Space! (And Doctor Who)

Just had to try some starry space nails to play around with some glitter! I used a good variety of holographic glitters on this, so I love how they shimmer! Some of my favorite nails thus far. And yes, where there is space, the TARDIS and a random Dalek somehow show up.

 Detail image! I tried to get a picture where at least most of the detail showed up. 

Each hand separately!

Colors Used:

Sinful Colors Secret Admirer

(I absolutely am in love with this color. Dark gray/black with silver sparkle!)

Wet n Wild Fergie Dutchess 

(Blue and purple glitter)

Wet n Wild Fergie Rock N' Roll 

(holographic glitter)

Sinful Colors Tokyo Pearl

Icing Falling For You

(A nice orange-gold shimmer)

Wet n Wild FastDry Saved by the Blue

Milani Cyberspace

(holographic blue!)

Sinful Colors I Miss You

(Purple Glitter)

TARDIS: 

Wet n Wild FastDry Saved by the Blue 

Wet n Wild Wild Shine  French White Creme

NYC Black Lace Creme

Dalek:

Pure Ice Iced Copper

NYC Black Lace Creme 

Milani  Signature Gold

Wet n Wild WildShine  Metallica

Gray-dient

Playing around with a group of gray and silver paints! Each finger has a gradient as well, but it's not as noticeable in the final product. Once I finished I decided to add a nice glitter with holographic larger hex glitters, which helped to even out everything and override the fact that each polish on its own had a different shimmer or tone to it. It's also fun to have that flash of color on gray!

Colors Used:

(From pinkie to thumb nail)

Sinful Colors Tantalize

Confetti Silver Slippers

China Glaze Immortal

Revlon Steel-her Heart

Sinful Colors Secret Admirer

Wet n Wild Fergie Rock n' Roll

(a nice silver and holographic glitter)

Trying to catch some of the holographic glitter flecks on camera!

Geometric Water Marble

This didn't come out as flashy as I had planned, but it was certainly a fun experiment! It kind of developed itself along the way, as I was pretty much just painting whatever details I felt would be fun. If I try this again, I probably would use a different blue instead of the China Glaze Blue Bells Ring. That particular one dries too fast for water marbling, but I was stubborn and tried to make it work nonetheless. Using a light gray base rather than bright white muted the colors a bit, but I rather like it that way!

Colors Used:

Sinful Colors Tantalize 

(A nice shimmery light gray)

China Glaze Blue Bells Ring 

(I'm going to have to use this again soon to do such a pretty color justice!)

L.A. Colors  BCC 588 (Purple)

Sinful Colors Tokyo Pearl 

(For just a touch of gradient shading)

Wet n Wild  Dutchess 

(lovely blue and purple glitter used on the ring finger)

Black Kiss Nail Art

Steampunk Nails

These were such fun to do! Sorry for the slightly blurry right hand picture, I may try to retake that. I experimented quite a bit with these. The base color is actually a mid-orange, which I then sponged over with browns to create an aged coppery gold look before adding the geared sections.Gears were done first in gray acrylic paint, then silver was added to make them really pop out.

 Thumb detail images!

Colors Used:

 Revlon Tangerine 

China Glaze Goin' My Way

Confetti Debutante

(Goin' My Way and Debutante were sponged on top of the Tangerine to make the base color)

Revlon Steel-her Heart 

L.A. Colors Silver

Sinful Colors Rise & Shine

Sally Hansen Golden-I  

(For some shimmer over the teal Rise & Shine)
Various Acrylic Paints

Experimenting with Design

I hurriedly tossed these together in about an hour, but I hope they don't look too rushed. I had just picked up a hex glitter polish and wanted to incorporate that, but not making it overwhelmingly glittertastic. I wouldn't say these were my favorite nails ever, but they're still fun! 

Colors Used: China Glaze Immortal 

(I do rather love this color. There's just a wonderful array of colorful sparkle hidden in the medium gray)

 Spoiled Cougar Attack 

(I find that I love coppers and browns quite a bit for nail colors. This was a last minute addition to the nails, but I love it so!)

Spoiled Deeper Dive 

(Teals are my weakness. Love 'em!)

Spoiled Pet My Peacock

(As much as I love the hex glitter itself, this one is such a pain to actually get glitter out of the bottle and onto my nails!)

Lord of the Rings!

I'm really rather proud of how these came out! I was in the mood to attempt a theme, so of course I had to do Lord of the Rings! I at least was able to see The Hobbit before these chipped too badly. These pictures were actually taken about four days after painting these, when I decided to add some glitter to simulate embers. I was impressed with how well the Milani polish held up on the tips!

