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!! :)

Spiral Dotticure and a Nail Fail

As you may know from previous posts, my fellow hobbyists, I bought two of the twelve polishes in the new China Glaze On Safari Collection last month: Desert Sun and Call of the Wild. Once payday came, though, my friend V and I agreed that we needed the rest of the collection, so we split the cost half and half...and they arrived on my doorstep just a few days later! Aren't they gorgeous?

I'm sure you've all seen a metric ton of swatching posts on these polishes, so I won't bother to list off the names, but feel free to ask if you actually don't know which is which! :)

I of course wanted to do my next manicure using some of the new polishes...but honestly? I think I should have stopped part of the way through. It's a common failing of mine to not know when to *stop* when I'm doing a manicure. I've been making it a point to Pin things that show off how beautiful simplicity can be, so I'll remember it when I'm doing my own nail art. This weekend, however, I clearly forgot.

I started with a base color of China Glaze Man Hunt, which is quickly becoming my favorite blue (it pushed out my previous favorite, Frostbite, also a China Glaze.) The accent nails got a layer of Prey Tell added. I meant to do just Prey Tell on those nails, but I zoned out while painting on the pretty blue and forgot to leave those two nails plain. That was the first part of the fail - the Prey Tell just didn't look as gorgeous as it should have. Then I tried to do lace with a dotting tool...which came out pretty well, actually, though it probably would've looked better 1: in a straight line, rather than the curve I went with, and 2: if I'd STOPPED THERE. But I really wasn't happy with the way the Kalahari Kiss looked with the other two colors, though I should've. Mr. IJAH thought it was gorgeous at that point, actually. But...well...I added little flourishes in I'm Not Lion, and spread it thinly over the lace.

My 8-year-old daughter thought it was gorgeous. Me, not so much. I just couldn't like it, so I took it off. Let me know what you think, though - Hail or Fail?

Anyway, I'm very happy with what I replaced it with! Two coats of China Glaze Agent Lavender, and then dots in a swirl with two sizes of dotting tools, in Purr-fect Plum and Man Hunt, and this is the result:

The accent nail is kind of subtle - most of the nails have Purr-fect Plum on the tips and Man Hunt on the base of the nails, while my ring fingers have the colors reversed.

Nail Fail with Shells

A lot of people have said they like this manicure, but to me it's still a nail fail to me. You know how you sometimes have this image in your mind of how you're expecting something to turn out, and then when something goes wrong, you just can't look at the results objectively? Yeah, that's where I am with this.

I had an image of doing a gradient (in shells) from black to pink, with the shells kind of mixed in the middle? Yeah, that didn't work. Also, you know how Seche Vite tends to layer over nail polish like a coat of plastic or resin? I had a mental picture of these shells sitting in that layer of resin...except that after two coats of Seche Vite, I was too scared to add more. I don't know what chemical reaction was going on here, but the SV dried up with the texture of fruit roll-ups. Seriously. Fruit leather on my fingers. Totally not the clear resin I expected to be encasing these pretty crushed shells.

I started with my standard two coats of Haken Nail Magic, two coats of China Glaze Sex on the Beach (appropriate for putting crushed seashells on, don't you think?) and then I dabbed SV on spots on the nail, added shells, added SV to the next spot, etc.

I don't remember if I mentioned it on the blog here or only on the Facebook polish group, but I wanted to report on how my latest base coat has been doing in strengthening my extremely thin, flexible, bendy, breaking nails. I also have a (usually mild) problem with flaking on the ends, but due to the flexibility of the nails, they usually break off before the flakes get serious.

When I started doing my nails seriously last winter, I picked up a bottle of Sally Hansen Miracle Cure. It did help slightly with the flakes, and my nails would get a millimeter or two past the end of my fingers before they broke, which was an improvement, but it didn't stop the flaking, and it didn't improve the strength or ridiculous bendy-ness of my nails. So when the bottle was getting low in March, I picked up a "strenghtening" base coat on a trip to Sally Beauty the first week in April. Nail Life Nail Revitalizer was the worst base coat I've ever had for my nails. A plain base coat is better for my body chemistry than that stuff. (I'm not dissing the product - I've heard other people say it works for them. But it does not work for me.)

