Spring ASBMF Challenge #12: May Flowers!

Um, ya...wow, remember this challenge?  You know the one that started in April...that I still didn't finish.

...awkward silence...

Trust me, I had no intention of putting the next challenge post off for this long.  I believe my last challenge post was in June, which wasn't so bad for only having three parts left to do.  But considering that it is now mid-August...well, smooth move exlax!  I think it was just one of those things where, each time I went to paint my nails, I thought of the challenge but wasn't really sure what I wanted to do and just decided, "oh what's one more week?" instead.  Well Sarah, do a little math here...what is "what's one more week?" times 6 weeks?  Answer: way too friggin' long to be procrastinating on finishing this challenge!!!  You may be asking, why even bother?  Well...I don't know.  Even though I feel like a bit of a jackass for putting these last three parts off for so long, there is another part of me that doesn't want to just quit so close to the end and then pretend like it never happened.  So instead, here I am in mid-August with a post on...May flowers...lol.

This is two coats of Styled Out, from the Maybelline Color Show line, stamped with Konad plate m64 using Konad Special Polish in pastel blue.  Styled Out is part of the Denims set of polishes from Maybelline's Color Show line.  This is really the only Color Show polish I was interested in getting when I saw the swatches.  I might even grab a back up bottle since the bottles are only 7ml and this color is stinkin' gorgeous!  My favorite color may be green, but when it comes to polish, I can't resist a sparkly dark blue.  I used two coats but it was near perfection with just one coat.  I'm just crazy and felt like I needed to have a second coat because of some spots that seemed patchy to me, which in reality were probably fine.

The pattern is not your typical flower pattern, but I really like it and have used it a few times before this.  It has sort of a country/farm house feel to it.  Sort of reminds me of a pattern you might find on an old bandana, other than the typical paisley designs you normally see.  I also love the blue on blue look.  I don't stamp enough using something in the same color family as my base color and I really need to do it more often.  I'm getting in the habit lately of over analyzing what to paint on my nails instead of remembering that sometimes the simplest designs can yield the most amazing results.  "Keep it simple, Stupid!"  I have to remind myself of that every so often.

If you hadn't noticed, I decided to set up a custom domain so my blog address is now officially Allthispolish.com, and I'm also experimenting a bit with an updated watermark to match.  I actually bought the domain a couple weeks ago, but thanks to a bit of over zealousness on my part, I managed to screw it up.  It wasn't working and I didn't realize at first that I had done something to directly cause that, so I ended up waiting about a week and a half before trying to investigate what the issue was.  Then, with a little help from a friend at work, I got it fixed.  Here's a hint to anyone who is thinking of buying your custom domain through Blogger...when you get your Google domain registration confirmation email, DON'T activate Google Sites when you click the link to create your administrative account.  In fact, don't even click the links in the email at all, unless you're thinking of using Google Apps to set up a custom email address.  The domain will redirect to the blog on its own within a day or two.  But activating Sites will cause Blogger to think some other blog is already using that domain and it won't redirect automatically.  All you would need to do then is deactivate Sites and add the domain manually to your Blogger settings, but Blogger and Google Apps don't always want to cooperate so it may not get corrected on the first attempt.  Ok, end of rant, hee hee.  It's all good now so who cares!  Now to see if I can get the last two parts of this challenge posted before, oh let's say Christmas, lol.

Spring ASBMF Challenge #11: Eggs and Chicks

If this post wasn't part of the ASBMF challenge, I might have instead titled it "Why Sarah doesn't do freehand."  Although, let's be honest here folks, if it wasn't for the challenge then this post wouldn't even exist.  This is waaaaaay out of my comfort zone.  I envy people who can draw those cute little animals on their nails.  Did you ever see Simply Rins Little Pink Pigs?  Adorable!!!  And she makes it looks so easy.  I love them.  But I doubt I would be able to recreate them.  Granted, I haven't tried anything like this using acrylic paints yet, which does seem like it would be easier to draw with.  But even with paints, I highly doubt I would come even close.  My little pink pigs would come out looking like they had one too many rounds at the bar last night.  Or that I had one too many rounds and then tried to paint my nails in a drunken stupor!  Sadly though, I couldn't seem to avoid trying freehand on this part of the challenge.  It may be the Spring Challenge, but thanks to my procrastination, it's the last day of June.  So I didn't want to make little chicks and pastel eggs or anything that would have been more Easter time appropriate.  And I didn't even have any useful stamps to Konad my way out of this.  My inspiration was actually a picture I had seen a hundred times before in a wallpaper app on my cell phone.  It's one of those dorky-funny kind of pictures and I hadn't really thought about using it for nail art before until I was scrambling today to try and knock out this part of the challenge already.

