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!

did my nails GIVEAWAY!

Elizabeth at did my nails is having a 100th post giveaway here! I love, love, love her blog. Super readable, friendly and helpful when I email her with nail art/nail care questions, and gorgeous nail art and swatch pics!
And the stuff she's giving away is super-cool. From her post:

"...China Glaze It's A Trap-eze!, Color Club Wish Upon A Rock Star, Claire's Candy Shop, 2 Sasatinnie polishes (teal green and FCGL002, the Orly Fowl Play dupe I posted about here, 2 Sasatinnie minis (gold and lt blue shimmer), and OPI Nail Envy Base Coat. Also, in addition to the polishes, I'm including a set of nail art brushes, a pair of dotting tools, and an OPI crystal nail file."

Plus, one of these days, I might actually win one of these giveaways!  Sigh...

Simply thankful

Technically, Day 8 of the 31 Day Challenge was supposed to be metallic nails. But I was ready to move on from the black and white gradient (bottom half of post) two days before Thanksgiving, so since I'm doing this challenge on my own, I decided to do Day 9: Rainbow Nails first! Besides which, sometimes there seems to be a fine line between shimmer and metallic, so some of these might qualify either way. On to the rainbow!

I was daunted by the idea of rainbow nails at first, thinking all my atrophied-by-motherhood brain could come up with was gradients or cutesy little rainbows ending in puffy clouds on each nail. Ack! But then I realized I could do skittles of different autumn-y colors for Thanksgiving, and it would make a pseudo-rainbow of muted jewel tones! LOVE.

Next dilemma: not having exactly the right shades/finishes of some colors I wanted. Playing around with polishes, I had stumbled across the fact that Sinful Colors You Just Wait, which I first took to be a sheer peach shimmer, has a duochrome to green that makes black polish look like green metallic! Oh. my. GOSH! I decided in the end to layer it over NYC Flat Iron Green, instead, just b/c I didn't want any stray black edges showing, although Flat Iron Green is almost black anyway. And the purple I used on my pinkies is almost too dark to differentiate, too, so I layered Sinful Colors Bali Mist over it.

Another issue: Everything but my thumb and ring fingers showed brush strokes. I HATE brush strokes. I'd seen someone's neat trick (on Pinterest, maybe?) of sponging a final, thin layer of the same polish over metallic or shimmery polishes that have brush strokes. Genius, totally worked!

Yet another issue: The shimmer in Sinful Colors Midnight Blue is much finer than all the other colors I used, so while it is just about as perfect as a polish can get (in my book, anyway!), the slightly different texture/finish was glaringly obvious. I decided to sponge on a layer of Pure Ice Calypso...without first painting a layer on...because I'm lazier than the day is long...which is why my ring fingers look a little blotchy with Midnight Blue peeping through at full strenth. But live and learn, now I know I can't cut that corner any more!

sunlight (Check out that coppery shimmer!)

Not so much feeling the love on the indoor light pic, mostly b/c I'm too frickin' lazy to pull out my camera tripod and the pic is fuzzy. That's OK, because...

TADA!! Flash: possibly one of my fave pics of my nails EVAH.

Nina Ultra Pro Brandywine, Sally Hansen Lustre Shine Copperhead, NYC Flat Iron Green snuggled up close to its partner in crime Sinful Colors You Just Wait, SC Midnight Blue paired with Pure Ice Calypso, and Wet 'n' Wild Megalast Disturbia (love the name) in tandem with Sinful Colors Bali Mist

Despite the fact that I'm notorious for not being able to wear my nails w/o some sort of design or art, I loved this one and didn't want to take it off! I could not stop staring at my nails, which in my experience, is not something a log of nail bloggers say about a hand full of cheapo polishes like these. I have a serious love of deep and/or bright colors, so maybe that combined with all the shimmer was love at first sight...and second glance...and...

Kitchen Table Nail Salon

All my girls wanted they're nails done last Friday. It took me an hour and a half to "do up" everybody; I jokingly told them I felt like I was working in a nail salon!

Olivia (14) chose CG Starboard stamped with Orly Buried Alive and Mash plate 44.

Isabella (10) was getting parakeets for her bday, hers are painted with Pure Ice Free Spirit and a franken I made from Sinful Colors Tokyo Pearl and Midnight Blue, stamped with budgies and bows in Konad Special Blue and a green I frankened from Konad Special Yellow and Blue with plates BM-315 and  BM-317.)

Kristiana (6) wanted blue and white skittles (Revlon Indigo Night and Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear White On) stamped with doughnuts and cupcakes from BM-308 using Konad Special White and Blue.

