31 Day Challenge, Day 19. Galaxy!

I love Galaxy Nails! I have always kind of been a space nut. I wanted to be an astronaut when I was little, said I was from Mars for a while and really looked up to my Uncle, Homer Stewart.  He was a huge name in the Jet Propulsion Lab. He was part of the moon landing. He let me borrow Kodak pictures(originals) of the earth from the moon for a science fair project. I love space.
One of the things I love about galaxy nails is that there are so many different ways to do it. My first attempt was with a black base and the water color method of adding the other colors. I have also seen sponge effects, acrylic paint, and splatters(which I can't find the link to at the moment). But recently I found a mani that used powdered eye shadow. This is what I used for this one.
First I laid down 2 coats of Necromorphic, a franken of mine with a black base and tons of holographic glitter. Then I used a dotting tool and put on some sporadic white dots. Then one nail at a time I swiped on a coat of Quick dry top coat and sprinkled one color of eye shadow on the wet polish. Once all the nails were sprinkled, I waited for the polish to dry, tapped off the excess powder and washed my hands. Then, I did the whole process again. I did that for green, blue, gold, and red powder. Then one last coat of top coat and I was done. I found that something I would do differently is to press lightly on places with powder to make it stick better.  Anyways, enough babbling, on to the nails!

And obviously this eye shadow is not for eyes anymore, but don't worry I didn't buy it for my eyes anyways. I used some of this to experiment with pigmenting polish. It's really pretty.  I really like this technique and with different colors you can create all kinds of effects.

Stay Tuned, tomorrow I am attempting a water marble. In my opinion it is the hardest technique to master and I still haven't yet. So let's see what happens.

Happy Manicures!

P.S. Check it out! A review of my polish from the Beautiful Jen at I Like my Polish Black, Just Like My Metal

31 Day Challenge, Day 18. Half Moons!

Todays mani, is a total FAIL! I wanted a really cool french tip/half moon mani, using three different colors. My first attempt used Pure Ice-Wild Thing (green) as a base and then alternate top and bottom half with Pure Ice- French Kiss(blue). The green showed through the blue pretty bad and I thought it was because I hadn't waited long enough. I repainted, half and half and then masked off the moons and tips and the green bled through the China Glaze-Gothic Lolita. Blech. I even waited 24 hours before painting the purple. I guess the green is just a bleeder. It looks interesting though.

Blech. Oh well. Tomorrow's is way better! Super excited about it. Stay Tuned!

Happy Manicures!

31 Day Challenge, Days 15, 16, and 17

I have been busy, sick, and lazy the last few days. I was really looking forward to this challenge but I am so disappointed by what I come up with. I just feel like they are really blah. I have a couple coming up that are fun and that I like, but in this post there is only one.

Day 15 is delicate. If you know me, you know I am anything but delicate. In fact I don't think I own anything that could be considered delicate except a crocheted doily my grandma made me, and that's in a box cuz it would look so weird in my house. I had some great ideas for this mani. I was gonna do toilet paper, but that looked ridiculous.  I thought I would do a dandelion blowing in the wind. I found out that I can't paint a dandelion for crap. It was getting late by this time so I took my light shimmery blue, Essie- Bikini So Teeny and painted the nails. Then I looked through my stamping plates and found one that has barbie on it and some really pretty lace. So I stamped lace and then made the tips french. Meh. It's pretty, don't get me wrong. But my creative muscles definitely weren't flexed.

Day 16 was tribal. I hate what is called a tribal manicure. I am not a fan of those sort of geometric designs. Everyone pretty much does the same thing. Sponging different colors, then a geometric pattern in black. How Boring and generic. I asked Dingus what I should do as I had already looked up Cherokee (I'm 2/64 cherokee) and didn't like those designs, I looked up celtic and gaelic and thought those would be really hard. Dingus said I should look up the local tribes. The Salish. They make beautiful totem poles. I chose four animals from carved oars and used them. I like them a lot. From top to bottom, Killer Whale, Raven stealing the sun, Bear, and Eagle. I got a lot of compliments on these and Sweetpea said they were great!

Finally, Day 17 was glitter. I love glitter now that I have figured out the glue technique. You use white school glue as a basecoat so that when you want to remove it, you just peel it off. I hate trying to get rid of glitter with polish remover. Anyway, I got Saly Hanson Insta-Dri - In A Flurry. Its a really pretty green polish with green glitter and tiny flecks of purple. I thought it would look great with this gorgeous Lavender glitter by Milani. It did. But can my pictures show you that? No. They cannot. I really need a lightbox, but I don't really have a place for it. Poop. So, here are the pics I took in different light and you can see different aspects of it in the pics.
 

