31dc2013 Day Nineteen

31dc2013 Day nineteen: Galaxy nails


      

            OKAY, so take it easy on me okay?!? This was my first attempt at galaxy nails ever! I see beautiful photo's of this style manicure all the time but never tried it because I figured my nails were way to small to have all that going on them. I still gave it a shot though.

         I started with a coat of Sally Hansen "Black out" for my base. I ripped up one of those wedge make-up sponges.  I gathered up a blue , purple, yellow, and a light blue polish. put a dot of each color on some wax paper, took a piece of sponge for each color and starting with the darkest color started sponging in lines or circles. So first Dark Blue, then medium purple, some yellow, and then because I couldn't find any of my white polishes I used a super light blue for the stars added last.

     I think I got a little sponge happy with the purple. eek.

      Eh not the best, but not the worst either.  I will certainly try this again if for nothing else but to try and perfect it.  What do you think of my first attempt?

     Steady hands to all!

31dc2013 Day Sixteen

31dc2013 Day sixteen: Tribal print

      Okay, I didn't make it to the store. I still wanted to give it a shot anyway. Since my delicate print was such a fail, I decided to only try to do the tribal print on my middle finger and thumb. I also tried a new (to me) technique on my pointer and pinky fingers called saran wrap nails. I also added a glitter nail (my ring finger).

      Not sure who coined the term, but I suppose this would be called a skittlette manicure.
On my thumb and middle fingers i started with two coats of julep "niecy" Which is a bright bubblegum creme. For my pointer and ring finger I started with a coat of "Rainstorm" by sinful colors. After that dried I painted a thin coat of julep "jessica" and took some bunched up plastic wrap and dapped up some of the color to create a marble look. To me it almost looked like acid washed jeans which looked pretty cool with the bright pink! For my ring finger I added 3 coats of julep "oscar" a pretty dense gold glitter.

     Once my base polish was dry I free handed a simple design over the pink nails. Finished it all off with a coat of extra shiny top coat and voila!. Not the best but certainly better then my previous post. What's your favorite nail art tool for doing small line work?

    Steady hands to all!

31dc2013 Day Five

31dc2013 Day five: Blue Nails

I love blue nails. I remember being in 6th grade and getting my first blue polish, it was so different, funky, and fun. Also a pretty big deal because my mother didnt like me wearing darker colors on my nails. I still remember a pretty horrific story she told me about a roomie she had when she was in the air-force. This may be a tad morbid, but to make a long story short, her roommate was found in the river with dark black blue nails(and it wasnt from polish). So yeah, for me that meant no blue or black polishes. Okay now back to the nails.

I wanted to do something simple for blue since it's such a vivid nail color as is. So I started with two coats of spoiled's "Your Fly's Down" which is a very pigmented slightly shimmery royal blue. Only needed two thin coats for full coverage, it applied very smoothly. All in all it's a very nice bright blue especially for a $1.99. Well I couldn't stop there, that would be a little too simple.

I added a coat of Zoya "Opal" to my pointer, middle and pinky finger. Opal is a beautiful fleck effect top coat in a very lightly green tinted jelly base. The flecks work so well and differently over all sorts of colors. In my mind this over the blue would look like a blue and green globe. Which you can see in the first picture in this post that it certainly has a nice contrast and depth over the blue. I then added Essie "shine of the times" to my thumb and ring finger just for fun.

All that flaky goodness! I like sparkly things but find it hard to wear for very long. I thought adding a matte top coat to the fingers with zoya opal might make the globe effect i was going for stand out more.

It looked pretty dreamy and kind of reminded me of the ocean. Very pretty and deep. I then added matte top coat to the thumb and ring finger.

It made it look like I had crushed sea shells on my nails! It was a nice compliment to the zoya opal without stealing the show so to speak. I will say though the zoya opal is a tad thinner and less dense with flakies then Essie shine of the times. Still a great glitter topper though! Which flakie polish do you prefer?

Steady hands to all!