Guinevere's Diamond Dreams

*sigh* I'm having a love affair with Guinevere.  But more about her later...

Sally Hanson's shimmery Diamond Strength Diamonds covers this spongetastic mani!  

I rather like this one!

This is the last pic of the mani and the bottle of Diamonds before...

gravity snatched the bottle from my fingers and my glorious purple flowering clematis gobbled it up...  the black eyed susans snickering the whole time...  :p

It turned out to be easy to find but from this view looking down from my deck I thought I wouldn't see it again til springtime!

So a-england's Guinevere has made off with my heart! It's the antique pale mauve that you see.  Isn't she beautiful?  I've done my best to sponge it together with the blue Revlon's Dreamer.  I wish I knew how to make a really awesome gradient between the colors!

Just yesterday I looked at an air brusher in Michael's art supply store.  But it's a little too spendy.  I also envisioned how I'd work the airbrush with my left hand...  not pretty!  ha ha!  My sponging technique will just have to improve.  :)  Ciao!

Addendum:  OMG I just found this gradient tutorial and it looks so awesome!!!
Can't wait to try it!!!

French fleur

ooooo, I wanted something pretty today...

basecoat of an ANCIENT Orly Top2Bottom.
Fenchie in my Grammie's favorite: Revlon Cherries in the Snow.  

Konad plate m20 with Sinful Colors Snow Me White.  And last but never least SV!

I posted the camping trip pix about a week after the fact.  

Since that mani I've been in mommy mode running around getting the day to day stuff done with nakey fingernails.  

Today I screeched to a halt to spend some time making my nails pretty again.

It reminds me of a Meryl Streep line in the movie Death Becomes Her....

 "(sharp intake of breath in surprise and delight)   I'm a girl!!!" 

♥

Chickie Doodles

This past weekend I went camping with some awesome friends who all own chickens!!!  Backyard Chickens is the website on whose forum we all met.  What a blast.  The general kookiness of my nails suits the group's mentality to a T. 

This was after 2 days of camping so I didn't even bother to show the chickies on my other fingers.  They started to find their way off my nails long before this pic was taken.  

These pix are in front of my chicken tractor/coop/run!  There's Daisy Mae between my fingers and Ginger above my thumb!  My other thumb in the previous pic (with it's chickie footy prints wandering away from mama over to my ring finger) was the last one I did the lines for the footprints.  And it shows!  Used a push pin dipped in a drop of Sinful's Black On Black.  An Embossing/Dotting tool was used to create a flower on each pinkie nail.

Being impressed with the chickie and mama is not allowed cuz they're stickers!!!! (This chickie's foot has had enough apparently!)  A scrapbooking friend suggested stickers and I'm not good with fingernail art by any stretch of the imagination, so stickers and a topcoat of SV it was!

This was so much fun to do.  Revlon's Dreamer provided the blue backdrop. 
Chicken Dreamer.
ha ha ha ha!

Ixnay on the Ombre

Remember Offspring?  Love that band... couldn't help but think of their album title as I attempted my first ombre. 

I started out with my Nail Magic Nail Hardener because of some disturbing peelage!  Nooooo!  And then?  Get this:  my mom's just been introduced to the joys of nail polish by me.  But my beloved, deceased Grammie LOOOOOVED nail polish!  I never knew that!  And her favorite?  They still make it!  Revlon's Cherries In The Snow.  Now I have my own bottle of my Grammie's fave :*)  How awesome is that? 

Cherries in the Snow is the darkest pink/red.  Sally Hansen's Presto Pink Insta-Dri is the lighter pink.  SV on top.  I used the neato technique found here!

Personally?  I think I need more blending!  Sarah and I were doing our nails at the same time and after we got outside we were astounded at all the problems we could see in our work!!!  HAHAHA!  We were all like, "What's this noise?  It looked way better inside!"  Hilarious.  Next time, we're doing our manis outside. Haha!

Any perfectionism aside, I'm pleased with my first foray into ombre!  

fleur konad

Something pretty and spring-like is in order today!  Enter Revlon's Top Speed Lava, Sally Hansen's Insta-Dry Whirlwind White and Konad's m73 plate!  Not to mention some patience! ;)

 Way up close, the super fine lines in the design show varying amounts of polish -therefore they are varying opacities.  I wonder if the Insta-Dry aspect of the white is the problem.  Wonder if using the specialized Konad White polish would take care of that.  I don't have too many readers but does anyone else have experience with Konad's White polish?

 

Maybe we'll just stick with slightly out of focus pix!  ha ha!!!

This is only my second or third konad so it's still very fun to learn how to do this!  

I think the luscious Seche Vite topcoat dims the white somehow.  

Well I'll take it anyway!  

Hope you're enjoying springtime!  xo

Fiery Frosting

I got to go see Hunger Games today!!!! Finally! I'm a big geeker so I knew I had to do something extra special with my nails...

 Thumbs up for Katniss Everdeen, the girl on fire!!!  Hee hee!!!! 

Did I ever have fun with this mani!

I used a sponging technique for this.  

 First I painted the cuticle side of my nail in Sally Hansen's Insta-Dry 

Lightening yellow.