My version has a few slight differences, besides looking no where as cute as the original illustration.  I reversed the position of the cow and chicken so I could put the chicken on my index finger instead of trying to fit her on my pinkie and I added spots to the cow's face.  In the pic, clearly a cow even without spots on his face.  On my nails, some sort of weird white horse head attached to a cow's body.  Horsecow?  Cowhorse?  Corse?  Ya...so I decided to spot his big ol' noggin too.  Then I drew the cow-spotted egg (or something sort of resembling an egg-like shape) on my thumb.  Anyway, I'm just posting one picture, I'll spare you from having to look at more.  I present my Eggs and Chicks (and Cow).

Phew!  That hurdle is out of the way.  May flowers should be easy enough and I'm actually looking forward to the newspaper transfer compared to this freehanded flop!  Then it's just the design of my choice left to do.  Oh, and in case you were wondering, here's a quick run down of the colors used:
base - Zoya Bevin
bodies/egg - Wet n Wild French White
cow spots/eyeballs - Wet n Wild Black Creme
nostrils/horns - Zoya Caitlin
hen's comb - Zoya Sooki
feet/beak - China Glaze Sun Worshipper

Just a reminder that, while I'm still struggling with Spring lol, the rest of our Facebook group is just starting the Summer challenge.  There's still plenty of time to start up if you're interested.  Check out our group page to join!

Spring ASBMF Challenge #10: Butterflies!

As much as I love the look of the Monarch butterfly wings manicure (and want to eventually try it myself), I decided to use one of the gazillion butterfly stamp designs I have that I never ever use, so at least now I can say I've used one of them!

It's not that I don't like butterflies.  I do.  If I see a real butterfly, don't bother trying to carry on a conversation with me until it's gone 'cause I'm gonna be all "Ooh, a butterfly!" and just watch that little bugger flutter around and around until it flies away.  But butterfly patterns, decorations, etc. aren't really my thing.  So I've never had the urge to use one of the ump-teen butterfly designs available between all the different plates I have from Konad, Bundle Monster, Red Angel, etc...  I have had the DRK-A plate for a few months now though and have yet to use it.  Even though I'm not big on butterfly designs, the DRK-A plate has this full nail butterfly design that kinda caught my eye from the first day I saw it.  The butterflies are a bit more cartoonish, with a hand drawn look to them that I like.  So for this manicure, I decided to use a few polishes from the New York City Ballet Collection.  I started with 3 coats of OPI Care To Danse? to make it more opaque.  Then I layered on one coat of Pirouette My Whistle, another coat of Care To Danse? and finally topped it off with one more coat of Pirouette My Whistle.  For the butterfly pattern, I used Konad Special Polish in Dark Purple.

I like the way this turned out.  I really like the the look of these colors together and I love the jelly finish of the OPI Ballet colors, even more than I though I would when I bought them.  The stamping came out decent enough.  My only issue was my impatience, as usual, with waiting long enough to top coat when I stamp.  I have a few little smudges on my pinkie and ring finger.  It may seem dry enough, but the stamped polish feels almost perfectly dry as soon as you stamp it on, considering how thin of a layer of polish it is you're dealing with.  So you really have to give it enough time to set up and dry all the way before trying to spread a nice big glob of top coat over it.  This time, I didn't wait long enough and got a few smudges.  Not too noticeable though.  It didn't drive me crazy enough to redo them.  I've gone all week so far with smudgy digits.

Just a few more designs to go.  There is a Summer Challenge starting this Friday but I've decided to pass.  Especially since I would be overlapping the start of that challenge with the end of this one.  I'm planning to do a post probably once a week though linking either to the new manicures that week from the group or maybe one post a week for each part of the challenge and then I'll update links as people do them.  I'm not sure which way I'm going to do it just yet.  But there are some super talented ladies in our group, so even though I'm not going to participate this time, I still want to be sure to share the amazing manicures I'm expecting to see these ladies come up with!

