Eddie Munster nails?!?!

If there was ever a testament to the painful reality of my inadequate spacial relations skills, here it is:

WTH? Jenna, what is Eddie Munster's hair doing on your tips? Sigh... OK, so, in my head this would have had an effect similar to being under a black umbrella and seeing the rain falling just past it. Only, my inability to judge distance and size meant that the scallop-edged tape I cut with my decorative scissors and used for this funky French mani didn't translate to the realization that only about two scallops would fit on each nail, thus giving the illusion of hair slicked back from a creepily Dracula-esque widow's peak. (Whew! Major run-on there.)

Oh, but here's the kicker: there's even more humorous bungling hidden in the depths of this look! The base color was a franken I made before I learned that not ALL glitter is solvent-resistant. The original color of the polish was pale peachy-pink with turquoise, orange, pink, and gold hexes mixed in with iridescent micro glitter. Once it had finished mutating into a deadly muddy grey with glitters mere ghosts of their former selves, I just happened to name it "Bride of Frankenstein". Bwahahaha! What better polish mating could there be for a look that turned out to be so hilariously horrible?! Say it with me, people: "FAIL."

Geometric Nails

I was looking forward to Day 10: Geometric, because I tend to gravitate toward more organic shapes and don't utilize all the great techniques for creating geometric patterns on nails. I contemplated some form of tape mani, but since that's actually the next challenge and I haven't had much experience with tape manis, I went with some simple stamping. I've known since I brought OPI Ski Teal We Drop home from Hilton Head that I wanted to use it for this day's challenge, paired with silver squares/rectangles.

This past summer, my oldest showed avid interest in my nail art hobby just long enough to convince me to start her a small collection of polishes, whereupon she gave up quickly and I inherited her teeny stash. This was my first time using Wet 'n' Wild FastDry Silvivor from that stash; I could tell from the bottle it was more glittery than my solidly chrome Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Silver Sweep. When I stamped with it, the result came across as more grainy looking than Silver Sweep; not necessarily a bad thing, just different.

The deep teal of STWD was difficult to capture with my camera, but I think these shots pretty accurately show it. I really like it paired with the jumbled rectangles and squares of BM-320. I must have ginormous thumbnail beds, though, because you can see below that the full nail images don't quite reach the edges of my thumbnails. Still and all, I'm in love with stamping and the not-quite-complete thumb stamping is only really obvious when I slap a macro shot on here!

Glitter Tips

Day 2 of Crumpet's Slow Challenge is silver. I am partial to silver rather than gold. I don't think I've ever tried a glitter tip gradient, and that is what I chose for this day. I started with a base of NYC In a New York Minute Sidewalkers, a light-to-medium grey polish that, to my eyes at least, leans just a teeny bit brown, or maybe it's greenish. Hmmm... I don't use grey polish very often, and I'm never that excited about it...until I put it on! I really like the subtlety of it, although I don't think grey would be a great color for me in, say, clothing.

There are two ways to do a glitter gradient, I think: sponging, or applying three layers of polish. I chose the latter. I used my unnamed silver glitter polish to apply a thin coat from about halfway up my nail down to the tip. When dry, I added a second coat over about 2/3 of that area, then again 1/3 of the way up. This was so simple, and yet so elegant! I love the way the glitter caught the light w/o outshining the base color.

Mani Happy Memories

Day 14: Flowers. Hmm, how to fit that into a Christmas mani? Poinsettias, of course. But I was getting a little bored with the bright red and bright green already. I was staring at my bin of green polishes, and it hit me! In the mid-80s, my family lived in Miami for 2 years. Our whole neighborhood was full of stuccoed houses with mica flakes mixed into the stucco so that all the houses sparkled. Very beachy, very...Easter eggish. Our house was mint green. I kid you not. Mint green with sparkles!  OK, there's a point, and I'm getting there! My mom found out that in Miami's sub-tropical climate, you could plant all those lovely poinsettias from coworkers, etc. right in your yard! So, out in front of our minty, glittery house was a flower bed filled with a whole row of bright red poinsettias. Hence, my flower/Christmas mani from a memory of my childhood:

I couldn't capture the glittery silver very well; my photography skills are minimal. For this mani, I used Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Mint Sorbet topped with a nameless silver glitter from The Supply Source. I used acrylic paints to make the poinsettias and leaves (although technically the "flowers" are leaves!) and for the centers I dotted on Supply Source's gold glitter polish with a homemade dotting tool. I really like how this turned out!

Beware: User Error!

Day 12: Stripes
Let me clarify a few things straight off:
     1) The utter and complete ickiness of this main is completely due to my inexperience and not a reflection of polish quality.
     2) I wanted to do this nail art challenge to break myself out of the mold of just imitating others' good ideas, but I have found the added benefit: I am learning SO much about what does and doesn't work in nail art!
     3) I'm trying to stick w/ the 31 Day Challenge and do only Christmas/winter nail art for all of December, so sometimes I have to really s-t-r-e-t-c-h to encompass both of those ideas.

I was so excited to receive in the mail Floam from Ninja Polish--my first from them!

 
 I desperately wanted to use it right away, so I convinced myself that I could use it as a base for striped "wrapping paper" nails. Really, I should have used a base color, then just one coat of Floam, because to get as much opacity as I wanted, I had to use 3 coats of my precious Floam. This is a thicker polish, plus there's the sandy texture of the glitter...

I was not about to try freehanding stripes—not up for that yet! I couldn't find a stamping image that had stripes I was happy with, so I told myself that plaid is just stripes in two directions! Hence, Mash plate 39 and Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Silver Sweep. I will only subject the world to one pic of this awful mani:

I wasn't as careful as I should have been with the Floam application, so I had teeny glitters all around my nail that clung to my skin no matter what methods I resorted to in order to clean them up. The beauty of the Floam was hidden by the stamping, and even with two coats of top coat, the surface was visibly bumpy. I could lie and tell myself it's reminiscent of some funky, imported, textured wrapping paper from World Market, but...not so much. Oh well, another lesson learned.

Metallic, Magnetic Snowflakes

So, skipping back one day in the 31 Day Challenge, here is Day 8: Metallic Nails. I used China Glaze Magnetix in Pull Me Close with their magnet pattern of diagonal stripes as my base color. Not only is the blue sort of metallic-looking, but magnetic polishes have teeny iron filings, ergo they're full of metal! Duh. So, anyway, then I stamped over the pattern, which I chose to represent a cold wind blowing, with the full-nail snowflake image from BM-323 using Sally Hansen Insta-Dri in Silver Sweep. This polish has got to be one of the best inexpensive polishes in America for stamping! I added just a couple silver hex glitter pieces from Born Pretty with nail glue, one on the biggest flake in the pattern and a couple just randomly placed on each nail.

One of these days, I'm going to get the hang of flash close-ups of my nails...I hope.

Outdoor lighting, a little better than usual b/c I actually busted out the tripod. (You go, lazy girl!)

I love snow, and I really liked this mani!