Christmas Ornaments - Christmas 2014

I hope everyone had a great Christmas yesterday.  Just wanted to quickly post my Christmas nails from this year.  I had these on since Saturday and was originally thinking I'd change them up either Tuesday or Wednesday night.  But the cleaning, wrapping, and just general last minute preparations for Christmas kind of derailed that plan!

For my base, I started with two coats of Orly Au Champagne then topped that with one coat of Sonnetarium Snowfall.  I used this same combination a few years ago as a base for a Christmas lights design, and had been wanting to use it again ever since.  On my ring finger, I used a design from MoYou London Festive Collection plate 17, stamped with Konad Special Polish in red.  I felt like it needed a little something else, so I used black Konad Special Polish and stamped a small music notes design from the same plate at my cuticle.

The ornaments all came from MoYou London Festive Collection plate 18.  I used Konad Special Polishes in red, green, and blue for the ornaments, and also for dotting to fill up some of the blank space around the ornaments.  Once the dots were completely dry, I topped everything with one coat of Seche Vite top coat.

Even though I ended up only doing one Christmas themed design this year, I didn't mind much because I really liked how this one turned out.  I received quite a lot of compliments at work on this one, and I was glad to finally use Snowfall over Au Champagne once again.   I really like those two polishes together.

Christmas Nails 2013 - Better late than never!

I realize I never did put together a post about the designs I made this past Christmas.  So this may be a little backwards since I just recently posted my New Year's design, but today is Russian Christmas after all, so I guess it's as good a day as any to finally put these up!  So, to those who are celebrating, Christos Razdajetsja!  Slavite Jeho!

Ever since I picked up the 2013 holiday collection of the JulieG Gum Drops polishes, I've been wanting to use Mistletoe to finally try out Nailside's abstract Christmas tree design.

First I painted my nails with a polish combo I've managed to use in some way for at least one holiday manicure each year since they first were released in 2011: 2 coats of China Glaze Poinsettia topped with one coat of China Glaze Ring In The Red.  I also added a layer of topcoat to my ring finger before starting on the tree itself.  For my tree, I started off a little different by first taping off a tree shape on my nail, then filling it in with one thick coat of Orly Dazzle and quickly removing the scotch tape.  Once that was dry, I taped off the same tree shape and then crisscrossed striping tape over the tree and painted on one coat of Mistletoe.  When I pulled off the tape, it gave the impression of having silver garland draped on my little tree.  I finished off the tree with a piece of diamond shaped holographic glitter I fished out of Cirque XX.  I had originally wanted to use a star glitter but the only stars I had available were too large.

I finished off the rest of my nails by stamping on an ornament pattern from Bundle Monster plate BM-H03 using China Glaze Millennium, then top coated the stamped nails.

For Christmas Eve and Christmas day, I kept it pretty simple by just stamping some holly leaves on all my nails.  Considering I started with a base of Amazeballz by Lacquistry, it really didn't need much else to be sparkle worthy for Christmas.

I had finally snagged myself a bottle of Amazeballz in an early morning restock earlier in the month and it arrived just in time to to use for Christmas.  I used 3 coats to get full coverage, but it was already almost completely opaque by the 2nd coat.  Once I had it on, I knew I couldn't bring myself to cover it up, so a simple holly leaf design stamped on each nail near my cuticle was enough to make me happy.  The holly leaf design was from Bundle Monster plate BM14, from the original 2010 set, stamped with Konad Special Polishes in red and green.

Besides being a belated Christmas post, this was also a little flashback to my nails prior to my recent New Year's chop, ha ha.  You'll probably be seeing some more flashbacks to longer nails coming up, as I have a few generic/non-seasonal designs from the past month or two that I never got around to posting yet.  Thanks for stopping by and Merry Christmas!  ;-)

Liquid Lacquer 80's Baby

Today I have the first of 4 polishes I recently received from Liquid Lacquer.  There were a few polishes I had been eyeing, so I decided to apply for Melissa's blogger package.  I thought it would be a great way to order some polishes that I wanted and in the process try out a few polishes that I might not normally have chosen on my own.  80's Baby is a perfect example of that!  I don't think that I would have ordered this glitter on my own, so when I got it as part of the blogger package, I was a bit nervous.  Especially since I don't consider choosing glitter and base color combos one of my strong points.  But after testing out a few combinations, I came across one that just wowed me.  This is 80's Baby over Orly Lucky Duck.

80's Baby is a mix of mostly neon colored glitters: yellow, pink and green, and winter white matte glitters in a clear base.  I went from not being sure about this glitter to wearing this combo for 5 straight days.  I tested this over several different base colors.  Some combinations worked well, some were...well, just wrong.  As in "I'm not even going to show you" wrong.  But 80's Baby/Lucky Duck was a winner and my absolute favorite.  It really looks awesome over white too.  I went with Lucky Duck for this post because it seems neon glitters over white is a common find on the internet so I wanted to try something a little different.  But I will definitely be wearing this over white one day soon because I loved my test swatch of it.  Here's a shot of 80's Baby over Milani White On The Spot, China Glaze Lemon Fizz and Finger Paints Black Expressionism.

