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.

Open to Interpretation (aka Easter Puke Nails)

The last day of the 31 Day Nail Art Challenge!  Granted, it took me something like four months to complete, with side jaunts and rest breaks along the way. Nevertheless...

Day 31 of the challenge as listed here says, "Re-create your favorite challenge." What does that mean? Redo exactly my favorite that I did, that someone else did, re-create my fave of my own but do it a little differently...?!?! Googling around, I discovered that some versions of the challenge list day 31 as, "Re-creat someone else's mani that you love." Ah...that's better.

This is the beautiful mani I picked, although I wanted to do it in different colors. I wanted to use Orly Buried Alive as my base. I was surprised by how much I loved this color on my fingers! Alas, that was the last thing that went well.  The stems I painted were too thick and my choice of flower/bud colors did not pop against the base color. I have no idea how the ones in my" inspired by" stand out so well on that navy blue. I ended up mixing each of mine with white, which looked just muted until they were up against that brown, whereupon they took on Easter egg hues. The horror continues! The dots were too big and too crowded, and then...THEN! I noticed my stark white stems had turned cream-colored. "OK," I said, "I can live with cream." As I continued to stare at my completed mani over the next 30 minutes, I watched that cream turn to a banana yellow. Not a bad color in and of itself, but the look as a whole was just, well, icky. Like someone vomited their Easter candy onto my fingernails. I left it on just long enough to prove its awfulness here:

Then I said, "The challenge is over. I'm going to do whatever I want on my nails, " and proceeded to spend more time than I could afford on a Friday morning doing these:

Pizza nails! Per my son's request, so even that wasn't really doing what I want. But it's better than Easter puke. Just sayin'.

Imitation is the Most Sincere Form of Flattery

Or so they say. For "Inspired by a Tutorial" on Day 30, I chose to attempt the spun sugar look I watched xoxoalexisleigh demonstrate here. I combined this with some Valentine pink hearts, saving the spun sugar for my accent nails because—dang!—it takes F-O-R-E-V-E-R. Looking  back on it, I wish I'd used a second pink rather than the blue; I picked blue because I was originally going to use a frankened jelly-sammy-in-a-bottle for the other nails that contained some blue glitter. Oh well.

My hands look terrible here! That is not actually skads of dry skin clamoring for hand cream; I'd just finished waxing a piece of furniture that I'd painted with DIY chalk paint (this blog has terrific instructions and loads of info on a fabulous technique!) and the wax dried on my hands. I didn't even realize it until I looked at the pic...after I'd taken this polish off and couldn't get a better pic, of course.

My base color is a franken my youngest asked for and named, a bubblegum pink creme with teeny holo glitter called Pink Ocean. (She's precious, but corny.) I stamped over it with China Glaze Fly and BM-317. My accent nail is a beautiful, squishy, unnamed raspberry red jelly from Donna Michelle I scooped up at the dollar store. (I bought it to franken with, but I'm kind of in love with it the way it is.) The strings of polish atop it are Fingerpaints My Art Belongs to You, Sinful Colors Snow Me White, and Pure Ice Calypso. As fun as this look is, just doing both my ring fingers was a pain in the tukhus! Stir, stir, stir, stir, stir. Stretch, stretch...you get it. Too little bang for my buck, effort-wise. So, if I EVER feel like wasting that much time for that little result, it will still be accents only!

Fairies on my fingers...

Day 29's challenge was "Inspired by the Supernatural". I am NOT AT ALL into creepy supernatural stuff, so I was leaning towards doing something that reflects my faith in Christ. But I could not think of anything at my skill level that would classily depict that. I went with something cute and sort of silly: fairies. This mani wasn't all that fabulous, mostly because it didn't show up that well on the black background.

I started with a base of Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Black Out, the most miserable, thin, streaky black creme I've ever owned, so I had to use two coats. I topped it with a coat of Wet 'n' Wild Fast Dry Hannah Pinktana and pressed a few holo silver hexes from the dollar store into it. I stamped a flower in Kleancolor Metallic Purple and a butterfly (just half the image on my ring finger) in Kleancolor Metallic Fuchsia from whatever Salon Express plate (can't be bothered to go look). I painted a head, arms and legs in Nakey Nana (a homemade franken named for my littlest's beautiful skin), a dress in Color Club Worth the Risque, and hair with Kleancolor Metallic Yellow.

