Day 28, Inspired by a Flag. American Flag

Not that I am super patriotic but I knew I could pull off an American flag with the colors and stamps I have.

I used red base color on my fingers and a blue base color on my thumb, then stamped white striped on the red fingers and a white star on the blue thumb. Very quick and easy.

Day 27, Inspired by Artwork. "Watercolor"

I chose watercolors because I had not done water color nails before. It was pretty fun and easy and quicker than I expected. I did different color schemes on each hand since I wasn't going anywhere and I knew it'd be coming off within 24 hours anyway.

Here is how they turned out:

As you can see I got it all over my skin but I tend to do that all the time anyway. I tried cleaning it up but got really tired of the cleaning process pretty quick (again as usual) so I stopped once it looked "okay."


I definitely like the left hand (first picture) better. I'll be posting today's (day 28) here pretty quick too. Anyone done water color nails before? I found it pretty fun.

Combo, Days 25 & 26.

Inspired by "Fashion" and "A Pattern" I chose the pattern "houndstooth" and the fashion aspect was fall colors. Once again half way through I decided I didn't like something and did a switheroo. On my right had I have China Glaze Agro stamped with SinfulColors Rich in Heart on my left China Glaze Agro stamped with SinfulColors Mercury Rising. I like my left hand sooo much better.

Anyway here are the photos. :3

Prett pretty. :3

Combined Days 23+24: Inspired by a Book & Movie

So because I have fallen behind I combined days 23 and 24, my Harry Potter nails are inspired by books and movies! Yaay! I'm such a cheater.... ANYWAY.

I chose to do house colors on my fingers and A skull and snake on my thumb to represent the Death Eaters/Voldemort.To achieve this particular manicure I used 10 polishes. Plus top and base coats.  I wound up doing the design twice because I didn't like how the lines on the original house color nails turned out. I had hoped it would turn out more plaid but it didn't. Then I learned a new way to use my stamper to pick up the image and avoid smearing the polish on the plate. YAY! it made it so I am able to pick up my ACTUAL plaid stamp without it smearing all over it's self. So hurrah for do overs. Also the ring finger (Ravenclaw) had to be redone three times total because the first color I used for bronze came out WAY too orange. I will share all the different "finished" designs so you can see the evolution.

First off with the overly orange Ravenclaw ring finger:

Next we have the "fixed" ring finger but the wrong stripes:

And finally we have the PERFECT house colors! Except somehow I got a black speck on my index finger that was in my top coat's brush. Weird right? But at this point I am pretty much thinking "Redo? NOPENOPENOPE" Anyway here is the final Harry Potter paint job:

An all the colors used were:

Thumb: PureIce Black Out, Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear White On, Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Mint Sorbet
Index: KleanColor Metallic Yellow, KleanColor Metallic Red
Middle: Pure Ice Silver Star, China Glaze Agro, 
Ring: KleanColor Metallic Mango(1st) Pure Ice Fast Lane (2nd), KleanColor Metallic Sapphire
Pinky: Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Mellow Yellow, Pure Ice Black Out


So, there we have Days 23 and 24, Inspired by a Movie and Book!

Tomorrow I will be combining Fashion and Pattern! Once again I will be a sneaky cheater!

Day 22: Inspired by a Song, Boris the Spider.

First off, I was looking forward to this, I had so many song ideas and then I decided on a song that has a nostalgic good-feely memories. It's "Boris the Spider" by The Who. When I was in 5th grade my teacher would take any toy a kid had out during class and hold it for the day. At the end of the day he would get on the over head projector and have his plastic tarantula "eat" the offending toy and it would be returned to the kid as we were leaving to go home. While the spider was having it's meal he would play "Boris the Spider" on a little boombox. That teacher was easily one of my favorite teachers ever. He was a cool dude.

For the nails I used a base of KleanColor Metallic Aqua (cuz I like blue) then stamped with KleanColor Metallic Black. I WAS gonna stamp with PureIce Black Out but I didn't like how it looked so I switched to my only other black. I finished off with a matte top coat which helped bring out the spiders, since metallic stamps tend to blur into metallic backgrounds. However my matte top coat isn't super great quality.

