Happy Birthday Flowers!!

My birthday was back in July, and I absolutely adored the birthday card that my co-workers gave me. So much so that I did a manicure based on it that very weekend!

Isn't that pretty?! So many colors went into this manicure: the base white was Sinful Shine Wisp, but the rest of the polishes are in no particular order: Sinful Colors Happy Ending, Sinful Shine Bananappeal, Avon Absinthe, Orly What's the Password, Above the Curve Wisteria, and I used both Girly Bits Street Magic and a little bitty Bon Bons clear glitter polish (no name on the bottle) to mimic the sparkle-shine on the card. Here's a blurry pic to show off that glitter:

And here's the rest of the nails!

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.

Mossy Jasper Nails

I really can't leave a new nail polish sitting untried on my desk for very long. They caaaallll to me! So I was lazy one day, but I wanted to show off the gorgeousness that was my new Zoya Logan. I also had the idea that I wanted to do a gemstone manicure, and after browsing around different types of gemstones, I wanted to see if I could do a rendition of moss jasper, and this is what I ended up with.

I started with a base of Avon Absinthe, and after that was fully dried I put on a thick coat of Zoya Logan, and used plastic wrap to sponge some of the color back off.

Here are a few pictures I found googling "moss jasper" or "moss agate" to give you an idea of the look I was going for, so you can decide if I nailed it or not!

And now for the picture spam!

Spring Bluebonnets in Summer

This manicure was one of those rare, spectacular times, when I was not using anyone else's manicure as inspiration, and yet my nails managed to come out exactly as I was imagining it when I designed it!

I started out with Milani Whitest White as a base, and then used the plastic wrap method to marble on first Color Club Take Me To Your Chateau and then Avon Vintage Blue. It came out, as I said, exactly as I had mentally pictured - that beautiful bright but pale blue of the sky on a crisp spring day with a hint of white to imply wispy white clouds.

I used a detail brush to add stems of Sinful Colors Exotic Green, and then my smallest dotting tool with China Glaze Frostbite for the bluebonnet flowers. I stippled the flowers quite thoroughly rather than just putting solid dots of the lacquer, in order to let some of that white/blue from the polish underneath come through, to add texture and depth to the flowers.

I really was blown away by how these nails came out just the way I wanted them to. While I often draw out a design that I want on paper, I only paint an actual practice nail maybe a third of the time, and this wasn't one of them. I just had an idea and went to town on my fingernails, and I was so excited to watch the picture in my mind take shape on my tiny little canvases!

52-Week Challenge: 5/20 - Pastel

This week's theme from the 52-week challenge I've been (mostly) following is pastel. So I used a pale pink, a baby blue, a light green, and white to make this pretty floral panorama on my nails.

I started with a base of two coats of Nailtiques St. Croix, though these pictures make it look kind of lavendar rather than the milky pink it really is. I used Sinful Colors Snow Me White to brush a broad french tip on each nail, and then Avon Vintage Blue and a detail brush made up flowers of various sizes. I used more Snow Me White to draw in the details on the flowers (and in a few cases, blue again and white again on top of that), and then China Glaze Tree Hugger to draw in the vines and occasional leaf.

My nails are just about the only part of me that gets much of a chance to be delicate or girly, since I've been a tomboy since I was old enough to climb trees. I don't really care for lace, hardly wear the jewelry I own, and I couldn't keep a flowering plant alive to save my own life, so I have to make do with flowers on my fingers!

MSMD - Art Deco

It's Monkey See, Monkey Do Monday again here at my hobby space, and this week I'm mimicking the always amazing pshiiit.

As usual, my rendition is nowhere near as good as hers, but I still enjoyed having it on my nails for a while. I used NYC Purple Pizzazz Frost, Avon Mirror Shine Polish, and Rimmel London I Lilac You for the three main colors, and China Glaze Black Diamond for the black outlines. My ring finger and thumb also have Sinful Colors Daddy's Girl over the Purple Pizzazz Frost, though it's a very subtle difference, and the camera didn't capture it at all.

