Day 3: Snow Globe

Ciao pretty ladies!

Day 3 of this challenge is themed like a snow globe.  Yes, just like every other person who saw this theme, I did contemplate doing pastel nails with China Glaze Snow Globe on top. But no! I had to take it to the next level, and I'm really glad I did.

Base color is China Glaze Secret Periwinkle, a color I have been crushing on for a long time, and I finally received it in a swap, with Sinful Colors Unicorn, Envy, and Green Ocean! How exciting! I love saving money by swapping rather than buying new polish, don't you?

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What, you mean to tell me that sending nail polish to random strangers in exchange for other nail polish isn't a normal thing to do?

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Oh.

I don't see myself stopping anytime soon though! I much prefer trading nail polish to trading something like baseball cards! :D

Four of the nails in today's design have just a tip of CG Snow Globe, to represent all the fake snow in a snow globe when it has fallen to the ground.  The accent nail is a actual snow globe! With a teeeeeny tiny Christmas tree.  Base is Milani Red Sparkle (one coat glitter collection) and the tree is SC Envy (also from my swap).  I painted another layer of snow globe over the globe, but it was denser than I thought, and covered the image pretty much, making it hard to see and photograph. But I'm ok with that, it's like a real snow globe swirling with snow.

GLITTER

This is my right hand, for once, since I couldn't bear to take the Dear Santa off my left hand! I had quite fun taking this progression of pictures, getting closer and closer to the camera.

Now for the important question - do you even have a snowglobe? When's the last time you've actually shaken one? I can't remember for me!



The other bloggers doing this challenge are:

Claire Gallaugher - Purple Fairy Dust All Things Beautiful

Emma Hoop - Manicurity

Kerrie Black- PhishPosh and Polish

Bee Justice - Bee Polished

Zoe Garner - Obsessive Compulsive Nail Painting Disorder

Felicia Banuelos- Confessions of a Nail Polish Junkie

Lisa Armstrong-Waite - Happy Nails

Julie Rivard - Tales of Knit and Nails

Alyssa Dees - No Junk Nail

Arielle Stephenson - Only Always Soccermom 

Merry Christmas!

Maria

My friend Rena's nails

Rena was my roommate sophomore year.

That was a very fun year.

Rena is amazing.

On an unrelated note, Rena lets me paint her nails for fun and practice!

This post is dedicated to Rena. :)

One day, Rena came over to watch TV and just hang out.  Unsurprisingly, I hijacked her hands and she let me go to town and paint whatever I wanted!  I gave her a blue ombre manicure, and I think it turned out very well! These shades transition very nicely together.

I used, left to right:
OPI What's with the cattitude?
OPI No room for the blues
OPI Suzi says Feng Shui
Barry M Cobalt Blue
Maybelline Denim Dash

The paler hand is mine. 

This manicure was definitely a success. It is simple ans subtle, but still striking and attention-catching.  In fact, Rena told me some of her male friends even commented on it! To me, that means it must be something really special, if they noticed it.

We had fun after this manicure!  The nail polish drying dance:

A few weeks later, Rena asked me to paint her nails with a running theme, since she is an avid runner.  She has a fantastic blog over at http://milehogger.blogspot.com/ and her posts are always so much fun to read! She makes me wish I could run.

On her thumb, a replica of her actual running shoe.

On her other fingers, from left to right, a gold medal (made with striping tape), her Garmin GPS, a galaxy nail (her choice), and her specific water bottle.  I'm sure she will remind me of all the acutal names for these things, because I forget them.  My brain is busy speaking polish-speak, about dupes and CPs and layering and holos... no room left for running vocab.

 The ring I love:

 Posing like a nail blogger:

 All ten nails:

So, Rena, when can I paint your nails again?

This has been a public service announcement, reminding all us polish-aholics to remember about all the potential nail art canvases on our friends hands! :)

Maria

Day 11 - Polka Dots

Hello,

Today is the first set of nails from the second group in the challenge: polka dots! I love my dotting tool and do a lot of polka dot manis and pedis, since they are so easy and fast and yet look like they took a lot of work.  For the challenge, though, I wanted to do something different that I've had on my mind: Seche Vite dots.

For this mani, I did a base of

Essie - Coat Azure.  This is my first time using this color and I am SO GLAD I decided to pick this one up.  It is unique in my collection, and kind of looks like blue jeans.  It applies as a perfect one coater, which is nice for this challenge since I'm trying not to use up TOO much nail polish on manis that are only going to last for <24 hours.

