My First Giveway Win & Military-Inspired Mani

I'm sorry I haven't posted in so long, September got really crazy for me! My Mom came to visit for about a week, then I caught a terrible cold the following week, that I'm still trying to get over. I have been doing my nails and taking pictures, but I just haven't had time to post, or felt like posting when I did have the time. But, I have several new followers, which is awesome! Thank you so much for following my little blog! I promise to try to post more often, and hopefully you'll enjoy!

I do have some exciting news. Yesterday I won my very first giveaway! And two new brands of nail polish for me! I won three Tic Tacs and one Nubar from one of my favorite blogs, Concrete And Nail Polish. Thank you so much, April! You totally made my day! And I can't wait to try them all, especially Green Litter! ha!

Okay, so now on to some nail art! This one was somewhat inspired by one of my best friends who just got back home from Iraq this week. Although I'm sure he'd love the idea that he inspired nail art! I wore Finger Paints Military Green alone for one day, and had a bit of tip wear and shrinkage thanks to Seche Vite. So I wanted to try my hand at a Military Chic mani a la Nailside. Jane makes it look so easy and awesome. But I didn't have any gold polish for the tips, the closest I had was copper, and when I tried it on paper, I just didn't like it as well. So I decided to stamp something, since it had been a while since I stamped anything. I tried a bunch of different stamp and color combinations on paper, and finally ended up with this:

Finger Paints Military Green stamped with Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Slick Slate and konad m62

I didn't get all the stamps centered on each nail, and you can already see some shrinkage on my ring finger, thanks again to SV, but overall I'm pretty happy with this mani. It still has a bit of a military theme to it, and I love these colors together. Finger Paints Military Green really does look a lot better on the nail than in the bottle. I had picked it up at Sally's several times and put it back. But after I saw a few bloggers swatch it, and talk about how this is one of the trendy colors this fall, I just had to go back and pick it up! And I'm so glad that I did. 

Well, that's all for now. I will post more soon, I promise!

Thanks for reading!

Crystal

My First Patchwork Quilt Mani

So this weekend I had plenty of time to play with my polish and try out some new techniques. Recently I had seen a few blogs about patchwork manicures. It seemed fairly easy using scotch tape, as long as I could get the tape to come off clean this time! : ) The only thing is, all of the pictures I saw labeled as patchwork looked more like color block to me. Remember some of those rad ‘80’s and ‘90’s fashions?

I actually had a color block leather jacket back then! So trendy, ha! While all of those patchwork (or color block) manis look awesome - I’m looking at you, Chloe’s Nails : )  – the word “patchwork” makes me think of quilts, more specifically, my grandmother’s quilts. My grandmother made some of the most beautiful hand sewn patchwork quilts. Each piece of fabric had a different design on it, and when the patches were sewn together they made the prettiest patterns, like my favorite, Grandmother’s Garden. When I thought of trying a patchwork mani, I wanted to pay homage to my grandmother and her beautiful handmade quilts.

I wanted each “patch” to have its own little design, and yet blend together with the other “patches.” Originally I planned to use three base colors, like most patchwork manis I have seen, but I ran out of time before I could add a dusty green “patch.” So this patchwork quilt mani is just dusty blue and grey. Not bad for my first try though, if I do say so myself!

Sally Hansen CSM Gray by Gray stamped with Wet Cement m21 & Sally Hansen Wet Cement stamped with Gray by Gray m62

I will definitely try this again when I have more time to add a third color. And will, of course, post pictures!


Thanks for reading!
Crystal

My First Taped & Stamped Manis

I just realized that so far I have only posted water marble nail art. But I have actually been trying more techniques. Thanks to my good friend, Tawny, for telling me to check out Chloe's Nails, I tried working with Scotch tape. I tried to replicate her shredded mani using different colors. I did have a little trouble peeling some of the tape off, so it's not perfect. And for some reason I didn't take pictures til after I had some tip wear. So it's really not perfect! But still kinda cool-looking. It's been a while since I first tried it, and now I kinda want to try it again to see if I can do it better. When I do I'll be sure to post some pics. But for now, here's my first shot at a shredded mani:

Sally Hansen CSM Pedal to the Medal & Wet n Wild Black Creme

Then my first Konad stamping set arrived in the mail! I shopped all over the internet to find exactly what I wanted to start with and the best deal, and I ended up ordering the B Set from Nail Essential on Amazon for $24.

It came with 1 stamper, 1 scraper, 3 Special Polishes (black, white and red), and 4 plates: m4, m8, m15, m21. I also ordered 4 additional plates from them, all for less than $4 each: m12, m28, m62, m63. I had seen m62 and m63 on other blogs and loved some of the images. I chose m12 because of the Christmas images I know I'll play with this December, and m28 for the skull & crossbones and spider images I thought would be fun for Halloween.

Since my shredded mani was on its last legs when I got my stamping kit, I decided to try my first stamping over it, just to see how it worked. If I totally screwed it up, well I would be removing it anyway. But it actually kinda worked. Again, far from perfect, but fun, and a learning experience.

SH CSM Pedal to the Medal & WnW Black Creme stamped with Konad white special polish & m28

My next several stamped manis, for some reason, I still didn't take pictures of until they were a couple days old and showing wear. I think maybe I wasn't real confident with them at first, but still wanted to document them before I removed them. So here are pics of some more fun with stamping:

Sally Hansen Creamy Olive stamped with Konad white special polish & m62

I absolutely LOVE this dainty image!

Sally Hansen Gunmetal stamped with SH CSM Pedal to the Metal & m63

Revlon Blue Lagoon stamped with Sally Hansen Celeb City & m63

LOVE this blue polish, but Celeb City is not opaque enough to stamp with. Will keep looking for a good opaque silver.

Julep Miranda stamped with Konad black special polish & m28

I did this on my thumbs just before I removed this polish because I wanted to see how the spider looked. It turned out better than I thought it would with even more detail than I could see on the plate! I can't wait to use this for Halloween!

Well, I hope you enjoyed my super-long post about my discovery of stamping and taping! Now I am completely caught up with posting pictures of everything I have tried so far since I really started playing with nail art just a little over a month ago. So now I'll really have to start working at it so I've got some cool new stuff to post more often. I can only hope that I keep getting better at it as I go along, for your sake and mine! Let me know if you have any ideas you want me to try, and I just might give it a shot!

Thanks for reading, and inspiring me!

Crystal