Red & Silver Glitter Glow

My co-worker named this "Hogalicious", but I think that had more to do with it being a home game weekend when I asked her for the name of it. It wasn't my intention to be team-supportive when I painted my nails with this, I'm quite sure. ^_^ I don't think the Razorbacks would care for rhinestones and glitter, really.

This is one of those mani's where I wiggled my fingers off and on throughout the time I wore it, just to enjoy the sparkle and shimmer as the light played across my nails. Just check out this out-of-focus glow!

No other comments, so enjoy the pretties...

Elegant Evening in Pearls

Another blog post titled with the name my co-worker, L, gave to this manicure. It's a pretty simple mani in terms of artwork - I started with a base of Nabi Holographic Purple, added a gradient of loose glitter to the tips, some rhinestones on the middle fingers, and a clear glitter polish on the thumbnails. Voila! "Elegant Evening in Pearls" was the result:

Framed Leaves

When my friend V wants to come over and do her nails, but doesn't know what she wants done on them, we usually head to my Nail Art pinterest board and she'll pick out a handful that jump out at her for me to choose between for which one or ones I feel like doing that day. Usually we'll use that picture as an idea or place to start, but we seldom actually mimic them closely. I do that often for my manicures, but V usually has an idea where she wants "this, but with this, or that, or changed this way..." However, she loved this nail art so much, and the colors, that she wanted it just like this one. Or, you know, as close as I can come with my growing abilities. :)

So here is the nail art which she loved so much, from Finger Food Nails:

However, given the length of her various nails, we decided to put the accents on her index and thumb rather than ring finger.

I discovered first that drawing a border on nails? WAY harder than it looks! We didn't take pictures of her right hand because I did that one first, and her left hand, which I did second, came out so much better. I apologize for the tip wear - it was raining the day we did the manicure, and I no longer take pictures inside my house because the lighting is horrible, so the pictures were taken after a day of hard work at the office! I would make it more of a priority to make a light box if it weren't that the lighting in my office at work is actually pretty good, so when I can't take pictures outside, I just do it on my lunch hour, but V works on the other side of campus from me. A bit inconvenient for her to come over for pictures at lunch! :)

We used KleanColor Military Green for all the green nails and the framing and outlining, and the white base for the accent nails was my new go-to white, Sinful Shine Wisp. I used China Glaze Solar Power (I think I did, anyway; I failed to record which colors I used, but I'm sure of all the others besides the base yellow) to fill in the leaves, and topped them with a thin swipe of Sinful Colors This Is It for that nice shimmer.

As seems to often be my problem, I go too big. I don't leave enough white space (literally white in this case, but it means the empty background space in an image) when I'm creating a manicure. These would have been better if done with my thinnest detail brush (I have one that I have cut down to only about three or four bristles) and smaller leaves, more spread out. I really like how delicate the leaves were in FingerFood's manicure, but that's an area where I continually strive for improvement. I've been doing this nail art hobby of mine for nearly a year and a half now (I did my first ever nail art on the Winter Solstice of 2011) and I've come a long way, but I've got a long way to go to what I'd like to be. But since it really is still just a hobby, and not an obsession, I don't actually spend a lot of time practising any of this stuff. I just like to do my nails. I'd get better at it faster, I'm sure, if I put the time and effort into practising my manicure designs on my swatching wheels until I'm completely happy with them before putting them on my fingers, but I usually just jump right into it! Which keeps it fun, but makes me glare when I post these close up pictures on a blog. 

Still, it's a good record, and (I hope) inspiration to others out there who are having fun with it but not nearly as good as some of the amazing artists out there. If you look at too many of them, you can despair sometimes when you see your own work on your own hands. But having a record of my progress lets me and, I hope, others see just how far I've come over time. And if I can do it, anybody can do it!

Golden Rays and Lubu Heels

I came home the other day to a package in the mail. New polish! Woot! I love getting packages from my exchange group, and I love using new polishes in manicures! I received three Joe Fresh polishes (my first!) and three China Glazes, and the first one I put on my nails is my brand new China Glaze Lubu Heels. Soo pretty but so hard to photograph the rich red shimmer! You can expect to see all my new polishes over the next few weeks, as I don't put polishes into my polish shelf until after I've used them once. :)

On my thumbs and ring fingers I started with one coat of Sinful Colors Unicorn, topped by a coat of Sinful Colors This Is It. The rest of the fingers got two coats of Lubu Heels, and a coat of Seche Vite topped them all off. Then I used striping tape on the accent fingers and added a thick coat of Lubu Heels before removing the tape to reveal crisp gold rays. Some rhinestone accents in contrasting colors and it was ready to go.