Hannah from Polished Prisms

Amanda from Mandy's Polish

Heidi from DIY Polish & More
Katee from A Girl and Her Polish
Charlotte from Charlotte's Nails
Tess from Football and Fingernails
Karine from Karinea0a
Victoria from Manicurator
Sharon from What Color is My Coat?
Ashley from One Nail To Another
Dani from Rustic Comfort
Sue from Creative Nail Design by Sue
Amanda from Counting Down to Bliss
Kayono from Neues vom Kellerkind
April from Munia's Nails
Sharra from The Blahg
Jess from Nearly Natural Nails
CR from Color Me Silly
T from Mami Blogs
Alyson from Beads. Nails. Food.

Spring ASBMF Challenge #9: Fresh Cut Lawns

Sunday afternoon, I took off Hatched and I knew I had to get working on Fresh Cut Lawns for the ASBMF Challenge.  If I didn't at least start it, I knew that I would just end up putting it off for the entire week.  Having no real idea what I wanted to do, I decided to pick out a green polish to paint my nails with and then hope and pray for inspiration.  It finally came when I decided to make my Fresh Cut Lawns manicure more abstract themed and try my hand at a newer technique that I've been drooling over for a while now, the Spun Sugar manicure.

I don't know if that's the accepted name for this technique but I've seen it used as the name a few times and it seems like the catchiest name out of all the one's I've heard.  I can't remember exactly where I first saw this, but it may have been from an entry by The Nail Buff on Chalkboard Nails' dotting contest back in February.  Also, she links to this video on YouTube, which I remember watching back when I first saw this technique online.  There's also a pretty good tutorial video here where it is referred to as "Sugar Spun" nails, rather than Spun Sugar.  I started by testing it out on just my thumb, using an orange stick and three different greens.  And it was a good thing I tested it on just one nail first because I totally overdid it on my thumb!  I applied way too many strings of polish.  You couldn't even see the base color anymore and it was just a lumpy mess.  Adding top coat made it even worse!  That really helped me though to get an idea of how to limit the number of lines to use and the rest of my nails came out great, as well as my thumb which I had cleaned off and repainted.  And even when I got a small blob on my ring finger when I bonked the orange stick off my nail, I didn't mind how that mistake ended up looking.

My base color was OPI Here Today...Aragon Tomorrow Suede.  And let me just say, I love the OPI Suede Collection polishes!  They're matte polishes, but like the name implies, with more of a suede look to them rather than a pure flat, matte finish.  They are really great left matte/suede, but when you add top coat...WOW!

I managed to top coat my nails before thinking about taking a picture of the original matte finish.  I actually wasn't planning on taking a picture of this color by itself at all, but once I added the top coat, I couldn't resist snapping at least one shot.  I used to think it was odd to add top coat to a matte polish.  If you're specifically buying a matte nail polish, why un-matte it?  (Is that an actual word?)  But then I realized it just gives you another option for how to wear that polish.  And adding top coat affects the look of a matte polish in a completely different way than it does when applied to a regular polish, especially with the OPI Suedes.  They are absolutely my favorite matte polishes ever.  They have such depth and they have more of a gritty look to them.  But gritty in a completely awesome way.  Adding top coat just makes that gritty appearance sparkle in a "jump up and smack you in the face with all its sparkly glory" kind of way.  Actually, I didn't start the Spun Sugar part of this manicure until the next day after work.  So I had worn Here Today...Aragon Tomorrow Suede with just top coat all day on Monday and got a lot of compliments on it.  For the design, the colors I used for my "grass" were (in the order I applied them) China Glaze Tree Hugger, OPI Don't Mess With OPI and OPI Did It On 'Em.

This technique definitely takes some patience, but it's so worth it.  Clean up really wasn't all that bad either.  I considered taping off my nails, but I was worried that the tape might tug on the strings of polish and mess up the edges when I tried to take the tape off.  So I just used a small brush and acetone to clean up the sides of my fingers after I applied each color.  There really wasn't that much polish around my nails to remove, but next time I might try putting some Vaseline or chap stick on my skin first just to see if that makes any difference.

After letting the polish strings dry and set up a bit, I added two coats of Seche Vite top coat.  I can just barely feel a little texture on my nails from the polish strings.  So even with two coats of Seche Vite, it's not perfectly smooth, but it's close enough that I don't feel like I need a third coat.  I know this is my lawn manicure, but every time I look down at my nails it makes me think of the Green Bay Packers!  And dare I say, Zubaz!!!

