Turtle Nails

I love turtles. Like serious love. My birthday is actually National Turtle Day so turtles and I have a deeply rooted connection.

These nails were supposed to be done for my birthday, but the decals ended up getting shipped to my old apartment so my turtle mani had to wait. But wait no longer, I got them this weekend!

Pink turtles. My life is complete.

I started this manicure out with two coats of Essie Azure. 

My little 3d turtles (I got twelve different colors of them) came complete with Nail Glue, so I just put some on the back of the turtles and popped them on.

This is easily the cutest and simplest manicure I have ever done. My dad pointed out that 3D turtles aren't very practical.

Clearly he doesn't understand that nail art is rarely practical!

Couldn't be happier with these nail decals! I think they'll only last me until next time I have to wash my hair, but you better believe I'm going to enjoy them throughly until then.

How could you not love these cute little decals?!

My First Client

Hello loves! I finished my first week of nail school on Friday. So far so good, I'm just anxious for my teacher to stop thinking of me as "new" and let me start doing other people's nails!

I did have two clients this last week though. One was a 3 year old and the other is the one I'll show you.

Meet Amhanda! My teacher fills gloves with rice and has us glue acrylics on them so we can get some polishing practice.

For her mani I used two coats of Opi Dulce De Leche. Then I did a different design on each of her hands.

For this design, I used Sinful Colors Rose In Your Nose to do the criss cross pattern and Sinful Colors Bad Chick for the dots.

Her other hand was done with Bad Chick and Sinful Colors Flower Girl. My teacher showed me this design.

This hand was definitely my favorite. I felt like the design was very elegant and pretty!

Tomorrow starts my second week of nail school.

 Keep your fingers crossed I'll be able to work on some living (grown up) hands!

Happy Birthday to Me!!

Today's my 20th birthday so I decided to do, drum roll please, birthday cake nails!

I started out with two coats of Sephora by Opi Casanova Is So Into Me.

Then I added Lush Lacquer Birthday Cake to the tips of my nails. I mostly used this polish because of the name. And I've been dying to use it since I got it a couple of weeks ago! Opportune moment.

Then I added the little lines to represent candles with Sally Hansen French Manicure Natural White.

The flames were done with a thin nail art brush and NYC Lexington Yellow.

Presto! One easy, cute, and festive Birthday manicure.

I hope everyone has a great day. You have to have a great day because it's my birthday and I say so! ;)

The Making of Killer Nails

This is my 100th post!! I can't believe I've made it this far and that people other than my old roommate and my mom follow me (even though I love and appreciate them so much!!).

Today I thought I'd talk a little about where Killer Nails came from. I got into nail art last summer when I had a deathly boring full time job and not too much else going on.

 I used nail art as an outlet. I started toying around with the idea of making a blog and with the encouragement of my friends/family finally made a blogger account. Naming it was the most difficult part, my best friend Drew and I brainstormed and finally came up with Killer Nails (because we liked that it rhymed with killer whales).

Drew made this for me a couple of days after my first post. Isn't it perfect?! 

Given my blog's name, I thought it would be appropriate for me to do some Killer Whale Nails for my 100th post.

Sorry the quality isn't great! I left my camera battery charger in Tallahassee so I'm stuck using my parent's camera until I get a new charger.

For this manicure I started out with two coats of Color Craze Radiation. Then I drew on the whale shapes with a Sally Hansen French Manicure White Tip Pen. I painted the black on over it with Pure Ice Black Out.

I think these turned out cute, not my best work, but it was my first time drawing whales on my nails and one of the few times I've used a nail art pen so considering my limited experience, I'm pretty happy with the result!

Bonus picture of Drew's hand for making me that wonderfully ridiculous banner that took me so long to show off! Thanks Drew, love you !

I start nail school tomorrow, I'm super excited but also nervous. Wish me luck!

Spring Flowers and Exciting News!

Today I've got some exciting news to share with all of you! I'm going to school to become a licensed nail technician and I'm starting on Monday!!

I'm doing a 6 week program at Hollywood Institute of Beauty Careers. That means I'll be going to school Monday-Friday from 9:30-5 for 6 weeks. I'm going to do my best to keep posting on here, but I might be posting less frequently.

I'm super excited for this opportunity! If you really don't care and are just here for the nails then let's get to it.

Yes, these babies took forever. I had jury duty yesterday and in order to destress I pulled out all my polishes, brushes, and dotting tools and just started painting flowers.

