Monday Monday - the stuck in because it's apparently winter again edition

The new embroidery frame is a bit fighty, it likes to explode without much warning* so I didn't do work on it much. I have to work out some sort of stabilization beyond occasionally going over the whole thing with a rubber mallet. 

Most of my stitching this week was on #yearofstitch pieces which I generally do without a stand. I'm actually up to week ten though I've only posted through week four.

I didn't hate stitching this like I thought I would! Sadly I started it in two strand and found it a bit weedy, but I was kind of stuck with it by then so I soldiered on with the sides and switched to three strand for the middle section. 

Hooray for laying tools! You can do satin stitch without one, but I certainly wouldn't want to. Finishing off on the back was really annoying though.

I've done some on my HAED Shades of Red piece and it's starting to pick up speed but it still doesn't look like much yet. So much confetti stitching. I had been using a magnifier and light but I think I'm going to ditch the magnifier. It's a lot of hassle and my stitching just seems wonky in the parts where I used it.

There is a cross country stitching challenge at the HAED forum I follow I'm considering but I don't think I have any projects lined up which suit it very well and the prize images they offer aren't typically my thing. I feel like I should join for the sake of challenging myself but it really will cramp my style. There are a couple of months left to join (this is no small challenge) but I suspect I'll leave this one to others.

I did finally try my new Limited edition  Limecrime lip colour Beet It and though sadly I did not get a pic with it on my face I'm REALLY happy with the shade. It looks a bit mauve in the tube (see the small dot to the left) and I was almost pissed at having snagged yet another blah tone but it dries to a really nice intense shade right on that cranberry border between berry and red. I feel like it looked a touch more pink on my face but I also had a much more even application. Putting lipstick on your wrist is surprisingly awkward feeling.

I include the other Limecrime shades I own and a fairly true red from NYX in a similar formula (longwearing matte cream with a doefoot applicator) for comparison. So far all of these have proven to be pretty much bulletproof. Any lippy that will hold up to a dinner party and a mildly absurd amount of wine gets my thumbs up.

Utopia is the color I wore for my wedding!

*The embroidery stand actually exploded again as I got off the couch to set up the lip color pic.

What was supposed to be a simple clean up of my fatally chipped grey and gold polish turned into a subtle but (I think) cool French manicure. The base is Twinkle Twinkle by NailNation3000 and the tips are Love Me Fear Me by IncidentalTwin.

Sadly it doesn't photograph very well AT ALL as the camera really wants to pick up the yellow tone of the flakies instead of the opalescent goodness and I feel like this pic makes my nails look stained even though FOR ONCE they actually aren't.

I may use a pink tinted topcoat next time as these translucent manis seem to yellow out and get dingy really fast.

Monday Monday - almost missed posting on time due to DST!

I generally deal with DST by trashing my sleep schedule so hard that weekend that I barely tell anything is different on Monday. Works like a charm.

I got most of this written out earlier, got distracted by things, and suddenly realized it was almost midnight, oopsie!

Not much motion on the big stitching projects but I did finally start the Badass Crosstitch #yearofstitch and post the first week on Wednesday.

I have the second done as well but am not sure when I want to start posting them. I'm thinking maybe I'll post them Friday to split up the week a little bit.

The biggest thing that I did this week was finally rearrange my apartment. We moved in early July but the space never settled into a good functional flow and so many things never really seemed to find a proper place. We switched two of the rooms so that we now have the worlds tiniest great room and a separated office/craft/workout space.

Operation "be able to take a single picture in my home and not see a random cardboard storage box" is moving along nicely, but there's a lot left to do.

One of the projects I really want to tackle is a makeup and beauty product re-org. I literally have a box full of subscription boxes full of stuff that hasn't been sorted.

So of course I bought more beauty stuff on Thursday.

I stopped in at Ulta after my hair appointment to pick up the Tarte facial oil on the far right and see if I could get my brows done at the Benefit Brow bar (could and did!). I'd been stalking that particular NYX liquid Suede lip colour for a while so I grabbed that and another red. The third red was entirely accidental as I was comparing them to a color I knew I liked and simply forgot to put it down. Still haven't decided whether to keep or swap it. 

