Week 35 - Inspired by Food

So two things:
1) I trimmed my nails completely a few days ago because a some fingers were getting thin, bendy, and/or peely. Also, it was getting troublesome to type on my keyboard at work, so off with their heads!
2) I finally got a hold of some cuticle oil/butter from Lush and some proper Biotin vitamins. More about this in a post to follow.
3) I've been waiting so long for this theme and sushi nails had to happen!

Super adorbz.

I love how these came out and they were a lot of fun to actually do. The wasabi and the thumb roll are my favorites. Also, lol @ scandalous tuna sushi's "come hither" expression. I did follow this excellent tutorial by Miss Rainyday pretty closely, which can be found here!

The jist of things is to paint your thumb nail the dark color, your index, middle, and ring fingers white, and then your pinky finger green. The fish pieces themselves are pretty straight forward. The dotting for the eyes and the eye lashes were actually the most challenging part of this mani because you had to be really precise with your placement, application of pressure, and how much polish is actually on the brush (don't want to glob it all on there). 

Again, this has been really fun to wear and its gotten me compliments from friends and strangers alike! 

Look at my white polish, all battle-hardened. It's seen some action, man, and it doesn't want to talk about it.

Dotting tool
Angled thin brush (needs to be cleaned but eh)
CG's Glittering Garland
CG's Entourage
Essie's muchi, muchi
SC's Let's Meet
Orly's Peachy Parrot
Zoya's Kelly
CG's Red Pearl
CG's White on White

Week 33 - Orange

This week's theme was an excuse to do an other My Little Pony inspired manicure! Of course I went with Applejack.

Aaand this is what I came up with:

Her freckles made me want to do polka dots! I tried doing the darker orange as the base with the lighter orange as the polka dots, but it just didn't look right so I took it off. One thing I dont' care for though - I did a coat of Shine of the Times over the pointer, index, and pinky fingers to try and spice things up. I don't think it really added anything to the manicure though, and if anything, made it look less smooth and uniform. Also, the middle finger got a bit goofed... I think due to shrinkage caused by Seche Vite, as it may not have been quite dry enough when I applied the top coat... or maybe I bumped something, who knows! 

This was also the first time I tried the "make your own nail stickers" technique. I did this for the apples and the bow. For those not familiar, what you do is take a ziploc plastic bag and draw your design (in my case, apples and a bow) in polish onto a side of the baggie. Let it dry completely. Then peel off your design (it comes off easily) and place onto a tacky-wet base color with tweezers. And voila!

Since it was orange week, I went ahead and did a solid application of the darker orange I had used for dotting. It was pretty pretty on its own! Excuse the tip wear, it had been a few days and it really did hold up well overall. 

All in all, I was pleasantly surprised by Sinful Colors. I had made an emergency run to Target for this mani and couldn't spend much. At $2 a pop, SC has been a little hit-or-miss for me in the past, but these two oranges worked out quite nicely.

Orly's Lucky Duck

CG's Red Pearl
Sinful Colors' Cloud 9  (orange)
Sinful Colors' Let's Meet  (light orange)
Essie's Shine of the Times

Week 32 - Flowers

Flowers! So many possibilities for this challenge... it was a bit overwhelming. I went through three other design ideas before I settled on cherry blossom nails (since I was going to sushi later that day). I had wanted to try something new, but was fine revisiting this design using all-different colors from my previous mani.

I started with my pinky and worked my way left.

My thumb came out as my favorite. :)

And here is what I used for painting, dotting, and clean-up. The two Essie's are new and I really liked them. I've had the China Glaze for a little while but have never used it before now... and Elsbeth's Rose is an old favorite - it is so easy to stamp, dot, and generally work with.

Essie's Muchi, Muchi (light pink)
Essie's Mink Muffs (brown)
CG's Re-fresh Mint
Orly's Elsbeth's Rose

Week 27 - Easter

In the shade

In the sun

Conversation between my husband and I:
"Man, I don't know what I'm supposed to do for Easter nails. I don't celebrate it, I hate pastels, and I won't force myself into drawing eggs and/or bunnies."
"Hm ... So do zombie nails?"
"... but of course!"

...And that is all I will say about this week's theme. Although I do think its kind of weird that it's this week and not next week, seeing as Easter Sunday is April 8th.

