Santa Claus is Comin' To Town

This one may be a ways towards the abominable side of the spectrum. I had a grand idea, and...well, it was executed. I'm so not good at straight lines.

For the 12 Days of Christmas Nail Art Challenge, the song I couldn't get out of my head was the Fred Astaire version of "Santa Claus is Coming to Town".

You're very welcome.

So I started with a base of Finger Paints Cerulean Seascape with a couple of coats of Darling Diva Ringer (it's a lot like Fantasy Fire! Lovely!) that I'd been wearing for a couple of days. It looked suitably wintry-night-ish. On my thumb, I overlaid a few coats of Sally Hansen CSM Runway Red-y and made a belt out of Sinful Colors Black on Black and the weird Style Essentials Gold. On my index, ring, and pinkie, I made houses out of Sally Hansen Mellow Yellow, L'oreal Park Ave Luncheon, and Sinful Colors' Savage, respectively. I added roofs in the gold, and dotted on windows and doors in black. My middle finger is supposedly Santa's beard -- it's a coat of Commander in Chic with White On saran-wrapped on top.

Does it look like a town? Like a beard? I think I have Santa's belly under control (though if it were black, it might look more like a pilgrim hat than a belted torso!)

It's a learning experience, and I'm having a ton of fun trying new things. I sometimes wish the actual results had any connection to what I'm picturing in my head, though!

Go see what the awesome things my fellow challengers did!

Transgender Day of Remembrance

I haven't, as of yet, gotten very political or very personal on this blog, as my real name is attached to it. And I won't do either here and now, but if a frank discussion against xenophobia in this culture is upsetting, you can stop reading and my feelings won't be very hurt.

I did my manicure in response to Lacquer Lad's request for support in honoring the Transgender Day of Remembrance. The guidelines he gave in particular were that blue and purple should be used and maybe a candle.

I used Sally Hansen CSM Good to Grape and L'Oreal Rainy Picadilly for my colors, with a gradient between the two. I attempted to do a light purple flame (Good to Grape mixed with a little White On) on my middle finger... and it was a huge disaster. So I covered the whole nail with the mix, did some distressing with a little acetone, and added my attempt at this symbol with more White On (swiped from Wikipedia's Gender Symbol page):

Here's our frank discussion, now. We all perform gender roles as we've been trained. I know, love, and respect several human beings who perform gender roles in different ways than society wishes they would, and you know whose problem that is? It's society's problem, not theirs.

We're afraid of what we don't understand. We're afraid of people who seem strange or don't do what we expect. Without teaching ourselves to consciously accept people who are different from us, we end up missing out on amazing experiences and relationships, we add hate to the world, we add justification to those who hurt people for being who they are, and that makes us complicit in the violence against transgender or gender-queer people.

I sincerely doubt anyone reading this is the type to perpetuate violence on people who look or behave differently, but on this day, please remember those who died because other people had no such compunction:

Transgender Day of Remembrance Memorial List 2012

An homage to the art of the fan brush

I saw the coolest mani, done by Kimber at Kimber's Lacquer Korner that I knew I wanted to replicate. Hers turned out far better, as you can see if you click on her blog name.

So I asked my 11-year-old daughter to find four colors that worked together but weren't too similar. She did a great job, picking Sally Hansen CSM Black Platinum, Sinful Colors' Let's Talk, NOPI Lights, Kim-era, Action!, and Circus by Andrea's Choice Tightrope.

I put on two coats of the NOPI, then took my fan brush, spread the bristles, and dipped it into drops on my palette. I did light horizontal swipes each way, changing between the Circus, Sally Hansen, and Sinful Colors after completing both hands.

It's a cool effect, but the versions done by Kimber and her inspiration were both better executed. I think my fan brush wasn't quite stiff enough, plus I think I had too much paint on the brush.

I'll try again sometime, perhaps with a craft fan brush instead of a (totally never used) make-up fan brush. It's a learning process. :)

Galinda! (Or Pretty in Periwinkle and Pink)

In my awesome grab bag from Love For Lacquer came a really neat pink crelly with periwinkle and purple glitter, Galinda, by Lacquer Convention. I put two coats of it over three coats of Sally Hansen CSM's Shell We Dance.

I loved this manicure -- the pink wasn't so saturated that it was Pepto Bismol-y, the purple and periwinkle was lovely and came out of the bottle really nicely and evenly, and the micro fuschia glitter added great visual interest. It held up really well for like four days, and no chips marred its loveliness. I skipped a top coat because I really liked the amount of shine in the glitter and crelly polish.

But...

