TIHC Oct 31: Recreate your favorite from another challenger

I've been waiting to do this design for a couple of weeks now. Once I saw Somewhere Over the Polish Rainbow come up with it, I knew this was the design I was going to recreate. You can find her version here.

I spent a looong time going through my nail polish collection trying to find colors similar to the ones Shannon used. As it turns out, I don't have nearly as many oranges and reds as I do blues and greens. I had a lot of purple, but none of them sparkled.

That's when I decided to use different colors instead. I know this is part of a Halloween challenge, but I'm posting this in November. I don't think it matters too much anymore, so I hope...

Anyway, I absolutely LOVE how well this turned out. This has to be my most favorite design I've done to date.

I didn't follow Shannon's design too well. My gradient wouldn't blend too well and I made the dots way smaller, closer together, and in even lines. Honestly though, I love it. The idea of the challenge was to recreate, and not copy the manicure, and that's exactly what I did.

For this design, I used a lot of nail polishes. I'll try and make order of them as best as I can.

Base/ Gradient

• China Glaze Electric Pineapple
• China Glaze Entourage
• China Glaze Custom Kicks

Dots starting from the middle

• Orly Instant Artist 24 K Glitter
• Piggy Polish Irish I Was Irish
• Revlon Radiant
• Sinful Colors Kissy

I hope you enjoy this design as much I do!

TIHC Oct 22: Gradient

This is going to be a very quick post. I wasn't even planning on participating today, but decided that I could fit in something quick.

I originally wanted to do candy corn gradient, but decided against it. I figured several people would do it, and I was right.

I love the way the purple and black look together. It's very spooky!

(I'm really sorry about the lighting, the quality of the photos, and my really bad attempt to clean up my nails)

So, I don't know if you can tell, but all of my nails are gooooneeeee. It's so depressing. They all got in an accident over the weekend :( I was playing frisbee and figured out a bit too late that long nails are not meant for it. I broke 3 nails (and one of those I broke twice) and had to even them all out. They look so stubby to me..

For this design, I used Maybelline Color Show Onyx Rush as the base. Then I used China Glaze Coconut Kiss for the gradient effect. Once that dried, I sponged some Fantasy Makers Rest in Pieces right on top.


Wish me luck on my US1 midterm tomorrow!


You can view the upcoming challenges here.

Day 5: Peach Mango Smoothie

You're probably wondering why I named my post after 2 fruits and then called it a smoothie. Well, today I had peaches planned. I had a really cool idea to try, but I wasn't sure how it was going to turn out. Gradient peaches! Well, when I finished my nails, I asked my brothers to guess what fruit I had done. They both guessed mangoes.  I was up in arms. They were peaches! There wasn't any green in them!!! Then after looking at them for a while, I realized that they could pass as both peaches AND mangoes. I guess that's cool. Then I called it a smoothie because of the way all of the colors are swirled together. Yum. :)

Peaches are my absolute favorite fruit. I can't get enough of them! That may be why I love this design so much.

When I looked on Google for inspiration, I quickly found out that no one has ever made peach (or mango) nails. What a shame! Peaches definitely deserve some time in the spotlight. Mangoes too, I guess.

You're probably wondering how I even made these peaches. I'll be honest, I took the difficult route. Instead of searching for a round sponge of some sort, I took a makeup sponge and tried to cut a shape as close to a circle as I could. That only took forever, and it wasn't even circular.

I decided that I would attempt to transfer the terrible circle shape to my nails and see where I could go from there. So I sponged it on and it looked really weird. I did another layer and tried to overlap a bunch of the colors, but it still looked pretty bad. I took one of my brushes and painted the light blue all around to make the edges sharper. That did the trick. I then added some stems and leaves and voilá! Peach mango things were born.. Haha.

 When I figure out a better way to make these nails, I will be sure to make a tutorial for them. That would be a lot of fun to do, and I certainly wouldn't mind having delicious peaches on my fingers again. And hopefully I'll be able to get better pictures of my nails. I'll admit that these pictures aren't the best. I'm trying with what I have, though. I was going to take some more pictures when I woke up, but it was dark and rainy, so hopefully next time.

The colors I used for this were:
Base
China Glaze Aquadelic

Peaches
Piggy Polish 6 Impossible Things
Piggy Polish Damsel in This Dress
Piggy Polish Lemonade 5 ¢

China Glaze Dress Me Up
China Glaze Riveting
China Glaze Long Kiss

Stem
China Glaze Mahogany Magic

Leaves
China Glaze Entourage
(I really didn't like how light the green turned out to be, so I added some
Zoya Meg right on top. It turned out perfect!)

Gradient Stripes

I created this look just for Sarah's nail art contest. Since my favorite colors are purple, blue, and green, I decided to go with warm colors to make it a bit more challenging. It took me a while to come up with this design. I wanted to go with something simple, so I ended up painting different designs on every nail until I found one that I liked. I absolutely love the way this mani turned out. I've had several comments that this design would be perfect for Christmas. Looks like I'm a few months too early.. Oops!

 For this mani, I used China Glaze Long Kiss and Maybelline Color Show Onyx Rush for the base colors. Then I used Orly Instant Artist 24K Glitter for the rest of the design.

Red and Black Gradient Nails

Chalkboard Nails is having a nail art contest ending next week, and I am going to enter in it! I am still trying to come up with a design, however. I was playing around with base colors last night and ended up choosing red and black. I am absolutely in love with how well they turned out, so I put off coming up with a design just so I could take pictures of it. Aren't they lovely and dramatic?!

For this design, I used China Glaze Long Kiss and Maybelline Color Show Onyx Rush.