From left to right:
Orly's Here Comes Trouble
Essie's Sew Psyched
Essie's A Cut Above the Rest
CG's Glittering Garland
CG's Red Pearl

I started with two coats of Sew Psyched and added one light coat of the green Orly glitter, Here Comes Trouble. For the red splatter: I took a straw, dipped it into Red Pearl's polish well, aimed it over the nail and PUFFED. For the zombie ichor, I took a toothpick dipped in Glittering Garland and pressed it/dripped it randomly here and there. I didn't want to risk overwhelming the blood splatters.

For the brain gore-chunks, I brushed a random streak of pink glitter, A Cut Above, and set a light-pink rhinestone (brainssss) some where in the glitter trail.

In-doors, pre-clean up

This PC picture was taken with my hubby's iPhone (because I'd left my camera's SD card at work). I think it really adds to the effect!  You can see the crazy red splatter, and my initial attempts at doing dark green splatter before I realized I'd rather do it manually.

Week 23 - Spring (March 6, 2012)

Zoya's Bevin
Zoya's Cho
Essie's Little Brown Dress
CG's White on White

My take on a cherry blossom tree manicure. Mostly because I wanted an excuse to use Zoya's Bevin and Cho together - this manicure idea was half the reason I bought them. <3

Ignore the rain drops!

Background teal-blue- Zoya's Bevin
Branches- Essie's Little Brown Dress
Blossom petals- Zoya's Cho
Blossom center- China Glaze's White on White

Week 22 - Inspired by a Flag (February 27, 2012)

British Columbia has the weirdest flag, I dont even know. But I did have fun!This was all free-handed. Got to use my nail art brushes all legit-like to make the union jack and first time doing french tips with regular scotch tape (they turned out pretty okay).

Oh, and if you think my ring-finger sun looks a little wonky, just take a closer look at the flag... I was just trying to be true to the source material - *cough cough*.

Blue - Essie's Aruba Blue
Red - China Glaze's Red Pearl
White - China Glaze's White on White
Yellow - Orly's Hook Up

Week 18 - Inspired by a Movie or TV show

Sorry for the condensed format! I initially threw this together to make posting it on Facebook easier and in one piece.

Direct link to a bigger and better quality picture here: http://i.imgur.com/fxvOv.jpg

Farscape nails! Since its sort of niche, I thought I'd provide a brief (and informative) collage so that you'd know what's what.

Farscape aired from March 1999 to Oct 2004. I remember watching it every Friday night with my dad, so there a lot of good memories tied to this show. Bought the whole series and am making Jacob watch it with me! As of painting this, we're on season 1 and almost on season 2. There were a few other characters I wanted to include (namely, John Crichton, the main character) but alas, not enough fingers on my left hand...

Peacekeeper thumb
China Glaze's White on White
OPI's What's a Tire Jack?
China Glaze's Red Pearl

Zhaan index
Base is Orly's Sweet Peacock
Sides - Nina Ultra Pro's Big Spender
Very light overall application of China Glaze's Blonde Bombshell

D'argo middle
Base is Orly's Act Your Shoe Size
Tattooing is Zoya's Kelly

Rygel ring
Base is Zoya's Jem
Green is OPI's Leaf Him At The Altar
Gold is Nina Ultra Pro's Big Spender

Chiana pinky
Base is China Glaze's Sea Spray
Sponging light silver is China Glaze's Platinum Silver
Sponging dark silver is Zoya's Freja

Right hand - Moya
Orly's Fowl Play
with Essie's Shine of the Times on the ring finger only

Week 10 - Winter (December 5, 2011)

Winter makes me think of how it gets dark early in the evening, so for Week 10's theme I went for a clear, dark, night sky.

Dark blue - Essie's Aruba Blue
Sparkle blue star trails - China Glaze Dorothy Who?
Black - Sinful Colors Secret Admirer + 1 coat of China Glaze Fairy Dust

Dorothy Who? is a lovely blue glitter that I used for the star tails (just free-handed it with the polish brush). The stars themselves are stickers, and only the thumb and ring finger got rhinestone ones. The accent finger is Secret Admirer, a really pretty black polish loaded with silver micro glitter. To emphasize the fully starry night effect, I added a coat of CG's Fairy Dust, a super dense holo-micro glitter polish in a clear base.

Sorry for the blurriness. I took this on my cell phone at the time. It then got slightly corrupted uploading to Facebook and then being re-saved to my desktop a few months later.