Cat and Rooster

 Prompt: Photo

Supplies:

Butter London Squatter

Sally Hansen Stocking Nude

Maybelline Classic Camel

Sally Hansen Cinnamon

ORLY Mirror Mirror

Differently Dimension Boo Felicia

OPI Matte Top Coat

Dixie Plates DP11: Striped Texture

Egyptian

Prompt: Egyptian

A quick and simple design, but it's kind of fun that way! Foil stamping on the middle nails means the gold is super mirror shiny.

Supplies: 

Essie Sunny Daze

Color Club New-tral

Zoya Caitlyn

Seche Astute

BMC Royal Blue

Moyra Foil Gel Polish Black

Gold foil

BM-S250

Chic Peek BM-XL476

3D Leaves

 

 I'm back and posting images again! I'm not going to write as much, but I miss having a chronological record of nail art somewhere besides my phone gallery. So here we go, short and sweet.

Base Color: OPI Pepe's Purple Passion

3D Leaves: Custom mixed color from GDCOCO sculpting gel  

Gold Detailing: Elite99 gold gel

Day 30: Challenge Day - Simple Design

 For the last day of our month of nail art, my friend challenged me to do something simple. So I decided to take a multichrome polish since I already have trouble covering up the lovely shifting hues, and just add a tiny accent.

 I used a single coat of the amazing Dance Legend Knight over China Glaze Liquid Leather. I love this copper-to-pewter multichrome so much, it's magic!

 As a tiny little accent, I added a metal square to my middle two nails and put a square nail gem in the center. Not much, just something for a little extra punch.

Colors Used:

Dance Legend Knight

 China Glaze Liquid Leather

Day 28: Classy Animal Print

 Sorry for the delay in getting these last designs up! I actually did finish the challenge in April, but just didn't get around to posting! For the animal print challenge I decided to do a color blocked leopard print, because leopard print is always good.

 I began with a base of OPI Baring it All, which is a nice mid-tone nude. I then used OPI A-taupe the Space Needle, more Baring it All, and Nicole by OPI Others Pale by Kim-parison to apply a gradient to each nail. I wanted a bit more brightness, so I sponged some China Glaze White on White onto the very trips of each nail. I then added one coat of Sinful Colors 24 Karat to give it all a sparkly finish.

 Once that was dry I blocked off sections with some striping tape, then filled in portions with China Glaze Liquid Leather.  I then used a dotting tool to draw in some leopard spots with more Liquid Leather. The centers of the pattern spots were colored yellow with an unnamed ORLY goldenrod yellow (FBI40037?). It's such a pretty yellow; I have no idea why it wasn't named. As a last touch I added champagne colored nail gems to my index and pinkie nails.

Colors Used:

OPI Baring it All

OPI A-taupe the Space Needle

Nicole by OPI Others Pale by Kim-parison

 China Glaze White on White

 Sinful Colors 24 Karat

China Glaze Liquid Leather

ORLY FBI40037

Day 20: Forest

 The theme for today was 'Forest', so I decided to do a sort of backlit forest silhouette. It was fun! It looks best at a distance, as I was a little messy with the details and brush strokes are visible close up.

 I began with a background color of Maybelline Canary Cool, as it is one of my favorite beiges. I love that it leans slightly yellow. On  top of that, I layered a forest scene. I decided to use acrylic paints for this, mostly because I had them out and nearby. Woo!

 I started by putting in a light brown set of trees in the far background. I then added leaves in light green, followed by dark green leaves and branches. As a last touch, I decided to add a deer, some tiny birds, and a squirrel. The deer turned out decently enough!

Colors Used:

Maybelline Canary Cool

Acrylic Paints

Day 12: Traveling through Time

 For the challenge of 'technology' I decided to depict the changes in time-keeping devices through the years! It goes from a sundial on my pinkie, to an hourglass, to a rather steampunky geared clock, to a slightly more modern grandfather clock, and finally a digital display! Bonus - I made the digital clock glow in the dark because it's fun!

