Santa Decals

As I said earlier, I actually did this manicure Monday, but didn't have time to post. But here's a super bonus Christmas picture of my younger daughter at church on Monday night:

And the manicure:

It's two coats of OPI The Spy Who Loved Me, with little Cina decals I got from Sally a few weeks ago and meant to use before now.

I also came up with a brilliant idea to deal with the OPI minis I have collected, but that will be another post.

I hope you had a lovely holiday! I hope to find another challenge group because I really enjoyed the stretching and creativity I got to both see and experience for myself.

Elf-like!

I ended up spending 7 hours doing various church-related things today, so I'm too tired to be terribly clever. Tomorrow morning I'll do the last two manicures, and I'll be done with the challenge. I'm going to miss having the inspiration and fellowship of my challengers. I hope I can join another challenge group soon!

I google imaged a lot of Christmas elf pictures, and the main cohesive theme I saw was their stripey green and white tights, so I did a base of NOPI Lights Kim-era Action, and striped Kleancolor Green Grass. I have craft scissors that are zig-zagged and so I masked off my tips and painted them red with OPI The Spy Who Loved Me (which I love, and should get a full-size of soon, because it's such an interesting red). The zig-zags don't show well - my craft scissors have a wider zig than I really envisioned, and real pinking shears might have worked better. I used my NYC Matte Me Crazy topcoat, and I really liked the effect.

Still, I had multiple compliments from total strangers, although not one could guess I was aiming for an elf theme. Ah, well.

Go see what my other challengers did!

Abstractly Ornamental

My original plan (is it just me, or do most of my posts seem to start this way? Maybe it's just me) was to do one beautiful ornament on each nail and detail it and ... maybe that will work next year. My original manicure was a mess and I wanted to actually show a success for the first time in a few attempts, so I went back to the drawing board and came up with this:

I started with a couple of coats of white (I'm almost out! Time to try a new white!) and overlaid many, many (like....5 or 6 or 8 or 12....but probably 5) coats of OPI Fresh Frog of Bel Air to have a glittery tree backdrop. I dotted on big dots of OPI Into the Night, Orly On the List and Monroe's Red, and Sally Girl Dumped. It looks like ornaments on a tree to me, and that's what counts, right? Right? :)

Also, when I was at Sally, I bought "acetone nail polish remover" instead of straight acetone, and while it smells pretty good, it doesn't work as well for cleaning up around my cuticles. I think I have to go back to acetone, at least for clean-up.

My fellow challengers did beautiful things! Go look!

Gifts

I'm having a hard time writing today. I planned to attempt to put bows on, but I ran out of steam.

I also managed to delete the notes I took on what colors are where. They include Orly Dazzle, Naughty Or Nice, and Shining Star, OPI Goldeneye and Live and Let Die, and China Glaze Ruby Pumps.

Hopefully the other challengers have more scintillating conversation:

NOTD: Fire! Flames? Something like that....

So my original plan here was to make a sun-rise gradient, but halfway through the process, I decided I wanted brighter red on the tips, so I changed it to flames by sponging on the color in a oval way instead of straight across, and added the blue dot like the center of a burning match.

I used Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Mellow Yellow, Sally Girl Amped, and Maybelline Keep Up the Flame for the gradient, and the blue dot is OPI Unfor-greta-bly Blue. SV is the topcoat. I think I

I did this manicure on Friday, and it hasn't worn well -- lots of tip-wear, and some other assorted chips. On the other hand, this morning I went to the DMV to renew a car registration for a friend, and the DMV lady went on about how cute my nails were and seemed agog that I had done them myself. It totally made my day. I bet she doesn't hear "you totally made my day!" that often at the DMV, so it was good for both of us.

Also! I found a really cool website for style stuff through another blogger, iHeartPrettyPolish: Copious. She found a great Deborah Lippmann Across the Universe dupe: here. It's by Hot Mess, and called "Across the Trailer Park". I joined up with Copious, and I'll put a link for anyone else interested in joining here. They offer $10 credit for signing up, so the polish will be free! (Well, $0.60 in fees, but it's got free shipping. I'm all about this!) I'll post again with pictures when it comes and I can show it off.