Sweet and Spooky Carnival

 

I tried my hand at a Sweet and Spooky mani today! It's October and I love this season. I've been posting a little (really very little) on TikTok and they had this neat filter thing that would change on picture into another. I wanted to do something that looks sweet and innocent but then would turn creepy. I also have to practice my reverse stamping (I'm still so rubbish at that). So I have the happy Fun Fair mani up top with balloon animals, candy and confetti. 

But then....

A Creepy Carnival with clowns, spiders and skulls!

I'll do my best to remember all the plates and polishes I used. 

Fun Fair: Maniology MXM 094 and MXM 095 

Sally Hansen base colors and Maniology Stamping colors.

FreakShow: Maniology M 312 and BM S244 (which I think has a new number but I'm not sure what it is)

The base colors of polish I think were Sinful Colors, Sally Hansen and Maniology. The stamping colors are all Maniology.

In The Valley Of Kings

    Forgive the poor dry cuticles, I'm working on getting my nails back to picture perfect. Well, maybe like picture acceptable? Anyway, this was a challenge to use a plate I haven't yet played with. This is another BundleMonster (now Maniology) plate. BM-S250 which is now M063. A couple coats of Sally Hansen's "Coconut" from the Jelly Belly collection. I really like this polish because it is a "warm" white. Not really a cream or off white, but not super bleach brilliant white either. Stamped with Sinful Colors (I don't remember the name of it but it had "rock" in the title) and Maybelline's "Bold Gold" my fav gold stamping polish. I had a scarab beetle on one finger with a dot of blue for it's shell, but I disliked it so much I redid the whole finger. Sometimes less truly is more.

    This was a simple stamp, but I would like to try more with it in the future. I love the Egyptian feel to it and would like to incorporate more color to it.

Very proud of how straight the lines came out. No waviness at all!

The Spirits Speak

This is the plate that got me back into nail art. I'm so in love with this Ouija board plate (M071 and it's sister the Tarot card plate (M072) from Maniology. This is a very simple stamp of Sinful Colors black with Essie's "Dive Bar" blue duo-chrome over it. The stamped with BundleMonster/Maniology stamping white.

Quoth the Raven...

Yeah, it has been a while. Life got messy, as it does, and though it's not less messy, I feel the need to paint my nails again. I've always loved Halloween and now that I'm working in a library (OMG I love this job so much!!) I wanted something literature-ish and also Halloween-ish. Edgar Allan Poe it is! I don't really have an old paper colored polish, so my pastel yellow "Unicorn" from Sinful had to do the job. I stamped with a brown Sinful Colors that I've forgotten the name to. I think it had "rock" in the name. I really like that brown over the pale yellow. It gives the old paper with faded ink effect I was going for. I stamped over that with BundleMonster's stamping black polish. BundleMonster has changed their name to Maniology, so I'm going to mess that up quite a bit before I get used to the new name. The stamping plate is from when they were still BundleMonster. So the plate I have is BM-S248 but they have remade it so now it's M64.

Old BM plate

But it looks like M064 combines 2 plates, Poe and Vampires, so its like 2 in one now! That about does it for now. I have a Maniology order coming in soon so I hope to share new plates with you soon!

Halloween Spiderwebs 2014

This isn't the best mani I've done, but it's been 2 months since I've posted anything on this blog. This was my Halloween mani. A fit of depression has kept me from doing much nail art, but I'm starting to get interested in it again. This is Hot Topic's no name purple, Essie "5th Avenue", Sinful Colors "Clementine" and Orly "Black Vinyl". I stamped with Cosmetic Arts "TGIF" and MoYou Pro XL 05. I used a different sponge for the gradient than the usual cosmetic wedge and I'm really happy with the smoothness of the transition. It came with a Halloween make up set and I'm gonna try and find more like it. Maybe I'll do a comparison post on different sponges for gradients. I was running late for work so it's not my best cleanup. My topcoat is getting thick as well. Time go thin it and get more before I run out :D

Ingress ~ Enlightened

I've mentioned it before on my other blog, but I'm a big girl. I don't mean grown up, I mean I got more than a little meat on my bones. As such I've been keen this year to loose some (or alot) of weight. I took up jogging which, on its own is fine, but I just discovered a video game that ties very nicely into my wanting to get up and work out. It's called Ingress and it is a world wide, GPS based, capture the flag type game. You capture points (called portals) for your team. The catch is these portals are actual sculptures, interesting buildings, or works of art in your town. You have to physically go to these locations. This game gave me the excuse I was looking for to go for a long walk or jog. You can procrastinate when you're just listening to music and walking, but when you get a notification that the portal you captured yesterday is under attack today? You grab your shoes and try and get it back now! Its way more fun and addictive than you would think it would.