I really like a long sweeping liner brush so I'm enjoying going back to a true liquid liner but I would prefer it to be even more matte. I'm also looking forward to trying that silicone brush with a gel liner as I'm not a big fan of the usual suggested firm angle brush and I feel like I've lost the ability to do things I used to do daily on a moving train with liquid (I commuted to college and grad school).

I've gone back to dark blue hair as I grow out the white and it's like hanging out with an old friend. Note also my freshly waxed brow line! Even without filling them in (I always break out less if they don't fill them after) I haven't had brows that crisp since Halloween!

My nails were pretty trashed so I repainted them on a shade I hope will stand up to the blue hair dye. 

The more I use that gold flake polish the more I want to. Not to mention that I saw both a macro gold flake indie polish and a gold foil enhanced mani tutorial vid on instagram within the last day that I'm trying not to think too hard about. Following Sveta_Sanders is kind of a problem as it's Russian language so I can't even read her posts much less buy those polishes, and she post some AMAZING polishes.

My other main beauty related move this week is to drink lots and lots and lots of water. It's so trite but it really works and I hate that I forget that. 

I haven't used lip balm in days and I could probably apply a lip stain right now with no prep whatsoever. I was noticing my skin looking pretty grumpy lately (for example that pic collage above, eek) and this has immediately perked it right up.

Monday Monday week 3 - Do All the Things!

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/
For serious, read this blog.

Okay, so uh, what all did I do this week:

Love me, love the occasional Batman Bandage

Nail polish break went poorly so I finally re-polished Sunday. My nails were getting shorter and shorter and my cuticles longer and longer so it was high time. I am at the point where I can't file any further without removing flesh on several of my fingers because of the way my nailbeds attach underneath (that is literally as short as my pointer and middle fingers can get right now).

I used this FANTASTIC "Super Juiced" colour I recently picked up from ILNP mostly because my hair was going to stain whatever colour I used blue anyway so might as well go with it. My nails are nubby and my cuticles are a mess, but hey, at least the colour is sexypants.

Cannibalized a mood ring and a crappy old needle into a fingertip laying tool with the magic of pliers and E6000 glue and so far I'm pretty jazzed. It's butt ugly and I want to blunt the needle a bit more, but it's comfortable to wear and works like a charm. Thankfully (?) with the mind numbing amount of black background in the cross stitch project I've been focusing on this week I have had PLENTY of opportunity to practice with it .

Got into a discussion of floor stands and Qsnaps (a popular style of needlework frame) on a Facebook embroidery group Saturday and decided to try out the combination on my stand. I have an Edmunds Stitch Master Floorstand which is not the sexiest thing out there but for the price (half price with a Joannes coupon, in fact) it is pretty good for my purposes. It's a bit tippy but I have zip tied it to a box which lets me wedge it under the edge of my couch.

I used a shelved Supernatural themed Work in Progress (or WIP) to test it all out and figured while I was at it I might as well get some work done on it. All I had left was stupid annoying really effective backstitching so I had at until it was done. It's all stitched so I just need to wash and mount at this point. I think I want to try out a padded mount for this as I hate how glass looks over embroidery.

As a... break? (am I crazy? I'm starting to think I'm crazy) from cross stitching I decided to try a blackwork project so I spent much of Sunday getting the fabric prepared for that. I've decided to do the astonishingly free Box of Delights by Elizabeth Almond of Blackwork Journey ( <- link is the designer's own Pinterest page, in case anyone is worried about copyright. Her own page doesn't have such a nice spread of pics, but it is here).

I had originally tripped over her also astonishingly free Save the Stitches design first but having never done much (or really any) blackwork it is WAAAAY too rich for my blood. I like how this one is worked in perfectly reasonably sized little chunks.

It's the perfect project to use a silver 32 count linen I've been hoarding and this particularly lovely aqua I've been drawn to every time I open my floss box. I'm basing my piece more on the blue and white version but with a darker outline. The aqua will be the patterned part, the darker blue will be outline, and the coppery colour will be used in place of the metallic thread her original design calls for.
I did say this was supposed to be a break and metallic thread is not a "break".

