manic MANI MONDAY: NUDE AND NEON NAILS

So you won't need to go out and buy anything to create these nails.
To get the neon effect, we used highlighters instead of nail polish.


With a highlighter, color a small piece of computer paper.
We used 3 different colors: pink, yellow and blue.


Cut out the colored pieces of the paper.

 
Cut out the paper into to tiny strips (small enough to fit on a finger nail.)

Coat your nails in a nude polish. We used Essie's Topless and Barefoot.


Paint your nail again, with a second coat, and lets the nail dry just enough to get tacky.
Place the strips on your nails in whichever order you like.


Push the strips down around the edges and cut them right against your nail.


Cover with a clear coat and done! (Well let them dry for a while, of course.)

If you like what you see...

This is just another picture to show what color the pink actually was.

It doesn't show up in the pictures very well.

P.S. To get the paper off of your nails, soak your nails in nail polish remover and then remove them like you would any other nail polish.

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the ISSUE AND SOLUTION: BRACELET ORGANIZATION

Let me start off by saying, if you are wanting some fancy schmancy bracelet organization, you might as well turn away now. This is a DIY that is resourceful. We might as well call it a "Rig it yourself," an RIY, if you will. My bracelet organization situation was a problem and I needed to find a way to make it functional but, I only wanted to make it happen with things that I already had. That is precisely why I've been waiting for the moment when we had collected enough paper towel rolls. Obviously, that day came today. This whole project only took me about one and a half hours which is pretty good for a project like this, well, in my opinion that is. As you can see, this project is meant to be put in a drawer (because that is the only place I have space to store my bracelets) but you could just as easily keep it on top of a dresser. I took a whole lot of pictures so it'd be more understandable so let's do this thing!

My bracelets started off looking like this, except times like 20. Couldn't ever find anything.

You will need:

- A box (if you are putting it in a drawer you will need to make sure the box will fit inside.)

- 3 empty paper towel rolls

- Spray paint (optional- you could just leave it plain if you wanted.)

-Duct tape

- Scotch tape

- Scrapbook paper ( I used three different kinds.)

- Scissors

- Box cutter

- Something to write with

First off, you are just going to push all the flaps down into the box itself.

Push down two sides that are opposite of each other and the push down the other two.

Place the three paper towel rolls evenly in the box.

Make sure you keep enough space between each roll for bracelets to hang comfortably.

Place a mark on the edge of the box where the center of each roll meets the side.

About 1.5" down the edge of the box, draw a line straight across (parallel to the edge.)

Then, draw a line from each mark to the parallel line.
(You can see my mis-mark. No biggie, it'll be spray painted over later.)

Place the middle of a paper towel roll where the two lines meet and trace
the bottom of the circle. You can trace the whole circle if you want,
it will all be cut out momentarily.

It will look something like this.

Then you will just take a box cutter and cut around the semi-circle shape
and all the way up to the edge of the box.

Then cut by the edge and pop out the odd shape.

It should look something like this when you finish them all.

Here, I just placed the paper towel rolls in to make sure they fit. They did...

Then I took some duct tape and lined the edges of the holes.
You could skip this step, I just preferred some extra protection.

Cut a piece of duct tape and place it around the edge, then cut slits in the duct tape. This makes it possible for you to push the duct tape down without measuring and getting all fancy. This part is kind of hard to explain, which is why I took many pictures!

After you push the cut pieces down it looks like this and then you turn the flap over and
do the same thing to the other side.

All edges "sealed."

Then push the flaps all down. (The flaps with the holes in them get pushed down last.)
Secure the flap with a piece of duct tape.

I taped down all of the flaps just to keep those suckers down and out of my way.

I spray painted the whole box, I painted the inside one shade of blue and ended up painting the outside another shade of blue. You could skip this step, I just liked the little extra detail.

Now that the box is drying, we can move on to the paper towel rolls.

Place the paper towel on the back of a piece of scrapbook paper, right up to the edge.
Mark where the other edge of the roll is on the paper.

Draw a line all the way across the paper where you placed the mark from the paper towel
roll. I just used the same distance for all the papers.

Scotch tape the scrapbook paper onto one of the paper towel rolls,
making sure it is lined up even on both sides.

Roll the paper towel roll up in the paper until you reach the edge and tape it down.
Take scotch tape and completely seal the edge of the paper.

They should look something like this when they are done.

This is basically the finished product without anything in it.

I took a bunch of my skinny bracelets and placed the in the bottom of the box since there
was a little bit of extra space down there.

And this is the box all organized!

Looks way better than the situation I had going on earlier and now I can easily see all- well most- of my bracelets. Easy to see, easy to wear, holla!

If you like this DIY, let others know!

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the DIY: PERFECT CHEVRON

The chevron pattern is everywhere, and we LOVE it. We basically want to decorate our entire house in chevron, so we started with this project. There are zillions of tutorials for different ways to make the tutorial pattern, but we came up with our own. Hopefully you will find this tutorial helpful in creating the perfect chevron pattern. 

You will need: A blank surface (we used an 16"x 20" canvas), a ruler, a pencil, painter's tape, x-acto knife, and one spray paint color. For the first few pictures we will be using a diagram we created as the real dots were not dark enough to see through the camera.

Next, create dots with your pencil. On each edge of our canvas we placed 5 dots, equally spaced. On the longer side this ended up being a dot every 5 inches and on the shorter side it was a dot every 4 inches.

In the next step, line up a ruler diagonally with the dots. Place a dot directly in the middle of each set of two dots.

Next you will connect the dots in the chevron shape like the picture above.

When you are done drawing lines it should look something like this.

Next, fill up the spaces with painter's tape and cover any part of the canvas you don't want painted.

In this part we took an x-acto knife and made the edges straighter.

Spray paint the empty spaces (or the whole canvas as we have done).

When the paint has dried, remove the tape and then you have a perfect chevron print. If you wanted to have this chevron print in two colors (not using white), you could paint the whole canvas first and then proceed to add the dots, tape off the canvas, and spray paint with another color.

The options are limitless for what you can do with this simple chevron pattern. Be on the lookout for our finished chevron print hanging up- we will be posting pictures of some new decor very soon. Also, makeup tutorials will be coming by the beginning of next week. Hope you enjoyed the tutorial!

P.S. This is what our finished piece looked like with words!

Check out our whole bathroom decor here!

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