33 Day Challenge: Favourite Pattern

Day 29 of the 33 Day Challenge is here. I seem to have gotten on the 'creating OK nail art bandwagon' again and I'm pretty glad because I'd been looking forward to the favourite pattern prompt for a while. I didn't even have to think about this one. I  love houndstooth anything, even this Lady Gaga ensemble (I wouldn't wear any of it but it's cool) and I'd been wanting to do a nude/neon houndstooth manicure for ages after seeing it in a blog (the name, I cannot remember and I can't find it on Google) and thinking it was the coolest thing in the world. However, I didn't own a good nude or an opaque enough neon colour to recreate what I had seen but thanks to my little haul last week, I have finally created a mani inspired on that one I saw many moons ago.

I started with two coats of My Island Home (MIH), a great-nude-for-my-skin-tone, textured polish from Face Of Australia, and let it dry for about an hour before I started stamping. It didn't need to dry for that long but I find the texture shows a lot better when the polish has fully dried. And I wanted to be absolutely sure I wouldn't have to redo the base from stamper pressure smudges. I have ruined bases many times that way and it looks like I have learnt a lesson. :)

For the houndstooth pattern I used the BM-322 plate and one coater polishes. From green to orange I used: 

• Essence in The Green & the Grunge
• Sinful Colours in Blue By You
• Max Factor Mini in Purple Haze
• Konad Special Polish in Red
• Essence in Flashy Pumpkin

Hold on, wasn't this supposed to be a nude AND neon manicure? Well, yes but... The one coater-ish neon pink I have didn't stamp that well and it looked like a greyed out pink over MIH. Plain black houndstooth was gonna be boring so I created a sort of rainbow effect with two of my new polishes and some old ones I knew were one coaters and had the potential to stamp well over the nude. I even gambled a little and brought out the shimmer Blue By You because I wanted sparkle. Look at it below, it worked and it looks so pretty in the sun.

Sun. I finally had the opportunity to do my mani early in the day and come out to the sun to take photos. I get to sit on the grass, enjoy the birds singing, the wind in my face, listen to the peace and quiet of the outdoors and not feel guilty that I'm procrastinating uni work. Yay for summer holidays!

On with the manicure... I didn't use any topcoat because I LOVE the texture of MIH but it makes me sad the stamping will come off quicker because of that. 

Did anyone notice that the pattern on the index finger is upside down compared to the rest of the fingers? Applying the colours to the plate to create the rainbow was sort of automatic but when I thought about it and was about to stamp the index finger, I thought I had it the wrong way on the stamper and redid it. I only noticed it when I was taking photos. I'm gonna say that's an accent finger. That'll work. ;)

I also noticed this mani fitted that prompt for Friday very well but I have no idea what I'm gonna do for that one. I'll have to do some brainstorming. Until then, check out the other ladies' manicures.

Till next time, 

Laura

33 Day Challenge: A Mani Using Two Patterns

Day 18 for the challenge. A few things pop into my mind when I think about that number:

1. I didn't know I had enough creativity to get through to this day 
2. I don't know how I'm gonna come up with my own ideas when the challenge is over
3. I'm posting this the day it is supposed to go up
4. My right hand is an awkward poser or it needs to find its own poses

I didn't want to take off my last mani (if you're in a desktop/laptop and have a keyboard, press the right arrow key to get to it and the left one to get back to this one, you know you want to try it...), so I brought out my right hand to play. Yeah, that means I have different designs on each hand. :)

I started with two coats of the super-buttery, non-streaky metallic polish called Crazy Fancy Love by Essence. It's actually a greenish rose gold multichrome but all the stamping doesn't really let its greatness shine through. Once I let this beauty dry, I stamped a what-I-think-may-be reeds pattern from the plate BM-406 with Ulta3's Frog Prince. I didn't know this could stamp as well as it did but I wanted a green and that was the opaquest one I had so I gave it a go. I stamped the roses with Konad Special Red Polish and the plate BM-323. I sealed it all off with a coat of Seche Vite before cleaning up.

I usually clean up before top coating a mani but I figured if my left hand strayed, the brush would remove the topcoat and not the stamping. Looks like that was the case but the cuticle edge was messy. Better than a half stamped hand?

I think the above photo is a right hand pose, if I tried it with my left my fingers would be super crooked.

Check out what the other talented ladies have come up with for this prompt.

Till next time, which I know I will be late for.

Laura

essence Snow White Glitter Sandwich

Going through Tasha's stash has given me quite a few lemmings. One of them was Essie's Jelly Apple. I loved the colour (my favourite polishes have always been red) and the jelly finish (which until now, I never owned). When swatches starting popping up on the WWW of essence's Snow White collection and its polish of the same name, I knew my lemming would be satisfied for a very low price. 

I patiently waited for Target to stock the collection but it took a few months before the display was up. I guess the release of Twilight was more important than Snow White (not on my books...). It took a few attempts and visits to two local Targets to get my hands on this puppy. I actually ended up buying three bottles, but at $3.50 each, it is still cheaper than buying one discounted Essie online.

Swatch below is done with one coat and no top coat. Isn't pretty AND shiny? I also love the fact they have a wide, flat brush that makes the application of this extremely-easy-to-work-with formula even easier.

I couldn't stop admiring the colour but after a few hours it got kinda boring and I thought 'Why not paint myself a glitter sandwich?'. I used my favourite glitter topper, American Apparel's Supernova. It's doesn't need to be dabbed on too much for an even coverage of its different size glitters and it's pretty colourful. Only applied one coat on the photo below.

I let it dry for a bit to avoid any drag and applied a second coat of Snow White. What happened to the colour of the glitters really impressed me. The glitters were either light or black and no actual colour showed thru. I'm still no connoisseur of colour theory and a lot of my experimentation is trial and error. Either way I was very happy with the result. It sort of reminded me of strawberries... 

 At the end, I added a matte top coat but wasn't too impressed. For once, I liked the shiny version better.  

Til next time, 

Laura