Day 9: Rainbow

Hello, readers. To all of you on the East Coast that have been affected by Hurricane Sandy, my heart truly goes out to you. Since I'm in Pittsburgh for school, we haven't been hit very hard. But my family and loved ones are in New Jersey without power, and they're in a state of emergency. Thankfully, they are all safe. The pictures I've seen of the devastation break my heart. I hope everyone affected is able to recover from this tragedy quickly.

On a brighter note, I have some nail art for Day 9's rainbow theme.

To achieve this look, I started with some glittery polishes, which I've listed below.

Thumb: Milani One Coat Glitter in Red Sparkle

Index finger: Milani One Coat Glitter in Gold Glitz

Middle finger: Milani One Coat Glitter in Purple Gleam

Ring finger: Milani One Coat Glitter in Blue Flash

Pinky: Milani One Coat Glitter in Silver Dazzle

Then I used striping tape to make the designs. I painted over each nail with Sephora by OPI's Never Enough Shoes, a black creme with lots of rainbow sparkle. I topped this mani with a coat of Seche Vite.

I think these are the last pictures from my old camera! But my new camera has come in, so posts will continue regularly.

Please keep those affected by Hurricane Sandy in your thoughts.

Day 8: Metallic

Day 8's theme is metallic! I decided to do a metallic dot gradient.

Oddly enough, all of the polishes I used for this mani are Sephora by OPI. I started with a base of Queen of Everything, which is one of my favorite polishes. I've put a pretty big dent in the bottle, so you can tell I really like it! It covers perfectly in just one coat.

Then I used a large dotting tool to add some dots of Rumba Romance, a metallic brown. I switched to a smaller dotting tool about a third of the way up my nails. I repeated the steps with Tempted by Teal. To seal it up, I used a coat of Seche Vite.

I liked this mani! Queen of Everything is just so lovely and perfect, and polka dots are always fun.

The next day's theme is rainbow!

Day 7: Black and White

I'm so glad it's finally the weekend! It was a rough week at Carnegie Mellon since it's midterms. I had a ton of work to do. But I'm all done for the week :)

Day 7 of the challenge is black and white! I figured it was a good excuse to do some stamping, but it was a bit of a fail :(

I always have trouble scraping the polish off the plate properly, so I couldn't get the full image! And then I put on topcoat too soon and smeared it. Ugh! So frustrating.

I started with two coats of White on White by China Glaze. I used Konad Special Polish in Black to stamp on an image from Konad plate m73.

I think it looks okay from a distance! Strangely enough, a lot of people thought this mani was really cool even though I thought it was a mess.

Oh well. Practice makes perfect!

The next day's theme is metallic; stay tuned.

Day 6: Violet

Happy Friday! Today's theme is violet. I had been meaning to try out that spun sugar technique, but I knew it would take a lot of time. So I finally had a nice chunk of time (and no pressing assignments to do), and I gave it a shot. And oh my gosh, I love it.

To do the spun sugar technique, you essentially put a blob of polish on a plate and use a dotting tool to swirl it around until it gets a little tacky. Then you dip the dotting tool in and pull it out slowly. If the polish is the right consistency, you'll be able to pull up strings of polish. Then you lay your nail next to the blob of polish and transfer the little strings right on. I decided not to put any top coat on since I like how 3-D it looks!

It's hard to explain how to do this in words, but there are lots of YouTube tutorials! Just search for "spun sugar nails tutorial" or something similar.

I took about a billion pictures, so you can see more after the jump!

Day 5: Blue

Day 5's theme is blue. I had actually just received my very first Butter London polishes in the mail when I decided to do this prompt, and among them was a blue! So I decided that would be the base color. I ordered them from Coterie - I got three polishes and a matte topcoat for $10! You can't beat that.

Anyway, I've been meaning to try out that Saran wrap technique, so that's what I decided to do.

I started with two coats of Bluey by Butter London. I let that dry, and then I painted on a coat of Wallis, another Butter London polish. Then I quickly dabbed off the wet polish with some crumpled plastic wrap and voila! Nail art.

I'm definitely a fan of this technique. It's quick and simple, but it produces interesting results! I think next time, I'll pick colors with more contrast.

I'm a fan of these colors, too. They have a lot of depth. I don't think I have anything in my collection that looks like either one of these, so I'm happy with them.

Butter London bottles are hard to hold!

The next day's theme is violet. Stay tuned for that!

