Texture, Schmexture

I am not a big fan of texture. At all. As in, alfalfa sprouts feel like hair in my mouth, and waffle-weave shirts give me hives. Literally. So, I was not so excited to see that Day 20 of The Crumpet's New 31 Day Nail Art Challenge was...texture.

I actually love the look of all those new textured polishes out there: Milani, and OPI, Zoya and Nails Inc...just not on my nails. I think I would go abso-frickin-lutely mad having to feel that on my nails. So, the closest I could bear to get was this:

I haven't used China Glaze Fly at all, I think, so it's the base color here, topped with one coat of Ninja Polish Floam. I matted it with NYC Matte Me Crazy; I should have gone for a second coat, because just one and the polish still has a bit of sheen. Sorry 'bout the tip wear; I'd had this on for two days before I remembered to take the pic.

After that, I used Sinful Colors Aquamarine for a perfectly-matched-to-the-glitter funky French mani, and after another day, was tired of the matte/glossy contrast look and added glossy topcoat to the whole shebang. Have pics somewhere; can't get to them because our iMac died! (sniff...) Waiting for hubby to get the new MacBook Pro up and running so I can find all the pics Eye-Fi has been hoarding for me, then I'll add them.

My favorite color?!? You gotta be kidding!

I was supposed to use my favorite polish for Day 19. Agh...too tough to chose! I decided to go with a new polish I got after falling in love with Stephanie's swatch of it at Imperfectly Painted: Sinful Colors Endless Blue. She's right in saying photos don't capture how deeply pigmented this polish is, although rather than cobalt, I might say this polish is something like electric royal blue.

At the same time I bought Endless Blue, I also picked up Hottie. Hate the name, but I've been waffling over buying the polish for quite a while. As royal blue is my favorite color in the whole amazing blue-to-blue-green range, I'd planned to just have Hottie over Endless Blue for this challenge. But I really felt the need for something more. So.

Here's my first horizontal gradient using Endless Blue and FingerPaints Tiffany Imposter, topped with the amazing and (in my case) under-utilized Social Suicide:

Something about this one reminded me of space, the sky, day-to-night science textbook diagrams...I love it and could not stop looking at this one on my fingers!

My oldest untried (AKA stop while you're ahead!)

Day 18: Your Oldest Untried

Seeing as I've been working my way through untrieds and seldom-used polishes through this whole challenge, and I've been finding beautiful swatches on other blogs of new polishes I can't afford and then frankening something similar, I had to really think about what was my oldest untried. I'm pretty sure it's a franken I made before I discovered that Born Pretty store glequins are NOT solvent-resistant. The polish is a black jelly with holographic and red micro glitters and what were supposed to be red glequins. Alas, before I even had time to come up with a cute name, the glequins bled, lending a reddish cast to the jelly (not bad—interesting, in fact!) and bleaching the glequins down to a peach shade.  I had been thinking how devilishly beautiful black and red can appear, and since this was not quite so intense and/or disastrous as the bleed could have been, I named it "It Could Be Worse."

I was careful with application, as those larger glitters could have proved fatal to a nice clean-up. I was surprised by the depth of the polish, and quite pleased. Alas, that's where it all went wrong. I really thought Kleancolor Metallic Red would be strong enough to show up against ICBW, but no. The full nail lips image I stamped using BM-303 isn't even recognizable on my nails. I ended up with it looking sort of like a Saran Wrap mani. OK, I thought, maybe a diagonal tape mani with a thick coat of Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Red Carpet? Uh...no:

Definitely NOT enough contrast.

A close-up of all the glittery goodness beneath the sad screw-ups. 

I will definitely be using ICBW again, but with silver as a topper or just alone to show off the depth.

My First Feather Mani

Challenge day 17 says "a new technique to you"...I'm far from a grammar expert, but wouldn't "a technique new to you" sound better? Hmmm.

Anywho, I decided to try a feather manicure. Thank you, my 10 sweet chickens, for dropping some really pretty feathers for Mom (me) to use! My base color here is a franken I call "The Rain Kept Falling in Love", because my oldest and I are sort of on a mission to name as many of my frankens as possible based on 77s songs. I followed The Nailasaurus' tutorial here for the real feathers, and then stamped the feather image from Mash 29 using Orly Buried Alive.

