Easter Nails

Inspired by my jelly sandwich from a few weeks ago, I did some Easter themed nails.
I decided to make it a ruffian manicure to incorporate some chocolate brown into it as well.

I used 2 coats of Revlon Chocolate Truffle to create the base for the ruffian. I only painted it near the cuticles, because I didn't want to create too many layers.
I went over that with a thin coat of Zoya White to create a base for the lighter colours.
From pinky to thumb, I used Zoya White, Fascino Blue, Sally Hansen Mellow Yellow, Sally Hansen Pink Blink and Ardene's Stereo Love. Two coats of each.
Once those were mostly dry, I added Ardene's Paris Nights multicoloured glitter. It's in a slightly green tinted base so it did alter the pastels a little bit, but it's super pale and sheer, so you don't notice it once the manicure is done.
Once the glitter coat was mostly dry, I went over it with Sally Hansen Polar Bare to mute down the colours and matte the glitter.
Topcoat to even everything out and protect it and voila! speckled Easter eggs!

The Ardene's polish and the Sally Hansen Polar Bare both take ages to dry, but it's a super cute effect.

I wore this over to a friend's house and once they saw it they said "you have Easter eggs on your nails! Chocolate ones!"
I think the concept was a success.

Reddit Challenge - Inspired by a Song

I had a really tough time with this one, and I asked people for help.

I asked my husband first. At the time, I was painting my nails black for my company Christmas party, and he just looked at my nails, looked back at me and raised his eyebrows. "Paint it Black" ... I really didn't want to cop-out, but I kept it in my back pocket.

I asked a co-worker. "99 Red Balloons", he suggested and gave me a link to a website with a list of songs that have colours in the title. Very crafty!

I browsed the site and thought "Yellow Submarine!" but since I'm going to be taking it off quickly to do a manicure for another Christmas party, I didn't want to put a lot of time into it.

I started typing in bands, looking for lists of songs, I finally went back to The Beatles, and figured why not just go for their costumes for Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

So ... here it is!

Thumb is 3 coats Claire's Scented Banana
Index finger is 2 coats Wet n Wild Lavender
Middle finger is 3 coats Claire's Scented Lime
Ring finger is 2 coats Fascino Blue
Pinkie is 2 coats Wet n Wild Red

Details are done with Claire's and Icing detail polishes in gold and silver.

Fast and cute!

52 Week Challenge - Two Again

OK, I've been lazy again ... I did two manicures, took photos, but never bothered to upload them or post about them.

Bleh.

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Crackle Manicure:
I guess the person who made the challenge wanted to give people a bit of a break?

I had a lovely vision in mind for this one, but it REALLY didn't work.
I used Avon Golden Twilight (black with golden-bronze flecks) and topped it off with Icing by Claire's gold crackle polish ... what a mess! The Avon polish was very pretty. The crackle polish? It was thick and goopy - If you put on a thin coat, you could see brush strokes, and it didn't crackle well at all. If you put on a thick coat, it was a nice colour, but still didn't crackle well.

Here's what I did instead:

2 coats of Revlon Stormy Night

Random dark teal crackle polish that I've used once before. XOX Cosmetics colour #N72. It's a very odd polish, thick and goopy as well (I remember it being thinner before), but this one crackled pretty well. It smells like paint / permanent marker when you apply it, but afterward, it's a sweet almost floral scent.

OPI Topcoat to seal it all off and shine it up - I would have just left it matte to have that shiny / matte contrast, but when this particular crackle polish dries, it lightens as well - some of the areas where it went on thicker remained shiny and dark, so I figured the shine would help mask some of the stripes, and it did!

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Rainbow / Pride Manicure:
I moved this one to this weekend, because Vancouver's Pride Parade was on August 5th. I missed the parade, but I did wear it downtown afterward.

I was trying to figure out how to approach this one, and I saw someone with vertically striped rainbow nails somewhere (I'm pretty sure it was in one of the blogs I read, but I can't find it)

I thought it looked really cool, and it would give me the opportunity to do ROYGBV (yep, I left out the I)

I really didn't have the patience to do sponging this weekend, so I did a few thin coats, and overlapped the colours. I used cremes for the primary colours (red, yellow, blue) and shimmers for the secondary colours (orange, green, purple)

Colours are:
Wet n Wild Fantasy Makers Venom
NYC Pumpkin
Sally Hansen Mellow Yellow
Wet n Wild Craze Jade
Fascino Colour #47
Icing By Claire's KTDID

phew!
I'm sure it would look better with the sponging, but I think this is pretty cute as-is.

Next week is a Galaxy Manicure - another one that I'm a bit intimidated by, but I'm sure I'll make it happen.

52 Week Nail Challenge - Fruit Manicure

I got all of my stamp plates on Friday.

I played around with them for a bit over the weekend and I decided that I wanted to use them for this week's manicure.

Please pardon the flash as always. If I remember, I'll bring my camera to work tomorrow to see if I can get a non-flash photo.

I picked up a pack of Claire's Sweet Scents - 5 scented nail polishes

Strawberry (pink), Orange (orange), Banana (yellow), Lime (green) Fruit Punch (turquoise)
I didn't want to choose just one, so I decided to do a skittles manicure.

Back when I worked at Claire's, their nail polishes weren't the best, so I was expecting to have to do multiple coats - these aren't too bad! Neon colours, dries matte, and dries quickly.

2 coats for each, except the yellow - it required 3, and it was kind of gloopy. :( I think if I want to use the yellow again, I'll do a basecoat with another yellow polish first.

Scent-wise, they're pretty standard artificial scents. The orange and lime were pretty 'cleaning supply' scented at first, but then they mellowed out.

Once they were on and dry, I went in with OPI Black Onyx to add the designs.

A strawberry on my thumb, orange slices on my index finger, bananas on my middle finger, a lime on my ring finger and a pineapple on my pinky.
Some of them are off-centre ... I'm still trying to figure out how to position the stamp.

I applied a topcoat to protect everything, which I figured would kill the fruit scent - I am surprised to say that it did not!

Next week is a Splatter Mani - remember splatter painting with straws from when you were a kid - yeah, picture that with nail polish. If it's nice next weekend, I'll do my nails outside. Must remember to keep a couple of straws this week.