The Girl With Rainbow Hands: Nail Art

Showing posts with label Nail Art. Show all posts

Saturday, December 10, 2011

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

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

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?

....

...

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?

...

...

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:

Sunday, December 4, 2011

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:

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

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

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

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

Saturday, September 17, 2011

Day 14 - Flowers

Hello all! I've had a very tough week, but today I was finally feeling up to painting my nails again... Resuming where I left off, we have day 14 of the challenge - flowers! I haven't done a floral mani before, they always seem so intimidating.

Well, to make things even more interesting, I decided to make today another first: my first time stamping! :) It was trickier than I expected.

I started with a base of Sally Hansen - Very Cherry. It is a strange name, since it looks very pink to me. I got this from the clearance bin at Target actually, for $1, and wouldn't you know it, it is a near dupe to OPI Be a Dahlia Won't You? It is pretty, but not my first choice color for the future. Too muggle, haha.

I have a small stamping kit I picked up in Italy, it came with one default plate, so I can't tell you a plate # for it. I attempted -- and partially failed, partially succeeded -- at placing these randomly all over my nails. It was an interesting look, reminded me of a Hawaiian shirt!

(These are the pics in progress - no cleanup yet)

Please forgive the sideways pictures - I'm trying out the new blogger iphone app! And while I *love* it, there is no way to rotate pictures.

Now, I had in mind from the beginning the idea of doing a jelly sandwich - with stamping instead of glitter on the middle. So I put one more coat of Very Cherry on top. I really liked the idea, and it is a great way to make subtle nail art, but in the future I will use a polish that is a little bit more sheer and jelly, since this one hid the flowers just a tad bit too much, in my opinion.

Well, that's it for tonight!

Have a great nail day,
Maria