My week in nails (well, actually 2 weeks ;) )

Hi all,

I am so sorry for lack of posting in the last 2 weeks but the time just got to me. Even though I have no excuse for not being too active on my blog, I had busy 2 weeks at work and guess after coming home this was not my number one priority. Still want to share with you my manicures that I have created in the month of December. If you would like to see more pictures, you can find me on Instagram under my username nailsby_judinka123 ( http://instagram.com/nailsby_judinka123/).

So without further delay, here are my recent manicures. I think I will try to keep it short this time...because there are more manicures in this article than the words in my vocabulary...lol...hope you enjoy it and don't forget, if you decided to recreate any of my manicures, make sure to use #nailsby_judinka123 on Instagram.

December 1, 2014 - Ugly sweater

When I saw these stamping plate images, I immediately knew I wanna use them for an Ugly Sweater manicure. Red and green are great festive colors and I thought they would look great as a base for this manicure. I decided to use 2 of my China Glaze polishes. I do not remember what plates I used for this manicure but you can find similar images in most of the collections. If I find the exact images I will note it in the capture of this picture.

For stamping I used a green polish and White On from Sally Hansen and Bold Gold from Maybelline. All great polishes for stamping.

You see 2 coats of China Glaze With Love (red color) and Glittering Garlands (shimmery green). The red polish is a straight up red cream. Both polishes applied without any problems. My only note to the green one is, that the glitter puffs up the brush so it may be a little bit tricky when applying the polish onto your nails. In general, I see the same pattern with most of their glitter based polishes.

China Glaze - Glittering Garland and With Love. 2 absolute must haves in your collection. They are both opaque in 1-2 coats.

Did you get your own ugly sweater this year? This tradition seems to be more American, because I do not recall any European country doing contests or parties showing ugly sweaters. So I wore one on my nails only.

December 2, 2014 - Snowflakes

As a base for this mani I used again 2 polishes from China Glaze and different stamping plates that have snowflakes. I placed the snowflakes on my nails in no particular order, trying to cover them up but not adding too many.

China Glaze - For Audrey and Water You Waiting For; stamping- Sally Hansen White On and a mix of blue polishes from an L.A. colors nail kit (they had no names).

I really like how this manicure turned out. Again, the glittery polish puffed up the brush so it was a little tricky to apply it but all in all, both polishes were easy to work with and covered the nails in 2 coats.

December 3, 2014 - Red ribbon

When I was thinking about this theme, I remembered a tutorial created by @yagala (on Instagram). She did a simple manicure creating a bow using a striping tape. I thought it was a great idea and decided to try it. I did french manicure tips with red nail polish mimicking the red ribbon and topped it with a bow on my ring finger. To create the bow was a little tricky but once I got it on there, it looked cool. To make sure the bow won't loose its shape, I added a stud in the middle.

French tip manicure mimicking the red ribbon adding a bow on my ring finger. For the white nail tip I used Sally Hansen White on and silver striping polish from Shany.

What do you all think? Also, I painted the ring finger with white nail polish and added silver striping polish. As a base I used Pure Ice polish that you can get at Walmart (I think that is the only place where you can find these polishes as this is their own brand.

Pure Ice - Mint Cream; you cannot go wrong with this polishes. They are not only a great quality nail polishes but the price is very affordable as well.

I like to use this polish as a base for my french manicures mostly because of the pearly finish. It is so easy to apply and the price for Pure Ice polishes is around $2. It is really hard to beat the price and the quality of this brand is pretty good as well.

December 4, 2014 - TBT and Winter

This winter mani was sitting in my phone for years before I published it again. I am pretty much sure this was my very first attempt for stamping and for the first time this wasn't bad at all!!! Originally I posted this picture on my private Facebook page but that was at least 2 or 3 years ago. The final result convinced me that nail art, especially stamping, is the direction I wanna go.

One of my first attempts with stamping. Not too bad for first time ;).

For the mani itself I used 2 polishes from China Glaze. Around that time my local grocery store started carrying China Glaze but since I discovered www.8ty8beauty.com I have ordered all my China Glaze from their website only.

