Take Two Day 6: Animal Print

I'm back on track! So the deal with last night was that I was preparing for my speech class today. All went well, thankfully!

So for today's animal print, I couldn't decide what to do. I typed "animals" into Google and found this gem. They looked so cool that I had to try and recreate them!

Fish Food

I went to a Halloween party the weekend before Hurricane Sandy hit, and I had to do my nails according to my costume. When I was getting ready for the party, I had no idea how I was going to paint my nails, so I decided to modify the design I was already wearing.

The prompt for the challenge I was in was witches, so I was still sporting my witches brew. Since I didn't have much time to come up with anything new, I painted right on top.

For this manicure, I used the watercolor method. Here's a great tutorial from Beauty Geeks.

In order to make it look more like "fish food," I added a flaky glitter on top.

I'm sorry for the bad quality of the pictures and my even worse attempt to paint over the edge of my nail where the polish had already worn off. I was rushed and didn't have time for a real photo shoot or for fixing them. I kinda like how they came out, though. It's so colorful and sparkly. This manicure was perfect for what I was going for and it worked out really well. :)

I'm just going to go over the colors I used for the second part of this manicure. Those were: China Glaze Coconut Kiss, China Glaze Custom Kicks, Sinful Colors Kissy, Sally Hansen Insta- Dri Co-Bolt Blue, and China Glaze Luxe and Lush.

This is me in my costume trying to do a serious pose... It's so bad, it's funny! I crack up every time I see this picture. I hope it makes you all laugh too. :P

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 19: Bats

When I think of the word bat, I think of the object I could use to chase my brothers around the house with. That thought inspired my design for today.

If you have younger brothers like I do, then you know that they can be ANNOYING, especially when they are both teenagers. Sometimes you just want to throw something at them! That's why I painted a baseball on my accent nail. It's the best of both worlds. ;)

For this design, I used China Glaze Oxygen for the base color. I used 3-4 coats. For the designs, I used Piggy Polish 6 Impossible Things, China Glaze High Roller, and China Glaze Mahogany Magic.

I hope you guys didn't think I was serious. I love my brothers (even though they CAN be annoying). My actual design for today is way cooler. Bats for me = BATMAN!!!!!!! This is the most excited I've been to do my nails since my last Batman design. Even more so because I finally got a break from studying. I'm smack in the middle of my midterms. I have 3 more next week.. Agh!

I hope these are worth it because of what little time I actually have to paint my nails now.

Instead of using the tradition Batman symbol, I decided to use the symbol that's in the Dark Knight Trilogy. 

(Don't you just love the awkward hand pose above? I had to hold the nail polish bottle upside down and rotate the picture the correct way when I was adding my watermark.)

For this manicure, I used Sinful Colors Secret Admirer for the base. Then I used Essie Marshmallow and Maybelline Color Show Onyx Rush. For my accent nail, I used Sinful Colors Kissy for the base. Then I outlined the Batman symbol with Piggy Polish 6 Impossible Things. Then I used Maybelline Color Show Onyx Rush and Piggy Polish Lemonade 5¢.

You can find the upcoming nail challenges here.

TIHC Oct 5: Water Marble

Today's challenge is water marble! I was a little nervous to do this since I've never tried it before. I was right to be nervous. I redid my nails 4 times and I still didn't get anywhere near what I wanted. At least it kind of looks cool..

Alright, it looks really cool. It just wasn't how I pictured it.

The nail polish I kept using wasn't exactly great for water marbling. It kept separating and let a lot of air pockets in. It still did towards the end, but I had given up by that point and let the bubbles stay.

The look I was going for was to make spider webs out of the marble. You can kind of see it because of the shapes I made, but it didn't turn out well at all according to what was in my head. The two closest are my middle and pointer finger.

For this design, I used Maybelline Color Show Onyx Rush for the base, and then used Essie Marshmallow (Fitting, right? :P), and Sinful Colors Secret Admirer.

Maybe I'll have better luck with my next attempt.

You can find a list of all the challenges here.

Day 1: Watermelon Nails

When I was deciding which fruits to choose for the week long challenge, the very first one that popped into my mind was watermelon, of course!

When I was rummaging through my nail polish collection, I realized that I didn't own any bright pink. I'm not a fan of reds, pinks, oranges, and yellows, so I own mostly cool colors. 

Now, instead of running to the nearest store to buy a bright pink, I remembered that my coworker gave me a few bottles of nail polish that her daughter never used anymore. One was a vibrant, but sheer pink. I decided I would see if layering it over one of my lighter pink shades would suffice, and it did! Look at how gorgeous and bright that pink is.

I'm happy with the way this design turned out. My inner perfectionist is screaming that my lines aren't perfectly straight, though. I know I'll improve in time, but for now, this is the best I can do.

If you take a look at the seeds in the watermelon, it almost seems like they're smiling at you...

For this design, I used China Glaze Dance Baby and Revlon Just Tinted Desire for the base. Then I used Zoya Meg, Sinful Colors Show Me The Way, Piggy Polish 6 Impossible Things, and Maybelline Color Show Onyx Rush.

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.