Hey, That's my Jam....Berry

One of my very favorite things in life is to get a pedicure. My girlfriends and I go about every other month and treat ourselves. We are usually scouring Pinterest for the latest designs. We then show our manicurist and they "attempt" to re-create the design. More often than not, it is a poor second to the original design, but it at least makes me feel a little more pretty when my toes are pretty too.

As much as I love to have my toes pampered, I usually don't do my fingers because I have problems with getting the polish to stay more than a day or so. And there is nothing more frustrating than chipping nails after you spent time/money/effort on making them beautiful.

A few months ago I was invited to a Jamberry party. What is Jamberry? "The wraps are a solid film covering that can be applied directly to the nail to achieve a look not found anywhere else.
Unlike traditional nail polish, they won’t chip and require no drying time. It’s so easy to achieve a professional, salon look at a fraction of the cost."

I was sent a sample of one of their wraps. There was only enough to cover one nail but it was intriguing. I contacted a local sales rep Ginny Bergkamp about sending me more to try. She generously sent me a half sheet of wraps. This was enough for a complete manicure and pedicure. 
 
 I asked for something wintery since this was right after Christmas. She sent me an adorable set called Winters Edge that had snowflakes all over it. I followed the included instructions and for the first day they were great. As I wore them to work the next day I started having problems with flipping and peeling. I contacted Ginny who was super sweet about it. She suggested reason why this was happening and ways to fix it. Such as I was over heating my nail so the wrap was not staying. She even offered to come to my house and put on a new set showing me step by step how to do it properly. I photo documented the process so you could have visual aids on how to apply and hopefully won't have the same issues I had.  

Step 1: Make sure your nails are completely clean. Use rubbing alcohol to clean nails and wooden stick to clean up edges of cuticles.

Step 2: Measure a strip to your nail size. Trim it to fit, cut it a tad longer than your nail. This is VERY important. I did not do this, so some of the wrap would touch my skin on the sides, this is what caused most of my flipping. Tip: wrap should not reach to the cuticle. Trim to make sure it is just slightly smaller than your nail. 

Step 3: This isn't shown but heat wrap for 1-3 seconds. Ginny has a really nifty heater, but your hair dryer would work perfectly. If the wrap starts to curl you have heated it too much. Next place is on the nail, while placing pressure.

Step 4: Gently pull out and down on the edge of the wrap where it is longer than your nail. This will help it to seal to the edges. By stretching it a bit you will help to reduce or eliminate creases at the edges. This was a BIG problem for me when I attempted to do it on my own.

Step 5: Continue on the rest of your hand. Do not trim the edges until you are done with the entire hand. The wraps will shrink as they cool and if you trim too early they will shrink smaller than your nails. Again, another problem I had when doing it by myself.

Step 6: Once wraps are placed on the entire hand and have cooled,  trim MOST of the excess of the edge. Then use a nail file and file at a 90 degree angle. ALWAYS file down, this helps to seal it to the edge of your nail.

Step 7: Use a buffer to smooth out the edges. Use lots of pressure, and make sure you go over the entire nail and all the edges. This is the last step to seal everything down.

One week after application. As you can see a little bit of peeling, but I just filed the edges back down and  it was good to go. 

 **Update** 
I found this awesome video from a Jamberry cosultant on youtube. She explains how to get rid of bubbles, and creases using your flat iron. I have tried this and believe me it is awesome! I have very curved nails and had lots of bumps and creases that lead to flipping. Since doing this technique they look much smoother and have lasted much longer. If one of the edges is coming up I just zap with with a warm flat iron and boom, fixed!


Wraps will last up to 2 weeks, more if you are very careful with your nails. The best thing is that when you are done, they are SO easy to remove. You can just peel them off, if they give you a little trouble then just add a little heat. It might leave a little residue kind of like a band-aid would, but it easily comes off. No nail polish remover, no smell, and an adorable design. Love it. 