I started this manicure out with two coats of Ulta High Roller.

This polish is very sheer, but definitely very pretty. It has a nice, light shimmer to it.

The other polishes I used for this manicure include NYC Lexington Yellow, Julep Lynn, Love & Beauty Purple, Nina Ulta Pro Pretti Pink, Essie Coat Azure, Sally Hansen French Manicure Natural White, Sephora by Opi Casanova Is So Into Me, Julep Susie, L'Oreal Tangerine Crush, Revlon Raven Red, Rimmel London Stiletto Red, Wet n Wild Tickled Pink, Stripe Rite Pink, Love & Beauty Lavender, and Stripe Rite Green.

My favorite flowery nail was definitely my thumb nail.

It was the first one I did and I just dove into it without thinking about it too much, I think that's why it turned out so good!

Happy Hump Day everyone :)

Sensationail by Nailene Review

My best friend recently moved to Ohio and left me behind bunches of clothes, shoes, bags, and other fun things! Amongst them was a Sensationail by Nailene Starter Kit.

I've never had gel nails done so this was a new experience for me. The kit came with all of these things:

What you see is a LED Lamp, gel base & top coat, color gel polish, gel cleanser, gel primer, lint-free wipes, a double-sided nail buffer, and a manicure stick. 

I followed the instructions step by step and the first step was to lightly buff your nails with the included buffer. My nails looked and felt like they had been scraped against the street.

I was a little horrified, not going to lie. When I finally got over that I continued on. The next set of directions was to wipe my nails with the gel cleanser using a lint-free wipe.

The cleanser was basically just alcohol. Then I applied a thin layer of gel primer to my nails. The instructions said to let it air dry for 30 seconds but it basically never dried so I applied the base coat a few minutes later.

This was when I first used the LED lamp. After curing the base coat, I applied the color gel polish. I cured them for 60 seconds then added another layer and cured another 60 seconds. Then I put on a coat of top coat and cured my nails for 30 seconds. Then I just wiped them down with the cleanser and lint-free wipes and viola.

This color is called Scarlet Red. It reminds me a bit of the wax from the Babybel Mini Cheeses.

I liked the LED Lamp because it beeped after 30 seconds and shut down after 60 seconds so you didn't have to worry about keeping track of the time.

The package promises 2 weeks of damage-proof wear, but I went sailing the next day and one of my nails started peeling off. I ripped the rest of them off the same day.

I'm surprised because the reviews for this kit are good and most complaints are that the polish is too hard to get off. Could it be I'm just too hard on my nails? The polish definitely looked pretty while it lasted!

The Five Senses

Polish Days is here once again! The theme this time was the the number 5.

I really struggled to think of something to do. I finally decided today to do the 5 senses.

At first I was just going to draw a finger, tongue, ear, nose and eyes but I thought that wasn't very fun or exciting so I did a velvet nail for touch, a lollipop for taste, music notes for hearing, roses for smell, and sequins for sight.

I started out with a base of two coats of Pure Ice Black Out for all of the nails.

The other polishes I used for this mani were Stripe Rite Pink, Ulta High Roller, Sally Hansen French Manicure Natural White, Relvon Raven Red, and Stripe Rite Green.

The black flocking powder and the gold sequins were both purchased from Michael's.

I'm really pleased with how these turned out! My favorite's definitely my pinky but I could be biased seeing as it look me like 10 minutes to place all the sequins :)

Check out all the other brave nail artists who did Polish Days:

My Microbead Procrastination

This week has been super super busy for me which is why I haven't gotten around to posting!

I had finals and had to pack up all my stuff for when I move in Fall. Then today I did the Color Run. 

Here are my before and after pictures, I got absolutely covered in paint. It was a blast :)

In between all my busyness, I did manage to do my nails. At 2 in the morning after studying all day. When I should have been sleeping. Can you tell that I've got my priorities in order?

I am absolutely in love with how these turned out. Under normal circumstances, I would never spend this much time doing my nails, but procrastinating makes me do crazy things.

For the base of this manicure I used three coats of Sinful Colors Easy Going. While the third coat was still wet, I threw on the microbeads.

Or rather meticulously placed them on. The only ones I really threw on were the ones on my pinky.

For my thumbnail, I put a coat of Revlon Popular over Easy Going.

If anyone's wondering, I got the microbeads from Michael's for a couple of bucks. 

Hope everyone had a lovely weekend!