Take Two Day 2: Flag Nails

Today, I chose a flag that's not as close to my heart as I would like it to be. For those of you who don't know, I'm a redhead, so you'd think I'm hard core Irish. Well, I am Irish, but my family doesn't celebrate anything to do with the Irish culture. I've been taking it upon myself lately to learn a bit more about their culture and history lately, but I haven't gotten very far yet. I do have an unbelievable craving for Irish soda bread, though. :P

I kept this design real simple. I didn't want to try anything too fancy. I'm really happy with how well it turned out. I was afraid that the colors I chose wouldn't look very well together.

Laser Tape Mani

Helloooo everyone! Today was such a beautiful day that I am in a fantastic mood, and since I'm in this great mood, I thought I'd share with you all my first attempt at a laser tape manicure. After I finished, I realized that it kind of like a laser rasta manicure, kind of like the picture I found below on Google. I totally wasn't going for that.

The reason why I chose the colors I did was because they're all fall-ish, minus the green. But that's the normal color of leaves, right? So that should do..

Autumn Stripes

Now that November has "fallen" upon us (Haaah. I crack myself up), I've been dying to use some fall colors! I just came out of an October challenge and thought I'd keep the first one simple.

Don't these look so festive?! I just love how well the colors go together.

There wasn't any inspiration behind this design (besides the colors!!). I've just been dying to use all 3 of these colors at once. The only 'challenging' part was figuring out which order to put the colors in.

Even though it looks like it in the pictures, the middle stripe is not gold. I don't even own a regular gold polish yet! It's actually an extremely shimmery bronze. Before I painted the red stripe, I was so afraid that the bronze color would fade into the orange because they are similar tones. Thankfully, it stands out just the prefect amount.

For this manicure, I used all China Glaze polishes in Riveting, Harvest Moon (How appropriate!), and Long Kiss. 

Let me know what you think!

  

TIHC Oct 12: Jack-o-lanterns

I don't want you guys to think that I forgot about today. I didn't. I painted my nails today and I love them, but I hate them all the same. Since I have work, I won't be able to redo the design the way I want until later tonight. So, be patient! I'm just going to edit this post later when I have my pictures ready. Check super late tonight!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It's finally later! I redid my nails after work and LOVE how well they turned out. I'm so excited to show you guys!

So, I actually got this idea from a fellow blogger. You can find the link to her design here. What I didn't realize until after I finished was that the girl had stamped the pumpkin faces onto her nails, and didn't freehand them like I did. I was a little taken aback about it at first, but then became proud because they turned out super well.

I probably should have saved this for my gradient design, but I was way too impatient. I had to show you all! Good thing I have something else in mind for that.

I've never been good at making my jack-o-lanterns look scary. Did I do alright?

I love how creepy they look. It's like they're waiting to freak you out.

For this design, I used China Glaze Riveting as the base. Then I used China Glaze Harvest Moon and Maybelline Color Show Onyx Rush to make the gradient. Last, I used Piggy Polish 6 Impossible Things for the creepy faces.

The link to future prompts can be found here.

Here are the other challengers. Add your link if you are joining in!

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!)

Day 4: Orange Nails

Orange you glad I didn't do bananas today? Hahaha. Anyway....

Today's design isn't as complicated or detailed as the others have been, but I still really like it. I think the simplicity of it makes the colors pop more. I realized was I was putting my watermark on the photos that I could have added a bit more detail to the peel (like white dots for texture), but oh well. They're still nice in my opinion!

I didn't have much inspiration, so I decided to look at a few designs. I picked up a few ideas, but didn't really recreate any. Unfortunately, there isn't much you can do with an orange wedge.. However, I did notice that no one had taken advantage of using the shape of the base of their nails for the wedge! I found that shocking, so I went with that.

This is my second attempt at this manicure. This first try turned out horrible, and even that is an  understatement. I decided to completely start over and it made such a difference. I really like how well it came together.

I also really like how Halloween-y the colors are. It's really a nice introduction to fall. :)

For his manicure, I used Maybelline Color Show Onyx Rush and Piggy Polish Damsel in This Dress as the base colors. Then for the rest of the orange, I used Piggy Polish Lemonade 5 ¢.

On a side note: I've been using my nail polish so much that I have almost all of the colors memorized. Haha.

Rainbow Stripes

So at 11pm on Thursday night, I decided that I HAD to change up my nail design. By that time, I was completely exhausted and wanted to go to bed, but I figured sleep could wait. I really wanted to do a design with all the colors of the rainbow. The thought of making thin and neat stripes out of the 8 colors I had in mind made me groan. Then a thought hit me. Why do I have to make my nails neat? I can paint them messily if I want to! And so I did. Here is the result..

 I think they didn't turn out too bad. The idea was to make them messy, so I kind of dig the disheveled look.

I saw my cousins today at a family reunion/ baby shower and the first thing one of them said was," Niiiice, gay pride nails!" That wasn't what I was going for, but sure, why not. Plain jane rainbows are boring anyway. ;)

The day before I did this design, I became absolutely fed up with my nail polish remover. I decided it was time to buy 100% pure acetone. It's the best product I have ever used in my life, and I would swear by it if it weren't for one small, yet obvious problem. If you take a look at my pinky finger in the picture below, you'll notice how dry and wrinkled my skin is. That is from the acetone. Unfortunately, I didn't notice until 15 minutes ago when I was putting my watermark on my pictures. Looks like I'll need to buy lots of hand lotion.

For the record, my skin is longer that dry. Thank goodness for Vaseline!

Here are all of the colors I used in order from the base of my nail to the tip:

Maybelline Color Show Onyx Rush
China Glaze Gothic Lolita
Sinful Colors Aquamarine
China Glaze Aquadelic
China Glaze Entourage
Piggy Polish Lemonade 5 ¢

Piggy Polish Damsel in This Dress
China Glaze High Roller

And for the base, I used Piggy Polish 6 Impossible Things

Whew. That was a lot of polish.