4th of July 2014 Skittle

I don't know why I was so excited for 4th of July this year. Usually I just try to catch glimpses of the fireworks going off thru the trees outside my window without ever leaving my own room. This year was different for some reason. My city stopped putting on fireworks displays a few years ago because of cost but for some reason did it this year. Only this time they charged you to get into the park to watch it. Guess they have to pay for the displays somehow. So I spent the night on a bridge just outside the park and still got a great view of the fireworks. Sorry, I'm broke.

I was excited to do 4th nails and decided to do skittles. Well, not actually decided. The fact is I COULDN'T decide what technique I wanted to do...so I did them all. I had a vague idea that maybe I would pick the nail that turned out best and redo the rest to match. That didn't happen so skittles it was! I used the same 3 polishes on all the nails, just the technique changed. Essie "5th Avenue", China Glaze "Snow", and Sinful Colors "Endless Blue".

I'll go the the nails one at a time tho.

Left hand

Thumb: Over "Endless Blue" I simply used Salon Perfect "Speck-tacular"

Index: Messy Mansion stamping plate MM15 and little rhinestones I got at a dollar store.

Middle: Blue and White striping tape I got at WalMart by Salon Perfect

Ring: Watermarble. I really should have painted the nail white first to make the color stronger and hide the bald spots but I was excited and didn't think it thru too well.

Pinkie: Small nail decal by Salon Perfect

Right Hand

Thumb: Salon Perfect "Starred and Striped" and "Grand Finale" over "Endless Blue"

Index: Another Salon Perfect Decal

Middle: Another Watermarble. This time with a white under coat

Ring: I loved the Index on my left hand so much I wanted to do it again on my right. 

Pinkie: This was the first time I had ever used loose glitter before. This is "Endless Blue" that I topcoated with a slow drying topcoat and then brushed some loose glitter over the bottom half of the nail. I added a star rhinestone that I got from a dollar store years ago and topcoated the whole thing.

I wore this polish for longer than I usually do and something odd started to happen. The topcoat started to eat the color off of the metallic striping tape. This is after the first topcoat and you can see between the white stripes that its turning silver. I re-topcoated it again a few days later to keep the edges of the tape from lifting up and the blue almost completely turned a silver brownish color. Very odd and something I need to keep in mind when I use this tape again.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

And a simple design to finish off my St. Patty's day celebrations! I wanted a very simple cream base so the glitter I added to the accents would stand out better. OPI "Jade is the New Black" as a base color. I don't have many OPI's as they tend to be more expensive than my regular fare, but this was a gift. I never understood why OPI is so popular, but I think I get it now. I was very pleased how this dried even before I added the topcoat. And application was a dream too. If only the decals had behaved as readily. Messy Mansion MM04 is wonderful to work with, but I'm still getting the hang of decals and these ones put up a fight. Wet n Wild "Black Creme" filled in with Sinful Colors "All About You" and "Gold Medal". I thought they came out wonderfully, and at a distance they really don't look all that bad.

But close up? Ugh. Bubbles in the paint. A lot of bubbles in the paint. The more it dried, the bigger the bubbles got. I'm at my wits end with this problem. Then as the ring finger dried it got these weird ridge-like wrinkles in the topcoat. Please, any advice would be greatly appreciated! Leave tips and tricks in the comments section.

Duochrome TARDIS

Guess who got a new stamping plate? This girl did! I have been drooling over MyOnlineShop MJ XII for months as it is the only plate I've seen with Doctor Who images, and you all know I'm a bit obsessed with DW. So I saved up and got it! I will do a review later, but right now it's so bitter cold (-40 degrees in Chicago) that I don't feel like doing anything. I've been trying out a new base coat and I'm pretty pleased with it. Wet n Wild basecoat is only 99 cents but I got it on sale for 69 cents. I did an under coat of Wet n Wild "Black Creme" so that Fresh Paint "Sugar Crush" would stand out on top of it. The decal is Sinful Colors "Endless Blue" with Wet n Wild "French White Creme" accents. I loved this combo so much I made a necklace of it as well. Soon as I get a decent picture of it I'll post it too.

UPDATE: As promised, here is my necklace:

31 Day Challenge: Day Twenty-One ~ Inspired by a Color

Wow, this one was hard. I tried 4 different practice nails and 2 actual manicures. First, what does "Inspired by a Color" mean? We already did the spectrum the first week of the challenge, what color is left? I thought it might be a particular color, like robin egg blue or something. Looking up manicures people have done in the past for this challenge, it seems the consensus is to take the name of a polish and make a manicure inspired by that. Ok, that makes sense. I had just bought Sally Hansen "Red-io Active" and thought it would be cool if I could make a Radioactive symbol on each nail. I figured I could freehand the symbol on some plastic and peel it off and place on the nail like a decal.

