Beach Beauty: Calico Toes

Painted myself some über cute toes yesterday. Calico to be exact. Love ‘em.

I found this tutorial for your fingers, but thought it would last longer, be easier to do, and be pretty dang cute on those l’il piggies.

DIY Calico Toes:

1. Paint toes light blue

2. On a piece of plastic or cardboard, put a small blob of light pink and bright pint polish next to each other so they touch.

3. Dip a homemade dotting tool in the middle of the 2 light polishes (this creates the 2 toned flower effect) and make flowers by clumping 3-5 dots together.

4. Using a tooth pick or nail art brush, paint some thin green lines for leaves.

5. Done. Perfectly pretty springtime toes that will cause you to not wear a closed toed shoe for at least 2 weeks.

Polish Used: China Glaze Hop Top Blue, 4Free by Mary Jo Matsumoto Floating Lotus, Essie Fiji and Sally Hansen Lickety Lime split.


Beach Beauty: Confetti nails

I really should call this ADD nails, because I started off doing polka dots, then four different colors of dots later…voila, confetti nails.

The good thing is it’s super easy, and really doesn’t take long at all to do, and is fine if you are messy or don’t have a steady hand.

DIY Confetti Nails:

1: Paint base coat and a layer of clear or sheer pink polish.

2: Using a homemade dotting tool (I like to push a push pin into a pencil eraser) dip the dotting tool in your first color polish and put 4-5 polka dots on each nail in your first color in no specific pattern.

3. Repeat step 2 with as many other colors as you want. I cut myself off after 4.

4. Let polish dry and paint on glossy topcoat.

5. Enjoy! An added bonus of this is…if it chips, it really doesn’t show. Hallelujah.  

Neon Ombre Nails

DIY Neon Ombre nails.

Step 1: Go to a Sephora Store.

Step 2: Try out each neon nail color to make sure it is in fact neon. For the ombre effect, try neon pink, neon coral, neon orange, neon peach, and neon yellow in that order.

Step 3: End up giving your nails a rather stellar manicure in the process…for free :)

Beach Beauty: Strawberry Toes

My 3 year old niece, Ella, was the guinea pig for the latest DIY Pedicure. She wanted Strawberry toes, so I was going to give them to her no matter what. So if anyone has a little daughter, cousin, niece or friend who can sit still, this is the cutest little pedicure ever.

It also looks great on adult toes. In case you want to try it out.

DIY Strawberry Toes:

1. Paint base coat.

2. Paint toes a bright deep strawberry pink color.

3. Using a white nail art brush, in the center of each toe, by the base of the nail, paint three skinny triangles that connect at the base, to make the strawberry leaves.

4. Paint over the white with a bright green nail polish (if you can find a nail art brush that will work best.) By doing white first, the green will be much brighter.

5. Using either a black or yellow polish and dotting tool, paint a few tiny dots on each toe for the strawberry seeds.

6. Let polish dry completely, then cover with glossy topcoat.

Eat your heart out Strawberry Shortcake.

Beach Beauty: Matte & Shiny Dotted Mani

Matte nails. Love ‘em, everything about ‘em. Pair it with some strategically placed shiny topcoat and you have some nails that look like they’ve been pecked by a rain shower.

Here’s the how to. It’s simple.

1. Paint nails as you normally would. Opaque, non shimmery colors work the best.

2. Using a matte topcoat (I used Essie Matte About You) apply a layer to each nail and watch that gloss go buh buy. Alas, nails that look like velvet. Pretty sweet.

3. Using a homemade dotting tool (my favorite is a push pin stuck into a pencil eraser) place random dots of a super glossy top coat all over nails.

4. Let polish dry

Enjoy your velvety yet glosstastic nails.

Beach Beauty: Supa Dupa Butterfly Toes

As the great Poet, Missy Elliott, once said: “Me I’m supa fly (uh-huh), Supa dupa fly (uh-huh), Supa dupa fly.”

Ok well, I’m not supa fly at all, but my toes are. They look like Monarch butterfly wings, which served as great inspiration for an easy and impressive DIY Pedicure.

Here’s how to get some Supa Dupa Fly toes, in the Monarch sense.

1: Paint toes with a basecoat

2: Paint toes with 2 coats of a very fun, almost onoxiously bright color.

3: Using black nail art polish brush, paint a swipe across the upper inner corner of each toe. Then fill that corner in, this will make a black triangle tip on each nail corner.

4: Still using the black nail art polish, draw 3 lines (big toe) or 2 lines (other toes) that connect the other side of your toe to the black triangle corner.

5: Still using the black nail art polish, curve the area where the line and the black corner intersect, so there now are no straight edges. This makes the black look like the curve pattern of the wings instead of straight edges.