RESULTS:

I like how they turned out. Not super fantastic but still pretty awesome.

And for reference The song:

Day 21: Inspired by a Color

I chose (like a few other nail bloggers) to interpret this prompt as "inspired by a color name" as in the names ont eh bottom of polish bottles. I went with the color Silver Star, by Pure Ice. I did a base coat of darker silver, SinfulColors' Silver Screen, then stamped stars on my nails with PureIce's Silver Star polish. the stamp plates used were Mash 36 and Mash 49. The results:

 

I think it turned out GREAT. I was initially afraid the silvers would be too similar but they surprised me and contrasted JUST enough to make a very pretty silver star print.

How did you interpret today's prompt?

Days 19 & 20

I have a galactic fail and a pretty water marble to share this morning. My attempt at galaxy nails for the first time went over pretty badly mainly because it all wound up blue on accident. I will try again some time in the future and try to avoid the blue fiasco. Maybe I will have a good glitter to use then too.... anyway here it is:

 

I used a black base with three or four colors forthe galaxy/nebula bits and they looked good then I went to add a top layer of a glitter aaaand because I didn't check it first to be sure it turned out it wasn't a clear base but a blue sheer one.... whoopsies. It's not totally awful but I still really dislike it.

And my water marble I was super happy with. I did a dry water marble, using More Nail Polish's method.  I used Salon Perfect Baby Blues fro my main color and Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Blue Me Away for the marble. The result is as follows:

Very, very pleased with this one and will keep it most of today as well  (day 21) but will change it later after my day is mostly over. And for now I need to sleep, my niece is having a birthday party at one and I need to sleep before I attend.

NIni every one!

Day 18, Half Moons

Did I say I wasn't going to do half moons? Well apparently I lied. I got some stuff to use for blocking off the appropriate areas today and decided to do the half moons I said I wasn't going to do. Tee-hee-hee?

I used two colors and did a simple, standard half moon. The polishes used were SinfulColors Rich in Heart and SinfulColors Dancing Nails.

So I really like how it came out for my FIRST half moons ever. I am really looking forward to doing more of these sometime after the challenge.

Day 17, Glitter & Day 18, Half Moons

Well first off I hate glitter usually, wanna know why? Because of my inability to apply it evenly. You thought I was going to say because it is so hard to get off the finger nails huh? Well that is true but mostly my application issues is where my hatred stems from.

For day 17 I chose green and black glitter polish, namely China Glaze's Graffiti Glitter, applied over a dusty green base, Finger Paint's Be-Leaf It Or Not. As usual with me and glitter we were not nice to each other. I won't go into details but I think the Graffiti Glitter may be seeing a therapist for all the verbal abuse I gave it.

Here is how it looks:

It's a great glitter, with bars, and hexes and dots, so pretty! But not when I use it.

Day 18 I'm going to have to skip. Sorry all. I don't have the supplies to do half moons. I can TRY, but I am so scared of failure that I really don't want to. Maybe next year!

Day 16, Tribal

So this was more fun and less stress than I thought it would be. I did a google search for "simple tribal nails" to get inspiration because I don't trust my ability to do complicated tribal styles. Anyway I found a couple and then had a bit of fun. Here is the result:

First was a base coat, then the base color which is Wet-n-Wild Wild Shine Bijou Blue, two coats. The green stripe came next, took three layers of that to get the contrast I wanted, it is Wet-n-Wild Wild Shine Caribbean Frost. After they were dry I used a So Easy Stripe Rite Nail art bottle/brush for the lines. Finally used Pure Ice Black Out and a dotting tool for the dots. Topped with Seche Vite.

I lovelovelove how it turned out for my first try! Very happy. Yep.

How's everyone else's challenge month going so far?

Days 14&15, Floral and Delicate.

So once again time got away from me. So I doubled up. Flowers and delicate in one paint job. Hooray for work ethic! Or cutting corners ya know whatever works.... Anyway here they are:

I started with a none too fancy base coat, then used Salon Perfect Baby Blues for the base color and stamped with Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Lacey Lilac, topped with Seche Vite. The stamp plates were Mash-42 for the fingers and Mash-40 on my thumb. As you can see I am picking at and chewing my thumb a lot again... sorry for the unsightliness of it.