Pardon the carpal tunnel wrist brace. Couldn't be bothered to take it off!

Awkward angle of my ring finger, trying to show the edge of the flower and the side view fairy w/o too much glare!

Back view of a fairy reaching to touch a flower. This shot almost totally disguises the flower, but it does extend to the right side!

Not my best ever, for sure.

Irish Nails!

Yet another challenge I was a bit stumped by was Day 28: Inspired by a Flag. I'm not a patriotic person, and the American flag seemed too complex for my skills, anyway. I got to thinking about my Irish heritage (among all the other things I'm a mix of), and the fact that my oldest daughter is completely enamored of everything to do with Ireland. So, I picked the Irish flag, a fairly simple one that is nice and bright:

I gave all my nails a coat of Sinful Colors Snow Me White, as three of my nails would have white, and the other two colors I chose are rather sheer.  I topped the white ones with Finger Paints Well-Cultured Pearl, my index with Sinful Colors San Francisco, and my ring finger with Pure Ice Hot Tamale (I find myself falling back on that particular orange quite a bit!). For my thumb, I pulled apart some Born Pretty dried flowers and rearranging them to look like four-leaf clovers. And in honor of the legend about St. Patrick chasing all the snakes from Ireland, I stamped the snake image from Mash-50 with my frankened green stamping polish and then carefully painted the universal symbol for "no" or "forbidden" or whatever in black. Pretty cute, I think.

Brushstroke Art

Holy Moses on a motorbike!! I am so far behind; I've got about two weeks' worth of finger(nail)painting to document. Agh!

I was totally intimidated by Day 27: Inspired by Artwork at first. All these gorgeous posts of nails painted like Starry Night and The Scream... but I took my cue from a few others who, like me, must have felt that something more abstract and open to interpretation would be the answer.

Here is what I picked out when I Googled "artwork":

artist: Michel Saloff-Coste

 These were pretty easy to do, and the bonus was that I worked in yellow as my base color. Yellow is my least favorite color, and I like to challenge myself to use it.

Even with something as easily interpreted as abstract art, I still found myself a bit unsatisfied with my final result, but my hubby and kids really liked this one.

This was my first attempt at a brushstroke mani. Sometime I'd like to try a monochromatic one.

Inspired by a Pattern

My first thought when I saw "inspired by a pattern" for Day 26 was some sort of clothing pattern: floral, plaid, stripes, polka dots, houndstooth check, ... But when I Googled "pattern", this image popped out at me:

Oh, I love it. Nothing too original, but this green is beautiful! Not too hunter-ish, not too emerald, and I love the swirls peeping out from behind the snowflakes. And here in SC, man, do I wish we got more snow!

I don't have this green in my arsenal; the closest thing I had was Sinful Colors Rise and Shine. The label on the bottom says matte, but to me it seems to dry looking a bit like all those spiffy rubber finish polishes I've seen on blogs. The closest I could get for the swirls was to stamp Mash-40 with a shimmer over that rubbery goodness, as I was not in a million years going to keep mixing little dots of Rise and Shine with just a touch of black to get a darker green. I used another Sinful Colors polish, Gorgeous. Oh man, I was tempted to stop there with the swirls. I've never done a tonal stamping mani before, and it was so elegant. But, further up and further in! I stamped with BM-323 and (yet another) Sinful Colors Snow Me White.

I had a hard time capturing the swirls. I can see one glinting on my thumb and the darker effect I was looking for on the other fingers in the first pic, and all shimmering a bit behind the flakes in the second pic. Not too bad for someone who is determined NOT to buy a new polish every time I don't have the exact color in my stash.

Fashionab-owl!

Day 25: Inspired by Fashion had me stumped for a bit. I have NEVER had a clue about what's fashionable, and have never cared, either. I Googled "fashion"...and laughed my head off at all the images! Seriously?!?! Someone actually wears those things?

But I do have a least a little bit of an idea what's fashionable in the nail art world. And what seems to be cutesy fashionable on Pinterest. And two of those things are half-moon manis and owls! I saw the gorgeous little owls on Let Them Have Polish, and felt that was fashionable enough for me!

