MSMD -AND- Weekly Challenge Theme

As the subject line suggests, I'm doing double duty with today's post. This is both a Monkey See, Monkey Do Monday, and it also follows this week's theme for the 52-week challenge I'm following.

I got the idea when I saw this post from Marie's Manicure Madhouse, which in her case was inspired by clothing, but I saw both cobblestones and scaly skin in it, as well. Whichever way you look at it, it's a gorgeous manicure:

This week's 52-week challenge theme is "animal print", so I combined that mani inspiration with this snakeskin print...

...and this is the manicure that came out of it!

The base color is Maybelline Color Show Twilight Rays, and the snakeskin print used OPI Wooden Shoe Like to Know? and China Glaze Kalahari Kiss.

Let me know what you think of my monkey-see-monkey-do snakeskin, and check out these other entries into today's MSMD Monday!

52-Week Challenge 3/4: Spring!

I'm running so behind on blogging about my manicures. I'm still doing my nails about twice a week, and taking pictures of them, but I've been so crazy busy at work that when I get home I just want to zone out and play Sims3 or read fanfic. I've been doing my nails for the challenge themes, really I have! (Even though I actually either forgot to take pictures of the 2/25 week theme - jelly sandwich - or I have lost them, because I did actually do the challenge theme that week, but I can't find any pictures of it. Bad Ro, no biscuit.)

I originally did this manicure just to highlight the gorgeous Dandy Nails - Piece of Youth, but when my co-workers looked at this manicure, the first word out of their mouth was "Spring!" (at least three of them, separately, squeed about the springy-ness of it, in fact) so I decided it qualified for this week's challenge theme.

This gorgeous glitter is the newest polish in my stash that I received from one of my fabulous exchange group, The Dirty Dozen (March is my month to receive, but she sent me this one early!) I am a US-shipping point for my group members out of the country who'd like to buy things from companies who only ship within the US, so I get to ogle their pretty polishes before I send them on. For the first time, though, this one tempted me soooo badly that I actually opened it and swatched it to see if it looked just as good on a nail (swatch stick) as it did in the bottle.

Turns out Dandy Nails - Piece of Youth? Actually looks BETTER on the nail than it does in the bottle! The bottle looks like the glitters are all clumping, and makes you think they didn't use a very good suspension base. I shook and shook and shook and it still looked like most of the glitter was stuck on one side of the bottle. But when I pulled out the brush and swiped it across the swatch stick? Plenty of glitter there! Pretty smooth placement, too. The microglitter brushed out pretty evenly and I only had to do minor positioning of the larger hexes. Of course, I'm a little OCD about symmetry, so others might not even need to do *any* positioning.

I mentioned to my DD-mate when I let her know her polishes had been shipped on that I had swatched one of them, and let her know how gorgeous I thought it was...so she asked if I'd mind if she bought me one as part of my package, early, and direct-shipped it to me? Did I MIND? Pretties! Pretty pretty pretties! YAY!

Ahem. No, I didn't mind at all. Thanks! :)

I started this manicure off with two coats of China Glaze For Audrey, a color that I don't typically like on its own, because I'm not a fan of greenish-blues, outside of actual, real turquoise stone. Dunno why, really. I don't even remember if I bought For Audrey for myself because this shade was missing from my paint palette, or if someone bought it for me. :P But it matched nearly perfectly with Piece of Youth, so there you go. I put two coats of Piece of Youth on my accent nails and on a taped off triangle on the rest of them. I outlined the taped areas with L.A. Colors BCC 570, and topped the points with a yellow rhinestones, and voila! Pretty springtime sprinkled on my nails! :)

Piece of Youth makes me think of robin eggs, actually, which is probably what contributes to the whole spring-feel of the manicure. I think that's more of a cultural identification, though, since robin eggs in crafts, candy, and pictures, seem to be often pictured as having yellow speckles, but as far as I can determine through a brief internet search, real robin eggs are uniformly blue. When the question is asked in places like ask.com and wiki.answers, blue speckled eggs are consistently identified as robin, whereas websites devoted to bird identification or bird watching refer to robin eggs as simply blue. No speckles mentioned on any of them I looked at. Some pictures seem to show some black speckling, but I suspect that's...ahem...other matter deposited on the eggs as they're laid. Weird the things you find out when you weren't thinking about it.

Week 51 - Red - So late!

I took a few weeks off from blogging for the holidays! It wasn't entirely intentional...or at least not planned, anyway. I work at a University, which closes completely between Christmas Eve and New Year's Day, and I spent that time at home and hardly even looking at the internet. I only checked Facebook enough to keep up with my out-of-state family and didn't even read nail blogs at all! Wow. I did, however, actually do my nails and take pictures. I just didn't post about them.

So here's the belated post for week 51 of The Year's Challenge, which was Red.