Talk about a flashback!  Oh and here's a close-up of my index finger from my cell phone, so you can see all the stringy-ness!

Be sure to check out some of the other ladies who participated in this challenge!

Hannah from Polished Prisms
Amanda from Mandy's Polish
Heidi from DIY Polish & More
Katee from A Girl and Her Polish
Charlotte from Charlotte's Nails
Tess from Football and Fingernails
Karine from Karinea0a
Victoria from Manicurator
Sharon from What Color is My Coat?
Ashley from One Nail To Another
Dani from Rustic Comfort
Sue from Creative Nail Design by Sue
Amanda from Counting Down to Bliss
Kayono from Neues vom Kellerkind
April from Munia's Nails
Sharra from The Blahg
Jess from Nearly Natural Nails
CR from Color Me Silly
T from Mami Blogs
Alyson from Beads. Nails. Food.

Spring ASBMF Challenge #8: Matte Magic

Yay, I finally did a manicure for the Matte Magic part of the challenge that I don't hate!  It's not that I don't like matte finishes, cause I do like them.  I've rocked a matte manicure before, I just could not for the life of me put anything together for this challenge that I liked enough to post, until now.  I think maybe I was trying too hard, over thinking it instead of keeping it simple.  I just got Barielle Elle's Spell yesterday in the mail, which I managed to snag off of Enamel Girl's blog sale.  So today while I was staring at the bottle (again) I decided to try flakie tips with Elle's Spell over black and then add matte top coat.  Flakies + Matte = Joy

My nails are a little shorter now, I trimmed them back before my last mani with KBShimmer Berry Patch, so it was a good time for the black polish.  Not that long nails have ever stopped me from using super dark colors in the past, but I do sometimes agree that darker colors can look better on shorter nails.  I just don't necessarily stick to that rule all the time.

This manicure started with one coat of Finger Paints Black Expressionism.  This is an awesome black!  Great coverage in one coat.  I bought this back when Finger Paints put out their Special Effects collection.  Black Expressionism wasn't a new shade but they were marketing it with the flakie polishes to use as the base color.  I had heard it was a good black polish, so I grabbed a bottle to try.  I liked it so much, I ended up going back and getting a second bottle later when Finger Paints were on sale.  Once the black base coat dried, I dabbed on Elle's Spell on the tips in a slight curve, rather than straight across my nails.  I went over the flakes two more times and then added a coat of Seche Vite.  I was going to skip the Seche Vite and go straight to Essie Matte About You as the only top coat used, but when I did that to the first nail, it ended up not being completely smooth.  So I decided to add the Seche Vite first, then matte the whole thing.

A quick peek at the challenges yet to check off my list (I need to get my rear in gear!) and a reminder to check out the other fabulous ladies participating in the ASBMF Challenge.

Hannah from Polished Prisms

Amanda from Mandy's Polish

Heidi from DIY Polish & More

Katee from A Girl and Her Polish

Charlotte from Charlotte's Nails

Tess from Football and Fingernails

Karine from Karinea0a

Victoria from Manicurator

Sharon from What Color is My Coat?

Ashley from One Nail To Another

Dani from Rustic Comfort

Sue from Creative Nail Design by Sue

Amanda from Counting Down to Bliss

Kayono from Neues vom Kellerkind

April from Munia's Nails

Sharra from The Blahg

Jess from Nearly Natural Nails

CR from Color Me Silly

T from Mami Blogs

Alyson from Beads. Nails. Food.

Spring ASBMF Challenge #7: Glitter Tips!

For part 7 of the ASBMF Challenge, I had a ton of ideas for glitter tips and didn't know what direction to go in.  One of the ideas I had involved using one of the new jelly polishes I had recently received from Birchbox when I bought the Zoya Blogger Collection.  I didn't have a definite plan, I just knew I wanted to try out one of these newbies and thought maybe I could make sort of a glitter tips/glitter sandwich combo out of it.  And that is basically what I ended up with.  It was a lot more subdued than some of the original ideas I had in mind, but I think the end result was a subtle and elegant little manicure.