So, there are the last few days of the challenge.

Happy Manicures!

31 Day Challenge, Day 14. Floral!

I have to admit, I think floral prints are a little girly and I'm not girly. I do, however, have flowers in my tattoos and these flowers are from my newest, Layla.

She's not terribly new, April I think is when she came into my life. I designed her myself and love her to pieces. So, she inspired my floral mani:

The base is actually another untried by Wet n Wild - Night Prowl. I really like it. The pics don't do it justice, it's a beautiful black with fuchsia micro glitter. Love! This is also the thrid mani in a row I did on top of the others and the glue base. It was actually pretty cool to take it all off in one big chunk. I hope you're enjoying this challenge, I'm definitely enjoying doing it!

Happy Manicures!

31 Day Challenge, Day 13. Animal Prints

I just want to go on record saying that I think animal prints are cliche and overdone. Especially savannah animals. Giraffe, leopard, hyena, whatever. And they're on everything, clothes, furniture, linens, throw pillows, fat women's underwear etc. It's bullshit! My neck of the woods needs some representin too. We need to see some moose print kitchen towels. So, to kick off a new trend I decided to do animal prints of the locals. Here in the Inland Northwest, we have some great creatures. I have recreated their prints for you with black acrylic on a new franken white and silver base and displayed them next to the animal they represent. I chose pics of them looking natural and I think you'll find, our animals are very happy. Except the turkey, turkeys are bastards. Now, without further ado, here are my animal print nails!

Look at all those happy Northwest animals!

Check out who else came to see me the other day:

Isn't she pretty? I'm such an outdoors-person. LOL


Happy Manicures!

31 Day Challenge, Day 12. Stripes!

Ok, I dunno why I keep doing this, but my fingers make me look like a sports fan. Broncos or some crap. I really actually don't like sports but I seem like to love the garish look of blue and orange together. I really liked these nails, but next time I won't try to paint over another mani. Where it looks a little muddy in the orange is where it was over something else. I wanted to cut down on how many times I removed the polish during this challenge cuz it's usually every two to three days that I change it. During the challenge I want to do two or three a day, so I don't have to do them every day. I started with an Elmer's school glue base(this makes it so it just peels off) and did my animal print mani, thinking that was today's. Then I did this one and then my floral. It got really thick, I think I had 15 coats of polish by the end, LOL, and it lasted 3 days through showers and all. The glue base is great for glitter and stuff that's hard to remove too. I'm not going to credit anyone with that idea because I read nearly 50 blogs and several have mentioned this technique. So whoever started the idea, thank you! Anyways, The colors I used today were China Glaze - Riveting and Blue Year's Eve. A lot of the girls doing this challenge are doing 30 days of untrieds, using polishes they haven't tried before. I am almost doing that. Riveting, and a majority of the other polishes I've used are untrieds, kind of fun! Ok, I'll stop babbling...
On to the picks! 

So, what to you think? I like the horizontal ones the best. I used this striping tape I got for $1 on ebay, free shipping. I got 10 rolls and I'm about halfway through one. I don't think I'll need to buy more for a while.

Happy Manicures!

31 Day Challenge, Day 11. Dots!

I woke up yesterday morning and thought, What if I did my dots mani as draped pearls, aw genius!
So, I did a base of Wet n Wild Ebony Hates Chris, it's a great, fast-drying, super glossy black. I used my dotting tool and a couple of old frankens I made, plus Homo-Reptilia and went to work.

 

I just realized I chose kinda christmas-y colors, oh well. I still think it's really pretty and I have gold silver and copper and wanna try it with them too.

What do you think? Other colors to try, backgrounds, more or less beads?

Happy Manicures!

31 Day Challenge, Day 10. Gradient

Alright, here we go! I feel like this is the truly creative part of the challenge.  I decided to do my gradient in contrasting colors, two of my newest frankens, Homo-Reptilia and Companion's Kiss.
For a little fun I added a rinestone. What do you think?

I really love how these turned out. Homo-Reptilia is such a pretty kelly green with a nice silver shimmer. I plan on adding some green and possibly blue glitter. Companion's Kiss is a very sparkly grape with silver shimmer and some purple and blue micro glitter. I love how this set of frankens is turning out. So Vibrant! I'll be sure to do a page of full swatches once they're all finished. Super Excited!

