Lead Lighting Nail Art

Today I have a little Crumpet Nail Tarts Pick-n-Mix.  This week is geometric/yellow,blue and green.  I think I achieved both!

I started with two coats of Finger Paints Black Expressionism and then stamped with VL-3 and Konad White.  When I top coated it, smeared the white, which happens often with Konad stamping polishes and Seche Vite.  I am actually on the search for a better top coat.  Despite my love for how fast it dries, I have been having a lot of shrinkage recently.  I feel like I am on a holy grail quest for the perfect top coat.  Bah!  Anyway, I ended up touching up the black lines to cover up some of the smearing.

Then I used Colors By Llarowe Tweety Bird (yellow) and Loaded Lacquer Island Punch (blue) to lead light over the white.  I was having trouble finding a green jelly in my stash, so I took Julep Payton, which is somewhat sheer at one coat, and mixed it with a clear polish from Sally Hansen.  I kept mixing until I got the opacity I wanted.

Despite the smearing and imperfect lead lighting, I ended up really loving this!  Wouldn't this make a great easter egg mani with some spring colors?  So fun!

Thanks for looking looking and commenting!  Check out all the other Tarts nail art!

Purple Heart Nail Art

I feel I must start this post with an apology.  It is that time of year when it is constantly cold and it seems that no matter what I do, my hands look like those of a 50 year old smoker.  My cuticles are not too bad since I constantly take care of them, but my skin is constantly dry.  It doesn't help that I am also losing weight.  I mean, it does help my health, but I find that even though I have been keeping well hydrated, my skin is "loosening" and showing that "crepiness", like crepe paper, full of wrinkles.  I need a good paraffin wax!

Today's post is for The Crumpet Nail Tarts Pick-n-Mix challenge.  The theme is purple or/and hearts.  I decided to go with "and".

 I have to admit that I had a very hard time with this manicure.  Not this design exactly, but with the whole hearts thing.  I will have many varied valentines manis this month, so I had plans for this one.  I wanted a cute stamping french tip.  M80 to be exact.  However, my M80 is a fauxnaud (Konad knockoff)  I purchased this before developing a conscious about those kind of things.  I was going to stamp in white and fill in the hearts with pink.  Cute idea!  It just was not meant to be.  I tried every combination of white and stamper that I have.  I tried stamping directly onto my nails and as a stamp decal.  Nothing was working.  I finally gave up and grabbed another image I had set aside for Valentine's Day.


 
PUEEN SE01B.  That cute swirly winged heart.  Once again I tried a couple different white polishes and a couple stampers.  So frustrated though I just gave up.  I have never had so many problems stamping!  I just grabbed another plate and went to work.

I finally settled on PUEEN 68 with much better results.  I was so sick of stamping, however, that I didn't even care if I got my lines straight, just slapped it on my nails, took pictures and said DONE!

This is what I ended up with.  I started with three coats of Dance Legend Mist Way Be Mine.  Such an appropriately named polish for this nail art.  I stamped with the aforementioned PUEEN 68 and A England Lady of the Lake.  The next morning I woke up and went "Ugh!".  I couldn't stand it, so one dimensional and boring.  I decided to add something more.

I filled in some of the hearts with Blue-Eyed Girl Lacquer If You're a Seascape, a pretty bubblegum pink holo.  Still not satisfied, but I didn't want to make all the hearts pink.

Instead I grabbed A England Lady of the Lake again and filled in the rest of the hearts with it.  "Sigh".  Much better, but it sure took enough work to get it to that point!  Look how it all sparkles!  My hearts are now happy.

Despite all the trouble, the wonky stamping and my sloppy hearts, I ended up still liking this.  Maybe because I worked so hard at it?  Sometimes nail art is just a pain in the fingertips!

Check out the other purple/heart nail art (I love it when something rhymes).  Let me know if you think I succeeded or if I should have given up a long time ago.  (tee hee)  Thanks for looking and commenting!

More Double Stamping Nail Art

It's Monday and that means The Crumpet Nail Tarts Pick-n-Mix.  Today's theme is flowers/pale blue.  I wasn't feeling the flowers.  I just did flowers last week!  If you missed it, you can find it HERE.