The Lacey Lilac was pretty bad for stamping with it wanted to stick to the stamper when I needed it to transfer to my nails, resulting in my rocking the stamper which smeared it a bit on my index and middle fingers. It also resulted in incomplete stamp transfer in other areas but my index and middle finger bugged me the most. So probably won't be using it for stamping again. Which is sad because it is very pretty.

Honestly? I only painted the one hand due to being so cranky with the stamping failure. :C

Anyway, look forward to my tribal later today, it turned out pretty rad for my first try at tribal prints! 8D

Days 12 & 13: Stripes and Animal Print

The last two days have been pretty strange. I've been sleeping most of the time and when not sleeping I have felt so drained that I didn't want to do anything but be a vegetable with my Netflix and Hulu documentaries. So when I finally mustered up the energy to do my nails Thursday night and realized I had two days worth of nails to do.... I decided to combine them into one.

So here they are:

As you can see, I chose to use a stamp. And the stamp did not like my tired and somewhat lazy application. But I am content with the result considering how I have been feeling lately.

I used SinfulColors Hot Spot as a base and for the stamps I used Sally Hansen White On.

Brief Apology

Sorry I have not posted day 12 and 13 of the challenge yet, been a bit under the weather and chewing my fingers from stress so my thumbs look awful.

I opted to combine 12 and 13 today so that I don't have to stress over them as much. I didn't do my nails at ALL yesterday because I was in bed all day. Got up twice to eat and use the bathroom then sacked out again. Hopefully whatever caused that is out of my system. Pictures of today's nails will be coming in later today once I get them cleaned up as bit more and figure out a good way to hide my chewed up thumbs.

Sorry errybody.

Day 11, Polka Dots

I am not a super fan of dots, mostly because I can never get them spread out evenly when I want them to be. So I was expecting today to be super annoying to get done. Well I was wrong thank goodness! I did a simple "dotted tips" design and I love how it turned out.

The two colors I used were SinfulColors Opening Night for the base color and then SinfulColors Gorgeous for the dots. I almost used SinfulColors Rich in Heart for the dots but decided I wanted something lighter and more complementary to the base color. Rich in Heart is a very dark red. To top it all off I used Seche Vite, which, unlike some top coats I've used that make some colors fade into each other, actually made them contrast more. Which was great, the more I use it the more I see why people are so crazy for Seche Vite.

And as a crazy random bonus my nails look really nice with my 3DS!

Day 10, Gradient!

I was originally gonna use just China Glaze Get Outta My Space and China Glaze Strap On your Moon Boots to make a pink to blue holographic gradient, they sponged on so sheer I knew I would be there forever to get the opacity I like. SO I went for two colors I KNOW make a spectacular gradient. KleanColor Metallic Pink and KleanColor Metallic Sapphire. I used them as a base and got the opacity I wanted then used just China Glaze Get Outta My Space for a sheer holo top coat applied via the cosmetic sponge I had done the regular gradient with. 

What wound up happening was the China Glaze "top coat" made the vibrant base colors more dusty and added the holographic sheen I was hoping for! It is SUPER pretty even in low light when you can't see the holo effect.

Here it is indoors under my desk lamp:

You can see a hint of the holo effect but not much. Because I do my nails almost exclusively at night I had to wait until I woke up this morning to see how they fared under sunlight. I wasn't disappointed. Unfortunately my camera or my skills as a photographer are not well suited to catching the rainbow. So I have a picture and a brief video to share to try and show the beauty.

 

And for reference this is a gradient I did months ago with the same base colors minus the holo topping.

Over all? I am gonna be super sad to remove this for tomorrow's prompt.

Walmart refuses to enable my addiction!

So a few people have been seeing new colors from Salon Perfect popping up in their Walmarts, and this got me pretty excited. So I went to my local Walmart the other day and the nail polish section looked as bad as it did last time I was there... mostly empty and in a state of disarray. It's nice to have a big section just for nail polish but what is the point if they never stock anything new? Or even refill the stock in the first place? 

