Cookie Monster Nails!

Om nom nom nom, cookie cookie cookie? Yes, the Cookie Monster from The Sesame Street has made it to my nails and I'm about to show you guys just how easy it is to do this nail art look yourselves!

You will need:

Dotting tools (which I talk more about here)

Small paintbrush/striper brush (which I talk about here again)

Clear base/topcoat

Blue Nail Polish - Catrice 400 Blue Cara Ciao

White Nail Polish - Rimmel London Nail Tip Whitener

Black Nail Polish - Rimmel London I love Lasting Finish 080 Black Cab

Light Brown Polish - Gosh 596 Miss Mole

Dark Brown Polish - Catrice 720 Bruno Brownani

Cotton Buds

Nail Polish remover

This is a really simple tutorial with only eleven easy to follow steps. It took me about a half hour to do this look from start to finish including drying time. Now enough preamble, down to the fun stuff!

The Cookie Monster Nail

Step 1: Take your blue polish and paint a semicircle of blue about half way down your nail.

Step 2: Take your largest dotting tool and dip it in the black polish. Dot this in two circles in the centre of the semicircles edge.

Step 3: Take your next smallest dotting tool, coat it in your white polish. Dab two white circles within the black ones.

Step 4: To make your Cookie Monster look as crazy as possible give him wandering eyes by dotting two small black dots looking in opposite directions inside the white circles.

Step 5: Take a very small brush and dip it into your black polish. Paint a smiling, wide open mouth just a little beneath the eyes.

Step 6: Dip a cotton bud in nail polish remover and clean up any messy bits. Use a clear topcoat to seal in and protect your design.

The half-eaten Cookie Nail

Step 1: Paint your entire nail blue.

Step 2: Paint a semi circle two thirds of the way down your nail in your lighter brown colour.

Step 3: Dip your small brush into your darker brown polish, use this to paint a jagged edge along the semicircle giving the cookie it's half-eaten look.

Step 4: Take your smallest dotting tool and dip it in your darker brown. Dot this at random inside the semi circle so that it looks like chocolate chips.

Step 5: Once again, dip a cotton bud into nail polish remover and clean up any messy bits. Then use your clear topcoat to give the nail a polished finish.

In eleven simple steps you've managed to nail the Cookie Monster nail art look. Now that's what I call tasty!

'Friends' Nails!

Could these nails be any more Friends orientated?! (Excuse me, channeling my inner Chandler!) But yes, the summer, for me, has meant watching reruns of Friends pretty much every evening. So the hit TV show was my inspiration for my nails this week!

Excuse the mess on my thumb nail, I would have used a cotton bud dipped in nail polish remover but I'm away from home at the moment and because I'd lose my head if it wasn't attached to my shoulders I forgot my nail polish remover (le gasp!).

If you've watched Friends as religiously as I have I'm sure you can guess what's on each nail. However, on the off chance you can't, let me break it down for you. The Friends logo stretches across my thumb and pinky nails, the Central Perk coffee shop sign is on my index, then there's the peephole from the door in Monica's apartment on my middle fingernail and of course no Friends mani would be complete without Smelly Cat on my ring finger!

Now, I must admit I used a lot of colours for this. Here is the list:

Nails inc - 411 Elm Park Gardens

Nails inc - 042 Hampstead Gardens

Nails inc - 210 Floral Street

Catrice - Blue Cara Ciao

Catrice - 700 Birdy Reloaded!

Gosh - 571 Wild Lilac

Rimmel London I love Lasting Finish - 030 Double Decker Red

Rimmel London I love Lasting Finish - 080 Black Cab

Rimmel London 60 Seconds - 805 Grey Matter

The only tools I used for this were my set of dotting tools and cocktail sticks. The details took about a half hour/ forty minutes to do but I had time and had always wanted to see if I could actually do a Friends manicure! If you had been painting this what iconic Friends related things/ phrases would you have used? I must admit, I had thought about painting "we were on a break" instead of Smelly Cat!

Cheeky Monkey Nails!

After buying two new Catrice Cosmetics Ultimate Nail Lacquers I decided to do a manicure with my new purchases! I actually really recommend Catrice nail polishes to anybody. They are €2.45 each in Penneys stores across the country. Catrice polishes are the best for those of us that want all the colours just because, who knows, you may one day need them! I personally love Catrice polishes because they are cheap, come in a huge variety of colours, paint on thick and pigmented while lasting a good week on my nails sans chips!

I bought two colours on my last trip into Penneys, 700 Birdy Reloaded! (a bright yellow colour with a slight shimmer to it) and 720 Bruno Brownani (a deep, dark brown colour). Both of these colours go on smooth and a little thick. The yellow bottle suggests using two coats for best coverage but I honestly find that with these colours, more often than not one coat does a perfect job!

                                                      

For this manicure you'll also need a dotting tool and a striper brush which I talked about in this blog post. On top of those you'll also need nail polish colours in a lighter brown (I used Gosh 596 Miss Mole), white and black.

First we'll look at the banana nails:

Paint your index, middle and pinky fingers with your yellow nail polish

Once the yellow has dried take a striper brush and dip it in back paint. Here we are going to paint small black outlines of bananas starting from the nail bed and reaching out to the tips of your nails.

As you can see here, I am not that great at drawing bananas, but it's okay it's supposed to look a little more abstract than your average banana as it's just black outlines on a yellow base. Paint as many or as few as you want, I liked to paint some bananas curving in the opposite direction to the others but again, it's up to you how you want them to look.

Next up are your monkey nails! These are surprisingly easy to do and look really cute, plus they only take five minutes from start to finish. Firstly you need to take your dark brown and paint almost all of your thumb and ring fingernails with it, leave an arc of your natural nail unpainted at your nail bed, as you can see below. Then I want you to paint your lighter brown in an arc again from about half way down your nail like so.

