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 Four

31dc2013 Day four: Green Nails

For this manicure I had the opposite problem from the orange and yellow nails. I have WAY too many greens to choose from. From my nail polish collection it's pretty easy to see what my favorite color is! I wanted to do something a little different from what I'm used to nail art wise. I know crackle polish is pretty old hat at this point, but I came across this Pure Ice "Vinyl Remix" duo and since I love and collect vinyl records I had to pick them up.

This polish duo is pretty interesting. It comes with a "magic base coat" which is a highly pigmented white polish that applies pretty easy for a white. Could be a one coater if you do a thicker coat. This dries pretty quickly too which makes it perfect for nail art!

I then did a stripe of the art in motion "dj spinner" which applies black and quickly crackles to reveal green inside the cracks.

Whats interesting about this polish that you can't see in this particular design, is that the crackle will bend, wiggle and swirl with the brush stokes you make using the top crackle polish.

After the middle stripe I used some striping polishes to do a variant of green lines. I then topped it all off with a glossy top coat to get rid of the crackle texture. Even though this is a design i've never done before and probably would not have if not for the 31 day challenge, I'm pretty happy with the overall outcome and plan on doing more stripey looks!

Steady hands to all!