My Signature Style

 I had a bit of a hard time figuring out what I wanted to do for my signature style. I only started doing my nails at the end of last year and most of the nail art that I've done have been done to represent themes for challenges. Then I thought about my favourite colours and it became evident. I should do something green, silver, and Slytherin-esque. I decided to do my nails silver with a green accent nail with a silver snake.

I used Push and Shove from OPI for the Silver. That came in a special pack with its own base coat that you are supposed to use called Lay Down That Base. I'm not sure why it has a special base because I've read varying things online about that polish. The green I used is from Old Navy and doesn't have a name, the red is Scarlet by Ulta3 and the black is from Wet n Wild but the name is worn off.

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National Pride... America or Australia?

The theme for the 29th is National Pride. The question now was is that Australia or America? Well, I have two hands, so why not both? I was originally going to do America on my right hand and Australia on the left because of dominance in that country, but I decided that it would look better according to their flags if I did it the other way. It was also great that the two countries have the same colours on their flags!

The American flag was really easy. I used my new Ulta3 nail polishes for the red and white. For being so cheap they really are good polishes. Not great, but I got them buy one get one free so they were only $2.50 total. I painted those nails white and then free hand painted the red stripes. The blue nail I just painted with a ChiChi nail polish and put white dots for the stars.

The Australian flag proved to be much more difficult. The Union Jack part had to be done layer by layer because the white for the cross overlaps the red parts of the X. I am really happy how it turned out. I don't have the other star that's below the Union Jack, but that's because I don't have a finger there. I thought that it was more important to get the Southern Cross in.

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Wedding nails!

When I first read the prompts for the OMD2, I was excited to see that Bridal was on there. As I've said before, I wasn't able to do all of the prompts or do them in order because I got married on the 19th!

I wanted to get my nails professionally done for my wedding because I'm not always the cleanest when it comes to painting my nails and I knew that there would be a lot of focus on my left hand in particular. I was going to get them done with a French manicure, but the salon that I went to was weird. I asked them to paint my nails in Canberra't Without You and then do French tips. That would have been fine at another salon. But these people had no idea what I meant. They were saying that the only way that I could have a French manicure was if I got acrylic nails because they would need to take off the tip of my nail polish and it would look messy. I've gotten plenty of French manicures done and I've even done my own, so I'm not sure what they were talking about.

I decided that instead of making that a disaster, I should use it as a chance to do nail art. I was debating whether or not I wanted to do a French manicure or a little heart on the ring finger. This made the decision for me because I definitely didn't want plain nails since the Canberra't Without You is such a pale neutral! I didn't want to mess them up, although I did have strange smudges of black that appeared on some of my nails, and I didn't have a small brush with me, so I used a bobby pin and a plastic bag to make hearts the night before my wedding. That morning, I peeled them off and placed the best one on my nail. It did need some touching up, but I think it looked great! The photographers probably got a better picture of my hand that I can add later when I get the pictures back. (The heart is Barefoot in Barcelona from OPI.)

But since the bases weren't done by me and I don't want to cheat, I did another version of my wedding nails for the OMD2 challenge. The base colour is Canberra't Without You from the OPI Australia collection. I knew I wanted this as my wedding nails since my mom found it at a garage sale because my husband and I live in Canberra and we met on a bus trip from Perth to Canberra. The heart is also from that collection and called Koala Bear-y. I figured that the two Australian colours were fitting since I love Australia and my husband is Australian.

UPDATE: Here's another picture of my nails from the big day!

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Nautical

I went to university at Hope College which has an anchor as its symbol because an anchor is the symbol of hope. For that reason, I was pretty excited for this theme. I love to draw anchors and anything with anchors on them because they remind me of Hope.

For this theme, I wanted to go with a white and navy colour scheme. I only have one creme that would count as a navy and unfortunately for me, it's a matte. I really don't like matte polishes, but none of my other blues would have been right. I started with a white base colour for my nails using White Lily from ulta3. My accent nail has a base colour of the matte blue end of Pinstripe from Revlon's Nailart ShinyMatte double sided polish. 

I don't usually use top coat when I'm doing nail art that I plan to take off right away because I often find that it isn't 100% dry when I want to add it and colour gets into my top coat or I just think it's a waste since I'm not trying to make my manicure last longer. However, the matte blue does show up really dark, especially in pictures, so I applied the top coat for the second picture. I think that it makes it more evident that it is blue instead of black and I like the glossy finish.

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Outdoors

What represents the great outdoors better than a picnic? I chose to go with a picnic and ants for this theme. 

I went with a white base colour on my index finger and thumb. I used Lily White from ulta3. For the red lines, I used Scarlet from ulta3. I first did lines vertically then horizontally. I wasn't worried about the lines being opaque because on a picnic table cloth, they are usually pinkish and then a more opaque red where the lines intersect. To get this affect, I just added another dot of the scarlet at each intersection. 

The green is Con-fused? from China Glaze. I did just a base colour of that to represent grass and did some ants on top with a black. I did the body of the ants with my dotting tool. That part was easy. Then I had to decide what I wanted to use to draw the legs. They had to be so little and fine. I first tried using the second tool in the picture below. That had a pretty fine point, but not fine enough for this level of detail. Then I tried the next tool, which is a REALLY small dotting tool. That also did not work as it made them thicker than I had anticipated. I then settled on the tool on the right. It is fewer bristles, but it's really long and therefore harder to control. However, I liked how it did the legs.

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Roses

Day 25 of OMD2 is Roses. I'm painting them the same day as the lavender ones, so I chose to paint that as my base colour. It was my first time attempting to do roses, but I had seen tutorials and pictures online. These are the polishes that I used.  From left to right, they are Lavender Soap, Summer Rose, and Koala-Berry.