I used Sally Hansen White On and Cardinal for these candy cane stripes. I was not really happy about this manicure, though, but I wasn't annoyed enough by it to take it off and try again! My free-hand stripes leave much to be desired, but I was too lazy (holidays!!) to use the amount of layers and tape that would be required to tape off these very thin stripes.

I was also annoyed that despite waiting almost an hour after painting the stripes, the top coat still blurred the red into the white. While I like the Sally Hansen colors - which is why they're still in my stash - I'm really not fond of the formula of their polishes. At least not the lower priced ones. 

So, I hope you all had wonderful holidays - whether you celebrate the Solstice like I did, Christmas, Hannukah or Kwanzaa, I wish you all joy in your relationship to whatever you hold holy, and I hope you all have a wonderful new year. You can expect to see two to three posts a week from me until all my backlog is posted, I imagine. :)

Week 45 - Tribal

I didn't have any posts last week, and I think that's a first in months. I did do my nails a few times - I tried to push myself to keep up with the Halloween challenge, and I did my version of "witches" by drawing wiccan symbols on one hand (I had a pentacle, a moon and sun, and a three-phase moon) and the colors of the elements on the other (earth, air, fire and water). But I never got around to taking pictures of it. And then for Halloween itself I painted my nails to match my kimono costume, but the pictures I did take came out horrible. There wasn't any art to the manicure, just a gorgeous purple with blue glitter on two of the nails of each hand, so when the pictures came out overwhelmingly BLUE and I couldn't get the color even passibly accurate, I decided they weren't worth posting.

Now I hope I've kicked the depressive phase I've been in for the last few weeks, and my nails and everything else will get interesting again, but at least for last night, I managed to get going. This week's them for A Year's Challenge is "tribal". So I looked up a bunch of Cherokee patterns (since I'm part Cherokee, myself) and drew up some designs. I also added a dreamcatcher - I have no idea if Cherokee used them or not, but *I* use them as a pagan and a shaman, so I added one anyway.

I started with a base of two coats of Fingerpaints Don't Make a Scene, except for on my thumbs, which has two coats of Nailtiques Shanghai. I used a detail brush for everything except the four dots on the thumb, for which I used a dotting tool. The colors: Milani Whitest White and China Glaze Liquid Leather for the basics (I need to get another bottle of LL, as it's over half-gone!) China Glaze Solar Power, Sally Hansen Blue Me Away!, and Nailtiques Shanghai for the yellow, blue, and reds, respectively.

And the highlight of my morning today - I came into my office to find a small package in red-tissue paper, tied with a pretty purple ribbon. This is what was inside it:

 Awwwwwwwwww! I have awesome co-workers! When I went to thank her, she tried to tell me that she was sure it wasn't a higher quality polish like I normally buy...at which point I stopped her and told her that Sinful Colors is the second-biggest-brand on my polish shelf. AND I didn't have Nail Junkie yet, so I'm very happy to have it! Again, she tried to wave away the gift, but I'm just tickled pink that a co-worker actually thought of me when she was out shopping, and picked something up for me. It was so sweet!

Lastly, here's a heads-up for you: I've reached 52 followers on this little blog of mine, which is just amazing to me, really, and I want to have a giveaway for you awesome people who think my attempts at pretties are worth your time. :) I'll need to figure out what polishes to give, and get them in hand, but sometime in the next few weeks I'll put up a Thank-You for Following giveaway for Thanksgiving.

Belated Week 40 - Animal Print Mani

I really didn't feel like doing zombie nails this week for the This Is Halloween challenge - while I think they would be awesome with a costume, I just didn't fancy wearing zombie nails to work with my regular office attire. I wouldn't get in trouble, but I would find myself explaining them to everyone who visited my office that day, and while I enjoy it when students notice my nails, I would be annoyed at feeling like I needed to explain why they were zombified. :P

I also don't do my nails just for this blog. This is a record of my hobby - the fact that others enjoy seeing my nail art is completely a bonus! But I primarily take pictures and keep a record just to show myself and others the progress that I've made from complete nail-n00b to nail artist, at whatever level of competence I may have managed by now.

So I decided to go back to my delayed participation in A Year's Challenge. I fully intend to fill in all the weeks I've missed - including the first few weeks before I picked up the challenge - but since I don't do my nails more than twice a week very often, there just isn't space on my hands to do both challenges. :) Even though I didn't participate in the zombie nails, I included the link at the bottom of the post so you can go see how amazing everybody else's were, and we'll be back to the Halloween themes on Friday! :)

Well, the theme for week 40, September 30th, was Animal Print Mani. So I started with this amazing photograph I found on EarthShots.org photo of the day contest, titled Moving Day by Isak Pretorious:

I was just taken by the way the colors played together - the gradient from white on the belly to the orange on the back, the slightly darker orange of the spots - just beautiful. I've seen leopard spot manicures, I've even done one, I think, but I thought a gradient underneath would be just that extra touch that it needed.

