Z is for ...

And so ends the ABC Challenge. I am terribly sad to see this challenge over. I almost want to start all over again because there are so many letters that I had multiple nail art ideas for. Take Z for example. There's zebras, zombies, and zigzags and the one I went with: 

Z is for ... Zippers

I did this design completely backwards. I was working on swatching Shimmer Polish (swatches coming next week) when I was hit with the idea of zippers opening up to reveal Mary in all it's glittery glory.

I think it turned out pretty great considering I had to draw everything around that small V of Mary you see. To learn how to do a traditional zipper nail and not my backwards version you should definitely check out this picture tutorial found on Beautylish.

Will any of you be joining me for the Inspired by Time Periods Challenge??

R is for ...

Hello lovelies!! I have some awesome news and a bit of blushing to do. My 1 year blogiversary was the 7th. For some reason, I thought it was the 17th. Boy, color me embarrassed! I don't know why I didn't think to check before I started slowly gathering the things for my Blogiversary giveaway. With the thought that it was later in mind there was no rush to pick things up. I actually just picked up the last prize this Sunday ... so I've decided to continue and open the giveaway on the 17th. At least it has a 7 in it, right? That means the giveaway opens midnight tonight!!! So stick around. Now, onto the ABC Challenge.

R is for ... Rust.

I really do seem to be behind in everything! This was supposed to be done last Wednesday. This post was meant to be for the letter S. You'll understand when you read my giveaway post just why I'm so behind and out of sorts. :)

I used one coat of Pure Ice Silver Mercedes as the base for this mani. Using an eyeshadow applicator, I dabbed on a few smudges of Pure Ice Iced Copper. Using the same side of the applicator and while the Iced Copper was still wet I added a few dabs of Mabelline Color Show Bold Gold to the centers. I finished by mixing a bit of Iced Copper and Bold Gold together on my applicator and adding a few light dabs of that to the centers and outer edges up into the Silver Mercedes. I think it gave this mani a very nice 'rusted' look.

Happy Hanukkah

Two posts in one day?? Yes!! There has been an influx of Hanukkah nail art, but I still come up with very little in search engines. I'm not Jewish, but I don't think there can ever be enough nail art for holidays, any holiday. So I felt it was my nail artist duty to contribute. :)

This is based around a really beautiful menorah I saw in one of my Hanukkah searches. There were, of course, four candle holders on each side and rising up from the middle was a Star of David candle holder. There were no candles in the holders in the picture but I could just imagine how stunning it would look all lit up.  I just had to use that Star of David and put a candle on top.

As for the other nails, I thought this all deserved a beautiful and simple background to draw attention to the accent nail. After two disasters with tape, I finally just free-handed the stripes using China Glaze Blue Bells Ring over Pure Ice Silver Mercedes.

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If there is ever a holiday coming up that you want to see nail art for let me know. I barely follow US holidays let alone those internationally, but I would love the chance to attempt nail art for your favorite holiday. Leave me a comment or Contact Me so I can mark them on my calendar. :)

Spring Fling

Another day, another post. I know I mentioned it somewhere before, whether here in a post or on my Facebook page, but I was asked to do a set of nails for my niece for her Spring Fling dance. I'm happy to say I got them completed and didn't mess them up while helping her glue them on. They looked amazing with her dress!

She was my personal hand model for the day and was nice enough not to complain when I twisted and repositioned her fingers into what was surely uncomfortable positions. :)

The nails also looked adorable with her enormous ring and oversized earrings!

Alright, gals, say hello to my niece. She was finally all decked out for Spring Fling and ready for pictures.

Can you imagine dancing in those shoes???

The Mommy Mess

Happy Mother's Day  to the mothers out there. Today's post is for my own mommy.

I thought long and hard about this design. I didn't want a generic Mother's Day design. What I really wanted was something personal to my mother. Well, my mom's favorite flower is the lilac. Best of all? Her favorite color is also purple! Talk about perfect.

Sadly, I found the lilac flower almost impossible to recreate into something people would look at and think, "Oh, that's a lilac!" In my opinion, it's a bit of a mess.

However, my mom was kind enough to point out that her knowing what it was was all that should matter. This mani was created for her after all, and she loves it.

I started with these nails. I'm not usually one for a French mani. I always end up with streaks when using a 'natural' polish, which was no different with this mani. But I became pretty fond of these. I used two coats of OPI Bubble Bath with one coat of OPI Alpine Snow on the tips. I was feeling very steady handed that day so I went ahead and free handed the tips.