China Glaze - Water You Waiting For and Blue Years Eve. For stamping I used White On from Sally Hansen.

Sometimes it is still hard to believe how short and unattractive my nails used to be. I believe I got through the urge of biting off my nails. They are still brittle and break quite easily but is nowhere near where they used to be.

December 5, 2014 - Candy Cane and Red and Green theme

For this mani I used Sinful Colors nail polishes and then I used striping polishes from Shany I ordered off Amazon. You get a great variety of colors in this set (this link will direct you to the Amazon website with detailed pictures and description of the product http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005X2F7KI/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1). My only complaint is the weird scent they have but that is nothing I cannot get over. Just a quick FYI if you are a person who is sensitive to strange scents.

Sinful Colors - Sugar Sugar (red color) and Exotic Green (green color). Striping polishes were used from the Shany set and the white was from Sally Hansen.

For the white stripes I used the  white nail art pen from Sally Hansen. Simple and easy candy cane manicure. This was free handed but in the future I think I will use nail art decals so that my lines are more even.

December 6, 2014 - Houndstooth 

First I was playing with the thought I will attempt to hand paint the houndstooth image. Then I found several houndstooth images in my nail stamping plates stash and went for it. Besides different size houndstoohs I also decided to do the stamping with several colors so that my manicure looks more festive.

For stamping I used black Konad, red China Glaze and green Sally Hansen nail polishes.

For stamping I used black Konad, green Sally Hansen and a red polish from China Glaze. The base is Champagne Bubbles from China Glaze. Can you all see that I have a slight obsession with this brand? Besides the fact that I love the colors China Glaze comes up with, I can get them for a really good price online. Most polishes from this brand are opaque in 1 to 2 coats and that is something I really like because there is nothing I dislike more than a visible nail line.

China Glaze - Champagne Bubbles (this is 2 coats on my nails).

This is 2 coats on my nails but I think you could get away with one thick layer. I love the sheen running through the polish and I am so happy this color is in my stash. It is not a typical gold and it truly reminds me of a color of a champagne.

December 7, 2014 - anti-bullying nails

I was originally tagged on Instagram to do the anti-bullying manicure. Unfortunately the person's username got lost in my feed and when I did post the picture, I asked this person to leave me a comment so that I could give her credit. She never got back to me...so maybe if you are reading this article, let me know.

Anti-bullying manicure; I tried to tell a story here...

My story behind this mani is person who is being constantly bullied and is unhappy. Thanks to help and awareness, this person is sceptic at first but at the end they realize bullying is gone and they can live a happy and healthy life and have a working relationship. Me, personally,  have never experienced bullying and I am grateful for that. Never understood where the need to bully comes from and I hope the awareness is reaching out to you all to respect each other. We are all different and we should accept everybody around us for who they are!!!

2 coats of China Glaze polishes - Lotus Begin, Royal Tease and Fancy Pants.

This was another manicure where I used all China Glaze polishes. Guess it was a good week for this brand.

December 8, 2014 - Snowmen

And here we go again - China Glaze Running in Circles and For Audrey. My snowmen were painted with Sally Hansen White On and for the eyes I used black studs.

How cute are these hand painted snowmen? Excuse the one on my ring finger, he is melting...lol

The snowman on my ring finger looks like he is melting...you see how great my free hand painting skills are?! To create the snowman on my ring finger I used a dotting tool. The snowmen noses were drawn using an orange stripper from Shany (link above).

China Glaze - Water You Waiting For and For Audrey

Even though my snowmen are not perfect, I really liked this manicure. The blue color comes across a bit darker than it is in the bottle but I think that is partly caused by the white polish used to create snowmen heads.

December 9, 2014 - Twin manicure

My Instagram friend srasandhu (http://instagram.com/srasandhu/?modal=true) asked me if I would like to recreate one of her manicures for a twin manicure swap. I absolutely loved  this idea and the manicure she suggested to do for this swap. I have used lighter colors but had the same Pueen stamping plate; thus I was able to mimic the same image on my ring finger. You can check out her original mani on my Instagram account or directly at her account (link above).

