Challenge Day 24- Inspired by a Book

Well hello everyone. So far today has been one horrible day for me so I hope you all are having a bit better luck. Within an hour of being awake I had tummy troubles, sneezing coughing bad from a head cold and I thought I just stubbed my toe, but actually I scraped off a chunk so I was bleeding and it hurt. All in all me = not a happy camper today. Oh and of course the child I am looking after isn't feeling well today either because of some vaccines she got so she is cranky too. What a wonderful day! Sorry...enough of my bitching. Onto nails! So I am of the generation that really grew up reading and loving the Harry Potter books. I have read each book of the series probably at least 20 times over and I still love them every time I read them. So for this manicure of course I was inspired by my favorite series of all time. I started off with two quick and not clean coats of Finger Paints "Lemon Sour" then I free hand striped some gold using Wet n Wild's "The Gold and the Beautiful" then I used Sally Hansen Insta-Dry in "Cinna Snap" to add more free handed stripes to the top and bottom of my nails. Then I topped it all off with the iconic HP lightning bolt using Jordana's black nail art brush and then topped that off using an angled eyeliner brush dipped in some more Finger Paints "Lemon Sour". The overall effect is kinda cute, but definitely could have been improved with a bit more precision. Hope you enjoy the pictures!

Challenge Day 22/23- Inspired by a Song/Movie

Hi everyone! Well today I am going to cheat a little since my inspiration came last night when I was watching one of my favorite movies and a song in particular as well as the whole movie inspired me for this challenge.  I was watching Across the Universe when my favorite part/song came on, which is Strawberry Fields! So I bring you strawberry nails today! I have to admit I could have done them a lot better technique wise, but you will have to forgive me since I was rushing because it was already really late and I was tired. I started with two coats of Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in "Cherry Red", which was a dream to apply and I could have probably gotten away with one coat if I hadn't been rushing. Then for the tops I used Orly's "Wandering Vine" and added accent stripes in "Green with Envy" from Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear. For the "seeds" I used Jordana's black striping brush, which I believe may be why they turned out a bit on the wonky side. All in all I think it is adorable, but I think the execution could have been a bit better.

So you be the judge for yourself, but I think it works for my inspiration and I hope you don't mind my combo mani for two challenges. :-) Well then until next time! :-)

Challenge Day 21- Inspired by a Color

Hello again everyone! When I was little I used to love reading and re-reading fairy tales. I had one particular book of fairy tales I still read whenever I have trouble sleeping. I think part of the reason I always loved this one book of fairy tales the most was because I loved the color! So for today's challenge I bring you my book of fairy tales, which I have loved since childhood and still love to this day.

I used three coats of Essie's "Turquoise and Caicos", which is a color I used to see used by other bloggers and every time I saw it I would say "Oh I love that color what is it?". Then I would see that it was the beloved by many "Turquoise and Caicos" and I thought that I didn't really need it and it is fairly hard to find so I put it out of my mind until I recently found it at my local Walgreens! They recently started to sell Essie's and in their brand new display I found one bottle of this color so I decided to take the plunge and buy it. I don't entirely love the formula since I definitely needed three coats for full and even coverage, but the color is amazing! It also happens to be the EXACT same color as my book of fairy tales, which brings me back to my original point. :-) Well, I hope you enjoyed this and I will try and get somewhat more caught up with posting tonight. Until next time though! :-)

Challenge Day 20- Water Marbling

Hi everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful Memorial Day Weekend! I know I did! Sorry for being MIA, but I was visiting my sister and I was much too busy working very hard on my tan. :-) So back to this challenge then! I have to say I am not very happy with how my water marbling turned out for today, but I do hope you all enjoy it. So I started off with two coats of "Break Through" from Essence. Then I did one drop of each in this order: Sinful Colors "Paradise", Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in "Bubblegum Pink" and NYC Long Wearing in "Empire State Blue" for the marbles. I think I needed some more contrasting colors to get a better effect, but I do think I finally have gotten the technique down. I also used scotch tape to cover the skin around my nails and then coated the backs and a bit down my fingers with vitamin E oil. This combo made clean up an absolute breeze! All I had to do was clean up a little bit right next to my cuticles and a bit under the edge of my nails. So without further ado here are the pictures!

Unfortunately the blues didn't really show up too much and the pink sort of blended in with the base color I used. Next time I know that I should go with a more neutral background and more contrasting colors for the marbling. So hope you enjoy this and I will try and post again later to catch up a bit. Hope you enjoy this nice hot weather too!

