Crumpet's 31DC: Fire

I wasn't super keen on this prompt because I wanted to think of something creative, but was coming up blank.  I was going to try a fireworks mani, and KNOW I saved a link somewhere to a cute look, but can't find it anywhere.  I almost skipped today, but then...
I was torn.  I thought about going straight Fantasy Fire, but my swatching abilities leave something to be desired, so I'll leave that to the pros.  I thought about some layering and finally came up with this:

*1 coat Gelous base
*2 coats China Glaze Smoke and Ashes
*2 coats Finger Paints Flashy
*2 coats Darling Diva Ringer (accent)
*1 coat Out the Door

Instead of trying for flames, or some of the gorgeous gradients I've been working my way up to, I went a little dark.
I used Smoke and Ashes, a black base with green shimmer, for my base, like coals.  On my accent I went with Ringer, a pink to green shifting shimmer made to resemble Fantasy Fire's shift. 
On the other nails, I used Flashy, a red to green shifting flakie.  My fire's a little more abstract, but I think I'm liking it.

I forget that I have some awesome flakie polishes tucked away that always win me over when I pull them out!

It's My Year

I've been on a cleaning kick recently.  This is partly due to my new found free time after losing one of my jobs.  It's partly due to my parents doing a major clean and purge of our home 600 miles away from me.  It's also largely due to a marathon of "Hoarding: Buried Alive" on Netflix.  I was going through my polish and trying to organize and log it all.  I have actually not bough much polish since March or so, but I had a ton of polishes that I never tried (sort of like my bookcase full of books I haven't opened.  Yet!).  I keep my polish in drawers and cute photo boxes, but that means that I am really only seeing the caps when I look for a color.  I was a little hesitant to mark my bottles, but I used sticky labels to paint swatches of colors and punch a little dot for each lid.  Some (I'm looking at you OPI) were a little hard to neatly apply, but overall this has helped me so much when it comes to finding colors.  It also opened my eyes to some untrieds that I was truly missing out on!

 *1 coat Sally Hansen Hard As Nails Hardener
*3 coats OPI It's My Year
*2 coats Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Golden-I
*1 coat Finger Paints Elves Bells
*1 coat Out the Door

 

 Forgive the tip wear--I have a habit of painting my nails at night, as I relax, and then going to bed.  In the morning, I often forget to snap pictures before work, so this was after I got off.  In real life, it was not nearly this noticeable!
It's My Year is one that I picked up on clearance at Ulta and never got around to trying on.  What a mistake!  That second picture is blurred to show how much sparkle is packed into this beauty.  The color is like a dark lavender, soft, and packed with golden sparkle.  I guess you might call this a foil finish, and it is radiant in the sun!

I added a gold accent to work with the warm shimmer in It's My Year. You can see how Golden-I, the gold base, is also loaded with shimmer for a foil finish.  I love Elves Bells, micro gold glitter with holo particles, and hadn't used it since Christmas, so I added a coat on top. 
Did you ever find a polish that you kicked yourself for leaving in the untrieds too long?

New 31DC: Saran Wrap

I went into today's challenge feeling a little cocky.  Maybe it is because sponging was so easy the first time I played with it, so I figured that this was the same.  It is, but it's not. 
A "Saran Wrap" manicure is, as I read in many tutorials, a dry base color with a new color painted on top.  While that top color is wet, use wadded up Saran Wrap to blot off color, leaving a sponged/mottled finish.  As I did my first nail, the OCD side of me instantly hated this.  A lot.  The polish came off too much and was too tacky.  I kept going and hated each nail just as much.  They didn't look like the cool examples I've been seeing all over.  As I looked at my fingers, I decided to go back over them using the less talked about method of dipping my Saran Wrap into polish and then dabbing it on.  This was much better, for both aesthetics and the side of me that needs to be in control. 

*1 coat Yello-Out
*2 coats Finger Paints Tiffany Imposter
*Spoiled Are Mermaids Real?
*1 coats Out The Door

I saw this mani by Jenny when I searched Saran Wrap manis on Pinterest and loved the look of a shimmer over a cream.  Actually, I loved the look of these two, but figured I'd try to add just a tiny bit of originality to my work (which is rare for me).  I love Shrimp on the Barbie, and Are Mermaids Real? is like a sister to it.

