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 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

First post!

Hello to any future readers!

My name is Maria and I am a 21-year-old college student, studying Nutrition and Italian. I have a big addiction to nail polish, as does pretty much everybody who reads nail blogs, I think ;) I particularly love creative hand-painted nail art, and rarely wear my nails in a solid color.

Anyway, I've been thinking about starting a nail blog since the beginning of the summer now, but I kept putting it off, scared and not thinking I would have enough to write or that anybody would read it. However, three things all together convinced me recently to start one:

1) I sorted and inventoried my polish and found that I have 215 polishes. To me personally, that is a staggering number. I always assumed I had 50 or so!

2) I bought my first dupe. Accidentally. I'm not quite sure why this convinced me to start a blog, but I guess in some way, having so many polishes that you can buy two of the same color accidentally seems like I have enough to write about, hah.

3) I came across the 31 day nail art challenge and thought it would be great fun and a great motivator to post for the first 31 days of having a blog.

Without further ado, I shall show you what I've had on my nails for the last four days, and then what I've done for the first day of the challenge.

I'm not a huge fan of pink, actually, but when I decided to wear pink I thought I might as well go all out!

I used a base of Nailtek II, Seche Clear, three coats of NYC Uptown, stripes with a white striper, and then two coats of OPI I Lily Love You. I really liked the end effect!

PS I apologize in advance for my bad pictures! I'm going to practice and get better as fast as possible!  My fingers look fat and greasy from bad angles and cuticle oil :(



Taken in sunlight:















Blurry to show all the colors in the amazing flakies!!




I think the flakies really added something to the plain stripes! And a friend told me I had unwittingly copied the Victoria's Secret bags, which was funny.

____________________________________________________

And the 31 day challenge is:



RULES:

- Reblog this post if you're gonna accept this challenge
- One post per day
- If you miss one, pick it up the next day
- Post a picture of each mani
- It would be nice if you listed/linked to what polishes you used
- For the inspiration prompts, SHOW US YOUR INSPIRATION/SHARE LINKS
- BE CREATIVE
- TRY NEW THINGS
- HAVE FUN!!!

So, for day one, I have red nails. Orly Rock It, from the new Mineral FX collection. It is a gorgeous color with a lot of depth, that actually does have a shimmery mineral effect. I want to love it, but I'm just not a huge fan of it on my skin tone. I have the same issue with any red or purple that leans toward being "berry colored." It was opaque and applied flawlessly, though. I used two coats, and the second coat looked exactly the same as if I'd left it with one! No top coat, since I plan on taking this off tomorrow anyway, and it is plenty shiny.








Taken in (dusk) sunlight:





Taken in (dusk) sunlight:



Taken in (dusk) sunlight:





Taken in (dusk) sunlight:





Taken in (dusk) sunlight:





I snapped this one spontaneously this evening. Note the nail polish on my car key! :P

Taken in artificial light. Less color accurate, but it shows the sparkle nicely.