I started with three coats of LynBDesigns Don't Torture Me, one of my all time favorite light blues.  If you want to see it on it's own, you can see it HERE.  Then I stamped with Apipila P.2.  I used the image on the right and Cupcake Polish Neither Here Noir There, a lovely dusty blue holo.  Then I stamped over that with the left image and Jupep Millie.  Two double stamps in one week?  Look at me go!

I love that I can get a splatter effect without all the mess!  Thanks for looking and don't forget to check out all the other Tart's nail art.

Wishing for Spring with a Green Gradient

I happen to live in one of the coldest states in the continental United States, Minnesota.  This is the worst time of the year for me.  Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years hare over and now comes the long cold stretch until Spring Break, but even then it is still cold.  So it is natural, if emotionally torturous, that my mind turns to spring at this time, which is reflected in my nail art.

It has been so long since I have shown nail art on Bria's nails.  Mostly that is because she broke several nails and they are so skinny that if you reduce the length, there is hardly any room for any art.

The theme for these came from The Crumpet Nail Tarts Pick-n-Mix 52 week challenge.  It is "three shades of green/yellow".  I started with a gradient of Sally Hansen Lightening, Lickety Split Lime and Julep Payton.  I have never tried the Sally Hansen Insta-Dri for a gradient, but if they all behave like these two, I will have to try more!.  They give really good coverage, so you do not have to sponge as many layers, and it dries quickly so you don't have to wait as long between layers.  Brilliant!

After the gradient was fully dry, I used striping tape tape to create vertical stripes with Finger Paints Black Expressionism.  I don't know why, but I love vertical stripes on my nails.  Maybe it is because it makes you nails look longer.  You can see more vertical stripes HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE.  

Finally I added some little flowers layered with Black Expressionism, China Glaze In the Rough and more Sally Hansen Lightening in the center.  As you can see, Bria loved these!  Unfortunately she has started a new work study at a local college deli, which means she is washing dishes a lot.  The result is that this only lasted a couple of days.  She is going to have to go polishless for awhile :(

Thanks for looking and commenting.  Don't forget to check out the other Tarts nail art!

Crumpet Nail Tarts Brown

It has been a few weeks, but I decided I needed to jump into Crumpet Nail Tarts Pick n Mix Challenge.  This week is Book/Brown.  Today I went for brown.

Although I am not wild about this in the pictures, I loved it IRL.  It looked very sophisticated and was a perfect edgy work look.  And, although winter is here with a vengeance in Minnesota, I felt it made for a good fall look.

I started with two coats of Cupcake Polish Too Haute to Handle.  This is a pink leaning nude holo.  Kind of a rose gold.  I really love this polish, but it does call for a nude holo comparison as this is not the only one in my stash.  The Cupcake store describes this as a dark gold, but I just ain' seeing it.  Also says that it is textured, but I didn't find that true with my bottle.  Still love it!  Application was a breeze and dry time was excellent!  

Next I stamped with Loja BFF-04 and Mentality Foxy.  This image stamped beautifully!  

Look at that holo!  But even with the rainbow the stamping shows up.  Sometimes holos overwhelm stamping, but not with this combo.

You can guess how I feel about this one.  Loved it!  Check out what all the other Tarts came up with.  Thanks for looking and commenting!

A Return of the Double Challenge Manicures

Heellooo!  As I type that, I hear it as Robin Williams doing Mrs Doubtfire.  Cracks me up!  You may (or may not) have noticed that I have been scarce, not only here but on all the other social media sites.  I have been a busy girl!  I am back, however, with one manicure for two challenge prompts, Nail Challenge Collaborative's stripes and Crumpet Nail Tart's three dark colors.

I have mixed feelings about this one.  I love the color combo and the design, but my execution of it is a little sloppy, at best.

I am using a flash pic here because in all the others, the maroon color was showing black.  Here are the colors I used.

• Cuticle - Spa Ritual Deep - A gorgeous blue leaning grey with a purple shimmer.
• Middle - Spa Ritual Freedom - Greyed purple with a blue shimmer.
• Tips - Spa Ritual Twilight - Dark maroon shimmer

I love these colors together, the perfect fall combination.  Of course, I see all my little imperfections, the biggest being that I wish I would have put a second coat of Freedom in the middle.  Twilight could have used a second coat too, to deepen the color.  My lines....weelll, let's just not go there.

