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

31 Day Challenge, Day 7 - Black & White Indecision

I don't have an actual completed manicure today.  I just couldn't decide what I wanted to do so I thought I would show you what my nails look like when I'm trying out ideas.  Please keep in mind that none of these are meant to be 'finished', some are a little sloppier than I'd like.  What I would normally do after this stage is pick one, take everything off and start over to do a mani for realsies.  Obviously that didn't happen here. :)

I think if I were forced to pick one and go with it I'd pick either my pinky or my middle finger.

31 Day Challenge, Day 5: Blue

I used to never wear blue polish but now I find myself with a great deal of it and am really liking it!  For today's challenge manicure I used 6 polishes, 4 of them untried blues.  Well, technically one is a blue glitter but still...untried. :)

Challenges, Stripers, Art Fail

I decided I was going to try my hand at the 31 Day Challenge, starting today.   I likely won't do a prompt each day, every other day or every 3 days seems more reasonable to me.  Why am I doing this?  Well, I tend to get stuck in a rut with things and I figured this would force me to step out of my comfort zone and do new things (new to me, at least).

Snow in the Valley of the Sun

I grew up in the Northeast US with trees, grass, seasons and snow but now I live in the middle of the desert with very little variation in weather.  I like to say we have 2 seasons here:  summer and not summer.  Anyway, sometimes I really miss the snow so I now have it on my nails.  This was made possible by the awesome haul from Sally and Ulta today, largely courtesy of the best boyfriend in the whole world.  A picutre of that follow as well.

On my nails is a base of 2 coats of Fingerpaints Midnight Sleigh Ride.  This is such an amazing blue.  It's super pigmented (I could have done just a single coat and been fine) and has a tone of lovely micro glitter.  So sparkly! I then stamped with OPI Alpine Snow using Mash plate 47.  Over that I put a light, light coat of Orly Shining Star and topped it all off with Seche Vite.

Here is the Midnight Sleigh Ride on its own.  The first picture is with the flash, second is without.

Here's the mani after stamping but before adding the Shining Star.  You can tell I haven't stamped in a while.

And here's the final product after adding the subtle sparkle from Shining Star:

Aaaand here's the haul:

Did I mention he's amazing?

Tape is handy

I usually don't have the patience for tape manicures - I'm constantly ruining them by taping way too early in the drying process.  But, yesterday I managed to contain myself enough to do this.  It's a base of OPI's My Boyfriend Scales Walls with a stripe of Sinful Colors' Out of this World and a strip of L'oreal's The Queen's Ambition.  I was kind of dull looking when I finished so I topped it off with a light coat of Confetti's Ice Ice Baby.

Blood

I'm starting to get in the mood for Halloween, it's my favorite holiday. So yesterday I did the blood splatter nails...really, really should have taped my fingers. Such a mess but it was fun to do. Added bonus - they glow in the dark. For this I used Piggy Polish Nocture-Nail (for the glow in the dark goodness), Fingerpaints Signed in Wine, Sinful Colors White on White and my current favorite top coat Seche Vite.