Out of the three Blogger Collection colors, I decided to use Zoya Belle because it is the most unique jelly out of the three.  It's the most unique jelly I own actually.  The shimmer in it makes it looks not quite as squishy as other jellies, but it's still got a lot of jelly characteristics to it.  Here is three thin coats of Zoya Belle over nothing but Orly Bonder base coat.

You can see there is some visible nail line even with three coats but I think adding a fourth thin coat or having used three thicker coats instead would have taken care of that.  The glitter I decided to use was China Glaze Techno, which is a clear base full of holographic hex glitter and holographic micro glitter.  For application, I just used the bottle's brush to dab the glitter around on the end of each nail.  After it dried, I dabbed the brush around the tips a second time just to get some more hex glitters on there.  Techno right on top of Belle was pretty harsh on the eyeballs, to tell you the truth.  It was "Japanese anime cartoons causing seizures in kids" type harsh.  If I hadn't already considered layering the glitter between the jelly, I probably would have ended up taking it off at that point.  Techno looks great over so many colors, so I'm not really sure what happened when I layered it over Belle that made me dislike it so much, but I think maybe the shimmer in Belle and the holo in Techno just weren't able to play nice with each other.  I wish I had taken a picture of the glitter like that, but it just slipped my mind at the time.  After the second coat of Techno dried, I added two super thin coats of Belle and that just transformed it into something totally different!

Techno was so pretty layered between Belle instead of just layered over it.  You could still see the holo in the glitter come through but without feeling like someone was smacking you in the face with a disco ball.  Here's a reminder of what's yet to come and, as usual, be sure to check out the other ladies who are participating in this challenge!

Hannah from Polished Prisms
Amanda from Mandy's Polish
Heidi from DIY Polish & More
Katee from A Girl and Her Polish
Charlotte from Charlotte's Nails
Tess from Football and Fingernails
Karine from Karinea0a
Victoria from Manicurator
Sharon from What Color is My Coat?
Ashley from One Nail To Another
Dani from Rustic Comfort
Sue from Creative Nail Design by Sue
Amanda from Counting Down to Bliss
Kayono from Neues vom Kellerkind
April from Munia's Nails
Sharra from The Blahg
Jess from Nearly Natural Nails
CR from Color Me Silly
T from Mami Blogs
Alyson from Beads. Nails. Food.

Spring ASBMF Challenge #6: Ombre

This past Sunday, I worked on my ombre for part 6 of the April Showers Brings May Flowers Challenge.  This also happens to be my first ombre ever.  I wasn't sure how I was going to approach this.  I definitely have enough polishes to have been able to pick 5 different shades of a color to do it that way.  But instead of fumbling through my stash, I opted to try the technique of taking one color and then adding white and black to that color to create different shades.  I ended up picking a color that was rather dark to begin with, Orly Lucky Duck, so I decided to forget about the black polish and just used white to make lighter and lighter shades of green for all my nails.

On my pinkie, I used two coats of Lucky Duck by itself.  To create the lighter shade on my ring finger, I put about 5 or 6 drops of Lucky Duck on a paper plate, then I added a drop or two of Wet n Wild White Creme and mixed it up with an orange stick.  I then took a brush from an empty bottle of Seche Vite and applied the polish to my nail.  For each nail after, I just put less and less Lucky Duck on the plate and more of the White Creme to get each nail lighter than the previous nail.  I did one hand at a time but I actually ended up getting the nails on my right hand to match up almost perfectly to the nails on my left hand.  My pinkies were the only nails that I applied more than one coat of polish, since I was using Lucky Duck straight up.  But I used just one pretty thick coat of polish on the rest of my nails, so that I didn't have to keep mixing more polish for each one.  I put it on so thick though that it actually bubbled quite a bit as it dried.  But amen for Seche Vite, because once I applied  a coat of that, all the bubbles completely vanished!

I have to say I'm pretty shocked how much I love this manicure!  I remember when they first became popular, I would see People Magazine posting photos all the time of celebrities sporting ombre manicures.  For some reason though, I just wasn't into it.  If it wasn't for this challenge, I can't even imagine how long it might have been before I would have finally tried one myself.  But having had this manicure on for about 3 days now, I'm kind of obsessed with it.  I keep looking at my fingers and comparing the shades. It's like walking around with one of those Pantone paint swatch cards strapped to your hand.  It's turned me into a bigger nerd than I already was.  I didn't think that was possible, until I found myself standing at the bathroom counter getting ready for work and started noticing that my middle finger matched the color of the sink, my index finger matched the color my soap dish..."I wonder which nail matches the wall color?"  Wow!  Stop Sarah, just stop.  Put your hands in your pockets and walk slowly out of the bathroom!  The point is that even though an ombre manicure is a pretty basic concept, it's far from boring.  