On my ring finger I tried to do the runes for the One Ring. Originally I had them in only orange and yellow, but I decided they didn't show up strongly enough so the black was added. 

Thumb nails were of course the Two Towers, done using black, grey, red, and yellow acrylic paints. I added a slight bit of yellow and orange glitter to the Eye of Sauron and the area around Mt. Doom, and then used some green glitter in the trees around Isengard on my right thumb.

Tried to get a good detail picture in sunlight, but of course it had to be overcast. I really need to get a light box set up...

Colors Used: China Glaze Goin' My Way

Sally Hansen Lacquer Shine Glossy

Milani Signature Gold

Spoiled Ants in my Pants (Red Hex Glitter)

Spoiled Cougar Attack (Small Copper Glitter)

Various acrylic paints

Black KISS nail art pen

Water Marbled Tips and Gradients

 These were so much fun to do, and I love the effect! It had been a while since I had done much with water marbling, so I thought I'd give it a go once more but with a bit of a twist to it. Plus, I had just nabbed some cool striping tape and wanted to try it out! Of course, once I finished the tips the white section just started to bother me with how white and blank it was. So though I wasn't entirely happy with how the flower stamps came out, at least it added a bit more color!

Colors Used: Wet n Wild Wildshine White Creme

LA Colors Blue BCC 569

LA Colors Purple BCC 588

China Glaze Gaga for Green

Purple Striping Tape

Messing around with some newer colors! I was in a gradient mood, and the swirlies were suggested by a friend. It turned out rather fun! Heh, I will strive to clean my fingers up a little better from now on, though. 

Colors Used: NYC Prince Street

LA Colors BCC 569 (a lovely bright blue, but I love how dusky indigo it looks with one layer on top of that purple!)

Pure Ice A List

Hokay, from now on each post should only feature one nail art design as I'm nearly caught up! Woohoo!

Just a little more catching up to do!

So for Christmas I received some really fun scrubs, and figured in the week between Christmas and New Years I'd do matching nails. I'd just nabbed some Bundle Monster stamping plates to play with, so it was a bit of an experiment. Did the base coat in two layers of black, then stamped on some tiny stars. Once that was done, I used a dotting tool to add pawprints in pink, purple, blue, and orange. Didn't come out as clearly as I hoped, but it was fun!

Colors Used: NYC Black Lace Creme

Sinful Colors Mint Apple (the stars)

L.A. Colors Purple (BCC 588)

Spoiled Designated Driver

Wet n Wild Fastdry Fuschia Rama

Milani Neon Dude Blue

This was a rather fun one. The downside of the scrubs pattern right before was that the black chipped easily and I felt weird wearing black nails. So, change of tone! Sponge gradient of blue to nude, then I went and had fun with nail art brushes and striper brushes and dotting tools. Nothing elaborate, but fun at least!

Colors Used: Milani Dude Blue

Wet n Wild Wild Shine White Creme

KISS white nail art brush

Shany blue sparkle nail art brush

New Years Fireworks! Instead of using black, I used this lovely business suit blue I picked up while searching for dusky blues. I don't think the pictures do it justice, but it was very nice!

Colors Used: Sonia Kashuk Taunting Teal
(love the color, but I would never call that Teal in a million years!)

Various nail art brushes in gold, blue, and silver

And that's enough image spam for tonight, though I'm almost caught up! I think I only have two or three more before I'm up to the present!

Holiday Nails Continued

I figured I'd break the holiday nail post into two just to cut down on the number of images per post. Because I can. Mwah ha ha!

Ornaments on a tree! Kind of fun, definitely silly. Did the 'tree' using a water marble of three greens, then just plopped ornaments on top of that. And then I painted a nutcracker on my left thumb, and a bell on my right. Also added on some loose hex glitter and foil I found at the dollar store, because it looked fun!

Colors Used: Spoiled The Parking Meteor Expired

Wet n Wild Fastdry SaGreena the Teenage Witch

Wet n Wild Fastdry Sage in the City

Various other paints for the small details

And here's what I was sporting on Christmas day! Just some present boxes, with the ribbon made by cutting thin strips of masking tape because that's what I had on hand. Worked out fairly well!

Colors Used: L.A. Colors Silver (base color, for the ribbons)

Wet n Wild Megalast I Red A Good Book (just one coat, and it still sparkled nicely from the silver beneath!)

China Glaze Gaga for Green 

China Glaze Winter Holly

Holiday Nails!

