Client Nail Files

If you didn't know, I work at a 4-star nail salon in Colorado. Ever since joining the team there, blogging has taken a backseat. It's tough to come home from long shifts, sometimes ending past 8:00pm, and find the energy and content to blog.

Nonetheless, nail art is still a huge passion of mine. Most days, my clients don't ask for nail art (Boulder isn't a city known for its colorful, wild fashion), but on the days that they do, I get so excited!

I'd like to share some nail art that clients and I have done together with you now! Check out the collection below, each design with its own story.

Easy Rainbow Nail Art for Divine Caroline

Check out today's colorful tutorial for Divine Caroline!

I'm showing you how to make an impossibly easy rainbow look like the one below.

Pop over to my Divine Caroline guest post for the products and techniques used.

Cacee Polish - BFE Summer Collection

Primary colors are special and great. We all grew up on crayons and markers and chalk in primary colors. It makes sense that we are always drawn to them, even after we've digested all our crayons and turned our toilet bowls into colorful rainbow movements.

That was a disgusting thing to say, I'm sorry. Maybe this will make it better!!!

This design was done with five of the six colors I'm reviewing tonight. These colors from a polish line called Cacee.

The first color is Tiffany. This silky baby pink is such a black sheep in the collection, I'm totally confused by it. It is a silky satin, while all the others are cremes. What?! It took 3 coats on the thicker side to get here. I didn't much like it, but it's the only one I felt like that about.

Tami is my favorite in the collection. It's a neon coral, requiring three coats. I hate my camera for ruining it. It's so much brighter and warmer, and doesn't blend into the skin tones as well.

See the way Whitley stands out against my skin? That's how Tami should be. Whitley is an uneven, patchy polish, and it took four coats to get this opaque. The color is great though! It's like mango. Yum!

Lena is a grassy neon green of three coats. Very smooth looking!

Melanie is a perfect sky blue, and it only needed 2 coats.

Dianna also only needs two coats. It's more magenta-y than lavender.

Primary colors. Crayons. Joy. They're all synonymous in my mind!

Cacee polish is available in lots of nail supply stores. I found it in my local one, AAA Nail Supply in Broomfield. I'm not sure how much they retail for, but I'll find out and update the post when I do!

These products were sent to me by Cacee. The reviews are based entirely on my experience with the products and were in no way influenced by anyone.

The Dark Side of the Moon

Money, get away.
Get a good job with good pay and you're okay.
Money, it's a gas.
Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash.
New car, caviar, four star daydream,
Think I'll buy me a football team.

Money, get back.
I'm all right Jack keep your hands off of my stack.
Money, it's a hit.
Don't give me that do goody good bullshit.
I'm in the high-fidelity first class traveling set
And I think I need a Lear jet.

Money, it's a crime.
Share it fairly but don't take a slice of my pie.
Money, so they say
Is the root of all evil today.
But if you ask for a raise it's no surprise that they're
giving none away.

"HuHuh! I was in the right!"
"Yes, absolutely in the right!"
"I certainly was in the right!"
"You was definitely in the right. That geezer was cruising for a
bruising!"
"Yeah!"
"Why does anyone do anything?"
"I don't know, I was really drunk at the time!"
"I was just telling him, he couldn't get into number 2. He was asking
why he wasn't coming up on freely, after I was yelling and
screaming and telling him why he wasn't coming up on freely.
It came as a heavy blow, but we sorted the matter out."

Striped Skittle Gradient

The colors used for this manicure were plentiful. 15 different bottles from several different brands, with the common denominator, Lime Crime. You get the best of two worlds: skittles and gradients. Cheating at gradients with stripes is something I've wanted to try recently, and this one was pretty great! It probably took longer than a regular gradient since I did both hands and the non-dom is less than perfect and steady, but like I said, the best of two worlds. The best!

I'll happily edit this post with each polish color if you're interested, but for now, let's just bask in the polish bath I've set up. What a magical place!

Taste This Rainbow

If Skittles started making creamsicle flavored Skittles, I think they would look like this.

And you would so buy them. You'd feel guilty about it, and you would purposfully rip the bag right where the calorie content was listed, but you would still buy them. And you would LOVE THEM!

