MCC Day 3 - Presents

Kelly at devilishdesigns is running a Christmas Challenge, and Day 3 is Presents.

So I just finished applying to the last of my grad schools. I just need to mail out a package with my physical application to the one school that wants physical copies and I'm done. I'm pretty behind in the challenge, what with the last minute rush of my applications, and the plus side to running late is that I got to see Kelly's design for this day before I had painted mine yet. I adore what she did, you should go check it out. Her presents really inspired mine.

 I went with a bow colour that was the same as the background colour on the nail before so I could get a wide range of colours with a bit of order to them as well.

I traced the outlines of the bow with a black striper, but went with a broken, sketched line rather than a careful traced line, I like the movement it gives things, and I don't wrap my presents too neatly, so why should I paint them that way?

There are a lot of colours used here, I'll list them all for you here:
Black: Kiss Black Striper
Yellow: Sally Hansen Lite
Blue: Sally Hansen Blu
Green: Wet 'n Wild SaGreena The Teenage Witch
Purple: Sally Hansen Cyber
Red: Sally Hansen Rapid Red and Cult Nails Charlatan over top for the background. (Rapid Red is the only red I own. Shocker, right? So since I wanted something shimmery I made it myself. Charlatan made things a bit more pink but I'm fine with what I ended up with.)

This day in the challenge has really gotten me psyched for Christmas! Are you excited?

MCC Day 2 - Candycanes

Kelly at devilishdesigns is running a Christmas Challenge, and this is Day 2..

Candycanes!

Here is a closer shot for you. I like this, its pretty simple but I keep glancing down and smiling, I don't know.

I did this freehand. I considered taping but thinking about all that time waiting for everything to be 100% dry just made me want to pull out my hair, so I took a walk on the wild side. What can I say, I'm just crazy like that.

Right below this is my right hand, you can see that the lines are a little thicker and slightly more woobly, but good try left hand, good try. You didn't embarrass us or anything at least.

Back to my left hand though.

As for the polish I used, the white is Heaven White by Misa, and the pink/red is Sally Hansen's Hi-Res. The green is Sally Hansen's Hi-Def from the same HD set. Over top of it all I used Claire's glow in the dark nail polish, which is a surprise hit for me. I originally bought it just because, well, it was glow in the dark and that was awesome, but it has some great, subtle glitter in it and every time I see my nails glowing it really just tickles me, so I've grown to adore the stuff.

Shew, so that was a lot of pictures, but I had fun with this and the increasingly rare sun was out and shining when I wanted to take my pictures so I indulged. See you for the next day in this challenge!

MCC Day 1 - Snow Flakes

Kelly at devilishdesigns is running a Christmas Challenge, and it sounds super fun so I'm excited to be participating. The first day in the challenge is snow flakes, hope you like it!

This is also my first post on the other side of the hellish end of term rush I just got through. Holy moly, I can't believe I'm free! Nothing to do! Well.. except for grad applications and Christmas shopping and post-end-of-term-desperately-needed-now house cleaning and planning to go home for the holidays and.. whoa. Anyways, at least I don't have anymore homework.

 Day one of this challenge is snow flakes. I decided I wanted to go for snowflakes from afar rather than doing closeups of them, and I think I like the abstract-ish snowflake.

 I didn't have this on for long though, since I needed to start the next challenge for the week, don't worry, I'll spread these out more next week.

You'll be getting another post later today probably with Day 2 of the challenge, what with me being so behind on this and all.
Hope you liked this one!

Glittery Randomness

So.. November sure is a busy month. I'd been grinding away at my homework and grad school applications and whatnot and then suddenly a few weeks had just flown by. I've still been taking pictures of my nails though so never fear. I'm actually still pretty busy but I missed my blog so much that I'm taking some time away from the last mad dash to the end of term to post this.

I'm not sure what this is, but I do like it. It's a little reminiscent of seaweed or something, I'm not sure. But there are plenty of sparkles and I got to use OPI Don't Touch My Tutu outside of a jelly sandwich so I'm happy.

