Day 5: Garland and Day 6: Elves

Hi all!


I started out doing Day 5: Garland.  I thought this was going to be an easy one, but my color choice turned it into a major fail!  Ha! We all have our down days.  I used a base of Essie Case Study (an ugly pretty color) and Sinful Colors Call You Later as the winding garland.  I thought it would look like a garland running up the side of a brown house but... it just looks like swamp weeds. Woops! I'll share the pictures though, perhaps they can be a learning experience for somebody else who wants to try these colors together.

I can't bear to end the post on that note, so I'm going to add in Day 6: Elves to this post as well.  Now this... this is cute.  This is something I'm happy to wear on my hands. :)  My boyfriend thought this one was clever and called me a real artist.  

Colors - Ulta Limelight, Wet n Wild Red Red, Zoya Shay, NYC French White Tip, and Wet n Wild Black creme. 

I really wish blogger had a rotate picture function!!

Hope you're a little bit more in the Christmas spirit than you were five minutes ago :)

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

Day 4: Water marble

My first water marble post!

Here goes nothing ;)

I had never done a water marble before, and, from the sounds of others' trials and tribulations with it, I didn't really think I'd ever do one.  I mean, I have plenty of ideas for freehand nail art.

But I'm so glad this challenge forced me to try it, because what fun!

I decided to start very simply before hassling with room temperature distilled ionized straight from Mount Olympus water.   I just used average tap water in an average paper dixie cup.

In case I messed up, I chose cheap, opaque polishes. Wet n Wild Red, NYC French White Tip, and Sinful Envy.

Then I used an unfolded safety pin and dragged it around to make a design... then took a deep breath and made my first dip...

Whooooooooooaaaa!! How cool is that?? It totally worked! I'm not sure I can express how excited I was. You'll just have to take my word for it.

Then I repeated the process with the two other fingers on that hand, with good results.

(By the way, I don't regret not taping.  It looks a hot mess, but it all came off for me rather easily with an acetone soaked Q-tip while it was still wet.)

For my thumb, I decided to be brave and I tried red, green, and a metallic silver color.  First I dropped the colors...

Off to a good start...

Then I swirled them, dipped my thumb in....

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaand, I missed.  hahahaha.  The pattern looked so good in the water! Not sure how I ended up with an almost all red thumb nail.  Oops.  But it was bound to happen sooner or later :) 

So I re-dipped it, with the red, green, and white again.  Unfortunately I swirled it a bit too much, so it is more mixed than the other fingers, but it's still ok.  I allowed it to stay on my hands ;)

Oh! Cool science! I accidentally dropped one drop of silver from too high up, and it sunk about half way down and stayed suspended there as a sphere! Whoa! You can kind of see it in the above picture.  

Final product: 

Epilogue:

The next day, la-di-da, just minding my own business, I looked down, and my ring finger was missing a corner! *sniff*

This manicure was definitely an attention getter, and inspired me to try more marbling in the future! I can't pick a favorite nail of this manicure, but I can pick a least favorite. ;) Do you like water marbles?



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

Day 1: What you like most about Christmas

Hello all!

Time for another challenge, one that I'll actually finish this time!  Christmas is my favorite part of the year, tied only with the first month of summer :) so I couldn't turn down this challenge!

Day 1 is a manicure themed about what you love the most about Christmas.  What I love the most about Christmas is seeing decorations everywhere and feeling such a part of the community.  Even with all the stresses of the holidays, I feel like it is pretty impossible to be sad while walking down a street with Christmas lights on all the houses.

My manicure's base color was 3 coats of Orly Meet Me Under the Mistletoe.  This is a beautiful and unique green polish, it has noticeable tiny flakies and glass flecks that give it an unparalleled depth! Then I put a matte top coat on it, and added white dots, then went over them to add color to my Christmas lights <3

(Pardon the cleanup, I know I only cleaned two nails....because I DROPPED MY PAINTBRUSH IN THE PURE ACETONE AND IT DISSOLVED! ha. ha. ha.  Frustrating though.  Lost a brand new brush and a giant bottle of pure acetone.  Sigh. Trials of being a nail blogger.)

