Friday, October 31, 2014

Candy Corn at Sunset

And now for something completely different! Oops, wait, that will have to be another day, because this is the obligatory Halloween manicure. ^_^ Actually, I did this mani last week. As I write this post, I have no idea what I will have on my nails for my anniversary. Probably just plain black, as the kids have me dressing up as Death this year. My kids will be Ren & Lin dressed as Black Cats of Halloween. I am apparently officially *old* now, because I thought that this would be an extremely obscure costume...but apparently anyone into anime would know what this is. I was chatting with the clerk at the fabric store when I bought the material to make their shorts and cloaks, and she knew exactly what I meant when I told her. But then, she and her friends are going as the Teen Titans this Halloween. :)

Anyway, the manicure!


Obviously the index and middle fingers are meant to portray candy corn. The remaining three are not strictly Halloween scenes. They're just sunset with tree and bird/bat silhouettes. I didn't even paint any gravestones! And yet, because of the time of year, one immediately interprets the flying beasties as bats rather than birds.


I was really happy with the trees on my thumb. Not so much the one on my pinkie - I was trying for a spreading tree, like an oak, rather than the tall skinny ones like on the thumb - but it just came out blobby, I think. I started with a base coat of Pure Ice Superstar! which is my current white polish. The candy corn was done with Primary Beauty Neon Yellow and Wet N Wild The Clock Strikes Orange, though I touched up the yellow ends with Sally Girl Banana later, as my index fingernail broke and the polish chipped on the middle nail before I could get pictures (it was raining a lot when I had these nails.)


The sunset was done with a gradient of Barielle Jordana's Skinny Jeans, Broadway O! Jessica, and The Clock Strikes Orange, with the ground and silhouettes painted in Sinful Shine Dark Room, which is my current black polish. I didn't take any pictures of my right hand because it was just plain bad. The thumb smudged at some point and while sometimes I can draw decently left-handed, this manicure was not one of those times. :P




Monday, October 27, 2014

All Things Fifties - Strawberries!

I did this manicure back in April. It was glorious springtime, flowers blooming, and I felt like polka dots. I have no idea why, but I went with it! Instead of roses, I added strawberries for a fresh fruity flavor. :) This nail art design is officially called a "skittlette", and I even went and looked up the source of the name just to share with you! Marta from ChitChat Nails gave the following definition:

skit·tle·tte:
Not quite a full skittles look, a skittlette manicure is one with at least two different accent nails. Pick any formation/order 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.
For those of you who like math/equations.  A skittlette can be any of the following:AABBC, AAABC, AABCD(in any order on your nails so that AAABC=ABCAA=AACBA)


So as I have two nails that are white with red polka-dots, and the remainder are different, this is a strawberry skittlette!


The red, white, and yellow are all Sinful Shine: Devious, Wisp, and Bananappeal, respectively. The green is Sinful Colors Exotic Green, and for a bit of change-up I used Zoya Chloe on my index fingers over the Devious. I don't really remember why I decided to do that. It looks kind of out of place looking back on it, but it was pretty! I do love looking at sparkles on my fingertips over the course of the day, and color-changing flakes are always the bomb.


Co-worker L named this one All Things Fifties because she said it reminded her of aprons with strawberries and polka dot skirts from the time period.


Friday, October 24, 2014

Drops of Bunny

I know that the green and the pink that I used here were a two-polish box set from Salon Perfect that I had bought just a bit before this manicure, though since I bought it from the Clearance aisle, I don't think the two colors I bought were two that were originally sold together, based on a quick browse through the internet. It looks like I have Pocketful of  Posies and Mint Julep, which were not sold in the same 2-bottle package. But yay! I like them. I don't remember what pastel purple I used, but if you ask, I'll look through my stash and let you know.


I have no idea why L decided to name this manicure "Drops of Bunny", but hey, I'm rolling with it anyway. The only thing I would likely come up with instead is "triangles and dots" or something similarly lame.