 I thought it was cute/funny that all my little women picked blues and greens! I, on the other hand, went way out of character for Day 7: Black and White Nails. I went minimalist! I can almost never bear to do anything this simple on my nails (or in the pages of my kids' scrapbooks—too many good pics to choose from!). 

I decided to use Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Black Heart for the base color because the thought of cleaning that much Konad Special Black off my fingertips was daunting. I used the gradient image from BM-301 and Konad Special White. This was one of the BM plates that I had trouble with, even with two replacements! It leaves a huge bare spot in the middle of the image unless I scrape with a metal scraper... I then sponged some Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear White On at the tips to even things out, cover bare spots, and make the tips even whiter. I love how it turned out, especially as everyone in the family had the same initial reaction I had: "It looks like snow falling!"

flash

inside, no flash

sunlight

Now, if South Carolina would just GETsome snow this winter!

Purple Pinkies...in more ways than one!

OK, so it's really just two ways: pinky fingers and sort of pinky-purple polishes. Honestly, these are listed as purples, and I was surprised to find that layering Wet 'n' Wild Hannah Pinktana over Sinful Colors Purple Diamond actually made it more purple than it was before, not more pink. This was a good thing, because on me, at least, Purple Diamond looked pale pink. And China Glaze lists Flying Dragon as neon purple. Eh...maybe, sorta.  Whatevs. 

This is what I got for Day 6: Violet Nails: two coats of Purple Diamond, one coat of Hannah Pinktana, stamped with Flying Dragon using BM-320.  Can't find the pic taken with a flash. Oh well, it was crappy anyway.

sunlight

thumb, double stamped 

Sinful Colors Purple Diamond, Wet 'n' Wild Hannah Pinktana, China Glaze Flying Dragon

 See, they look PURPLE/VIOLET here!

Couple more blathering thoughts: I take photos of my left hand more often, not because I'm cheating and not doing my right, or b/c I suck so bad that I won't show my right hand mani. It's because I get this ugly patch of eczema on my right index finger every. flippin'. autumn/winter. Not nice to look at, certainly not in macro shots. So, not so many pics of my right hand floating around out there. Second blather: maybe it's because I'm FAT, I don't know, but although I LOVE my full-nail stamp images, I have a hard time getting the images all the way to the cuticle, and more so getting them all the way to both nail folds on each finger. I don't know if I've always had deep nail folds (having only taken up nail art 6 or so months ago), or if it comes with the territory here in Chubbo-land, like crappy curtains in a single-wide in South Congaree...but, there you have it.

I'm SO blue!

And by that, I mean that blue has been my favorite color for as long as I can remember.  Especially royal blue, like the Revlon Colorstay Indigo Night (stupid, stupid name)  I used for Day 5 of the 31 Day Challenge. It almost covered with one coat, and I knew that layering over it with Pretty Polish Spectraflair Top Coat and Pure Ice Don't You Wish (Um, lack-of-punctuation alert, people at Pure Ice!) and then stamping with Konad Special Black would hide any teeny bald spots. I used a variety of plates for these royal blue holographic skittles, but they're all from the Bundle Monster 2012/300 series set of plates.

left hand, flash

 right hand, flash

right hand, sunlight

left hand, sunlight

my pretty polishes

Man, I love blue polish!

Can you see my nails?

Credit goes to my spousal unit for the title of this post! I was intimidated by doing camo nails for Day 4: Green Nails. But I found a really good YouTube video to help me along, and I loved her twist with the safety orange accent nails!  Here's the vid:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tn04ZhQ0lg8

Here are the polishes I used: China Glaze Starboard, NYC Flat Iron Green, Sinful Colors Nirvana, Loréal Walk on the Beach, Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Black Heart, China Glaze Japanese Koi, and NYC Matte Me Crazy.

I freehanded the camo pattern with a homemade dotter (ball-ended straight pin stuck in a pencil's eraser end!) over Starboard as my base color. I planned to use Walk on the Beach as my lighter brown, but it was way too light, so I ended up mixing a dot or two at a time with Nirvana at about 50/50. I was really pleased with the results!

sunlight

indoor w/ flash

Whose tongue is it?

This pic of one of my 4-year-old Australian cattle dogs, Pizwat (PEAS-watt) and my oldest, Olivia, cracked me up!

It's like he's saying, "Oh, man, Sissy, what did you have for lunch? And can I have some?"

Does this count?

