Valentine Blues

Somehow I ended up with blue hearts on my nails last week.  I was already wearing 2 coats of KBShimmer Blue Topaz and had every intention of using the top image from Pueen plate 16.  But then I spotted the hearts images on the right side of the same plate and the next thing I know, blue hearts all over my nails.  I ended up spending Valentine's Day itself sporting naked nails, so this turned out to be the closest thing to a Valentine manicure I did this month.

I really like this mixed hearts design from Pueen.  I'm not usually a fan of heart-themed items, except when it comes to my nails it seems.  I've ordered many a stamping plate solely because of a cool hearts design that I saw and decided I had to have.

To stamp the hearts pattern, I used Robin's Egg Blue from Rica on Etsy.  I had pulled out both Robin's Egg Blue and the blue pastel Konad Special Polish as possible stamping colors.  Robin's Egg Blue was just a touch more pale than the Konad and I thought it paired with the KBShimmer polish better.

I do love a good monochrome manicure.  I don't know if I just prefer the way they look, or if it's because I kinda suck as mix-n-matching colors when stamping!  Maybe a little of both.

Florida Sky Saran Wrap Mani

In one of the Facebook groups that I'm in, we've been doing a challenge where every week there is a new photograph posted to use as inspiration for a manicure.  Several weeks ago, it was my friend Alyson's turn to post a photo, and she chose a picture she had taken while visiting her sister in Florida.  It's posted below, but you can also see it here on Alyson's Instagram account.  I also highly recommend checking out her Facebook page, where she posts pictures of her nail art.  She's got some mad freehand skills that always leave me completely jealous.

As soon as I saw the picture, I wanted to try to recreate the look of the sky with a saran wrap mani.  I started with a base of OPI Mod About You.  Once dry, and working one nail at a time, I dabbed different spots of my nail with OPI Rumple's Wiggin' and with Zoya Blu, then tapped my nail with small, balled up pieces of plastic wrap until some of the original base color started to show through.

There were a few times that I reapplied some polish, if I thought there wasn't enough pink (or blue or purple) on a particular nail, and then patted it with some more plastic wrap until I was happy with the final result.  I think my favorite nail though was on my ring finger, and I only needed to make one pass with the plastic wrap on that nail.

I was really happy with how these came out.  There wasn't as much contrast between the colors with this look as with my last attempt at saran wrap nails, but I love both versions.  And I think I did a decent job of mimicking the look of the clouds in Alyson's photo, which was my main goal for this manicure.

So far, this was the only picture from the challenge that I've done a manicure for.  I just never got around to doing anything for some of the other weekly pictures that the group members have been posting.  And they've been posting some really awesome photos to use as inspiration, so I'm a little disappointed in myself for not making time to try any other looks.  But there's a lot more photos to come, so I've got a lot more chances to be inspired on the way.

Spring ASBMF Challenge #1: Spring Pastels

Yes, I entered my first challenge.  I can't believe it either.  I see people doing different challenges online all the time and it's like boom, boom, boom...they just keep spitting out new designs every couple days.  I don't know how they do it all, I think I'd give up after like day 3!  But then Hannah from Polished Prisms suggested a more laid back challenge on Facebook and she came up with this Spring "April Showers Bring May Flowers" Challenge.  We don't have set dates.  Everyone can do it at their own pace, according to what meets their schedule, which is perfect for me since I usually only change my nails once a week, maybe twice.  A few people are already on ladybugs, but that's the whole point...you do it when you can.  I just need to remind myself not to panic when I start to see more people getting days ahead of me, lol.  If you're interested in joining the challenge yourself, Hannah set up a group on Facebook, April Showers Bring May Flowers Challenge.  You don't have to have a blog, you can join the Facebook group and post your challenge pictures there instead.

So I was planning to start this a few days ago, but for some reason I really hit a brick wall trying to decide what to do.  Since Easter is this weekend, I wanted to kill two birds with one stone and pastels work great for Easter anyway.  I did have this elaborate idea for small Easter eggs all over my nails, which I actually attempted.  The end result though just reminded me that I need to invest in a small kit of acrylic paints for more intricate designs like that.  It actually was not completely hideous, lol, but because the nail polish is not as opaque as acrylic paint, I really had to layer the nail polish on to get the designs to show and that just made the whole thing a lumpy mess!  Off it came and on went plain polish just to get me through the next two days at work.  Last night I came home and grabbed a bunch of pastels ready to tackle the challenge.  I started with 3 coats of Orly Lemonade, hoping for inspiration.  I was planning to do a patchwork scotch tape design with Lemonade and two other Orly colors, Prelude To a Kiss and Jealous, Much? but then the idea of a water marble popped into my head and that somehow led to the idea of doing a splatter manicure instead.

