The Lacquer Legion: On Holiday - A Familiar View

It's another Lacquer Legion day! I get so excited for the end of the month now—I just love participating in this group.

The LL mods chose "On Holiday" as this month's theme, and I have to say, this one was equal parts fun and challenging for me. I knew early on what I wanted to do and was excited to try, but I also knew that it would be difficult, so I spent most of the month psyching myself up for it.

OPI Sheer Tinted Stamping

As soon as I saw the press release for the OPI Sheer Tints line, I knew exactly what I wanted to do with these unique polishes. I've seen people execute all kinds of creative looks with them, but what I really wanted to try was painting them over some white-on-black stamping—i.e., the same technique I used for my Painting the Roses Red Valentine's Day manicure.

Much to my delight, it worked fabulously!

Muppets Most Wanted Nail Art

Like every true '80s child, I love the Muppets. I grew up watching reruns of The Muppet Show (I'm just a little too young to have seen the original airings, but not by much!), and even now, I always get excited when a new Muppet movie gets released. So when I started seeing trailers for the upcoming "Muppets Most Wanted" movie, I knew I had to do some nail art to celebrate the occasion.

At first glance, I know this may not seem like the most Muppet-y manicure ever, but bear with me! I'm not really enough of an artist yet to hand-paint cute little Muppet faces on my nails, so I decided to match the characters' outfits (and the movie's logo, in Kermit's case) in this image instead:

Wallpaper by stuartreeves.com and characters ©Disney

I really admire other nail artists' abilities to do super detailed, hand-painted nail art for movies and other events, but I know I'm just not quite there yet. So my goal with this design was to capture the fun, colorful look & feel of the movie using techniques that are generally pretty doable for someone without a lot of amazing art skills (like me!). I feel like I succeeded—at least, I hope I did!

Read on for more details and lots more pictures!

31DC2013 Day 3: Yellow Nails

I mentioned it last time, and I'll say it again now in the interest of full disclosure: I really don't like yellow. I think other people can look amazing wearing it, and I've seen it used brilliantly in professional decor, but I usually go to great lengths to avoid having it in my own wardrobe or decorations. I just think it looks terrible with my skin! But just for the 31 Day Challenge, I made a point of going out to find a yellow polish I could stand to have on my nails for any length of time. In the end, the winner was butter LONDON Jasper, and the manicure I came up with was... well, interesting:

My husband said it reminded him of a cartoon turtle or dinosaur, and honestly, I think that's a pretty fair assessment. After I got the base of Jasper applied and dried (and it covered beautifully, as you can see, especially for a light colored polish), I added butter LONDON Slapper to the tips using striping tape and to the cuticle line using a dotting tool. The overall effect is definitely not a subtle one! If I had it to do over I'd probably leave off the dots, or maybe do something different at the cuticle, but... oh well. What're you gonna do. :) I'm glad to have Jasper in my collection now, though, for those rare occasions when I need a nice, soft yellow. I may even use it again in another 31DC manicure this year—I have a few ideas already!

Another note about this manicure: since I knew I wouldn't be wearing it for very long, I topped it with Seche Vite to get it dry as fast as possible. And while it did dry super quick, I ended up having the same problem I always do with Seche Vite: within a few hours of these pictures being taken, my polish started severely shrinking up away from the edges! I'm so envious of people who don't have this problem with the Seche Vite top coat because if it weren't for that issue, I would use it all the time.