Challenge Day 19- Galaxy Nails

Hi everyone! Wow what a crappy week weather wise! I have to say that this is my (and I am sure most others) least favorite type of weather. I am constantly feeling like I can't keep my eyes open for more than a minute! Oh well, enough complaining and onto some nails!

Well I had been kind of looking forward to this day/terrified of it. I really like some galaxy nails, but I feel like it is easy to go overboard and ruin it, which I now believe even more! I feel like I definitely need to try this again with someone else watching me to tell me to quit while I am ahead! So first I am just going to show you all the polishes I used because I ended up doing each nail a bit differently in a slightly different order and some colors were not used on certain nails and others were used more and less on some and...yeah...I didn't do them all the same, but all of these polishes were used on at least one nail.

Ok so left to right we have: Zoya "Crystal", Kiss Nail Art in white, OPI "Metallic 4 Life", Ulta "Denim Glitz", Finger Paints "Where Art Renoir?", Avon "Lagoon", Sally Hansen Insta-Dry "Jumpin' Jade" 

So I started off with two coats of Essence "Holographic" nail polish in "Blue Ray". I say "Holographic" because it isn't. It is not at all holographic, but it is a super awesome duochrome. I took a few pictures of it on its own because I thought it was super pretty. 

You can see there is a strong teal-purple flash/shift that to me looks like a peacock in a bottle! :-) I will have to use this one again whenever I attempt some peacock lookin nails. :-) 

Anyways, after that I used a makeup sponge to add a streak of white going sort of diagonal across my nails then I just started layering a bunch of colors in different orders and such on top of the white. I mainly used the Avon, Zoya and Ulta colors on top of the white and on a few I added a touch of the green Sally towards the edges. I then topped them all with a very thin layer of "Metallic 4 Life" so I got some "stars" on there with the chunky silver hexs and the black base helped to blend all of the other colors together a bit more, which I can't decide if that was a good thing or a bad thing. After that though I sponged on some of the Finger Paints Renoir on the edges to darken them a bit and try to give it a bit more depth. All in all the end result could have benefited from some more lightness, but I am really really enjoying it still. I am already thinking about what I could do differently next time so stay tuned for that after I am done with this challenge...or maybe this might have to be the one I recreate for day 31...hmm... :-) Ok well enough of my blabbering here are the pictures. 

 Well I hope you enjoyed! Until next time! :-)

Challenge Day 18- Half moons

Good morning all! Well I am pretty pleased with how today's look came out. I had been thinking about trying the half moon look for a while so I had the reinforcement things that everyone says works so well and I have to say I agree that they do work pretty well. I started off this look by painting my whole nail with Sally Hansen's Insta-Dry in "Silver Sweep", which looked really freaking cool actually! I thought it was going to be super streaky and uneven since it is a metallic, but the formula was awesome and I happen to love the inst-dry brush so no real brush marks!

Anyways, so I let the silver get completely and totally dry and then I placed the reinforcements at the base of my nails so they would create the half moon shape. Once they were in place I painted the top portion above the reinforcement with two coats of "Metallic 4 Life" by OPI. As soon as I had two coats done I immediately removed the stickers so the polish didn't get too tacky and start causing problems. On a couple of nails I actually didn't get the stickers off quickly enough and the top color started sticking to the paper of the sticker more than the nail so the sticker took more polish with it than it should have. (I hope that makes even a little bit of sense) So after that I just added some top coat and cleaned it up! It really wasn't hard at all except next time I will be much more careful with the placement of the reinforcements because I ended up with some very uneven half moons. Each of my nails has a different size moon because I was so worried about sticking them down properly I didn't pay all that much attention to consistency across the nails. Okay well after all that here are the pictures of the final product! Hope you enjoy!

Okie dokie folks! Well enjoy and see ya next time!

Challenge Day 17- Glitter

Hello everyone! Now this is a challenge I can get behind! I have to say I feel like I should have come up with something better for this one since I love my glitter so much, but I kind of got overwhelmed and just decided to go with a simpler approach. Now this is a glitter I fell in love with the moment I laid eyes on it and yet I still hadn't used it! So here it is for your viewing pleasure...drumroll please...Nicole by OPI "Follow me on Glitter"! I love this polish! The formula was amazing totally opaque in two coats and honestly it was opaque in one, but just not dark enough to get the full effect of those tiny colored hexs floating around in that fabulous gunmetal glitter base. I love it! So here goes the pictures!

This one has that wide brush, which is really okay for me when it is such a great formula polish so I had no problems at all getting this on nice and evenly. Overall, this is a really quick and easy, but special glitter polish that I have a sneaking suspicion will be landing on my toes soon as well! :-) SO! I hope you enjoyed it too and until next time! :-D