Sling Manis

Well, it's been three weeks now since I dislocated my shoulder and let me tell you that it is boooring not being able to use both arms. Especially in the summer. So I attempted a couple manicures while keeping my arm in the sling.

This design matched my dress for another wedding. I'm actually pretty proud of this considering I had to keep my right arm stable the whole time.

This one turned out cuter and was a good summer design. The colors also matched my outfits for most of the week which was quite fun.

It sounds like I can finally get out of the sling and back into the normal swing of things. Well, I should really avoid swinging, but uh, you know what I mean. 

I did a pedicure last night and spent way too long trying to remember how to do water marbling for a manicure today. Both turned out decently, and I'll post pictures soon.

Until then...

Happy Painting!

Wedding Season Nails

Hey there, nail enthusiasts of the net! I have some fun ones today. It's wedding season, and with that it meant it was time to get a new dress. Of course whenever I go shopping for a dress I take into consideration the kind of nail art I can do to accessorize, and I found such a fun dress to inspire my art.
My cousin got married this past Sunday and I did a mani-pedi to go along with my dress:

(I'm the one on the right)

I snapped some pictures quickly while waiting for the ceremony to start, so these are not the best of pictures (and I proceeded to pick of the paint the next day- bad habit, I know), but they turned out pretty great!

Pretty fun, right?

It's a good thing I like my pedicure, since I'm probably going to be keeping it for quite some time.

I have bad news.

I dislocated my right shoulder yesterday and the doctor I saw thinks I tore a ligament or cartilage. I'll find out in a few days when I see the orthopedic specialist. Either way, My dominant arm is down for the count for at least a few weeks. I guess I can work on using my non-dominant hand in the meantime, but unfortunately I won't be able to do any nail art (or anything else I like to do for that matter) for quite some time. You have no idea how frustrated I am about that. But I will try to post sometime in the next month.

Until then-

Happy Painting!

Pinspiration Challenge Day 6: Floral

I wanted to give myself a bit more of a challenge today by trying something new. I have done a lot of floral designs, but almost always use a dotter for those, so I wanted to try something freehand. I found this great design, but unfortunately I couldn't track down the original artist. If you happen to know where it is from originally, I would love to know. But here is the original pin:

And here was my first attempt at this rose technique:

They're fun. Messy, but not too shabby for my first attempt I suppose.

Happy Painting!

Pinspiration Challenge Day 4: Colors

Today's challenge was an interesting (and messy) one. I decided to try out a tutorial pin from my board for a blow dryer technique. I got a new scarf over the weekend and thought that the colors would be really pretty for this design. Here is the original pin by the Neverland Nail Blog:

Here is part of my scarf that inspired my colors:

And here is the result:

Not terrible for my first attempt, but they're not the most beautiful thing I've done either. But still, the colors are pretty and I finally figured out how to get the paint consistency so that it will spread right. It was fun to try.

Happy Painting!

30 Day Challenge: Inspired By a Song

Well, we're going back to the 90's for this challenge. Remember that catchy song "Blue" from Eiffel 65? Well, let me remind you of some of the lyrics:

Yo listen up here's a story
About a little guy that lives in a blue world
And all day and all night and everything he sees
Is just blue like him inside and outside

Blue is his house with a blue little window

And a blue corvette

And everything is blue for him and himself

And everybody around

'cause he ain't got nobody to listen

I have a blue house with a blue window.
Blue is the colour of all that I wear.
Blue are the streets and all the trees are too.
I have a girlfriend and she is so blue.

Have fun trying to get that song out of your head!

Happy Painting!

30 Day Challenge: Inspired By a (wibbly wobbly) Color

Okay, I'm backtracking to catch up from the weekend, so hopefully I'll be able to post two of these challenges today.

When I saw the prompt for a color, of course my first thought was Tardis Blue. Doctor Who nails have been done before, but I thought I'd take my own little stab at them.

I could only fit "Police" and not "Box" but you get the idea. Aww, a cute little Tardis. Not too shabby for my first try. It doesn't look amazing when you see it this far up close, but trust me, from far away it looks pretty cool. But I'm really proud of how the rest of my DW inspired nails turned out:

Starting from left to right we have the BBC Doctor Who logo, the Silence, a Dalek, and a Bowtie, because bowties are cool.

Isn't the Dalek super cute?? And I think the blue I used for these nails is actually pretty close to the Tardis Blue, but maybe a smidge darker.

Polishes Used:

Pure Ice French Kiss

Sally Hansen Hard As Nails Blue Me Away

Wet n Wild Metallica

China Glaze Concrete Catwalk

NYC Sidewalkers

Wet n Wild Red Red

Black and White Stripers

Happy Painting!