Why yes, DIY grime guards ARE on my imminent to-do list, why do you ask?

I've got my fabric all mounted and prepped but... [EDIT]
I had a whole thing about being daunted by Holbein stitch here but then I woke up this morning to find out via Facebook that it's not designed for Holbein at all and is instead entirely worked in backstitch (woo, more backstitch!). Which tells you something about how well Elizabeth Almond supports her patterns as that wasn't even eight hours and she lives on a different continent.
This is, might I add again, a FREE PATTERN.

I'm in the process of kitting up another (considerably more detailed) David Bowie cross stitch but I have to pick a fabric and set up project cards so that'll be a little bit still.

I have some family stuff coming up this week and a major apartment layout overhaul planned so I'm not sure how much interesting stuff I'll get done in the coming weeks but fingers crossed I'll get some tinkering time.

What kind of house doesn't have salt?

So, there's this show called Supernatural.

Perhaps you've heard of it?

I uh, have some *feelings* regarding this show and so when I saw that Incidental Twin not only had SPN themed polishes but one PARTICULARLY FREAKING COOL polish I had to have it.

*cough*andabouteightotherpolisheswhichyouwillbeseeingallingoodtime*cough*

Every time I pick up one of the Incidental Twin polishes I'm not sure how it's going to work out. They're somehow just different from other polishes I've ever used... but at this point I've been impressed with the results EVERY time so I just go with it. I actually have a custom order in the works right now!

I hatched a plan to do a particular manicure for the final episode of season 10 using the Incidental Twin polish, a Supernatural themed stamping plate from Apipila, and Snowed In - a white stamping polish from Hit The Bottle which I bought off of Beautometry.

Those tiny black flecks, that's real CHARCOAL.

The hazy cloudy voids in the design, that's not a camera issue, that's SALT.

If there was ever a mani that needed a macro

A deep translucent charcoal jelly sandwich of protective sigils in a suspension of salt, charcoal, hex glitter in two sizes, and micro glitter "embers".

When I started I was REALLY dubious. I was sure that somehow I was going to mess this up. I was convinced that the polish was not going to layer how I envisioned, and that the stamps would be smeared and too busy, but I stuck with it and I think it came out even more amazing than I had hoped.

It's been a bit of time since I did the pics but I believe the base was CnD Stickey base coat, two coats of Salt And Burn, and a coat each of American Classics Gelous and Poshe topcoat to smoothe it out for stamping. 

I stamped each finger, sealed with Poshe again, put a final layer of Salt and Burn over the top to add depth, and finally smoothed and sealed with the same Gelous-Poshe combination.

I found a neat trick to use hairspray to keep the stamp from smudging From Youtube user Denisejohn65 - Nail Ed which seemed to work great! I'm pretty sure if I had to take this off to fix smeary stamping there would be salt from crying in the mix as well.

I was worried the polish layers wouldn't stick on top of the hairspray but there were no issues with the technique as far as I could tell. I will absolutely be doing this every time I stamp.

A very Supernatural season ender manicure special

I've been sitting on this post for no reason for months but I figured the new season was as good a reason as any to get back on the horse!

Stampy McStamperson

I finally started poking at nail stamping and haven't posted my last two manicures so I figured I should let you know what I've been up to.

I got a Konad Coraline type B stamping set on a whim a few years ago along with a couple of random Konad plates (M28 and M60) and later received the Pueen 2013 plate set for a holiday gift. They have been very safely tucked away in a little decorative box and shoved in the back of my nail polish tools ever since.

I follow some AMAZING artists on FB and Instagram so I've been researching stamping on and off for a while, but have been too chicken to try until this past Valentine's day when I did the manicure just below. I wasn't terribly unhappy with the final result but it was immediately apparent that I was going to need a few more tools to get the effects I wanted. 

Well, not to mention of course practice. A LOT of practice.

Valentine's mani in a berry coloured creme with sheer stamped hearts on the ring finger and rose gold glitter on the pinky. 

I kind of wish I had left off the rose gold as it was so much higher visual impact than the stamping. I know this pic isn't the greatest but it was VERY hard to get a shot where glare did not wash out the hearts.