Some of the neon glitters really pop over different base colors and some kind of disappear on certain shades, but each combination offers a great look.  The lime green squares, for example, really pop over Lucky Duck.  But see that big translucent neon green hex in the middle of Yellow Fizz?  There is also one on the black swatch, to the immediate left of the big pink hex.  But it just kind of melts into the black background and the same thing happened over Lucky Duck.  But for how great the other colors look, that's a trade-off I'm willing to make.  And they show up just fine over other colors, like Lemon Fizz.

Application of 80's Baby was really smooth, but for the test swatches on the nail wheel it did take about 3 coats to get the glitter built up the way I wanted it.  For my actual manicure, I tried dabbing the glitter onto my nails, instead of brushing it on, and I was able to get the coverage I wanted in just one coat.  I finished off the manicure with one coat of Gelous and one coat of Seche Vite.

I'm so glad that I signed up for the blogger package.  I would probably not have thought to order 80's Baby myself and I would have really been missing out on a great neon glitter!  I'll have some more Liquid Lacquer polishes coming up soon.  In the meantime, be sure to check out all of the current Liquid Lacquer polishes available on Melissa's shop!

Spun Sugar: Take 3!

It has been a while since the last time I tried out the spun sugar technique.  My last attempt was not one of my favorites...it was ok, but not as exciting as the first time I tried this technique.  I had been wearing OPI We'll Always Have Paris Suede for about two days and was staring at my nails trying to decide if I wanted to change it up and the idea try a spun sugar mani again finally hit me.

Before I get any further, here are a few shots of We'll Always Have Paris Suede by itself.  This was two coats, no top coat.

I love the OPI Suedes.  All of them.  As a whole, it is definitely one of my favorite collections of all time.  Without top coat they are prone to chip quicker, just like most matte finishes, but application is so smooth and they just look fantastic once dry.  I think I'm going to have to try out each one of them as a base for a spun sugar mani at some point.  Just like with the my first attempt using OPI Here Today...Aragon Tomorrow Suede as my base, I love the way the subtle sparkle squeaks through between the strands of creme polishes layered over it.

For the strands, I started out with applying random lines of the original/non-suede OPI We'll Always Have Paris.  That was followed by strands of Orly Artificial Sweetener and Orly You're Blushing.  I went back and added just a few more strands of We'll Always Have Paris at the end because I felt it needed just a few more dark lines.  Once that had set up for a bit, I tried to get the surface as smooth as possible by applying a coat of Seche Vite, one coat of Gelous and then one last coat of Seche Vite to finish it off.

I can't wait to do another one, definitely one of my favorite techniques!  Also, I finally caved and bought myself a new camera with the help of some gift cards I was hoarding since Christmas.  It's a Canon PowerShot SX50 HS and I love it.  I think you can tell the difference in clarity right here in this one post between all the swatch pics of We'll Always Have Paris Suede, which were taken with my 9 year old Sony, and the pictures of the spun sugar mani, which were all taken with the new Canon.

Christmas Tree Wrapping Paper

Last weekend was the annual Christmas party held by the owners of the company I work for and I wanted to do something new on my nails for the party.  I decided to try out the little abstract Christmas tree design on the newest Bundle Monster set.  It is from plate BM-321.  I was actually planning to use the Christmas tree stamp along with a few other Christmas themed stamps like the gift box and the ornament but I didn't like the way that they were stamping so I decided to just stick with the trees.  I was afraid that the trees would be too plain completely by themselves, so I came across a swirly type design on Bundle Monster plate BM-224 and stamped it a couple times on each nail as a background to the trees.  The final result ended up reminding me of something you might see on Christmas wrapping paper.

For my base color, I used Orly Dazzle.  I stamped the swirl design with Konad Special Polish in white.  Then using Konad green for the tree and Konad red for the tree base, I stamped about four trees randomly on top of the swirls on each nail.

I really like Orly Dazzle as a base for stamping.  I've used it before and I love the way the stamped designs look over the silver background.

I'll probably do at least one or maybe two more Christmas type manicures before the holiday, but I don't know if I'll have time to actually post them until after Christmas.  So if I don't get a chance before Tuesday, here's wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!!!

Christmas Lights

For my second Winter mani of the season, I leaned a bit more towards a Christmas design instead of just a basic Winter theme.  I've been wanting to try out the Christmas light bulb design on the 2012 Bundle Monster plates since I first bought the set, so I figured now was as good a time as any to give it a shot.

I started out with a couple coats of Orly Au Champagne, then went over that with one coat of Sonnetarium Snowfall.  I picked out 4 colors from my Konad Special Polishes to use for the bulbs: orange, blue, yellow and red.  The bulb design can be found on plate BM-318.  For each bulb, I stamped using one of the 4 colors and some Konad Special Polish in green for the little light socket part of the design.  Then I used the same green Konad polish to freehand some wires connecting all the bulbs.

The only issue I had with this design was that the yellow bulbs were a lot harder to see in real life than they are in the pictures.  You had to get really close to see the detail in the yellow bulbs but the other colors really popped well on the white background.  Snowfall over Au Champagne was gorgeous all by itself.  I didn't take any shots of it without the stamping (D'oh!), but it was so pretty that I think I might have to use this combination again at some point this Winter for another manicure.  And I should have a new post up later this week of the design I have on right now, that I did to wear to my office Christmas Party last night.  It reminds me of Christmas tree wrapping paper.

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 #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!

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.