52wkCrumpet27: Not worn enough

This is week 27 of Crumpet's 52 week challenge! The "rules" are very flexible and you have all week to accomplish the mani. As always, must be done on your own nails, using the colours suggested (or parts thereof).
This week's prompt: Music and Not worn enough (either each alone or combined). I chose Not worn enough as I had spied this old green a couple of weeks ago and thought "I need to use this again sometime". Today is the day!

This is a one coat base of China Glaze Agro (Hunger Games collection). I love this green!! The hue is an antique metallic shimmer, going into olive green. Fab fall-autumn colour. Very rich and a bit medieval (go Game of Thrones!). I wore it heaps a couple of years ago then stopped. Too many polishes, not enough days.

When this was dry I used acrylic paint and drew flower-fronds in grey shades all over. I like the grey-green combo. Out the Door sealed the deal. This is one of those manis I really like on myself and others. For some reason, painted flowers always look elegant and in some way artistic. I try other things, but always come back to something like this.

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52wkCrumpet11: red and gold

This is week eleven of Crumpet's 52 week challenge! The "rules" are very flexible and you have all week to accomplish the mani. As always, must be done on your own nails, using the colours suggested (or parts thereof).
This week's prompt: chevrons, and red and gold (either each alone or combined). I chose red and gold as it is Christmas and I feel like I just did chevrons. I took inspiration from the great Robin Moses and painted poinsettias.

Inspiration from Robin

I started with a one coat base of OPI Gwen Stefani's last year's holiday collection: L.A.M.B. (Love.Angel.Music.Baby). This is a beautiful polish, applies very satiny and is 95% opaque in one coat. I did not worry too much about the remaining 5% as I knew I would be painting over the gold.

Although, in the pics, you can't really see it, the poinsettias are painted in two tones of red. I mixed a darker red and a lighter one. I started with the darker petals, then drew the lighter petals on top. I had to go over some of the petals twice. At fault would be the gold base vs a white base. Well, that's my excuse!!

Then I drew the leaves in two tones of green and added some white and black accents here and there. In the middle of each flower I used a dotting tool and dabbed a splotch of China Glaze Electrify (a great holiday red-gold glitter).

right hand

I am getting better at using my non-dominant hand. Key is to hold the brush really far down, at least for me. I find I am having a lot of control now. Top coat brings it all together. I will be adding a gel top coat on this one so that I do not ruin it by removing client polish and for it to last until the next challenge mani.  I wonder if any of the girls will also do holiday stuff???? Cheers all! x

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piCture pOlish Marine in white floral

This is a polish I bought in the great Candy Girl 50% off sale going .... on still !!! (here the website). The online shop is clearing out some polishes and everything is half price - such a deal!! I have picked up some piCture pOlish colours – and some more Zoya as well!

This is two coats of Marine, a bright blue oceanic creme. Almost turquoise, but not quite. Application was easy and two coats was enough for full opacity.

Then I drew some lined petals - really nothing fancy, was a quick mani - in white acrylic paint. I added some blue and some white glitter in the petals using two more pp finds = Splash and Storm. I have had Storm for a while but just got Splash as well. Not a lot of photos, as pretty easy peasy - but fun and really pretty and summery! Cheers girls x!

52wkCrumpet8: books and brown

This is week eight of Crumpet's 52 week challenge! The "rules" are very flexible and you have all week to accomplish the mani. As always, must be done on your own nails, using the colours suggested (or parts thereof).
This week's prompt: books and brown (either each alone or combined). I combined. I was convinced a lot of girls would be doing the newspaper transfer mani so I decided to paint bookshelves and be different. And then I noticed lots of girls did bookshelves, so I wasn't so clever after all!

The base is two coats of Essie Sable Collar. I have had this colour for-ever it seems. I bought it in the wrong time of year, then forgot about it in winter. I like the silkiness of the colour but I am still not a fan of Essie. I find their polishes way too thin. I would have needed a third coat to wear this on its own but settled on two as I knew I was painting on top. There must be a reason why I only have four Essie polishes!

I hand-painted all the bookshelves and books – and my wee cat Harvey sitting on top of one shelf – using acrylic paints and thin brushes. Top coat sealed the deal and brought it all together. There are a couple of reasons why I only did my left hand: 1) lazy! 2) too many nail studio clients and I needed my dominant hand to remove their polish and 3) was almost dinnertime.

left side more in the shade

So on my right hand I applied the beautiful – and very, very similar shade to Essie – Fake Tan from Gelicious. This is a rich shimmering coffee brown colour. I kept it pure, so I have lopsided hands this week! But people will think it is on purpose! And I have removed numerous polishes (with non-acetone remover) and the mani still looks top!

That's me for this week! And now I am wondering what Crumpie means with "brush stroke".

