31DC2013 Day 8: Metallic Nails

I was really stumped when it came to putting together a metallic nails look—and I'm not even sure why! I have plenty of metallic polishes that I love. As a result, I went through a couple of different manis before I finally settled on one that I liked well enough to wear and post here.

My brain kept circling back around to the idea of diamond plate when I tried to think of "metallic" ideas, so after trying some other things, I decided to just give in and attempt a diamond plate look. I started with a base of Zoya Claudine on all my nails, and then on my thumb and ring finger I used Zoya Trixie and a small nail art brush to freehand a diamond plate pattern. Then I used some nail glue to attach diamond-shaped silver studs from the Born Pretty Store to my other fingers.

Looking at these pictures, I just realized that I've now done two monochrome manicures in a row—sorry about that! I promise I'll include some actual colors next time. :)

31DC2013 Day 7: Black & White Nails

I didn't mean to completely copy someone else's manicure for day 7 of the challenge, but I accidentally did! I wanted to try some waterfall nails, made famous by Sammy over at The Nailasaurus, and I decided to do them in black and white, over a grey base. Well, after I finished the manicure, I went to have a look at all of Sammy's waterfall looks and realized that she did a monochrome waterfall, too—a couple of months ago. Oops! I guess that makes this an homage to her lovely work.

Even if I'm an accidental copycat, I really like how this turned out and I'm definitely going to be doing more waterfall manis in the future. I started with a base of Nars Galathee and then used the brush side of the Nubar nail art "pens" in basic white and black to create the waterfall. (I also used Zoya Trixie and a striping brush to add some silvery accents to the waterfall.) This could've all been done with regular polish and a striping brush, and I'll probably do it that way next time, but I'd just picked up the Nubar pens and wanted to try them out.

How about you guys—have you tried any waterfall manis yet?

Thanks for reading!

31DC2013 Day 6: Violet Nails

For day six of the 31 Day Challenge, I decided to try a new (well, new to me) technique: saran wrap nails.

My color in my pictures is a bit more saturated than I'd like (there was more contrast in real life), but this is a base of Essie Under Where? with piCture pOlish Shy Violet layered over the top and then dabbed with a ball of crumpled saran wrap to get the marbled effect. (There are tutorials all over the internet for this technique; Nailed It has a nice one. That is more or less the method I used, except I was lazy and just reused one larger ball of saran wrap for all my nails. It seemed to work fine!)

Next time I try this, I'll probably dab the top layer with the saran wrap more aggressively to get a more drastic marbled effect.

 

31DC2013 Day 5: Blue Nails

Day five of the 31 Day Challenge was one of those "well, it was a good learning experience" days for me. Which isn't to say that I don't like how my nails turned out—because I definitely do!—but next time I try this kind of manicure, there are some things I'll do differently.

My "blue nails" idea was pretty straightforward: start with a sparkly blue base coat (butter LONDON Big Smoke, in this case), do some neat designs with striping tape, and then add a coat of creme blue (OPI I Saw...You Saw...We Saw...Warsaw) to create sparkly lines when the striping tape came off.

Well, that's exactly what I did, and it worked perfectly, but as you can see, I really should have picked two blues that were a little less similar. Photographing the tape designs was basically impossible!

The effect was somewhat less subtle in person, and I did enjoy playing with different tape designs, so overall, I was happy with how this turned out. Definitely going to use more contrasting colors next time, though!

31DC2013 Day 4: Green Nails

I'm not sure what happened—it feels like I just blinked, but more than two weeks have passed since my last post! I really want to avoid those kinds of breaks in the future, so I'm going to make more of an effort to space things out better from here on out. I still have so much to learn!

Anywho, I've been moving along with the 31 Day Challenge at my own leisurely pace over here, so let's get to the nails, shall we?

Day 4 called for green nails. I really love green, so even though I went with some simple half moons for this manicure, I'm super pleased with how this turned out. I started with a base of Zoya Rikki, and when that dried, I used hole reinforcers to mark off the half-moon shape before adding a coat of Zoya Hunter. Very easy, but the results are so satisfying!

As a side note, I think the photo above is one of the best pictures I've ever gotten with my current camera, so hooray for that, too! I guess green really agrees with my skin tone and lighting situation.

Thanks for reading!