Solstice Nails!

Hello Ninjas!

I hope everyone is travelling safely to an from all of the cool people they get to visit this holiday season. I'll be in NY with my husband's family until New Years which means scheduled posts!

I'm doing Solstice before 4 and 5 because it comes first on the calendar! Solstice was the 21st when the world was supposed to end so I figured my nails for the End of the World party qualified. This is two coats of ManGlaze #Matte is Murder with one/two coats of the Sephora by OPI gold leaf topcoat. I used Essie Matte About You to top it all off.

 I chose this combination because Famine is the black Horseman of the Apocalypse and he is often portrayed carrying golden scales. It applies to Solstice anyways since it looks like a starry night and Solstice has the longest night of the year!

Two in one!

Good evening darling Ninjas!

It's winding down here at work as we get ready to close next week for the Holidays. I've had fun over the last couple days decorating our windows for the Holiday spirit :)

Tonight's manicure is one that served a double purpose. I did my "Inspired by a holiday song" on one hand and "Ugly Christmas Sweater" on the other! The base here is butter LONDON Victoriana which was a gift from my lovely Mother in Law. The accents are done with color club art brushes.

I chose the Dreidel song for my Holiday Song :) I went with a blue dreidel with white characters like this one:

source: http://us.123rf.com/400wm/400/400/webking/webking0511/webking051100250/283514-isolated-blue-dreidel.jpg

Then for my inspiration for the Ugly Christmas Sweater I did something that was reminiscent of this cute little dog sweater!

source: http://www.baxterboo.com/images/products/medium/east-side-collection-christmas-star-dog-sweater-blue-1.jpg

And my customary bottle label shot!

Wintery Nail Art

Hello Lovely Ninjas!

It's time to try another challenge on my lovely little blog. This one is much easier though because there's no specific time frame for the posts, they just have to be in order!

Tonight's post is Snowflakes. I did this manicure for the night that my husband and I went to the Trans-Siberian Orchestra concert. This was done over my Electro Midnight manicure from Tuesday to give it a nice blue wintery look. I used Mash plate m20 with Sinful Snow Me White and Casabalnca to do the "snowflakes" since there was no closer design on any of my other 20-ish plates. After the stamps I added caviar beads to the middle of each flake for a little blue accent and topped it off with a coat of Seche QD.

This is Halloween day 30

Hello Ninjas!

We're getting to the end of this challenge! This will be my first challenge ever and if I can stay on track, it will be my first completed challenge as well. I imagine I'll have a little trouble reproducing a manicure for this but I'll certainly try! My main problem will be figuring out how to coordinate this with my Halloween costume.

Same base as yesterday, two coats of Barielle Decadence with various striping polishes used to make the "treats" I did two treat bags in the shapes of a ghost and pumpkin. I think my favorite treat is the devil shaped lolly pop, the piece of hard candy didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped so pay no mind to that!

This is Halloween Day 29

Hey Ninjas!

Hope you're all staying safe with the crazy weather out there! It's pretty miserable here in NC, and I'm a few hours inland. Keep warm and dry if you can!

This is not my best work. I sponged Wet n Wild Black Cream over Barielle Decadence then added ManGlaze Fuggen Ugly for the hedgestones. I highlighted the shape with a white striper then did the RIP (or AD for Albus Dumbledore) with a black striper.

This is Halloween day 26

Konbanwa Ninjas!!

This wasn't the easiest week but now it's over! As long as I stay healthy and don't pick up another cold  the next week should be great. I need to re-dye my hair red so I can be Poison Ivy for Halloween but it should be an otherwise uneventful (except for work tomorrow) weekend!

For witches, I went with the stereotypical pointed witches hat. They were freehanded with a black paint pen and silver/purple striping polish over two coats of Zoya Ziv. Ziv was an AMAZING gold polish that I almost didn't want to cover it up to do nail art on it. The star is from a glitter I got from Hot Topic a year or so ago and I thought it worked pretty well as an accent on the tip of the hat!

This is Halloween day 22

Hello Ninjas!

The grand opening of our new building for Jiu Jitsu is today! I'll be super busy at work so I decided to so this post the night before things went crazy. Hopefully everyone will have an awesome Monday!

This is a pretty neat manicure, I think. Three coats of Nina Pro Cobalt make up the base, I sponged China Glaze It's Alive on the nail tips, then I added one coat of an unnamed Pumpkinhead polish with holographic moons over top. I wanted the overall effect to look like the crescent moon rising over a green field. I think this turned out pretty well though my right hand came out a lot better than my left.