I would've stopped using it sooner, except that I only get paid once a month, so I had to wait 'til the beginning of May to buy a new base coat. By that time, I had more serious flaking problems than I've ever had, even before I started "treating" my nails. So among my other nail purchases the first of May, I bought Haken Nail Magic. I immediately noticed a dropoff on the level of flaking, which was a good thing, but I wanted to wait a few weeks to give a more thorough report on how my nails are doing.

I've had one single nail break in nearly four weeks...and it was one where the flakes had started cracks before I started using HNM. I still have some thin areas where the flakes haven't grown all the way out yet (I was getting flakes in the middle of my nail with the Nail Life, not just on the tips like I normally get!) but I'm not getting any new flakes, and my nails are literally longer than they've ever been in my life.

Compare how long they are right now with how long they were five weeks ago:

And that thumbnail on my left hand is the one that broke three weeks ago, so it's my shortest nail. My nails have actually started clacking on the keys when I type! ^_^ 

Little Purple Dress

I've had a stream of non-inspired days for a while now. And even when I've felt inspired, what I've come up with hasn't been. I really wasn't happy with this manicure and took it off after a day, but I did take picture of it and decided to share. Some people liked it, even though I really didn't, so maybe some of you readers might be part of the people-who-like-this population. :)

First, here's the inspiration for this manicure:

I don't think I'd ever wear this dress, but when I saw it on Pinterest, I thought it would make nice nail art. I think I did it wrong, though. I can think of a couple of other ways to interpret this dress on nails, and I may try again. ^_^ First, I don't have a nail polish of that shade of purple, so I had to franken one. It's a combination of China Glaze Salsa, Frostbite, and a lot of Milani Whitest White. I'm really happy with the colour of purple I created. I think it would've matched the dress better if I'd matted it, but I haven't yet bought a matte topcoat. It's on The List. ^_^

I used NYC Black Lace Creme for the belt, and I mixed a bit of Milani Whitest White, a touch of China Glaze Mahogany Magic, and a teeeeny dot of neon yellow and neon orange to make the cream color. I really do like all the colors together.

It's just the artwork that doesn't work for me. I think maybe I shouldn't have turned the dress upside down on my nails, maybe. Put the cream ruffles at the base of the nail, and do...something?...to make the bottom look swirly and loose. That will take thought so it might be a while before I revisit this fashion disaster on my nails. :)

Nail mail, nail FAIL, and week 10: polka dots!

That post title is quite the mouthful, isn't it? It's a long post, too! But I can't really separate out the topics, because they're all related! Have you ever had a day where you have your manicure all planned out, but then you get home and find nail mail in the post, which you then just have to try out, throwing the plans out the window? Well, that was my yesterday!

March 4th started week 10 of the one year nail art challenge I'm participating in, and this week's theme is polka dots. So I had this mental image of a sky-blue background, and rainbow colored polka dots in a spiral pattern...and then I came home to this package:

That's right, I've got four new Nubar polishes (from left to right - Forest, Greener,  Reclaim, and 2010) and three Nabi magnetics (l-r: Dark Wine, Cappucino, and Green)! I took these pictures, then I ooh'ed and aah'ed over them for a bit, and decided I couldn't wait to try out magnetic polish for myself. I'm not quite sure why I grabbed Dark Wine, when normally I would have gone for the brown or green, but that's what ended up in my hand and I didn't even think to question it until I already had a few nails covered. Of course, it's this gorgeous dark red-brown color which is my favourite kind of red, honestly, so that was okay by me. Having read many reviews of magnetic polishes, I decided to start with one thin coat, let it dry, and then experiment with the magnets for the second coat. (I got two different magnet patterns in these three polishes, too.)

The first thing that really hit me about this polish? Why did it not occur to me how much different it would smell from normal nail polish?! I don't think I've seen any other blogger mention it, but it really should have been predictable. It smells like wet pennies, or rust, or...well, it is wet iron filings or dust or particles in there, after all! I should have expected it, and yet I didn't. It made an odd combination of dirt, metal, and bloody taste in my mouth. (Bloody in reference to the metallic taste of blood, not British vernacular. ;)