Hokay, from this post on I at least have pictures taken with a moderately decent camera. I don't have a good photography setup yet, so lighting and whatnot is still iffy. Oh well! 

Here's yet another water marble. I still like this combo, it reminds me a bit of those pirouline wafer stick cookie things. Mmm, good times. 

Colors Used: Pure Ice Iced Copper

Confetti Debutante

Confetti I<3U

Poinsettias! I really like how these came out. Slapped down a clear base coat, then went to town painting. 

Colors Used: Cheap Acrylic paint in green, red and yellow

White KISS striper

 Icicles and lights! Whenever I decorate for Christmas I tend to use blue and white lights as opposed to the traditional colors. So that plus my love of blue is the excuse for why the 'lights' in this are also blue.

Colors used: Milani Sail Away (base gradient)

Wet n Wild Wild Shine White Creme (icicles and snowflakes)

Black KISS striper

Milani Neon Dude Blue (lights)

And so it begins!

In the interests of completeness, I'll go ahead and post my first forays into nail art. Now, at the time this was a beginning curiosity of no actual merit, so all pictures were taken with my crappy cell phone camera (and I don't have a smartphone, so it well and truly is a crappy camera). That said, I'll squeeze all of those onto this one post so it can be over and done with! I'll do my best to remember what colors I used.

Water marbling! I saw a picture online and decided to just try it.

Colors Used: Wet n Wild Wild Shine Caribbean Frost

Wet n Wild Fastdry The Wonder Yellows

Wet n Wild Wild Shine Blue Moon

Hard to see on this picture, but these are leaves! It was November and I was trying to be seasonal. I did a base water marble (since that's all I knew at the time and was having too much fun), then I made tiny leaves from masking tape and used that to block off areas while applying a second contrasting water marble.

Colors Used: Wet n Wild Fastdry 9.0.2.1. Orange

Wet n Wild Fastdry The Wonder Yellows

Wet n Wild Fastdry Sage in the City

Second Layer: Revlon Raisin Rage

Revlon Plum Night

Decided to try something in red to be sporty even though I'm not much of a sports fan. 

Colors Used: Wet n Wild Megalast I Red A Good Book

Sinful Colors Sugar Sugar

Wet n Wild Wild Shine Black Creme

Leaves again! This time I painted teeny leaves on top of a dark red gradient that faded to a nude color, because I was feeling adventurous.

Base: Wet n Wild Wild Shine Sparkling Dessert

Sally Hansen Lacquer Shine Glossy

Leaves: Wet n Wild Megalast I Red A Good Book

Sinful Colors Sugar Sugar

Wet n Wild Fastdry Sage in the City

And after that I finally dragged my real camera out, so later posts will have higher quality images!

Why am I so bad at introductions?

I've always been at a loss when it comes to introducing myself. I suppose it can be hard to sit back and try to sum up the whole lot of boring normality that is my life and still try to make it vaguely interesting. Well, here goes nothing! I'm 25 years old, and I currently work at a small animal veterinary clinic as a veterinary assistant. I'm going to school part time to try to finish up a degree in Animal Science, but I have no idea what I'm going to do with said degree once I finish.

Outside of a love of animals and general science, I do have a creative side. I probably could have gone to school for art, but I decided that I wanted to be able to keep that a hobby and keep it from becoming a necessary chore to survive. Because of that, I haven't practiced drawing seriously for quite a few years. I hope to get back into that soon; you may see a few doodles appear on this blog. I also enjoy making jewelry on occasion, and I have a large stash of wire-wrapped polished rock pendants now. Nothing too fancy, as I'm too much of an amateur to warrant spending big on sterling silver wire and all that shnazzy stuff. It's fun though, and that's all that matters to me!

I recently have gotten into the hobby of nail art. A month or so ago I decided to pick up some nail polish for the first time in nearly 15 years, and now I'm always painting something or other on my nails. I can't do fancy long nails due to how hands-on my job is (and frankly, long nails would probably drive me insane) but I figure I can make my shorter nails purty all the same. Nail art is probably going to be the predominant thing appearing on this blog for at least a good while.

Other than that, you'll probably get good and tired of seeing pictures of my cats or hearing tales of feline shenanigans. And if I don't post for a good long while, there is a good probability I've suddenly lost myself once more in Skyrim or whatever other game catches my fancy.

So that about sums it up for this first post. I'll get some older nail art pictures up soon - I figure I'll start at the beginning of my nail art journey for the sake of completeness (and totally not as a way to pad out this page, haha!)