Forget Me Nots in Fall

Last week I showed you little blue flowers on a nude background. This week, another manicure done with Forget-Me-Nots, on a burgundy background. Of course, last week's was done in April, and this manicure was done in August, which may have had a bearing on the base color chosen!

The blue is definitely Color Club Take Me To Your Chateau, and the yellow looks to be Sally Girl. Banana. My first thought, looking at the base color, is that it is Rimmel Burgundy Flirt, but looking at the swatches online, Burgundy Flirt looks brighter red than this. Now I'm curious and I'm going to make a note to myself to look through my stash when I get home today and find out which polish I used here. ^_^

Bayberry in November

The last of my back-dated manicures, I finally went back to fall colors for one last hurrah. Having found a variety of gorgeous plants and fallen leaves along with some holly springs, I made this pretty little thing for my desk at work:



This picture was taken with my phone, so the colors weren't captured nearly as vibrant as they were in real life. The reds and purples came out nicely, but the yellow and orange were much more vivid and striking than this picture shows. The next day I created this on my nails to go with it!

I used quite a few different polishes for this one! On a base of NYC Fashion Safari, I used Vernis Milk Chocolate and Cappucino to draw some branches, and I added random swipes of Barielle Myrza's Meadow for some green-tinted sparkly goodness. I then used a dotting tool to create leaves with alllll of the following polishes...

(listed in primarily color-spectrum order)

Sinful Colors Beau Brique

Sinful Colors Timbleberry

Wet N Wild The Clock Strikes Orange

Wet N Wild Sunny Side Up

Sally Girl Banana

Sinful Colors Let's Meet

Sinful Colors Innocent

Sinful Colors Happy Ending

That's a lot of polishes, but I always have fun with a dotting tool and I really think the end result was gorgeous.

MSMD & 52-Week Challenge: 5/6 - Yellow

Today's post is both a Monkey See Monkey Do Monday and it uses this week's challenge theme of 'yellow'.

I was inspired by this manicure from Emily's Nail Files:

Aren't those daisies adorable? I started with a base of Rimmel London's I Lilac You, and then dotted my little flowers with white...but then I decided they'd look better with a black center than yellow, after which I thought the petals should be yellow, which turned them into Black Eyed Susans! :)

The black centers are NYC Black Lace Creme, and the yellow was done with Sally Girl Banana.

Now let's see what other bloggers might have done for today's Monkey See Monkey Do Monday!

Week 12 - Skittle

You may remember that I mentioned I had won a nail art contest? Sally Beauty sent me the mini collection of Sally Girl Spring Collection: Cherry, Orange, Banana, Lime, Coconut, and Grape. Since this week's challenge theme was skittle, I thought what better time to use them? Presenting my Spring Skittle mani:

I started with Banana on my left-hand pinky, and proceeded down the rainbow spectrum across my hands. Lime, Coconut, Grape, and Cherry on my left hand, then Orange, Banana, and then Lime, Coconut, and Grape again on my right hand. I decided to add color-coordinated sparkly topcoats to my thumbs and index fingers, so Zoya Chloe was added to the Lime on my left hand, and Essie A Cut Above on top of the Cherry. On my right hand, China Glaze Electrify was the topper for Orange, and Luxe and Lush sparkles over Coconut.

Here's a closer look at the left hand. I have no idea what happened to my middle finger. Nothing was put on that nail except Sally Hansen Miracle Cure, two coats of Coconut, and Seche Vite, so your guess is as good as mine how that pattern showed up, but I decided it was pretty, so I kept it. :)

The obligatory closer look at the right hand comes next...

I love that Luxe and Lush. It looks like little ice chips on that pale blue. And of course I'm totally in love with Electrify. After I came back from my camping trip, I had an extremely chipped manicure, but I was too exhausted on Sunday to do my nails. (In fact, I crashed on the couch around 4:30pm, went to bed around 2am, and got up at 6:30am to get ready for work. I woke up from time to time in between, but I pretty much slept most of that time!) So I had to rush to clean up my nails this morning, and after removing the remnants of my weekend polish, I did a 15-minute manicure which consisted of base coat, two coats of China Glaze Riveting, and a coat of Electrify on my ring fingers. A coat of Seche Vite and I was off getting ready for work. I got a lot of compliments on it, even though I felt sort of naked since I didn't even take the time to do clean-up!

Obviously, I did get my China Glaze Capitol Colors Collection in the nail mail last week, but I didn't manage to get a decent picture of it. For some reason, in each picture, some of the polishes were color-correct, and some were waaaay off. And in each lighting I used, a different set of polishes came out good and bad! I'll try again later this week to take pictures of all the nail mail I got last week, but for now, I'm headed off to bed. Again! :)

I...WON?!

I entered my vintage roses manicure (you can click the picture to go to the blog entry)

into a contest on Facebook. Sally Beauty had a Spring Trend Giveaway where readers uploaded photos of "their favorite trends for spring." Readers then liked the photos to vote on their favorites, and the top five pictures would each win their 6-piece spring color collection:

I just got the email saying I won! You can go here to check out the pictures for all five winners:

Spring Trend Giveaway Winners

I'm just flabbergasted. I don't know how many entries there were because they removed all the pictures except the winners, but the idea that I was one of the top five vote receivers? Just...I feel way too new at nail art to think I'd be voted in the top five on anything!

Also? Is it weird that I'm kind of upset with myself because I just ordered a bunch of pastel China Glaze polishes yesterday, along with a grey, because my stash lacked them, and now I'm getting very similar colors for free? :P