JUNE NAIL ART CHALLENGE: SUMMER NAILS

Hey guys! I thought I would take a break from all of my swatches and show you guys some of my designs for the June Nail Art Challenge :)

So as you can see the first day's theme is Summer :) And when I was trying to think of what I could do for Summer nails all I could think of was something to do with the beach, flip flops or sunglasses...and those are all themes for other days of the month...I was having what you could call 'writers block' but for nails :P I don't know what you'd call that, a nail block?? Hahahah! :P Anywho, I needed some inspiration so I was going through photos I have liked on Instagram and came across this beautiful design by @seizethenail :)

So after deciding that this was the design I wanted to re-create I went to work! Obviously I think her design turned out better (her nails are gorgeous!) but I have to give myself some credit because I really like the way mine turned out as well :)

Real quick, I do have to tell you that when I was starting the palm trees I really wasn't to happy about how it was turning out. I actually had to start over on about 4 nails :S but once I figured out how to paint the palm trees it was a little bit more exciting to see the design come together.

I started out with a base color of China Glaze, Sky High-Top, and then using a make-up sponge, sponged China Glaze, Coconut Kiss, Frost Bite, Happy Go Lucky, Sinful Colors, Sweet Nothing, Orange Cream, and Silky Polish, Viole Serenade on the tips of my nails. Before I started painting my palm trees I painted one coat of China Glaze, Fairy Dust over each nail to give the sunset a sparkle. Then using my black acrylic paint and a small nail art brush I painted each tree. As I said before I didn't get the trees right on the first try, it took me a minute to figure it out, I even had to look up some YouTube videos to see how other people painted their palm trees. Once each nail had a palm tree on it I was able to finish with a top coat of Seche Vite and then apply Orly's cuticle oil to complete the design.

Thank you for taking a moment to check out my nails! Be sure to follow me on Facebook (Playful Polishes) and Instagram (@playfulpolishes) if you have them :) 

JULEP MAVEN SWATCH & REVIEW

Good afternoon everyone! I hope you guys enjoyed my last post about Becoming a Maven and found it helpful :) Today's post is another Maven box! My second box (which was May, I received my June box 2 days ago, so pics and swatches to come!) came with 3 gorgeous colors!

This box is so cute! It's the perfect combination for a date night :P The rose hair pins are super cute too, but I don't know that I would ever wear them. Even though I paint my nails Alot! I'm not a super girly girl.

The best thing for me about receiving these Maven boxes every month is that I get polishes I normally wouldn't chose. Not that I don't like the polishes they send (because I love them!) I would probably just chose other colors before the ones I've received.

So onto the swatches of these colors, which are my favorite swatches I've done so far :P

Coco - Coco is absolutely stunning! This is one of those colors that I could wear all year long, because it is so elegant and beautiful! I only applied 2 coats, but if I got polish on my cuticle it was NOT easy to get it off! lol you can kind of tell in the photos...not that I should point that out :P but oh well.

Clara - Clara is the polish I wasn't really excited about when I first saw it. It just seemed kind of plain. So when I started painting I wasn't sure if I was going to like it or not. The first coat was kind of streaky and thin, but once I finished a 2nd coat and actually looked at the polish on my nails, I fell in love with it! Lol. It's a beautiful peachy-pink color, very soft and pretty, and I have to admit, it's now one of my favorite colors :P

Paris - Paris is a very beautiful sparkle/glitter polish. If you remember from my last post, I don't really like using glitter polish very much, but because I have received some in these Maven boxes I'm starting to like them more...I guess I just need to start using them lol :P

The reason I really like Paris is because it has 2 different size sparkles. The larger sparkles are silver and gold, and when the light reflects off of them they look like different colors of the rainbow :) The sparkles don't apply evenly (but I don't think many sparkles polishes do) so I had to move them around with the brush and place them where I wanted them.

I hope you guys enjoyed this post! :) I have many more to come! Once I catch you guys up on everything I plan on having a more set schedule with my posts, so stay tuned! :P

BECOMING A MAVEN

Some of you may be wondering "what the heck is a Maven!?" ... Am I right? :P Have you guys heard of Julep nail polish? I had seen it a few times here and there, and every time I saw a picture of someone who had Julep polish I was kind of jealous lol. One day when I was going through my feed on Instagram I came across one of the nail accounts I follow and she had a picture of her Maven Box. Once I actually figured out what she was talking about I noticed 5 or 6 other accounts posting pictures of their Maven boxes! (You know how once you really notice something you start seeing it everywhere!?) I had to know what it was because I had never heard of it before, and to my surprise she had Julep nail polish!! She had a full description of everything in her box and how to get my first one for free, so of course I had do that! Free nail polish!? You bet I'm going to jump on that! :P She posted a link in her bio of how to sign up to receive your first box free, so I immediately signed up!

