Day 9: Rainbow Nails

Day 9: Rainbow Nails!!

I am so excited about these puppies! I tried a rainbow mani a week or so ago when I sat down and tried to swatch several days, but it did not turn out well at ALL. I'm MUCH happier with this one!

This was actually so simple to do! I started with two coats of Sally Hansen Lavender Cloud. I dabbed each rainbow color onto a piece of paper and used a small paintbrush to draw lines about 3/4 up my nail. I did all of one color first so that my polish didn't get too dry while I was working.

Then I sponged a little more white over the top to obscure the tips of the lines a little bit. I used a white striper for the "rays of light" and a dotting tool for the stars. Finish with a coat of none other than China Glaze Fairy Dust and you're done!

Here are ALLLL the colors I used to make the rainbow gradient:

Sadly, stupid Seche shrunk this mani and it made me so sad. I tried to file down some of the shrinkage to make it less noticeable, and I think that helped... but SV, I am not pleased with you. Revlon is getting more attention now because you suck and ruin my hard work. >:[

So pleased with this one! I had hoped that would be the case -- I'm excited for this challenge because I will be doing things I don't normally do and expanding my horizons...yay!

Day 8 - Metallic Nails (Industrial Nails!)

Hello ladies! The theme for today is Metallic Nails.

I struggled back and forth on what constituted a "metallic" nail polish. All I have in my stash are foils...but alas, are foils and metallics the same thing? Is a foil a sub-category of metallic? I don't know either! So I figured this day was up for personal preference/interpretation.

Upon rummaging through mother's stash, I found some of the old Sally Hansen Chrome polishes. The silver one was the epitome of a "metallic nail polish" in my opinion, so that's what I settled on! The color is called Black Pearl Chrome and it looks lovely on me if I do say so myself! But I decided that this challenge was to improve my art skills, so naturally I had to add to it.  Upon searching images under "metallic" on ShutterStock, I found lots of pictures of various metals and industrial themes.

I decided on a sort of corrugated metal type pattern (I don't know what to call it?)

This was my inspiration:

I used plate BM-209 for the fence-like pattern, Sally Hansen Insta-Dry in Lightening and a black striper for the .... striped part. That was redundant. Haha

 

There's my metallic nails for ya! What do you all think of these?

Color Club Sugar Plum Yum

When I saw this polish at Sally's, I knew I had to have it.  It's one of my all time favorite color combinations - purple and green.  This is from their Scent-suous holiday collection and - as the name implies - they are scented polishes.

Sugar Plum Yum is a small green glitter with medium sized purple hex glitter.  It's very thick and clumpy and can be a little difficult to apply.  Instead of stroking it on your nails you have to kind of spread it out over the nail bed to get even coverage of the glitter and it works best if you layer it over a solid color.   The color I chose in these swatches is China Glaze Midnight Kiss - a gold foil from last year's holiday collection.  I did not apply a top coat because I did not want to mask or obscure the fragrance.

The fragrance reminds me a lot of Sweet Tarts and lasts for a couple days if you do not apply a top coat.  I actually quite enjoyed the scent and look of this one - it's very festive!  I'm just not looking forward to chiseling this off my nails! :)

Have a great day everyone!

Day 7: Black and White Nails (Tuxedos!)

 

Today's theme is Black and White nails! I'm pretty proud of these puppies.

I wanted to do a black and white mani that wasn't your traditional pattern -- no checkerboards, zebra stripes, etc. So guess what I did? Yep. Googled "things that are black and white." I'm like a child. The options that immediately peaked my interest were penguins, yin yans, dominoes, bar codes, and tuxedos. I'd seen tuxedo nails before and thought they would be the cutest! Although... I don't know who originated this idea so if any of you do let me know! I want to give credit where credit is due.

I just used Pure Ice's Super Star for my base and created a V-french with a simple black Kiss striper. I made the bow ties with a dotting tool and teeny tiny paintbrush (couldn't get my lines as sharp as I wanted) and finally added on the buttons with a small dotting tool and black polish. Pretty simple!

I love these cute tuxedos. I left this on for three days! That's a long time for me. And I got SO many compliments on it from total strangers! That always makes me feel good :)

Have a lovely day everybody!

Day 6: Violet Nails

Today's 31-Day Challenge theme is violet nails!

I started with two coats of an unnames mini Funky Fingers lavender polish and topped it with the best purple topper -- Jesse's Girl Confetti! Confetti turns everything into an amazeballs magical blueish purple color! I love it.

Tomorrow starts the actual nail art of the 31 Day Challenge! Who's excited? *Raises hand* Me, me, me!!