I used a pencil eraser to get the circles

I used a dotting tool to draw the symbol

As a reminder, this is what the Radioactive warning sign is supposed to look like:

As I review the pictures looking for a good one to post, I guess they didn't turn out too bad. Not my best work, but not as bad as I thought when I was doing it.

Sally Hansen "Red-io Active" and Orly "Liquid Vinyl"

I also attempted mani's for Sally Hansen "Lightening", Sinful Colors "Cotton Candy", and Milani "Wild Violet". With Violet I tried the one stroke technique. I'm gonna get more practice before trying that one again, it was a disaster.

31 Day Challenge: Day Fifteen ~ Delicate Pattern

Day 15! We're half way thru the challenge!

Try as I might, "Delicate Nails" had me stumped. The only thing I could come up with was an ancient map. Did that count as delicate? Thin lines and lettering? But no matter how hard I tried, none of my freehand looked at all good. Then I stumbled across some of my temporary tattoo nail art. This one in particular:

So I ended up going with the map decal. It's still nail art, but it's so easy it feels a bit like cheating almost.

31 Day Challenge: Day Fourteen ~ Flowers

Picture found on Google Images. No idea who photographed it
but it wasn't me.

The Stargazer Lily is one of my fav flowers, but was rather tricky to replicate in a manicure. My original idea was to do a background color of some pastel and free hand the lily in the corner of each nail. Freehand has not been kind to me lately, however. I almost had to scrap the whole idea when I stumbled across one of my BundleMonster plates, BM314. Hang on, is that a lily? Woot! But wait, there is a whole bunch of stuff on this image. I just want the lily to be in the corner. How can I isolate the flower and color it in to look like a Stargazer Lily? The answer was stamper decals. Now I'm still perfecting the art of stamper decals. Some decals get this hard edge that sticks up, or don't want to lay right on the nail. It was a bit of a risk, but that's what a challenge is for. So I stamp the image, scrape away the parts of the image I don't want and color in what's left.

When making a stamper decal you kinda need to think about it from the top down. The topmost layer when you put it on your nail will be the bottommost layer when you paint it. So first is the outline provided by the stamp in Wet n Wild "Black Creme" and a layer of topcoat to protect it while you color it in. The next is the spots I added with a dotting tool using Sinful Colors "Energetic Red" and the paler pink strip in the center of each petal in Sinful Colors "Cotton Candy".

Last is Wet n Wild "French White Creme" to fill in the flower and a final coat of topcoat to strengthen the decal. Let it dry a bit and place it on your nail. Topcoat it in place. I did one and took pictures incase I messed up the other 3. Good thing I did because the first one turned out so wonderfully and the next 3, not so much.

AMAZING! I love, love, LOVE this! Oh, and a quick note about the background color. I was gonna slap on just some random pastel, but last week I read about a technique I'd never tried before called watercoloring nail polish. I'll write more about it later, but basically what I did was paint my nails with Sinful Colors "Unicorn" a pastel yellow, then put a teeny, tiny drop of Orly "Blue Collar" and Sally Hansen "In Record Lime" on one nail and with a large paintbrush (not huge, but bigger than you usually use for nail art) dab acetone over it to dilute it and make it run over the nail. When it dries it makes these subtle water rings of color. I adore how it turned out.

But then I got carried away and made a decal for all my fingers. I should have stopped when I was ahead. The next 3 didn't turn out as well and the combination of all the decals made it look too busy. You also lose the look of the watercolor below all the decals. Also the air bubble problem I've been fighting decided to show up again. No idea why, I'm not using any of the same polishes or topcoat that I did for my temporary tattoo manicure.

31 Day Challenge: Day Ten ~ Gradient

I wasn't sure I was gonna have time to paint my nails today, but when my MoYou plates showed up I made the time! I couldn't wait to play with this amazing plate. Here I have a green to purple (yes, trust me, that's purple. It always shows up blue on my camera) gradient that I stamped over with the feathers of the peacock. For the accented ring finger I wanted the body but every time I stamped it and cleaned off the bits I didn't need, the stamp was dry. So I did it as a stamper decal. I haven't had to very much luck with stamper decals, the edges always roll up and stick off the finger, but this is my absolute BEST decal EVER! I giggled like crazy when it turned out so WONDERFULLY! Well to be honest I was giggling the moment the mail showed up with my plates. I still am. *giggle* Ahem, this is Wet n Wild "Buffy the Violet Slayer" and "Sagreena the Teenage Witch" stamped with Pure Ice "Silver Mercedes" and MoYou plate Suki 01. Love, love, love this! I might do a review on MoYou soon, but the 31 Day Challenge is keeping me pretty busy. I'll see what I can do.

*giggle*