simple little gradient/doticure!

Well I haven't posted in quite some time so I decided this would be a great little tutorial to post because I jut love how my nails turned out! This post will be for a gradient and doticure I just did.

Items that will be needed:

(Acetone for clean up, acrylic paint in colors of your choosing, top coat, white base coat, cuticle balm since your cuticles will be dried out from the acetone, paint brushes, a clean up brush, dotting tools in different sizes, stripping tape and a makeup sponge which I forgot to include in the photo.)

Ok, for starters make sure everything is laid out and readily accessible. Make sure you grab some paper towels and wax paper for your paint. The paint colors that I chose were neon purple and neon pink by FolkArt. I put some blobs of paint on the wax paper. I chose two colors and then mixed the two to make a third color like so:

The first thing that I did was put on a white base coat so the colors of the gradient would pop more and so the doticure had a base color instead of plain nail. I used Snow Me White by Sinful Colors.

Next take your handy dandy little makeup sponge and start painting on some stripes of the acrylic paint with your paint brushes. I suggest using more than one paint brush so you don't have to keep cleaning it off.

Then just start sponging the bad boy onto your nail like no tomorrow. You're going to need to do a few layers to make sure the nail is fully covered. Its going to be very messy but don't worry about it because it will come right off with water and soap.

After you do the nails that you want, make sure that you put a generous amount of top coat on your nails as the paint will come off when you wash your hands. Once the top coat dries, walk on over to your sink and grab some q-tips and soap and go to town on your cuticles to get all that paint off. If bits are left over you can always use your clean up brush and acetone to get rid of it. They should now look like this:

Ok now were going to work on the accent nails which will be the doticure portion of the nail. Whip out that stripping tape and put two pieces to make lines on your nails. The way that you want to do the dots on your nails is completely up to you, but I decided to show you how I did mine in case you wanted to do the same.

Do the same steps with the other two colors that you used for the gradient to cover the rest of the nail. Take off the stripping tape and put on a top coat.

Look at that, now your done! Bust out your camera and start snapping some photos! If you try out this tutorial and post it on Instagram tag me to your post because I would love to see them. My IG name is @Nails_by_Jillyin :)

Orly Nail Rescue - to the rescue.

                                         


I personally have extremely weak, brittle nails. They constantly break and bend so I usually wear acrylic nails because I cant grow mine out. Recently i took my acrylics off because I was getting sick of doing them. I was upset because I knew i was going to have to file my real nails down to nubs because they were going to be totally destroyed, which I absolutely did not want to do. I've tried pretty much every nail strengtheners I could get my hands on in the past and none have helped. I've found that gel polish does help to make them stronger but it is just so time consuming. That is when I came across Orly Nail Rescue. I was a bit hesitant to try it as I've had no success in the past with other products, but I decided to give it a try anyway.

All I can say is that this product is an absolute life saver. Not only does it help to repair nails if they have a crack or a chip in them, but it also makes the nail stronger. The instructions say to use it on the whole nail, but I only use it on the tips as not much is included in the package so I want to make it last awhile.  As you can see on the picture above the nail rescue kit contains a small bottle of nail glue (0.18 oz or 5 g as stated on the bottle), a small container with the nail repair powder (0.15 oz or 4.25 g), an instructions manual and a little pink buffer.

The instructions are really simple:


1. Brush the glue onto your nail, make sure not to put too much on or get it onto your skin.

2. Dip your finger into the powder QUICKLY as you do not want the glue to dry. I would suggest to have the lid already off before you put the glue on your nail.

3. There will be excess powder on your nail, just brush it off.

4. The nail will be uneven and bumpy but don't fret, the package comes with a nice little buffer that you use to make the nail smooth.

And voila! now your nail is fixed and is rock hard.

I highly suggest every nail enthusiast to own this product because everyone's nails will break at some time or another and this way you do not have to completely file the nail down. The process doesn't take long to do, but the product stays on your nail for a good amount of time. I've noticed that acetone wont even take it off. Eventually it will wear away though. I purchased this at Sally's Beauty Supply for $6.99 with my Sally's card, however you can find it online as well if you do not have a Sally's near you.

I'm very curious to hear about your experiences with this product so please leave me a comment and let me know how it went!

Ruby Kisses - You learn something new everyday.

Hello and welcome to my blog! I'm going to be honest right now, I'm not exactly sure how these blogs work, I've only looked at about 3 to get a vague idea. Basically what I plan to do is show you swatches, nail art and hopefully inspire you! If you enjoy my blog please follow me on instragram for more photos. My name on instagram is nails_by_jillyin.

So to start this off I would like to show you a new brand I came across the other day. The brand is called Ruby Kisses. I was a little reluctant to purchase because it was a cheap brand at only $1.99 a bottle but they had too many gorgeous colors to pass it up.

This right here is called Cast a Spell. I could not get any pictures to show the true color. it is much more royal purple IRL. I only needed one coat for full coverage. It went on very smoothly and it has a wide brush which i love because it can basically cover the whole nail in one swipe.

I then decided to add Mardi Gras on top of Cast a Spell.

Now I'm not one for bar glitters but when I saw this I just had to have it. This is the only polish that I own that has bar glitters in it. This polish has silver holo bar glitter and small purple circle glitters in two different colors. I am absolutely in love with this polish. There was no fishing for glitter involved as the polish is a glitter bomb but I did end up needing two coats to make it really noticeable.

Needless to say I will be going back to pick up more of these polishes. I guess the price of a polish does not always determine the quality of a polish. If you would like to pick up some of these polishes you can order them through Ruby Kisses website which is http://rubykissescosmetics.com they also offer other cosmetics which I am thinking about trying out. I have a feeling they will be comparable to E.L.F cosmetics. 

Since this is my first post I would really appreciate some feedback on what you though about it. This blog may not end up being the best, but I am only doing this to share my love of polish with others. I may end up posting about other beauty products along the way.