Challenge: Winter

I know I need a better method of photographing my nails during the winter. Well that or not being so lazy about doing my nails and posting challenges at the last minute.

This week is a winter challenge. I think this color combo turned out great. I'll admit it looks a little sub par in this lighting though. Both of the images are from the new Shany set. I think the snow covered trees with snow was the perfect image for this week. 

I need to pick up the pace and get started on holiday manicures before it's too late!

Pure Ice - Platinum

Wet n Wild - French White Creme

NYC - Extra Shiny Top Coat

Shany - SH202

Shany - SH207

Glitter Snowflakes

I've been having the worst luck photographing my nails lately. It's constantly overcast during this season and all my indoor lighting has a yellow tone. I'm sorry about the weird tones, but I did my best to adjust to make the polish accurate but not so much as far as the skin tone.

This week's challenge is "over glitter". I've done a lot of glitter before, so I was hoping to make this one stand out from the rest. It's a little premature for the area I live in, but I thought I'd get the jump on snowflakes before everyone else.

The images are a combo of Shany and Bundle Monster. The polish is layers of Hard Candy, Sinful Colors, Pure Ice, L.A. Colors, and a couple of coats of Seche Vite to smooth out the uneven glitter surface.

Hard Candy - Sky

Sinful Colors - Cinderella

Pure Ice - Oh Baby!

L.A. Colors - Sparkling Diamonds

Sally Hansen - Hard to Get

Seche Vite - topcoat

Shany - SH17

BM - 323

Black and White Swan

This week is Metallic Madness. I've been trying a few different things with this plate for a while. This week's theme gave me the inspiration for something better!

I would say I took some liberties with the madness part of this challenge. I used China Glaze Stone Cold and Pure Ice Platinum. Stone Cold dries matte, but it ended up with a satin finish with a shiny topcoat. I had to use a different black for the black swan because the stamper couldn't fully pick up Stone Cold.

To get the swan facing the opposite direction, I stamped with my XL stamper and then onto my Salon Express stamper before my nail. This is definitely a trial and error method, but it eventually worked out well. I wasn't a fan of the asymmetrical wings on this plate, but it actually turned out better that way for me on this manicure. My pinky nail is way to small for the wing size on the left. I used the stamper transfer method on my right hand to get the wings on the correct fingers too.

China Glaze - Stone Cold

Pure Ice - Platinum

Wet n Wild - Black Creme

Orly - Top 2 Bottom

Shany - SH03

Poison Dart Frogs

Although I've been pretty slack about posting lately, it's Sunday! Which means another AIS challenge. This week: Toxic or Poisonous. The first thing that came to mind was snake, and even though I had some good snake ideas, I wanted to do something else. My thinking outside the box only got me so far as Poison Dart Frogs. They are so vibrant and of course cute. There's a bunch of different colored poisonous frogs, but red, green, blue, and yellow seem to be the basic colors. Their patterns vary too. So doing the best with what I had this is what I came up with!

I used 3 different Bundle Monster images and a Salon Express. These 2 photos are with NYC matte topcoat for the less wet frog look. The last photo is the original shiny, but I was just in love with the yellow matte finish.

The yellow pattern was my favorite, but the Salon Express full nail images are too small to fit on any other finger. I tried to add eyes, but that turned out looking really stupid.

e.l.f. - Smokin Hot

Wet n Wild - SaGreena the Teenage Witch

Pure Ice - French Kiss

L.A. Colors Art Deco - Yellow

Wet n Wild - Black Creme

NYC - Extra Shiny Top Coat

NYC - Matte me Crazy

BM-313

BM-222

BM-211

SE22

Rain Card

I did a gradient of Wet n Wild Rain Check and Wild Card. The polishes are way too sheer for an easy gradient though. The amount I had to put on made it hard to work with and slow to dry. I peeled it off about 24 hours later and the bottom layer was still mushy. I used a small stamp on this one to not take away from the base colors. The stamp polish is Sally Hansen Hard to Get. This one works great for me because it's gotten thick and goopy over time.

I tried to get a few different angles to showcase Pure Ice Oh Baby! that I put over the other 2 colors, but it didn't photograph well. Oh Baby! is a pretty clear base with tons of blue micro glitter that has a pink holo effect. It looks great over blues and purples especially.

This one is the most color accurate. I should have added at least 1 more coat of Oh Baby! but there was way too much polish already.

Wet n Wild - Rain Check

Wet n Wild - Wild Card

Pure Ice - Oh Baby!

Sally Hansen - Hard to Get

Seche Vite - topcoat

Shany - SH18

More Sinful

The color wasn't turning out quite right, but these are the 2 attempts at showing Winterberry as a grayish purple. This was an easy day with 1 color 1 stamp. I didn't get a full stamp on the ring finger. I gave it a valiant, but far from perfect, effort of stamping over the top to correct it.

Sinful Colors - Winterberry

Pure Ice - Paying With Platinum

Seche Vite - topcoat
BM-202

Happy Birthday!

My sister's birthday is tomorrow. We celebrated yesterday and for the occasion I thought balloon nails would be really cute. There were a lot of balloon manicures out there but I thought the cartoon balloons were the cutest. I did the plastic baggy method for my right hand and figured since I was at it I'd go ahead and do 10 balloons and take care of both hands at once.

First I sponged SH Hard to get on the tips. For the balloons, I used e.l.f. Smokin' Hot, Pure Ice French Kiss, SH Lickety Split Lime, Art Deco Intense Pink, and Art Deco Yellow. After that I outlined them with a black SH Nail Art Pen and topped it off with a Seche Vite topcoat.

My sister was nice enough to share a couple of extra dotting tools with me so maybe tomorrow I'll try to recreate the cupcake nails she did for herself!