I sometimes wonder if they don't refill the stock because they don't know half of it is missing, as in people are walking out of the store with a pocket full of polish and not paying for it. I mean the alternative to that theory is they just never stock it even though they know it's a nearly empty aisle.

All this is kinda beside the point. What I wanted to mention was the new Salon Perfect Holographic Collection which is crazy similar to China Glaze's Hologlam collection. Not surprising considering they are owned by the same parent company. They still look very pretty. Maybe not as holographic as one would like but I'm addicted to sparkly stuff.

I first saw pictures that weren't form the company at nouveaucheap. And form there did more digging and found this comparison at ohthreeohfour. Apparently a lot of the colors are pretty much exact dupes of the China Glaze colors. Which is sad but at least it gives people a cheaper way to get holo polishes. I got all my China Glaze Hologlam colors form the clearance bin at Sally Beauty so the price was pretty similar thanks to mark down.

Anyway I will continue to hold out hope that my walmart with pull it's self together and carry these colors!

Day 9, Rainbow!

At first I was really worried about this as I have very little bright rainbowy colors, but I made it work using a yellow, a pink and a blue metallic polish from KleanColor.

Polishes Used:
Sinful Colors Snow Me White
KleanColor Metallic Yellow
KleanColor Metallic Pink
KleanColor Metallic Blue
Seche Vite
Pure Ice Black Out (in second picture)

This was quite messy to do but I still love (for the most part) how it turned out. I used a white base coat then KleanColor Metallic Pink and Metallic Yellow on the index and pinky fingers, Metallic Yellow and Metallic Blue on thumb and ring finger and Metallic Blue and Metallic Pink on the middle finger. Because of how the colors blend and overlap it looks like I used more colors than I did, but luckily I did not have to break out my super-stain-happy KleanColor Metallic Green.

Still I was not totally happy and thought it looked incomplete somehow. So I went looking for stamps to try. And I wound up with this:

Now I really, really like it. Animal prints and I usually don't get along but this was gorgeous in my opinion.

And there you have it, Day 9. Rainbows.

Day 8, Metallic

So I went simple for metallic again. I am Emmers queen of Lazyland!!

Anyway here it is:

  

Used Pure Ice Fast Lane for the base color then OPI Silver Shatter on my ring finger and thumb nail. In all honesty I am regretting the crackle. I should have done something else, but I was tired and >insert excuses here<

Oh well. Tomorrow's prompt should be interesting. Not sure what I am gonna do for it. Hmmm.... rainbows.....

Day 7: Black and White.

My black and white nails were stamps again. I like how they turned out but I also don't like how they streaked in some areas.

I wanted something with a kind of "retro" feel as far as the design. The stamp is from the Mash-42 plate. The polishes used were SinfulColors Snow Me White, and Pure Ice Black Out.

Day 6: Purple.

Ugh. First paint job was a DISASTER. I'll just show you...

So maybe "disaster" is a strong word but I hated the result... I didn't want a straight gradient, so I added the dots and immediately regretted it.

So I did a second one. xD

Scrapped the gradient and went for STAMPS!

KleanColor Metallic Purple and Metallic Fuchsia as base colors and Pure Ice Silver Star for the stamps.

The ring finger's stamp is the same silver stamp as the other fingers but when I added the top coat it drew pigment from the base color into the silver.

I really, REALLY, need to get my fingers more moisturized. I need to buy gloves so I can apply lotion then gloves then go to bed and hope it helps revive my skin.

Also when I went to do stamps I couldn't find my stamper thing... I just about had a panic attack I was afraid my ferrets had stolen the thing and eaten the rubber bits. That would have sucked. But no, it was in a baggy on my table with my orange sticks and my scraper card and stuff. the LAST place I looked. I even had a flashlight out and was looking under my TV stand and cabinet.... I so silly.

Anyway it is bed time.

Day 5: Blue!

So the first thing I did was try the dry water marbling on my right hand. And it worked pretty good except my very first try I messed up royally. "Oh it should be dry now -yank- Oh crud ALL the polish came off WITH the plastic...."  Kinda a reverse of what was supposed to happen. So I tried again and it worked better I just had to patiently sit a while and watch and episode of Empires. Here is the result:

Sinful Colors Hot Spot and Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Blue Me Away

Once again it's an epic mess. I am getting lazier and lazier as this challenge goes on and it's only day five... BUT IT'S STILL PRETTY!