Anyway, there are 2 teams and I play for the green team (my fav color) called the Enlightened. The blue team is the Resistance. The idea behind the game is a new energy is leaking into our world called Exotic Matter (XM for short). The Enlightened want to study it and see if it can be harnessed for good. The Resistance believe no good will come of it and it was sent to control human minds. The theory is XM has been leaking for a long time and has shaped mankind's will for generations. It even has affected our minds and made us shape our art in a manner that will allow it to leak thru faster (hence portals are usually art sculptures. We unknowingly made them into patterns that will allow XM to come thru).

To do these nails, first I painted them all black using Orly "Black Vinyl". Then using a striper brush I painted white lines and free handed the enlightened symbol using Cosmetic Arts "Picture Day". I used the water color technique to make the foggy field areas (when you connect 3 portals in a triangle it makes a field between them and gives you lots of experience points.)

Then I painted over all of it with Sinful Colors "Irish Green" a bright green jelly. I hoped you wouldn't see the green over the black, but it did show up somewhat. Next time I'll have to be more careful with the jelly.

Some XM just floats around, that's the white dots I added after the green jelly. I am adoring this mani even tho very few people will understand it. If you get a chance, check out the game. And join the Enlightened! :)

Check out this great commercial for it! *Note: I am not paid for this. I wish I was, Google has deep pockets. I just really enjoy the game and like to talk about it.*

*Technical Difficulties* apparently I can't access YouTube on the mall's WiFi. I'll try and add the vid later.

Dragon Eggs

These magnificent little gems have been popping up in all my nail polish groups these last few days. Dragon Eggs! I adore them! The tutorial I have been following is by Accio Lacquer.  The only real difference is she says she used about 200 thumbtacks, but my count is closer to 600, but I think that is mostly because I got a bigger egg by accident. That's right, you heard me, thumbtacks. The basic idea is you paint the heads of the thumbtacks with nail polish and push them into a Styrofoam egg. Very easy, but time consuming. And polish consuming I found out.

Materials:

• Styrofoam Egg
• Thumbtacks (The large the egg, the more tacks you will need)
• Nearly full bottles of polish and topcoat (for my example I used Sinful Colors "Enchanted" Wet n Wild "Buffy the Violet Slayer" and Fresh Paint "Candy Crush")
• Cardboard, corkboard, or foamboard. Something to hold the tacks while you paint them.

No way to get around it, this is the long boring part. Push your thumbtacks into something to hold them in place. First time I did this I used a pizza box. This time I just using a couple sheets of cardboard. Don't push them all the way down or you might get em stuck to the cardboard when you paint. Try to leave some space around each one so they don't get stuck to each other either.

300 tacks....

And 600 tacks. Long and boring, but it helps so much when you paint em.

I started off with Sinful Colors "Enchanted" a deep almost eggplant purple. One coat of that followed by the slightly shimmery color Wet n Wild "Buffy the Violet Slayer". By the time you finish painting the last tack, the first is dry and ready for next coat. I topped it all off with a coat of Fresh Paint "Candy Crush" and lovely flakie. You can topcoat as well, for the green egg I did, but I ran out so purple egg isn't topcoated yet. I think I'll get some spray sealant for it.  For an egg this size you will almost used a full bottle of polish each coat. Like 2/3 of a bottle. That's why I suggest you start with nearly full bottles and cheap ones. First egg I did, my green one, I had no idea just how much polish this eats and used my beloved China Glaze "Running in Circles". It's not empty yet, but it was a wrench to part with that much of it.

This part goes much faster than the stages before it. Time to stick em on the egg! Now the eggs has a narrow and a fat end. You want the fat end to start with.

In the center of the fat end push your first tack in. Doesn't have to be exact, just eye ball it.

