A dot dot dot

I have been a total slacker lately. Not necessarily in regards to painting my nails, but in posting the pics of them. No reason for it either, other than I'm a slacker :) 

I had seen a manicure similar on another blog, and liked that it looked like more work than it was. So I decided it was my turn. 

I painted all nails except my ring finger with one coat of Sinful's Snow me White, and one coat of Tokyo Pearl to give the solid, pearly white color. 

My ring finer is Pure Ice's Wild thing, with a coat of Rimmel's Cocktail Colour Cutie Colada. 

All very inexpensive polishes. 

One my nails were dry, I poured out a small pool of black wet n'wild polish that I get around Halloween for $1.

Using my small dotting tool, I began to make clusters of 4 dots in rows. I started in the middle of each nail, then did the cluster above, then the cluster below, and then those on each side. Don't worry too much about spacing, it's ok if they aren't perfectly lined up. Almost all of my clusters ended up being slightly wider than they were tall.

As you can see with the closeup of my thumb, not all dots are the same size, and not all clusters are the same shape. It's ok, that won't be as noticeable with the next step.

Pick however many colors you want for the dots, and pour a small glob of each out. In reality, it is probably best to do one color at a time, otherwise your drops will start to dry, and they'll "string" as you try to leave dots. Then you'll have to pour out more polish. I did them all at the same time because it looks better for the pic. I ended up pouring out more of each color. (I believe in reusing as much as I can, so those old bills are used as my color pallet :) gotta make them useful for something!)

Randomly place dots of each color in the center of the black dots. You can keep the colors in order, or make them completely random, as I did.

This would be a lot of fun to play with variations...make the center dots in each row all one color, or make the center dots black and the base dots multi colored. 

Natural Turquoise Nails

One of the manicures I've seen done by other bloggers that I have wanted to give a try is a natural marbled stone look. In particular, I wanted to try emulating turquoise. I couldn't decide which shade of the color I wanted to use, so I chose to do an ombre effect. When in doubt, pick all the colors!

Right hand

 

Left hand

To get the black polish to have that lacy look, I did a modified water marbling. On my pinky fingers, the turquoise is so dark it is hard to get a pic to show the black well.
While it may look like it took a long time, once the base color was fully dry, the black marbling was a very quick process. Clean up took a lot longer than the polish application. It took less than 10 minutes to do the marbling.
I really liked the effect, but wanted a little more "oomph" to it. So I decide to add a little bit of gold streaking, since turquoise often has copper streaks in the marbling.
To get streaks that are not predictable, I pulled the cotton off the end of a cotton swab, and left some of the fibers trailing.

And here is the result:

I love the addition of the little bits of gold. It is very subtle, and gives the outcome an overall more natural look. Definitely a fun look.

I think my favorite turned out to be the lightest color on my thumbs. I like the contrast. 

Cuddly Critters

I have seen many manicures online with cute creature faces, and wanted to give it a go with putting my twist on it. I didn't take step by step pics, because I wasn't sure how it would turn out. And I'm glad I didn't, because I'm less than thrilled with the outcome. I am posting anyways, just to show that even someone who does their nails all the time and is at least at an intermediate skill level can have flops.

 They didn't turn out bad, just not as cute as I had imagined in my mind.

Mr. Giraffe definitely looks a little... um... wonky.
Part of it is because I wasn't using the right sized brush.  And part of it is just because.

I think Mr. Hippopotamus is my favorite. 

4th o'July Polka Dots

I know I'm posting just a few days late, but better late than never, right?

For the 4th I just did simple polka dots. Nothing complicated, but fun nonetheless.

Being new to Idaho, I didn't know what to expect of the holiday around here. What I wasn't expecting was the volume and saturation of fireworks displays in each neighborhood. It was a constant cacophony of booms, pops, whistles, hisses, snaps and cracks, that lasted for many hours with no lull in the sound. 

Oddly though, throughout the night I didn't hear any sirens. 

I hope everyone's 4th was safe and a celebration worthy of our independence. 

Tequila Summer Sunset Nails

I decided that I wanted something summery, but different than the polka dots I often do. A fabulous summery drink is a Tequila Sunrise, and I love the colors, but wanted to incorporate purple, so decided why can't I have a Tequila Sunset?

I decided to use this as a great time to test base colors also. Many of us who are "into" the whole nail art thing emphasize base color importance, and I wanted to see if it always makes much of a difference. 

So, on my left hand, each nail is painted a different base color. (1 coat each, except the pinkie which is 2 coats)

Thumb = China Glaze Avalance - a nice gunmetal charcoal color

Pointer = some old, random, obscure brand in Silver - a nice metallic opaque silver

Middle = Sinful Colors Snow Me White - a very opaque white

Ring =  Salley Hansen Insta-Dri In A Flash - a shimmery, white-ish nude

Pinkie = Wet'n'Wild megalast Sugar Coat - a slightly pinkish nude, no shimmer or sparkle

Once my nails are dry, it is time to move onto the coloring!
Take a regular makeup sponge, and dip it into water to get the sponge damp. Dry off the outside of the sponge. This is to help the paint not dry up so quickly on the sponge.
Paint a stripe of each color you want on your nail, onto the sponge.

Dab or roll the sponge onto the nail to apply paint. You can tape off around your nails, or apply Vaseline around your nails to make less of a mess, or to be lazy like me just paint on your fingers and clean it up later.

This is one dab/roll across each nail. I reapply a small amount of paint to the sponge between each nail.
If you like the base paint peeking through, or like the lighter more pastel color scheme, you can stop here, apply some top coat and be done.

I would like my colors more vibrant, so I will do another dab/roll cycle for each nail. This tends to make the colors blend just a little more, and they are much more bright. Wait at least a few minutes between each coat, otherwise the sponge will pick up as much paint as it is laying down.

Once my nails are colored to my liking, I use a Q-Tip dipped in acetone to removed the color from around my nails.

To protect the color, I added a quick dry clear coat.

I thought the nails still needed a little more, so I added some iridescent glitter polish.

I really can't see any difference in the outcomes of each nail. So in this instance, the base color didn't really matter.
On my right hand I didn't use a base color at all, and the results are the same. So if you're going to make your colors dark, and opaque, the base color is optional. The results do look a bit different, and that is because the nails of my right hand are shorter than those on my left, and there wasn't as much room to get as much purple on there.

These are the colors I used for this manicure
Mabelline = Plum Paradise
Sinful Colors = Cream Pink
Salley Hensen Insta-Dri = Lightening
Pure Ice = Don't You Wish