I was not looking forward to Day 3 of the 31 Day Challenge: Yellow Nails. Yellow is my least favorite color EVER.  But I found this nifty little bottle of Bon Bons nail polish, a shimmery sunshine yellow that I felt I could almost live with.  Paired with another Bon Bons itty-bitty bottle of goodness in the form of a watermelon red shimmer and Sinful Colors Midnight Blue (one of my FAVE polishes ever—so metallic, so blue, so NOT showing brush strokes at all EVER), I figured with two accent nails and lots of splatter painting, it's almost as if my nails aren't yellow...does that means it does or does not count for the challenge?  Anyway, here 'tis:

Sunlight

Flash (big time)

My two faves:

The first pic comes closest to the right color for the red, but it's still more pink than that. It looks flippin' tomato orange in the second shot. Whatever. And, as is obvious from those two pics, I have a hard time making the whole coffee stir technique for splatter painting work well.  It's still infinitely better than polish thinned out and splashed around with a paint brush; 90% of the time, this spacially-challenged hand-eye-coordination reject missed the nail completely with that method! In the spirit of full disclosure, also note that deep blue polish splattered on super-dry, Mommy-washes-her-hands-too-many-times-a-day fingers equals rather ineffective clean-up and creepy blue lines all over my thumbs...and index fingers. Oh well. All in all, it wasn't half bad; the kids like it, especially Ian.

Recovery From Failure

Um, maybe. Really, I need to take pics of my failed manicures, for no other reason than to give myself a good laugh. For Day 2: Orange Nails, my oldest daughter wanted me to finally use the faux dried flowers I got from the BornPretty Store. I, on the other hand, was hoping to achieve a verdigris look by stamping with this image from BM-301:

 Blurry, but whatever.

"Ooh", I thought, "feminine and floral with accent nails of edginess!" Uh, wrong. (And dangit again! Why don't I take pictures of the crappy manis?) What happened was that after a base color of Pure Ice Hot Tamale (which my oldest, Olivia, gave me for Mother's Day ), I stamped the crackly-looking image with a homemade mixture of Konad Special Blue and Special Yellow..."homemade" special green! (I can franken successfully as long as it doesn't involve glitter.) My ring fingers and thumbs ended up looking muddy and brownish.  Not so pretty in combo with the shimmery orange with teal flowers.  So, this a.m. I removed the stamped ones (dangit, double dangit for not thinking to take pics!) and did accent nails with Sinful Colors Kissy (so beautiful, I want to eat it!).  Ahh, much better. Trust me.

Natural light

Flash (No idea why clean-up around my ring finger looks so bad in this one. It looks fine above and in RL.)

Epic fail!

Warning: word-heavy post.

So, I'm attempting the 31 Day Challenge, doing it in order but at my own pace. I'm not sure if it's one of the rules, but I want to come up with original designs for each challenge to stretch my creative skills a bit. Originality is NOT my strong point.  My original plan for Day 1: Red Nails was a base coat of China Glaze Rare & Radient with Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Red Carpet over it, then pulled off in patches with plastic wrap (one of the two "Saran wrap mani" techniques, the other being applying the top color with plastic wrap). Thankfully, I tested this on my plastic palette first, because the Red Carpet was more like magenta. Hmm... So I tried my old sal-free Grace Advantage Rodeo Drive Red (creme), which worked, but I ended up looking like I'd just butchered...something.

In an attempt to salvage this gory mani, I decided to apply apple slice fimo slices.  OK, can I just say I hate those little suckers?! Maybe it's because my nail bed is curved, but I can't get those darn things to stay flat or stay stuck, even with nail glue and pressing each one down for about 3 minutes! So, I peeled them off. Yeah, and bald patches appeared where the polish went with them. I knew it would, but I didn't want to have to redo everything (foreshadowing...). I tried to patch the baldies, and then cover/blend with a homemade franken. Lesson learned the hard way: I just suck at frankening. And if I can't do something well, I don't so much want to do it any more. 

So, now I had blotchy, bloody, murky, glittery nails. Um, nasty. Should have taken pics to prove how truly disgusting this mani was. Skipped that step and did another reverse plastic wrap mani with Finger Paints Hue Rang? as the base, the Rodeo Drive Red applied and dabbed with cling wrap, and it was still a little bloodier than I wanted, but I was too tired to care at this point:

 So, the next day I realized this might not even count as red nails for the challenge. Decided to add a no-name coat of red glitter polish (#803) that I got for $1.50 from The Supply Source. Ya know, to make it more RED. I was worried the glitter would blur the cling wrap design. Oddly, no, the glitter barely shows up, and it ain't just the crappy picture.

So, all in all, I busted my rear to end up with a mani that might not even qualify for the specified challenge color and that doesn't excite me even an iota. I did get one compliment on my nails...from an old lady working at my son's allergist's office, whose signature polish is anything frosted.  Eek!