 To begin, I used a base of dark brown Sally Hansen Cinnamon. I then sponged on a touch of Essie Epic Proposal to give everything a burnished bronze look. The sundial was done with light brown ORLY Dare to Bare ringed in Sinful Colors Copper Pot. Highlighting the dial and the bitty roman numerals were done with acrylic paint.

For the hourglass I used acrylic paint to draw the shape of the glass, then L'Oreal The Statement Piece to add the sand. The wooden frame was added with a bit more Copper Pot.

The open face gear clock was drawn with more Dare to Bare, followed by black acrylic paint. Golden roman numerals were drawn with L'Oreal Because You're Worth It. Because I could, I added a 3D element with some watch components.

 I added more Sinful Colors Copper Pot to my index to act as the wood of the clock. The watch face was painted with L'Oreal Hit the Slopes. Acrylic paint was again used for the black details.

Lastly, I made the digital clock with a black acrylic background, then painted the numbers in white acrylic paint. I added a touch of Serum No. 5 Blue Blazes over the white paint to make the numbers glow blue!

Colors Used:

Sally Hansen Cinnamon

Essie Epic Proposal

ORLY Dare to Bare

Sinful Colors Copper Pot

L'Oreal The Statement Piece 

L'Oreal Because You're Worth It

L'Oreal Hit the Slopes

Serum No. 5 Blue Blazes

Day 10: Landscape

 For the nature prompt I decided to try to paint a landscape inspired by an image I found online. I hope I got close to portraying the image, at least! It's a bit rushed, but it gave me an excuse to break out the acrylic paint again. It's really been way too long since I painted on canvas.

 This is done entirely with acrylic paint, so I have no polish to list! I hope the sunbeams look sunbeamy enough - it changes meaning if it looks more like an explosion!

 I'll have to do another landscape sometime when I'm not rushing to do a crazy 30 day challenge! At least now I have a functional if cheap set of acrylic paints to work with.

Day 6: Hamblen Landscape

Today's theme is 'Inspired by Art', and I decided to try and replicate one of the stunning landscapes by Matthew Hamblen. It's just so dynamic and colorful! This was a bit of a speed paint as I started late, but I tried to at least make it recognizably based off the painting. Woo!

  So this is a bit different for me in that I used very little nail polish! The entire design is painted in acrylic paints. Of course, I learned from this that I really need to buy some more paints. Only after I started did I realize that my bold orange paint was dried up, and I had the hardest time getting a good vibrant orange from mixing the reds and yellows I had on hand.

 Even if it didn't turn out as an exact match to the colors of the painting, I had a lot of fun with it!

 Colors Used:

Acrylic Paints

Day 3: Easter Chocolate

 Not sure if I'm entirely happy with how these turned out, but they at least look like chocolates to me! I originally thought about doing all of them as foil eggs, but decided to actually show some chocolate. For this day in particular dealing with my needy needy cats was a headache, so I'm glad I got anything done at all!

 The base chocolatey brown is Sally Hansen Cinnamon. I really like this brown! Starting with my thumb, I added some texture by pressing into the drying polish, and put in a touch of 'cream filling'  spilling out with light brown OPI Samoan Sand and white L'Oreal Hit the Slopes.

My index nail is a Cadbury creme egg! I pulled out the nail foils to do this one. I applied blue and red foil to half of the nail, then added a blobby shape in gold once those were dry. Using the dark blue China Glaze One Track Mind and a small brush, I wrote in the tiny Cadbury logo.

 My middle nail is a simple dipped design with Sally Hansen Cinnamon and OPI Samoan Sand. I really need to try doing dipped effects more often, I love the effect!

For my ring nail I tried a crosshatched textured effect by doing the 'spun sugar' technique with Samoan Sand and Hit the Slopes. It didn't turn out as well as I hoped, and it seemed like these two polishes didn't want to get to the perfect consistency to drag across my nail for the technique. Bah!

Lastly, for my pinky I added foil to just the tip to look like a half-unwrapped chocolate, then put some pink and yellow tiny pieces of crushed shell to the base as a topper. Finally I mattified all but the foil!