The sheer, faintly holo pink is very pretty, but wasn't really the effect I was looking for. I assumed that since it was a Konad polish it would be more opaque, but that's what I get for assuming. I lined this finger up pretty well but the left was a few degrees off.

This was also the absolute limit of nail length I could stamp with those Pueen plates, as I confirmed doing my next mani. The 2013 Pueen plates have a concave curve-in at the bottom of each design which frankly makes NO sense since it cuts a good couple of millimeters off of the usable length of the designs. It does look like this has been fixed with later plates but that doesn't help me much with the ones I already have.

My next attempt at stamping was a crocodile mani inspired by a really deep leathery green Sally Hansen Insta Dri polish I had just picked up.

Deep forest green creme mani with croc skin stamping over a pale green with a glassfleck finish.

This design doesn't look half bad from normal viewing distance but up close it is NOT the effect I was going for. The dark green reads more black than I had hoped and it turns out that at that scale a croc skin pattern just looks... kind of messy.  I feel like I should have put some kind of lizard stamp on another nail as a "this is what you are looking at" key.

Again I expected the green to stamp more opaque. I did try out the polish on paper a few times both for colour and to make sure my stamper was primed properly, and it looked okay there but the glassfleck just overpowered the dark green. The level of contrast here just did not do anything justice. Even though the stamping is the same polish as the rest of my hand it looks completely different and doesn't look tied together at all. I think I would try this again with closer coloured base under the stamping, or possibly even with shiny stamping over a matte base.  Also the Insta Dri nail polish dried really fast all right, but I don't think that was so helpful in this particular design.

The pattern was definitely too short for my nails. It barely covered my ring and middle fingers and would not have covered my thumb. Because it was kind of abstract I was able to restamp in a couple of places to fill holes, but obviously this would not work with a more regular design.

So what now?
This is going to be a limited technique for me until I get a few more tools. Luckily(?) I'm tired of winter and am engaging in lots of retail therapy so a few of those tools are already on their way. In the last two weeks I bought three stampers and six plates. All of the plates were either larger scale designs or all over etched plates.

The main issue I have is due to the shape of my nails. I have a wicked double convex curve to my nails and for a firm stamper like the Konad one to work I have to either squish it so hard I will distort the design (also that's really uncomfortable), or roll the stamper around in a spiral pattern (yeah, that's not going to get messed up) to cover top to bottom and edge to edge.

I love the way my talons look most of the time, but this makes nail art SUCH a pain in the butt!

I have similar problems with all stencils, tapes, wraps, and charms... pretty much any thing which requires a flat surface of any sort to work is a no-go for me. Also really annoying for touch screens because when my nails get long as I have to use odd parts of my finger.

Based on the issues I had with the firm Konad stamper I decided I wanted a supersoft XL stamper. I'm also really interested in trying the reverse stamping (kind of DIY wrap) technique I first saw via this video from Instagram user Sveta_sanders so I want a really large stamping surface.

For a really fantastic video of this process I highly recommend this video from blogger / youtuber / instagrammer Cassis Peach.

The first purchase was a large round silicone Creative Shop stamper from Beautrometry. Since this is currently back ordered pending a restock shipment from the Ukraine I also ordered from AU retailer Messy Mansion and got two XL rectangular stampers on the squishy side (one purple, one white) and three plates  (MessyMansion22, MessyMansion44 and Leadlight Lacquer05). According to the tracking site these are currently in Georgia so I should have them within a few days. I like that all of those stampers have deep curves to them so I think it will be easier to get reverse stamps to sit well on my nails.

A couple of days after that I saw a Facebook post from Lacquer or Leave Her on MoYou London's duochrome stamping polishes and found out that they have a David Bowie themed stamping plate (Rockstar09), so I finally bit the bullet and bought it along with two more plates (Festive15 and Fashionista11).

Yeah, like I wasn't going to buy this.

I had wanted to buy some of their duochrome stamping polishes but fiscal responsibility finally prevailed. Polish texture obviously makes a difference so I do want to pick up some stamping specific polishes. Cassis Peach apparently swears by a Mexican stamping polish called Mundo de Unas so that's going to be the next on the shopping list. It's very reasonably priced, but I've declared wallet truce until all of the stuff above (and a polish order form Lucky13 Lacquor) comes in.