Then comes the fun part! I used BasicBeauty's matte top coat on all of my nails, and then... *drumroll*... used a dotting tool to make dots of Seche Vite! It turned out fantastically, little clear 3D bumps on my nail.  I've been touching my nails all day, the texture is just so cool.  (Note: this is not a smart thing to do, as the oils from your hands will make the matte polish look less matte... but I couldn't help it! woops.) I achieved exactly the effect that I was looking for: raindrops! It looks like I have little water droplets sitting on my nails at all times.  I actually took a shower and when I was looking at my nails, I couldn't tell which drop were Seche Vite and which were water!  I suppose some of the manis from this challenge are going to turn out to be duds, but this is another one that I am adding to my repertoire of go-to's when I need something that I know will look awesome.

  Also, a few of the water droplets have little bubbles in them, which makes sense if you know anything about Seche Vite, so maybe next time I'll try this with just a normal clear polish... but it has to be thick for the effect.  And they aren't too noticeable, in case you want to try this with Seche Vite.

As you might be able to imagine, this was very tricky to get a picture of.  Plus, unfortunately, this mani got a little bit "wrinkled" with sheet marks, since I went to bed too quickly after doing them... and the bubbles look a little deflated... but I *think* that is just since I didn't let it fully dry before sleeping? I will have to try this again, to see if it is because of the technique (I hope not!) or because of my not letting it dry.  It looked more... raindroppy... last night.  Just a little disclaimer.

Pics:

Indirect sunlight:

Do you like it? Can you imagine what it looked like before I messed it up, lol? Also, any suggestions: do you think I should try it again with a different thick clear coat?

Ta ta for now,

Maria

Day 9 - Rainbow Nails

Me again :)

I was excited about this day in the challenge! Rainbow nails! I love bright colors on my nails so much. I've never been a big fan of nude colors, or black or white or vampy darks.  I wanted to do a skittle, but that wsn't interesting enough for me, so I broke it up a little.  I put the 6 rainbow colors on 5 nails, as if somebody *pushed* and all the colors slid a half nail to the right.

The colors I chose were:

OPI Comet Loves Cupid
Revlon Tangerine
Sally Hansen Mellow Yellow
Orly Fresh
Sinful Colors Paradise
Funky Fingers Riot

They were the closest I have to standard color wheel colors, and I think they all played very nicely together!  These are all richly pignmented colors and covered in one or two coats! ...Except my frenemy Mellow Yellow.  It applies horribly and streakily... but it is possible to build it up with four coats and end up with a fantastic sunny yellow color that always makes me smile.  Unfortunately, I got a bit impatient with it today and glopped it on pretty thickly, which made my ring finger lumpy. Woops.  Lesson learned.

Bottles:

And the whole mani, in indirect sunlight:

This one got me a few compliments, and I think I will recreate it again on a later day.  I used scotch tape to make the lines nice and straight, which worked nicely but I need to push it down a bit more near my cuticles.

Have a colorful day!

Maria

Day 5 - Blue

Hi there,

Time for day 5 of the challenge, which is BLUE nails!  I'm really enjoying this challenge.  Today's mani is definitely my favorite so far! This is an unusual color combination, but it has been on my mind since the moment I bought these polishes.  I'm curious if you like them together, or no?

I used Orly Sweet Peacock, and Jesse's Girl Baby Cakes.  Both of these colors are stunners!

Orly Sweet Peacock - a new polish which I'm sure you've seen before if you read any other nail blogs.  It is a gorgeous shimmery blue foil.  It applies very smoothly, opaque in one coat, but I used two to give it that extra depth.  I have nothing bad to say about this polish! (We'll see later tonight if it stains when removed...)

Jesse's Girl Baby Cakes - first off, can I say, I LOVE the bottles on these polishes!  They are just so cute and almost seem vintage to me.  I am definitely going to be buying more of this brand: cheap, high quality polish, with display-worthy bottles!  This bright neon pink applied very smoothly and dried in under a minute, with a matte finish that is typical of neons.  It is just so bright. I love it.

The nail art is a kind of dry marble technique.  First I painted three (sloppy) stripes, of blue on the outside and pink on the inside. Once that dried, I quickly painted over the blue again and then the pink (order is important, because the neon dries super fast), and then used a toothpick to drag the wet polish into the design you will see below.  I really like the effect - it kind of looks like I had neon pink nails but the blue nail polish is closing in on it from the sides to cover it.

Without further ado, the pictures:

Orly Sweet Peacock.  Sunlight, with purple background to help my camera which was freaking out and being very inaccurate with a white background.  This is pretty color accurate:

Same deal, with Jesse's Girl Baby Cakes:

 And the mani! Taken in sunlight:

What do you think? Do you like the pattern? And how do you think the colors go together?

Oh, and, do you think I should make the pictures a little bit smaller? I started with them big, and I do like them, but recently I'm thinking maybe I should make them a bit smaller?

Ta ta for now,
Maria