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.

A-Week 2012 - March 18-24

Yay! It's that time of year again!

A-Week is short for "Atheist Week", and it is 7-days out of the year in March where self-identifying non-religious folk change their FB status (or something similar) to raise awareness and visibility of those who are "Good without gods."

While this is mostly an online/FB thing, I've been looking forward to this particular manicure since I started the hobby in October/November 2011. I am a fan of the Hester Prynne-vibe.

Oh, and sorry for the glossiness. It was overcast when I took this and even then, the gloss was impossible to escape. What's a Tire Jack is just SO glossy, even before the Seche Vite top-coat.

Black is OPI's What's a Tire Jack?
Red stylized A is Zoya's Sooki
Red Glitter tips are Orly's Star Spangled

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 20 - Valentines Day (February 13, 2012) and Review of CG's "Go Go Pink"

Second time dotting, first time stamping. My Hot Chocolate polka dots are supposed to bring to mind a box of chocolate, and for the record, it is THE PERFECT milk chocolate color. My first time using this color and I am so pleased.

And let the records show that Elsbeth's Rose transfers beautifully as a stamping polish. My first stamping success!

Review for China Glaze's Go Go Pink.

Color Family: Pink
Color Finish: Cream

First time using this beautiful pale cream pink that I got from a swap. When the bottle arrived, I was initially annoyed that a fair amount had been used up already (while the bottle I traded was completely brand new; an accidental extra). But it all made sense once I sat down to use it.

Application was a pain. It took at least five coats on each finger to get this level of opacity, something that really surprised me from China Glaze as their formulas are usually opaque in three coats or less, easy. In addition to being sheer, it was stubbornly streaky and took forever to dry between coats.

Once you get past the application, the color itself is gorgeous. I'm not sure if its from all the coats I used to reach opacity, but it ended up feeling delightfully squishy, as if gel.

Over all, I would give this color a 3.5 out of 5.0. While the end result is arguably worth it - you'd never guess it was such a pain in the butt to work with - I'm sure there are plenty of other pale pink creams out there with much easier application. I don't want to end up using 1/4 of the bottle every time I feel like a light pink manicure.

Application: 2 of 5
Color Intensity (Initial): 2 of 5
Color Intensity (Final): 5 of 5
Color Tone: Cool

Additional Comments: Streaky, Inefficient, Sheer, but you'd never know if all you saw was the final result.

Overall Score: 3 of 5

Week 17 - Red (January 23, 2012)

So this week's theme is Red, but all I really wanted to do was find some way to try my new bottle of Champagne Bubbles. I had some neat taping ideas that ended up looking weird in practice, so after an hour or two I said "screw it" and just did a simple red mani with Champagne Bubbles as the accent finger. I dressed it up a little with some nail stickers. I do really like this red (Star Spangled), the micro-glitter is really dynamic. The picture doesn't do it much justice; it reminds me of Dorothy's ruby slippers.


Champagne Bubbles is lovely too! You can't see it in this picture, but its a shimmery golden-yellow with tiny, sparse silver microglitter - aka, the bubbles!

Week 12 - Christmas (December 19, 2011)

Too many colors to name them all.

This one was pretty cute to wear! Lots of colors, lots of fun. Also first time using Orly's Sweet Peacock (pinky) and Fowl Play (ornaments, ring finger), which I got from a swap.

All went well, except the green I used on my middle finger ended up staining my nail yellow. :[ It was also really really thin and would smudge/wrinkle if you even looked at it wrong. I lost count of how many times I had to completely redo it. That green turned me of off Sinful Colors for awhile, but I've since learned that any green, regardless of brand, will stain my nails in spite of a base coat present.Will post the name when I get home and can look it up.

Week 11 - Violet (December 12, 2011)

Inspiration: My Little Pony's Twilight Sparkle! ♥♥

CG's Coconut Kiss
SC's Bali MistOrly's Elsbeth's RoseCG's Platinum Silver

I've been waiting soo long to do a MLP-inspired manicure, and this week's Violet theme provided the perfect excuse.


I did two coats of Coconut Kiss on each finger. Then I did a centered taping of Bali Mist, which is really sheer on its own and looks lovely over the dark purple. I then applied two coats of Bali Mist over my ring finger and free-handed the cutie mark with a brush and Elsbeth's Rose. I then used a striping tool for the Platinum Silver on each finger. 



Ponies are so boss.

Week 9 - Rainbow (November 28, 2011)

Purple, China Glaze's Coconut Kiss
Red, China Glaze's Red Pearl
Orange, China Glaze's Japanese Koi (Neon)
Yellow, Orly's Hook Up
Green China Glaze's In The Limelight (Neon)

I painted all of my nails white and then cut thin strips of tape to lay over each nail at random. Then I painted over with one layer of a color and then lifted off the tape.This one did not turn out like I had imagined in my mind because I did not have proper tape for this style of taping. I used regular scotch tape and cut each piece various sizes of thinness. However, the chemicals in the polish ate at and weakened the tape so that when I tried to pull it up, it would instantly break as if brittle. I ended up tweezering the tape off, bit by bit, and getting polish everywhere on my other hand.

Though I didn't know it at the time, what I needed was tape more resilient, like blue painter's tape or those fancy shiny nail strips.

Week 7 - Inspired by a Tutorial (November 16, 2011)

My first ever "nail art", this week's challenge was to make yourself try something new, fun, and challenging! This is the second manicure I had ever given myself, so it's a little rough around the edges, but all around not too shabby! I had no toothpicks or dotting tools, so I had to make due with... I don't remember what. But it was goofy. :P

This is the tutorial I chose to duplicate:

And this (below) is what I came out with. Cell pic, so sorry for the slight blurriness. Also, this is before I had any tools or know-how for proper clean-up, so I just focused on not flooding my cuticles.

Black, Sephora OPI What's A Tire Jack?
White, China Glaze White on White
Pink, Orly Elsbeth's Rose
Yellow, China Glaze Sun Worshiper
Teal, Sephora OPI Mermaid to Order
Glitter, China Glaze Fairy Dust