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

Day 8 - Metallic Nails

Oooooohhhh! Shiny. :) Shiny nails. I'm very fond of metallic nail polishes, so for day 8 of the challenge, I did money-based nails.  I used gold, silver, and bronze polishes to make a penny, nickel, dime, quarter, and dollar coin!

The colors I used were:

Claire's Tin Man - A stunning silver polish, with coarse silver glitter in a pigmented silver base.  This is definitely not a top coat; it is completely opaque in one color.  This is one of my favorite polishes in my stash, actually!

OPI Brisbane Bronze - a pretty standard Bronze color.  This one is almost opaque in one coat, but really needs a second coat for full coverage and depth of color.  It looks a little dull in the shade, but truly shines in the sun.  The formula is a tiny bit thinner than I like, but it applies fine.

Milani Gold Lamé: This is a nice little gold polish, it dries without much gloss.  It has no glitter in it, it is just a straight up gold.  I've never used it by itself, but this is a great polish to use as underwear for other colors, or  for nail art.  It needs two coats to be opaque.  In this mani, I used it as underwear for Revlon Gold Coin, just to bring out the gold, since that polish tends to lean more silver than the name implies it would.

Revlon Gold Coin - Again, a fairly opaque metallic polish, although it has a clear base and needs two coats to be completely opaque.  This color is like a white gold... it definitely leans warmer than your average silver, but it is not quite gold enough to call "gold" in my book.  I often layer this over Milani Gold Lamé, which results in a fantastic gold color, with flecks of many shades of gold and silver and a depth that looks like you used five coats!

Bottles on white background:

Bottles on dark background:

OPI Brisbane Bronze:

Milani Gold Lamé and Revlon Gold Coin (see how silver it looks, next to the true gold?)

Claire's Tin Man (I wish I could get a backup of this)

And the art! This was extremely difficult to get a flattering picture of, but I tried my best.  I also re-learned a nail art lesson that I keep learning and forgetting again: letters and numbers are much harder to paint than one would think! I'd rather do stripes or clouds or flowers any day.  Don't forget to check out the Milani Gold Lamé and Revlon Gold Coin combo on my thumb!

Cheers,

Maria

Day 2 - Orange

Hello again,

Today I'm going to show you guys my 2nd manicure in the 31 day challenge, and also a bonus manicure I did a few weeks and really liked.

First up, my orange nails for Day 2.

I don't know if it is considered cheating or not, but I didn't feel like doing just solid color orange nails.  Even though it is September, I'm not ready for summer to be over!   So I painted some fun orange nails with a scrumptious creamsicle accent finger!

The color I used was Jesse's Girl Beauty Guru.  I bought this at Rite-Aid a few days ago.  And you know what? I really, really like it! I wasn't expecting to love an orange like this, but I really do.  It is a beautiful muted orange that I could almost call a dusty orange.  It was not opaque enough to cover in one coat, but two coats evened everything out nicely.  A third coat would have probably made it look even better, but I didn't use one since I am just going to be taking this off shortly in order to do Day 3 of the challenge.  It dries moderately shiny, but I think it looks much better with a coat of Seche Vite.

And don't you just love the thin rectangular bottle?! I do! And it still has a decent 10ml. (photo from Jesse's Girl website)

For the accent nail, I used a bunch of colors.  The background is one coat Milani Silver Dazzle, and then a light stippled coat of Revlon Aloof (a very light silver).  The popsicle stick is Essie Case Study with highlights of Milani Gold Lamè. The cream is just a white striper polish.  The only tool I used was a very, very small tipped paintbrush.

Taken in direct sunlight:

Note the hot ring from my hot boyfriend ;)

And one taken inside:
(cringe- I swear I'm getting my better camera soon! It is at my parents' house right now :-/)

It's a keeper. This color is definitely going to be used this fall.

And now I want a creamsicle.

Find things to smile about,
Maria