I am sad that I forgot to take a picture of my nails during the process of painting them, but it was quite simple. I just made light pink blobs with Summer Rose. Then I did some board lines with the Koala bear-y and made a dot or brought the outer lines into the middle. It was actually really similar to the leopard print but with pinks instead of browns.

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Negative Space

I had good intentions with this one, but failed pretty miserably on the execution. I just could not get a smooth look and it destroyed the idea. I chose to do the optical illusion vases faces to represent negative space. I painted my nails silver with a brown for the faces. I tried using a variety of brushes and tools to draw the faces, but none of them were working to make it look better. I used Push and Shove for the silver with the Lay Down the Base that came with it. The brown is A-Piers to be Tan.

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Animal Print

I went with a zebra print for my animal print. My friend had asked me to do this to her nails a while back, but she couldn't come over the day that we planned and then I was busy with my wedding. Someday I will get to do her nails.

I went with the design originally planned for her so I did a white base colour with black stripes only on the accent nail. I used White Lily from Ulta3 and an unknown black that I have in my stash.

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Chevron

I chose to use some new nail polishes. I got them when I was in Sydney when my family was visiting for my wedding and they were on sale. Since I have a rule that I can't buy nail polish until I have a job, my now-husband bought them for me. He's pretty awesome like that. Both nail polishes are from Revlon and they are from an older version of the scented ones, but most of the labels have been worn off.

The purple is Grape Icy. That one smells so good! Most scented nail polishes don't have a strong scent until after it dries, but this one was a blast of grape right when I opened it. My husband even noticed. I tried to take a picture of just the purple on my nails, but neither with or without the light really captured the colour. It's a shame because I really like the colour. The one without the desk light (the first one) is probably a better indicator because it's a really vivid purple. The desk light made it look too pink.

I then added some chevrons freehand using a pink polish called Raspberry Rapture. That one smelled good as well, but the grape was definitely more fragrant.

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Dotticure

I decided to go with a black and white dotticure over a neutral nail colour. I chose Canberra't Without You by OPI for the base colour. The white is Lily White by Ulta3 and the black is old and has the label worn off.

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Galaxy!

I've been wanting to do a galaxy nail for a while because I think they are so beautiful! That's even why I chose to have the background for my blog. But I didn't have sponges for a long time and then I got so wrapped up in challenges that I wasn't able to give it a whirl until this month. I was so glad that the OMD2 challenge included a galaxy nail!

I'm not completely thrilled with my final product, especially the stars, but it was actually really easy so I can definitely see myself trying this over again sometime. I did like the polishes that I chose. From left to right: Radiant Violet by Three Beauties, Lily White by ulta3, the purple shade of Chi Chi magnetic polish, Candid Cameron by Nicole by OPI, and Push and Shove by OPI.

 I did two coats of the Radiant Violet to get the desired darkness. It is hard to tell with my pictures, but the polish is a deep blue with shimmers of blue and purple.

I sponged on some white. In retrospect, I would have liked the overall design if I actually planned where I was going to put the sponging.

 The purple came next. I actually had some of the purple and white mixing on my plastic bag and I liked the effect it gave from the few lighter streaks.

I used Candid Cameron next. I absolutely loved what the greenish blueish colour did to the galaxy effect.

I added some stars. I wasn't happy with this part. I thought that the silver would look good, but I think that the stars in general look silly. I did put the Big Dipper on my thumb, which I do like in theory.

 I found out that we don't have a good light for taking pictures of nails in our apartment, so I'll need to get a good desk lamp. In the meantime, here are a couple of pictures to try and capture them better.

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Abstract

I'm not sure what inspired me to do this abstract design, but I chose to do yellow, green, and blue. The yellow is Nails Inc's Belsize Park. The green is Glowstick by Wet 'n' Wild Fergie. The blue is Frostbite from China Glaze. I started by painting my nails yellow and then trying to put tape on to paint the green. The tape mostly messed up the yellow because I guess it wasn't all the way dry. I don't really have the patience required to use tape for a mani. I just did the blue free-hand.

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Funky French

This manicure is actually for the 14th as part of the OMD2, but as I have said earlier is a former post, I am going to be posting them when I do them and out of order because I will be busy for three weeks in July because I am getting married on the 19th. I will probably reorder them once we get back from our honeymoon.

I started with a white base colour, which I was not happy with how it turned out, which you can read about in the post linked above. I did, however, like the design of my nails. I decided to do a mustache for my funky French manicure. I used a dotting tool to make the mustaches. First I made the dots in the middle and then I lightly moved my dotting tool away to make the shape of the moustache. The larger one on my thumb was made differently and I used a bunch of dots that overlapped to get the shape that I wanted.

I left in the picture of them not cleaned up because as you can see they didn't clean up well and I ended up getting a big gouge in the one on my index finger as well as some blurring on that same finger and my thumb. I was not happy with the white nail polish.

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Rainbows

I wanted to do a sponge rainbow for this prompt. It was my first time doing a sponge like this, so it was a bit of a learning curve. I did have the forethought to put white on my nails first because I knew that it can make the colours pop.

I started out trying to put a bit on a ziploc bag and using the sponge to apply each colour. I realised that it doesn't blend it, so then I applied directly to the sponge. That gave me what I wanted. I used Lily White from ulta3 for the base colour and used Scarlet by ulta3, Belsize park by nails inc, and Frostbite by ChinaGlaze. The blending of colours by the sponge gave me desired orange and green.

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