Friday, September 27, 2013

Abstract Autumn Colors

These manicures that have been backed up on my computer are not being posted in the order they were done. This is actually the first manicure I did after I bought Sinful Colors Let's Meet, Beau Brique, and Coffee. I did another (the color blocking I already posted) with exactly the same colors, and Coffee has been used on several other manicures since then!


There's nothing else to say about this manicure. I just made random designs, really.





Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Framed Watercolors

I had been using fall colors on my nails for over a week on my nails when I did this one. I really felt like I needed something different, so I went for pink, purple, and blue!


I used Sinful Colors Daddy's Girl, Neptune, and Over It for this manicure, and I don't have a lot more to say about it other than I suck at making frames. I occasionally like the way it looks on other bloggers, though, so I might try it again from time to time, but for right now I don't like it on me.





Monday, September 23, 2013

MSMD - Autumn Color Blocking

I have a hard time with impulse purchases of nail polish this time of the year. I am all about the autumn colors - the vast majority of my wardrobe is black, green, and brown! Yellow pretty much only goes on my nails, but I have some burnt orange in there as well, and the isolated pieces of red, blue, pink, and white for accents, but autumn colors are my colors.


I was really excited about how well this manicure came out, because I adore crisp, clean, sharp lines in a manicure! I'm just usually not good at getting them myself! This color block is a Monkey See Monkey Do version of a manicure that I found on Pinterest posted from indulgy.com, but I always always always go searching for the original source of any picture I post, so this manicure is from Kate at Kate's Mani:


I used Sinful Colors for the entirety of this manicure: Let's Meet, Beau Brique, and Coffee (which is my new favorite brown and shows up in a LOT of the manis I've done the past few weeks!)


Detail oriented people might notice that I missed a stripe from the original on my middle finger. I noticed that, too, but didn't feel like fixing it, though I did add the third stripe on my second hand, because I thought it looked better that way.







And now for any other ladies who decided to Monkey See Monkey Do this Monday!

Sunday, September 22, 2013

Woo Pig Sooie!

If you knew me personally, you would know that while I do actually love the University I work for, I'm not fond of the mascot. I think it's ugly. I would be happy to buy more UA pride wear if they had less of the hog on them. I have a single T-shirt that I found in a thrift store that has "Arkansas" across the chest in the school colors and font, but it's NOT easy to find University of Arkansas memorabilia without the razorback.

But for the first football game of the year this year, my co-workers were all ramped up about it, and everybody was encouraged to wear any UA shirts they had for the Friday before the game. I went a step further and did a manicure, just to make one of my co-workers smile.


I was really proud of my work on that razorback! Many people who saw it asked if it was a decal!

I'm not sure which white and red polishes I used for this other than the glitter, which is Red Dog Designs - The Engineer.



Friday, September 20, 2013

Green Watermarble

This watermarble was supposed to be green and blue. As you can see, it did not come out that way in the end product, but like many manicures, even though it doesn't come out the way I imagined it when I started, it still came out beautiful.


Seriously, after painting a basic white (Milani Whitest White) and top coating it, I used China Glaze For Audrey and Wet N Wild Stand the Test of Lime in my watermarble, but it looks for all the world like I used a mint green and yellow!

This is probably the only manicure style that I can do which comes out prettier on my dominant hand than my other. I accidentally double-dipped the index finger on my left hand, but I liked it enough as an accent and didn't feel like cleaning it off and starting completely over, risking damaging my already done nails by messing with acetone in the process.


I've only done watermarbling very seldom before now, because the taping off of the fingers is such a tedious process that I just hate doing it. However, my bestest friend, V, has just started doing her own nail art, and of course she is starting with watermarble because she already does that very well at my house. I have in the past done the taping of her nails for her, and the cleanup, but she does the marbling herself. So she did research and discovered that other bloggers out there have used chapstick, olive oil, or cuticle oil to keep the lacquer from sticking to their skin, so I decided to give that a try and see if it was easier. So after my nails were prepped, I used my cuticle oil to paint the skin around my finger that would be dipped into the paint, and sure enough, clean-up was a BREEZE! I will definitely be watermarbling more often now - sooo many techniques and designs I want to try!






Wednesday, September 18, 2013

A Skittlette of Leaves

I went nearly two week without posting to this blog, but I assure you that I did not go nearly two weeks without doing my nails. I have a backlog of posts where I recorded the polishes I used and took pictures, but I just haven't been in the mood to type up blog entries. Now I can, so I'll have them scheduled every two days for the next few weeks!

For this manicure, I started with three colors that I just wanted to put together. I used Revlon Sunshine Sparkle, Sinful Colors Happy Ending, and Sinful Shine Amazonian. ChitChat Nails has dubbed this a "skittlette" manicure. She defined it in an interview with So Nailicious as follows:

"skit·tle·tte: Not quite a full skittles look, a skittlette manicure is one with at least two different accent nails. Pick any formation you wish, but for a true skittlette at least two nails need to be the same (the others can all be different) OR two pairs of identical nails and a different nail."


As you can see, my thumb is painted in Amazonian, my pinky in Happy Ending, and the index finger has only Sunshine Sparkle. My middle two fingers were painted with Sunshine Sparkle and then I added leaves using Happy Ending and Amazonian.







Monday, September 16, 2013

MSMD Chocolate & Caramel

I don't always have a Monkey See, Monkey Do, though most of my manicures can tip their hat to someone for giving me the idea, but this post was completely based on Spektor's Nails manicure which looked to me like someone drizzled chocolate and caramel on top of a piece of candy. I just had to have it on my own nails for a few days!


Mine came out more blobby than hers did, mostly due to my lack of patience, but I loved it all the same, and all my co-workers thought they were amazing. I started with a base of Finger Paints Don't Make a Scene (it's my only basic tan color - I really need to get a few more in that shade range) and used Barielle Aura Angora and Sinful Colors Coffee for the spun sugar lines.






And now for something completely different...or, you know, other people's Monkey See, Monkey Do's!

Thursday, September 5, 2013

Autumn Swirled French Tips

My friend V's hands are gracing my blog again today. I did these nails for her last week when she was over watching So You Think You Can Dance with me. It's our summer ritual - she's here every week and we watch "the dance show" together. It is THE dance show for us. :) But you're here to see pretty pictures of manicures...


She started with a base of NYC Carrie'd Away. It's the perfect nude color for my nails, however, it's clearly not the right shade of pink to be completely nude on hers, but it did the job for this manicure. I used the needle marbling technique for these, which means I put down little blobs of each color and then used a pointed tool (in this case, my smallest dotting tool which comes to a point without an actual "dot" at the end) to swirl the colors together before they dry. Mixed in here are China Glaze Cranberry Splash, Harvest Moon, Riveting, and Barielle's Aura Angora, the last which was also used to make the line between the french tips and the base color.