I started with base coat and a coat of Orly French Manicure Deja Vu to brighten my stained nails a bit. I found a rainbow/gradient-ish group of polishes that all had a similar shimmer finish; I was in the mood for cohesiveness! (Is that a word?) From pinky to thumb, I used Sinful Colors Rise and Shine, Pure Ice Free Spirit, SC Cloud 9, Pure Ice Hot Tamale, and SC Under 18. All the little tummies are just the owls' colors mixed with white, the beaks are Orly Buried Alive, and the eyes are Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Lightening (why?!) and SH Hard as Nails Black Heart.

Another mani I'm thoroughly enjoying looking at!

Wingfeather mani

Day 24 was "Inspired by a Book". I based my manicure on Andrew Peterson's On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness, book one of the Wingfeather Saga. My oldest's best friend introduced us to this series of books, and we all have been enjoying them immensely! Andrew Peterson is a brilliant writer, in my humble mommy opinion. His books are beautifully written kids' fantasy novels that are just as entertaining for adults. They are super-clean without being cheesy, full of adventure and good v. evil clashes as well as ordinary human interaction made intriguing by his elegant style. Think I like 'em just a little?

Here is a summary of the story, and here is my nail art representation of it:

Index: Janner, the main main character, is a writer and Throne Warden responsible for the safety of his brother. I stamped BM's "love" image onto cream for this. Middle is Leeli, Janner's sister, blue for the sadness of being crippled by the enemy, vine's with lavender flowers for her crutch, and a musical note for her role as Song Maiden. Ring: Janner's brother Tink (Kalmar) is the young High King of Anniera and an artist, so here is a drawing of a tree with a calligraphy-style pen. My pinky is for Peet the Sockman, a homemade peach/nude polish topped with white and red stripes for the sock and a black V to represent the claws at the end of his arms. My thumb is symbolic of the powerful sea dragons.

And this hand: Cream with just the bottom portion of the "love" image for Oskar Reteep and his love of books/knowledge on my pinky. Ring: green and a muddy gold for the Fangs of Dang. Teal jelly and turquoise glitter sandwich stamped with waves for Janner's grandfather Podo, a salty old sailor. Index: royal blue with a (faint) crown for Janner's mother Nia, queen of the lost kingdom of Anniera. And lastly, cream with big pawprints for Leeli's pet and protector, Nugget.

 The sea dragon nail is my favorite. I love this Sinful Colors Kissy, an amazing teal loaded with turquoise glass flecks, topped with Color Club Worth the Risque, although the holo of this stamped image doesn't photograph well.

My least favorite is the "Nia nail". Kleancolor metallics are beautiful, but bleed/seep through any image stamped on them! The crown was originally gold, and I was so proud to get it centered well, but as soon as I topcoated, the crown faded. It's not a total loss, as I think the faded crown could represent the fact that Nia is queen of a country that no longer exists.

Wonka Nails!

Freehand nail art is generally above my pay grade, and there wasn't a snowball's chance in hell that anything I did was going to actually look like what it's supposed to represent. I was going to go really simple for Day 23: Inspired by a Movie. One of my favorite movies is Notting Hill, and I was going to use my delicious L'Oreal Notting Hill Blues and maybe just stamp some heart pattern over it.

But then I got to thinking how much my kids love Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, and how much more they'd enjoy seeing me represent it on my little canvases than they would some grown-ups' movie they don't know anything about. So, I busted my butt, painting non-stop for 1.5 hours to achieve this very amateur but very under-15-crowd-pleasing skittle mani:

left hand

right hand

Thumbs: an Oompa Loompa (w/ some serious glare!), and chubby Augustus Gloop, which may be my favorite for no better reason than I love how the hair and cheeks turned out!

 Left index and middle: Violet Beauregarde and a "bad egg" on the scale for Veruca Salt.

Left ring and pinky: Mike Teavee on Wonka Vision and Charlie Bucket burping his way down in the Bubble Room; I love that the holo showed up in both of these!

Right index and middle: you can see the lapels on Mr. Wonka's jacket, but the sun completely washed out his big lavender bowtie, and of course there's the edible teacup, and the chocolate waterfall. In retrospect, I should have texturized the grass, maybe with a reverse cling wrap and two shades of green?