There are only four colors used in this manicure, with two more for the accent nails. I started with a base of Sinful Colors Snow Me White, and then I put a big drop of white on my plastic-lid-palette alongside a big drop of China Glaze Desert Sun, and swirled them together in the middle. Using a fan brush, I picked up the whole line of polish and brushed it sideways across my nail. It makes for a lot of clean-up, but it also makes for the smoothest graduation in colors I know how to make. My paint palette is limited in its selection of orange cremes - most of my orange polishes have shimmer, like Avon's Lucky Penny or Sinful Colors Courtney Orange - but while I thought that Desert Sun was nearly the perfect color for the cat's undercoat, I needed a brighter and darker orange for the spots. So I mixed together a dollop of Primark Beauty's neon orange with a dollop of Desert Sun, and mixed them together thoroughly. That's the color I used for the leopard's spots. Then using the dotting tool with the thinnest tip I have - it doesn't even have a bulb at the end, it just tapers to a rounded point - I used Liquid Leather to make the spots around the spots. (Okay, my wordsmith brain says there should be a word for those rather than just black spots and orange spots, but I'm too lazy to go look it up right now!)

The accent nails do have the white/orange gradient underneath, but on top also has a simple gradient of China Glaze I'm Not Lion and I Herd That. I just brushed Lion up from the cuticle to fade out about 2/3 of the way up the nail, and then used Herd That from the tips about 2/3 of the way back down. I did the second coat the same way in order to make the fade a little more unobtrusive, and *poof*! I'm done!

I just love how many beautiful colors show up in these glitters. I should have taken a blurry picture just to show how amazing they shine, but I totally forgot until I was writing up this post. I can waste a lot of time just wiggling my fingers around and watching the way the glitter changes - it's like one of those optical illusion 3-d pictures that used to be on the cover of children's books (do you remember those?) where you move them around and the picture changes so that they almost look like they're moving.

Week 38 - Metallic/Magnetic Nail Fail

Another semi-weekly installment of A Year's Challenge! Click on the link to see a list of the weekly themes and other amazing blogs that are following the challenges. I admit to having skipped last week's theme, because I honestly didn't feel like I would do it justice, and while I don't begrudge anyone else's desire to put a memorial/tribute to 9/11 on their manicures, it seemed too deep of a subject to put on my fingernails. If I had the creativity and artistic talent of 10 Blank Canvases or Sonoma Nail Art, then I would have tried my hand at giving homage. But my only creative talent lies in words, not pictures, so I declined.

But on to this week's attempt! And why I labeled it a 'nail fail' in the title of the post. If you've been reading my blog rather than just looking at the pretty (and sometimes not-so-pretty) pictures, you might remember that I've said my main failing is to not know when to stop? That I don't stick with simplicity? I always overcomplicate things? And I babble...but that usually makes people giggle rather than grumble, so I tend not to try to fix that one. ^_^

I'm really happy with the polish part of this manicure. I used Nabi Red Wine, and a straight line magnet on most of the fingers, and a star-shaped magnet on the accent nails - thumbs and ring fingers. If I'd stopped there, it would have been a beautiful manicure. Regrettably, I did not...

The stickers looked so cute on the sheet! They actually looked pretty cute going on my nails, too, but for several problems. The plastic was thick, so the cut edges of the stickers look extremely abrupt. That might have been okay, except that the stickers did not want to stick on a curved surface, like my nails. And topcoat? Didn't hold them down. At all. I ended up using nail glue to stick down a few stubborn edges!!

Also, do you see the difference between the different flowers? The pink, purple, and blue look like simple flat colors, while the green and yellow have holographic spots on them? There turned out to be a verrry thin clear plastic layer over the top of each sticker which decided to peel off overnight (and a few more peeled off after these pictures were taken, even!) Out from under two layers of topcoat, these things shed their iridescent film!

And the last annoying thing? One of the stickers either turned completely clear overnight, or it not only lost the iridescent layer, but the colored layer, too, leaving only a clear plastic bottom!

You see that index finger there? It was green when I went to bed the night I did these nails. I took these pictures the next day at lunch, as I frequently do to take advantage of the natural daylight for taking pictures, while I do my nails late in the evening most times.

In summary? I loved the magnetic polish (though the magnets that came on the lids are far too weak, but I fixed that by buying a 3-magnet set off of EvilBay) and HATED the stickers. I think I'll give the rest of the sheet to my short people (also known as spawn, or just children to normal people) to play with, as they're clearly not suited for nail adornment.