Random Acts of Manicure - Storm's End

A complicated deep bronze manicure accented with stormy teal blue.

This is the trailing edge of a sudden summertime storm - roiling backlit clouds on one side of the horizon, rainbows on the other.

Nail Nation 3000 custom artisan 5free polish sucked me in with the a dead sexy purple glitter holo and caught me tight with my love of pets (and flakies).

This particular polish is part of the Rainbow Bridge collection where each rainbow drenched colour is named after a different beloved pet. A brief story of each namesake is listed on the site, and well, I'm a sucker for that kind of thing.

Penny's Holo is a sort of bronzed coffee tone which is very clearly PACKED with rainbowy goodness. I've been really into bronzes lately and Spectraflair is my JAM, so I really couldn't resist. It was a little darker/browner than I had expected when all was said and done, but still a gorgeous colour. It does seem to photograph a bit toward the bronze/olive side here but the pics on the site are fairly true.

It chipped fairly fast but I didn't use the Gelous nail coat for this mani and frankly I think my topcoat is aging out. Everything I wear is chipping within two days right now so I'm reserving judgement on longevity for the moment. The formula was surprisingly dense and could have possibly even covered in one coat if I had laid it on thick.

The stormy teal is Fashionista, which is the Revlon dupe for Essie 782 Go Overboard I mentioned in my last post. I think the accent really perked up the cooler tones in the spectraflair. It went on a little thinner than the Essie but it covers beautifully in two coats and seemed to have reasonable longevity. I actually tend to find Essie polishes a bit odd to work with texturally but they finish beautifully and wear well.

Bonus: sometimes removing colours with Spectraflair in them is a bit of a fight but this came off nicely.

Nail Art Challenge #17 - Rock Some White While You Still Can!

A clean and simple manicure in piano-key white to ride out the last week before Labor Day.

I just took this mani off and re-polished my nails last night, so I figured it was high time to post the pic I took over a week ago!

The original plan was to do...something...? with this once the white dried, but it was so clean looking and I was so busy with wedding stuff I decided to leave it alone and let it speak for itself.

This is hands down the best white I've found so far and I achieved great opacity in two coats with a bit of additional touch-up in places though I'm still on the lookout for something that will be 100% opaque in two coats.

I don't know which product is responsible for the current state of my nails but I've been using the Orly Bonder Basecoat with the Gelous coat as a second layer for a while now and it's REALLY REALLY working.

I spent much of Monday moving a friend into a new apartment. At that point my nails were one week's growth longer than the pic above and I packed, lifted and carried all day with pretty much nothing but tip wear and a little bit of cracking/crumbling along the sides to show for it!

Nail Art Challenge #15 - Creature Feature

An ultra vampy and completely freehand retro half moon gel manicure in shades of glittering starlet gold and sugar-sweet fake blood.

I went to an outdoor festival from Thursday of last week to Tuesday, and I knew it was going to involve a lot of stress on my nails. I've done this trip every year for about fourteen years and I usually I chop my nails off beforehand for simplicity's sake, but they were sooooooo long this time I just couldn't bear to. I opted instead to do a home gel manicure and hope for the best.

I had not yet used the gold glitter so I knew I wanted to do something with that, and when I saw the cherry color next to it I thought immediately of those ultra vampy 60s & 70s Dracula's Bride types, walking the line between menacing and seducing the protagonist with their long almond shaped nails practically dripping with blood.

The Iconic Vampira

The length is somewhat annoying (especially with my touchscreen smartphone) but they held up like champs despite a lot of wet and mud and physical labor. In fact I'm STILL trying to decide whether to trim them down! I love having the Red Carpet Manicure home set for exactly this sort of situation, but be forewarned, doing home gels takes a LOT of time, patience, and fussy attention to detail.

It probably wouldn't have taken something like two hours if I hadn't opted to do it completely freehand, but I'm never happy with the moon shape I achieve using stickers to mask it off. This method does have the very large advantage of having every layer completely cured before you move on to the next, so its easier to fix mistakes without messing up the base colour. The wine colour is VERY translucent though, so it took many layers to build up the depth of colour to my liking which caused a bump I'm not terribly fond of at the edge of the moon shapes.

