Memorable Days Giveaway

Another amazing lady who does amazing art.  Check out her blog and love her!
Memorable Days Giveaway

Challenge - Super Heroes!

I thought and thought about this challenge. Did I want to take it to the other end and do a villan? I thought, maybe a silly one.  I almost did The Tick. Mostly just to write SPOON! across my nails. Then I thought, well, I like Cartoon Network. They have silly heroes. And, eureka! SAMURAI JACK!

I used a ton of different colors.  I knew i wanted a black background, and soon found out that rep polish just disappears on top of it.  I mixed up red, orange, yellow, and white for the end color of the eyes and chin.  Still wanting to have a really choppy background and the recognizable stripe background, I tried several red polishes.  Crackle, creme, glitter... All of the above!  It still looked not Samurai Jack enough.  I took red polish and a fan brush and ran it across lightly and the eyes and chin. And... Oh yeah.... That's the stuff.  I finished with a matte top coat. Samurai Jack may like glitter, but he's no glossy Mr.!

Enjoy!

Challenge Week 3 - Super Hero?

I had a ridiculous amount of ideas for this and initially tried something eclectic and fun. My idea was to go with anti-heroes and tribute each nail to one of my favorites. I snickered about it to myself as I did it because, well, I think I'm hilarious.

Thumb: Deadpool
Index: Rorschach
Middle:The Shockmaster (A stretch, I know!)
Ring: Captain Jack Harkness
Pinky: Magneto

Soon after I realized that it was a really niche effort as most humans wouldn't know ALL of them. So, armed with better lighting and an endless amount of patience I ventured into the world of water marbling!

This was a pretty long endeavor. There was SO MUCH MESS before I got it right.  

First, I put down a base coat of Rimmel Black Satin, then added a coat of Color Club Berry and Bright before doing the marbling with Zoya Carmen and the Rimmel Black Satin. 

I adore this look! I wanted it to look kinda stringy and webby for my bro, Spiderman and am very pleased with the result. 

I'm definitely going to do more marbling. While messy and time consuming, it just looks so dang cool.

Awesome Giveaway!

Check out this awesome giveaway! Congrats to Belen for making a great milestone!
http://nailpolishlane.blogspot.com/

I am also Making a few changes to the blog. Please forgive our dirty construction.

Swatch- Layla Polish

Lucky you!  Two posts in one day.
I got Layla Polish's Ceramic Effect "CE52- The Butterfly Effect".  It is a beautiful deep purple flakey.  I got it at Ulta in CLEARANCE! I love clearance. I mean I LURVE clearance.
It is so dreamy....
Uh... Sorry.
Back to the polish. It was so smooth to put on, not thick and goopy. It dried quickly, which made the additional coats easy to put on.  I did three coats because in the light you could see my nail line, which shows a little in the pics.

What do you think? I'm enamored by flakies, and love to just stare at them.

Rachel

Challenge Week 2- The Four Disco Seasons

FINALLY! Yay! It's my turn.
I went a little different than Teyie's amazing post.  I decided to do something inspired by Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" violin concerto.  I call it "The Four Disco Seasons." I got to break out my new camera and get better shots.  WAY better than the phone.

I started first with three coats of OPI's Hearts & Tarts to get an even nude background.  Then I used 5 different glitter colors. Mostly because I can... The other reason is to represent the four seasons on my main fingers in a single color, and my thumb to represent sheet music.
My Thumb I used Klean Color "Diamond Pink", pointer finger Sinful Colors "Faceted", middle finger Omega Labs 5 Star USA "No. 311", ring finger a mix of Sinful Colors "Paris" and Klean Color "24 Carat", and lastly pinky finger Nicole by OPI "A Gold Winter's Night".  Forgive the glitter explosion, I tried. :) (BTW, the pic is of my right hand. I forgot to take a pic of my left hand before I started the design.)

Then I painted black lines for the music staffs to undulate across my fingers in a continuous flow, and black musical notes.  The notes didn't show up well, so I decided to make them a light gray color by mixing a little Sinful Colors "Slate" with Orly's "A Decade of Dysfunction".

I like how it turned out, but next time will know to use either a stamp for the lines, or a a lot thinner brush.
I am so loving seeing my improvement through this whole journey.  I'm learning so much by other's blogs, tutorials, and trial and error.

Lemme know what you think!

Rachel

My Valentines Challenge!

Here's my attempt at our first challenge. It's also my first time freehand painting. Not too bad. Need to learn how to paint a violet better. Getting better at the painting and cleanup, but my cuticles I destroyed today. Oops.

What do you guys think? What was your mani for today? Was it an Anti-Valentines Day mani? Or just another day of fabulous nails? 

CHALLENGE!!!!!!!!!!!

A friend of mine, Teyie, and I are doing a 52 week challenge.
Too long you say? OH CONTRAIRE! It will be EPIC!  I Encourage anyone to join in and let me know what you did! I will post it here, or once I get the hang of all this blog stuff, we can link, or something.
Without further ado, I present the list of EPICNESS:

1	2/10/13	Valentine's Day
2	2/17/13	The Four Seasons
3	2/24/13	Super Hero(es)
4	3/3/13	Glitter
5	3/10/13	Saturday Morning Cartoons
6	3/17/13	St. Patrick's Day
7	3/24/13	A Time in History
8	3/31/13	Inspired by a Book
9	4/7/13	Striping
10	4/14/13	Alfred Hitchcock
11	4/21/13	China Pattern Girl
12	4/28/13	Artwork
13	5/5/13	Indiana Jones
14	5/12/13	Under the Sea
15	5/19/13	a Tutorial
16	5/26/13	Candy
17	6/2/13	Sushi
18	6/9/13	T's Favorite Monster /
		R's Birthday
19	6/16/13	Panoramic
20	6/23/13	an 80's Flick
21	6/30/13	4th of July
22	7/7/13	Miyazaki
23	7/14/13	B-Movie Horror Films
24	7/21/13	Inspired by a Song
25	7/28/13	Tea
26	8/4/13	the Supernatural
27	8/11/13	Squee!
28	8/18/13	Coupling
29	8/25/13	Nerdy Sci-Fi
30	9/1/13	a Natural Disaster
31	9/8/13	Spun Sugar
32	9/15/13	Creepy Crawlies
33	9/22/13	Tattoo Transfer
34	9/29/13	It's Raining Men
35	10/6/13	Inspired by an Animal
36	10/13/13	Inspired by a Plant
37	10/20/13	R's Favorite Monster /
		T's Birthday
38	10/27/13	Halloween
39	11/3/13	Marbling
40	11/10/13	Fruit
41	11/17/13	a Blogger
42	11/24/13	Thanksgiving
43	12/1/13	Fashion
44	12/8/13	Stamping
45	12/15/13	Favorite Musical
46	12/22/13	Christmas
47	12/29/13	NYE
48	1/5/14	Pirates
49	1/12/14	Inspired by a City
50	1/19/14	Magic
51	1/26/14	Disney
52	2/2/14	Star Wars

Here's Teyie's hand at Valentine's day theme nails. I think she rocked the casbah with them!

Apparently I have no talent because she got it all.
Until next week!!!