I'll definitely have to try ombres again.  But next up for the ASBMF Challenge is glitter tips!

Check out the other ladies participating in this challenge!

Hannah from Polished Prisms
Amanda from Mandy's Polish
Heidi from DIY Polish & More
Katee from A Girl and Her Polish
Charlotte from Charlotte's Nails
Tess from Football and Fingernails
Karine from Karinea0a
Victoria from Manicurator
Sharon from What Color is My Coat?
Ashley from One Nail To Another
Dani from Rustic Comfort
Sue from Creative Design by Sue
Amanda from Counting Down to Bliss
Kayono from Neues vom Kellerkind
April from Munia's Nails
Sharra from The Blahg
Jess from Nearly Natural Nails
CR from Color Me Silly
T from Mami Blogs
Alyson from Beads. Nails. Food.

Spring ASBMF Challenge #5: A Rainbow After the Rain

I was just thinking yesterday about how long my nails were starting to get.  Then I woke up this morning to find a chunk of the nail on my right middle finger missing.  I have no idea how it happened.  I didn't have any cracks or weak spots on that nail.  But there it was staring back at me, the whole corner missing, snapped off cleanly like someone had taken a clipper to it while I was sleeping.  So everything has been trimmed back, which I guess is ok in the long run.  I had a few nails that were taking a path of their own, so trimming them back has made them look straight again.  Then it was time to work on the next part of the ASBMF Challenge and tackle a rainbow design.  After a lot of thought, I decided to do scotch tape rays, à la Chloe's Nails.  I've done scotch tape manicures before but this was the first time I did small rays versus big sections, which would be more like color blocking.

I started out by free handing a rainbow with vertical stripes on my thumbs and middle fingers.

For the rainbow, I used China Glaze Poinsettia (red), Orly Crush On You (orange), Orly Lemonade (yellow), OPI Don't Mess With OPI (green), OPI Ogre-The-Top Blue (blue) and OPI Funky Dunkey (violet/purple).  I didn't really have any polishes that would work well for indigo so I made one on a paper plate by mixing two drops of Ogre-The-Top Blue, one drop of Funky Dunkey and one drop of Wet n Wild Black Creme.  I put a coat of Seche Vite over the rainbows so they would dry faster and I wouldn't have to wait as long to apply the scotch tape.  On the rest of my nails, I used two coats of China Glaze Liquid Leather.  Next I took 4 thin cut strips of scotch tape, which I cut at an angle so one end was skinnier than the other, and applied them to the rainbow nails.

The Scotch brand tape I used has silver and gold stars and squiggle designs on it, so that's the gold and silver blotches you see on the strips above.  Once I had the tape strips on and secure, I went over them with a thicker coat of China Glaze Liquid Leather and then immediately pulled off the strips with tweezers.

I think my right thumb actually came out the best.  I had the thinnest strips of tape on my thumb and they were angled better than on my other nails.  But overall I think the final design came out ok.  Not exactly as I had pictured it in my head but close enough that I'm satisfied with it.

Here's a look at what's up next...

And as usual, be sure to check out the other ladies participating in this challenge, either by heading over to the Facebook page for the challenge or by checking out the bloggers below:

Hannah from Polished Prisms

Amanda from Mandy's Polish

Heidi from DIY Polish & More

Katee from A Girl and Her Polish

Charlotte from Charlotte's Nails

Tess from Football and Fingernails

Karine from Karinea0a

Victoria from Manicurator

Sharon from What Color is My Coat?

Ashley from One Nail To Another

Dani from Rustic Comfort

Sue from Creative Design by Sue

Amanda from Counting Down to Bliss

Kayono from Neues vom Kellerkind

April from Munia's Nails

Sharra from The Blahg

Jess from Nearly Natural Nails

CR from Color Me Silly

T from Mami Blogs

Alyson from Beads. Nails. Food.