In real life, all these little mess ups just weren't noticeable and I ended up loving it!  For some reason it felt very work appropriate, like it would have gone really well with a dark grey pinstripe suit.  I look at these pics, though, and cringe.  Damn DMPs!  Oh well, I enjoyed it while it lasted :)  Thanks for looking and commenting and don't forget to check out all the other stripes and dark colors.

My Life is a Train Wreck

A new month, a new challenge.  This month starts The Crumpet Nail Tarts Pick n Mix Challenge.  There is one prompt with two parts each week.  This week is two color gradient/teal.  You can do one nail art with two color gradient or one with teal or both on two different days or one with a gradient that includes teal.  Get it?  Sounds complicated, but it isn't, it just gives a lot of flexibility as to what you want to do.  Plus, the idea is to concentrate on your golden oldies and untrieds.

On top of the Mix n Match, I decided to continue to try and get some of the #31DC2014 prompts completed.  Plus Llama nails.  I am becoming the combo prompt queen!  Today's nail art is for inspired by a song (31DC2014), two color gradient (Crumpet Nail Tarts) and cartoon/anime.  Here we go!

These, once again, are Bria's sweet nails.  Why do I always do the complicated ones on Bria's tiny tips?  

I have recently discovered a children's program that was on for three seasons starting in 2006.  It is brilliant, funny and dark, which is right up my alley.  It is Ruby Doom.  I stumbled across it on Netflix and devoured two season within two days.  I Bingeflix!  This nail art was inspired by the following song.


 
Misery is a girl who's life is filled with, well, misery.  And she is in bed because she can only sing (well) when she is asleep.  

Anyway, I love this song and it fits my life perfectly right now.  I try not to throw my personal life into my blog too much, but since it relates to the song....Some of you know I lost my job.  Hunting for a new job after 12 years at the company is...well, let's say stressful.  Then my dog got sick.  After an expensive vet visit (which we can't afford because...well no job) we were given some pills and told to complete the course and see if he improved.  He seemed much better, until we completed the medication.  Then he started throwing up and having diarrhea again.  Took him into the vet today.  They did blood work and a rectal exam because he no longer will sit, only stand or lie down.  They found that he has kidney disease and a hard growth in his anal glands.  The growth may or may not be cancerous, but finding out would mean a biopsy, which, again, costs money.  And the kidney disease?  It has no cure and can only be managed with regular IV fluids.  All this to say that we are going to have to put him down.  If it was just one issue he was dealing with, we might pursue things further, but it would be for us, not him.  He is obviously (at least to me) suffering and he is old.  He was a stray, so our best guess is that he is 14 or older since we have had him for 13 years.    So this song fits right now.  Oh what the heck, throw in a sick dog.

I am keeping a stiff upper lip.  I continue to look for a job and give my dog as much love as I can, while I can, but I feel like my life is spinning.  That is why I continue to do my nails, and Bria's.  It is relaxing and brings me joy.  I may be posting less often, but don't expect me to disappear.  I hope you feel like that is a good thing!

On to the nails!

My two color gradient consists of Julep Millie, an indigo creme, and Arcane Lacquer Dreary days (fits, huh?).  Dreary Days is my untried.  It is a gorgeous grey filled with blue and black glitter.  These two go together perfectly IMHO.

I ended up really happy with this, except my middle finger.  Let me walk you through it.

I added Orly Diamond Days on pinkie and middle.  I don't know why I didn't add it to all of them, but I think I thought it would just be covered up with the stamping.

If you watched the video, you can figure most of these out.  The ring is my pitiful attempt at freehanding the bridge.  I tried to use an Eiffel Tower stamp, but it wasn't transferring, no matter what stamper I used. Oh well, you get the idea.  My thumb is for the line "Did that place you're in explode".  Love it!

I stamped everything but my thumb with MJ XX, my index with MJ XIX and ring with Vivid Lacquer VL 016.

I am kind of liking the multiple plate stamping right now.  The only problem with this is that the Mash plate image stamps backward and I didn't realize until we were done.  Unless you do a decal, it says BOOW instead of BOOM.

Bria, of course, loved this.  The more complicated, the better, in her opinion.  Plus she likes Ruby Gloom almost as much as I do.

Thanks for looking and commenting!