Catching Up - Through Day 16

This post is going to be a whole lot of random, but it's already 12:30 and I don't particularly feel like splitting it up.  These are my backlog of pictures I've taken while I couldn't actually upload them, for the 31 day challenge.  Since I'm trying to do both at the same time, I crossed out all the doubles between the two lists, and then made "b" days for the extras.  Some of the pictures I took also seem to have disappeared, so I'm still hunting for the tape manicure I did.

These are also going to be in backwards order of how the days went, since that's how they were uploaded.  First up, we have Tribal Nails for Day 16, starting with my horribly screwed up right hand:

I used Pure Ice Over The Top, but unfortunately, I used it "over the top" of the white polish I'd put on all my nails, intending to do the tribal print over all of them.  When I decided I was just going to do a solid color for my right hand, I didn't bother taking it off.  The suede finish polish just slid right off when it was partly dried.

Fortunately, I wasn't too disappointed, because the rest of the manicure turned out rather atrocious as well.

Ironically, the ikat print nail was the only one that I thought actually looked nice, and I'd only done it on one nail because I was sure it would be way harder than ikat-type zigzag chevrons.

Needless to say, I didn't go out of the house with this on and took it off later that evening.

Colors Used:
White - Sally Hansen Whirlwind White

Right Hand - Pure Ice Over the Top

Red - Sally Hansen Elegant Cognac

Orange - China Glaze Desert Sun

Gold - Nail Art 14k

Green - Essie Sew Psyched

Blue - Art Deco Turquoise

Purple - Art Deco Magenta

Next up, Day 15b, the Jelly Sandwich.  I did two versions of this one, one on my right hand and one on my left.  The first is a more "traditional" jelly sandwich, with the color, colored glitter, and milky neutral color--Sally Hansen Petal Pusher--on top.

As you can see, I managed to mess that one up, though, so later that day when I was done with classes, I took that hand off and redid it so they were both like this:

These two polishes were made for jelly sandwiching with each other.  For the base (on both styles) I used Sally Hansen Salon Manicure in Cherry, Cherry Bang, Bang! a bright magenta color.  The glitter was Ulta's Pinata-yada-yada, and on top is the only use I've ever found for Wet n Wild's Fuchsia-Rama, which has a jelly finish, and I hadn't touched since I tried using it alone for a manicure once and even 5 coats weren't opaque.

I was totally in love with the look of this, and very sad to take it off (besides the thought of having to get all the glitter off....).  If you picked up this color when the Salon Manicure line was under $2 on clearance at Walgreens, I'd suggest finding Fuchsia-rama (regular price is usually $1.99, but you can find them on sale intermittently at most drugstores) and trying this.

Day 15 - Delicate Print Nails

I did two designs for this one, as well.  On my right hand, I did the cloud/lace/scallop pattern

And on my left hand, I did a floral/dot print vaguely inspired by the wallpaper I had in my room as a young child.  It was peach and baby blue on a cream background with a floral/dot/stripe pattern.

A lot of my flowers turned out a bit wonky, but I still really liked the design.

Colors Used

Cream - Almay Sheer Icicle

Brown - Sally Hansen Terracotta

Blue - Sinful Colors Lavender

I had the idea in my head that for the Chevron nails for Day 12b (I seem to have lost the pictures of Days 13b and 14b), I was going to do one of the colors from the China Glaze Bohemian collection, with one black chevron in the middle.  I then ran out of patience for taping, so this proved rather difficult for me, trying to get perfect angles and straight lines.

This is China Glaze's Rare & Radiant with Sinful Colors Black on Black, topped with NYC Matte Me Crazy.

For my right hand, rather than try to get one line perfectly straight, I just made copper tips, and I also really liked this look.  I have no idea why I didn't get any pictures of either one before they were mattified, but maybe I did and they disappeared along with the others.

I also managed to mess this one up fairly quickly after doing it, but I did wear it the rest of the day.