Your gonna want to spiral out from that tack. Each tack you put in needs to overlap the last tack you put in. It also helps if it overlaps the row below it too. These aren't glued in (tho you can if you want to) and the tack you put in holds all the tacks before it in place. That sounds confusing. I made a short video of what I mean but blogger is being a pain and not loading it right. I'll keep working on that.

Just keep going spiraling outward and upward.

Get the idea?

Keep going!

And your done! My camera has a tough time with blue-leaning purples, but it is way more purple in real life. I love how the flakie adds just a subtle magic to it.

And my first egg, Sally Hansen "Emerald City and China Glaze "Running in Circles". And I used gold thumbtacks instead of the silver I used in my purple one. Now time to make some sort of padded chest to store them in. I'll be experimenting with smaller eggs later this week. I still want to make a red holographic one and a white pearly one.

Neon Rainbow Graident

Summer time to me means neon polish! No idea but this time each year I start itching to bust out the eye watering shades. I wanted to do a vertical gradient rainbow across my nails but everything kept going wrong with this mani. The white undercoat China Glaze "Snow"got patchy bald spots no matter how careful I was in application. The gradient refused to be smooth and everytime i tried to fix it it just kept pulling polish off my nail making the bald spots glaringly obvious. Despite the fact that it didn't turn out as planned, it was still fun to do. Let's see if I can remember what polishes I used...

From Pink to Purple:
Sinful Colors "Pink"
Warpaint Beauty "Acid Orange"
China Glaze "Celtic Sun"
Warpaint Beauty "Slime"
Sinful Colors "Endless Blue"
And the purple I simply don't remember what it was. I don't have my polishes with me right now but I'll try and look that up for you guys later.

Since the gradient just didn't turn out as I imagined I coated the whole thing with China Glaze "Fairy Dust" to try and hide the flaws. I should have used China Glaze "Icecap", it's much better at hiding flaws than "Fairy Dust" is. I wore this for a few days then tried to stamp over it, but it didn't turn out and I just removed it altogether.

Spring Watermarble ~ Flora Glow

A new month, a new challenge from my nail art group World of Nailcraft! This month is was the palette "Flora Glow". Lovely soft pinks, teals and greens and at least one nail had to be watermarbled. You all know my love and fascination with watermarbles, so I had to get on this right away!  I put a base down of white and used all Sinful Colors for the marble. "Cotton Candy", "Unicorn", "Pistache", "Sweet Nothing", and "Tempest". Here is the image we were given as inspiration:

I wish I had more of the teal like blues, but I think I rather nailed the pinks and light yellow. The blue, purple, and green I added because it complemented the other 2 colors and I didn't want just a pink and yellow marble.

Dragonscales

I am so in love with these nails! The mottled look of the scales is stunning! On Messy Mansion's facebook page a fan posted dragonscale nails and I fell in love with them I just had to try them myself. I don't see a blog post from her but I will link to the facebook post here. I don't know what polishes Jae K used, but I painted my nails first with 2 coats of Sinful Colors "Clementine" I then sponged a little bit of Sally Hansen "Lighting" in patches. Where I didn't put "Lighting" is sponged just a teeny tiny amount of Essie "Fifth Avenue". Then I sponged all over it again with "Clementine" to blend all the edges. I went over the top of the red and yellow to make them not so bold. This way it all looked like shades of orange.

Satisfied with the base colors, I then stamped over it with MM21. Scales on all fingers, but a dragon for the accent nail. I used Cosmetic Arts "TGIF". To give you an idea of how big the stamps are, here is my nails before clean up:

More than satisfactory for my nail length.

Here is Jae's picture:

And mine again:

One of my better Monkey See, Monkey Do mani's if I do say so myself.

LeadLight Flowers

I got a new Watermarking software for my pictures!