My inspiration, in much bolder colors than my chosen pastels, was done by Nory of Fierce Makeup and Nails:












Monday, October 20, 2014

Fifties Apron

This is one of those very few manicures that I didn't copy off of someone else's design. I just had the urge to do red flowers on black, really, and this is what my brain came up with. Pretty sure the black I used is Sinful Shine Dark Room, but the rest of them? If you really want to know, I'll dig through my stash and narrow them down, but I sure don't remember just from looking at the pictures! :)


I did the flowers in white first, and then drew the red on it, and then the white lines. I used a dotting tool and some black to do the centers, but I dug into the polish just a bit to mix the red and black. It makes for a dark center without defined edges, which I tend to like for flowers.


I was really trying to work on the size of my dots. I've admired other people doing a spray of dots, where they start off larger and steadily get small. I did okay with the middle finger on the left hand, and the ring finger of the right hand, but the rest of the time they came out just as blobby as I'm used to. But hey, that's what practice is for! I'm improving, which is really the best I can hope for.







Friday, October 17, 2014

Purple Warp Speed


There's not a whole lot to say about this manicure. It's plain and simple stripes, but it was a fun look! I have no idea why I think of warp speed when I look at it, but there you go. My co-worker L named is Stripes at Sunset. :)

The base color is Nabi Holographic Purple (yeah, that's the only name on the bottle!) and while I know the name of the black I used is Sinful Shine Dark Room, I don't remember the name of the blue, though it also was Sinful Shine, which shouldn't make it too hard to google the name, come to think of it... Ta da! It's Alfresco.



Monday, October 13, 2014

Rainbow Sprinkles

This is a really old manicure. I couldn't find the pictures for it for a while, and when they finally showed back up on my computer, I was well into the I-don't-wanna-post phase. But hey, I actually have the names of all the polishes I used!!


The white base was done in Milani Whitest White. The red dots on the thumb are done in China Glaze Salsa, and the glitter they're dotted with is Pure Joy. Orange is brought to you by Wet N Wild, The Clock Strikes Orange, and glitter-fied with Linderella's Cauldron Drippings. The middle fingers used Sinful Colors Exotic Green and Green Ocean, while the ring fingers are done in China Glaze Frostbite topped with Blackheart Royally Screwed. Last, but not least, the pinkies are dotted with Wet N Wild Who Is Ultra Violet and topped with dots of Max Factor Fantasy Fire. Phew, that's quite a list!


I didn't take pictures of the right hand, as it looked nearly identical to the left hand. Dotting tools balance the skill, or lack thereof, between the abilities of the dominant and non-dominant hands! I did take a handful of different pictures, at different angles and focus to show the pretty glitters as best I could.





Friday, October 10, 2014

Aztec Green

Yet again I have completely no idea what polishes I used for this manicure, but I do know exactly where the inspiration came from! Raggio di Luna does some amazing nail art that frequently gets pinned to the nail art board I use for inspiration, and this one is no exception.


I did mine in green, as yellow is not a good color for me. I'm still working on my ability with fine lines, but I did one of my better jobs with this one!






Monday, October 6, 2014

Green Sparks or Peacock Feathers

Green sparks is my name for this mani, and peacock feathers is L's name. Either way, I really really liked this one! It was even prettier on my fingers than it looks in the pictures. I liked just wiggling them around and watching the light play on the green glitter.


The base color is Barielle Aura Angora, and the black I used is Sinful Shine Dark Room, but I'm not sure what I used for the green glitter. I have several of those I might have chosen from. It could have been Zoya Ivanka or Nubar Greener, just off the top of my head. Give me a holler if you want to know the whole list (somewhere between 3-5, I'm thinking) of polishes I have that it might have been.


Now, I am the first to admit that while I'm a fairly good technician when it comes to creative/artistic things, I am not actually creative. Most of my best manicures are copied from someone else - I can't come up with a pretty and aesthetically balanced design if my life depended on it. And this mani is no exception. The amazing Liloo did these two manicures that I shamelessly copied from:

 

Aren't they amazing?! They both link to her blog, since I can't find the individual posts they came from, but I really enjoy her manicure designs. She does tiny fine lines MUCH better than I can, but I was still happy with my results.