I also used Dollish Polish Spank You Very Much for the glitter gradient. I also used a touch of Claire's Ice Ice Baby for some bigger glitter pieces and my Kiss Soft Blue striper for the lines.

More pictures! And another compliment for Spank You Very Much, it goes on like a dream for such a glitter packed polish. Love it.

 I had fun with this and didn't go into it with a plan. It may be a little odd but I'm happy.

 What do you think of this design? Too weird? Let me know!

Fishtail Braid in Cool Colours

I hadn't tried a fishtail braid design before now, it's a lot of fun and really very pretty! I chose to use dark colours here so the difference is pretty subtle, I definitely want to try this out with some bright different colours as well for a different effect.

This was freehanded, I considered taping but decided against it, most of the time I managed to keep things pretty even in width. One problem with this type of design is the polish on the tips of your nails can get a little thick if you aren't careful.

I love a good top coat over dark colours, I'm using Seche Vite here. Haven't had a problem with shrinkage since the first time I used it when I put on far too much, maybe wrapping my tips is helping with that.

Thanks for looking!

Teal Gradient With Dot Accents

Yay! I'm so happy to show this to you! This is my first post for Teal Tuesdays and I had a lot of fun doing it, it was sort of a surprise favourite. I had initially just done the gradient to play with a couple new teals I had, and once it was on I wanted to do something a little more fancy with it.

I was staring into my nail supply stuff and thought, okay well dots are always nice, and they are, but what I like is that the lightest colour and the darkest colour look so much lighter or darker respectively when contrasted like they are. It ties things together nicely too if I do say so myself.

Anyways, picture spam! Here you go.

Woo! If I were to do this again I'd wait a couple seconds more before top coating, I smudged a couple dots and it bothered me, but what can you do? Hope you liked it!

Here are the other participants:

Orange with Black Glitter

Halloween is great and I haven't posted anything particularly festive yet, so here you are. I used some black glitter flakes so get the gradient and added a bit of black polish to the tips of my nails first so that they would be totally black. Not sure what I'm intending with my accent finger but I liked doing it.

I don't have much to say about this, orange and black are certainly strong colours though, I kept noticing this one.

Pictures pictures!

Would you like to see more halloween designs? I think I'd like doing something more complicated, I'm loving what I see other people doing!

Dollish Polish Spank You Very Much

I adore this polish, absolutely adore it. This is Dollish Polish Spank You Very Much over Sally Hansen Blue It and I can't even say how much I love it.

This glitter applies really well and has a great range of cool colours in it. I wore it for a long time since I used it right after I broke my pinky nail and was worried about how well my patch would hold. You might be able to tell since I feel like my pinky nail looks a little more bulky than usual but hopefully not, in person no one looks long enough to be able to tell at least.

I've got a bunch of pictures here, really I can't say how much I love this, it's so shimmery and multihued. I got it from llarowe by the way, they have a great site.

Before I removed it I played with a couple things over top, first a matte top coat here:

And then a dark water marble over the other hand here, it is really subtle, not sure if I'd do it for a proper design, what do you think?

Oh, and I tried out lining up some glitter pieces along my pointer finger as well, whoa does that ever take a long time! It was fun so I figured I'd let you see that too since I'm including the other silly things I tried out.

Thanks for reading!

Anniversary Nails

I did this nail design on Wednesday since my boyfriend and I had our 6th year anniversary then. I was just feeling in the mood for something hearts and sweetness so here it is.

I used Essie Fiji for the light pink background and Sally Hansen Hot Magenta for the gradient and the hearts. The hearts were free-handed over top of the gradient, followed by a coat of Claires Glow in the Dark polish over that for a bit of glitter in the light and to make the light pink glow in the dark, because how fun is that?

Wish I could have gotten a good photo of the glow in the dark effect for you all, but it wasn't working out for me. Still, I'm pretty happy with what I ended up with.

I used two coats of Seche Vite for my top coat to smooth out the roughness of the glitter, and I recently found some 100% acetone at Wal-Mart so I got to touch up my polish without trying to use my regular remover to do it.

What do you think of this design? I'd love to hear from you!