Day 13: Animal Print

Hello ladies!

I struggled with what to do for animal print for a long time. I didn't really want to do one of your traditional animal prints (zebra, leopard, giraffe etc) but I couldn't find any inspiration for anything else. So today's post won't be as exciting as some ;)

I started with a base of Sinful Mint Apple which is a beautiful ... mint color. You guys should know by now that I suck at describing colors. Just trust me. ANYWAY, color is beautiful, but if you guys have seen my first post about it (I won't link it because it was one of my very first posts and it's horrible), my bottle of this has a HORRIBLY wonky brush on it. I took out the brush of a Sinful top coat I have and used that instead, but it made the consistency kind of weird on the first couple coats of color. Oh well, I got it evened out eventually :) My rant on this color chipping on me after 12 hours is a whole 'nother post.

Then I sponged on Essie French Affair lightly to give it some KAPOW! Stamped with Sinful White on White and plate m78. Then.....yes, I added some China Glaze Fairy Dust. (Hi, my name is Amanda and I'm addicted to Fairy Dust.)

Ta-da!

The most perfect autumn red - Wet 'n' Wild Burgundy Frost

This one's a beaut, ladies.

It's Wet 'n' Wild Burgundy Frost. But don't let the term "frost" scare you away from this one. It's not frosty at all! It's the prettiest deep, shimmery metallic-ish red. This color is AWESOME... definitely one of my favorites. I wore this a lot last year after I got it. It's so great for autumn and winter. This would look great with China Glaze Party Hearty on top of it. It's seriously Christmas-red.

Application on this was great too. This is two coats. Mine was a little on the watery side, but nothing I couldn't deal with. These polishes dry fast as well! The only thing I don't like is that they seem to chip rather quickly on me.

I really need to learn when to leave things alone. On day two, I added a simple leopard print to it. I've been in a nail art rut lately, and animal prints are my go-to design when I can't think of anything else. I suppose it doesn't look bad, it just detracts from the beauty of this color.

We'd also like to take a moment to answer one of our most often asked questions -

Who is madmanis?

The answer is, it's an acronym.  mad = Mother and Daughter and manis = manicures.

That's all for today. Do you love this red as much as we do? Let us know in the comments!

-Amanda

Fairy Zebra!

Hello lovelies!

I started with two coats of Sally Hansen Delphinium. The polish was pretty sheer on the first coat but after another thick coat was opaque. It's a really pretty dusty lavender.

 

Then I stamped over it with plate BM223 and Konad special polish in white. I think I like this zebra print more than the Konad one. Topped with two coats of China Glaze Fairy Dust and a coat of Seche Vite.

Very subtle but pretty! I'm digging this one :)

Neon Leopard

Quick post for today..I did this last night at like 12am, and I can't say that I was really happy with it, but I decided to post it anyway. I don't know who came up with this design but I've seen it floating around for a while now. I just used a base of Sinful Snow Me White and made the spots with China Glaze Lemon Fizz, Sinful 24/7 and China Glaze For Audrey. I actually ended up taking this off the same night...one of those nights where you aren't happy with anything. I'll have a 4th of July mani for you guys soon though :)

 

-Amanda

Guess we're on an animal print roll...

I started off with 2 coats of Wet 'n' Wild's Inferno. Inferno is part of the brand's Craze line. They're in the wee little bottles! Application on this one was a BREEZE... I love it when $2 polishes act like $8 polishes :) I didn't get any pics of just the base color...stupid me. But then I sponged Wet 'n' Wild's Everybody Loves Redmond and 9.0.2.1. Orange on top of the base color...an idea I saw on Emily's Nail Files! Go look at her tutorial, it's awesome. I only applied the tiger stripes to the tips of my nails though.

 

Then I decided to put some matte top coat over it, because I thought it would make it look like fur (? ... I don't know, it made sense in my head) and all I can say is, someone really needs to teach me when to use matte top coat because everytime I decide to pull it out and use it I end up putting it on something that doesn't need it. BAH!

That's all for today, have a nice night :)

-Amanda

Sinful Unicorn Errr.. Giraffe

Oh yellow nail polish!  You are so lovely and summery yet so temperamental and streaky!  I want to love you, but you do not return my affection.

I started with...  get ready for it...  4 coats of Sinful Colors Unicorn.  I knew I was going to need multiple coats so I waited till I could really take my time with the application.  Unicorn is patchy and streaky - pretty typical for most yellow polishes.  If you're planning on using Unicorn, be prepared to invest some time into it as it's going to take multiple coats to become opaque.  Even after 4 coats I still had some dragging and patchiness.  The pics make me look like I have lobster hands.  My camera was doing some funky color correct as it focused - my hands are not red as the pics make them look.

There is a BM plate that is a giraffe pattern, but I measured it and discovered that it's so small it only fits my pinky fingers.  So I knew I was going to have to free hand this design.  I decided to go with an acrylic paint for the giraffe spots because I knew it was going to be tedious work and I wanted something that would cover completely and dry fast.  Plus, I didn't have any dark brown polish.  I just made little random geometric shapes with a small nail brush and brown acrylic paint.  Sorry for the pic spam!

I call these...my diva nails

Hello! This not having a job thing sure leaves me a lot of time to do my nails...

These are definitely my "diva" nails. They're funky and sparkley and in your face and I think I really like them!

I started off by painting just the tips of my nails with Pure Ice's Super Star which is a really good white polish given the price. I only needed two coats to get it opaque! I applied SV over the white and waited a good 15 minutes, then taped off a diagonal on my nail with Scotch tape. I used Milani Purple Gleam over the tape to create the diagonal, applied more SV and waited another 10-15 minutes. Finally I taped off the opposite side of my nail and used the zebra print Konad plate in black special polish. Some of the tape lifted off when I was putting the purple on so I decided to use a silver striper to cover that up. I am so sneaky :)

Whad'ya think? Yay? Nay? I think these are so FIERCE! Rawr

-Amanda

Blue Wet n Wild Leopard

Now that I'm home from school, I have a lot of time to do fun manis and get good pictures! I actually got the mini set of the OPI Pirates collection yesterday, but for some reason I wanted to use an untried.

I dug into my stash and decided to use Wet 'n' Wild's Blue Wants to be a Millionaire. On my swatch wheel this one looks very sparkly and opaque, however it took me three coats just to get it to the opacity you see here. Even then you can still see some vnl. It IS pretty though -- it has a subtle holo effect but it was hard for me to capture it, so just trust me on this one. Here is three coats of Blue Wants to be a Millionaire:

I then pulled out my trust Konad plate (m57) and used the leopard print on it. I love this pattern - it's probably the one I use most when I decide to stamp. So I stamped over the blue with regular Sinful black polish (which works pretty well actually!). I then filled in some of the little leopard spots with various blue polishes -- Sally Hansen Blue Me Away, China Glaze First Mate and Wet 'n' Wild Rain Check. Here is the final product, which I'm really digging!

It's in your face, but whatever. I'm going to get my share of obnoxious manis before I get a big-girl job and can't anymore :(

Hope everyone has a wonderful day! It's finally pretty out here in Indy! :)

-Amanda