These last two pictures are of my left hand. This is the hand I usually use for my pictures, but I found myself liking the nails of my right hand better. But, I guess the lack of precision worked better for this mani. Go figure.


Polish Used
Borghese - Brilliante
OPI - Bubble Bath
OPI - Alpine Snow
OPI - Uh-Oh Roll Down the Window
Sally Hansen - Green with Envy
Sally Hansen - Lacey Lilac
Pure Ice - New Lilac
LA Colors - Purple
Sally Hansen - Insta-Dri

Twinkling Hot Tamales

First off ... whoa, what is up with the new posting feature?? Was anyone else horribly confused and panicking a bit? I thought I pressed the wrong button or something!!


Right, onto the post. I'm not sure how long I can keep this daily posting up. Maybe another day or so if I'm not too lazy to paint my nails today, so enjoy it while you can! Today, I bring you Twinkle and Hot Tamale both from Pure Ice.

This alternating mani is two coats of Hot Tamale, the darker polish, and two coats of Twinkle, the lighter polish. I'm just noticing now the slightly visible nail line on some of them. They could probably use another coat or three. I guess this means they're more sheer than I thought.

Twinkle showed up fairly dark in most of the pictures I took. I managed to find a handful of true to color. Twinkle is a simply lovely shade of coral pink or maybe a salmon. It contains a slight hint of orange but I'm not sure if that's just the gold shimmer playing tricks on my eyes or not.

Hot Tamale is a darker color that I think nearly overwhelms the delicate Twinkle. The closest I can come to describing Hot Tamale is an off shade of vermilion, sometimes known as cinnabar. I think this shade works best because vermilion is described as being similar to scarlet but with more orange and less red. Hot Tamale certainly has it's fair share of orange and mixes nicely with the gold shimmer the polish contains.

 Twinkle and Hot Tamale close-up shots.

You really get to see the true shades of these colors up-close in direct sunlight.

Hot Tamale shows it's gold shimmer much less than Twinkle. The gold shimmer blends too well with Hot Tamale's metallic finish to really pop. That certainly doesn't mean Hot Tamale doesn't pop all on its own. While pink is my favorite color I don't think I can wear a shade as delicate as Twinkle ... at least not without Hot Tamale to carry it along.


What I didn't know while buying this polish was how closely Hot Tamale resembles Riveting from the China Glaze Hunger Games collection. Riveting has slightly more depth to its color; the metallic finish of Riveting shifts subtly darker than Hot Tamale. However, Riveting leaves Hot Talame in its gold shimmering dust. Riveting has a much, much more present shimmer. The gold flecks are also bigger and brighter; they really shine out of the polish. As you can see from the picture below, Hot Tamale is not an exact match to Riveting but you might be able to make a fairly passable fraken dupe out of it by adding a thicker shimmer.

Will any of you be trying Hot Tamale in place of Riveting? What about Twinkle? Will it work better with your skin tone than it does mine?

The Hunger Games

In honor of my finishing The Hunger Games trilogy and in anticipation of the first movie, I decided to do Hunger Games nail art. I think this is one of the only books I've ever read where I didn't prefer any one character over any other; I just plain liked them all: in various different ways, yes, but still ... I tip my imaginary hat to Suzanne Collins.

The first nail, the thumb, is the mockingjay of course. I mean, what else could possibly say Hunger Games better than the mockingjay? Not my best work, I admit. I'm guessing it looks more like a blob than a bird with an arrow if you don't know what you're looking for.

The index finger is to honor Katniss Everdeen, The Girl on Fire, one light shining gloriously in the dark of District 12 (and all of Panem). The flame, the dark surrounding it, and a little bit of coal using black crackle to show where she comes from.

Next is the one nail I desperately wanted to do but debated endlessly on just how to accomplish it. Even with my love and sorrow over Rue, I was left agonizing over what to do for her. I already had the mockingjay, but that was for the overall series. I could do an orchard tree but that didn't feel right either. Finally, I decided to follow Katniss and honor Rue with flowers. So, I tried covering the entire nail in nothing but flowers. I reworked this multiple times. I can't tell you how many times I had to use nail polish remover. Finally, I used a combination of stamping and a brush to fill the flowers in with different colors. The flowers cover the peephole into another world; one where Rue leaps through the trees like a bird with the whistles of her mockingjays singing that she's safe. Yeah, I'm a big ol' sap!

