Thursday, August 29, 2013

Twilight's Aura - Interlocking Dots

There's no lengthy explanation to this manicure. I had a new polish, Barielle's Aura Angora, and I needed to do something with it. I pulled out Maybelline Color Show's Twilight Rays and did an interlocking dots mani. None of these pictures do Twilight Rays justice, really. It looks like just a glitter polish, but it's such a gorgeous shimmer that I really couldn't capture. My photography skills were not up to the task. So just enjoy the pretty pictures!







Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Mish Mash Challenge - Untried Technique

So I joined a new challenge this past week. I haven't been feeling inspired by the tri-polish challenge lately; I need more guidance than just color! So I stumbled across this challenge last week and I jumped on it...and of course, the very first week I join, I get a nearly impossible requirement.

A technique I've never done before? First I had to think of one...and then I realized that the only techniques I've never done were because I didn't want to! This manicure took me hours to do. Admittedly, it's gorgeous, but I have no idea how Polish All The Nails does it so often and makes it look so amazing! Anyway, I decided on hand-placed glitter as the new technique to try. I seriously, seriously doubt I will ever do this again!


The base color is Barielle Jordana's Skinny Jeans, and I have no idea where I got the glitter. I bought a bunch of tiny little jars of multiple colors of hex glitter off ebay at some point, and a few more little bottles I bought in a set at a dollar store once upon a time. This was a pain-in-the-butt manicure, but it really is gorgeous. I might do it again if I had a really, really special occasion that needed the right kind of bling...but I think I'd be more likely to use a glitter polish or water marble for a special mani, ya know?





Here's our list of challenges, and then check out what the other ladies did this past week for a new technique challenge!



Monday, August 19, 2013

Monkey See Monkey Do Monday - French with a Twist

I took advantage of Barielle having an amazing sale a few weeks back to get some new polishes. I only had Elle's Spell from this brand before now, but I honestly love their formula. All four of the new polishes I bought go on smooooooth like butta! But I'm not a review or swatch blog, so that's not what you're here for. :) As the title of the post says, this is a Monkey See Monkey Do manicure, so without further ado, here's the inspiration for today's nails:


Aren't they pretty? Of course, I didn't go with anything so neutral-colored. I used two of my brand new Barielle polishes to recreate this - Myrza's Meadow and Date Night. I officially LOVE Myrza's Meadow. I had to point out all the multi-colour glitters to all of my co-workers. This is one of those polishes that had me wiggling my fingers off and on all day just to see the pretty sparkles. The green is the pale green of early spring, and the glitters are, in my mind, tiny little wildflowers just peeking out in the spring across the meadow.



I used Milani Whitest White and Sally Hansen Celeb City for the detail work. I tested different colors on a sample stick before putting them on my nail - I didn't like the way white looked between the two greens, but the silver alone tended to not stand out enough between the dark green and the already-sparkly-light green. So I used white first underneath the silver and it gave it just enough definition to pop properly between the two.










Friday, August 16, 2013

Inspired by Artwork

I have a Pinterest board that I've titled "Inspirations for Nail Art". Given my lack of creativity and poor ability at design, I seldom attempt to copy a pattern or painting. I usually attempt to copy other people's nail art, as the creation of a design to fit on fingernails has already been done for me. But occasionally I give it a try, and that's what you get to see today.

Here's the painting from which I am basing today's nail art.


It's beautiful, isn't it? I love almost all of the paintings this artist has done, though I don't have the kind of money which would allow me to purchase original artwork for my house, so all I can do is admire it on the web and point other people towards their site so maybe someone else can buy their stuff!

I originally thought I'd recreate that background with a multi-layer plastic wrap technique, starting with gray, and then white, and then a pale gray on top of it. But I got an inspiration just after I'd put the initial gray on my nails, and I pulled out a white crackle instead!


The base color was done with Sinful Shine Steel Reserve, and the crackle is Avon Mosaic Effects White. Then I used Sinful Shine Dark Room to draw some branches and the birds, and China Glaze Salsa for the leaves. I think the background would have been better represented if I had painted the crackle in a much thinner coat (some of the edges are exactly what I wanted, and if I could've kept it that thin across the nail it would've been closer to what I imagined than what came out) but I'm happy with the end result nonetheless.


Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Neon Tribal

I picked up a few of the Wet N Wild Pop Art Craze Collection when I was at Walgreens a few weeks back, and the neon colors just screamed at me that they needed to be used for a design I've never done before - tribal. I always admire crisp lines and sharp designs, and I've been practicing with making thinner lines, so I had to give it a try!


This is Wet N Wild Who Is Ultra Violet?, The Clock Strikes Orange, and Stand the Test of Lime, with Sinful  Shine Dark Room for the lining. This was one of those manis where you get it finished, and you want to fist-pump, it came out SO perfectly, exactly like you had imagined it. And then, of course, I smeared one of the nails putting on topcoat. Harrumph. But beyond that one little annoyance, I really loved this manicure! I only took pictures of the one hand, since I did the same design on both hands.




Monday, August 12, 2013

Cupcake Mania!

My 9-year-old wanted her nails done the other night, so knowing some of her favorite things, I showed her a nail art I'd pinned recently that was just up her alley - cupcakes! Bedizzle was swatching some glitter indie polishes and had a pink one that made her think of sweet things, so she drew cupcakes on top of it so that the glitter looked like the frosting on the cupcakes. B loved it, so we did our best to do the same. Admittedly, I had much smaller canvases to work with!


I apologize for the quality of the pictures - it was excessively humid and I had to wipe off the camera lens after every shot, but as it was fogging up in a matter of seconds, very few of the pictures came out without some level of fog to them.

We started with a base of Pure Ice Home Run, and added a nice layer of Girly Bits Hippity Hop to the top of it. I have no idea which polishes were used in the creation of the cupcakes (other than the black was China Glaze Liquid Leather) as B just gathered a handful of polishes and said, "Use these!" On a whim, I put ice cream cones on the pinkies rather than cupcakes, but B liked them.




And here's our inspiration!


Saturday, August 10, 2013

She Canna' Take Much More, Captain!

I've mentioned before that I can't leave a new polish untried for very long. They sit on my desk until they've been used in at least one manicure before they get moved to my polish stash shelves. Not too long ago one of my polish exchange buddies sent me a package which included two polishes from my wishlist from Red Dog Designs, from their The Original Series collection. Today's polish is The Engineer, and it's a gorgeous red jelly with lots of red glitters.


I don't know if my pictures do it justice, but this is three coats of Engineer with designs drawn on in Sinful Shine Wisp. Engineer was nicely opaque after just two coats, but I added a third just for the depth of the glitter sandwiched in those layers. It looks gorgeous!





Thursday, August 8, 2013

Belated July Tri-Polish #3

I actually did do three out of the four Tri-Polish Challenge manicures last month, but I didn't get the third one published on time, and then it just sat around on my hard drive. But it was a really fun mani and even late, here it is!


The colors last month were blue, blue, and green, for which I used Pure Ice Home Run, China Glaze Man Hunt, and A-England Dragon. This one was on a base of Milani Whitest White, I think. I just used a striping brush to make a few randomly-colored vertical stripes on each nail, then added large dots with smaller dots on top of them. I didn't have much rhyme or reason for which color, other than using a base of A-England Dragon instead of white for the accent nail...but it came out pretty awesome, IMHO!





Monday, August 5, 2013

Monkey See, Monkey Do Monday!

I had this gorgeous picture pinned on my nail art board that I wanted to try, and the very day I sat down to recreate it on my nails, I found someone else had done the same thing. So on this Monkey See Monkey Do Monday, you get to see three variations of the same design! First, you get to see what I did, since it's my blog after all. ;)


I started with a base of Fingerpaints Putty In My Hands, then I added Sinful Colors Timbleberry. I totally lost which color I used for the stripey outlines by the time I took the pictures, but the inset jewel color is Zoya Blaze.


And now here's the manicure I based it on:


And the other copy of it -


Isn't it amazing the differences one can get from the same design just with three different color sets?





Let's see who else decided to do a Monkey See Monkey Do Mani today!