Colors Used:

Sally Hansen Cinnamon

OPI Samoan Sand

L'Oreal Hit the Slopes

China Glaze One Track Mind

Tiger Foils

 I think foil transfer is a ton of fun! I picked up this really cool foil of printed tiger fur with sparkly holographic white zones. This was a bit of an unplanned experiment of whatever sounded good at the time, but I like it!

 I put a base color of Wet n Wild Black Creme down, since I find it hard to get 100% coverage on foils without some creasing and black hides that really well with this pattern. And really, I didn't have as much trouble as I was expecting!

 For my ring accent nail, I thought I would experiment with foiling an oval metal stud. Trying to foil over just the metal did not work, so I painted over it with more black polish before applying the foil. That still looked a little bare, so I framed it in tiny metal beads. I then decided to go all-out and added some holographic silver diamond glitter and then applied more foil across the tip. Woo!

Colors Used:

Wet n Wild Black Creme

Tiger Nail Foil

Happy Pi Day!

 Gotta celebrate Pi Day with some Pie! Sorry for the late post, but I'm almost caught up at least! These of course were my Pi Day nails for the 14th. I'm not entirely happy with them, but maybe I'll revisit and improve on the concept next year!

 My idea was to have pies with slices taken out at different areas and then have the digits of Pi overlayed on those spots. To begin, I started with ORLY Dare to Bare. I sketched out a rough basketweave pattern for the pie crust, then filled in sectors with Sally Hansen Cinnamon. The spaces between the crust weave were filled with Essie Hip-anema to represent the cherry filling. To make it look nice and juicy, I added some shading with NYC Velvet Rope. Highlights were added with just a tiny dot of white acrylic paint.

 The numbers were painted by hand with white acrylic paint. I used small amounts of more Sally Hansen Cinnamon to give definition to the crust, and then added some Revlon Socialite to add a golden-brown shimmery color.

Colors Used:

ORLY Dare to Bare

Sally Hansen Cinnamon

Essie Hip-anema

NYC Velvet Rope

Revlon Socialite

Geometric Stamping

This time the random number generator lost track of the season, as it picked Revlon Fall Mood for me to try. Far be it for me to argue with an excuse to wear copper!

Revlon Fall Mood is a bit sheer, and as I was short on time I decided to do two coats over Sally Hansen Clay, a light reddish brown. I think it would have taken many, many coats of Fall Mood alone to cover up visible nail line.

I stamped a really cool geometric design from Pueen plate 52 on my thumb, middle, and ring nails using Wet n Wild Black Creme. For my index and ring fingers, I used two rectangular studs in a line. Didn't do the greatest job aligning them, but it works.

Colors Used:

Revlon Fall Mood

Sally Hansen Clay

Pueen 52

Floral Paisley

 I'm catching up on my backlog! These nails were done for NPQ's Hippie Challenge and they were so fun to both paint and wear! I rarely wear yellow polish but this actually worked out well.

 To start I used Butter London Jasper, which is one of my favorite yellows. It's nice to find a yellow that applies so well and needs less than three coats. Once that was dry, I used nail guides to block off a half moon at the base of each nail and filled that with OPI A-Taupe the Space Needle. I decided on the moons to give some contrast to the pattern.

 The flowers were added with a small dotting tool.  I used quite a few different colors:
Sinful Colors Southern Belle (Fuchsia), China Glaze Capacity to See Beyond (Aqua blue), OPI Call Me Gwen-ever (Orange), Sinful Colors Poudre (Light orange), and Seche Delicate (Pink). A little acrylic white paint was used for the centers of most flowers.

This pattern was much easier than it appears, it just required a bit of patience. The hardest part was trying to make sure I didn't repeat the same shapes in the same orientation!

Colors Used:

Butter London Jasper

OPI A-Taupe the Space Needle

 Sinful Colors Southern Belle

 China Glaze Capacity to See Beyond

OPI Call Me Gwen-ever

 Sinful Colors Poudre

Seche Delicate