I'm Back!

I know I've been gone for a while. I have been painting my nails the w whole time, but there are very few I've been willing to share. Nothing was working quite right.

I've got a few saved, and I seem to be back in the groove, so I want to start sharing again!

I'm going to trial updating without the use of flickr, just to make updates easier for me, but I'll still upload things there later, to have a gallery all in one place.

I will be keeping my nails short going forward, because I'm trying to learn ukulele, and long nails don't help!

So, without further ado, here is this week's manicure!

Polishes used:

3 coats Essie Sunday Funday

3 coats Sinful Colors Snow Me White

essence black nail art "tattoo" pen

Design originally found on Pinterest

Reddit Challenge - Decals

A nail blogger I've been reading for a few months - Rebecca Likes Nails - is having a 2-year blog birthday giveaway ... head on over and enter!!

---

This one actually took me a couple of tries - I wasn't happy with either, but here's the one I'm sharing:

I started with two coats of Sally Hansen Heat Flash - a bright neon coral (it matches my site!)

On all but my ring finger, I topped it off with Icing By Claire's Rave Royalty - a gold/orange flakie (I'd say it's more like shards) that has the occasional flash of green. The polish is in a very sheer coral base, which does show if you put it on bare nails, but there is no way you could build it up to opaque. I had to dab the flakies on rather than use it like a normal polish, but I love it!

I added the decals to my ring finger. The decals I have are a little too thick and my nails are a little too curved, so they don't lie flat. They're cute though! I actually got them at a dollar store, so I guess I couldn't expect much.

---

I bought a few things at Michael's craft store the other day, and I got a 40% coupon for a single item this week. I decided to go buy a Recollections 3 Drawer Organizer Cube also known in the online nail polish world as a "Melmer"  (It's like a smaller version of Ikea's Helmer cabinet, and it's from Michael's ... so Melmer).

I got it put together in about an hour, and put shelf liner in the bottoms of the drawers (a tip I saw over at A Polished Touch) and started to fill it up.

I have to figure out how I want to put the polishes in ... by colour or by brand? I should let my husband organize it, he loves that sort of thing.

It doesn't look like my polish will even fill up one drawer - and some people have multiple Melmers!!
I'll take some photos when I'm done and share in another post.

Another double post

I really wasn't sure how the Galaxy manicure would turn out, and I've been busy this week, so I didn't actually get a chance to sit down and make an attempt until tonight.

I decided that while I was at it, I would do the "bling" manicure for next week. More on that later.

I could not believe how easy this was to do and how pretty it came out:

2 coats OPI Black Onyx.

Then I put a bit of Sally Hansen Pink Blink onto a palette (my temporary tape-on-a-lid palette!), and used the edge of a makeup sponge to dab it on in patches
I did the same thing with Sally Hansen HD in Laser - only this time I did it over my whole nail. It's too sheer to show up much, but it toned down the pink very nicely and added a nice bit of shimmer.
I went in with OPI Nice Color Eh? and dabbed it over the pink in smaller patches.
I finished the sponging off with Sally Hansen Heat Flash in the very centre of each nebula.

After it was sufficiently dry, I dabbed on a bit of Claire's Glitter topcoat for the stars.
Then topocat to smooth it all out and voila!

---

Now ... the "bling" manicure. I bloody hate that word, and I'm really not into having raised things on my nails - so I skipped adding jewels.
Unfortunately, you can't see the sparkly / iridescence in the photo at all, but here's what I did instead:

I painted all my nails with Sally Hansen Heat Flash - 3 coats on all my nails except my ring finger, which received 2.

I obtained a few tiny vials of hex glitter when buying some cheap-o clear polish to use for a project. One of them is an iridescent coral, so I thought I'd try placing it on my ring finger to look like scales.

Heat Flash is a quick dry, so I didn't expect to get anywhere with that. I did a small amount of topcoat at the very top of my nail, and planned to do further small blotches as I placed the glitter. Well, the glitter was too small, the topcoat was drying too quickly,and I was too impatient, so I just slapped on some topcoat and dumped the glitter on top. I really knew I shouldn't have done that, but thankfully I didn't get much glitter outside of my workspace, and it was fairly easy to clean up. I honestly think I'm just going to chuck the rest of it in the garbage.

Anyways, I added one more coat of topcoat, then I went over it all with Essie Luxeffects Shine of the Times.
It resulted in a super shimmery iridescent feature nail.
Good Enough.


And yes, I totally cheated and have a galaxy manicure on my right-hand and the neon glitter on my left-hand.
Hah!

52 Week Challenge - Two weeks at once!

Yep, I'm a bit late posting.
I was super busy last week, so I didn't actually finish the manicure until Thursday afternoon. When that manicure didn't work, I decided to take it off and do this week's manicure on Friday morning.
Then I didn't get a chance to update, because we took in my sister's cat, and had to spend a lot of time helping her adjust.

But, anyways ... here are two manicures for you to (hopefully) enjoy:

Last post, I said that the next manicure was rainbow/pride and according to the list, it is.
I thought about it a bit and ... well, pride parade and festival (at least here in Vancouver) isn't until August 5th, so I swapped the August 5th manicure into the June 17th spot.

So, this week I'm doing a needle marble manicure.
Here goes nothing!

2 coats Steady as She Rose - I'm not much for pinks, but I really like this one, it's a pale dusty rose with a hint of lilac. I let it dry very thoroughly.
One finger at a time, painted the top half of my nail with You Don't Know Jacques and then - while it's still wet, working quickly - the bottom half with Steady as She Rose.
Again ... while it's still wet, working quickly and carefully, use a pin to drag the two colours into each other and create swirls.
Once it's all dry, apply topcoat to smooth it out and protect it.

My layers were too thick, and I got some bubbling. They took hours to dry - 3 hours after topcoat, I ended up peeling the still soft polish off of two nails.

---

Onto the next manicure ... Neon
Neon polish is incredibly hard to photograph - you never get true colour. I haven't tweaked this at all in photoshop, but I took it in a very well-lit area (hence the different carpet - I was at work, in front of giant windows)

This is the summer trend this year. I have the Sally Hansen Instra-Dri limited edition colour Heat Flash.
I think I'd call it a neon coral - it's a very red orange.

Oh Insta-Dri ... I don't much care for the formula or the brush.
The brush and stem are flat, so you can't wipe off excess polish very easily. The polish itself is thick, but it goes on streaky. I used 2 coats, but I could have easily gone with 3.
The best thing about this polish? I haven't used a topcoat, and while it has started to chip, it has a super high shine.

I added black crackle to my ring finger just to break up the brightness a little (random dollar store brand).
It's cute! I don't know that I'd jump on the neon trend and get more shades, but this one is nice.

Next week's manicure was supposed to be 4th of July, but since I'm Canadian, I'll be doing a Canada Day manicure.