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!

Frosty the poorly proportioned snowdude...

For this challenge, I looked for some snowman ideas, and I saw, and really liked, this one:

While I didn't have the exact same colors on hand, I think my version isn't bad...but I made his head too small to be able to fit on decent sized features, and there's no way a scarf will work since his mouth sorta covers his neck-al area.

The turquoise base is Sally Girl Dumped and the nose is Amped. The snowman and ground are Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear White On, the black is Sinful Colors Black on Black, the silver is Elle Dancing Queen, and the shimmery white is NOPI Lights, Kim-era, Action.

I got dotting tools (straight from scenic Guangzhou!) and used a bunch of them. Unfortunately, the biggest one fell out of the tool within 10 or so dots. I'm going to try to epoxy it back together. I'm pretty sure the epoxy will cost more than the entire set of tools did, including shipping. I know, I shoulda ordered from bornprettystore or ... not China, but we've been poor lately. Maybe Santa will bring me some cash. And I won't feel obligated to spend it on "bills" or "living indoors".

I can't wait to see what my fellow challengers did! Check it out here!

Abominable Beginnings...

Hi! I'm Mela. I'm new to blogging and pretty new to the delightful world of polish and nail art. I'm rather terrible, and I can pretty much guarantee that no PR people are desperate for me to swatch their formulas and describe each color in detail.

Still, I like to write, I like to show off my pathetic efforts, and I'm a sucker for positive feedback.

I joined the Llama Nails group on Facebook, and they have an alphabet challenge. This week's challenge is the letter "E", so I did "E is for Extraterrestrials". I did a Galaxy manicure, like so many I've seen done by better and more accomplished nail bloggers.

I used:
Sally Hansen Black Platinum for the base, and then sponged on sally girl Dumped, Mean Streak, Amped and TTFN. I put on a coat of sally girl Glitzy and Later to make stars, and painted on little alien dudes in green and red acrylics with white and black eyes.

It was harder to work with the acrylics than I thought it would be -- I'm learning, though!