Ombre Tiger Gel Mani Tutorial

I got a little bored the other day and wanted to try the tiger mani with the gel polish. I've done it before with regular polish. You can see those pictures here. That one had white and orange. This time I decided to use neon orange and neon yellow.

What you will need:

• Black polish
• Orange polish
• Yellow polish 
• Glitter accent (I used gold glitter)
• Realllllllly thin nail brush

Step 1: Start by prepping your nails as normal (cut, file cuticles etc). Then put on your base coat (cure base coat if your are doing gel)

Step 2: Now, paint the orange polish 3/4 of the way up your nail starting at the cuticle and going up. **Do not cure yet**

Step 3: Now, using your yellow polish, paint the tip you left uncolored by the yellow, and paint down and just a little over the orange. The gel polish because it doesn't dry by air, will kind of run together. This is why you do not want to cure after you paint the orange on.

Step 4: Now once you have done this to all of your fingers, cure the polish. Repeat step 3. You want two coats to give you that ombre. And again, with the gel, it will blend together mixing, but be careful not to use too much polish.

Step 5: With your nail brush paint black stripes over the nail. Make them thicker on the sides and go outward thinner to look more like tiger stripes. If using the gel, cure the black stripes in the UV lamp.

Step 6: Add glitter over some of the black tiger stripes to accent. Cure if using gel.

Step 7: Top coat (if using gel... you guessed it, cure!) 

Step 8: Go out and show off your cute DIY mani! Go ahead brag that you did it yourself. I give you permission!

Heart and Design Mani

Fun and cute but I smeared the heart! 

I had fun playing with some designs. I got the idea for this manicure from a picture I saw on Pinterest. It didn't turn out perfect but it was a lot of fun.

I didn't take pictures to do a tutorial but it was actually quite simple.

Thumb: Paint nail with the two colors. Don't worry about making the line even because you will just put the gems over it. Once colors are mostly dry place the gems in a line down the nail. See easiest way to apply gems in this post.

Index Finger: Paint all over with the lighter color. With the darker color add a heart. See how to do the hearts in the heart mani tutorial.

Middle Finger: Paint the entire nail with the dark color. Once nail is mostly dry but still a little tacky, apple the gem towards the cuticle of the nail.

Ring Finger: Paint all over with light color. Once light color is dry, paint stripes in different directions. There is no rhyme or reason to this one, just so it looks good.

Pinky: Just like the middle finger, paint the entire nail with the lighter color. Once nail is mostly dry but still a little tacky, apple the gem towards the cuticle of the nail.

Top coat, let dry, and you are done!

**Make sure when you top coat, do two coats on the nails that have the gems.

Another angle, the last pic didn't have the ring finger! Whoops...

Glitter Ombre Gel Nail Mani

I recently posted a step by step tutorial of a glitter ombre mani. I had some good feedback to it, so I did it on another one of my friends. 

For the tutorial on how to do this (with regular or gel nail polish) go here.

Since I did different colors this time, I wanted to post so you can get ideas of different ways to do this. The only difference with this one and the one in the tutorial is obviously the colors, and then we accented the ring finger with glitter on the entire nail.

Enjoy!

A Post of a Different Kind..

I've been trying to stay motivated lately to meet my weight loss and fitness goals. It's been a challenging process but I am getting there. I am trying to cut out processed foods and making better long term choices that will enhance my quality of life.

My blog, as it says, is a little bit of this and a little bit of that. So my apologizes for the sporadic posting but this is my outlet! I don't have that many readers anyway so I can do what I want!

If I get ballsy enough, I may post some "transformation" pictures. I need to have some kind of transformation first to do that... sooooo instead I wanted to share a picture that I saw on instagram this morning. For whatever reason this picture really hit me and I wanted to share it.

"Why not you?" - Jillian Michaels