What's That Say? I Can't Read!

Greetings Children of the Night! Well here is my first post in a series all about food! OK, I admit it, I'm *obsessed* with food. Well, maybe not obsessed. It's more of a love/hate relationship really. However, I'm not about to get into my food issues here and now. On the up side though there is one food I will always love, bacon.

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 This is my homage to bacon. Please tell me *someone* else actually sees the bacon in this? I'll be honest, this mani was a total pain in my @$$! I didn't have a brown red so I mixed one drop of Sally Hansen Cherry Charisma with two drops of Finger Paints Sketchy Character (the bottle in the picture). In the light, it came out a smidge too red for me. The lighter meat color was an ancient bottle of Cutex Beige and the white "fatty" base color is Sinful Colors Snow Me White. So it's one coat of Nail Life Gripper, two coats of Snow Me White, and then the stripes.

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 For those of you who don't get the title of this post, here is a little reminder of the Beggin' Strips ad.

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Hope y'all enjoyed my bacon. I'm going to try water marbling again for an event this weekend, then food number two! Thanks for reading.

Ruffian? What is this?

Greetings Children of the Night and Happy Hump Day.

Hope y'all have had an exciting, or at least  productive week thus far. The Vuppy, (vampire puppy. It's the nickname I've given to the teething chihuahua puppy) The Boy, and I are all awaiting the newest episode of Monster Man tonight. While I miss my Face Off, this show rocks! If you haven't seen it check it out tonight. It's in the Face Off time slot (10pm) on SyFy.

Gratuitous Vuppy Picture

Anyway, in my journey to find a new project I ran across many pictures of what is being called the Ruffian manicure. I know for many nail bloggers this is old news as it first appeared on the runway for Fall 2010, but seeing as how I'm new to the nail world, I had never seen this before. In fact, the idea of watching fashion shows for the latest nail craze and the fact that polish companies like China Glaze and O.P.I have seasons is all news to me. Shoot, I just discovered companies like Butter LONDON and Deborah Lippmann!

I figured while I was giving the water marbling a break I would try this. Now keep in mind I *bite* at doing a free hand french tip so I was very very tempted to break out the guides and not attempt to do this free hand. However Laquerized provided an amazing how to so I figured I would give her directions a go and*voila* perfect (well nearly perfect) Ruffian.

I'm also calling this the coffee mani. I did one coat of Nail Life Gripper, one thick coat of Sally Hansen Mochachino, then two thin coats of Sally Hansen Insta-Dry Expresso. While staring at my nails I was moved to add a little something more... SPOTS!

Using Sally Hansen Hard as Diamonds Amethyst Diamond I put random shaped blobs of color and partially outlined them with my Sally Hansen Nail Art Pen. A final layer of Sally Hansen Super Shiny and I am more than happy with the results.

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I was very sad to find out that Mochachino (the bottle in the pictures) is a discontinued color. I love the shimmer, almost metallic, quality of this polish. I also love how close Amethyst Diamond and Expresso are in shade. The spots just take on a shimmery quality without actually changing the color. At this angle I think you get a really good view of the contrast.

So how many of you follow the latest nail trends? Anything y'all would like to see me attempt from this year's spring collections?

Water Marbling, my new foe

Greetings Children of the Night and a big hello to my new followers! Thanks for reading.

As I'm sure most bloggers are, I'm a junkie for other blogs. Eventually I'll get around to posting some of my favorites on here. I've been seeing a lot of buzz lately for water marbling. It seems to be the new 'it' thing on nail blogs everywhere. I read up on it, watched *tons*of YouTube videos and thought to myself, "hey self, that is a really cool effect and looks really easy. Let's try it!" So I did. *snorts* Easy it is not!

  I figured I would do peacock colors. I picked out a dark navy chrome, a purple shimmer, creme teal, shimmering green, and a really pretty deep metallic gold. I used many different brands (maybe that was my problem?) but it was the Finger Paints that refused to spread. My water may have been *slightly* too warm.

Left (non-dominate) hand

I love the way my pinky came out here. You can really see the green and gold.  Even the thumb looks OK.

left thumb

My polish wouldn't spread, it dried way too fast and then I ended up with some really muddy marbling.On this hand though, you can see all the muddy-ness and the air bubbles. Again though, the ring finger and pinky came out pretty good.

right hand

right hand

Over all, it came out *ok* for a first attempt. I'm not giving up though. I will win! *brandishing fist* Ahem, yeah enough of that. Have any of you tried water marbling? How did yours come out?

Irish Toes are Smiling

Greetings Children of the Night and Happy St. Patrick's Day!

I usually wouldn't think of posting a picture of my toes seeing as how I know it can just weird some people out. Well, that and I haven't had a proper pedicure in *years*. However I was struck for an idea for this skittle pedi and after the Boy's reaction to it I felt it should be shared with everyone. When he saw my toes, he blurted out, "why can't you just get drunk on St. Patty's Day like a normal person?!" Personally I like the end result.