I've never done a splatter mani before, but I've seen them online and I absolutely love them.  A splatter manicure is basically dipping a drinking straw in some polish and then blowing air into the straw with strong, quick puffs to make the polish splatter over your nails.  You repeat that with different colors to get a messy, but very cool effect.  I think mine was a success and a disaster all at the same time.  In the end, it was a success but along the way I definitely had some disaster moments and this is a technique that takes both practice and luck.  Since I was doing a splatter, I also decided to add another color, OPI Rumple's Wiggin', which is pastel purple.  The picture above is of the final manicure, which includes a coat of Essie Matte About You.  I decided to make it matte before even thinking to take a picture of it still glossy, d'oh!  So here is a picture of my right hand, which I don't usually photograph since I'm right handed and taking pictures with my left hand is a royal pain in the rear.  But I wanted to show how it looked with just plain top coat, so I snapped a pic of my right hand, before adding the matte top coat to finish it off.

If you've never done a splatter manicure and are interested, there is a good tutorial from The PolishAholic's blog that you can read and I would also suggest checking out the different splatters that Sarah from Chalkboard Nails has done.  If her splatters don't inspire you to try it, then nothing will!  Here's a link that will take you to a list of all her blog posts tagged with the splatter label, http://www.chalkboardnails.com/search/label/splatter.

A few things that I learned while doing this for the first time: practice and experiment!  There are various methods to do this and you might find one way works better for you than it does for someone else.  It definitely helps to hold the straw a few inches away from your nails.  Too close and you might get big blogs of polish that just flood your entire nail.  It also takes some practice to figure out exactly where to hold the straw.  I can't tell you how many times I tried it and the polish splattered in a circle around my nail without any of it actually hitting my nail!  I held my nails over a paper plate, which was resting on a big piece of cardboard.  I wasn't sure how far the polish would splatter, but it didn't go any farther than the edges of the plate.  It all will depend on how far away from your nails you hold the straw.  Just be sure to cover and protect the surface you are working so you don't get polish all over the place.  Here's a shot of how my paper plate looked after I was done with all 10 nails.

Even though it can be pretty messy, I definitely plan to try this technique again with different colors.  The edges between the splatters of color seemed to be more defined before I added top coat.  The next time I do this, I'm going to try to be more patient with drying time before adding top coat, to see if that will cause the end result to have some more sharp edges between colors.  But for a pastel splatter, I do like the way the colors kind of melted into each other.

***Edit*** April 8th 11:41pm: I had to come back and add a picture of my thumbs, especially my left thumb.  Even though my thumbs ended up having the least amount of splatter on them, I think I like them the most.  I don't know if it's that Orly Lemonade is just that pretty or if it's the subtle splatter versus the bigger blobs on all my other fingers, but I have been just constantly staring at my left thumb all weekend with this manicure.

April Showers Bring May Flowers

Ok, so yes, it is technically still March.  But this Tuesday does mark the official beginning of Spring and also, this post is serving as my entry into Enamel Girl's Nail Art Stamping Contest, which ends this Wednesday.  The theme of the contest is "Anything Spring" and when I think of Spring, I think of cooling afternoon rain showers and fresh flowers starting to pop up all over.

I decided to use Sinful Colors Cinderella as my base.  I just received it in the mail Friday.  I couldn't find it anywhere around me so I ended up buying it, along with Sinful Colors Green Ocean, from Traci's blog sale over at The Trace Face Philes.  Cinderella is very, very sheer though, so I decided to layer it over Revlon Blue Lagoon.  I originally bought Blue Lagoon to possibly layer Revlon Whimsical over, but it turned out to look almost exactly like the same shade of blue as Sinful Colors Cinderella.  The big difference is that Blue Lagoon has a silver shimmer and Cinderella has that awesome pinkish-copper shimmer that is making everyone go nuts over, myself included.

Revlon Blue Lagoon is a bit on the sheer side as well, but no where near as sheer as Cinderella.  It builds up very nicely after just two coats, whereas Cinderella would take 4 coats at least to be just as opaque.  So my base ended up being two coats of Revlon Blue Lagoon topped with one coat of Sinful Colors Cinderella.

Then I broke out my Konad Special Polish in white and a bunch of pastel Konad Special Polishes for the designs.

Using Konad Special Polish in white, I stamped the clouds design from Konad plate m79 onto my index and middle fingers and my pinkies.

Then on my thumbs and ring fingers, I stamped a flower pattern from Bundle Monster BM-224.

To get flowers of different colors, I placed drops from Konad Special Polishes in pastel violet, yellow, pastel green and pastel pink onto different parts of the flower pattern, then scraped and stamped on the flowers.

Taking my dotting tools, I then used the same Konad colors to dot the centers of all the flowers with a color different than the petals.  I waited for that to set up and then put a coat of Seche Vite top coat on the flowers and let that dry.  This way I didn't have to worry about bumping and messing up any of the flowers while I was trying to add raindrops with China Glaze Blue Year's Eve to my other nails.  To make the raindrops, I used the smallest dotting tool available and once I placed the dot of Blue Year's Eve on my nail, instead just lifting the dotting tool straight up, I gave the dotting tool a small, quick flick upward to stretch the dot into the raindrop shape.  Once the raindrops dried, I added a coat of Seche Vite to those nails to finish everything off.

This is my first time entering a nail art contest online.  There have been other contests that I've thought about entering but ended up procrastinating and just never tried.  So I was very happy with myself that I followed through on this one and making this design was a lot of fun!