Nail Art Challenge #14 - Light Up the Night

A dramatic inky black manicure with a fireworks inspired set of feature nails.

I was going for an explosive firework effect on the ring finger with trailing sparks on the middle and pinky fingers. Sadly any shot I could get in focus completely flattened the fire of the micro glitter, but hopefully the inset gives you a little better idea of the twinkling "spark" effect of that polish. It really is quite pretty in real life.

The Midnight Glitz (middle and pinky fingers) is a combination of large black and pale gold larger sized hex glitters with flat black and holographic micro glitters. Below is a swatch sample with two dabbed layers. I feel a little better about my shots after doing an image search of this polish as it seems NO ONE can get a good picture of it. This is as close as I've seen anyone get.

I always find pairing base colours with (non rainbow-y) multi-coloured glitters to be a challenge. This one seems  to work best with a dark metallic grey.

I don't know how well it would work over a brighter polish and I'm not terribly thrilled with the larger glitters, but it was EXACTLY the combination I needed to coordinate with the larger holo in this manicure. I wish I had used a layer of it under the polish I used for my ring finger. It looks pretty sexy in the bottle so it might be cool on its own if you can manage to build up enough layers.

I will definitely be either thinning the base of the large scale holo glitter or seeking another like it. I love the glitter but the base is like jelly.

Bonus shot: I FINALLY did my toes too.

Lemon Meringue Pedi- Shoes by Børn

Double extra bonus link: This is a shot of all the products I used to achieve the Light Up the Night manicure, including the non-polish pre prep and post mani quick dry stuff.

Nail Art Challenge #13 - Under the Sea

A carefully matched Ombre Manicure in increasingly deep aqua/jade tones.

I guess it's pretty clear I have a thing about this colour! I don't think you could buy a set that close all at once.

I love wearing manis like these and it came out better than I could have hoped, but I'm not looking forward to the upkeep on these fussy satins! I've had the two darkest satin colours *over a decade* and boy was that obvious when I started using it. That dark jade colour fought me every moment. The only polish here under a year old is the glittery accent colour.

I'm glad I got back to these posts, the odd thing is that I actually DID the last two manis but didn't get a chance to take pics of them before they got too messed up.

Nail art Challenge #10 - MomMommaMomMommyMumMomma WHAT?!?!

A no nonsense, in your face, but still somehow incredibly cheery mani in a bubble gum pink creme and a midnight blue jelly with silver hex and micro-glitter for Mother's Day.

If you've ever met my Mom this combo probably makes a great deal of sense.

I've already had to touch this up a fair amount but that could be due to a number of factors.

I have been trying the Orly Bonder base coat lately because my CND Stickey is getting low, but I don't think it has the staying power.

I like that the Poshe topcoat doesn't shrink on me like the Seche Vite, but it doesn't seem to have the gloss or strength.

It could also be the Sinful Colors as it's not the best quality polish. Though I can't complain too much considering the price.

You may or may not have noticed that I COMPLETELY SPACED on the May the Fourth be With You mani (pun intended) so I'll be making that up at some point. Wedding stuff happened, work is INSANE right now, and I simply lost track of time. Sorry!

Nail Art Challenge #8 - Showers/Flowers

A springy ombré manicure in shades of soft lilac.

I'm so excited to see the violets and hyacinths finally starting to bloom around here so I decided to go all out purple this week and break out a pre-packaged ombré set I had bought over the winter.

Overall this looks pretty good, but I'm not thrilled by the base shade. The colour on my thumb (which I usually call muddy or mauvey lilac) is one of the very few shades that REALLY don't look good on me. I had been hoping it would come out brighter, but such is the way with internet buying. I will probably re-use the darker shades and the glitter but the lighter ones I suspect will get pretty dusty, though I did use them in the Muppet mani.

It's lucky I just happened to be really bored sitting in my car for a little bit this afternoon and used the opportunity to take a few shots in natural sunlight because my regular camera doesn't capture this colour family well AT ALL. This is fairly true to colour on my monitor if *slightly* washed out, on my camera this shifted to a very blue periwinkle->indigo ombré.