  Nail wraps featured are Everything  Nice  Mint Green Chevron and the gold one is discontinued, similar here

  I love the designs that Jamberry offers, on of my complaints before was that although they have some amazing designs, sometimes it is just too much to have a bold design on every finger. And I didn't want to buy 2 or 3 different sets so I could use them together. BUT they recently came out with some really cute collections where you get 2 or 3 designs on a sheet so you can mix and match  yourself. I am drooling over these: 1.Tinted Classics  2. Desert at Dusk   3. Get Hoppy    4.Love Spell

  And those of you with little girls, they even have Mommy and Me sets. I can't get over how adorable these are: Destiny paired with Mint to Be  or Teal Mini Polka paired with Mini Polka/Mirage

For those of you who aren't as excited about the collections as I am, can create your own. Right now all wraps are buy 3 get 1 free! Ginny is such a sweetheart that she is offering a special just for my readers. Get a FREE accent sheet with any buy 3 get 1 free purchase.

 

Accent sheets available.

Selfie with Ginny, she is so sweet. Go to her website and check out some Jamberry for yourself. http://ginbjams.jamberrynails.net/

  

DIY Boppy Cover Tutorial

Source

Ever see these babies at your local fabric store? I call them Jelly Rolls, not sure if that's the official name of them but they remind me of the hay rolls I see often in Kansas so that's what I named them after.
Anyway they are so colorful and always catch my attention when I'm walking down the fabric aisle. I love that they do a wonderful job of finding and coordinating fabrics together and there are so many uses for them. For example I have made an adorable scrap skirt and a few other things out of the scraps. Most jelly rolls come in strips of 2.5"x44".

My mother bought me a boppy pillow and it came with one cover, but I just know that at some point it will have spit-up or some other bodily function residue on it and I will need to wash it, so I wanted to make a back up cover. Since I sew all the time I have tons of fabric laying around and so I thought I would go through my stash and see if there was anything there that I could use. Turns out almost every scrap of fabric I own is WAY to girly for a baby boy boppy cover. Then I saw a jelly roll that I had purchased months ago and never made anything with and then a light bulb went off. I could combine these scraps to make a very original piece of fabric.
When I opened up my jelly roll there were a few scraps that I was not particularly fond of for Little Man. There was one with peace signs and another with giant pink flowers so I threw those out.

Materials:
1 Jelly Roll
24" Zipper in coordinating color
Matching Thread
Boppy cover or Boppy for pattern

 After I decided on which of the fabrics from the roll I was using I lined them up. The roll come in 2.5"x44" strips, with 3 of each fabric. I cut them in half so they were 22" long. Now I had 6 different fabrics with 6 strips each. I also had 2 pieces of the rainbow strip fabric so I threw them in as well.

 Step 1: Take 2 strips and place right sides together and sew down one long side using a 1/2" seam allowance.

 Repeat with the remaining strips placing right sides together, until all the strips are sewn in a long piece of fabric. I decided that I didn't want a pattern so I randomly grabbed strips just making sure no 2 were too close together. I ended up with a piece of fabric that was about 22"x 58"

Step 2: Wash and dry the fabric so that it is pre-shrunk and won't shrink after the finished project is washed. ***Warning, since these strips are all cut and fray, you will have TONS of strings everywhere. Cut as much as you can off, but its not that big of a deal.

All the yucky extra strings leftover from drying

 Step 3: Iron the fabric with all seams pressed to one side. It doesn't matter which side just makes it lay better to have them all going the same way.

 Step 4: fold your fabric in half and lay another cover on top to use as a pattern. you can also use the actual boppy just make sure to add a few inches when cutting it to account for the sides of the pillow.

 Cut around the cover leaving enough room for seam allowance.

Step 5: (Sorry I forgot to take a picture of this step) Remove the top layer and cut a line perpendicular to the strips. This is where you are going to sew in the zipper. I placed the zipper where i wanted it, where both ends of the zipper touched the edge of the cover.

 Place the zipper and bottom half of cover piece right sides together, pin and sew together. Next pin the top piece and zipper together and sew together as well.

Step 6: Pin both front and back pieces of boppy right sides together and sew around all sides. Since you have a zipper in it there is no need to leave room to turn in. Once everything is sewn together, open the zipper and turn the cover right side out. Place your pillow inside and TADA!!!

I love how it turned out and I know that no one else will have one like it.