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Sunday, June 29, 2014

Another Black and White Fashion Inspiration

Don't know if I am going to get all four black and white themes for The Nail Challenge Collaborative posted before the end of the month, but I will get them done!  Today's is, once again, fashion inspired.


Here is the inspiration.


A Billie and Blossom animal print tunic.  I found it HERE.


This is one of those manis that looks much, MUCH better from a distance.


I stamped with SH213 and added splotches of white on top.



Wish I would have had the pic of the dress in front of me when I was executing.  If I had, I would have added a black french tip.  Hindsight is 20/20, right?























Twin Blog Candy - Liquorice

June is almost over!  It just flew by!  So today it is time for a Twin Blog post.  The theme this month is candy.  My twinsie is Erika from The Polished Fangirl and the candy chosen for us at random is liquorice.  Liquorice?  Really.  Luckily Ericka came up with a great idea with liquorice allsorts.  Never eaten them.  Course I am not wild about liquorice in the first place, so that may explain that. 


Hmm....If you are like me, you may be thinking, "Looks like a psychedelic bumblebee with a pink honeycomb." so you might want to see the inspiration.


Now that you see it, does it make sense?


Now originally I was going to do mostly stripes, so I started with a white base on all but the middle finger.  Then I changed my mind and added some of the others.  The yellow is Ellagee Cadmium Glass, a gorgeous jellie.  The pink is Cult Nails Falling Hard with micro beads.


I covered it all with NYC Matte Magic, including the micro beads, just to take the shine off.


There it is.  What I started out dreading, I ended up liking.  Stripes are a little sloppy and I wish I wouldn't have put the yellow dot next to the white and black roll for esthetic purposes, but then I am never fully satisfied.

Don't forget to check out my twinsie at The Polished Fangirl to see her take on liquorice.

Thursday, June 26, 2014

Mary Engelbreit inspired Nail Art

It has been forever since I participated in the Golden Olden Thursday, which is really too bad since I love giving some love to my older polish.


This was inspired by a popular artist from the 90's, Mary Engelbreit.  She combined black, pastels and white in a 90's country kitchen type of way.  Her most famous image was "Life is a chair full of bowlies" (instead of bowl full of cherries).  Here is what I am talking about:



Although I liked the idea....and some of the execution....I really to work on my roses.  They are pretty sad!


I started with three coats of Revlon Provence, then used striping tape to create stripes with A England Guinevere.


Next I dotted on some black as the base for my (messy) roses.


I used Sinful Colors Soul Mate and Julep Hayden for the flowers.  Finally Zoya Gemma and Orly Coachella Dweller for the leaves.


Despite the sloppy roses, I really love it.  Just need more practice with those roses!  Thanks for looking!





Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Black and White Inspired by Fashion

I am way behind in everything, and that includes The Nail Challenge Collaborative.  I considered not participating this month, but the theme is black and white and I love this prompt.  It means that it is all about the design and I love that!  I decided that I was going to go for fashion inspiration.


Here is the mani, shall we see the inspiration?


This is an Izabel London Panel dress.  It can be found HERE.  I really liked the color block look, and since I have never really done a color block...ever...I decided to go for it.


I started with two coats of Finger Paints Black Expressionism, my all time favorite black.  I then used stripping tape horizontally 1/3 of the way down the nail and painters tape to block off 2/3 way vertically.





I then stamped over the whole nail with BM-306 and Konad Special White.


After stamping, I peeled of the tape, which left the black "negative" space.


Once again, the mood stone says it all.  See you again soon!





Jindie Nails Clyde....Brown or Black?

Back again!  Today's prompt for The Never Ending Pile Challenge is brown.  I had several to choose from since I love brown polish.....I think I say that about almost every color, right?  This is going to very pic heavy since I ended up loving the look almost as much as the polish I chose!


So purdy!  But is it a brown?  Let's look closer.

With Flash
Artifical Light
  
This is three coats of Jindie Nails Clyde, one of a two polish Bonnie and Clyde collection.  It was fully opaque at two coats, but you know me, it is all about the depth when it comes to flakies and glitter, so I threw another coat on for good measure.  Technically, this is not a brown, it is a black jellie filled with lots of gorgeous flakies and shimmer, which give it a brown tinge.


Look at those flakies!  I love me some flakies!  There are bronze gold and copper flakies, plus pink glitter.  The pink was shy for the camera, but you cans just barely see them on my index in the flash bottle pic above.  This polish takes my breath away!





Next I stamped with GALS GA44 and Revlon Star Attraction, an antique copper magnetic polish.


What it ended up doing was making it look like the design was etched, even with top coat.


I loved the etched effect, even though it wasn't what I had in mind.  I did some test stamping and had a polish that was copper colored....don't remember now what it was....but must have confused which polish was which and ended up with this instead.  Happy mistake!


I am posting a lot more flash pics than I usually do because it really shows off the flakies.  Get ready for the pic spam!






Yep, the stone tells the whole story.  Thanks for visiting and commenting!





Sunday, June 22, 2014

Blue Textured Gradient with Born Pretty Store QA82

Hello.....*sheepish grin*.  What started as a short break has stretched into 23 days!  The short break was to give me some extra time for this.....


Yep, my lovely girl graduated!  Despite her learning disabilities, she graduated Cum Laude!  She was so proud, almost as proud as her mamma!  One more pic.


Despite it being out of focus, I love this pic.  *sob*  My precious girl!  Okay, I will pull it together....

Once I took a few days off of blogging, it has been hard to pick it up again, despite having manis done.  To be honest, I love having a nail blog, but actually writing the posts is my least favorite part of the whole process.  I will be getting back into the swing of things starting with a late post for The Glittah Pirates Never Ending Pile challenge.


Very apropos that these are Bria's nails, don't you think?  This was originally for the gradient prompt, but it never got posted.  Might as well use it for the blue prompt?


I started with a gradient of Zoya Godiva, Zoya NYX and Zoya Sunshine.  I have used Godiva and NYX to accent some nail art, but never as the main part of a mani, so I consider them "unused".  Look at that MESS!  I used masking fluid around her nails, but even after I peeled it off, there was sandy, gritty pieces left behind.  I love the outcome, but would highly recommend the tape method instead.


Next I stamped over the gradient with Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Cobalt Blue and QA82, which I received from Born Pretty Store for review.  They have a good selection of stamping plates at very reasonable prices.  To be honest, I didn't have high expectations for the plates I received.  I have had some very low quality plates in the QA series from other suppliers, the these are top notch!  It is well etched and stamps beautifully.  I chose this plate for its outline stamps as they will be great for lead lighting or stamping decals.  LOVE this plate!  Right now, selected plates are 20% off and, if you use my discount code, you get an additional 10% off the sale price!





Now on to the pic spam.




Bria loved this mani, so I had to include a mood stone pic!  Plus, with the flash you can really see how well the small details on this image stamped!  This mani made me want to go to the beach....in Hawaii of course!

It feels good to be back to the blog!  See you soon!