Lubu Heels has been on my wishlist for a while now. I love the rich deep color. This is one of those manicures where I keep stopping what I'm doing and wiggling my fingers around just to look at the beautiful shimmer and sparkle on my nails!

52-Week Challenge: French Manicure

It's been less than two months without one and I've already come to the conclusion that I much prefer having a weekly challenge to prod my manicure designing. However, searching on the internet produces only the 52-week challenge on reddit.lacqueristas. Not that there's anything wrong with their challenge, mind you, except that it starts the first week of October, which means they're over a third finished with theirs. So I decided to just take their weekly themes, start the calendar over this week, and tack the ones I've missed onto the end. So my own personal 52-week challenge starts this week, at week one, but my week one matches R.L's week twenty-one. :)

So this week's theme (1 or 21) is French Manicure. Generally I don't like French's, so this definitely was a challenge for me to come up with something I'd enjoy looking at. Also, I actually don't have any polishes that qualify as 'nude' on my skin. I have a few that are close, but if I get them opaque, they're clearly not. I chose to use a single coat of China Glaze Innocence which comes out sheer enough, but if I had any staining going on right now, it wouldn't have worked. I guess I need to find a good nude, don't I?

The tips are China Glaze Midtown Magic, though the difference between it and black is hard to see in some of these photographs, because the sun was playing peek-a-boo when I took the pictures. This is the best I came up with, I think, in showing the rich gold microglitter in this baby. It looked sooo much better to the naked eye, especially in the sunshine! It's a good thing I'm not trying to do a swatching blog. ;)

There's not much more to say about this manicure. The longest part, of course, was laying down those rows of silver microbeads! I wish I'd done a better job of it, but I'm impatient. :P More pictures below...

Your Stereotypical Valentine Manicure

I was laughing when I started this manicure. There I was with a bottle of Sinful Colors Black Diamond in hand, starting off a Valentine's Day manicure with black nail polish on my fingers. :) And the end result?

This manicure was made with only two nail polishes, pearlized rhinestones, and a small addition of flat heart-shaped glitter. A base of Black Diamond topped with two coats of a Pure Ice nail polish that lost its name label many, many years ago. I think it might be "Busted", but I only have online swatches to compare to what I have, so no promises on that. :) It looks very, VERY purple in these pictures, and only a few of them give the hint of pink that it actually shines in the light. It's really really pink in real life. Purple with pink shimmer, I guess? I don't know, but over black, it makes what I thought was the best color for a pretty, girly Valentine's Day manicure.

One of my co-workers has been mentioning...nudging...okay, badgering for a Valentine's manicure for nearly two weeks now. Any time I've had anything pink, red, girly-swirly on my nails for nearly a month, she's said something like, "That would make such a good Valentine's manicure!" So even though it's not a holiday I celebrate, I put the pretty hearts on my nails, just for her. :)

And no, I'm not bitter about love or anything silly like that. I'm very VERY happily married and I'm polyamorous on top of that, so I'm perfectly open to the idea of falling in love again if the right person comes along. To be honest, I still whole-heartedly love every person I ever *have* loved in my life. I don't stop loving people, even if we couldn't manage a relationship for one reason or another. Probably why I'm still friends with most of them. :) I just don't celebrate Valentine's Day any more than most Christians celebrate Beltane. It's a tribute to an old dead guy who was sainted by the Catholic Church. It started being associated with romantic love when Chaucer wrote it into something. People only started giving gifts rather than just love notes for the day (and more and more elaborate ones are becoming "required") in the past 50 years. If I were going to celebrate this day, I would do so by writing a letter to my loved one describing all the reasons I love him and how thankful I am to have him in my life. Other than that? I'd rather have a bouquet of chrysanthemums on a random day of the year than roses, chocolates, or jewelry today. It means more to me to be thought of as special on regular days rather than this day where every other commercial is reminding you that you're obligated to buy something to prove that you care.