Spring ASBMF Challenge #4: April Showers

Back on Sunday, when I posted pictures of my glitter sandwich mattified, one of the things I mentioned was that I finally got around to doing the April Showers part of the April Showers Bring May Flowers Challenge.  Well, it's now 4 days later and I finally got a chance to edit the pictures and put this post together.  I wish I could say that I've been really busy with all sorts of important stuff, but the truth is that I just play way too many games on Facebook!  One of the reasons that I had such a hard time with this part of the challenge was that I had just recently done an April Showers themed manicure back in March.  I originally posted it about it here.  So I was kinda stumped trying to think of something that wasn't too similar to what I had already done.  When I was trying to come up with a design, I started to think about how my absolute favorite thing about rain showers is laying in bed late at night, with the window cracked open just a bit, listening to the rain hit off the blacktop on the street outside.

China Glaze Stone Cold is one of my recent buys that I had yet to try and I thought it would be perfect for representing a paved street.  The gritty matte finish would be perfect to act as blacktop and once top coat was added, I thought it might give the impression of a wet, rain-soaked road. 

I also wanted to do something different for the raindrops than what I had previously done.  That was when I remembered I had bought a set of rhinestone wheels from Bundle Monster back in January and had yet to use any of them.  Looking through the wheels, I came across these blue raindrop/teardrop shaped rhinestones that looked perfect for what I had in mind.  I had a feeling that having these rhinestones on all of my nails would probably drive me nuts pretty quickly, so I settled on just using them for accent nails.  And I decided to reuse the clouds idea from my previous April Showers manicure, but with a bit of a twist.  Rather than having bright white clouds, I had an image in my head of darker, grey storm clouds staggered with white clouds overlapping them.  My only problem was that I didn't have a very good grey polish for stamping.  I couldn't get any greys to show up well over the black polish.  So I decided to reverse my original idea and stamp white clouds first, then overlay grey clouds, so that part of the white clouds would remain intact and other parts would look darker and more stormy.

The clouds design is from Konad plate m79.  For the white clouds, I used Konad Special Polish in white and I used China Glaze Recycle for the grey clouds.  I used one coat of Seche Vite on all the nails with the clouds and two coats on the nails with the rhinestones.  I ended up only wearing this for a few days.  I put it together Sunday night, took pictures Monday and by Tuesday night I was taking it off.  That's not to say that I didn't like it.  But it was the first time I had ever worn rhinestones of any type on my nails and I was not used to my nails feeling bumpy like that.  I kept having the urge to pick at those little buggers and knock them off my nails!  I will just have to be try to get used to having bumpy nails once in a while, especially since I have so many more types of rhinestones in the Bundle Monster set that I want to try some day.  I will say that I was surprised how well they stayed on.  I just used top coat to put them in place and then, as I mentioned, used two coats of Seche Vite over them.  That seemed to be enough top coat to get rid of any edges on the rhinestones that might have gotten caught on something and gotten them ripped off my nails.

Next up...A Rainbow After the Rain.

Be sure to check out some of the other ladies participating in this challenge.

Hannah from Polished Prisms

Amanda from Mandy's Polish

Heidi from DIY Polish & More

Katee from A Girl and Her Polish

Charlotte from Charlotte's Nails

Tess from Football and Fingernails

Karine from Karinea0a

Victoria from Manicurator

Sharon from What Color is My Coat?

Ashley from One Nail To Another

Dani from Rustic Comfort

Sue from Creative Design by Sue

Amanda from Counting Down to Bliss

Kayono from Neues vom Kellerkind

April from Munia's Nails

Sharra from The Blahg

Jess from Nearly Natural Nails

CR from Color Me Silly

T from Mami Blogs

Alyson from Beads. Nails. Food.

Spring ASBMF Challenge #3: Glitter Sammy

Part 3 of the Spring Challenge is a glitter sandwich.  I wasn't completely sure what I was going to do.  I had a few ideas in mind, but I don't have a ton of jelly polishes.  Most of them are from the OPI Texas Collection, which are great, but they are all pretty similar.  I definitely need to add some jellies to my stash in some other colors, like greens or yellows.  I finally decided to start out with three coats of OPI Big Hair...Big Nails.  I've seen it described as a mix between a reddish coral and a light cherry red.  To me, it seems more like "cherry tomato" red, if that makes sense.  Once I had it on, it leaned more coral/orange to me.  The idea I originally had would work better with a much redder jelly, so I decided to save my original idea for another day and started looking through my glitters for something else.  That was when I came across China Glaze Electrify, which I immediately thought would be perfect to use.  The only drawback with Electrify is that it's all tiny glitter and I wanted to have some larger glitters in this as well, so I grabbed Synergy from my collection of L.A. Girl Glitter Addict polishes.  I saw Purge sitting next to Synergy and, for a second, thought it might be interesting to add large green glitter to contrast the colors in Electrify, rather than using gold glitter.  But in the end, Synergy won out because it's not just gold glitter, it's holographic!