Day 4: Green

The theme of Day 4 is green. I picked up a new green that was on sale at Sephora recently, so I decided to try it out! It's called Designer Fig Leaf, and it's from Sephora by OPI. I actually had my eye on this color for a while, so I was pretty excited to find it on sale.

I decided to do another tape mani. I taped off my nails diagonally and used Zoya Julieanne for the purple half. Julieanne is such a fabulous purple with lots of interesting shimmer. Overall, I liked this mani. And I just love when my lines are so clean!

I was too lazy to set up my lightbox for pictures this time...oops!

The next theme in the challenge is blue. Look for that in a few days :)

Day 3: Yellow

I've certainly had a busy weekend - I was on call for work, and I also came down with a terrible cold :( But I'm feeling a bit better now despite my incredibly raspy voice. Onto the nails:

The theme of Day 3 is yellow! This mani turned out to be almost as much purple as yellow, but oh well.

I started out with three coats of Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Mellow Yellow. I started this mani with the intention of doing a glitter gradient with a stamped accent nail, but that's not really what happened.

I used a makeup sponge to add Milani One Coat Glitter in Purple Gleam to my tips. I decided I didn't really like how it looked on its own, so I added a little bit of Another Heart Breaks by Dandy Nails onto the gradient.

I originally wanted to do a stamping accent nail. I tried stamping a pattern on with Sexy Divide by Essie, but I decided it was too light. So I redid my finger with a yellow base and freehanded some swirls with a striping brush. Then on a whim, I added some dots of Purple Gleam to all of my nails.

Also, my new light box came in! I had fun playing around with it. I think I need to get some better lights though. It's kind of a pain to set up every time I want to take pictures, but it's also nice that it folds up for storage. I don't wanna take up too much room; I do have roommates after all!

The next day's theme is green. But I don't know - I think I might do every other mani as a challenge mani. I just have so many indies that I want to try out! At that rate, it'll be slow going with this challenge, but I really did it for some inspiration for nail art.

Day 2: Orange

Today I have Day 2 of the 31 Day Challenge! The theme is orange.

I'd been wanting to try a half moon mani for a while. As you may or may not know, you can create this look using paper reinforcement stickers.

The process is simple enough. The color you want to use for the half moons will be your base color. I used Stone Cold by ORLY. Let that dry, then place the paper reinforcement stickers at the top of your nails so they're covering a half moon shape. Then paint another color over it! I used Burst of Mango Creme by Sephora, a darkened orange creme. I also add a coat of Fresh Squeezed by Nicole by OPI to add some shimmer to the orange. It's like a modified tape mani.

I really like colorblocks of contrasting colors!

It's a little messy, but not too bad for my first try.

The next challenge theme is yellow! Look for that in a few days.

Day 1: Red

Welcome to Day 1 of the 31 Day Challenge! The theme of the first post is: red.

Okay, just before I came back to school, I realized that I owned about two red nail polishes. I, the girl with hundreds of bottles of polish, owned but a few lonely reds. And only one of them was a creme. The other was some sparkly number by ORLY. I picked up a few new reds before I left, and today's theme was a great way to put them to use! And since I now had several red cremes, I decided to do a gradient.

Sadly, the gradient is a little more subtle than I would have liked. I think my colors were just a bit too similar. I used three reds and a makeup sponge to achieve the gradient effect. From lightest to darkest, I used Energetic Red by Sinful Colors, Hey Sailor by China Glaze, and City Siren by China Glaze.

I then decided that a plain ol' gradient was too boring for me. To try out another one of my new indies, I added just one coat of Carbon Copy by Windestine. Carbon Copy is a clear base loaded with tiny matte black glitter. It has great glitter density! Here's a bottle shot if you're interested. It pretty much just looks like a black polish in the bottle since it's quite dense!

I think you can see the gradient a little better here...I'm so good at glitter gradients, but achieving a good color gradient is an art! Oh well; practice makes perfect.

Day 2's theme is orange...you'll see that in a few days.

31 Day Challenge 2012

You may have seen that lots of other nail art blogs are doing the 31 Day Challenge as seen on Chalkboard Nails. I've decided to start doing it too, but at my own pace! It's really impressive and awesome that so many bloggers are doing all 31 in just a month, but I really don't have the time. I'm a full time college student; I barely have time for sleep let alone daily nail art! I'll do my best to do a challenge every few days.

Tomorrow, I'll start with red nails! I'm excited :)