Week 13 - Ruffian Mani

I'm also going to double-up and call this my make-up mani for week 6 - Half-Moon Mani. (I started this challenge on week 7.) Mainly because I sucked badly enough at doing two nails with half-moons, I don't want to make myself try it on all ten! ^_^

I googled images for "ruffian mani" and I got two different types: one that has curves that follow your cuticle at the base of the nail...

...and another that has half-moons at the base and a corresponding french tip at the top.

Personally, I don't particularly like the Ruffian look, either way, but hey, I'm committed to this challenge! While I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do, my husband asked what I was doing. I told him, and he asked if I had any orange/brown colors. I pulled them all out, and then he asked, "Where's that bright metallic blue you used before?" I knew immediately that he meant China Glaze Frostbite, because he commented on it the last time I used it. So he held up a bunch of my metallic oranges and browns against the blue bottle, and decided on China Glaze Harvest Moon, and told me to use those two colors. It's not like I had anything better planned, so that's what I went with...and here was the result:

I took advantage of the rare occasion my nails are freshly painted during the daytime (I usually do my nails late in the evening, because I'm very much a night owl) and went outside to snap these in the sunlight. I also took some in indirect sunlight inside, but they all came out a wee bit blurry, and I thought the direct sunlight ones give a more accurate depiction of the colors.

inside, indirect sunlight, no flash

See? My camera didn't want to focus as well inside today for some reason. Anyway, I learned a few things from this. One? I don't freehand curves well enough to suit my nitpickiness, and two, shimmer polish is actually even harder to clean-up than glitter!! (Not the actual removal, of course, because we all know glitter's tenaciousness when it comes to that, but cleaning up the edges while keeping the polish intact...that's actually more difficult with shimmer.) The shimmer particles are just way too tiny to clean up easily, and it ends up with a sheer glitter sheen all around the edges of your cuticles, which you can see much more clearly in the slightly-blurry indoor picture. It's not at all obvious in real life, of course, but it's very annoying to me.

I don't particularly like this manicure, but I'm not calling it a fail, either. It's a satisfactory representation of this week's challenge...I just don't like the ruffian pattern. The colors, at least, are awesome together, and I can definitely stand to have this on my nails for a few days. ^_^ One of my co-workers asked me last week if I change my nail polish every day! ::giggle:: Well, I know a lot of nail polish aficionados who do, but no, I usually do mine about twice a week. Sometimes three if I either don't like what I'm wearing or get inspired and can't wait to try a new idea. But seriously, every day?? Where on earth did she get that idea?

For the challenge I'm following, it's a bit complicated. LizMarie started it on Polish-aholics Anonymous, but didn't post it on her blog. So Jenna Froggy posted the challenge on her blog, so you can find the listing where I did, here. Next week: stripes! :)