Next we'll create the monkeys ears. Take your dotting tool and dip it in dark brown paint, dot it on either side of the dark brown arc. Then pick a smaller sized dotting tool and dip it in your lighter brown. Dot this light brown circle within the two small dark brown circles and voilà you have cute monkey ears!

Now for the finishing touches that are going to take this oddly shaped brown blob and turn it into your cute monkey design! The eyes are simple, take your largest dotting tool and dip it in white nail polish. Dot the white in two circles, close to each other at the centre of the light brown arc. Take a smaller dotting tool and dip it in black. Once the white has dried dot a small black pupil inside each eye. The nostrils are just a little below the eyes. You take your smallest dotting tool and dip it into your black once more. Then you just place two small dots beneath the eyes and you have painted your little monkey.

Simple, right? Obviously you can use different colours, go crazy! Have purple and blue monkeys on your nails, they are your nails after all! Once you've done the above steps just make sure to use a good top coat to keep your nail design protected.

Here is a photo of how this design turned out on me. I really enjoyed doing this manicure as it's super easy and not at all time consuming. The best part of all was that I didn't need to spend a fortune on lots of different expensive nail polishes!

Monsters University Nail Tutorial!

Ah Monsters Inc. the movie that was the highlight of my eight year old life... Recently they brought out a Monsters University which goes back to when Mike and Sulley were in university which is kind of amazing because most of us who loved Monsters Inc. are in college now and appreciate this 'kids' movie all the more!

Of course, it was impossible not to do a nail art look in honour of this new movie. I decided to show you guys just how easy it is to get this nail art business down!

First you will need:

• Nail Polish Remover
• Cuticle Oil
• Base Coat
• Cocktail Sticks (or a striper brush)
• A Dotting Tool
• Cotton Wool
• Green, blue, darker blue, white, black and lilac nail polishes
• A small piece of sponge

Now, before I start painting any colours on I like to take all my old nail polish off with some cotton wool and nail varnish remover. I then file and shape my nails so that they are manageable (my nails are so bad for breaking when they are long). I like to rub in a nice soothing cuticle oil like Sally Hansen's "Vitamin E Nail and Cuticle Oil" into my cuticles before pushing them back and getting rid of dead skin. I find that this step really helps to keep your cuticles and nails in general looking clean and neat no matter how you paint your nails after! After cleaning the oil off, I like to use a good multi tasking base coat like Sally Hansen's "Complete Care Extra Moisturizing 4-in-1 Treatment". This nail polish goes on as a ridge smoothing, clear base coat (vital for preventing staining of your nails) but it also acts as a nail strengthener and helps nails grow. On top of that it works as a high gloss top coat. These are all things that nails that break as easily as mine need badly! Both of these products are found easily in most chemists and pharmacies across Ireland and are both roughly between €6 and €10. I would definitely recommend these if your nails are brittle, very weak or if you have dry, flaky cuticles.

Now, for the colour!

Here I used three main colours on my nails and they are as follows:

• Thumb, Ring and Pinky Finger - Rimmel London I love Lasting Finish in '045 Misty Jade'
• Index Finger - O.P.I (Nicki Minaj Collection) in 'Did it on 'Em'
• Middle Finger - Nails Inc. in 'Floral Street'

I used at least three (and in some cases four) coats of these colours as they are quite streaky at first and you need good colour pay off if you want to be able to use these as bases for your nail art. Don't worry if you go a little outside the lines here, we'll clean up later!

Here comes the fun stuff!

First we'll look at Mike Wazowski in all his one-eyed glory...

To do this you need to take your largest dotting tool and dip it in white nail polish. Taking this white polish you need to dot it in a large circle a little above the halfway point on your index fingernail. This will be Mike's beautiful eye! After the white has dried, take the smaller end of your dotting tool and dab a little circle of blue into the centre of the white circle creating the iris. Then take a cocktail stick and paint an even smaller circle of black inside the blue making the pupil of the eye. Once the eye is done you just take a striper brush (or another cocktail stick) and take your black nail polish. Paint a small curved line beneath the eye as this will make Mike's toothy grin! Using your cocktail stick again take a white polish and dot little teeth along the top of Mike's mouth. Ta dah! Mike Wazowski is now smiling up at you!

Next we have James P. Sullivan, or 'Sulley'.

This was far less time consuming to do. Apply the following steps to all the fingers painted in your lighter blue colour (in my case, 'Misty Jade'). Take a small sponge (you could even cut the corner off of a kitchen sponge it doesn't need to be fancy) and pick it up using a tweezers (this will make it easier to manoeuvre). Dip the sponge in your lilac paint and then gently sponge it on in small circular sections sporadically across your three nails. Try to make them look as irregular in size as Sulley's are, also don't worry too much about getting perfect circles of pure lilac as you want to make it look a little like scruffy fur!

Our final piece of detail in this design is on the middle finger. Here we'll paint the 'M' at the start of Monsters University.

This part is pretty simple, you take a cocktail stick (or striper brush) dip it in the darker blue and paint a solid capital 'M' over the white polish. Once dry, you paint a small white oval in the centre of the 'M'. Taking your cocktail stick again you do a small black dot within the white oval.

Once all these little details have dried you can take your top coat (for me, it's my Sally Hansen 4-in-1) and paint over each nail sealing in the colour and protecting the layers of paint. Then you can take a cotton bud,  dip it into nail polish remover and sweep along the sides of your nails to fix up any messy bits!

And there you have it! You've nailed a Monsters University nail art look in no time!