Tiffany Imposter is a cream whose name says it all.  While I think that this is actually a darker, dustier blue than the iconic original, it is pretty nevertheless (and a dupe of For Audrey).  I probably could have just used 1 coat, went with 2 to be safe.

Are Mermaids Real? is a pretty purple polish.  It is sheer, so it takes 4-ish coats to be opaque or a good base under it.  It's a darker, cool purple packed with golden shimmer.  That shimmer is the best part and I'm glad that it translated through the Saran Wrap!

As I photographed this and wrote this entry, I have come to like this look more.  I'm not totally sold on it, but I'm very willing to give it another go.  So, have you tried the Saran Wrap method?  Was I missing something the first time through that makes it more awesome?  Because I like the look of it after dabbing much more (which doesn't look a whole lot different from sponging). 

"I am one with the Yuletide"

"Know what I mean?"
Ernest Saves Christmas truly is one of the greats.  Watch it.  You will NOT be disappointed!
It was so sad to see my little snowmen go!  I got a lot of compliments from them, including my little cousin, and loved how they turned out.  BUT, then I made a list of the Christmas manicures I wanted to try, and realized that I'll need to change almost every day to squeeze them all in, so I had to say goodbye.  It was sad, but then I fell a little in love with this simple combo, so I might be over it.  Plus, you can rock snowmen again in January, right?  Right.
I initially wanted to do these nails(the pin doesn't lead to anything, but when I searched the watermark I found Linda165 on Youtube with a ton of tutorials!) for Thanksgiving, but I was really busy and didn't have quite the perfect colors, so it didn't happen.  Enter Christmas!

 

I have a tendency to use the same colors again and again, which means that I have a lot of pretties that go untried.  Meet Cult Nails' Annalicious!  I was about to use Danke-Shiny again, which is amazing, but saw this in my drawer and decided to give her a try.  This is a vibrant, bright red and gives a whole new look to this mani.  It's an orange/tomato red with tons of gorgeous red shimmer packed in.  The polished looked really thin with the first coat, but a second was all it needed.  I'm so glad I went with this bright, cheery red!

 

 

For my gold, I started with two coats of Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Golden-I.  This is a really pretty, shimmery foil gold with decent coverage.  I added a coat of Finger Paints Elves Bells over the top.  This pretty golden glitter is quite dense.  It has micro gold glitter and scattered, larger holo hex pieces.  It blends perfectly over Golden-I and adds just a little extra special.

I used some coupons and promos today and went on a little spree at Ulta and Sally's. This Finger Paints was the only one from Sally's, but I ended up with 4 free polishes from Ulta and a $5 off $10 coupon, ending up at less than half my original total. Score! One of my freebies was OPI Skip the Gift Wrap, a shimmery dark green with a foil finish.  I used 2 coats as the base for my pinkie and then added 1 coat of China Glaze Winter Holly, another Ulta find.  This green glitter is really dense, packed with micro dark green and gold glitter that flashes holo.  It's really pretty--don't take my pictures' word for it1

 

Because my nails are kind of stained (I'm sure you wouldn't understand that) I needed a nude base, so I used 3 coats of Julep Jennifer.  Then, with Annalicious, Skip the Gift Wrap and Golden-I, I dotted around the nail.  I used a thick coat of Seche Vite to seal it all up (I don't really have a choice there--my bottle's only about half full and now is SUPER gloopy.  Any recommendations?  Will thinner ruin the fast dry?).

I had a revelation tonight as I looked at these.  I am not very good at nail art.  I rush to take pictures and don't clean up well.  I neglect my cuticles (but I'm trying there!).  I am not perfect and envy the skills of almost every blogger I come across.  That being said, I'm not going to apologize or put down my work anymore.  I really like how this looks!  I loved my little snowmen!  I could critique their noses or cringe at the odd placement of dots here, but the reality is that I look down at my hands and it makes me happy.  This isn't a response to anyone but myself.  I could go on about how dots are all I can do and I wish I could successfully stamp, but I really want to stop that doubting, criticizing part of me and be a little gentler with myself.  I figure saying it publicly will hold me to it.  I love how sparkly and festive these are!  What are you loving about your nails?  How are you being good to you today? 

