Acrylic Nail Tutorial: Gray Business

Hey peoples! This is another acrylic nail art tutorial. Unfortunately I was in a hurry on Friday and didn’t make a video of my nail painting. I could have, but I would have seemed overkill to me since this one is pretty easy. It is basically two coats of gray sandwiched between two clear coats. The hardest part was mixing the color to get the one I wanted. I also didn’t use an accent nail this time. Don’t get me wrong.. I love accent nails, but it just didn’t seem business appropriate for this occasion. Plus, tomorrow I have my professional meet and greet and I didn’t want to have to redo my nails for it :)

~~~ Gray Business Nail Tutorial ~~~
Materials:
Acrylic paint (I used a gray and white)
Clear nail polish
Paint brush
Water (to rinse brushes)
Cloth to wipe brushes on (I use a paper towel)
Plate, paper, board, or something else to mix colors on and put paint on

Instructions:

1) First add a clear coat to your nails. This gives the acrylic something to stick to and it protects your nail. I used a clear strengthener coat. Be sure to let it dry before you move on to the next step.

2) Then it’s time to mix your colors. Add a little dot of gray (or black depending on how dark you want to go) and white to your plate. Blend them together until you get the color you want. You might want to make a good amount of this color so that you don’t run out. I ran out three times. Luckily, I’ve been color blending since my mom let me first play with paint (19-20 years ago) so I’ve had good practice on matching colors I wanted.

3) Once you’ve got the color you want, it’s time to cover your nails. Don’t worry about messes because the acrylic washes off wonderfully. It’s one of the reasons that I like acrylic nail painting soooooo much more than plain nail polish. Mistake recovery is easy!

4) Once you’ve covered your nails with one or two coats of paint, it’s time for your clear coat. This is the time to make sure your nails are the way you want them to be. Cover with a clear coat. Be careful here. I did take off a bit of the paint on Friday while clear coating. Probably because I was in a hurry to finish before the recruiting picnic. Nevertheless, make sure you don’t rub the nail polish bristles too hard because paint WILL come off. It only happened on one finger… maybe because I slowed down after that :)

5) After your clear coat has dried, wash your hands really well. This will take off the extra acrylic paint, leaving a very nice looking nail job.

~~~

I really like the gray color. It looks great with my suit and professional tops. AND it looks good with my turquoise skinny jeans. Gotta have variety :) Feel free to pin it and view the rest of my nail inspirations/tutorials on my Nailed board on pinterest.

Batman via Twitter

Making Batman bleach tees tomorrow because I'm cool like that #batman #bleachtees #causeimbatman

— Lauren Kaylor (@laurenichole89) August 11, 2012

I’ll try to take pics so you can see how we made them. The inspiration tees are pinned under Geeked, if you want to check them out :) Have you ever made a bleach tee before?

Update: The tutorial for the bleach tees I made are here. And yes, one says “Cause I’m Batman” in a deep raspy amazing voice :D

Hair chalking! Experiment success :D

Hair chalking! Experiment success :D #experiment, a photo by laurenichole89 on Flickr.

Last night I found hair chalking on pinterest. It is a temporary hair dye/pigment using soft pastels. I tried it out this morning on my dirty hair with no luck. Absolutely none. I do have extra thick oily hair though so that may have been the problem.

This evening I tried again. This time was success!! The differences: I was more awake. I rubbed in a single direction. I finished with quick hair dry on hot to set the colors. The color combos were fun and I will definitely do this again!! Sounds like success to me :D

Here’s the how to:

The pinterest nail trend.. in blue

Blue nails with different ring finger, a photo by laurenichole89 on Flickr.

One of my favorite trends on pinterest has been the different ring finger nail design. I love it!! This particular combo has been my favorite by far. I love the blue nails and the dark blue sparkle makes me happy :) I know it sounds silly, but it’s the little things right?

I think my favorite part is that the difference isn’t obnoxious. Two weeks ago, I had it in white and purple, which stood out like nobody’s business. This one is more subtle. Most people don’t notice it and I’m okay with that :)

What do you think about having an accent nail?

To the mine! [insert epic theme music here]

Two of my favorite time wasting games on the computer are Minecraft and Terraria. Equally addictive, they both have a main premise of getting treasure. Minecraft was created first and is 3D, while Terraria is 2D. Both have zombies at night and encourage deep underground digging. I’m not sure what is so addictive about it, but I think it has something to do with the randomly generated sense of adventure.

They also encourage creativity. Minecraft is the most creative. Homes, sculptures, sky-high designs, redstone contraptions…. pretty much anything you can think of can be built in Minecraft. Both have multiplayer capabilities for those socially inclined people. And now I sound like a game promoter. I’m NOT though. Just really like playing around! And here’s a clip of some minecraft:

Soooooo I will now have to make a video to give you a better idea of minecraft…. or you could just search on your own for them since my posting skills are rather sporadic ;)