6: Using either white nail art or white polish and a homemade dotting tool, paint dots randomly in the black tip area.

7: Let polish dry then apply a top coat.

8: Watch the video tutorial because I most likely made no sense.

9: Move your toes around as fast as you can and see if they flutter.

Polish used: Illamasqua: Jo’Mina  Milani nail art laquer

Time spent. About 8 minutes, no joke. (not including drying time)

Beach Beauty: Reverse French Striped nails

I honestly have no clue what to call this manicure, but it looks rad. Really, it should be called the - I tried three different manicures and messed them up then somehow came across this color combo, did a reverse french manicure, and added a stripe, and it came out rather sweet - nail art.

So here you go. If anyone comes up with a name for it, shoot it my way.

Step 1: Apply base coat

Step 2: Paint nails some obnoxiously fun & bright color

Step 3: Paint the TOP 3/4 of your nail a less fun, but very opaque color. (keep the line smooth) You should have what looks like a reverse french manicure now.

Step 4: Using a nail art brush or pen, paint a thin stripe where the two colors intersect.

Step 5: Let polish dry, and apply a top coat.

Step 6: Think to yourself, wow, this was way easier that a simple French manicure, but is much, much cooler.

Bikini top from: Dkoko

Beach Beauty: Neon & Neutral Nails

I seriously adore the oh-so-luscious neon & neutral color combo. It’s natural with a little touch of BAM! So, I had to translate it into a subtle yet fantastic easy-peasy manicure. All you need is the right buttery nude polish (ahem, Essie Sand Tropez por favor) and my favorite miracle worker for those of us who don’t have a steady hand, Sally Hansen nail polish strips.

How to get the look:

1. Paint your nails with a nude, opaque polish.

2. Let polish dry.

3. Cut a nail polish strip in half, and place the straight edge in a 45 degree angle from one side of your nail tip to the inside of your finger.

4: Press and seal the strip firmly on your nail, and remove the excess with a file. Repeat on the rest of your nails.

5. Apply top coat to entire nail.

6. Sit, stare, and pat yourself on the back (after the polish dries of course) for a killer manicure that really didn’t take that much skill at all.

Pictured above: Essie Sand Tropez, Sally Hansen salon effects: Electric Shock, and Salt Swimwear Bidget Bottoms.

Beach Beauty: Cow Print Toes

When it comes to toes, we always go exotic: Cheetah, Snake, Zebra, Tiger, Himalayan Snow Leopard. Now it’s time we show Old MacDonald and his farm some love with some Cow print toes. Hey, if D&G and Michael Kors use it, I think this print is e-i-e-i-oh-so pedicure worthy. The best part, it’s insanely easy to do and turns out rather chic yet adorable.

So mooooooove on over Bessie, it’s time for some beach bums to have some udderly cool l’il piggies.

How to have cow print toes:

1. Paint a base coat.

2. Paint 2 coats of white or really light opaque pink nail polish.

3. Using a black nail art brush/pen (or a toothpick with black polish), paint on the cow print. Hint it’s just a bunch of asymmetrical blobs with maybe a little small dot on the big toe. (Watch how this gal does it on her nails at :32)

4. Let polish completely dry, then apply topcoat.

5. Go grab a partner and do the cotton-eyed-joe. Barefoot.

Polish I used: Essie: Fiji & Milani Nail Art: Black Sketch

Beach Beauty: Cool & easy manicure in a box

One product, one little box of fun. Sally Hansen Salon Effects. These are sweet little nail polish strips that take about 10 minutes to apply and give you the liveliest nails of your life for less than 10 bucks. Best part. No dry time. What lured me in is the extremely cool designs to choose from: Lace, fishnet, neons, metallics, flowers, camo, butterflies. It’s like Lisa Frank for your nails, but with no unicorns.

I used the “girl flower” strips. All you do is apply nail polish remover to clean your nails, then peel, pull and stick the strip to fit on each nail. File off the excess and voila, you are ready. Ok one more perk, they supposedly last 10 days and do not chip.

Available at pretty much every drug store where Sally Hansen is sold, so go spice up your nails. Bam!

Beach Beuty: Watermelon Toes

Watermelon. I love it so much I could eat it every day of the summer. Yet I have never been in a watermelon eating contest. If it happens one day, I will win. Anyways, I was thrilled to find a quick and easy way to bring this summertime staple to my toes which were in dire need of some cuteness. If I might say so myself, they turned out rather adorable (without being over the top). Plus, I have received not one, but four compliments from ladies in the past 48 hours, one of which was a lady next to me in yoga class, so she had 90 minutes to get aquatinted with my toes…so I had to share.

Easy DIY Watermelon Pedicure

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