I think I liked my right hand the best! This technique was a lot easier than I thought it would be, and I was happy that the blue base contrasted with/complemented the feathers so well.

Day 16 of the New 31 Day/Crumpet's Slow Challenge is color opposites. Lucky me, my two favorite colors are opposites!

That isn't a chip or bald spot on my thumb tip; maybe my nail was reflecting something? I used L'Oreal Notting Hill Blues, Sinful Colors Cloud 9, and my Born Pretty Store loose glitters.  This also could have stood in as Day 17's "new technique", as I hadn't really done a ton of hand-placing of glitter, but I decided not to cheat and did something separate for that one.  The glitter didn't take tooo long, about 30 minutes for both hands, probably would go faster if I wasn't such a newbie. This look was very sparkly and fun!

Watercolor Nails

I love participating in nail art challenges, albeit completely on my own. I get to try so many new techniques; day 15's challenge is watercolor nails!

Watercolor makes me think of...water, of course. And water, in this case, made me think of dragonflies:

Alas, I cannot remember AT ALL which polishes I used for the watercolor effect! I know both the green and blue were shimmer polishes, but that doesn't help much, since I have a TON of blues and greens! I know I used OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls for the base, a waste of one of my more expensive polish purchases; I could have just used Snow Me White. And the dragonflies were applied using Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Black Heart, Kleancolor Metallic Orange, and a dotting tool. I was happy about the discovery of using a dotting tool for the wing shapes; I just dotted, and without lifting the tool, dragged toward the body of the dragonfly!

I ♥ Stamping!

Day 14's challenge was stamping...ooh, my favorite nail art technique! 

It's so hard to tell from the picture, but this was actually a jelly sandwich under the stamped vines. I used Pure Ice Free Spirit as my base color—not a jelly, but I wanted a firm foundation for the color! I added Sinful Colors Call You Later over that, and then added Nina Ultra Pro Pucker Up atop it. Pucker up is a neon duochrome sheer, so it's sort of jelly-ish in its translucence. I stamped with BM-312 and Konad Special Black. I loved how crisp the vine image came out!

Cheery Mani

Challenge Day 13 calls for a cheer-yourself-up mani. I've been itching to use both my Zoya Robyn and the spring images on BM-302. I couldn't decide between the bunny and the full-nail image of birds, snails and...what are those? "Suessian" trees? So I went with both in a skittle mani.

Obviously, Robyn is my base color, except for Kleancolor Metallic Fuchsia on my pinky. (It's much more metallic IRL, and so beautfiul!) I stamped with Konad Special White, and then used Sinful Colors Snow Me White, Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Lightening, and the fuchsia for the dots, stripes, and flower on the bunny nail. I couldn't figure out how to incorporate the accent/art colors into the full-nail stamp image, which is really the only thing I didn't like about this look.

My first striping tape mani!

I've done a little taping here and there, but it always makes me nervous. Even after learning the trick of laying down a coat of quick-dry top coat to keep the base color from peeling up with the tape, I still get nervous! I bought a bucket-load of super-thin striping tape off eBay from some place in China about a year ago, and because I didn't know how to use it properly, it has languished in my nail art bin for too long! Now that it worked so well for masking, I might get brave enough to use it and leave it on...

Anywho, for the 12th challenge in The Crumpet's New 31 Day/Slow Challenge, my base color here is Sinful Colors Timbleberry/Thimbleberry. I'd love to know what the polish's real name is! I assume it's the former, since every bottle I've ever seen says "Timbleberry". But I have seen display cases with it spelled both ways...not all at once...you know what I mean! 

I laid down some striping tape in various designs, then sponged over my nails with a gradient of Timbleberry, Sinful Colors Hazard, and a pastel peach knock-off of Butter London's Kerfuffle that I call Kerfuffulous! (This is actually a name my son and I made up long ago for his alias during a silly tea party with his sisters!)

My skin is looking terribly dry here! Even with using lots of cuticle oil and body butter, my hands just stay dry. But at least I usually apply cuticle oil right before taking pics so it's disguised somewhat...

I liked this look better than I thought I would. I would like to improve my gradient technique, too, so that colors blend more seamlessly. Not sure how to accomplish that.