So enjoy the hearts and flowers and pretty girly manicures that are all over the interwebs today. But if you want to tell me I'm special? Do it on a random Tuesday. Because it's Friday. The first week of every month. It actually means less today rather than more.

Blue Ice Bling

My friend V wanted some beautiful nails when she was heading down to Texas to visit with her family for a week over the holidays, so we decided on a cool snowy shimmer. We started with a base of Wonder Beauty's Diamond Dust, and then did various curling stripes with Sally Hansen White On and Cover Girl Electric Blue. 

The addition of rhinestones was the needed final touch to make this manicure look flowing and alive. V was really hesitant as I was painting this. She'd look at the swirls and look at the manicure picture we were emulating (a manicure by Eye Candy Nails in the UK), and make worried comments about how it didn't look right. I would point to a spot and tell her the rhinestones were going here, or there, or along that line, and she'd back down...but it wasn't until I actually started applying the rhinestones that her eyes lit up. "Oooh I will never doubt you again!" she claimed. Hah! I'll believe that when I...well, don't hear it! :)

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 28: Gradient

Welcome to my little corner of hobbyland. As you probably know, I'm following a Year's Challenge that I found over on the blog I'm Still Thinking... This week's theme is Gradient, so I asked my visiting daughter what color I should use. She said red, so red it is!

I started with a base white coat so the colors would cover better, then I put a drop each of China Glaze Brownstone, Rimmel Burgundy Flirt, and Avon Ruby Slipper next to each other on my paint palette (otherwise known as the plastic lid I stole out of the kitchen ages ago and won't give back. ;) Using a fan brush, I picked up all three colors together, and painted them across my nail as one. If you use a few strokes, it blends them together seamlessly. It's my favorite method for making gradients, because the obvious lines between colors that even sponging gives you kind of irks me. Not that sponging doesn't have its place, and it looks fabulous on other people, but on my own nails, I will overdo it to the point of obsession trying to make the change gradual. So even though it's messier, I will use a fan brush almost every time. :)

Of course, I obviously didn't leave it there! I used a striping brush and Sinful Colors All About You to add some curving stripes, and then added a rhinestone in the middle. Neither the Gryffindor look nor the fact that it looks kind of like a wrapped present were intentional! As you can see, I didn't get the pictures taken until after I'd started to have some tip wear, but I have to admit that sometimes I'm just plain lazy! I also don't have good clean-up on these because 1) I'm out of acetone, and 2) cleaning up red even with acetone is a job and a half, and I just couldn't get it done well with polish remover! And I may love sharing my nail art fabs and flops with you guys, but I just didn't feel like spending an hour cleaning up a manicure that only took a half-hour to put on in the first place, when it really only looked bad in the close up pictures. ;P

Week 23 - Ombre Mani

Week 23 in our Year of Challenges is an "Ombré Mani". Having discussed the difference between "ombré" and "gradient" (which is coming up in week 28) the nail polish community (isn't that weird to think of us as a "community"?) has decided that ombré means different shades of the same color, whereas "gradient" is a blending change between two or more different colors. A gradient can be an ombré, and an ombré can be done in a gradient, but specifically, gradient refers to shading between two or more colors on a single nail, and ombré refers to different shades of the same color (usually, but not always, done on separate nails.)

Now that we're even more muddled than we started, here's what I ended up with! :)

I swear that pinky finger is actually a green shade - if you hold that nail next to a blue, it looks very green; however, when you put it next to greens, it shows how much bluer it is than the others. Regrettably, I don't really have any other green of the right level of paleness to use there, and while I tried, I determined that I suck at mixing a single color with varying levels of white to make lighter shades. I did try. It came out very grey-green looking, so I decided to just use multiple polishes rather than a single polish with my pitiful attempt at lightening.

From thumb to pinky, I used Nubar Forest, Sinful Colors Exotic Green, China Glaze Treehugger, Sinful Colors Innocent, and that blue/green is China Glaze Re-Fresh Mint. I believe I just used two coats of each color. I was apparently less even with the second layer of top coat, after attaching the rhinestones, than I had thought. It didn't show up at all looking on my nails, even after seeing it in the pictures.