31dc2013 Day Seven

31dc2013 Day seven: Black & White

     For the most part this was a pretty simple manicure. I used Sally Hansen "black out" as the base for my middle and ring finger, and the pure ice platinum magic base coat (that was used on day four for my green nails) on my thumb, pointer, and pinkie. I used a larger dotting tool to add white polka dots to the middle and ring finger, Then added black dots to the pointer and pinkie.

    For my thumb I used a make-up sponge to do a black, grey and white gradient starting the black near my cuticle fading out to white at the tip.

     I then used a black nail pen to add some lines starting from the nail tip then added leafy and floral shapes and some little black dots toward the bed of the nail. I was going for a black and white photo look of some wildflowers at dusk. I really liked this manicure and it was pretty simple. What do you guys think?

  Steady hands to all!

31dc2013 Day two

31dc2013 Day two: Orange nails

        I'm back! This is my day two manicure and my second blog post! So orange eh? one of my least favorite colors. As a little bit of back story, I have an older brother who's about 16 months older then me. Understandably we were very close since we grew up so close in age. Well when we were in highschool the whole rave scene was very popular and with that came UFO pants, candy beads, pacifiers, and of course neon orange EVERYTHING! I myself as a self proclaimed punky gypsy however wanted nothing to do with this trend. My brother on the other hand was obsessed! I think at one point he had 5 pairs of those terrible tent like material pants- all in neon ORANGE! bleh! As the good sister that I am, I went out of my way to hide every single pair, but he just kept buying more! Needless to say I still have a strong dislike for this color. As evidenced by my polish collection in which there were only 3 colors in my stash that were in the orange range.

     One of the three (the NYC) is actually way more coral then orange but it suited my needs for this manicure. The other two are Julep the one in the middle is a frosty shimmery thin bright orange, while the one all the way to the right is a very pastel light orange creme. Neither of the julep's were colors I chose on my own nor would I. The frosty orange had a super wonky brush and was so thin you would probably need 4 coats for total opacity and the end result would be a streaky mess. The pastel orange needed 3 coats for full coverage which I find off for a creme.

So first I did a basecoat of Sally Hansen maximum growth (cuz I have weak little nubbins) Then followed that with two coats of the pastel orange creme. Then I added some essie shine of the times. I was originally going to stop there and call it a day, but the pastel orange was just too bright and cutesie or twee for my liking. I then decided to sponge the frosty orange and coral over it which actually made for a beautiful gradient with the slight sparkle of shine of the times peeking through!
But again still very boring and well, orange.  So I decided to give the monarch manicure a try!

Excuse the poor quality photo's still working on that aspect! All in all not bad for my first go though!
Although I'm not a fan of orange, I am loving this look! It was pretty simple too, I did the black with a nail polish pen and used white polish and a bobby pin for the little white dots. My right hand could use a little more finesse when it comes to the details but i'm still pretty proud of butterfly nails! Let me know what you think!

Steady hands to all!