Right ring and pinky: a sponged rainbow and BM-306 stamped image for all that CANDY, and the dorkiest representation ever of a famous golden ticket. I was trying to use a teeny strip from a catalog for words, and lined it up wrong so that all you get here is the measurement for a dadgum curtain!

These are nothing like all the amazing, lifelike portraits from so many nail artists out there, but I worked really hard and am pretty excited about these!

Self-Made Mani

Day 22 is Inspired by a Song.  I picked "Self-Made Trap" by the 77s, my favorite band of all time. I could gush for hours—days, maybe—about Mike Roe's genius, the double-edged sharpness of his word play, and his versatile voice. But this is not a blog devoted to the 77s. (I do feel it only does them justice to point out that their music pulled me through a couple of the darkest times of my life and renewed my hope and faith in God in really miserable circumstances.)

The song I chose is "Self-Made Trap" from the Pray Naked album, about all the ways we refuse to give up our sin and the guilt we experience rather than allowing God to free us from our crap. I struggle with this in a million ways every day, and this song helps me to see the truth and feel comforted, as well, remembering that my experience is common to the human race.

So, on to the nails! I chose as my base color Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Grey Area partly for the pun on the fact that there are no grey areas when it comes to sin, and partly because the greyish-brownish-purplish color, while beautiful, is also sort of dreary and well represents the theme. I stamped my pinky with a netting pattern for "tight nets, I weave all I can get", painted lips (kinda wonky ones) and stamped a key on my ring finger and freehanded steel stripes on my middle for "I grip the bars, swallow up the key", stamped barbed wire in silver on my index for "It's like serving time when there's none left", and lastly, for the last line "The die is cast, the word is no", I painted dice—notice that the two dice on each thumb add up to seven!

Here are the lyrics straight off the 77s' website:

Self-Made Trap

from the album "Pray Naked" (Mike Roe/Mark Harmon) i'll beat the rap for a self-made trap get all tied up in endless crap quicksand, i planned pitfalls, i dig 'em all self-made rope and self-made binds i'm all wrapped up in a sour grape vine a human web, i've spun every thread tight nets, i weave all i can get a rats maze wouldn't faze brick walls, i'm enthralled self-made traps, self-made snares handicaps and wheelchairs drown myself in rain, freeze myself in snow help comes fast, pride goes slow could be free if i choose born to win, dying to lose self-made twine, hand-made chains i'm all bound up and self-contained jail cells, i build well lions dens, i got a yen land mines, i design avalanche, i wouldn't blanch self-made traps, self-made snares handicaps and wheelchairs drown myself in rain, freeze myself in snow help comes fast, pride goes slow could be free if i choose born to win, dying to lose the warden comes to set me free i grip the bars, swallow up the key it's like serving time when there's none left on a fast train nowhere but we're not there yet the scenery moves the train stands still dungeon dark, i'll quench every spark a hangman's noose, never leave 'em loose self-made traps, self-made locks combinations i forgot for guards and gates i await i'm a natural born inmate could be free if i choose born to win, dyin' to lose lust came fast, love left slow the die is cast, the word is no © 1992 Fools Of The World, LTD. (ASCAP)

Blue Inspire Me!

Day 21 of the challenge is Inspired by a Color. Of course, I had to choose blue! Olivia actually came up with this design, based on a crackle glass bead necklace she inherited from my sis during a jewelry clean-out. (My girls love when Aunt Kristy sends them her jewelry cast-offs; my sis has really cool taste in accessories!) Here's the necklace:

Olivia picked my favorite shade of blue, and her idea was for me to do a jelly sandwich with my one crackle polish. I frankened a jelly with a random bottle of clear topcoat that came free with something or other and my Revlon Colorstay Indigo Night. The resulting color leaned a little more aqua than I wanted, and I will probably go back and jack it up with a dab of Maybelline Color Show Sapphire Siren. Anyway, I applied one coat of my jelly, which was a teeny bit streaky; I knew the crackle would cover it. I was glad I'd done test runs on a couple fingers, because I'd only used my Salon Perfect silver crackle once ever, and I found this blog post with really great detailed tips that helped me improve the bigger crackle effect I was going for. I applied one more coat of jelly; again, the crackle effect disguised any streakiness even though it was under the blue, and I did try to be a bit careful with application, too. This homemade blue jelly does self-level pretty well. No kudos to me; I just got lucky with my clear polish formula. I topped with a coat of Mmmn Nails blue-to-purple flakie, which is uber-subtle on this mani, but lent itself to the general crackle glass effect.