After that is the forest, stream, and the cave from the Arena. Again, it's not my best work, but I lost a good deal of canvas space. I haven't done a nail art design this intricate since I cut off a lot of my nail length. Still, I'm very pleased. Blue Year's Eve makes an absolutely stunning stream! All that bright blue glitter gleaming from the darker polish just speaks of hidden depths, and whether what lurks in those depths is good or bad will only be found out when you dip in a toe. I tried to add a muddy-ish, sandy bank and some odd rocks before it leads into the greanery of the forest. I'm pretty sure it was the other way around in the books: the forest leads into the barren stream riddled with a mess of rocks and the cave, but I couldn't see filling a whole nail with rocks.

Last but not least, I wanted to do something to encompass the violence of the Hunger Games. I knew I wanted blood, but wasn't sure in what way until I happened upon the trailer while searching out ideas. I saw the reaping of District 12, and when I saw the drab gray blues of their clothes (Katniss's horrific dress especially) I knew what I had to do. The blood spatter is done by straw as per a tutorial I found on Youtube. However, the original idea goes to thepolishaholic.com.


Not sure if anyone wants know this but I thought I would include it just in case. You can totally skip over this. :)



Polish Used
Thumb

• Wet n Wild - Goldmine
• Funky Fingers - Platinum Record
• Petites - Bronze Baby

Index

• L.A. Colors - Black Velvet
• Pure Ice - Siren
• Sally Hansen - Sun Kissed
• Sally Hansen - Mellow Yellow
• Funky Fingers - Black Scales

Middle

• Sally Hansen - White On
• Revlon - Tangerine
• Sally Hansen- Sun Kissed
• Sally Hansen - Mellow Yellow
• Pure Ice - Siren
• Borghese - Buon Viaggio Mauve
• Sinful Colors - Beautiful Girl
• Sinful Colors - Feeling Great
• Bon Bons - Blue

Ring

• Sally Hansen - Green with Envy
• Sally Hansen - Emerald City
• Pure Ice - Free Spirit
• Funky Fingers - Platinum Record
• Wet n Wild - Metallica
• Sally Hansen - Wet Cement
• L.A. Colors - Black Velvet
• China Glaze - Blue Year's Eve

Pinky

• Revlon - Cloud
• Pure Ice - Siren

Pure Ice - Rumors

I decided to start the week off right and give my nails a little TLC after noticing some peeling at the tips when taking off my feeling purple mani. My nails spent yesterday polish free with layers of various creams slathered on them throughout the day and are feeling much better for this.


However, that TLC was nearly ruined when I opened a new bottle of white only to find it the consistancy of water. It is the only white I currently have so I thought maybe I could apply two or three very thin layers and make everything work, but I was wrong. The polish migrated off into the creases of my nail no matter how thin I made the layers. Finally, I had to give up on any designs that would focus heavily on white until I can pick up a new bottle.


So, instead of a design I'm choosing to do a simple swatch of a color from a nail polish my mom bought for me. She knows me so well!! ♥ It's been sitting in one of my nail polish drawers since before Christmas so I think it's finally time to give it a try. I find it such a gorgeous color and would love to see how it looks in matte or swamped with glitter. However, I decided to leave trying matte and glitter for later. I really want to just showcase the true extent of this beauty of a color.


Pure Ice Rumors is a little bit red, a little bit purple, and a whole lot of mauve—old mauve that is. I find the polish just the right consistancy for a smooth stroke. This is the consistancy with which I can cover my whole nail in two or three smooth strokes without having to go over the nail repeatedly. Also, the color goes on nearly opaque in just one coat. I'm sure some people wouldn't even think of putting on a second coat, but I prefer a truly full coverage look so I'm going for two coats. I will say I'm impressed with how quickly this polish dries given it's not marked quick dry.


Isn't it a gorgeous color? I'll admit it's a teensy bit dull on its own having none of the shimmer of Zoya polish or the shiny brightness of China Glaze, but the color is great IMO. Give it some flash with a stamped design, a bit of sparkle, or some bling and you'll have nails that really pop!

Artificial Light

Natural Light

Here it is in natural light after stamping with Wet n' Wild Metallica. I'm still not 100% on the stamping wagon. My stamper gives me no end of trouble. I'm quick and efficient when working and I keep the pressure consistant across the nail but half the stamp is nearly always left behind. I'm not sure how people get such clear and whole designs, but I bow to their expertise! Still, even with only half the design on the nail it is eye-catching. I'm 50/50 and will continue to use the stamper until I make up my mind. :)

Artificial Light Stamped

Natural Light Close Up

So, what do you think? Is it totally one of your faves too?