So there you have it, my favorite part about Christmas is the Christmas lights :) What is your favorite part about Christmas, or the holiday that you celebrate?

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

Halloween prep

Hello all,

Happy Halloween!! Yeah, I'm a little bit early, but I've always been very enthusiastic about holidays.  I like extra reasons to be happy.

Today's manicure wouldn't be possible without the glorious franken, Pumpkin Patch, that I bought from the wonderful blog My Nail Graffiti.  Her husband made these four frankens!! I bought Pumpkin Patch and Magic Dust, for $3 each, what a deal!

Since I am so fond of orange, and it is Halloween-time, I used Pumpkin Patch first.

It was very close to opaque in just one coat, and you could probably be ok with one if it were a thick coat.  I did two thin coats for these pictures.  And - guess what - these pictures are after four days! There's hardly any tip wear! Color me impressed.

The is the cute bottle: 

And a close up:

 

Notice not only the various sizes of green glitter, but also the gold microshimmer! How unique! I can easily say there is nothing else like it in my collection.  It is so interesting (in a good way) and I loved looking at it.  

Plus, did you notice I got a new camera? I'm still working on figuring out macro settings, but I can definitely see an improvement!

Pumpkin Patch, indirect sunlight, after FOUR days of wear:

 

*lalalalala I don't see that unevenly short nubbin lalala*

I had intended to do nail art on these on the second day, but I came down with a very bad cold. 

Using Barry M Spring Green, Finger Paints Cordur-orange, and a pumpkin-shaped glow-in-the-dark neon orange: (woops I think I had left it on macro, heh)

Here's what I put on today:

Cute, eh? A cross between preppy plaid and Halloween.  The green stripes, freehanded, really bring out the green glitter.  And the jack-o-lantern (awkwardly on my middle finger since it is still short) glows in the dark!

What do you think?

 

Maria

Day 16 - Tribal Print

Hi!

This manicure is for day 16 of the challenge, the theme is tribal nails! I've been looking forward to this one a lot.  I've seen so many gorgeous tribal manicures on the web and now I finally got around to trying my own.  This is why I recommend this challenge - it gets you to try things you might not do otherwise.

I decided to do a more subtle tribal nail pattern, that could be done in just two steps.  I love multi-step manis, but I wanted to see how good of an effect I could achieve with just tow coats.



I used SOPI Caught with My Khakis Down (hehe) and Barielle Cowl of the Wild.

Caught with my Khakis Down - I have the mini bottle of this, and it is TINY! Which is too bad, because I really love this color.  When I bought it in the early summer, it had a sign that said "upcoming trend" and boy were they right! Suddenly it seems like every brand is releasing their version of this khaki green.  This one goes on smooth and opaque in two coats, and I really hope I get a chance to get a full-sized bottle of it.

Cowl of the Wild- I got this polish off the clearance shelf at Ulta (along with most of the rest of the Style in Argyle collection).  It looks horrible in the bottle, because no matter what I do, it will not blend together consistently.  You can see in the picture.  However, once you actually use it... it was love at first sight for me! I have bought a lot of brown polishes, and to me, this is the perfect brown that looks like you dipped your nails in a melted hershey bar.  Opaque and dries glossy, I love it.

These two colors also play really well together.  :)

For my first step, I painted each nail half green and half brown, alternating sides and direction.  I did two coats of each color, and free-handed it.


For the second step, I went back with a tiny paintbrush from Michael's and added various dots and stripes and patterns as they occurred to me.  I think it turned out really well, and looks like it took a lot more effort than in actually did.  I recommend this to anybody who wants tribal nails without taking hours to do so many different layers, colors, and patterns.

(I'm really fond of this one) thumb:

 pointer:

 middle:

 ring:

(whoooooooaaaa overexposure much?!) pinky:

Have you done tribal nails on yourself? How long did it take? Was it worth it?

Ciao 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