Happy Manicures!

31 Day Challenge, Day 9. Rainbow!

I love rainbow nails and I always want to use my color club take wing collection for them. The problem is, there's no red or purple, and the green is a weird shiny olive. Come on! So, I substituted Sally Hanson Red Carpet, a Purple I made called Purple Paradise, and just used the green in the collection cuz I didn't have one that would look good. Not that this one does. Overall I like this mani, but I think it looks less rainbow and more candy. Candy is good though right?

So there you have it, kind of a half assed mani. I am dissapointed with my work on this one, but its ok. Tomorrow's is fab-u-lous! I am excited to show you that one. It features two frankens of mine and maybe something else, we'll have to see.

Happy Manicures!

31 Day Challenge, Day 8. Metallic

I love metallic polishes. I didn't know the possibilities until I got into blogging though. It used to be that polish that claimed to be metallic was really just pearly. Now, it's damn near chrome! I love it. I really want Layla's Mirror Effect polishes, but I can settle for Essie's Mirror Metallics. Today I used Penny Talk and Blue Rhapsody, I've noticed that their names kind of resemble names of songs. Like Penny Lane, and Rhapsody in Blue. The other colors are Nothing Else Metals(Nothing Else Matters), No Place Like Chrome, and Good as Gold. The last two I can't think of off the top of my head what song they sound like. Anyways, these are really great for stamping, but really crap for just painting your nails. The brush is super tiny(as with all Essies) and the formula is super patchy. If you happen to paint over something you just painted, you know like by trying to paint your whole nail? It will totally wipe off the lower layer. So them it is totally uneven. My nails are nice and smooth but this problem made them look super ridgey. I like this mani, but won't do it again, I'll keep these polishes for stamping though.

In a lightbox of sorts

In the sunshine

With NYC Matte Me Crazy topcoat

This challenge is actually kind of fun, so far. Lol. I am happy that we're out of the color constraints after tomorrow. I like picking my own colors. I like making my own colors too. I created a gorgeous green and purple that will be in a mani coming up soon. Super excited!

Happy Manicures!

31 Day Challenge, Day 7. Black & White

I was really excited about today. The last black and white mani I did was kind of a fail. A lot of people said they liked it, but I didn't. This one is a little better. I used Manglaze Mayonnaise and Matte is Murder. I love these polishes! And not really surprising cuz they're so awesome, they stamp well too. At least the black did. I might like this mani more if it was glossy. I've already ruined it however, and will never know. LOL

I love Harley Quinn and really want to do a mani dedicated to her. This one is inspired by her, but it's in black & white, no red.

Oh, and the little playing cards are Fimo things. I bought 50 canes of fimo designs a while back and if you slice them really thin, you can use them as nail decorations. I may not like how this looks, but I am patting myself on the back for the great stamping.

One last thing for today, I have perfected the formula for Bigger on the Inside, which was featured in this mani. I am going to sell bottles of this polish for $7 and if I have to ship it it's an extra $2 for shipping. If you are interested email me at arpostels[at]gmail[dot]com.

Happy Manicures!

31 Day Challenge Day 6, Violet!

Day 6 is violet. I have a couple of new favorites in this category but I have to say Orly's Fowl Play takes the cake. It is a beautiful deep plum with copper and gold and purple flakies in it. I am so enthralled with this color. Check it out:

It's got these beautiful color shifts in it! This is the first color I wore on the newly nubbinized nails and I didn't want to take it off. Sooooo Pretty!

I don't have a whole lot to talk about cuz I'm in a funk. Hopefully things will look up soon.

Happy Manicures!

31 Day challenge, Day 5. Blue!

I love blue! I usually say green is my fav color but I think blue actually is. I love all shades of blue and one of my most favorite spaceships is blue. The T.A.R.D.I.S.! So, since I can't get nerdlacquer's I Think You Call Me...Sexy, I made my own Tardis blue. I call it Bigger On The Inside. Here ya go!

(P.S. I am not currently wearing it, I made it while I still had luxurious long nails. boo)

I decided to bling it up a little with Icing- Call Me Glitzy!

Like I said, I love blue!  This polish came out better than I ever hoped. Three easy coats(really it's opaque in two) super easy clean up and the shimmer is to die for. I didn't even want to put the glitter on top cuz I just liked looking at it so much! My favorite blue.

Happy Manicures!