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

Orly Lunar Eclipse Cosmic Leopard

I've been really uninspired for my manis lately - partly because I haven't been feeling well.  But I think I like this one.

This is 3 coats of Orly Lunar Eclipse from their Cosmic FX collection.  The bottle color is a deep indigo blue/violet with very subtle blue and pink sparkle.  The color translates pretty accurately to the nail.  It went on very smooth, leveled well and I did not have any issues with dry time.

Once it was dry I stamped over it with the Konad leopard plate using Sally Hansen Silver Sweep and filled in the dots with Studio M Frenzy.  Here is the finished mani.

Oh, and one more thing - GO BRUINS!  :-)

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