Gradient and Houndstooth

**This was supposed to publish HOURS ago!  I apologize for the mix up!  I have no idea why it didn’t publish.  Everything appeared to be in order.  Sorry.

I love houndstooth patterns!  The best houndstooth manis I’ve seen are stamped.  I don’t stamp.  Then the Nail Nerd posted a tutorial on how to do freehand houndstooth.  Yay!

I didn’t quite start things off the same way she did because I was doing a gradient under the pattern.  I freehanded my squares as well.  I made them too big, which messed up the rest of my design.  I had to try to squish things in and make everything fit.  It still translates as houndstooth I think (unless I ask my husband of course).  I love it either way.

While this looks like red, it’s actually a fantastic shade of pink, except that’s it’s call Blowfish Purple by LASplash.  It’s a gorgeous color.  I think it looks red because it’s over a very yellow gold, Sinful Colors This Is It.  My houndstooth design itself is a gold acrylic.  I really want to try this again soon, but I think I’ll actually follow her directions next time so my design is a little crisper.

Hangman Nails

I know, I come up with some wacko ideas sometimes.  Inspiration strikes in the most random places sometimes.  Who am I to say no. 🙂

Playing hangman was always cause for excitement when I was a kid.  I remember teachers offering it as a reward if the class behaved or finished our assigned work.  If you were the one choosing the word, you’d always try to think of something that would stump your classmates.  A word that had an ‘x’ or a ‘q’ was usually a good one to shoot for.  If it was a particularly difficult word and there were many wrong guesses, the poor hanging man would end up with feet, fingers and even hair sometimes just to extend the game.

For this mani, I started with a base color of Sally Hansen White On.  It bubbled like mad!  I did put it on thick, so I’m sure it was operator error.  I started out using black acrylic paint for the spaces and Mr. Hangman and a couple of the letters then opted to use a fine tipped Sharpie for the rest.  Tiny letters are difficult with a brush.  I need a shorter, stiffer brush to be able to pull this off I think.

What do you think of my crazy mani?  Can anyone guess the phrase on my nails?

Leopards and Gradients and Stripes, Oh My!

What the heck do I call this mani?  I want to call it a mish mash, but I think that’s technically when each nail is different.  There are a few different techniques showcased here so I’m struggling to find a title.

I’m really loving the peach/coral, aqua-ish and green combination lately.  I keep going back to it.  These are same three polishes I used in my String Art post last week.  I started by polishing my nails with Revlon Peachy.  This was the first time I’d actually painted my nails with it.  I loved it!  It’s a perfect summer color.  Then I did the leopard on my ring finger and thumb.  I was tempted to stop there.  I was so happy with it, but really wanted to do the stripes too.

Once the peachy had dried, I used some striping tape and polished some Orly Green Apple, then sponged on some China Glaze For Audrey.  The gradient on the stripes was a little tricky because generally when you do a tape mani, you want to pull the tape off right away, while the top polish is still wet.  For a sponged gradient, you would generally wait until the base color is pretty dry so the sponge doesn’t pull it all off.  Obviously these two techniques fight against each other.  I made it work though and I love the result!  I’m absolutely in love with this mani and will be sad when I have to take it off.

Twinsie Tuesday: Favorite Brand

Choosing a favorite brand wasn’t easy.  I don’t really have one.  A favorite polish is one thing, but saying a whole brand is your favorite is quite a statement.  For the purpose of this post, I’ve chosen China Glaze.  I actually don’t have that many China Glaze polishes, but I love them all.  I love the variety and formula and the fact that I can go to several different shops and buy them versus purchasing online.

I decided to play with a few different China Glaze polishes to create a whole CG mani.  I started with For Audrey, which I LOVE!  It’s such a beautiful blue.  I added Kaleidoscope Him Out to my ring finger and thumb for some bling; another fantastic polish!

Then I decided to go a little bit crazy and add some polka dots with a crackle polish, Fault Line.  The big dots cracked a bit, but the small ones didn’t really.  It was a fun idea, but didn’t really come to fruition like I’d hoped.

Individually, these are all awesome polishes.  Together they made for a fun mani.

Be sure the check out all the other manis today:

Amanda of Amandalandish
Anna of Going to the Showing
Anne of Grape Fizz Nails
Ashley of Art Evolve
Brandi of The Collegiate Nail
Chelsea of Nailed Blog
ChiChi of I’m Just Me…ChiChi
Cordia of Srsly Swatched
Jenn of All That is Gorgeous
Jenna of I’m Still Thinking
Katherine of Haul of Fame
Marisa of Polish Obsession
Meredith of Polish and Charms
Nory of Fierce Make Up and Nails
Sarah of See Sarah Swatch
Tara of Polishy of Truth

SpaRitual Howl

I’ve got another swatch for you today, Ladies.  Life has been pretty busy lately which can make it hard to find time to get my creative juices flowing. 

I got this polish recently from Apothica.com.  I don’t wear dark colors really often because of the staining, but I love them.  I’m drawn to them.  This is definitely one of those polishes that caught my eye.  Then I read the description, a black shade with a red-orange shimmer, and had to have it.

I love the golden glow in the bottle.  I’m imagine this would really come to life in the sun, but I only wore it long enough to swatch it, so I can’t say.  Thought I didn’t have it on long, it did stain a bit when I took it off.  Sometimes when I plan to wear a dark color or a really pigmented blue or really just anything known to stain, I will double up on my base coat.  I love how the golden glow warms up the black.  I really love the grippy handle on the brush.  It’s amazing how much that helps.  I wish more companies did that.  What do you think of Howl?  Do you own any SpaRituals?