Colors Used

Green - China Glaze Rare & Radiant

Black - Sinful Colors Black on Black

Copper - Maurice's Copper

I'm glad to be back to posting, I missed having somewhere to share my manis, and there are several more to come that weren't part of the 31 day challenge (I'm taking the 31-day part very loosely....)

I may have fallen off the face of the earth

I currently seem to be experiencing technical difficulties.  I have a camera, but I lost the cord to transfer the pictures from the camera to my computer, because my computer for some reason decided it won't do it if I just stick the SD card in the slot.  I'm currently home on Thanksgiving break, so I won't be able to look for it for a few more days, but I wanted to post something, even if it has no pictures.

Yesterday I finally went to Target--we don't have one where I go to school--and they had a huge clearance bin with Sally Hansen Salon Manicure polishes in a few colors that looked similar to the ones from the POTC OPI collection.  I got Ion, a light greenish grey, Pumice, a darker grey-green, and Bandage, a slightly orangey tan color.  At my store, they were $1.97 each.  I haven't worn any of them yet, but they seemed to be decently good coverage when I swatched them on paper.

I hope everyone has a happy Thanksgiving, if you celebrate it, and I shall attempt to resume my normally scheduled posting as soon as possible.  Normally scheduled being "whenever I do my nails and need to share them."

Floral Print - Day 14

This was my first attempt at this style of roses, and it didn't turn out horribly, but I think it could use some work, largely because I made them a bit small and then used roughly the same pattern of 3 marks on each.  I really loved the blue flakie look matte when I was swatching the other day, and it seemed like a good background for the delicate floral print for today.

Colors Used:

Blue - Sinful Colors Cinderella

Flakies - China Glaze Lush and Luxe

Rose Base - Savvy Tea Rose

Rose Accents - Pure Ice Taupe Drawer

Topcoat - NYC Matte Me Crazy

I also made a lightbox today out of a cardboard box and tissue paper.  After some experimenting, I realized that it only works when it's dark outside, and the only light in the room is the lamp over it.  It seems to make it a lot easier to get pictures of my nails without getting a shadow in the middle of them, but I still have to test it on shimmery polishes without the matte topcoat.

(Combined because I'm cheating)

Rainbow Fish! - Day 13 (Animal Print)

For the Animal Print manicure, I decided I wanted to do something other than leopard, zebra, etc.  For some reason I've just never really liked those kinds of animal print.  I'm also trying to use as many of my nail polishes as possible, as quickly as possible, so a mani that used 8 nail polishes seemed good to me!

As impressed as I was with this manicure, it didn't photograph no matter what I tried to do to it.  I even made a light box this afternoon, but unfortunately didn't figure out how to effectively use it until after I'd taken this mani off (and after I'd ruined it in rock climbing this afternoon, breaking 3 of my nails.)

This was meant to be the main Rainbow Fish inspired nail.  I was originally going to do all of these, but my Game of Thrones manicure taught me that I'm not particularly talented at drawing scales, so I stuck with one on each hand.

The Rainbow Fish theme was also a good reason to practice a fishtail pattern, and I think I didn't do too badly for my first attempt!  I need to work on getting it centered in my nail, but I think I got the lines decently straight.

Colors Used:

Purple Base - Savvy Deep Amethyst

Purple Glitter - Petites Zodiac (directly over Deep Amethyst)

Jade Green - LA Girls Chromium Green (Stained horribly yellow even with a basecoat)

Magenta - Sinful Colors Dazzle

Blue Base - Wet n Wild Bijou Blue

Blue Glitter - Maybelline Sea-Quins

Light Blue - Confetti Rhapsody in Blue (also used under holo glitter)

Holo Glitter - Color Club (unknown name, but not from the recent holo collection)

Black - Sinful Colors Black on Black

Raspberry Stripes for Day 12

Today I made an attempt at DIY striping tape which wasn't as bad as it could have been, but could also definitely have been better.  I cut pieces of scotch tape into very thin strips and applied them to my nails, but I didn't do very well at making them even.

