Peach Flowers

These were given to me as a gift from someone - I always think flowers are so thoughtful! These really added brightness to my home. What a pretty peach color for a flower, right?

Splatter Nails - 80s Style

I've been seeing a lot of other nail bloggers post about Splatter Nails- so I just had to try it! It's really fun but you look kind of insane while doing the process! 

All you need to do is take one straw for each color you'd like to use (apply one color of splatter at a time). Then, you dip one tip of the straw into your nail polish bottle. Make sure there is no bubble of polish covering the bottom of the straw, but instead just a coating over the straw's circle edge (a bubble will allow too much polish to splatter and it won't work well). Now, blow out through the clean end of the straw and wallah! Your nail polish splatters out onto your nail. 

I found I had to do this for each nail individually. I recommend covering your skin with vaseline first, as this is extremely messy!! The vaseline will make clean-up much easier. The polish should wipe off of your fingers with a paper towel, and then you can use nail polish remover to clean up any polish that the vaseline did not protect your skin against. Once it's all cleaned up, it's a cool look! I think what I enjoyed the most was not really knowing how it would turn out. As you're making your splatter nails, it looks crazy and messy so you don't really know how it's going to look until it's all cleaned up. 

I did find that certain polishes were too watery to work for this process. Has anyone else had that problem? I had to switch to similar colors during the process because the pink and blue were just too watery. P.S. I forget which blogger suggested it, but someone said that using black in splatter nails always looks great and I agree!

I didn't know what to name these Splatter Nails (especially since I anticipate making more variations in the future). The color combo sort of reminded me of the Ninja Turtles or the 80s or something, so that's what I went with for a title. Ha!  For steps and then the final results, take a look at my pics (don't forget you can click on the photos to enlarge your view):

Base coat

Supplies

different sizes of straws

The mess splatter makes!

1st Splatter Color

1st splatter color before clean-up (I thought this was so cool!!!)

1st splatter color before clean-up

all colors splattered, before clean-up

End Result of Splatter Nails:

Sad face :(

My AdSense account was disabled! Has this happened to anyone? I'm pretty disappointed! I put a lot of effort into my posts and I really liked the idea of having chump change coming in from Google AdSense. It kind of validated the time I spend toward my posts (not really but in my mind at least).
If this has happened to you in the past, let me know!

Vanilla Lime

I'm always drawn to scents like Vanilla Lime because I basically love all lime and lemon scents, tastes, colors ... everything! This Vanilla Lima home fragrance wax by Yankee Candle smells great. I will say that the lime is dominant over the vanilla. At certain times, I can't smell the vanilla at all. Yet, it doesn't just smell like lime alone. It's a fruity mixture of two pleasant scents.

Multi-Flower Bundle

What an amazing bundle of flowers this is! It's an interesting combination of flower types and colors. Which flower is your favorite? I think the blue flowers might be my favorite- if I had to pick! Do you like them all together? These were given to me last year by my boyfriend but I thought they'd be great to share since they're so pretty!

DIY Incense Burner - Pink

You may remember a DIY Incense Burner I made earlier this year. I never expected this, but that post gets read every day! It's actually one of my most popular posts. Since it seems to be something so in-demand that readers are searching for, I decided to make a new burner. You can read about my 1st DIY Incense Burner here.

Supplies for your Do-It-Yourself Incense Burner:

empty terracotta pot

paint

synthetic stones

sand

This time, instead of using a sponge to apply paint to the terracotta pot, I tried a new method I saw on Pinterest. I didn't follow this method exactly, but rather used my own technique with the paint idea as inspiration.

As you can see, I placed my empty terracotta pot upside down onto a cardboard box to catch the excess paint. Then, I placed circles of paint onto the top of pot (technically the bottom!), layering colors as I applied. The paint was then supposed to become so heavy that it would pour over onto the sides of the pot. But because my pot had a hole in the middle, it didn't work! So, I let each color of paint drip down the sides of the pot in more of a scattered line formation (instead of the awesome "pour-paint" look.)  Still, this alteration is just another option, right?!

Once the pot was dry, I just filled it with sand and then topped it off with stones.


The Process in Photos:

Real Housewives of NJ Inspired Nails

RHONJ Nails! 

My American (and maybe other?) readers are likely familiar with The Real Housewives TV series. Most people have their favorite series.... whether it be Orange County, NYC, NJ, etc.... the one and only version I watch is The Real Housewives of New Jersey! That being said, I think we all have our favorite housewife on the show too! Right? I have a clear favorite myself!

Since the show is in full speed right now and the season is so great (every week I'm excited for the new Sunday night episode!), I decided to make some nails inspired by The Real Housewives of NJ (otherwise known as RHONJ). Scroll past my photos to read about my How-To process.

How-To in Photos:

 End Results of Real Housewives of New Jersey nails:

Is that NJ on your nails? Heck yes it is! I painted my base coats with Waltz by Essie (the white) and This Is It by Sinful Colors (the gold). Waltz had to be applied for 4 layers! The RHONJ was written onto my nails with a gold Sharpee. The New Jersey shape was much harder! I tried out a few methods that did not work- cutting out the NJ and painting over the paper stencil, tracing the outside shape of the NJ, etc..  In the end, I wound up printing out NJ to size-up to my nail. Then, I placed the NJ paper on top of scotch tape. Then, I taped the side of the paper onto the actual piece of tape itself (weird, right?). Then, I cut out the shape of the NJ with a scissor. I removed all the excess tape and paper from the original piece of tape and then placed the tape onto my finger to paint over.

What do you think of my RHONJ nails?