 It's one coat of Nail Life Gripper and one coat of Sinful Colors Snow Me White. After that I put a second coat of color on each nail; the green is Sketch n Etch (Finger Paints), the orange is Wet n' Wild Fantasy Orange. The big toe is just a taped off stripes (I use blue painter's tape) to resemble the Irish Flag.

Simple but a fun effect. The Boy can't wait for me to take it off. He likes it when my fingers and toes match. What did you guys do for St Patty's Day? Leave me a comment and share.

The Green Eyed Monster

Top O' The Morning My Children of the Night!

Honestly if you're anything like me you have a tendency to curse the day star. All the same, St. Patrick's Day happens to be one of my favorite holidays, right next to Halloween. That meant I just *had* to do a themed mani. I had a good friend post a picture for me on Facebook of some really lovely inspiration. When I tried it, it really didn't work out for me so I ended up doing something slightly different.

Image source

 Instead, I started with one coat of Nail Life Gripper then a shear lime green color and did two coats. It's from the L.A. Colors shimmer brights collection. The color itself doesn't seem to have a name. After that I did the top third of my nail in two coats of Finger Paints Key To My Art. Once those had dried I used a cosmetics sponge and sponged Finger Paints Sketch an Etch in the middle of the nail. This ended up giving me a really cool ombre effect. After they all dried I put two coats of Sinful Colors Green Marsh over the top. Green Marsh is an ancient color I can't even find on eBay. It's a lovely green and silver holo bar glitter in a clear base.I ended with two really thick coats of Sally Hansen Super Shiny.

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 In this picture you can really see the holo/rainbow effect in the silver bar glitter.

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I think you can really see the gold tips from Key To My Art and the ombre effect. I love Key To My Art in the bottle. It looks like liquid gold.

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Green March #175

Here is the bottle of Sinful Colors Green Marsh. My mother bought this for me when I was still  in high school as a St Patrick's Day gift. I had *completely* forgotten I even had it until I found it in a box of goodies at my mothers house. I added a little cheap clear polish and *voila* it was just like new! I guess my Sinful Colors obsession started young.

I really wanted to go back to my nail art roots and do a little free hand design but I just haven't been able to find the time. I've been cleaning like a madwoman for the company we're having on Saturday for dinner. At this point I'm just hoping that my mani will last until Saturday.

Have a wonderful holiday and enjoy a pint for me.

Oldie but a Goodie

Greetings Children of the Night. 

My original plan for today was to start the 31 Days of Nails Challenge. Instead though I figured I would wait until Monday. Actually, at this point, I may wait until next month and do the 31 days of April.

Today I have for you one of the duo-chromes in my collection. I went into the box and picked out a random color. I had forgotten how much I love these kinds of colors. It's Sally Hansen's Nail Prisms in Amber Ruby. It is an extremely sheer color. Had I remembered I would have layered this over a white or black. Instead, I figured I would layer this to opacity for the pictures. Here I have four coats, and you can still see a little VNL. All the pictures are one coat of Nail Life Gripper, four coats of Amber Ruby, and one coat of Sally Hansen Super Shiny.

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 In this Picture you can actually see the color gradient moving down the nail. Closer to the cuticle is red, and the tips are the mossy green.

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 Here's the green. When I realized today that I hadn't gotten a single picture of the green I quickly snapped a few shots at an odd angle. Glad I was able to capture it.

Indoors (no flash)

The color though is just so pretty. It moves in a spectrum from red to orange to 'amber.' At some angles, in the shade, you can actually see a mossy green. This color also has a shimmer that is much more evident in the bottle than it is on the nail, but can be seen in the sun or under the flash. I took a ton of pictures trying to get the entire spectrum. This one just has to be seen in person. 

Going to start cleaning the house today for the company we have coming on Saturday. Hope y'all have a great day. Thanks for reading.

Taxi Cab? Not quite

Greetings Cildren of the Night!

It seems I finally have my feet under me again and can get back to posting on a semi-regular basis.

I went to Target recently and found two pretties that my mother bought me (thanks Mom!) and they were under a dollar each! In my excitement just to see them on the nail I actually swatched them in the car (I had one bare nail. I had lost an acrylic earlier in the day) and I loved the combo so much I ended up doing all of my nails with it. As you can see I also lost the rest of the acrylics. I'm really glad they look as nice as they do in the pictures. I was a bit concerned by nail nubs wouldn't photograph as well.I'm also aware my cuticles look like crap. Those nails just ruined my cuticles.

I am the princess of cheap polish; one of my favorite brands is Sinful Colors, yet I hadn't really tried NYC. This is NYC Taxi Yellow Creme (114) with  NYC Starry Silver Glitter (105). Eventually I'll swatch Taxi Yellow Creme by itself, but the pretty glitter hid all of the flaws in the yellow.