I used the PVA (or Elmer's Glue) base coat since I was putting on some glittery polish. I've had the same bottle made up for a few weeks now, and I used it exactly the same as I have since I started putting PVA under manicures, and it came off in tiny little chips, not at all in the lovely full-nail (or close to it) sheets that I've gotten when removing previous manicures. I felt beat up and violated by the time I peeled it off. I'm not sure if the Sally Hansen color base was the problem, if the Galinda stuff just didn't want to cooperate, or if I didn't use enough base coat this time. Regardless, it was a pain in the bleepity to get off.

I've got another glitter manicure on now to last through the election and possibly Veteran's Day, but I used Seche Clear and will try the foil method to remove it when it's time. I need a break from the PVA base coat. It's usually worked so well!

Happy Halloween!

I've seen a lot of great mummy manicures, and I've seen the fantastic spun sugar manicures (XOXOAlexisLeigh does a fantastic one here!), but I haven't seen anyone try to combine the two. (That doesn't mean no one has, just that I haven't seen it done in the many many blogs I follow).

So here it is. I did My First Ruffian (without actually referring to pictures I've seen before, so maybe it's more like a framed mani. My next ruffian won't have the underwear showing on the sides) and kept my left ring finger un-ruffianed for the art.

So on the bottom, we have Sinful Colors' Black on Black, then two coats of Sally Hansen CSM's Commander in Chic. On my ring finger, I put on two coats of the black, and then mixed 3 drops of Commander in Chic with 5 drops of White On to make a lighter, more bandage-y color. I taped my finger to avoid some mess, and taped off an area for the mummy's eyes, and mixed and stirred and mixed the combo color, for a long time. It was probably 5 minutes or so, before it got gummy enough to become stringy.

I followed the spun sugar manicure directions and it really, actually...worked! Amazing! Success isn't my normal outcome with these experiments.

I dotted on eyeballs and pupils, and I let the whole thing dry for about an hour, and then put on a topcoat of SV, which ended up ruining some of the definition of the strands, but I'm overall happy with my effort.

Happy Halloween!

Matte French

So first, let me apologize for the state of my cuticles -- you can see a lot of residue from my clean-up attempt. It washed off later. Hmph.

I bought a matte topcoat the other day ($1.74!) at Target and wanted to do something with it. I had grand ideas but a simple french manicure seemed like a good idea. So I painted two coats of Sally Hansen's CSM "Haute Chocolate" (I really love the deep brown with red and gold undertones), and let it dry. Then a coat of NYC "Matte Me Crazy" topcoat. I've been using Seche Vite for so long that I really wasn't used to it being tacky as long as it was. I free-handed SV on for shiny tips, and I really liked how it looked. Minus the cuticle mess.

A few hours after my mani was done, I grabbed lunch, and taking a burger out of the bag, I barely touched the side of my thumbnail to the bag and half of the polish slid off.

I think I'll try a coat of SV before the matte topcoat next time I feel like going matte, which will likely be soon. :)

Flocks in Flight!

So for my Llama Nails weekly challenge, F, I had a vision. And as usual, the execution of the vision is....suboptimal. But I'm getting better.

I first mixed up sally girl Epic and Sally Hansen White On to get a sky blue for two coats. Then I sponged on more White On for clouds, and gave it a couple of hours to dry while I saw an arachnologist debunk the Spiderman movies (did they need debunking? No. But it was entertaining) at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science.

After I got back home, I cut up some masking tape and made mountain shapes. I didn't have a great mountain color, so I mixed some Sally Hansen CSM Good to Grape and Haute Chocolate (Walgreen's has all Sally Hansen CSM polishes for $1.88 right now! Go!) and painted it on, one nail at a time, removing the tape right after painting.

I used my smallest skinniest brush (I need a smaller skinnier one!) to paint on wide Ms to be birds in flight, with the V being on my middle nail, with the Haute Chocolate.

Overall, I think I got the effect I wanted, though as always, it would be better if I had steadier hands.

Inspired Leopard Print!

I was totally inspired last night by another blogger's awesome leopard print mani, here, so I had to try it myself.

I started with two coats of Sally Hansen's CSM Commander in Chic, dabbed on bright pink spots -- Circus by Andrea's Choice's Ringmaster, and poorly outlined them with Sinful Color's Black On Black, adding some extra marks and dots. I should have been less assiduous in outlining the spots -- it would have looked better with a little less.

I really like the colors together, and I keep staring at it. Early reviews from my husband sitting 3 feet away are that it just looks like splotches, but I think it looks pretty leopard-y. I like it, at any rate.

I'm going to do some serious cuticle work later tonight, though. I didn't think they looked so bad until I saw this picture!

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!