My other hand I went a different route....
Gradient!

Sinful Colors Gorgeous on all fingers.

Sinful Colors Opening Night on thumb and Sinful Colors Hot Spot on the rest.

 I love how it turned out.

Yes there are days specifically for gradients and Water Marbles but I havent done either in so long, and seeing them on the list was taunting me.

I'm easily taunted.


Also blue is my favorite color ever so I had to so some thing special.

Dry Water Marble

So after reading this tutorial I decided to try a dry water marble. I have done regular ones but the mess is annoying as everyone says and this method is not only cleaner for my fingers but less wasteful of my polish as well. So that's a super bonus.

I'm trying it with blue polishes for the Day 5 challenge, Blue Nails. I will post when I wake up, it's about 5:30am now and after this I am gonna try to sleep (again). So far it looks pretty great just messy. :P

Look forward to it!

Day 4, Green

Messy as all heck but I was running out of time and patience.

After getting little to no sleep yesterday today I slept in way too late and when I woke up it was time to go out the door to help a friend so no time to paint.

Also my nails done been cut... cuz... they stoopid. One broke and other than my pinky nail I can't stand having uneven nails.... Weird right?

Anyway there they be, Day 4's Greens.

Base color is Sinful Colors HD Nails, crackle is Pure Ice Shattered.

Sinful Colors on Sale at Walgreens!

So my mom and I just got 12 nail polishes for half price at our local Walgreens Drug Store. The Sinful Colors brand polish was 99 cents instead of the usual $1.99, Sally Hansen products had various different deals, some were buy one get one free some were buy one get one half off.

I don't know if this is true for all Wallgreens locations but its worth a look yes?


I'm in love with so many of these colors.... SO MUCH LOVE!

Day Three Yellow: Part two

 

KleanColor Metallic Yellow under KleanColor Holo Yellow

I love how this turned out! So sparkly and bright! I also have a video of it to show off the sparkle!

Yeah I'm a sucker for glitter. ;u;

New "theme"

I have set up the fall theme for my blog even though it's not OFFICIALLY fall yet. What do you think?

Seche Vite....

So everyone raves about this product. And I finally got it as my other quick dry was not quick enough.... and holy balls. This stuff is great. I love it. Totally worth 6-8 dollars a bottle. 

The stuff I had (still have half the bottle) was inm "Out the Door" and while it does dry fast it would still be mushable after 5 minutes if the polish was layered too much. And I tend to do heavy layering.... base, two of color, maybe one or two of glitter, top....

I really like quick dry top coats because I have ferrets, weird reason right? They get into trouble so fast when they are loose that I have to drop everything and rescue them. So the less time I have to spend worrying about wet nails and getting polish in their fur the better. It's silly, and most people say "put the boys in their cage when you do your nails" but... I feel bad locking them up. Silly, silly, silly.

Also if I wanna paint my nails before going places during the day I'd like them to be dry before I leave and with me being a late-to-wake kind of person...

I digress...

Seche Vite is my new favorite top coat ever. Shiny, fast drying, GLORIOUS! Only complaint? It smells like rubber cement. xD

Day 3: Yellow Nails

My camera decided now would be the time to suck at taking pictures. Go figure. But here is day three and I will try to get better pictures after the sun rises in the morning.

Whoopsies....

I've been lazy, I'm sorry, can you ever forgive me? I do have a bunch of stuff to post but for now I'm starting with the 31 day Nail Art Challenge. I don't remember where I first read about it but I have an image of the days/challenges on my computer so I will share it with you and I am gonna do the challenge myself and see what insanity will follow.

So far I have done days one and two, because  started on the 1st of this month. So here the two days are:

 Day One: Red 

I've been wanting to do more nail art and I decided on Pokéballs for day one because I am that much of a nerd.

Day 2: Orange

Orange day I went for orange crackle over black because I wanted to do something simple yet not solid orange. I did little to no clean up after this hence polish mess. What can I say, I get lazy.....