Metallic

I knew that I had to use my super shiny silver for the metallic prompt. I decided to go with gold to add the nail art. I used Push and Shove by OPI and Gold Fushion by China Glaze magnetix.

I first painted my nails with the Push and Shove. I think that my camera was smudged on the lense because this picture is sort of blurry and doesn't show just how shiny the polish is. You can actually see your reflection, although it does show up as more of a smudge of different colours!

Then I added some gold dots. I had them more concentrated at the tip and less so the closer they got to the cuticle. It was actually pretty difficult to capture a picture because of how reflective the silver was!

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Black and White

I had more success with catching up with the black and white design. I had a design in mind, but it ended being too much trouble if I tried to do it with tape, so I altered it.

I used my only white and black nail polishes which are Lily white from Ulta3 and the unknown Wet n Wild black.

I first painted my nails white and then added some tape. My original design was like my ring finger only with more diamonds within diamonds. I'm really not very good at tape manicures, so I decided to go a simpler route.

The next step is completely covering the rest of the nail in black.

I took a picture right after I took off the tape to show the problems that can arise with tape manicures. As you can see, I have a few spots where the black sneaked in underneath the tape to the part that was supposed to stay white. I also have some purple spots because I was doing the violet nails at the same time and got some on the tape. But the problem that often happens to me is what happened to my index finger. That's because I didn't have enough patience. It's what happens when you put tape over nail polish that isn't fully dry. The reason it only happened to that finger was because I kept smudging it and needed to add new coats while the others all had a chance to dry.

Finally I cleaned it all up and fixed the mistakes to the best of my abilities without completely redoing them.

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Violet

I was pretty sick on Saturday so I didn't have a chance to do my nails. Then I was busy on Sunday so I didn't get a chance to catch up until Monday! But since it's for a daily challenge, I'm backdating this blog post.

I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do for violet nails, so I looked at my polishes and chose Grape Icy by Revlon, which is a scented one but not one of the current parfumerie ones. I also chose Pink Diamonds by L.A. Colors.

I started with painting my accent nail Pink Diamonds. It took a more than a few coats to get it to show up enough that I was happy with it. I painted the others with Grape Icy and added the tape to my accent nail when it was fully dry.

I then painted over the nail and tape with Grape Icy. I realised that the lighting inside makes it look pink when I take a picture, so I went outside in the natural light. Usually it's late and dark, since it's winter, by the time I do my nails, so I was glad to be able to go outside. I shows a much more accurate colour of my nails.

I took the tape off and this is how it looked. I like the concept, but this Grape Icy was definitely the wrong polish to use. It kept smudging and not drying. I think it just dries at a slower rate than my other polishes. When I took off the tape, the Grape Icy polish sort of stretched and covered up the Pink Diamonds part. I used a pencil to separate it so that you could see the lines. I'll definitely do this design again, just not with the same polishes!

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Blue is for Sonic!

To continue with my nerdiness, I chose a game of Sonic the Hedgehog to represent the colour blue.

I think that this is a world record for number of nail polishes that I used in one nail art. Usually I can just do one row or stagger it a bit, but I definitely needed two rows. I had to put a notebook under the back row to give it a rise so that the colours could been seen.

Back row: my unknown black, Bananarama from Kmart, Envious from Kmart, A-piers to be Tan from OPI, Frostbite from China Glaze, Gold Fusion from China Glaze magnetix.

Front row: Coach Ella from Fresh Paint, Scarlet from Ulta3, Lily White from Ulta3, Bonna Blue from Fresh Paint, Spun Sugar from Revlon Parfumerie, Tiramisu from Sephora, and Glowstick from Wet n Wild Fergie.

I bought the Kmart ones today. I broke my rule of not buy nail polish until I have a job, but I made an exception. When I did my yellow nails, I realised that I needed a new yellow. I asked my husband if I could make an exception if Ulta3 was on sale. He said yes, since this ban on nail polish buying is completely my own idea. I went to the chemist since I had to get some medicine. They didn't sell Ulta3 so I checked to see if Kmart had any cheap stuff. These ones were normally $2 each, but were on sale for $1 each. That's so cheap, especially for Australia, so I did pick up both of them.