30 Day Challenge: Inspired By a Movie

I'm back! I know I missed two days, but I was so excited about today's prompt that I decided I'll go back and do color and song later this week. Although this design is inspired by my favorite song in my favorite feel good movie, Mary Poppins.

Sometimes when I'm feeling blue I'll watch this clip. It always makes me so very happy! Mary Poppins actually had a pretty profound impact on my life. It was the movie that inspired me to strive to be a filmmaker as an adult. It's a movie I only let myself watch once a year so that it never loses its magic and charm.

"What did I tell ya? There's the whole world at your feet. And who gets to see it but the birds, the stars, and the chimney sweeps."

I must confess, to this day I have a bit of a crush on Bert. And chimney sweeps. And this still shot in general: 

So I tried to recreate this shot, but it was SUPER hard. I mean, for my first attempt to do something with this much tiny detail, I really can't complain. I don't know how some of you can get tiny details so perfect. Anyway, here's what I came up with:

The pictures today aren't really showing the colors well. There's actually a very nice purple/blue gradient for the background. So yeah, not my best work, but I had a really good time painting these.

Ever since I was a kid I would get really sad when the song Step In Time ends, and I think I'll feel similarly sad when I have to take this manicure off. 

Oh, and in fun news: I got a pedicure with my sister this weekend, and my pedicurist asked where I got my manicure done, so that was a really fun compliment to get :)

Polished used:

NYC Cashmere Creme

China Glaze First Mate

NYC In a Minute Battery Park Purple

Bon Bons Purple

Kiss Nail Art Striper Black

Happy Painting!

30 Day Challenge: Water Marbling

Ah, the dreaded water marble challenge. I've tried twice to do a water marble and both times failed epicly and gave up after one finger, so today was a huge success in comparison.

I'm calling this a half win half fail, since 5 turned out pretty well and 5 look pretty sad. But really, for my first real try where I didn't quit after 5 minutes, I'm pretty happy with how these look. Also, I'm really short on time today so I didn't fix my cuticles in post like I would have normally, so bear with me.

I like my middle finger and my pinky is pretty cool.

My thumb is definitely my favorite.

Close up of the three (oh, I guess 6 are good on second thought) that turned out well on this hand.

So there you go. I'm moderately happy with the end result. 

I'm about to leave in like 2 minutes to go visit my sister, so no list of polishes today, but I can put them up later if anyone wants to know what I used. I also probably won't be posting over the weekend, but hope to catch up quickly when I get back on Sunday.

Happy Painting!

30 Day Challenge: Stripes

Hey there, polish enthusiasts! I've been down for the count the past 10 days due to a severe back injury of some sort (we're not sure what caused it/what's entirely wrong yet), hence the delay in posting. Before my injury, however, I was able to do 2 quick designs for the stripe challenge.

The toe design is kind of boring since I was running low on time. I'm not sure what you'd call this- it reminds me a bit of a bug. Or perhaps an excel spreadsheet, haha. Unfortunately I can't recall which polishes I used (pain meds make me forgetful).

I like my manicure that I did on the fly much better. I wanted something a bit more intricate than my toes, but didn't have a ton of time, and I wanted it to match my outfit. The picture quality isn't amazing since I took this picture in the car on the way to a family reunion "extreme picnic" with the women in my family (I wore a blue and yellow dress, if you happen to be curious). This one turned out pretty great, I think. I used a yellow striper (can't remember the brand) and Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Blue Me Away. Which, by the way, even with my base coat it was a pain to try to take off. I still have a blue stain on a few fingers- so word to the wise, use a really good base if you use this paint.

I'm headed to the doctor tomorrow to figure out what's going on with my back, so hopefully I'll be back to painting again on a regular basis sometime soon. I'm excited to see many bloggers doing the 30 day challenge again, and I also found a cool new challenge that I'd like to try once I finish this one.

Happy Painting!

Blogs Upon Blogs

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I'm starting to reach out more to the nail art community, which means I'm looking for some great new blogs to follow. There's a lot of talent out there and a WHOLE lot of blogs, so it's tough to figure out which ones to follow.
If you have any favorite nail art blogs that you follow let me know. And yes, this is a post where you can shamelessly promote your own blog.

In other news, I forgot that this winter I painted my nails with all of my fun new supplies that I got for Christmas. Because I wasn't planning on writing a post about it back then, I only snapped a quick shot. I was so pleasantly surprised with my new colors and brushes. I simply love color blocking, and think it looks great in blue.

30 Day Challenge 5: Blue

I've been really busy lately, so for this/last week's challenge, I just did a really quick blue dot design. Since I was so busy, I didn't have a change to take pictures for a week, and decided to take them while out of town for the holidays, so the picture isn't the greatest, but you can basically see what I did.

I used 3 shades of blue (two of my new China Glaze colors) and a silver.

I also did my purple challenge while out of town, but I'll wait a few days to post those pictures.