This is Halloween day 19

Hello Ninjas!

I gotta say, this is probably my favorite manicure for this Halloween challenge do far! Bats are really neat animals and I have a habit of calling my chihuahua a fruit bat because of his huge ears and love of fresh fruit.

This manicure is done on two coats of ManGlaze Cabrón as a base and various art pens or striping polishes for the art. Cabrón is a color I picked up for two reasons: The name would probably amuse my mother as a native Spanish speaker and it's purple! This polish actually looks almost identical to butter LONDON Branwen's Feather when you first apply it. Sadly, it does not look as pretty when you apply a glossy topcoat over a mat topcoat (I wore this alone for one day before the art) Either way, I am, super proud of this manicure. The middle three fingers are my bat and my thumb is the flight trail of the moth that the bat is stalking on my pinky.

This is Halloween day 15

Good evening Ninjas!

Sorry I'm running late on this post, had another rainy day so I didn't get a chance to take pictures until I got out of work for the night and re-adjusted my camera settings a bit.

Not the best representation of zombies but I didn't have a whole lot of time for the nail art. This is two coats of Zoya Storm stamped with Sinful Colors Casablana and free handed red stitches done with a striping brush. The plate is Mash m28 and I thought it was convenient that the Skull and Crossbones had stitches in addition to the eye patch to make it a little more zombie-esque.

This is Halloween day 12

Hello Ninjas!

This was not an easy manicure for me! I picked up a black nail art pen with the idea that it would make it easier to do a Jack'o'lantern face with a finer tool than a striping brush but it didn't want to cooperate. Ironically, it was easier for me to properly draw the faces on my left hand than the right hand. I ended up cheating and using triangular nail art stones for the majority of the face on my two left hand Jack'o'Lanterns.

The base is one to two coats of Finger Paints Courder-orange from last year's Fall collection. I used Wet n Wild's Tangled in my Web for the non-pumpkin nails, and a black Sally Hansen nail art pen for the faces. With the studs, I colored the tops of them black with the pen because they were already orange and you couldn't see them on my nails.

This is Halloween Day 8

Good Morning Ninjas!

Week two at work, working our way through the water curriculum for the second time. I'm getting better at the foot work but it's still not intuitive for me. Hubby loves it because it's a natural way to move for him; I'm jealous! Tango seems to be feeling better and now he smells pretty because he got a bath last night :) MiL leaves today to go back to NY, it was great having her down here, she's super fun and really sweet so it's always sad when she leaves.

Day 8 is ghosts! I did the design over a base of butter LONDON Branwen's Feather. BF is a really pretty blackened purple with silver and pink shimmer that I thought would work really well for a dark night time background. I did a freehand ghost with Sinful colors Snow me White on my index fingers and used a black striping brush to do the eyes and outline (White dots in eyes were also a striper). I then did "BOO" on my middle-pinky fingers with an orange Sinful striper I picked up this Saturday. Since I saw a bunch of spiderwebs on nails when I was looking at ghost designs, I decided to use my white striper to do a web on my thumbs. The left one came out much nicer than the right but that's to be expected!

Halloween Challenge Day 5!

Hey Ninjas!

It's Friday and my awesome Mother in Law will be here this weekend! I always love having her visit because I have someone to go shopping for makeup with. Hubby will go in to stores with me but he doesn't find it nearly as interesting as I do!

This is my very first water marble! Please be kind... Some of the nails turned out pretty funky looking. My favorites are the ring finger on my left hand and the thumb on my right hand (Not pictured) I used Wet n Wild Black Creme, Wet n Wild Ocean Grotto, and Pure Ice 311C (? not sure of the name) to do the marble design over two coats of ManGlaze #Matte is Murder.

Right Hand

Left Hand

October Halloween nail art challenge!

Hello Ninjas!

I spent all weekend learning cool new ninja moves and having a fantastic time with my fellow martial artists. I gotta say, ninjas know how to party; my body hurts more from the dancing on Saturday night than from getting thrown around like a rag doll during training. Good times all around!

This is my first attempt at a nail art challenge. I've joined a great group of ladies with a love for lacquer in a Halloween themed challenge. The first day is Horror Movies! I had these grand plans for a really awesome SAW manicure but it doesn't look nearly as pretty as I hoped. Ah well, that's why it's a challenge! Two coats of Essence Grey-t to be here, ManGlaze Fuggen Ugly to look like saw blades on the tips of the nails, and two art stripers were used to make this manicure. The lighting wasn't working with me so I made one black and white for a little variety.