Then I got out the makeup sponges and tore a small bit off.  Instead of tweezers I wound up using my cuticle clippers.  Before the yellow could dry I put a 2 drop puddle of SH Complete Salon Manicure Kook-A-Mango orange on paper (my work surface) and dabbed the sponge, held by the clippers, in it. 

You can see how I dabbed the excess off the sponge and onto the paper so I could control how much I was applying.  After the orange was as I liked it I maaay have put some SV on.   Next was making a drop or two puddle of Revlon's Top Speed Cherry.  Sponge, sponge, sponge and SV!  After that I went back and sponged some more orange on every nail, because it got lost between the yellow and red. You couldn't see it very easily.   It was a big improvement to sponge more on.  

 The above pic was taken at the wrong light setting so you can't see the different colors as well as in the later pix when the mani is done.

So now enters the little colored dots that most people use to price their stuff at their rummage sale.  

I drew flames, and cut them out using an Xacto knife. 

Then pressed the sticker onto my nail and painted over it with SH Xtreme Wear 

Black Out.  I peeled the sticker off immediately so the polish 

didn't get a chance to dry.  Then SV.  Repeat 9 more times!

Ta Da!  One geek ready to go to the movies!

As I was taking these pix, the hubs opened the door, leaned out and said "You are such a dork". 
Yeah and your point is...?
:) 

Whimsical Dreamer

Yesterday in a dept. store, I found this color off on a shelf by it's own and it bewitched me! When I saw the name I heard myself actually singing aloud Supertramp's "Dream-ah, You know you are a Dream-ah!" I didn't even care that a stranger wheeled their cart around the corner at that very second.  Yes, I'm singing Supertramp out loud in the nail polish section, what of it?!   I grabbed Revlon's Dreamer polish (ok and a few others) and made my escape!

My 5 year old saw it and declared it Sky Blue!  I think she's on to something!

Magnolia tree invades the fingertip frosting blog once again.  What an ego!

Let's put some Revlon Whimsical on there and see what happens!

This feels out of my comfort zone a bit, but it's great springtime fun!  I like it! 

Now I have a sky color in my collection!

Hmmm, I think I'd like to look into some cuticle conditioners!  What this pic also shows is not only the big Whismical pink and blue sparkles (none are silver or white, that's the light reflecting) but hopefully you can also see those tiny blue sparkles as well!  SV on top as nearly always!  I hope you enjoy your day!  xo

Matte Sparkley Hot Pink

I bought a Revlon Top Speed polish at Walgreens the other day.   It was solely because the color on the  little card beneath the name of the polish transitioned from hot pink to a burgundy.  Well I'm here to tell you... the little card was a stupid head.
No transitioning what-so-ever to be found in Lava.  Great hot pink color, but this color is my m.o. from days gone by.  It's so 10 years ago for me when I had all manner of variations of this very color in my nail polish collection and no other color of nail polish... NONE. 
So no offense, Lava.  But this was no great shakes for me... What to do.  It took me a while of paging through countless other blogs... to stumble across the mother of all un-pc nail polishes once again... Man Glaze.  And the color... wait for it.... Fatty's Got More Blood.  Sorry to say, but that matte crimson color is just gorg.  And it inspired me to haul out my Sally Hansen's Diamonds and Essie's Matte About You.

 Above is the final deal.  Lava, SV, Diamonds and then the Matte.

 oooooo, my magnolia tree is in full bloom so it's the backdrop here.  Above and below are without the matte.

And above is with the matte.  Usually in a 'matte' versus 'glossy' bout, I always go with the glossy.  But this time familiarity was breeding contempt big time.  I'm loving this color in a form I'm not already bored with... as a matte!  :)

whimsy

Revlon's Whimsical caught my eye the other day! soooooooo...

I put it on and it's so sheer....  Sparkles, yes but where was the baby bird egg blue in the bottle?  Barely there!  Alright then, so I took the barely there off and I threw on my tried and true Sally Hanson Insta-Dry Whirlwind White.  And then the Whimsical.

I've never finagled chunky sparkles before and now I know why it's a sheer polish.  Cuz I was sliding those sparkles around to cover barren patches and consequently messing up the sheer blue polish on my nails!  ooooo it would've been a mess if you could see it better!

A mere trace of blue coloring came through but I really liked the more solid color the blue seems to be in the bottle!  So different than my usual and I was in the mood for something different!
But this is definitely fun!  It's a liiiiiittle bit like a robins egg :)

Naturally SV covers it all!  Cheers!

Springtime Polish

All of this crazy warm weather is making me want to abandon all of my favorite fabby drabby fall and winter polishes and get some brights on my nails!  So these are all the colors I have going on today!

Revlon's Top Speed Cheers made a quick turnaround from the Bacon nails to the base of this mani! Then Nicole's Blue Lace, Sally Hanson Xtreme Wear Mellow Yellow and lots of Sally Hanson Insta-Drys: Lively Lilac, Lickety-Split Lime, Snappy Sorbet and Instant Iris brighten the tips.  Bottle #2 of Seche Vite shines it all up.

The orange "Snappy Sorbet" tip used to be "Mellow Yellow".  But for some reason my husband HATED that tip being yellow!???????   And since its the finger with our rings on it... I moved the yellow over one.  LOL  Hilarity is never in short supply around here.

 Spring has certainly sprung on my fingernails!