Vintage Rose Nails

Sorry I've been gone for a while, but I promise I have some exciting new tutorials coming up!! Vintage Rose nails are definitely one of my FAVORITE looks. Comment if you have any questions.

...and NOW go show off your fancy new nails to your friends! Thanks for reading!

Independence Day Cupcakes!

Happy Independence Day everyone!

So I know this is a day late, but I wanted to share with everyone an awesome dessert I baked up with just enough red, white and blue to pass off as "patriotic".

You'll Need:

1 - Box Red Velvet Cupcake Mix

1 - 12 oz. Carton Cream Cheese Frosting 

½ - Container 8 oz. Cool Whip (so 4 oz.)

1 - Small Container Fresh Blueberries (about 100 berries)

(Makes 24 - Cupcakes)

So, this dessert is actually really easy. 

1. Bake the cupcakes as per the instructions on the box. Tip: I usually substitute a little extra oil for the water that is used, just to make the cupcakes a little extra moist. (For example, Duncan Hines Red Velvet Cake batter asks for 1 ¼ Cups Water - ⅓ Cup Oil, So I'll go ahead and substitute this ratio for 1 - Cup Water - ½ Cup Oil, sounds like a lot of oil but just trust me on this one.)

2. Let the cupcakes cool, and once cooled, prepare the frosting by mixing the cream cheese frosting with ½ the container of Cool Whip. You'll end up with some EXTRA fluffy and delectable topping.

3. A great method for topping the cupcakes with the frosting (if you don't have a pastry bag) is to load up all the frosting into a Ziploc freezer bag. Cut the bottom corner tip off of the bag diagonally, about 1 cm in length. Then proceed to frost.

4. Once cupcakes are frosted, make sure to thoroughly wash the blueberries, and sprinkle about 4 or 5 on top of each cupcake. Optional: You can also add a few red raspberries or sliced strawberries to emphasize the red, white and blue theme!

 Now FINALLY, eat and enjoy! I brought these to a friend's BBQ and they were a HUGE hit. Good luck, Happy 4th and thanks for reading!!

Paper Lantern DIY

Here's a great Summer project that's easy and fun.

Materials you'll need:

Paper Lantern 

1 - Pack Tissue Paper

Double-sided tape

Scissors

Start with a standard paper lantern. I got my oblong shaped one in China town for about $10, but I found a bunch of your standard sized spherical lanterns on ebay for around $5!

 

I apologize that I don't have a step-by-step picture-documented tutorial, but the instructions are rather easy:

1. Take the tissue paper (the kind used to scrunch up in gift bags) in the color of your desired liking and start cutting out uniform sized circles. I did this by tracing a paper cup, and I made sure that the tissue paper was folded , so that I would be cutting out multiple circles at once.

2. Using a small sized piece of the double-sided tape, start layering the tissue paper circles onto the lantern, starting from the bottom side, and moving in a circular direction. Tip: Using the wire inside the lantern as a guideline and following that path usually helps with the uniformity of the pattern. Circles should be about 1" - 2" apart.

Once your done, your lantern should look something like this:

 And here's what it looks like with the rest of my bedroom:

For a more in-depth tutorial, you can click on my source of inspiration for this project, from the queen of crafts herself: Martha Stewart Paper Lantern Project

Thanks for reading! 

More Fun with Leopard Print...

Continued from the previous tutorial I did, I wanted to try a different color combo for the rest of my hand that I thought would look awesome for the Summer as well:

Here are the polishes I used:

Step 1: Base Coat...

Step 2: Add "Blobbies"...

Steps 3 & 4: Line around the blobbies with black and add a few random spots in the empty spaces.

And here's what my whole hand looks like now, pretty cute right? Thanks for reading!! 

Summertime Leopard Print Mani Tutorial!

Today I wanted to post some DIY tips for the ever popular "Leopard Print" mani; a look that definitely seems to be timeless, and very versatile because of all of the great color combos to try. By far, this is one of my favorite manis and I get complements on this look all the time.


First off, I wanna show you the inspiration for my first ever leopard mani, which is a pair of my FAVORITE / BEAT UP target flats:

So, just for fun, I tried another color combo and had the print kind of fade out. It's hard to tell in the photo but my french tip is actually a mint color and looks really good with the blue:

Finally, in honor of Summer, I used some fun bright colors for the leopard mani, and below you'll see the step-by-step method for creating your own. It's really fun, and WAY easier than it looks, I promise!

Here are the colors I used. As you will see, the nude color was used as the base, the green / yellow / blue used as spots, and the black was used to line around the spots.

Step 1: Start with a nice solid base coat. Not too worry if it doesn't look completely opaque; once the spots are painted, it won't be very noticeable.

Step 2: Paint on some blobby looking spots. They don't have to be perfect, in fact the more different each spot looks, the better. Make sure the spots are somewhat spread out.

Step 3: Here's the tricky part, using a thin pointy nail brush, use a black polish to encircle the spots you painted in step 2, but keep the circle kind of jagged and disconnected (if that makes sense).

Step 4: Add a couple of small random black dots in the empty spaces, and VOILA! you have a cute leopard mani. (Don't you feel accomplished!) 

Hope you enjoyed reading!