Olivia was pretty excited that I used her idea and that it turned out so well!

Day 20 Doover: STILL Not a Water Marble!

Doover: (DUUUver) smooshing-together of the words "do over". My kids hate getting back school papers that I tell them are doovers. After the stamp "marbling" fiasco, I decided I'd give water marbling another try. Oh, it was horrible. The agony! The ugliness! The mess! I think I figured out what's up, though. I swear to goodness, I think it's my dehumidifier!!!! Going to test that theory out in a couple days; I raised the indoor humidity level from 40% to 50%. We'll see...

In the meantime, I removed my two coats of Pure Ice white and the gunk from trying to water marble three nails at 10 pm Saturday night. I NEVER start doing my nails after 9:30, but I started all over after 10 o'clock and did these needle marble nails:

sunlight

crummy indoor shot

right thumb, one of my faves

 I used CG Fly, Pure Ice Hot Tamale, Wet 'n' Wild Bijou Blue, and NYC Purple Pizzazz Frost, which is not a frost but is actually a gorgeous deep purple-to-blue duochrome. All but Fly are the ones I'd wanted to use for the water marble, but I think this was pretty nice, too.

Oh, and then, OUCH! This is what happened the next morning:

 My first break since doing the treatment outlined at Nail Care HQ (but my own mix made from her recipe).

Here's a majorly overexposed shot of my nail after I repaired it with nail glue and a piece of silk wrap. I don't mind having to nubbinize because of a broken nail, but this one was into the quick, and I need it to grow out enough that I can cut it and still keep my finger protected! As long as I was doing that, I figured I'd just leave it the length it is for now...

A Different View of the Galaxy

I've already done galaxy nails twice, once before I started the blog and for my 2nd post. I was tempted to skip it for Day 19, but then I got to thinking. Surely, I thought, there has to be some other take on galaxy nails besides the black base color, sponging, and glitter. I was also ready for a palette cleanser of sorts, i.e. I didn't use any glitter for this look, so my nails felt silky smooth for the first time in a few weeks.

I decided on a different view of the galaxy, one from here on Earth! Each of my nails is painted with a different shade of blue to represent the sky at different times of the day. I won't bother to list the various polishes or stamp plate #s for this one, 'cuz I'm being lazy.  Here's the flash:

...and sunlight.

 My pinky is a blue sky with the sun's rays.

Ring finger: overcast/cloudy

 My middle finger represents the first few stars to show up at sunset.

Index: the sky is a much deeper blue, with a beautiful crescent moon and stars.

 And last, my thumb was a much deeper navy in RL, with planets, stars, and comets all showing clearly.

Although the stamping didn't take the level of effort that a typical galaxy mani might, I was proud to come up with something "outside the box" that, IMO, fits the bill for a galaxy theme!

Half-Moon Mani? Yes, Please!

I've seen plenty of well-executed half-moon nail art/manicures, but I was never really that excited about the look. Until I did this mani for Day 18! I had almost complete coverage with one coat of Finger Paints Tiffany Imposter, which was surprising for such a light colored creme, and I knew any tiny bald spots would be hidden by my glitter topper. I used paper reinforcements as my guide/masking tool and applied one coat of NYC Prince Street (that I got in a combo pack with Flat Iron Green at the $ store—that's 50 cent nail polish, people!) and removed each reinforcement as soon as I coated each nail with purple shimmery goodness.  When that was dry, I coated the whole thing with SillyLily FAB3. I didn't even know those beautiful turquoise diamonds were in there until one showed up on my nail! It took one coat of Gelous and two coats of NYC Grand Central Station to smooth things enough so that the diamonds didn't snag on clothes, etc., but I can live with that!

flash

 

indirect natural light

sunlight

Wow!