Mani swap with an IG friend. Used China Glaze Pink-ie Promise, Dandy Layin' Around and Wish on a Starfish. Polka dots were made using Sally Hansen White On and for stamping I used Konad polish in black.

What you see on my nails is again 2 coats of China Glaze nail polishes. This is such a simple and eye catching design at the same time. It was my absolute pleasure to do this twin manicure swap and there is another one planned for near future.

December 10, 2014 - Champagne Bubbles

The theme for this mani was Champagne Bubbles. So not only I did stamping using champagne bubbles and champagne glasses images but also the name of the nail polish used for this manicure was Chanpagne Bubbles from China Glaze.

China Glaze - Champagne Bubbles; Maybelline - Bold Gold on my pinkie and black Konad polish on the rest of the fingers.

Even though this was an extremely simple design in real life it looked stunning. Even the gold image that is not too visible in this picture came through really nice. At the end I decided to finish the stamping with the black Konad polish because the base itself had a strong gold finish through it and the stamped image was almost invisible in pictures.

December 11, 2014 - Gingerbread mani

How cute are these gingerbread guys? Originally I was thinking abut trying reverse stamping for this manicure but at the end I went with the good old fashion regular stamping technique.

Stamping with my well know Sally Hansen White On.

As a base for the gingerbread mani I used the limited edition China Glaze from The Giver collection. When I heard that they are coming out with this collection, I was stalking 8ty8beauty every day at least once and when they finally had it in stock, I jumped on it and ordered the entire collection. When I checked last time, they were all still available on their website.

2 coats of China Glaze - Community from The Giver limited edition collection.

This is a perfect hot chocolate brown and was such a great match for this kind of mani. On its own the color is still pretty but in my opinion you will get more use out of it if you are using it for Christmas themed manicures. This is literally like looking at a hot steaming chocolate on a cold night in December.

December 12, 2014 - Santa and his Reindeer

Originally I was not planning on creating a manicure for this theme; however, I received my order from MoYou London (review is already on my blog) and could not helped it...had to try it out. At that time I was wearing the Magnetic polishes from Sally Hansen (lazy day manicure ;)) and happened they actually match the background for this Santa and his Reindeer manicure.

Stamping plate from MoYou London - Festive collection, plate #1. For stamping I used Sally Hansen White on and Maybelline Bold Gold.

I don't wear magnetic polishes very often but these from Sally Hansen are actually quite a good quality. Got most of them at Big Lots! for a great price and stocked up on all the colors and caps available. When using these polishes, I tend to apply a thin layer of polish as a base and a thick second layer so that there is enough polish for the magnet to move and create the desired shape. Once you figure out how to use them, the application is easy and the entire process takes only few minutes.

Sally Hansen Magnetic polishes - Read-y Response and Golden Conduct.

The great think about these polishes is also the fact that you can interchange the caps and use different caps with different colors. If you come across this brand of magnetic polishes, you should definitely pick them up...especially when you can find them on sale.

December 13, 2014 - where is the spring?

Yes, I am tired of winter. Thus I had an urge to create something with colors reminding me of spring. This manicure might be a little bit busy but the bright colors and shapes remind me of new leaves and the new life in spring.

Stamping plates from Pueen. For stamping I used green polish from Sally Hansen and Wet'n'Wild Pot of Gold.

This is 2 coats of China Glaze and OPI polishes. The application of these was super easy and I did not have any problems applying any of these nail polishes. For polka dots I used a dotting tool with a larger end but the polka dots did not appear too big on the nails. Also, I have used a stamping plate from Pueen from their buffet style set.

2 coats of China Glaze - Tree Hugger and Teal the Tide Turns and OPI - My Vampire is Buff. Must have colors in your collection.

I hope you all have a great week and see you again with this topic soon. Stay warm... I cannot wait for this winter to be over and it is only December.