Half Moon + Polka Dots

Another one of those looks that was better in my head than in real life. I'm currently working my way through my polish rack, trying to give some love to many polishes which haven't been used in a LONG time. This brown is actually a franken I made before I knew that anyone else did that sort of thing.

Long side note: Six weeks after my 4th baby was born, fibromyalgia descended like a load of bricks out of a dump truck. Among the many ways I have tried to deal with it was a long phase of treatment from this book. It didn't work for me, but during that phase I bought some sal-free cosmetics here. I ended up dumping some coppery brown loose mineral eyeshadow into a polish I didn't like, and tada! I never even named it...maybe I'll go back and do that!

So, it being late spring, I wasn't really excited about going into my brown stash. I thought pink (Sinful Colors Pink Forever here) would be a good pairing, and it might have been with a shade a bit lighter. But I was going for something that wouldn't require a gazillion coats over the brown, or laying it down first and then carefully painting in the half moons as I saw one blogger recommend. I did learn something cool: I was able to go back with a second coat of the pink, and it sort of reactivated the first coat, so I was able to remove the paper hole reinforcements from the half moons without messing up the lines.

The polka dots were a pain. Kudos to every nail artist out there who can achieve perfectly same-sized dots with their dotting tools. I can't. No matter how carefully I work, I can't. But really, who in real life is going to look at my nails that closely? And I did get a couple compliments on these!

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."

Flosser Stripe Mani

I fell in love with this idea from cutepolish at first sight! It doesn't have the texture of a candy floss/spun sugar mani, but it's so much easier and less time-consuming to do! I used three coats of OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls as my base color, then painted Sinful Colors Aquamarine and Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Vigorous Violet directly onto a floss pick (not both at the same time, obviously). I also showed a little love to Sinful Colors Super Star on my trigger finger accent nails. I pretty much LOVE this look!

Galaxy in a Bottle

After about 5 months, I finally used my Kleancolor Chunky Holo Black as it was intended...as a topper for black polish! Such a spectacular effect for so little effort! Here it is over Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Black Out. It seems almost like a galaxy effect in a bottle!

I think I've only used this amazing glitter topper one other time, here on top of purple. You can't even really tell that it's the same polish!

Anywho, this one was a lot of bang for my buck,  in terms of both cost and effort. And I couldn't stop sharing at that shift from green through yellow and orange to red!

Cheery Daisy Mani

I saw Kelly's nails here at Set In Lacquer, and attempted my own version. My nails being much shorter, the flowers take up much more space. I really liked how hers just peeked at you from the tips and base of her nails, but this isn't too bad:

I used a franken I made from an L.A. Colors Color Craze polish; I'd jacked the color up a notch with a dribble of my China Glaze Japanese Koi and called the new color Cosmic Carrots.  I used a dotter to make the daisies with Sinful Colors Snow Me White and Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Lightening (rolls eyes at stupid spelling of polish name...). Very cheerful mani!

Last, But Not Least––A Brushstroke Gradient

The last challenge for the Crumpet's New 31 Day/Slow Nail Art Challenge was "Recreate someone else's mani from earlier in the challenge." The Merge or Melt was the challenge I had the hardest time choosing a look for, so I Googled others' looks for that one and finally settled on a brushstroke gradient. I saw one somewhere done in blues and white with many little strokes from a small nail art detail brush, but I can't for the life of me find it now, so I went with a fan brush ala Superficially Colorful's beautiful rainbow nails. I stuck to a monochromatic theme for my nails, and did it vertically. I think this was better for my shorter nails as well as easier with my deep nail folds. It was still a bit of a booger to work with!

I started with two coats of Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Lacey Lilac, then a couple of fan brush strokes of SH Insta-Dri Vigorous Violet, and finally a couple of Wet 'n' Wild MegaLast Disturbia. As you can see, my topcoat smeared the Vigorous Violet on my pinky. Oh well. This wasn't the most difficult nail art technique by far, but neither was it effortless for my lazy self! I think if I try it again, I'll go with the little strokes and a detail brush.

My Favorite Nail Art Technique

My chosen technique for the Crumpet's New 31 Day/Slow Nail Art Challenge is stamping. I'm not the swiftest at freehand, tape manis make me nervous (always waiting for half a nail's worth of polish to pull off with the tape...), glitter/jelly/crelly sandwiches by themselves are great when I don't have time for art...but stamping is easy, looks professional if done right, and with just two sets of stamp plates (Bundle Monster 2012 and Mash 26-50), I will never run out of color/design combinations!

For my stamping, I had a few goals: 1) Use pink––I have a lot of pink polishes, but hardly ever use them. 2) Use an untried––this polish is a franken I made called So Sari, a shimmery hot pink with loads of orange, hot pink, and gold glitters. 3) Use a polish I'd never stamped with before––I totally thought Sinful Colors Endless Blue was pigmented enough to hold its own as a stamping polish. I was sort of right; it shows up very well, but is slightly sheer so the base color here tinted it purple. Which was OK, as I was trying to decide between blue or purple stamping! 4) Use a stamp image I'd never tried before––I always think these bold geometrics are not my style, and end up loving the looks on my fingers! This is BM-305, by the way.

I was really happy with how these turned out!