So after the three coats of Big Hair...Big Nails, I put on one coat of Electrify and one coat of Synergy.  Then I ended up putting on three more coats of Big Hair...Big Nails.  I started with one coat and then added a second, but I wasn't really satisfied with its "squishyness" until I put on the third coat.  My only regret is that I wish I added a second coat of Synergy.  It could have used some more of the larger hex glitters, but I'm still happy with the final outcome.

Here's a list of some of the other ladies in the challenge:

Hannah from Polished Prisms
Amanda from Mandy's Polish
Heidi from DIY Polish & More
Katee from A Girl and Her Polish
Charlotte from Charlotte's Nails
Tess from Football and Fingernails
Karine from Karinea0a
Victoria from Manicurator
Sharon from What Color is My Coat?
Ashley from One Nail To Another
Dani from Rustic Comfort
Sue from Creative Design by Sue
Amanda from Counting Down to Bliss
Kayono from Neues vom Kellerkind
April from Munia's Nails
Sharra from The Blahg
Jess from Nearly Natural Nails
CR from Color Me Silly
T from Mami Blogs
Alyson from Beads. Nails. Food.

Hopefully I'm not missing anyone.  Please tell me if I am!  There is also a number of ladies with great designs but who don't have blogs to link to.  So instead, you can always check out everyone's pictures and links by heading over to the Facebook page.

Spring ASBMF Challenge #2: Ladybugs!

I have a short post today for my second installment of the Spring Challenge April Showers Bring May Flowers.  Challenge #2 is ladybugs and I immediately thought of a ladybug design that is on one of my Bundle Monster stamping plates, plate BM13.

Even though I knew I wanted to use this plate, it took me a little while to figure out exactly how to use it.  I did actually paint my nails with a medium gray to start but then when I stamped the first ladybug, the gray was just too dark so I scrapped that idea.  I decided to stamp multiple ladybugs over Orly Au Champagne instead, but only as an accent so I applied 3 coats of Au Champagne to my thumbs and ring fingers.  I spent the next 5 minutes marveling over Au Champagne's satin matte finish!  Somehow, in all the reviews of the Orly Holiday Soiree collection this past winter, I had completely missed the fact that Au Champagne was a matte.  I must have read it, but it somehow just never registered in my brain.  I was so not expecting the beautiful satin matte finish it has and now I'm so glad that I bought this back when I saw it moved to the clearance table at Sally Beauty.  I had only used it once before and that was just as a base on a nail wheel for swatching Lynnderella Snow Angel.  I must have been so excited about getting my Lynnderella order that I was apparently oblivious to the finish of Au Champagne when it dried.  Anyway...for the ladybugs, I applied a small amount of Konad Special Polish in red to the body of the ladybug design and a small amount of Konad Special Polish in black to the ladybug's head, then scraped and stamped.

I did that about 3 or 4 times per nail and just placed them in random directions on different parts of each nail.  I took a small dotting tool and Wet n Wild Black Creme to fill in the dots of the ladybug design when Au Champagne showed through.  On the rest of my nails I used 2 coats of Zoya Sooki and with the largest dotting tool and Wet n Wild Black Creme again, I placed random dots over Sooki to give it a ladybug motif.

I do really like this, but I'm not a huge ladybug fan, so I'll most likely be moving on to the next challenge within a day or two.  Although I was happily surprised at the reactions I got at work today with this design.  There were a lot of "Oh my God, are those ladybugs on your nails?!"  It really got a lot more attention than I expected!  One of the cool things about doing a challenge like this is that if I wasn't doing this challenge, I probably would have never done this design.  But because of the challenge I was able to experiment and work with themes I probably wouldn't have thought to do on my own.

Be sure to keep an eye on Hannah's blog over at Polished Prisms.  She'll be updating her posts with links to all the wonderful ladies also participating in this challenge.  So check it out!