Snake Skin Manicure!

When I found this Mani on The Looks for Less I was ecstatic. I literally think I remember squealing with excitement. I read her entire post, watched a video and even searched Google for more information of different ways to this technique. I found out that is mani had been showed on the today show recently and to have it done in salons it has whooping 150$ to 300$ price tag. I knew I could do it for way less and was excited to give it a try.  After, a few days of researching I set out on my hunt for snake snuff. Snuff is the skin that the snake sheds naturally it is also more humane then using real snake skin. I guess it is one snake’s trash is another person’s treasure lol. At the time we were camping in a state park, so I decided to ask one of the rangers at the nature center if they had any snake snuff I could use. I got a strange look, but after explaining why I wanted it, the ranger seemed on board. Jen gave me three different kinds of snake skin and about five pieces. She even came over the next day so I could to a trial run on her nails. I was excited about doing her nails and it taught me a lot before I did the technique to my nails. I think both of our manicures turned out great!

For the Snake Skin Mani you will need:

•Real Snakeskin (Snake Snuff)

•A Base Coat

•A Base Color

•Thick Clear Top Coat

•Small Scissors

•Tweezers

I started by using a deep brown base coat, For my base coat I used "Bronze Baby" from Petties. Jen decided that she wanted to use four different colors for her manicure. So, I used "Bronze Baby" from Petties, "Magic" from Pure Ice, and "Totally Toffee" and "Copper-glaze Platinum" both Revlon. I cut the snake skin to fit each nail and then applied a think top coat; before it could dry I used the Tweezers to carefully place the snake skin onto the nails. Once the bottom coat had dried good, I did the trimming to the snake skin. Trimming it just insures that all of the snake skin it against your nails. Next, I applied two thick layers of top coat.  The texture of the snake skin is slightly odd but I was able to get used to it after a day or two. After wearing the mani for a few days, I found that the snake skin with the smaller scales worked better than the skin with the bigger scales and they also have less texture.

As you can tell, I'm still working on the whole water marking thing. Any suggestion would be super helpful!

Over all the mani was amazing. I will definitely be doing it again.

What do you think of the manicure?

Would you try it yourself?

XOXO's Love and Nail Polish,

~Sierra

"Bronze Baby" Petties

Hello Dear Readers,I want to start off by apologize for the pics. I am still trying to figure out how to take them and such. Anyways, for this Mani I used "Bronze Baby" from Petties. It was my base coat for my snake skin manicure, but I wore the solid brown for about a day or two. I will be posting the snake skin manicure and technique in another post. This polish isn't on of my favorites, (I prefer brighter colors.) But it is a nice brown/bronze color and has a great shine after it dries, even without applying a top coat.

The only thing I don't like about this polish, is depending on how many coats you apply you do not always get a smooth finished, sometimes you can still see the ridges in your nails (or at least I can in mine.) In this picture I'm only wearing one coat and no top coat. Over all this color is an older color but still good.  

4th of July

I know I am late getting to this post, but better late than never. I know a lot of people who do Fourth of July nails, and I am no exception. I am always looking for new holiday ideas. This year was harder than years past for me to come up with something I liked. I guess it was because I just couldn't think of anything that really inspired me. After, lots of thinking and looking at a solid red base coat for a day. I came up with this idea.

Sorry, for the burliness, I took the picture with my phone camera. From now on I will be using my regular camera. Anyways back to the mani, this is probably in the top 10 hardest manicures I have ever done. But I think it turned out pretty good. I started with a red base coat on all my nails except for my ring finger. For the red polish I used Finger Paints “Primary Color”. For the base coat on my ring finger I use Pure Ice “Gold Dust” and then put and two light coats of "Fame" from Petties on top. For the details I used N.Y.C "Skin Tight Denim Cream" for the blue and L.A colors fine tip “white”.  I did all of the details free hand, it was a slow process but I think it worked out good. To apply the red and blue details I used one of my fine tip paint brushes, and for the white I used the brush that came inside the polish bottle. Most of the details were really easy. However, it took a little time to get the letters on my thumb the way I wanted them.  It took about 2 total hours to do this main since I did everything free hand. But the finish product was defiantly worth it