Getting Closer to Halloween Gothic Stamped Blacks

 

As Halloween approaches I decided to goth-up my almond acrylics and paint them jet black. My boyfriend didn't like it. I used 3 coat of Visually Slimming by SPOILED, and can tell it's not the blackest of blacks. It almost looked like the darkest grey in the bottle, but I thought I'd give it a try. I got it from CVS a while back and it was so runny and watery, I thought after a year of sitting in my drawer it'd thicken up, but to no avail- three watery coats to full opacity. They look like press on nails. I tried to spice it up by stamping on gold ivy from BM plate 309. It will do until I repainting this Sunday. Hopefully I'll be more inspired to do Halloween nails next week.

Paradise Blue Cheetah and Gilty Gold Zebra

 I'm attempting to paint my nails as often as possible during my break from piano. I raided my roommate Ashley's np stash and found two new favorites: "Paradise" by Sinful Colors and "Gilty Pleadure" by Sally Hansen Complete Manicure. Paradise is a bright creamy sky blue which I can only imagine is even more beautiful in the daytime. I sit here admiring it in artificial light and can't wait for the sun to come up. I'll have to update you all with a daytime pic soon. It was two coats to full opacity. The first thin coat was streaky and I almost started to doubt my decision on picking a Sinful Colors polish out of her stash instead of a higher quality. But I was thankfully reassured by a thicker 2nd coat which brought the color to a dreamlike consistency. Gilty Pleasure is a champagne gold I used to make a couple streaks in my last post. I love it and it's so perfect on any skin color. Again it's two coats to opaque but with a light color like this, three should be perfect. I don't like to do three coats because, frankly, ain't no one got time fo that. 

I was a little disappointed in myself for not thinking outside the box and reverting to animal print. I promise my next post won't be something I've done a thousand times over. Hope you enjoy!

Gold and brown new years mani

This is the sequel to yesterday's swatch of Bling Dyanasty by OPI. On top of the gold base color, I took the largest dotting tool I had to add random large chocolate brown (OPIs I Brake For Manicures) circles all over the nail. I filled in the empty spaces with the smaller end of the same dotting tool. I let this dry, and it looked cool by itself (sorry no pic!) then went over it with a thin coat of top coat to adhere tiny gold hexagons. I used a dotting tool dipped in top coat to individually place a single hexagon in the center of each large brown dot. On my accent ring nail, I placed a row of gold hexagons along the nail/cuticle line. It takes two coats of Seche Vite to encase the hexagons completely to a smooth finish, but shown is just with one coat. Hopefully I'll have time to squeeze in another new years inspired mani; this one is cute, but not blingy enough to ring in 2012!

OPIs Bling Dynasty Swatch

I had to chop off my nails because I broke two of them! But I got to swatch a new color that I got for Christmas. It's OPI's Bling Dynasty. A rich golden shimmer. I used two coats here, but should have used a third. I really like it but I'm always skeptical of metallics and shimmers because they come out streaky often times. This only had minor streakage due to shaky cold fingers, I suppose. But looks festive for the holidays. My favorite now of all my golds.

Gold and Black Glitter Tips + Cross

I, admittedly a little tipsy, decided last night at 2 am, I was going to drill out my blue green glitter tips off my left hand and replace them with any color combo of my twin bro's picking. He was staying over at our place and was watching TV as I did my nails. He said black and gold so I used my new black hexagons on top of an old acrylic mix from last year that was Martha Stewart's Copper fine glitter and clear acrylic. I dumped a bunch of black hexs into the mix and applied it to my tips.

After shaping and buffing, I applied the black hexs to my index finger in the form of a cross. The center is a small silver rhinestones, with larger black rhinestones on the edges of the lines. I really like this and will probably try again is different colors later on.

 You can see my  thumb here without topcoat because I accidentally forgot my thumb, but thought I'd take a pic anyways for educational purposes. This is what it looks like buffed and before top coat. It looks a little cloudy.

Here's the interesting part of this post: One day, while looking in my black star cut out pot, I discovered a cut out heart. I dumped it out onto a piece of paper and rifled through it. I found about 30 cut out hearts with almost as many center cuts in there! It was enough for my to throw into its own empty container and save for  a rainy day. :) Bonus glitter!

30 Day Nail Challenge - Day 22 - Inspired by a Song

Mine: ^^^

Ke$ha's :

I was actually watching Pop-Up Video on VH1 when I had to do this design, and luckily enough Ke$ha's Tik Tok Video came on and they show her feet with gold leopard toes at the very beginning of the video! I hopped off the couch and immediately did these! With matching hands!

Henna Inspired (NATURAL) Design!

For those of you TV junkies like myself, you know that the season finale of the first season of Outsourced was last week; Rajiv got married and they had a big long Indian wedding episode with a segment where all the women did henna on their hands and arms for a day! I was so inspired I almost started drawing all over my hand with a brown marker.

I started with Sinful Colors "This Is It" gold nail polish with two coats, then painted swirlies, leaves, flowers, paisleys, and dots all over the gold leaving enough room to see the background color.

If you can't already tell, I have pulled off my acrylics and posted my natural nails for the first time...prolly ever on my blog. If you see natural nails on here, they are probably Chrissy or Oddrey's hands.
The most recent set of acrylics I had put on during Mardi Gras, so they had grown out quite a bit. When I pulled the acrylic (carefully) off my nails, they were perfectly squared tips , so they look just like they did with the acrylics on, only thinner!

As you can see in the bottom picture, I angled my nails to show you how thin they are after pulling the acrylic off. I just painted on one coat of white for ultra original French tips for the photo, and 2 coats of Seche Vite Dry-Fast top coat!

Let's see how long I can go before applying a full set again.