3DC: Inspired by a Color

3 weeks in!  I really did not think that I would make it this far into the challenge because it's pretty demanding, so I'm pretty proud of myself.  Today kicks off the final third: inspirations.
Inspired by a color is a little bit unfair because I have already posted color inspiration manis here, here, and here for Go Pink Wednesdays, and I'll have a couple more coming.  But, a challenge is a challenge, so I went ahead and tried another one.
I bought MaxFactor's Fantasy Fire on a blog sale a while back.  I know that this is super sought after and have been hesitant to use it because it's so small!  I decided to kind of let this be my color inspiration today.

The red/purple combo with the dark blue base is really pretty.  I have quite a bit of nail art coming up this week, so I really just wanted to do something simple and easy, and there's not much that's easier than layering glitter!  You can see the sparkle of Fantasy Fire in this next photo:

*1 coat Sally Hansen Hard As Nails
*2 coats Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Co-bolt Blue
*1 coat MaxFactor Fantasy Fire (ring finger)
*1 coat Finger Paints (thumb and middle)
*1 coat Nubar 2010 (index and pinkie)

 

 

I used 1 coat of Fantasy Fire over the navy Co-bolt Blue.  It's hard to really see in these photos, but in real life the pretty purple-red shimmer is very strong.  I hate that this is so expensive and hard to come by because I'd love to use more layers of it, but that bottle is so tiny!

 

I wanted to play with the red-blue color combo, so I used red-shifting flakies over the top of the navy.  I decided to use both Nubar 2010 and Finger Paints Flashy to compare them.  They both have red flakes of glitter that lay flat and are really easy to apply.

 

 

The flakes in Flashy are consistently a bit bigger than 2010, but the two are really close to each other.  I didn't think they'd be so similar when I used them because the bases appear so different, but it's really pretty hard to tell them apart on the nail.

Do you own any of these pretties?  How do you pair your flakies?  Any cool combos I should try?  What about Fantasy Fire?  Do you have it?  How do you use this tough to find jewel?

31DC: Half Moons

I'm actually pretty excited about this one!  Half moon manis aren't really my thing.  I don't really understand the appeal and have never felt compelled to do one before, which made me kind of dread this challenge (see also: tribal!).  Then, while quickly glancing at Pinterest (a.k.a. not realizing how many hours I had wasted) I found this adorable art and knew I would have to give it a try.  She painted the tips of her nails, so I almost didn't see it, but luckily my mind moved a little faster than my brush on this one!

*1 coat Sally Hansen Hard As Nails Hardener
*2 coats Finger Paints Tiffany Imposter
*Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Green With Envy
*Finger Paints Motley on tips
*Sinful Colors Snow Me white
*Color Club white striper
*Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Black Out
*1 coat Seche Vite

Kermit the Frog, here!  I'm kicking myself for not cleaning up my cuticles, because that would have made these even better, but I really like how they turned out!  The only glitch was my ring finger, which got a little smudged in the pupil, but I like the rest!
I used Tiffany Imposter as a background because it just seemed froggy!  I added a little Motley on top to glitz it up, but you can't really tell in the pictures. 

 

I used one coat of Green With Envy (the only untried) at the base of each nail and added an outline with my white striper.  Then, with the end of my paintbrush handle, added the eyes close and centered on the outline.  With my dotting tool, I added the pupil and used a small art brush to add the little lines on each side.  This is where the ring finger got a bit smudged.  I think that I will try these again sometime, and will just need to take more time with the little details. 

Overall, I liked how these little Kermies turned out!  Like I said, I always overlook the clean up that will make them look so much neater, and the eye is a little wonky, but I'm pretty proud of these little guys!  What are your thoughts on half moon manis?  Love 'em?  Leave 'em?  Found a creative way to use them?