I started off with painting my nails Bonna Blue because it was a good colour for the sky in the background of the game and not too close to the colour of Sonic. I used A-Piers to be Tan for the platforms. I just used the regular brush that came with the polish to apply them. My middle finger was left blank for Sonic's head.

The next part that I did was to add the squares in the platform. In the game, the ground has a checkerboard pattern. I tried a couple of colours to best show this and ultimately went with Coach Ella. I made small dab points with a detail brush.

Next I started to outline Sonic.

And of course fill him in!

And I couldn't forget his little smirky smile! That was the only part that used Tiramasu and in retrospect I could have just used the A-piers to be Tan but then I would have used one less polish!

The next step was the grass. Since the grass in the game is striped vertically with two shades of green, that's what I did. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the Kmart nail polish was pretty good!

 I added the gold rings next.

After adding the gold rings, I realised that I wanted to have the save point on my right thumb. I started with a silver rod and added the yellow and red.

The final product!

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An Egg-celent Yoshi

Green is the theme of the day, which also happens to be my favourite colour! I decided to display more of my nerdiness, as my blog URL suggests, and go with my favourite Nintendo character, Yoshi. While Yoshis can come in any colour, he's usually shown as green. I went with him on my left middle finger and the rest of my fingers were the eggs that Yoshi makes in the game. I showed my husband my nails, as he's a huge video games nerd, and he responded that it was egg-celent. Clearly that needed to by my title.

Here's the finished product with my Yoshi Wiimote!

The polishes that I used were my unknow black, Koala Bear-y from OPI, Glowstick by Wet n Wild Fergie, Bonna Blue by Fresh Paint, Lily White by Ulta3, and Jail Bait by Spoiled.

I started by doing the outline of Yoshi. I did little tiny dots to start with and then tried to connect them.

The next part was to start colouring him in.

After I was happy with the overall look with Yoshi, especially the eyes since I had trouble adding the white shiny bit, I added the spots to make the eggs.

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Tale as old as time

The theme for today is yellow. I'm not a fan of the colour yellow at all, so I didn't want to do just a yellow manicure. I remembered that I had pinned a beautiful drawing of Belle from Beauty and the Beast on Pinterest not too long ago because I thought that it was beautiful and I could adapt it for nail art. The drawing is from the etsy site EmilyNewmanArt, however this drawing is no longer available. Beauty and the Beast also plays a significant role in my life because that was my husband and my first date and my wedding dress was from a designer that bases their dresses on Disney princesses and mine was inspired by Belle.

I chose to go with a pale blue for the background and here are the polishes that I used. Bonna Blue from Fresh Paint, Belsize Park from nails inc, Coach Ella from Fresh Paint, A-Piers to be Tan from OPI, Dangerous from Sephora, Lily White from ulta 3, and my unknown black.

I started drawing Belle by doing an outline of her silhouette in black. Since I often have a problem with making my black lines too thick, I decided to start with this instead of her skin colour.

Next I filled in with Coach Ella. This got rid of some of the extra thick black lines.

Her eyes and nose came next. It's hard to see them in this picture, though. I painted white blobs with a small brush and then used my dotting tool to create the brown irises. I then mixed a bit of black and brown to make the pupils and draw little lines above her eyes for her eyebrows/eyelashes. Her nose is just a couple of small black dots that I connected.

Her lips were next. They ended up being kind of messy as more polish than I had desired made it onto my nail. I had to try to take some of it off with my dotting tool while trying not to smudge it. Mostly I just had to put more Coach Ella on to try to fix it.

I finally go to the point that I could paint her hair and make it look more like a princess and less like an alien. First I just did it with the brown. I realized that it gave it too flat of a look. No one's hair, not even a cartoon character, is only one colour. I decided to mix some brown and black. I didn't evenly mix them so they had a swirled appearance when applied. It gave me a much better end result.

 The yellow swirls of the dress were the final touches. I painted them on with my dotting tool. It seems to give me better swirls because the polish is thicker. I did the yellow swirls and then I mixed some brown and yellow together to add different shades. The middle finger on my right hand is supposed to represent the bodice of the dress, but I think that it really just looks messy. I don't like that finger, but I do like the manicure overall.

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