When you sign up to become a Maven you first take a style quiz to find out what Maven you are. I was matched with the "It Girl" category, and after reading through the other styles, it seems to fit me best :) But you also don't have to stick with that style every month...each month they send you an email with the contents of your next box and you can choose to receive a different one if you like another one better. So after your first box you receive a box every month for $19.99...now before you freak out about that I have to tell you that the reason I really like that is because you can opt out if it's not prudent for you each month. So on the 24th of every month they bill you and then they mail out your box on the 27th...I received my first box pretty quickly, which was awesome because I was so excited!

Here is my first box :)

Cute pink bag with a sample of a foot scrub :) And a cute Welcome note!

3 beautiful polishes! You may recognize the blue one from my Earth Day mani (:S that really shows how far behind I am on posting...).

I absolutely love these colors and I finally had a chance to swatch them this week! (I didn't swatch Carly because I thought I already had...Oops.) So here are the swatches and my review on each color :)

Simone - Simone is a beautiful, soft purple. For full coverage I only needed to apply 2 coats. The first coat was a little bit streaky, but the second filled in all of the streaks. My favorite thing about this color, that you can't really see in the photos, is it has a beautiful blue tint! When the light hits the polish you can see a little hint of blue sparkles, so unless you're actually paying attention you probably wouldn't really notice it. I almost missed it!

Stefani - Stefani is very similar to 2 other polishes I own, but this one is my favorite of the 3...the reason that is is because this color has gold flakes in it! You may kind of notice in the pictures if you look really closely. This polish was pretty opaque with 1 coat but I applied 2 just so I didn't miss any areas.

Carly - Carly is now one of my favorite polishes out of my entire collection! Although I'm not the biggest fan of glitter polish (because I hate taking it off lol) I could wear this color all the time! It is so eye catching! Despite the way the bottle looks, this color isn't actually opaque enough to wear without a base color under it, so for this picture I had a base color of Sinful Colors, Savage. Which matches perfectly!

Overall, I really like the Julep polishes so far, but I have to admit I don't love the brushes. Because of how long the stick is (idk the actual name of it, but the part that is connected to the brush and the lid :P) alot of polish runs down onto the brush while you're painting, so the brush is always full of polish...but once I figured that out it was a little bit easier to paint my nails without having so much polish on the brush. I guess it just takes some patience :) 

If you guys enjoyed this post and want to know more about becoming a Maven for yourself, here is the link: https://www.julep.com Enjoy!! :)

MIX & MATCH SPRINGTIME NAILS

Next up! This fun Mix & Match Springtime design was inspired by @naildecor on Instagram. I have been so attracted to pink and orange together so when she posted her design I fell in love hahaha! I immediately pulled out my nail supplies and started painting! :P

The colors I used were Silky Polish, Viole Serenade, Dupion Tang, Sinful Colors, Snow Me White and E.L.F., Party Peach. All of the small white designs were done with white acrylic paint and tiny nail art brushes :)

My colors were a little bit darker than @naildecor's but I totally loved this design! After about a week the rhinestones started to bug me though :P I like rhinestones but I can't wear them for very long lol.

Do you guys like this design? What nail designs would you like to see me do?? 

GALAXY NAILS

Hey guys! I apologize I haven't been around much lately. I've been super busy and pretty much neglected my blog :'( But I have alot more free time, so today I am going to start catching you up on all of the designs I have done in the past few months, so I hope your excited! :) I'm excited because once I catch myself up I plan on posting on a more regular basis again...more on that later!

This post is my second attempt at Galaxy nails. I have seen other bloggers do more of a purple colored galaxy nail and I have always wanted to try it, especially because I loved my first galaxy nails so much!  (Link to that design here). So while I was on vacation visiting family in Arizona (yes I take all of my nail stuff with me on my vacations! :P) I had some free time to paint my nails. The reason I chose Galaxy nails was because it was one of the days of the April Nail Art Challenge, which I started but wasn't able to finish all of the days because of how busy I was with work.

So enough talk, I know you want to see these nails ;)

Because I was on vacation I didn't have my usual set up for pictures...I usually use a light box and sunlight, so these pictures didn't turn out as well as I would have liked, you can't really see the contrast in the different colors, but I still really like them!

The colors I used (sorry I may miss some) were China Glaze, Purr-fect Plum, Coconut Kiss, Urban Night, Sinful Colors, Snow Me White and Silky Polish, Viole Serenade. I started with Purr-fect Plum as the base color and sponged all of the other colors in random spots using a make-up sponge. The more random you place the colors the better the end result looks :)

For the dots and the stars I used my acrylic paint which may have been way to thick. The stars didn't turn out the way I hoped they would, and I didn't want to take off what I had already done so I left them the way they were. So knowing that, maybe I'll try this one again soon just so I can practice doing more stars :) and play around with my acrylic paint a little bit more.

I hope you guys enjoyed this design and I have more coming! I will probably do a few more today and a few tomorrow just so I don't overload you or myself today :P Also I want to thank you for sticking around :) It means alot to me!