Pink & Black Funky French

This weekend had many nail polish experiments with lessons learned. Hoo boy but certainly NOT any I wanted to take pix of! ;) Although my nails are growing longer (unheard of for me in the winter season) a couple seem to be getting ready to peel and/or chip. So I threw some nail hardener on all of them tonight. But I still wanted to have fun so it occurred to me to do a nude sort of funky french.

There's SH's Insta-Dri in Instant Iris along with Sinful's Black On Black. And plenty of scotch tape and SV were also employed. One coat of SV after the Iris and another after the Black. What a difference it makes!

Must figure out a light box... it's a bugger trying to find reasonable lighting for my night-time manis!

Until I'm ready to take off this mani I'm going to carry my daughter's Hello Kitty notebook around. Who knew I was creating a manicure to go with Hello Kitty?!

All you other nail polish bloggers out there are so inspirational! Muwah!

Konad & Kitty

So I'm sitting in my spot of sunshine taking pic after pic and none of them are turning out very well... part of the silvery polish I used to konad is always disappearing in the photos. It consistently looks like I only put the design on bits of my nails rather than all over each nail! :p
Enter Marley...

He's joining me in my spot of sun and I can't resist petting on him! So, well, maybe he'll make a good background... what the heck, I'll start taking pix...

What ho? I can see much more of the Konad design when I'm in the shade! Aw Marley, thanks for showing up!

Since we fostered a kitty who was a real snuggler, Marley has become more affectionate. Like he took lessons from the other feline or something.

Here he's doing his best GQ. What a handsome boy. Ok, jeez, someone shut me up! :D The base is the Cult Nails' Tulum that I applied last night. Marls is showing off China Glaze's Admire. A lovely shimmery pink. All with SV on top. xo

Yay, I've joined the Cult!

Wooooo, how excited am I to take delivery of my first Cult Nails lacquer! What we have here is Tulum... under indoor lighting... not the best. But I tried, with the help of my daughter's white and pink unicorn no less. {Too bad Clairvoyant (aka Unicorn Puke) is still unavailable! but I digress....}

and a different light...

And there are gorgeous little sparkles in the bottle that I could see yesterday in the sunlight that I can't see under indoor lighting (at night) now. I love the color and I don't even know why! It's just perfect!

See the gold sparkles? I applied two coats of Cult Nails' Tulum under SV. I hope to see the sparkles on my nails tomorrow!

Oh and maybe I'm late to the party, or maybe our part of the country is late to the party... but look what I found at the drug store! No more making special runs to Sally's for these anymore! Sweet!

Tiger Tiger Burning Bright...

too bad this puddy tat has a beginner konad artist doing the stripes!
Love the idea, the Fascinante is so beautiful. But my durn perfectionist side is all up in my grill. So I say, sit down perfectionist side! I only just got my first Konad polish yesterday! Today, after a half hour of fail, fail, fail... not to mention the hours previously trying every nail polish I own! ...I finally realized my pressing down so hard on the nail polished plate was working against me! Whisper light pressure finally got the polish to adhere. Thank goodness...

Jeepers is this black a messer!

Yay! My first konad is done! Topped with SV. And I monkeyed around trying to finish off lines that ended in the middle of nowhere (with varying degrees of success) with SH Kiss Nail Art paint. I love my tiger concept but I'm going to have to practice more before I love the final presentation! You don't even want to see my other hand! ;) xo

I'm Fascinante by Carnival!

All the sequins and feathers will have to go back in storage and bras will have to be worn again tomorrow morning.  For this is the last night of Carnival in Rio de Janeiro!  Hmmmm, Carnival, Rio, Brazil....  I know what my nails will be wearing!  My most favorite polish is from Brazil!  This is Fascinante from the Aurora Boreal line by Ludurana.... All the ladies in the house say ooooooooooo...

I can't wrap my brain around the fact that this is the same polish...

OMG then the sun came out. Look at those gold and copper tones!

And if all that's going on with the color wasn't enough it also has a sexy little fragrance that still comes through after the SV. This is 2 coats of Fascinante, topped off with my SV. I ordered through http://shop.llarowe.com/ The lady there was so communicative. I'd buy again from her in a heartbeat!

xo

Shades of Grey Area

Maybe it's the sad state of nail polishes today that this impresses me... but it's 4 days and there is nary a chip on my SH Xtreme Wear Grey Area!  It kinda feels like a waste to take it off before it starts looking bad!  On day four, I'm champing at the bit to get some new colors on there so maybe I'll get over that whole "being patient" thing someday. In the meantime I decided to change up the look without removing the Grey Area.  Enter Essie's Matte About You!  :D  Tape my hands up and give them a new chic look!  Seriously... scotch tape :)

Scotch tape is great because you can see if it's pressed firmly up against your nail.  I have it pressed down right where I'm going to make a line with my Matte. Throw some Matte polish on the untaped part of your nail...    and peel that tape off just as soon as you're done applying!

My pinky finger's matte eeked under the tape a bit so I rubbed ever so lightly with a pointy q-tip soaked with polish remover and it worked pretty well I think.
And only if you want your polish gloriously shiny do you top it off with SV, so not this time! xo

Sherbet

So before I started this here blog I was reluctant to take pix of my manis cuz all the pix would wind up becoming clutter, sitting around gathering proverbial dust on the shelves of my computer. Last week I did this mani and at the last second before taking it off, I found I couldn't let it go so easily and quick snapped some pix... :)

Complete with a chip cuz hey, no one would ever see these pix but me! :p

So I used SH complete salon mani in Kook-A-Mango and OPI Deer Valley Spice covered by Seche Vite. I tried for the first time using the sponging technique. I look forward to getting better! The hand shown also has SH insta-dry in Instant Iris on there. I didn't think the 3 colors looked better than 2 so I left that one out for the right hand. I tore off a bit of beauty sponge, usually used for make-up, took it in a pair of tweezers, dipped in in the paint and sponged away. I think any really strong pink and orange would get you sherbet on your fingertips too!

SH Grey Area

Erika over at Chloe's Nails was all excited about Sally Hanson's Grey Area in a post a couple years ago.  I liked the look but not enough to special order.  And here I came across it on the shelves at Target just yesterday!  Sweet!

You'll notice the pointer finger is sorta off to the side every time... still needed to clean that one up... and my right hand? Yeah, I took all the polish off and did it over again :) The much loved and indispensable Seche Vite is topping everything off. xo

Away we go!

Erika over at Chloe's Nails is such an inspiration to me.  So much so that I've started painting my nails every which way and having so much fun!  I can't help but take pix of those little works of art on my very own fingernails!
So what to do with those?  Well I guess I'll slap a blog of my own together and put 'em all in one place! With built in reminders of the frostings that were used :)
So Hi!  My name is Margaret!  Pleased ta meetcha!
Let's see where this passion takes my fingernails!