31dnac day 4: Garland on a tree!

Hello Friends! Auto posting didn't work! So you're getting this a day late, sorry. I'll double up on one of my later posts. I stopped trying to remove the nails from the sticks at this point, and so from here on out all of the manis will still be stuck on the sticks. Today's mani was inspired by garland on trees. This was originally going to be my yellow post because I had no inspiration. Then the yellow inspiration hit and I changed it. Sadly you didn't get to see my actual mani for yellow, but that's okay. The following is 3 coats of China Glaze Winter Holly and then I used the spun sugar method with Color Club Daisy Does It. The strands turned out a little thick, but otherwise it's a neat effect. There hasn't been sun for DAYS so I couldnt capture the speckled goodness.

Enjoy!

Have a safe day!!

31dnac Day 3: Yellow

Hello! Quick post for today as I am super tired and it's the week before finals and I am swaaammmppped with homework. My nails for this actual challenge were utterly destroyed, so again you get a swatch I have sitting around in my file o' photos. Below is two coats of Sinful Colors Pull Over, which I bought because I was hoping it was similar to Cult Nails' Feel Me Up not sure it is exact but it satisfied my lemming!!

 It's my new favorite yellow!!!

Hope you have a great day!

31dnac Day 2: Orangaments!

Hello! I'm still sad about the nails, but I managed to save today's nails! I took these pics yesterday when I was still sad, but they turned out ok...ish... I love these nails in real life. I was trying to figure out how to make orange nails christmas-y, and I google image searched and came up with a vector of an ornament which I found here. I can't show you an actual picture without buying the stock, but if you click you can see the picture.So this is inspired by an oranament! an Orangament! lol.


Tiny Note: These are on false nails...see this post to read more about it.

Aren't they cute?! Starting from the lightest color, I sponged the ever infamous Fingerpaints Lemon Sour in the corner, then I used Essie Fear or Desire to start the gradient, working in a semi circle around the corner of the nail. After that I used Essie Orange, it's obvious! using the same technique and ending with OPI Chop-sticking to My Story. At the end I had a perfect gradient on my sponge lol. If you want I can try and do a tutorial. Let me know in the comments!

 For the stars I used Milani White on the Spot and BM 14 to stamp stars repeatedly all over the nail. I think this mani would look great in any color! Blue or purple would be really pretty! OOH Lavender with black?!?! *wheels are turning*

To make this more Christmas-y you could do a green gradient with gold stars, or if you have many shades of red (which I do) that would also be pretty with either gold or silver stars.

What do you think? My yellow nails got completely destroyed, but I have a plan for tomorrow. I'll see you then!! Also, I'm going to start posting not blog-worthy pics of things on my facebook page  and I really want to start interacting with my readers more. So feel free to post pics of your manis or tweet me!

I'm Depressed!! 31dnac

Hello Friends. If you're in the PAA Facebook group you may already know this. But I spent the vast majority of November knee deep in polish making 31 sets of 5 false nails to do my SECOND attempt at the 31 days of nail art challenge. Every set was not only the theme from the challenge, but also Christmas themed. Well long story short, the glue I used to put the false nails on sticks so I could paint them more easily was too strong, and I can't get them off the stick. I tried acetone, but I'm afraid of melting the nail also. At this point I have 25 sets done and I was about to do day 26 today but I don't know at this point. I'm gonna try and salvage as many as I can. I completely ruined the red nails (which is fine, it was just a ruffian with OPI Goldeneye and The Spy Who Loved Me,which I can recreate if anyone wants me to), but I did manage to save the orange nails, and I ruined some of the yellow nails, which were ugly anyway. I stopped there. I may end up just showing them on the sticks in some sort of pretty way. I haven't decided. Would you guys be okay with that? I spent a lot of time on these and I don't want to just throw them away.

So instead of any Christmas themed nail art, today I will show you a crappy swatch of China Glaze Bend Over Backwards  from the Cirque de Solei collection. It's still red!!!

Why yes, that is upside down. It's kinda trippy...made me laugh anyway.

Macro shot of the beautiful shimmer in this polish that my regular swatches didn't capture.

Why yes, that is polish on my cuticle. This is me caring about it. -_-

 I HATE this polish in the lighting of my house. The light in my house is VERY yellow. But looking at this in white light and outdoors it is very pretty. This is two coats I believe.

Sorry if I seemed down, or short, but it's very disappointing to me right now.

Anything like this ever happen to you?

Have a happy 1st of December!

Challenge Day 30: Copying the Copy Cat

 Hello Ladies! Today my mani was inspired by this YouTube tutorial. If you don't follow CopyThatCopyCat's blog you should! She does some really amazing nail art! On to the mani!