Side note to explain something you may or may not have noticed:  Yes, I'm American from maaaany generations back (and millennia back on my Cherokee side), except that my spelling has a tendency to waver because I find that the -our spelling feels different than the -or spelling for many words, and it works better in my autistic little brain. I'm inconsistent with it because when at work I try to remain consistent to the American spelling, but when I'm writing prose or poetry, I prefer the British spelling because it has more depth. I find a blog to be somewhere in between creative writing and communicating, so I do tend to waver on my spelling, depending on where my brain is during any given sentence. And wasn't that more than you wanted to know about me? ::grin::

Once I got past the taste (no, I didn't put it in my mouth, people, please stop having flashbacks to the polish drinking lady) my next-first thought was that it was very, very thick in consistency. It doesn't spread easily on the nail and dries extremely quickly when trying to use a thin coat. This meant that my first coat was not only streaky, but felt almost like a sheer concrete texture. I would reach a point on the nail and the polish would just -stop-, and no amount of running the brush over that portion of the nail (despite the fact that the brush looked like it had plenty of polish on it) would cover that section, so I'd have to dip it again. It also dried ridiculously quickly, which meant the stroke after re-dipping my brush would not meld smoothly with the previous stroke...it felt like hardening grit.

The second coat, since I was going for a thicker layer, went smoother, at least. I headed for my left index finger first. (I'm right-handed.) I put a medium-thick coat on, and placed the magnet on the skin just past my cuticle, and lowered it down close to the nail. Side note: I was using this one:

I waited 30 seconds. I've heard stories of strong magnets and weak magnets, and I figured longer wouldn't hurt, right? After counting slowly to 30, I lifted the magnet to find...umm, nothing really. There was some slight colour variation, but nothing you would notice if you didn't know what you were looking for. Okay, that was frustrating. I tried painting on a slightly thicker coat and repeating the process. 1...2...3...lalalala...
Lift the magnet, and voila! Lookee there, pretty stripes! Or, you know, waves. I was going for the chevron, obviously, but I was clearly off-center and I think I must have not held the magnet completely still, to make that slightly loopy pattern. Still, that's pretty! I am encouraged!

... wait for it ...

I went on to the middle finger. I painted the same medium-thick coat that worked on the index finger. I repeat the 30-second process. I lift it off to find...nothing, again. So I repeat, again. And ... I still get nothing?? Whaaat? Okay, that nail was a fail. (I realized after, looking at the pictures, that there was a faint colour variation, but it wasn't even noticeable in real life.)

I repeat the process (including having to do it friggin' TWICE on EACH finger!) on the rest of my left hand, and get satisfactory patterns on the rest of the fingers, although I continue to fail at centering the chevron, even though I move it over what I think is far enough each time!

I won't bore you by going over the entire process for the other hand. The summary? Index finger was same off-center wave. Middle finger and ring finger I managed to very nearly center the thing...and accidentally touched the polish, which actually created a pretty pattern. The pinky was another complete fail, with no pattern emerging. The thumb looks weird because I decided to try doing each side of the thumb separately with the stripe magnets, which worked fine on the first half and not so much on the second. :)

Two things: please pardon the lack of clean-up, because I was so annoyed with this I was already planning to strip it off and start over, but I wanted to document my Fail. :) And second, this polish is soooo shiny that it was a pain in the tushie to try and find an angle to photograph it where you could see the pattern in the polish and not have the glare of the light completely obscure said pattern in the pictures!

Soooo, having decided that this is a thorough fail manicure, and I don't want to leave it as is, I decide that it's still a really pretty colour and I can go ahead and use this week's theme, Polka Dots, and dot over it. So I grab those three pretty Nubar greens that just came in the mail, pick out several sizes of dotting tools, and go to town! I went completely overlapping-dot-happy on my thumbnail, and it needed more variety of color, so I grabbed Sinful Colors Exotic Green as well, and then mixed a few of them together for a variety of shades.

Honestly, I'm gonna call this one a nail fail, as well. It wasn't as bad as the first one - I was willing to leave it on my nails and wear it to work today - but I'm probably going to take it off tonight, or tomorrow at the latest, depending on how much time I have to myself tonight. It just isn't *pretty* to me. My co-workers liked it (I agree, it's not *ugly*), but it's really not my thing. I think tonight I'll try my original planned design for this week's Polka Dot theme and see if it comes out better. (Considering I actually planned it, rather than just deciding on the spur of the moment to try a random pattern like I did here, it's almost guaranteed to come out better. :)