31 Day Challenge, Day 13 - Fun and Funky Kitty

Day 13 is Animal Print.  I have to admit that this is not what I was originally planning on doing.

A little over a week ago I had rescued a super cute Great Dane pup and was going to do a mani based on paw prints and his awesome merle pattern.  Sadly he became quite ill a few days after I brought him home and we discovered he had several serious health issues.  We did everything we could but unfortunately his little body was just too compromised and we lost him earlier this week.  I am heartbroken that we couldn't save him.  I will do my originally planned mani at some point, I just can't right now.

Instead I have a fun, funky, bright leopard print.  It's wholly season inappropriate but the bright colors make me happy right now and that is exactly what I need.

For this I did a base of 2 coats of China Glaze Gaga for Green then a light coat of...wait for it...Fairy Dust (man, I love that stuff) because I wanted a little glitz but not too much.  For the inside of the spots I used China Glaze Escaping Reality and outlined them with Liquid Leather.  It's all topped off with a very healthy coat of SV.

31 Day Challenge, Day 9: Rainbow Harlequin with China Glaze Cirque Du Soleil

Whew, today's nails took me a lot longer than expected and they're still not all they could be.  But, I love the new Cirque Du Soleil collection from China Glaze.  The colors are just amazing.  So bright and vibrant, just beautiful.

Colors Used:

China Glaze: White on White
China Glaze:  Surreal Appeal
China Glaze:  Escaping Reality
China Glaze:  Igniting Love
China Glaze:  Hanging in the Balance
China Glaze:  Def Defying
China Glaze:  Creative Fantasy
China Glaze:  Fairy Dust

Day 3 - Yellow With Flowers and My First Fishtail

Ok, I have even less yellow polish than I do orange so once again today was difficult.  I don't like yellow all that much and wasn't about to run out and buy new polish just for this.  I know, usually any excuse for more polish will do but it seems silly to buy something that I'm just not going to wear.

I had picked up a Sally Hansen Happy Manicure mini set a little while ago which contained a decent yellow so I built this manicure around that.

Another copycat mani

Yes, I lack originality sometimes.  The thing is I'm unemployed right now so I spend a lot of time online just messing around when I'm not actively looking for a new job and that inevitably leads me to evil places like Pinterest where I am flooded with amazing images of nail art and I want to recreate them all!  The other day I ran across a lovely photo of simple and elegant nautical strips - this particular manicure from manicurator.com.  Now, I did mine using only striping tape because even after a couple of hours my painters tape was still sticking and pulling up polish.  I don't recommend blocking off large parts of your nail with striping tape - it's kind of a pain and then you run the risk of bleed through between the pieces no matter how well you stick them down.

I also think I need to go back to buying SV.  I've been using Out the Door which I like over solid colors or gradients but over stripes and dots and other art it just seems to smear more than I'd like it to.

Oh, oh....and I broke a nail while cleaning so I had to file them all down.  I hate breaking nails and this one ended up being one of those unpretty painful ones that you just can't fix due to how far down into the nail bed the tear is.  No, I will not show pics of my sad, sad index finger on my right hand - no one needs to see that, not even me.

For this I used 4 thin coats of Wet n Wild Megalast 205B Sugar Coat.  It's super super sheer so if you want full opacity many coats are necessary - it's great for a sheer classic French though.  The stripes are done in L'Oreal VIP Status.

One of these days I'll buy an actual camera. To date all my photos are cell phone photos and for that I apologize.

Zoya!

I've seen manicures similar to this on several sites and thought it would be cute and fun to do...and it was.  For this I used 5 Zoya shades: Robyn, Charisma, Perrie, Maura and Dana.   The blue base is Robyn and the accent nail is Perrie - all of the colors were used for the dots.

Manicures of the past month.  These all looked way, way  better in person - I really, really suck at taking pictures.