The polishes are not really great quality and if you ever wondered what people were talking about when they mention Seche Vite shrinkage, my middle finger is a fantastic example. The colour actually shrank at BOTH ends despite adding a layer of the Gelous on top. It's very hard to get the proper coverage without flooding your cuticles. I am going to have to remember to glob on more and cleanup with a fine brush and remover afterward.

I still feel that the Seche is worth it for that shine and the fact that I was able to pull my laundry out of the dryer within half an hour of finishing. It also completely smoothed over the fact that my nails are kind of a peel-y mess under all of that polish.

Nail Art Challenge #6 - Celebration of Spring

A dead simple active length manicure in an eye catching tender new leaf green.

Not very arty as nail art goes, but that green was just so beautiful I had to let it shine.

A little late I know, I'm sorry. I got the painting done last night but the silver polish I was wearing prior took SO LONG to remove I ended up finishing up after bedtime and I cut my sleep pretty tight as is.

I went to bed so fast afterward I was dead sure I was going to have to fix sheet marks today! Have I mentioned lately that I love Seche Vite?

I got the creme polish from Color Club in a Birchbox shipment sometime last year and I'd been pretty dubious about trying it, but looking at it now this mint colour looks so amazing on me I'm tempted to find some matching clothes. Sadly I dont think it's going to be very durable but I'd love to revisit it, so I may try it again with a couple of layers of Gelous Advanced Nail Gel Coat as that really seems to extend a mani. I got surprisingly good coverage in two fairly thick coats due to time constraints, but I think this would do better with three thin coats.

The glitter topper (macro shot here) has perfectly matching satin green glitter in bar, tiny dot, and hex combined with a superfine holo glitter, in a very slightly green tinted base. The base and glitter makes it look a touch darker than real life in this pic. I really love glitter polishes with satiny glitter (rather than reflective) so I will definitely be revisiting this colour as well. I have one other shade in this line and may go back for more.

Nail Art Challenge #5 - Pick a Muppet, any Muppet

A Muppet-Tastic mani made up with monster blue, shades of lilac, lilac and blue glitter, and googly eyes.

I am a MASSIVE Muppet fan and from moment one I knew I was doing my very favorite Muppet, Gonzo. Not the most amazing likeness but I think it does the job in a gestural sort of way. Once I remembered I had a stash of googly eyes there was no stopping me!

The polish fought me a bit but a great deal of that was simple time constraint. I didn't want to put a layer of topcoat between details so I knew I had to do it all in one shot.

Initially I had been worried that chopping my nails so much shorter was going to lose me working space but I think this scaled out pretty much perfect. I only did this on the left hand as two Gonzos just doesn't make sense. *laughs*

I think the lilac and blue hex glitter was just the right detail to pull it together as a full mani. I had real doubts at how this was going to turn out as I was doing it but in all I'm really happy with it!

Did I mention the googly eyes?

Added bonus, this massive sinus infection (oh, I apparently had a massive sinus infection, by the way) has me so clogged up I didn't have to smell any of the remover or fresh polish!

Nail Art Challenge #4 All is Full of Love

A stark Enamel White/Piano Black manicure inspired by the video for Bjork's All is Full of Love.

I thought of doing something more classically Valentine themed but just couldn't get the video out of my head. I decided instead to go really really stark and mechanical to match the gorgeous robots in the video and try a new technique while I was at it.

If you are not familiar with either the song or video they are both quite stunning.

All is Full of Love - Bjork (Director:Chris Cunningham)

Between dings, smearing, hairs getting stuck in my topcoat (twice!), and new tool learning curve I'm amazed this came out half so well as it did. This one fought me pretty much from beginning to end.

The colour and very slightly translucent finish of the Essie Marshmallow is just what I was looking for, but I would really like a white that is non-streaky in less than four(!) layers. I am too fidgety to dry, much less maintain nail polish this thick. Every second that I go without a fast dry top coat is another opportunity to get dings, and boy howdy did I ding this up. Luckily the colour was forgiving, but fixing mistakes never comes out quite right.

