Day 13: Animal Print

I love animal print. Quite often I struggle to pull it off without looking tacky and ridiculous, but I think with nails you can go as wild as you want and still look fabulous. My grad was yesterday though, so I chose to go with something slightly more subtle: zebra tips with a bit of flair!

The base is "Beige Blast" by Sally Hansen Insta-Dri, and the green sparkle is "Treasure Island" by LA Colors. I chose to add the sparkles because my faculty colour is green and I thought it would be fun to coordinate for my big day. I'm not going to list my black and whites anymore, I don't think anyone really cares which brand of polish I'm using for those.

As for the grad ceremony, it went great! The whole thing didn't take long at all, and my boyfriend, my parents, and I all went out for lunch afterwards. I am now officially done with my bachelors degree! Only 6 years in the making. :P

Day 12: Stripes

For this week, I took some inspiration from one of my favourite shows. Let me give you a hint:

...nnnnNNEEEOooww...

Nothing yet? Then how about this:

If you aren't a fan of The Big Bang Theory, then I should probably take a moment to explain that a) this is from The Big Bang Theory, and b) I took my inspiration from Sheldon's Doppler Effect costume. Three cheers for nerdy nails!

That being said, I wasn't really feeling the black and white nails again, so I used this as an opportunity to try out some new colours. I quite like how it turned out, even though they ended up a bit lumpy because painting them was a DISASTER!

The base colour is "Seashell" and the stripes are "Blue Lagoon", both by LA colours.

Day 11: Polka Dot Nails

For this manicure, I borrowed an idea from The Manicure Maniac. The results came out a little different than I expected though.

From a distance, this reminds me of those glow-in-the-dark star stickers. I love it! The green is "Palm Tree" and the blue is "Splash", both by LA colours.

You may notice that I'm hiding my thumb in this picture. This is because I jinxed myself and decided my nails were more or less the perfect length. I then promptly broke massive chunks off of BOTH of my thumbnails. It never fails. Thankfully the rest of my nails are still good...for now.

Also, I finally got a new strengthener! After looking at a few reviews I decided to try Sally Hansen's green tea and bamboo strengthener. So far it's working really well, and there are no more bubbles! We'll see how well it lasts though.

Day 10: Gradient Nails

I had quite a few ideas for gradient nails, but eventually I settled on this one!

I apologize for the terrible picture, I had a lot of trouble with this entire manicure. Just about everything that could go wrong did go wrong, so when it finally got to the point that I was ready to photograph it I didn't have any patience left. Anyway, the colours are, in order from lightest to darkest, "Summertime", "Exotic Pink", "Pink Chiffon", and "Morrocan", all by LA Colors.

On another note, I finally bought a new nail strengthener. Hopefully this one won't cause so many bubbles!

Day 9: Rainbow Nails

I have to admit, "rainbow" is not a theme that inspired me very much. Partly because I'm not a biggest fan of having a different main colour on every nail. Especially with rainbow, because I don't have enough polishes to find colours that really go together. It's pretty much take-what-you-can-get. However, my boyfriend came up with an excellent idea: rainbow fruit nails!

The concept was that the fruit would be-in order of thumb to pinky-a red grapefruit, an orange, a lemon, a lime, and a blueberry. Unfortunately I ran into a few snags. For one, the thumb is supposed to have an orange "peel", but it didn't show up over the red. The blueberry also looks a bit out of place, I think, and again the colour on the tip didn't show up as much as I would have liked. People seem to like it though, so I guess it turned out all right. Here's a breakdown of the colours I used:

Thumb: pinkish red from the Monster High Nail Polish set, orange is LA Color's "Perfect Sunset"
Pointer: LA Color's "Perfect Sunset"
Middle: Sally Hansen Insta-Dri's "Ligthening"
Ring: LA Color's "Palm Tree"
Pinky: purple is from the Monster High Nail Polish set, blue is LA Color's "Splash"

I also tried using acrylic paint for the first time instead of doing the designs with nail polish. I definitely liked it, but I need to get a smaller paint brush as well as more acrylic paint if I want to keep it up! I also need to find a new strengthener, this one is too thick and I always end up with bubbles in my nail polish. That, and it dries out really fast.

Day 8: Metallic Nails

This is yet another manicure that I knew almost from the instant I saw the challenge what I would do for this day. Of course, with that much build up it's easy to be let down by the results. And so, it is with a bit of trepidation that I present to you my metallic nails.

The chains are from BM12, and the accent finger is from BM21. I like the accent finger, but the rest of the nails are supposed to look like chains hanging down. I don't think they turned out very well. Part of it is that the plates weren't etched very well, so it was REALLY hard to get an even coat that showed off the design. I also put the design too far down, it kind of ruins the effect. I took a close up of the thumb on my right hand, it's the only one I think looks good.

I'm also not super impressed with the silver Konad special nail polish. I don't know if it's not thick enough, or not bright enough, or what. It doesn't stand out as well as I thought it would.

Overall I'll chalk this one up to good idea, bad follow through.