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