But at least that red striped sparkle is absolutely gorgeous!! :)

Dotted French Tip - Week #2 fill-in

Good Monday, nail art enthusiasts! I will freely admit I'm being a baaad challenge member and totally skipping this week's theme. Why? I don't care for cupcakes. Seriously. I have absolutely no love for the cutesy that is cupcakes on nails. I can appreciate kawaii, but I am not a cute person. If you are, then by all means, head over to Jenna Froggy's Year's Challenge page and check out everybody else's cupcakes, but here on my hobby blog, you're getting anything that drops into Ro's weird little mind. Just not cupcakes. ;)

Instead, I'm going to make up one of the weeks I didn't do, because I came into this challenge a few weeks late. So I present to you, week #2: french tip! (Yay! I hardly ever do french tips, but I figure if I'm going to do it, might as well use it for a fill-in!)

I started with a base of two coats of Finger Paints Don't Make a Scene, then I added french tips in Orly Buried Alive. I really love this color - the rich red and gold shimmers are just beautiful. It really does bring to mind a freshly turned top soil (though you'll never see this lovely color of dirt in my front yard!)

I used China Glaze I'm Not Lion from the On Safari collection to line the separation between the base and tip colors, which allowed me to cover over those not-quite-perfect spots! Then I used a dotting tool to put dots of Don't Make a Scene on the brown tips, and I used China Glaze Prey Tell for the dots on the tan base. I tried just using Buried Alive, but the added contrast of a third color really helped the dots to pop out. Onto the DMaS dots on the tip, I added slightly smaller dots of Prey Tell, and then finally even smaller dots of I'm Not Lion. The Prey Tell dots on the base just got a smaller dot of I'm Not Lion on them.

I've gotten some surprisingly enthusiastic comments on these from my co-workers, and one of the male professors happened to come by while I was showing them, and he asked if I did them myself or went somewhere to get them done! I can't think of a better compliment than people thinking that a professional did my nail art. Well, I did have one better compliment, when a salon manager asked if I was certified (or licensed, or whatever it's called), because she'd been looking for someone to do nail art at her salon! Anyone who knows me in person would have been rolling on the floor laughing at the question. I am not, not, NOT a people person. I would have a nervous breakdown if I had to work in a service environment constantly, let alone having to touch strangers constantly. ::shudder:: No, I'll keep this at hobby level, thanks, and stick to my own nails or my very close friends.

 

Week 34: Bling!

Good morning hobby lovers! This week in the Year's Challenge is BLING! I keep wanting to do a manicure with rhinestones, but I never seem to get around to it. I can't help but be intimidated by the gorgeous rhinestone art manicures I have pinned from Sarah ❤'s Pretty Little Things, but sometimes you just have to muddle through!

You think that's enough bling? My co-workers all thought so. :) I started with two coats of China Glaze Man Hunt, from the new On Safari collection. I then did french tips in a V-pattern with my new favorite glitter, Wonder Beauty Diamond Dust. Then there was a layer of Gelous, followed by lots and lots of picking up rhinestones and bullion beads with the pointy tip of an orange stick. A final layer of Gelous to seal it all, and voila! I'm all blinged up!

Seriously, though, this is one of my favorite manicures lately. It came out exactly as I had envisioned when I worked up the design on my nail wheel, and that's something I really can't say very often. Be sure to go over to JennaFroggy's page to see who else is participating in the Year's Challenge! There's lots of gorgeous nail art to oooh! and aaah! over just waiting for your click!

Week 32: Needle Marble

Yet another week has gone by, and that means another theme for the Year's Challenge. Head over to Jenna Froggy's page to check out the full schedule and see a list of other blogs participating, but for now, this week's theme is Needle Marble. If you're not already aware, needle marble is a technique where you put drops of different colors of polish on your nail, and use a sharp instrument - toothpick, tiny dotting tool, or needle (hence the name, duh ;) - to draw swirls directly on your nail. I don't remember who it was, but the blogger I first saw using this technique linked to a Robin Moses tutorial for how to do it, so I'll give credit for where I learned how to do this where it's due. You can find the video at the bottom of this post. :)

Without further ado, here's what I came up with!

I had an inspiration for this manicure. I don't know how well I captured it, but I was basing it on a particular painting, Rebirth by Oni Hazarian, which is available in multiple types of prints from Fine Art America. I love browsing their website for inspiration, which you can tell from browsing my "Inspirations for Nail Art" pinterest board. ^_^

To do my best with how this beauty inspired me, I used a base of China Glaze Smoke and Ashes. The various swirls were done with Primark Beauty neons yellow, blue, and orange, Sinful Colors San Francisco, and NYC Broadway Burgundy Frost. This is one of those manicures where I think it really looks much better in person than in pictures. I did manage to get a certain depth to it that I don't think really shows up here. Ah, well. Even if I didn't capture the effervescence of the painting, I still have pretty nails!

And, as I promised, the link to the great teacher of technique - Robin Moses teaching "Marbling Without Water":