As far as the black, this was my first time using a striper brush, that was certainly an experience! I can't say as I'll be reaching for that tool again any time soon. I set the initial positioning by laying down tape to get the line straight which worked out pretty well, but it was not down flush (only as a guideline) so I had to pull it up to avoid  the black bleeding under. Even with a target line figuring out and maintaining the right position of my hands to get the brush at the best angle was incredibly awkward. And that was with my GOOD hand!

The black polish got sticky on the brush very fast so it was hard to work slow enough to keep things neat. I used topcoat over the white so I was able to use a file to clean up the black a bit once it dried, but even then the final layer of topcoat somehow smeared the black. *sigh* I did do the full design on both hands and the right came out shockingly good, but I had a lot more problems with smearing on the black on that hand.

You wouldn't think such a simple design would be so fiddly but there was very little room for mistakes here. In the end I'm pretty happy with how it came out, though I do think it would look much better if the white was not as built up. A vertical line probably would have been more flattering to the length of my nails but that would be too close to my last challenge mani.

I expect I will be removing this pretty soon as the white is not holding up well. The Poshe polish is easier in some ways but doesn't seem to hold up like Seche Vite. I think I may have to take down the length of my nails a bit as well as my typing accuracy is questionable even in the best of circumstances.

Nail Art Challenge #3 - Fashion Week

I'm not gonna lie, I really wish I had been able to put this challenge off until a bit later in this week as I really have not been terribly keen on the collections I've seen so far.  Luckily something about this particular look by Custo Dalmau caught my attention just in time.

http://www.style.com/fashionshows/complete/slideshow/F2014RTW-CUSTOBARC/#7

Overall it's a bit much but the base lines are pretty cool. I have done a vertical fuchsia and nude look before and really enjoyed it so I thought it'd be cool to revisit and tweak.

Also I want those purple aviators something fierce.

Like seriously. Reflective purple aviators. Now.

I translated that look into a curvy vertical neon and nude (almost a putty, really) with black triangular accents.

I resisted the urge to tape it off in favor of free-handing and in retrospect I'm regretting that. I had texture issues with all the coloured polishes and that made it very difficult to clean up my lines. In the bottle and in the pic the fuchsia is perfect, but in real life it is noticeably more purple. Still a great colour for me, but not exactly what I was aiming for. The coverage on the Ulta nude is outstanding and it leveled beautifully, but the thickness made it difficult to manipulate the line.

I was originally planning to go much larger on those triangles and add a bit of purple at the base if possible, but no battle plan survives contact with the enemy (Marshal Helmuth von Moltke the Elder 1800-1891). I keep planning out designs and then realizing that even when my nails are on the longer side I have very little space to execute them.

Okay, I just checked and the nails on the swatching wheels I have are nearly the size of my thumbnail! No wonder I am having problems with my design scaling.

What? I'm a child of the 80s.

I do really like the use of transparency in fashion lately and was originally thinking of doing something in a sheer and black windowpane like this gown from Christian Siriano (one of the few pieces so far that's really stuck with me this season) but just couldn't figure out how to do it justice without the giant pile striping tape that is currently on order and certainlytakingitssweettimetogethere.

*ahem*

I also really liked the tone on tone marbled look on some of Siriano's other dresses and it gives me some ideas for experiments in water marbling.

In all I'm not terribly thrilled with this particular look, but I learned a few things and have some ideas for the future so I'm calling it a positive learning experience.

Nail arsenal part one - which has very little to do with nails, actually

I got a specific request on my Facebook to do a nail primer post and I've had a number of private discussions about it, apparently there's a real manicure knowledge gap!

There is surprisingly little nail specific info on this post (bear with me) so if you're at all curious about how I care for my (non face) skin you're in the right place.

This post is all about groundwork. If you want manicures that stand up to daily life and look great you need skin and nails that do the same, or you're just whizzing into the wind.

I did do an earlier nail polish post so if you want to know more about how I got so into this whole thing stop over there and give it a read.

Please note that I'm not an expert and a lot of nail products are fairly new to me so I'm still learning their ins and outs. I can generally get a pretty good result, but with any body products personal chemistry is crucial and what works for me may not be ideal for you.

More after the jump: