Everyone loves a Dotticure

Let me begin with another congrats to my giveaway winner Angie at Our Painted World.  She is super talented and I was excited to see that she had won! She chose two awesome Llama Lacquers,  Redrum from the Halloween Collection and Strawberry Susie from The Girls Collection.  I can't wait to send it all out.  Another hearty thank you to all that entered!  I truly appreciate all your support and the wonderful comments you left me.  I hope you stick around while I continue my crazy nail journey.  I'm sure I will have another giveaway in the future :-)

Ok, so on to my ABC challenge post.  This week was the letter D, and once again I knew what I wanted to do from the beginning.  I love a dotticure and there are so many different styles of it that I want to try.  I know it is nothing original, but having polka dots dancing on my fingers puts me in a good mood.  I decided to use some dark colors for this and they didn't show up as well as I would have liked them too, but I like it nonetheless. I am finding that because it is fall I have to use dark fall colors.  No more pastels for a while.  

Base-Finger Paints Bauhaus Burgundy
Dots-Orly Space Cadet and Black

See, nothing too fancy.  Space Cadet is actually a holographic polish that came in a french manicure kit and looks really cool in person. I couldn't get my lighting right and got a lot of glare.  These were the best two pictures I could get.  

Thanks for stopping by.  Make sure you check out the other ladies.  A lot of dotticures today :-P

Glamour and Glitter, Fashion and Fame

"Jem is my name. No one else is the same. Jem is my name" Sing it with me ladies.  What 80's girl didn't love her some Jem.  She was the oh so cool answer to Barbie.  On top of it all she had pink hair. Awesome.  So I have for you today a manicure using my new Llama Lacquers polish JEMtastic.  When I set out to make this polish I knew it had to have pink and yellow.  Light pink glitters for her hair, bright pink squares for her eye makeup, and of course some yellow to represent the star in her name.  I just love this polish both in the bottle and on my nails.  I wanted it to stand out so I used it over Orly's Decades of Dysfuntion which is a white polish with an almost lavender/pink tint to it.  I also did an accent nail with stars. Cause JEM was a star!!

Base-Orly Decade of Dysfunction
Glitter-Llama Lacquers JEMtastic
Accent Nail-Wet N Wild Tickled Pink
Stamp-BM15 using Sally Hansen Lightening & Speedy Sunburst

If you like it and have to have it you can purchase it at my etsy shop, Llama Lacquers. There are four more polishes based on 80's cartoon females and of course my Princess Bride collection.  Also, two Halloween themed polishes that are a little unusual.   

Thanks for stopping by!!  I appreciate all of your comments.  Don't forget to enter my giveaway too! It ends on October 13th :-)

Days 26-28-Patterns, Art, and Flags

So I fell a little behind :-/ Fortunately I was ahead before I fell behind, so I didn't fall tooo far back. That sounded confusing.  Anyway, it has been busy and then I got sick.  Feeling better today, so you get three manis in one post! Amazing, I know. So, let's get started!

Day 26 was inspired by patterns.  There are so many freakin patterns that I am inspired by that I simply couldn't choose.  So I think I took an easy way out and did a mani using a bunch of geometric patterned stamps I have been wanting to try.  Excuse the messy tips....I didn't have time to photograph them right away and ended up chipping them a little.  Overall, I liked this mani, especially the base color that reminds me of denim.  And it happened to match my dress I was wearing that day :-P

Base-Finger Paints Art You Blue?
Stamps-Bm 203, 322, 319 using Sally Hansen Silver Swift and Spoiled Correction Tape

Day 27 was inspired by art.  I had an idea for what I wanted to do for this for a while, but wasn't sure I could get it right.  I have always loved paintings of birds on a wire.  There are a million of them out there.  All with different backgrounds and different birds.  I especially like the ones where there is a long wire and the two birds are sitting right next to each other <3  I started with a whiteish base coat and then sponged on a pretty purple.  Then I drew the wire across three nails.  I originally wanted to free hand my birds, but I was sure I would screw it up.  So I found a stamp that had a crow sitting in briar bushes.  I simple removed the briar bushes and used the little bird.

Base-Orly Decades of Dysfuntion
Sponging-Sinful Colors Winterberry
Stripe-It's So Easy Black
Stamp-BM 323 using Milani Black Swift

Day 28 was inspired by flags.  Considering the 20 year anniversary of Hurricane Andrew was this past week and hurricane Isaac has reared its head, I thought I would do a mani in honor of all the people affected. I chose the hurricane warning flag.  Nothing real fancy, just simple and to the point. 

Base-Spoiled I Tripped on the Carpet
Box-It's So Easy Black Striper

Thanks for checking out all of the manis today.  I feel like I did them a bit of a disservice by not writing much.  But I figured with three manis no one wanted to hear some long story :-P

Hope everyone is feeling well and don't forget to check out the other ladies manis!  We're almost done!!

Day 23-JAWS!!!!!

I am going to be honest up front. I have never seen Jaws all the way through. Crazy, I know.  I have seen parts here and there, but to be quite frank....I'm scared.  Giant man eating shark. Enough said.  But I wanted to so something fun and a little bit dark so I chose to be inspired by this movie anyway.  I also have fallen waaaay behind on my 52 week challenge (I figure I have done a manicure every single day, the nail gods will forgive me) and yesterdays theme for that was Under the Sea.  Voila, I combined the two and you get Jaws nails.  I really am loving these 'inspired by' themes as I get to do fun free hand nail art.  It is really helping me get better and learn techniques to a steady hand.  I still suck at free hand on my right hand, but I'll get there.

