Fifties Apron

This is one of those very few manicures that I didn't copy off of someone else's design. I just had the urge to do red flowers on black, really, and this is what my brain came up with. Pretty sure the black I used is Sinful Shine Dark Room, but the rest of them? If you really want to know, I'll dig through my stash and narrow them down, but I sure don't remember just from looking at the pictures! :)

I did the flowers in white first, and then drew the red on it, and then the white lines. I used a dotting tool and some black to do the centers, but I dug into the polish just a bit to mix the red and black. It makes for a dark center without defined edges, which I tend to like for flowers.

I was really trying to work on the size of my dots. I've admired other people doing a spray of dots, where they start off larger and steadily get small. I did okay with the middle finger on the left hand, and the ring finger of the right hand, but the rest of the time they came out just as blobby as I'm used to. But hey, that's what practice is for! I'm improving, which is really the best I can hope for.

Purple Warp Speed

There's not a whole lot to say about this manicure. It's plain and simple stripes, but it was a fun look! I have no idea why I think of warp speed when I look at it, but there you go. My co-worker L named is Stripes at Sunset. :)

The base color is Nabi Holographic Purple (yeah, that's the only name on the bottle!) and while I know the name of the black I used is Sinful Shine Dark Room, I don't remember the name of the blue, though it also was Sinful Shine, which shouldn't make it too hard to google the name, come to think of it... Ta da! It's Alfresco.

Rainbow Sprinkles

This is a really old manicure. I couldn't find the pictures for it for a while, and when they finally showed back up on my computer, I was well into the I-don't-wanna-post phase. But hey, I actually have the names of all the polishes I used!!

The white base was done in Milani Whitest White. The red dots on the thumb are done in China Glaze Salsa, and the glitter they're dotted with is Pure Joy. Orange is brought to you by Wet N Wild, The Clock Strikes Orange, and glitter-fied with Linderella's Cauldron Drippings. The middle fingers used Sinful Colors Exotic Green and Green Ocean, while the ring fingers are done in China Glaze Frostbite topped with Blackheart Royally Screwed. Last, but not least, the pinkies are dotted with Wet N Wild Who Is Ultra Violet and topped with dots of Max Factor Fantasy Fire. Phew, that's quite a list!

I didn't take pictures of the right hand, as it looked nearly identical to the left hand. Dotting tools balance the skill, or lack thereof, between the abilities of the dominant and non-dominant hands! I did take a handful of different pictures, at different angles and focus to show the pretty glitters as best I could.

Aztec Green

Yet again I have completely no idea what polishes I used for this manicure, but I do know exactly where the inspiration came from! Raggio di Luna does some amazing nail art that frequently gets pinned to the nail art board I use for inspiration, and this one is no exception.

I did mine in green, as yellow is not a good color for me. I'm still working on my ability with fine lines, but I did one of my better jobs with this one!

Green Sparks or Peacock Feathers

Green sparks is my name for this mani, and peacock feathers is L's name. Either way, I really really liked this one! It was even prettier on my fingers than it looks in the pictures. I liked just wiggling them around and watching the light play on the green glitter.

The base color is Barielle Aura Angora, and the black I used is Sinful Shine Dark Room, but I'm not sure what I used for the green glitter. I have several of those I might have chosen from. It could have been Zoya Ivanka or Nubar Greener, just off the top of my head. Give me a holler if you want to know the whole list (somewhere between 3-5, I'm thinking) of polishes I have that it might have been.

Now, I am the first to admit that while I'm a fairly good technician when it comes to creative/artistic things, I am not actually creative. Most of my best manicures are copied from someone else - I can't come up with a pretty and aesthetically balanced design if my life depended on it. And this mani is no exception. The amazing Liloo did these two manicures that I shamelessly copied from:

 

Aren't they amazing?! They both link to her blog, since I can't find the individual posts they came from, but I really enjoy her manicure designs. She does tiny fine lines MUCH better than I can, but I was still happy with my results.

Surging Seaside

Surging Seaside is what my co-worker L named this particular manicure. Honestly, I had some stickers that I wanted to use in this manicure, but they absolutely refused to curl properly to fit on my nails. So I took the exact same sections that I had cut for my nails, and I freehand drew them! Bwahahaha, I have defeated you, evil stickers!

Seriously, though, I was really happy with this manicure and I hated when I had to take it off. I had a list written in this draft of polishes, but it was clearly 100% wrong about the colors used (for example, it listed Wet N Wild Kaleidoscope, but that's a glitter polish, and there's no glitter used in this mani!) So I have no clue what polishes I used in this mani, but as I've said in the previous recent posts, if you really want to know, just ask. My stash isn't so huge that I can't narrow it down to two or three polishes at the max, and I can probably name the exact polish for most of them. I'm just not at my stash while I'm typing these. :)

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: