Peppermint Candy Canes

  For my first Christmas themed manicure, I decided to go with a holiday classic treat, candy canes!  While I was originally planning on doing just red on white, I decided it needed a little bit of green as well...

Outdoors, shade

  For these nails, I started off with two coats of Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear White On, followed by Konad using Fright Night Claw Polish Toxic and Nicole by OPI Stuck In The Chimney on plate m65.  I carefully painted the red onto the solid stripes, and then carefully added the green on the dot-stripes, so that I could more easily get a multi-colored stripe look.  I think it turned out very nice!  Aside from the pointer finger, where you can see I was a little short on my stamping and attempted to compensate with a second stamp... should have just left it alone, haha.  I also apologize for the dry nasty cuticles - the winter is hard on them!  But I picked up some LUSH - Lemony Flutter at the mall the other day and it is already working its magic!  :D

  Hope everyone is having a great holiday season!  I am off to put up our Christmas tree with Dan now!

Halloween Candy Corn Nails

  Today I have for you my version of candy corn nails - a classic Halloween candy made into a fun french-inspired mani!

Indoors, Artificial lighting

  This is an idea I have had since I first really started my polish obsession a few months ago, although I have to say I was a little afraid to try it since I have historically been somewhat bad at free-painting tips.  I think it turned out fairly well though!  This is actually my second attempt at this mani.. more to come on that story a bit later though, haha.

Indoors, natural lighting lamp

  For these nails, I used NailTek as a base coat and then added two coats of Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear White On for the white.  I then added a coat of Seche Vite over the white (something I decided to try after the first attempt; more to come) and over that used two coats of OPI Brights Power, the orange (and it is indeed very bright).  After another coat of Seche, I finished off with two coats of Nicole by OPI One Voice for the yellow tips, and topped it all off with a final coat of Seche!  I think these nails are fun and festive, and I got a lot of great compliments on them!

Mmm, candy corn!

  Overall I was very pleased with this (second attempt) manicure.  My lines were fairly decent and it really looks like candy corn on the nails!  There were a couple of faint streaks of color that got on the white, which I was a bit unhappy with, but nothing very noticeable in person, I think.  After a couple of days wearing these, I decided that a coat of Sally Hansen Hidden Treasure would look pretty awesome on top, and it turns out I was totally right - in my opinion!  :)

Outdoors, partial shade - look at that shine!

  You can see that there was some tip wear, almost like the polish shrank up a bit.  I wonder if some of that is because by this point I had something like thirteen (!!) coats of polish on my tips... yikes!  But it was a really fun mani and I enjoyed it a lot.

First attempt - looks okay, but really thick

  As for the first attempt, which you can see above... I added colors in the opposite direction, starting with yellow and ending with white - since white tips are classic I thought I would try that first.  This caused some problems for me, since the yellow took three coats to be opaque, and the white was a bit thick.  By the end I had a totally gross thick goopy mess on my tips.  Also, the white tips yellowed quite a bit and there was more significant color streaking (neither of which is quite as obvious in this particular photo), which is why I decided to add the top coat in between colors.  I was debating whether to leave it a bit or try it again when I got a HUGE smudge in what I thought were fairly dry nails, and then wet polish started oozing out.. yuck.  So I took it off and switched the order and it looked great!  Much less gloopy build-up and actually, with my nail shape, I think looked a bit more like real candy corn with yellow at the tips.

  Have you ever tried a candy corn mani?  Do you even like candy corn?  I have noticed that it is one of those love it or hate it things.  My dad and I love it, and I think everybody else in my family is not such a fan.  Maybe I should take some over to my parent's house and share some of my bag with Dad, since I doubt they will buy any over there... :)  

  To see another great candy corn mani, and to see a tutorial, you can head on over to BABBLING BROOKE.

  Also just a reminder to ENTER MY GIVEAWAY if you have not yet!

Halloween Water Marbling

  Last night I got the inspiration to try water marbling again - and I think it turned out fairly well this time!

Outdoors, full sun

  Yay, I actually managed to come up with somewhat of a uniform pattern this time!  I tried to alternate the direction of the swirls for something a bit more interesting.  Overall this marbling went well - still some air bubbles, I need to work on that in the future.

  For this marbling, I started off with two coats of Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear White On as a base on the nails.  Then I used Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear White On, OPI Funky Donkey, Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Black Out, and OPI Brights Power for the marbling effect.  The orange did pale up a bit, looking almost a peachy color, not quite the bright orange that you see in the bottle.  But it is still fun, and still very Halloween-y, I think!

Outdoors, shade

  This afternoon as I was sorting through my polish collection, I got the urge to try a new sparkly glow-in-the-dark over this.  It is a lot of fun!  Unfortunately, I can't seem to get any good pictures of it glowing in the dark, so I can't show you that feature, but it is pretty cool.

  I am really pleased with this water marbling attempt, I think it turned out quite a bit better than the last couple of times!  Even my sister Becky, who didn't really like water marbled nails before, told me this was pretty cool.  I think it is a really fun and interesting technique, and I will keep practicing and hope to improve even further in the future!

Adventures in Marbling, Part Two

I decided to try out water marbling again yesterday, this time for the K-State vs. Iowa State game (KSU won, by the way)!  It was an interesting experiment.

Outdoors, shade, no flash

  For this marbling, I used OPI Purple With A Purpose, Sally Hansen Xtreme White On, and Nicole by OPI Positive Energy.  I ran into a bit of a problem with this marbling - the purple did not want to cooperate at all.  I think this was because it was older, a bit over halfway gone, and starting to get just a touch too thick.  I had a hard time getting it to spread out in the water - on three of the nails, this caused the polish to simply collect up and then didn't settle nicely when I dipped the nail into the water, resulting in a bit of a jumbled mess.  As such, I was planning on making a tutorial this time around, but decided not to since I was having issues.  I will try again soon and hopefully get something more workable!  The following is my right hand:

Outdoors, shade, no flash

  Also, please excuse the horrible clean-up (or lack thereof), since it was very late last night when I did this and I was in a huge hurry this morning when I was taking the photos.  They are not nearly that messy now.  :)

  I tried to get a bit more of a true marbling look this time, rather than just a few blocks of colors.  While I was more successful at that, I still lack any sort of clear pattern, even though I did all of the nails one-at-a-time this time around.  I blame my issues with the polish on this, although it is probably also inexperience.  Next time!




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By September 30th