Well, we made it past St. Patrick's Day. I love the holiday, but it's time to hang up the green polish for a little bit. Maybe next year I won't start my celebration right after Valentine's Day. Today we have a neat technique that I'm sure has been floating around out there for a while, but I only just discovered it when Messy Mansion posted about it a couple weeks ago. I may do a tutorial on it soon, but for now I'll let Messy Mansion explain it herself. Now she calls it the Leadlight technique after her new polishes coming out and that's what I call it too, but it also goes by "glazing". The term Leadlight makes me think of stained glass windows with the lead strips that hold the colored panes in place. I'm not sure what Messy Mansion had in mind when she came up with the name. The basic idea is a light color background that you stamp a dark color over. Then use sheer or jelly polishes to fill in the colors. The colors will stand out over the light color, but won't obscure the dark color lines. I've used a white background (Sally Hansen "White On" and Wet n Wild "French White Creme". I was running low on white so I poured them both into the same bottle) I stamped with Wet n Wild "Black Creme" using MoYou Pro 06. Then I filled in the flowers and leaves with Sinful Colors "Irish Green" and OPI "Guy Meets Gal-veston" and "Y'All Come Back Ya Hear?". All three are strongly pigmented jellies that I don't get a chance to use all that often.

So what do you think? I think this is a good substitute for those that just can't seem to get the hang of stamping decals, tho not a replacement for them. You have the limitation of only being able to color over light colored backgrounds. Other than that, it does seem to be a viable option for art in its own right.

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.

Happy Pi Day!

Ah, Pi Day again. This year I'm happier with the results. I do seem to be craving spring it seems, the colors I chose look a bit Easter-ish to me. For those that don't know, the mathematical constant Pi is the circumference (the distance around) a circle divided by its diameter (a line that cuts thru the middle of a circle). It doesn't matter how big the circle is, the Circumference divided by the diameter will always equal 3.14159....(it's a very long number. No one has found the end of it yet). This number is also called Pi, named after a Greek letter.  There are a few numbers in math that do this, but not all of them share a name with a tasty dessert. Mmmm...Pie....

First the basecolors: Here we have on the index Sally Hansen "Grape Race", the middle has China Glaze "Seahorsin' Around", the ring finger has China Glaze "Running in Circles", the pinkie China Glaze "Wish on a Starfish" and the thumb Sally Hansen "Lighting".

Second the stamping: The black is Wet n Wild "Black Creme" and the freehanded Pi symbol is Sinful Colors "Gold Medal". Since the blue, green and pink were glittery I added a coat of China Glaze "Icecap" to the purple and yellow to match. The numbers on index, middle, and pinkie are BundleMonster BM311, the thumb is BM408, and the ring is isolated parts of BM425. The 2 stamps on BM425 actually read I <3 YOU and CUTIE PIE, but I just used the I <3 and PI. That was trickier to do that I thought it would be.

And yes, I am a big enough nerd that I scheduled this post for 3/14 at 1:59am. *giggle*

Book of Kells

Well, I wanted to do a St. Patrick's Day mani without using green, and I think this qualifies! I was falling asleep a few nights ago trying to come up with a green-less mani and had a brilliant idea. The Book Of Kells! I could mimic the calligraphy and colors used in that famous illuminated manuscript. I fell asleep that night knowing I had solved my problem. The next morning I could not remember my idea to save my life. I knew I had thought I came up with an answer, I just couldn't remember what that answer was. Frustrating. It took me a couple days, but I did eventually remember it.

A note about the base color. I've been looking for a perfect "old parchment paper" color. Not a stark white, but a slightly yellowed, maybe almost creamy brown type of color. I have not been able to find what I was looking for anywhere. So I decided to make one. I didn't take progress shots because, honestly, I didn't expect it to turn out as well as it did! I took an empty bottle of top coat, poured in some Wet n Wild "French White Creme". I don't use it all that much since I discovered Cosmetic Arts "Picture Day" for stamping. I then added in a small amount of Sally Hansen "Lighting" and a couple of drops of Milani "Dark Coffee". The color was perfect! Exactly what I was looking for!

Image from Wikipedia.

I then sponged on just a little bit of Sinful Colors "Nirvana" in random areas to look like older, browning areas of the paper. Then came freehand time. Using a small detail paint brush I painted large decoative letters on the thumb (Essie "Fifth Avenue" ), index ("Lightning" again), and ring (Wet n Wild "Saved by the Blue"). Outlined the letter in Wet n Wild "Black Creme" and dotted around the edges. Middle and pinkie got random letters that I hope look like the calligraphy in the Book of Kells. I wish I had some Celtic knots to add around the edges, but over all I'm pleased. Turned out much better than I thought it would.