For these nails, I used NYC Cashmere Creme for my ocean/sky base.  I then used Orly Grave Mistake to draw in the letters and the dripping blood. This is a PERFECT color for blood.  I can't wait to use it for all of my halloween manis in October!  The thumb is Wet n Wild Caribbean Frost.  Jaws himself is NYC Sidewalk and I used It's So Easy black and white stripers to do the details.  For my swimmer, I first used the white striper and then went over it in Sally Hansen Sorbet to give them a more natural skin color. On my right hand I got lazy and decided to stamp a shark on my thumb.  I used Sally Hansen Silver Sweep with plate m27.  

My thumb was giving me trouble....the polish shifted :-(

Do you have a favorite ocean themed movie? Since Jaws is not my favorite I would have to say that U-571 is the best ocean movie....plus it's a WWII movie. Double score.

Come back tomorrow for a book themed mani that I haven't decided on yet. :-P It will probably have trees though!

Thanks for stopping by, and go check out the other lovely ladies who are participating

Day 7-Ebony and Ivory (aka Black and White)

This manicure was really a no brainer for me as far as coming up with an idea.  I play the piano, and a piano is black and white.  So there you have it. I play classical music and have two tattoos that are music inspired.  My favorite composer is Frederick Chopin....the Fantaisie Impromptu is my arch nemesis. It is such a beautiful song but sooo hard. Some day I will get it right :-P
So, the question was which stamps to use since I have a bunch of music inspired stamps.  In the end I chose to go with my newest ones.  Not much more to say...it actually went pretty smoothly and quick.  I just need to get better at putting the stamp on straight.  I think I may have figured out the trick by the end of this manicure.  I will have to do some more testing and then I will let you know the technique (if I can explain it)

Black Base-Milani Black Swift with Orly Androgynie on top
White Base-Sally Hansen Hard to Get
Stamps- sheet music is m73 using Black Swift & the piano is m58 using Spoiled Correction Tape

My lovely piano 

I have included the Chopin's Fantaisie Impromptu played by the uncomparable Rubenstein if you want to listen to a beautiful piece of music.  I just listened to it for the umpteenth time and it still brings me to tears. I'm a dork, I know. 

Thanks for stopping by.  I appreciate all comments you leave!

Don't forget to check out the other ladies that are participating too

Guest Post & New Indie Polish

YEAH for my first guest post! and YEAH for it being for someone such a great nail artist as Caitlin @ Caitlin's Creative Corner.  She is always so creative and unique from doing book covers to teal tuesdays.  Thanks Caitlin for letting me post on your blog :-) And have a great vacation!!

My other first is that I got my very first Indie polishes today and was soooo excited to try them out.  I have been drooling over some Indie polishes for a while now and for one reason or another have not bought any.  So, I finally decided to give one a try and they are AWESOME! I came across D & R Apothecary last week while searching through Etsy.  I could not get over all her awesome colors.  She also makes handmade soaps....which she sent me a little sample of :-)

So, I got three shades from D & R.  Rock Star, Champagne, and Bumble Bee.  I am saving the Bumble Bee for my Steelers nails later in September.  Black and Gold!!! I am also saving the Rock Star for later too.  I know I scheduled Rock Star Nails somewhere in my 52 week challenge.  So, I chose to do the Champagne nails.  Take a look at this color! It is so purty, you really want to drink it and get all giddy on bubbly.

I used Decades of Dysfunction as my base coat.  This is the first time I used this color....its quite pretty really. It's an off white with a hint of pink or lavender.  It's hard to tell 

I'm a little bummed that I couldn't get the real color to show up in these pictures.  But it's still pretty.  It is a gold base with purple and gold flecks.  Just gorgeous. It looks coppery in the pictures which it really isn't. Oh well.  It was also real easy to put on.  I love glitter but one of my complaints of most glitters is that you have to blob it on.  This went on in a nice smooth motion.  My hats off to you D & R Apothecary! Thank you for such a job well done!

She is also discontinuing some of her older colors if you want mini bottles for only $2.50.  She needs more room :-)  So go check out her Etsy page here

Thanks for looking! All comments are appreciated!

Pretty in Plaid

I am loving this 52 week challenge because it is pushing me to do things I wouldn't normally do.  I don't love plaid and probably wouldn't have done this had I not scheduled it.   I am a shcedule whore.  I had a hard time deciding if I wanted to do free hand plaid or stamp.  I was tired last night (as I had just driven from Pittsburgh to Michigan)  so I decided to do the stamping.  I am pleased with how it turned out.  They feel Scottish and I want to come up with a clever name but I can't think of one.  What would you name these? 

Base coat is Milani Black Swift with two coats of Orly Androgenye
Stamped with Spoiled Correction Tape using m60
Striped using Wet N Wild Red REd



You can sort of see the sparkles from the Orly coat in this picture

Have you looked at my schedule for the 52 week challenge?  Check it out on my blog roll.  Maybe you want to do it with me! Thanks for looking