Chinese New Year 2014 nails

新年快乐!! Happy Lunar New Year!

This post is actually a little bit late, but who cares! Chinese New Year lasts for fifteen days ;) the first day was on Friday, but I was too busy eating my mom's cooking and greedily collecting hong bao to care.

A first for my blog (I think). The nail art today was painted by me, but on my sister's nails! She coerced me into doing her nails for her over the weekend. Her nails/hands are about 100x prettier than mine, so really it all worked out!

The red is (surprisingly, not China Glaze Ruby Pumps) from a brand called Venique. I can't find the name because I don't have the bottle, but I highly recommend this brand! The nail polish applied beautifully. Use two coats over a base coat. 

The glittery gold is Julep Oscar. By itself, this polish is really too sheer to look good. Pictured is a few coats, just because I wanted the glitter to be more dense. With a striping brush, apply 2-3 (depending on how sparse or dense you want the glitter to be) coats on a diagonal across the tips. 

For the ring/accent figure, I offered to either attempt to draw a horse or I could write the Chinese character for horse (because it is the year of the horse and, coincidentally, her zodiac sign!), 马. Considering I draw about as well as a second grader, she wisely chose the second option. So using a striper brush and a Venique foil gold (also of unknown name), I drew the character for horse. 

Overall, the design turned out very well! I had managed to leave nearly all my red and gold (since I don't have a lot of either color) in my apartment, but somehow I managed to find the pack of nail polish that Venique sent me, so it all worked out! 

Lastly, sorry about the obnoxious watermark. I usually use Aviary, but since I haven't updated my iPad yet, I couldn't get it to download. I like this one though, plus it's super simple to use!

Up next, I'll probably post a couple of Valentine's Day designs! 

Chinese New Year Nails

新年快乐!!!!!!!!

If you can't read Chinese, that says "Happy new year!" in Chinese!

Sunday is the day for the Chinese New Year/Spring Festival. It will officially be the year of the snake! Yay!

In honor of my favorite holiday of ever, I did my nails! This is exciting because it has, unfortunately, been awhile since I've had time to do that. But here's a quick and simple design that I did.



I chose red and gold because they are lucky colors in China. The thumb, middle, and pinky finger are all Zoya Stella. My pointer finger is China Glaze Ruby Pumps because it was glittery and I wanted to see how it looked. It was too dark though, so the rest of the nails I did in Zoya Stella. The glittery gold is Butter London West End Wonderland. Such a perfect gold (both for this design and in general!)



The red and gold design: Paint your nails with base coat (I used Essie's Ridge-Filling base coat), then two coats of your red. Use the gold polish and swipe it diagonally across your nail. It took me about three coats to get the gold to be opaque, but it dried really fast and it is SO glittery and eye catching, especially in the sun!

I had wanted to be able to do more Chinese New Year designs, but I ran short on time. No matter! Chinese New Year lasts for 15 days! So expect at least one more red/gold/Chinese New Year-esque nail design before I move on to Valentine's Day nails! If you're looking for a quick design, I posted a cut-out hearts design last year. I picked up a gorgeous pink Orly at CVS today, so I plan on putting that to good use! (And yes, I realize that I haven't posted any new nail polish purchases. Truth is, I haven't been able to buy nail polish lately because the nearest Rite Aid is kind of far and it's really cold here in Michigan. Oh well, it'll be a good chance to finally use the half of my collection that's been sitting untouched.)

Happy Chinese New Year!