As you can see, I covered up the lines with a fine silver glitter to try to hide how uneven they were just a bit.  Then I put a matte topcoat on because my current motto seems to be "Mattify ALL THE THINGS!"

Colors Used:

Base - Sally Hansen Raspberry Race

Stripes - NYC Manhattan

Glitter - Sally Hansen Starry, Starry Flight

Topcoat - NYC Matte Me Crazy

I want to try this again sometime, but I think it'd work a lot better with actual striping tape so I could get each of them more uniform.  Overall I really liked it, though, my main problem with it was that Manhattan looked a lot more purple in the bottle, and then ended up a lot more burgundy than I was envisioning, so I didn't quite like those two together, but with the silver over top I think it looked fine.

(Combined because I'm cheating)

Day 11 Polka Dots and Rock Climbing

I wanted to do polka dots with a bit more subdued fall-ish colors, and when I asked someone for a suggestion, I was told, "Red, orange, purple, and russet."  I did not know guys had colors like "russet" in their vocabulary, but I guess that works.  In my head, I'd been picturing one color of dots over a base color, but I decided to go with this instead.  I started out with 2 coats of China Glaze Hook and Line, which is a gorgeous mushroomy color that I'm now in love with.

Icky pre-cleanup picture.

I then put a coat of a gold and bronze microglitter over the top.  I wasn't sure if it would be overkill, but I really like the way the background turned out.

Colors Used:

Base - China Glaze Hook and Line

Glitter - Bonita unknown name

Red - Sally Hansen Red Zin

Orange - China Glaze Desert Sun

Purple - Sinful Colors Winterberry

Brown - China Glaze Call of the Wild

Russet - I actually had to mix a color just to have anything near what I could call "russet."  And it ended up just looking brownish black anyway, but it was Call of the Wild with Finger Paints Bauhaus Burgundy and a bit of Red Zin.

I'm sorry I  haven't posted in the last few days.  I've done a couple other manis that I'll be putting up as soon as I get the time, but I also haven't done much with my nails, since on Sunday my rock climbing class went on an all-day field trip and it seemed a bit pointless to do my nails just to destroy them on the rocks.  The trip was amazing, though, and here are some pictures (despite the fact that taking pictures of scenery rarely ends up as impressive as you remembered it in person).

The only picture I have of me from the whole day....

My new chipmunk friend.

The insanely hard climb that I didn't even attempt.

Halloween Kitty Glow-in-the-Dark Nails

I feel like I must have been the only person on the internet who wasn't in the spirit of Halloween for most of the month of October, but I've just never been that interested in anything about the holiday besides all the clearance candy the day after.  I do, however, like kitties, and both the cats I had growing up were black cats, so that was what I did for today.

Initially, I'd planned to do a whole cat sitting on the fence scene with my middle finger, but decided I wasn't feeling up to that level of detail, so I stuck with a simple silhouette of a cat.  The ring finger doesn't have the glow in the dark polish over the whole nail like the others--it's just over the moon.  Unfortunately, as much as I tried (and I have about 100 pictures to prove it, if you consider pitch black "proof") I couldn't get a picture of them glowing.  They did glow, a lot more than I expected!  But for some reason my camera wouldn't pick it up.

No idea what those lines of glare on the cats are doing.  They were solid black in person.

I actually really liked the slightly grainy effect of the glow polish over Trout, and I'll probably do it again sometime just for that look, but with a different dark color underneath.

Colors Used

Blue - NYX Salon Formula in Trout

Glow in the Dark - SP Salon Perfect in Green Glow (on all nails except ring finger, on moon)

Black - Sinful Colors Black on Black

Yellow - Sally Hansen Insta-Dri in Quick Canary

Silver - Sally Hansen Salon Manicure in Sterling