I used six colors for this creation. My Boyfriend Scales Walls (OPI) for the white, Grape Pop (China Glaze) for the purple, No Room for the Blues (OPI) as my blue which turned into a beautiful softer blue, Just In Lime! (Sally Hansen Insta-Dri) for the lime green, The "It" Color (OPI) for my yellow (with no hint of the red undertones coming through at all) and Tasmanian Devil Made Me Do It (OPI) for the orange/red.

Fantasy of Perpetual Indulgence

Today's nails hardly needs any blog-talk accompanying it. It's so flippin' amazing, but it's also a rarity currently. The amazing glitter shown here is Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence from Sonoma Nail Art. It's a seriously remarkable. I originally wanted to do it over yellow as advertised on the Sonoma Nail Art blog. I wanted to try something else though, so I chose a HOT pink, Flip Flop Fantasy (China Glaze).

I seriously considered buying 2 of these polishes to offer as a giveaway prize, but then I thought that wasn't fair to the other girls who were waiting for the shop to open like me. My heart was racing faster than ice cream on a hot tarmac. When I actually got this bottle and another into my cart, I was certain they'd sell out before I could finish PayPal's transaction, but they didn't and I got a confirmation message! I felt happier than a starved-for-attention actress mentioned for her terrible fashion choices.

Rainbowed

Not much can be said about tonight's manicure...except it's fat and fully of color! (I will be fat and full of corned beef soon...if this slow cooker thing wasn't so slow.)

Another patient dotting manicure done with lots of colors. I gave a little teaser out to Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr (though the Tumblr tease didn't seem to go through) with Instagram (my name's kehteh on there if you're interested in following my grams).

Like I said...lots of color! Most of them are China Glaze, but Zoya and Savina were both used as well. The base is Secret Peri-Wink-le (China Glaze). Moving from the pink to the purple, here are the rest of the colors:

• Pool Party (China Glaze)
• Papaya Punch (China Glaze)
• Happy Go Lucky (China Glaze)
• Kiwi Cool-Ada (China Glaze)
• Light Mist (Savina)
• Breezi (Zoya)
• Dream (Savina)

I seem to be using the same colors for my manicures, but it's just so hard for me to pull away from bright, bold creme polishes. That's why I love the Up & Away China Glaze collection so much. 

Milky Glitter

Marshmallow (Essie) and Rainbow Connection (OPI) have been trying to get together for a long time, but the retailers they're sold through just won't put them near each other. It's not fair. Rainbow and white just never get the chance. They're always polar opposites on the polish display stand, and frankly, I'm sick of it. Let's fight this! Let's get rainbows and whites together at last! END POLISH SEPARATION! Take a lesson from The Posh Polish, and lay these two polishes in the same bed...nail bed!

(I'm in a weird mood.)

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

This year's St. Patrick's Day is one of the first I'll be able to celebrate properly since it's on a weekend and I have no other responsibilities looming at the moment. My good friend Bree (who let me do her nails a few months ago when I was first starting out) also wanted to take advantage of this and asked me to do her nails. Of course I said yes! Her ideas were amazing too, and this is the result.

Obviously this took a mother load of polishes to create. I used Starboard (China Glaze) as the gorgeous Kelly green base. We thought about topping it with some Kleancolor chunky holos, but it was too stunning on its own. Her ring finger's base is Glitter in my Stocking (Nicole by OPI). That's also the gold in the pot of gold. The pot (done with Time Off by Sinful Colors) is only on one of her thumbs, and the other thumb is a continuation of the rainbow. The colors used for the rainbow include Be My Valentine (Sinful Colors), Papaya Punch and Happy Go Lucky (China Glaze), Lickety-Split Lime and Brisk Blue (Sally Hansen Insta-Dri), and I'm a Belieber (Nicole by OPI). This was my first try at my new MASH brushes, and I absolutely love the little one that comes in the set. I'm sure it'll wear out fast. I have big plans for that little guy.

Her ring finger was done freehand, using Artsy Crafty (Color Club) and Limelight (Ulta). She was absolutely tickled by the time I finished (even though it took quite some time), and we celebrated at The Sink and a Hookah bar I've never been to. She said she even got a compliment on her nails going into the bathroom.