Guest Post: Ashley from Passion for Polish

Hello all! I have an exciting post for you today! Ashley from the blog Passion for Polish was sweet enough to write me a guest post! This was the first guest post to be featured on my blog and I think it was a lot of fun! Ashley is extremely nice and she has beautiful nails. She created a pretty design for me today, check it out!
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Hello Hand-y Feats and Other Treats readers!  When Erin asked me to do a guest post for her, I was so unbelievably excited ... and then completely terrified!  Erin has such a talent for nail art, and I'm a bit nail art challenged, so it took me forever to come up with an idea.  Erin specifically requested that I use some form of 3D nail art, so here's what I came up with.

The shimmery pink foil is Studio M Nail Lacquer Hot Like Lava.  On my two middle fingers, I used 3 coats of OPI Alpine Snow, and stamped the flower design with Hot Like Lava and image plate BM-211.  I finished it off with gold steel ball nail accents from the Born Pretty Store for the centers of the flowers.

As pretty as the steel ball nail art is, this isn't a manicure that's going to last very long.  If you seal it with a good, thick layer of top coat, you can get a few days of wear out of it at most.  Since they're so tiny, they won't stay put as well as something larger, like a rhinestone.  But I still love them!  Thanks so much to Erin for having me over to visit today!

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I have never used any type of 3D nail art and I just LOVE what Ashley did with the gold steel balls! I think these nails are simply amazing! I would definitely wear them for a night out or to a wedding. Thank you Ashley for writing such a wonderful guest post! I hope you all enjoyed her post, I know I did. Make sure to check out her wonderful blog! I really enjoyed having a guest post and I hope to have more in the future. If you are interested in writing a guest post for me, I will gladly do the same for you. We can do a swap of sorts! Go ahead and email me or write me on Facebook if you are interested. :) Ashley also featured me on her blog today, you can see the post here.

Have a wonderful weekend and I will see you Monday!

Erin

31 Day Challenge! Day 14: Flowers

Aloha! Day 14 already! Wow! Today's challenge is flowers. I was working on my other challenge, the summertime one, and it really put me into a tropical, summer mood. That mood really affected my flowers.

Roses are red.

Hello! Happy Valentines Day, I meant to post this earlier but was preoccupied... So I was a little stuck on coming up with another love themed design and I was checking out Cutepolish, who always has just the cutest videos and I came along her Vintage rose design and thought "wow, this is perfect" since roses are one of my favorite flowers and they pretty much go hand in hand with Valentines day.

Apologies for the quality of the photos. For some odd reason, the colors really didn't want to capture right on the camera. Mostly the roses themselves just wouldn't show up. Make sure to watch the video by Cutepolish if you would like to recreate this design, I couldn't do a better job of explaining how to do it haha. Here is the link to the video again. 

What I used:

Base coat: Essie ridge filling base coat

Base color: China Glaze For Audrey

Inside of rose: OPI Rodeo Rose

Outside: Orly Belle of the Ball

Leaves: Art Deco Really Green

Top coat: Seche vite

What is your favorite kind of flowers? Besides red roses, which are the best color of roses? I think I might attempt this design again but with a much lighter pink for the inside of the rose, so it would show up better. I also love pink and yellow roses, they are so pretty so I'm thinking I might make this design over but use those colors. :)

Until next time,

☮Erin

He loves me...

Hello everyone! So sorry that I have neglected to post lately. Sadly my mother has been in and out (and back in) the hospital and I have been rather upset and stressed lately. BUT not posting has been making me more sad, so here is a quickly done post for you all. 

It is now February the month of love, so it's safe to say that all manicures done for this month will have a love theme. I don't even like to celebrate Valentines day since I find it to be just a sad, miserable holiday. Most of the time I am single on Valentines, so February 14th has always been a reminder that I am alone, and that is just a crappy feeling! However, I am an advocate for love. Love has many sides to it and in my opinion, it is the best thing in the world. 

My first experience with love, besides the love of my family, would be the time I experienced my first crush. Of course I played the silly, "he loves me, he loves me not" game with any kind of flower I could find in the fields at recess, so I decided that would be a cute idea for a nail art design.

For those unaware of the game, "He loves me, he loves me not," is a game you play when you are in love with someone (or have a crush) and want a silly way to find out if the person feels the same way about you. Find a flower with multiple petals and one by one pull the petal off of the flower going back and forth between the person your fancy, loving you or not. So for example, as you pull of the first petal you would say "he loves me," then the next petal, "he loves me not" and so on and so forth. The final petal will reveal your loves true intentions haha. It's very silly but it's fun. 

Right hand

It's a simple design and really cute, especially if you would do this all the time like I did haha. I was rather boy crazy as a child. All you need to recreate this look is a nail art brush, a lighter colored base color, a green polish for the stem and leaves, color for the petals and color for the pollen of the flower. 

Left hand

What I used:

Base coat: Essie ridge filling base coat

Base color: Essence You Belong to Me

Stem and leaves: Art Deco Bright Green

Petals: Ulta Plum Perfect (with a little white mixed in)

Pollen (or middle of flower): Sally Hansen Mellow Yellow

Essence You Belong to Me is becoming one of my favorite polishes and it was only 99cents at Ulta! Definitely need to go get more of it. I hope you enjoyed my post! More love themed nails are on the way!

Until next time,

☮Erin

Julep Swatches

Hello there! I have been meaning to post for a few days now but alas, I started tutoring again which has left me a little bit of a scatter brain. So my last post was about my lovely Julep box. Just by looking at the bottles, I could tell that I would love my two new polishes. Oh how right I was! These two colors are just gorgeous. First off here are some pictures of Julep Megan. I thought this was going to be a darker aqua color but really it turned out to be a sheer shimmery aqua, which is absolutely beautiful. 

Most of the time I feel that nail polish needs a little more to it, which is why I usually will snazz it up with a stamp or hand paint an image or something. Adding nail art to a plain polish is so fun and really makes things festive but with Megan I felt no need to add anything to it, it's just lovely all on its own. 

Next up there is Carrie, and as I have mentioned before this reminds me of Sex and the City. This is such a cute cotton candy pink. I really loved this color and took lots of photos with it, so here are just three haha. 

Carrie is also another color I could just wear by itself, it's simply pretty and makes me feel oh so girly. However, I was curious how it would look with stamping so I tried a combo that I have always loved, pink and brown.

Base Coat: Essie ridge filling base coat
Base Color: Julep Carrie
Stamping Polish: Essence color and go, Date with the Night
Stamp: BM 16
Top Coat: Seche Vite
**And the dots in the flowers were made with the OPI exclusive, A Sparkle Yule Love and a dotting tool.

I was also curious how this design would look with a matte top coat. I just painted one hand and I must say I wasn't all that impressed with it. Having the shine with the color combo was a much better fit. It was hard to capture the matte top coat on my camera but the third picture below is with the matte top coat.

With Matte top coat.

So who else has gotten a Julep Maven account? How do you like them or dislike them? I hope you enjoyed my post. Always feel free to leave me comments, I love hearing what you guys have to say.

Until next time,
☮Erin