Dollar store finds!

I feel like I make weekly trips to the dollar store. At least I know I'm not breaking the bank that bad when I do splurge. Anyways, in two of my most recent trips I found some exciting things:

Essie nail strips. Who knew these were a thing? Certainly not me! But I was excited to try them out. 

Easy to apply but left my nails all funky when taking them off... They stayed perfect for over a week though so it was well worth it!

Revlon moon candy nail polish. I remember when these first came out and I was obsessed with these. Oddly I never bought any though(my broke behind was cheap) but now I have two! Got these babies for a buck a piece!

Waddle waddle!

Finally, I have decided to master my favorite animal in nail art. Plus it doesn't hurt that my students were learning about animals in winter this past week! 

I simply followed a design found on Pinterest with a base of black. Then I added the white belly. Next I dotted the eyes and added my orange accents. Turned out beautiful!

To add to the Penguin fun, here are some of my other creative and penguin-y fun from the week!

Mouseketeer

I tried two things for this post! For one, I did a wonderful Mickey/Minnie Mouse inspired mani. Secondly, I tried the glue as a base trick. For those who don't know, this is when you paint a base coat of elmers school glue on your nail before painting nail polish. This ideally should make your polish peelable (not sure if that's a word but I'm going with it!). 

Let's start with the design. It looks fab!!

The designs were very easy to create. The pinkie is just simple dots. My ring finger took the most work to get the ears correctly but nothing you can't handle! My pointer started as black and I added the embellishments.

Here's the downer to this mani: it chipped sooooo quickly! I like the idea of the glue more than the actual application(although you should totally put it on your cuticles around bail to have easy clean up!). The next day, a good portion of my fab mani was gone. :(

Bloody Halloween

I am beyond psyched at this point for halloween. How couldn't I be? It's my favorite freaking holiday. I love an excuse to dress up, eat candy and get the life scared out of me. 

For this round of Halloween nails, I bring you: blood (not real blood of course) but still pretty gruesome! I found these wonderful designs on Pinterest:

I've done splattering using a straw before but it's been awhile. So, it took few try's before I got the effect I wanted. Regardless, I'm pretty proud of these nails. They look awesome(although I get a lot of puzzles questions from my preschoolers but luckily distractions are everywhere!).

Candy Corn Crazy!

Am I the only one out there who has a love hate relationship with candy corn? The first one tastes amazing but five in and I'm done. It gets boring fast. Regardless, I felt a compulsive need to do this nail design. Plus I added some glitter. Glitter makes everything better!

So the picture is my pre cleanup. I seriously have been slacking in the pictures(& cleanup around my nails!) and will be trying out some new tips I found online! Stay tuned!

Ipsy Bag try

Every month, I get this cool bag from ipsy. I'm not a huge fan of make up but I love all the cool products they send me. This month, I got this awesome nail polish that I have fallen in love with. Just wanted to share this awesome shade and brand!

Walking in the Spiderwebs

I love Halloween, and No Doubt (haha, word play) so of course I had to do a spiderweb mani. I have to admit though that the spiderwebs were tough to do! So, I only got one on each nail. Nevertheless, it looks adorable!

Nail polish used:

Julep - "Elise Bombshell"

Art Club - White

Ready for autumn

Personally, I love the fall season. I mean who doesn't love hot cocoa, apple picking, pumpkin patches, Halloween and sweatshirt weather? That's what heaven is in my book! With all of that inspiration, I had to do pumpkin nail art(and trust me it won't be my last autumn inspired mani!).

I started with a simple yellow base and added polka dots of fall-ish colors. To the ring finger, I started with an orange half moon(the pumpkin) and added a stem and vine. The result was adorable.

Nail polish used:

Pure Ice - Excuse Me

Sinful Colors - Nirvana 

Hard Candy - orange

Sinful Colors - San Francisco

Kick off!

In honor of football season, I decided to do a football inspired mani. I painted green for the field and added white lines and numbers to represent the field. On my ring fingers, I painted brown with white stitches to make footballs.

Also, a big thanks to Savanna for finding my perfect brown!!!

Nail polish used:

Nirvana - Sinful Colors

San Francisco - Sinful Colors

White - Art Club

Na na na BATMAN!

Who doesn't love batman?!? One of my awesome preschoolers asked me info could do batman nails, so of course I had to try. I found this lovely design on Pinterest and decided to give it a try.

I decided to nix the cat woman and added my own spin but thought it turned out ok. Not my best nail art but still made my preschoolers happy!

Minions!

I know it's been awhile but I'm back at it! And with the ever popular minion design. To begin, I'm happy to tell you that this design was fairly easy to pull off! I began with yellow and then added blue stripe at bottom and used black and white to add the eyes and mouth. I am very impressed with the turn out and hope everyone else enjoyed them too!

P.s. Don't mind my skin markings. I am a total clumsy person and have shaky hands...