I just wish I could make straighter outlines. I get so tired of the little wigglies. ^_^

May Polish Days - The Number 5

THE NUMBER 5!

The theme for May's Polish Days is, as you can see, the number 5. Any interpretation of 5, so I'm really looking forward to seeing what everyone else comes up with! Being who I am, my mind immediately went to the five elements: earth, water, air, fire, and spirit. 

The fire element is on my index finger, with a base color of Ulta Eye Popping Poppy. Air is in the middle on top of Sinful Colors Unicorn. For Water on the ring finger I used Avon Vintage Blue, and Earth was done with Avon Jade on the pinky finger. For Spirit I used a base coat of Sinful Shine Wisp and a single coat the indie polish Wonder Beauty Diamond Dust to highlight the airy, ethereal nature of one's Spirit. All of the symbols were done in Sinful Shine Dark Room on a layer of top coat on a piece of plastic, then cut out and transferred to my nails after they were dry.

For the other hand I used the same base colors, and then drew a star on each finger. The five points of the star, in paganism, also represents the same five elements, so I thought that tied the two hands together nicely without me having to do the same intricate symbols twice. I'm so lazy! I used Dark Room to draw most of the stars, though I drew one of them in Wisp for an accent, then topped all five of them with Sinful Colors This Is It. I honestly wasn't careful about putting This Is It on any of the stars - they all went over, but it only really showed on top of Wisp. They look actually outlined in the black ones, but it just ended up looking messy on the white one. Ah well, we learn something new from each manicure, yes?

This picture is slightly blurry and it really shows how beautifully the Diamond Dust shimmers on my thumbs. I don't remember whether I purchased my mini bottle of Diamond Dust or if someone gave it to me, but I wish I could find for sure where I got it so I could purchase a larger bottle. It's been a go-to polish when I want to just add sparkle to any polish without affecting the color. But while my stash list has it labeled as a Wonder Beauty polish, the only label actually on the bottle is "Diamond Dust" (hand written, round label, on a mini bottle), I've never purchased anything else from Wonder Beauty, but I can't find it on their website or on the other company I might have gotten it from, Spooky Bones (Strange Polish). So if anyone knows who made/makes Diamond Dust, I'd love to know. I need more. :)

In general, it's not one of my manicures that are just pretty on their own, but I'm really happy with both the symbolism and the rendition of this month's theme.

Now it's time to check out what the others came up with for "the number 5"!

Purple Stripes

There have been a lot of times over the past few weeks when, for one reason or another, I didn't get around to doing my nails in the evening as I usually do. This has led to me looking at my stash shelf in the morning, trying to think of something I can do to my nails in a half-hour to an hour that still qualifies as "nail art". A few times I've packed a few polishes and tools into a bag and done my nails over my lunch hour!

I don't remember if I did this one before I went to work or at lunch, but this manicure was definitely one of those decided and designed quickly.

The base color is Avon Mirror Shine Polish, followed by a stripe down the middle of Orly Fowl Play. A manicure that only needed clean-up where my non-dominant hand shook too much! I've actually reached the point where I hardly have to do clean-up on the base color polish. After a year at this nail art stuff, it's about time my hands got steady enough to do that!

I really liked the effect I got from the stripe of Fowl Play over the bright lavender chrome! Please ignore the piece of missing polish on my left hand index finger. I work in an office, and while I love having nail art as my hobby, I consider my nails to be just as much of a tool as my feet, hands, ears, and teeth. It's not unusual for my fingers to be peppered with paper cuts and I'm never going to be one of those people who opens cabinets with their knuckles to avoid breaking a nail. Nail art is fun, but my nails will never be my obsession. Which isn't to say I think badly of those who are that careful of their nails, of course, but it's not and never will be my priority. (Now, if you want to see me get touchy about one non-practical, strictly decorative, portion of my body? Tell me I should cut my hair and watch how fast I growl. ^_~)