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52wkCrumpet7: wild animals and yellow

This is week seven of Crumpet's 52 week challenge! The "rules" are very flexible and you have all week to accomplish the mani. As always, must be done on your own nails, using the colours suggested (or parts thereof).
This week's prompt: wild animals and yellow (either each alone or combined). I combined. Yellow is a colour I do not wear often enough and wanted to try some different freehand animals. I love giraffes! So I went for giraffes standing in the pampas of the African plain – even if some look like dinosaurs or emus. Fun fact that I learned on safari once: giraffes sleep mainly with their heads upright because if they lie them on the ground they do not have enough strength to pull them back up. How bizarre!

you can kind of see the base shimmer here

I started with a base of Butter London Cheeky Chops, my oldest yellow. What a mission! It is one thing to use the colour for nail art by dribbling drops of it on a palette, another to paint your nails. The colour was a bit thick and the bottle half full. I was too lazy halfway through to thin it down and just trudged on with two coats. To give a bit of a pop I topped this with a coat of NfuOh 029, an old untried (man, I am ticking all the boxes this week!) holographic jelly yellow. Basically clear, it is a holographic in a yellow liquid. I top coated before moving on.

right hand

Using black acrylic paint I drew giraffes in either profile or semi profile. Some look rather like aliens from The Jetsons but the Mr figured it out all on his alone! My right hand doesn't look half bad, either, so improvement. Even if, in hindsight, my right thumb looks more like a donkey!

I wisped on some grass stalks using different polishes and a longer brush: China Glaze Happy Go Lucky (another old yellow and a bit darker than BL), OPI Don't Talk Bach to Me (a greenish yellow) and an older Thai polish with no label or name that some may classify as orange, but I am calling amber. Keeping with the safari theme, I added I Herd That to the tips (China Glaze On Safari collection). Now to scroll through the other creations - bye girls x!

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Happy Hallow-day of the Dead

This year I decided to go with sugar skulls. I felt a bit brighter than the more gothic Halloween ideas that were floating in my head. I started with a base of white and China Glaze Life is Beautiful. This pink dries matte, but in the end that didn't matter! I top coated before continuing.

Using acrylic paints and watered down polish (well, actually, acetoned down) I started painting. Using a multitude of skinny brushes I began with the pink behind the eyes, then added yellow and black and in the end a spot of white. Using black acrylic paint I drew the heart shaped nose. Then I drew the cross, and some black swirly stuff and the mouth, and some eyelashes. I watered down the red some more and added blush to the cheeks and bordered it all with blue. I dabbed on some glitter as well.

right hand

On the non-skulled fingers I drew aspects of a spider web and added some glitter. Very plain, but I wanted something on them but not so much as to take away from the skulls. Oh, I gel top coated the skulls when totally finished so they will last a while. Removing polish from clients takes its toll! And, to add that extra something, I took all of these pics before I did any cleanup so you can see all the white polish and paint smudges!! Classy.....  Boo! Happy Halloween!

Lemon Meringue Gelicious based floral nails

We are off this weekend to a family 80th and as suggested earlier, I have my nails done to match my outfit. I am wearing a black and white chevron striped dress and yellow shoes.

I started with a base of Lemon Meringue Gelicious. Personally I haven't worn gel in a while and I got all inspired by clients who were requesting gel manis. For me, gel manis are the best working mani as I use non-acetone remover on clients, do not harm my own art and don't have to refresh that often. On the flip side, though, I don't wear as much different nail art as I would like to. I applied three very thin coats of Lemon Meringue, a soft pastel yellow, and then cure top-coated.

Initially I was going to do feathered stripes in black and white but I tried that on one nail and didn't like it. Then I was thinking of doing hibiscus like flowers but went off that as well. Finally I decided on freefall petal flowers and bursts of white and black.

Using acrylic paints, I drew the basic flowers and bursts in black then filled in the petals with grey and also added some grey bursts. Then I highlighted the petals in white and yellow, adding some bursts here and there. When all that was done I added some black dots and top coated with Out the Door.

right hand

I am very happy with these and think they match my "ensemble" perfectly!! I am a bit anxious going in to the weekend as there are some members of the family I have yet to meet – in fact, I don't even know if they know I exist! But I think all will be good and I am looking forward to it! Bye girls! x

Blue skies and acrylic painted waves

This post is late as I have been tiki-touring with my son who is visiting! These are blue nails as his favourite colour is blue. I really like how this mani turned out and in the end, it was not that complicated. I am still wearing it at the five day mark - they look no different than these pics taken on day one.

I started with a one coat base of white (I used China Glaze White on White) and top-coated that for a quicker dry time. Then I sponge-gradiented a two-tone blue all over the nail. Not as a typical flowing gradient, but more of a botched look. I used piCture pOlish sky and OPI Can't Find my Czechbook. I alternated between the light and dark colours being on the top and bottom of the sponge. Then I top-coated again.

I mixed light blue and white acrylic paints and using a flat brush in a one-stroke technique I painted waves on the tips of my nails. This was really just drawing stripes with the flat brush in two tones. I tried to only go over once to keep the saturation but had to top up a couple of places. Then I drew simple orange half-flowers on the side of the nail and highlighted with white dots and reflections, and blue lines. Thumbs got two flowers! One last coat of Out the Door brought it all together.

Clean-up was a bit more involved as the sponge work was messy (though I applied Vaseline around my cuticles first). But I got there in the end. I have gotten heaps of compliments on these. They have a pastel look to them as the background is a mellowed blue. The sponge work created a nice canvas that has depth but is not over-powering. Even the Mr liked it!

right hand