Remember my last post where I said that that was after a long day of swatching? Yeah this was after that...enough said...

I used Deborah Lippman Almost Paradise for the base, Wet N Wild Black Creme for the heart, and white paint for the lace and dots.

You cant see the lace too well on this pictures, but you can in real life. I have no idea why I look so red...lol.

What's your favorite YouTube tutorial?

Challenge Day 24: Perfect!...well not really.

 Hello Friends! Today I'm bringing you nail art inspired by my one of my favorite authors Ellen Hopkins. The books are written in poetry form and talk about topics such as: drug abuse, depression, suicide, prostitution and body image. You can find out more about the books here. To some it might sound like they would be boring and hard to read because of the poetry part, but it's really not. I would recommend them to anyone! Anyway, here's the cover that inspired me:

I really want to go re-read these books. My favorite of the bunch is Identical and I wish I could tell you why, but it gives the whole book away. Let's just say, I'm a psychology major...lol.

I thought I recreated it fairly decently!

This was done after a long day of swatching so excuse the mess. I started with a base of Milani White on the Spot and then sponged China Glaze Sweet Hook , Sinful Colors Paradise, and Essie No More Film. 

I put a layer of seche vite down, then I wrote the word "Perfect" and the swirls with a striping brush and No More Film and then took a qtip dipped in remover and dabbed the letters, my goal was to make them look like a water color, but it didn't work.

Finally I used Wet N Wild Megalast in Through the Grapevine mixed with remover again and dabbed that around the letters. 

Dwindling down!

Have you read any of Ellen Hopkins' Books? What's your favorite? Are you gonna pick any of her books up now? I'm excited for her new releases!!!

Challenge day 23: Twinkle Twinkle Little Bat!

 Hello Ladies! Did you get what movie I'm doing from the title? Yes! It's Alice in Wonderland! The original cartoon one for those who didn't click the link. When you google search Alice in Wonderland nail art you usually come up with some really cool card-based or clock-based nail art, which is understandable. I decided to do something different and I was inspired by the dormouse and his song:

Twinkle Twinkle Little Bat,

How I wonder what you're at!

Up above the world you fly,

like a teatray in the sky!

When you google search search "Dormouse Alice in Wonderland" you come up with this image which is what inspired me to do this:

SQUEE. It turned out so much better than I had ever hoped it would. And it also took me 2.5 hours to do this. On one hand. I can imagine how horrific it would have looked on the other hand.

I started out with a black base and used a no-name purple, revlon royal, and white (in random orders) to make the galaxy-esque background. Then added the stars and fireworks with a brush and a dotting tool with Milani White on the spot, Sally Hansen Insta-dri Express-so yellow, and China Glaze Aquadelic.

If you want to know a specific color on the dormouse just ask, because I must have used at least 12. I used a scraggly hair on one of my brushes to outline him. It was not fun. Just as a tip for you nail art fiends, I put a layer of seche vite between Mr. Mousey and my background in case I messed up, and when I took this off it  he came off completely separately from my background, so my idea worked!

I'm proud of my Alice in Wonderland nails! Have you ever done them?

Hope you have a great day!!!!

Challenge Day 26: Inspired by Icat...er...ikat

Hello friends! Today I have some super fun inspired nails to show you. As usual, I was wandering around pinterest when I saw this post and I just had to recreate it. It is in french but when you translate it, it says that she copied these. But first! what is Ikat? I had never heard of it before. You can read this wiki or the tldr is that its a dye process that is similar to tie dye but uses a resist agent instead of string or rubber bands to create patterns. 

Here are some examples in furniture and fashion: (taken from this google search and put into a picmonkey.com collage)

Now! Onto my mani!

Agh, I forgot I had taken off my ring because my hands were swollen (damn heat) ignore that! I need to work on my hand modelling....

For my base I used Zoya Wednesday which did not photograph the correct color. I much prefer this color! lol. But there it is.

For the spotted areas I used Sally Hansen Ink Splatter a black cracking, China Glaze Lightning Bolt, a white crackle, and Sinful Colors Fusion Neon. Plus I think I used black acrylic for the middle dot.

I also tried it over OPI If You Moust You Moust, with Wednesday in place of the neon and I used black and white acrylic paint instead of the crackle. I liked the way that looked better, but I did not take pictures.

What do you think? Do you like trying to recreate looks that other people do? Or even other companies, for example recreating nail wraps? They can be kind of expensive.

Happy Sunday!

31 Days of Nail art challenge: RAINBOW DOTS OF DOOM!!!

Hello my dear friends. If you are on the PAA Facebook group page (which I suspect most of you are and if you aren't then yay!!!), you have already seen this mani!!! I'm gonna keep it short and sweet today because I'm watching old episodes of Stormchasers on netflix and finishing crocheting a purse. If you want me to post pictures of my purse when it's done let me know!