All these pictures are one coat of Nail Life Gripper, 4 (yes 4) coats of Taxi Yellow Creme, 2 coats of Starry Silver Glitter, and one coat of Sally Hanson Super Shiny. This was not a very thirsty glitter. One thick coat and there wasn't a bump in sight.

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I love Starry Silver Glitter. It is really really sparse though, so it's definitely a layering color. I don't event *want* to think about how many layers it would take to make this color opaque. It is a silver micro glitter in a clear base with lavender and blue hex glitter. In the bottle it is so pretty. All that silver glitter just flashes a rainbow of beautiful colors. On the nail however, it loses that rainbow quality. In the bottle you really don't see the two colors of hex glitter. That was a really pleasant surprise.

Failed Macro

Now that I have my natural nails back I thought I would play with the macro settings on the camera. Come to find out, I have *no* idea how they work. :-/ I also don't know where the manual is so I'll be experimenting for awhile.

I'm thinking about starting the 31 day nail challenge. I saw Nails and Noms do it and I'm very inspired. Honestly, I was just waiting to add a yellow to my collection. I generally don't wear yellow. With my skin tone, it looks like I'm going through liver failure. What do y'all think? Think I should try?

Ren Faire stripes

Hello Children of the Night. It's been awhile since I did a nail post and this one (again) is not one of my best. I got really sloppy with the striping and you can see some serious bleeding around the tape lines. Next time I'll make sure not to rush it. 

It is Bay Area Renaissance Faire time here in Florida or BARF as we call it.  Here is a link if you're a local. Make sure to come out and see it. My ren costume (yes I'm one of THOSE people) has a green striped underskirt. I figured I'd do my nails to match. I didn't actually end up going, funny enough. The weekend I do go though I'm going to repeat this mani but much more carefully. It's two coats of Nail Life Gripper, two coasts of Sinful Colors Snow Me White, and the tape stripes were done with scotch tape and two coats of Finger Paints, one coat of Sally Hanson top coat.

My cuticles finally look good *grin*

Ignore the chip in the pinky

Here is the skirt I used as inspiration.

Ren skirt with overskirt

Ren Skirt without

So here is the picture I promised of my V-Day mani. It was taken on my phone so not the best but you get the idea.

I'm going to be doing some work for Party Like a Pin-up (here's their link) so I'm going back to my red nails for awhile.

Valentine's Day

Hello to my Children of the Night. I hope y'all had a bloody good Valentine's day. I ended up spending it with my folks instead of the boy (really not sure how he felt about that, he's been kinda snarky.) He an I however, went to a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert the Sunday prior so I'm going to count that as our 'date' *giggle*.

For the evil love holiday I was going to paint my nails black but I had a girlfriend request I do something for her. She wanted hot pink, red, and black. I immediately figured I would try to do an ombre (seeing as how that's hot this spring.) Oh my word what a complete fail! In the interests of full disclosure I am going to post the pictures of my fail. Don't worry I did NOT leave the house with my nails like this. I ended up with a red glitter paint with gold stamped hearts. Silly me though broke a nail before I got really good pictures of it. I may be able to find a crappy one on my phone to post.

First I put down a base coat of Nail Life Gripper and two coats of Sinful Colors 24/7. After that I added Sally Hanson Rapid Red tips. I really should have just stamped on some red and white hearts and called this a good job. Oh no, I had to be 'creative.' *rolls eyes*

 I then used a make-up sponge to blur the red farther down into the pink. This is where I started to go wrong. My lines are far too clean. There isn't enough bleed through.

  Here it *almost* looks promising.

After that dried I added Sinful Colors Black on Black tips with the make-up sponge. Again there isn't nearly enough bleed through. I just ended up with really harsh lines and a Toucan Sam effect.

 In an attempt to blur the lines I added two coats of Sally Girl Disco Ball and that just gave me a shiny toucan. *snicker* Yeah this was not one of my better attempts.

Well here is the final product with the bottle of Sinful Colors Black on Black. Yeah.... not really my best attempt. I'm glad I went with a red after all. I'll have to check if I took a phone picture and sneak it into my next post.

Night now my nails are bare *ACK* and I'm out of ideas. This weekend is our Bay Area Renaissance Festival and I might be going on Sunday, depending on how I feel. I've been plagued by really nasty headaches lately but I have friend how is a massage therapist who has offered to help me out. First time for me, so we'll see how it works out. I'm trying to decide if I want to do my nails to match my Ren Faire costume. It's a green stripe skirt. with a white top. Maybe green and white french? Eh we'll see.

Thanks for reading. 

Face Off was on last night. Hopefully I can have my Face Off post up tomorrow.