Dotty goodness. My base is Sinful Colors What's your name? and I used Milani White On The Spot to dot rows in a diagonal manner.

Over the top of the dots I used China Glaze Surfin' for boys,Orange you hot?, Celtic Sun, which for some reason doesn't show up, and Surfin' for Boys Super glows...I don't get it lol. Next is China Glaze In the Limelight, Splish Splash, and finally Sinful Colors Dream on. I loved this and I think I wore it for 3 days. Which is unheard of for me.

This was before I changed my nail shape I think. I apologize for the ugly cuticle mess. Black is hard to get off and my brush is terrible.

Hope you all have a great day!

Challenge day 26: Inspired by Fashion!!

Hello Friends!!!! Today I have for you a Betsey Johnson inspired nail look. As many of you may have heard, Betsey Johnson has gone out of business, which makes me sad because I never could buy any of the clothes because they are too small to fit my body!! But I love the way they look and this dress is right up my alley. So, I did nail art to (kinda) match!!

Here is the dress:

I linked to this above, but it just takes you to pinterest, where I found the image. Does anyone read these?

Isn't it adorable? I want it sooooo bad. And Here is my mani!

Yaggghhh! It's so cute!!! I wish I would have put the actual bow up a little bit higher, but still...super cute!!!

For my base I used Nicole by OPI Paparazzi Don't Preach and Orly Nite Owl in a ruffle mani (pics down below) I almost died just at that part. With a little more practice it would have been perfect! I wish I had a lighter shade of tan or a nude to make the dots to recreate the colors from the dress more, but this works out too.

After that was dry I used CND Guava to create a bow across my fingers and then outlined it in an Orly instant artist striper brush (btw did you know that these are just paint? waste o' money, good thing I got it free). Finally added Seche Vite.

Here is the ruffle mani without the bows. I like this better, but both looks are super cute.

Here it is in the shade. 

18 more challenges left!!! I better get going! lol.

Do you like to wear ruffle manis? the last one I tried was horrible.... Inky Whiskers said on one of my blog posts that she tried to do a scallop mani and it didn't work out for her. Dotting in a straight line on a curved "canvas" is difficult. I find myself wanting to follow the shape of my nail, or avoiding my cuticle.

Challenge day 13: It kinda counts!

Hello my friends! Today I have deemed animal print day. I did not want to do traditional animal prints, just like most of the other bloggers I have seen do this challenge. So what did I do? Koi print! I imagined that it was like taking a fabric that had animals on it (technically would be a print no?) and slapping it on my nails. I originally saw a similar design on google and found it here. I don't know how I found it, but I did. I did this once where I used a more water-esque type background. Also, I filed my nails into a slightly different shape, and this is the longest I've had my nails in...honestly I think ever. I'm trying to see how long I can go without a break. I had a minor one on my right hand but that's while I rounded out my nails more. Kind of hard to tell on my middle and ring fingers because they are so wiiiiide.

I used Essie Turquoise and Caicos for the base color. On top of that I sponged a whole lot of teal-y seafoam-y typeish green blues that I have. I have 17 different ones....I honestly can't remember which. I think I used: Julep Daphne, Zoya Wednesday, Essie Mint Candy Apple, and....one other one...maybe not. eek. Bad blogger is bad.

For the Koi I used a white acrylic paint, black acrylic paint, Essie Action, Essie Orange, it's obvious! , and China Glaze Orange you hot? Ha the big koi on my pointer finger is all bug eyed. He's my new friend Krazy Eye. Say hello!

Here's a picture with Mr. Thumb fish and his cut off friends. This was my favorite one. Sadly, I did not take a better picture.

And as a super bonus! on the Polish-aholics Anonymous facebook group page we were talking about what brings traffic to our blogs. My most common search was Essie Action vs China Glaze Orange you hot? and the other two compared to Essie Orange, it's obvious! So, I did a swatch-y swatch on my nail wheel!

From L-R China Glaze Orange you hot?,  Essie Action, then Essie Orange, it's obvious! Two coats, no top coat. As you can see the China Glaze is just a tad lighter than Action and has shimmer and Action dries to a pure matte finish whereas the China Glaze has more of a plastic-y finish. and Orange, it's obvious! is darker and less yellow. I wanted to to include Essie Fear or Desire but forgot. But that color is somewhere in between, leaning more towards the China Glaze and Action.

Another one bites the dust! Do you like Koi? Every time I see them I think of the bridge at the koi pond at Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo where everyone throws the food in and watches them fight over it. They are some crazy fish.

What is your favorite animal or animal print to paint on your nails?