Purple and Green Giraffes and Cheetahs

I've taken a billion photos of this mani, trying to capture the actual color of these spots. Unfortunately, my sad Canon PowerShot A590IS just couldn't rise to the occasion. If you are tired of seeing only animal print stamping on my blog, I am sorry. Out of the 15 or so plates that I have, only 1 works consistently well. I'm hoping to acquire some new plates for Christmas, but maybe I'll break down and convince the hubby I need some before then. he, he. :) 

The base color is Color Club Wild Orchid (which I have had for over a decade!) and stamped using my XL stamper with the dark purple Orly from my last post.

I really wish you could see these colors as they really are IRL. I finished them and decided I was in love, but now it's time for them to go! haha.

Globe and Nail's Reciprocal Gradient Recreation

I came to the Reciprocal Gradient design by Globe and Nail through my good friend Debbie Crumpet's recreation for her final pink mani for October.

Here is the original from Globe and Nail in blue:

http://globeandnail.blogspot.de/2012/10/reciprocal-gradient-tutorial.html

And here is Debbie's recreation:

http://www.the-crumpet.com/2012/10/go-pink-wednesday-reciprocal-gradient.html

I wanted to use my go-to purple creme (OPI Planks A Lot), so I just picked a complementary purple creme by Orly. If you want to recreate this mani for yourself, check out Globe and Nail's tutorial with the link above. Basically, you create a gradient for your base, tape off lines, and create the same gradient, but with the colors reversed. 

 

Have you seen this look before? I really like it. :) I think next time I will try different colors instead of the same color in different shades or maybe even a 3 color gradient, though the middle color may get lost.

Jewli's 31 Day Halloween Nail Art Challenge: Day 24 - Inspired by a Song

I worked two seasons in a Halloween store and one of those seasons we were only allowed to play cds that we were also selling. We only sold 2 types: spooky noises and classic songs. Among the classic songs were Thriller, Somebody's Watching Me, Monster Mash and, of course, The Time Warp. (here is hopefully a video that works if you aren't familiar with The Time Warp from Rocky Horror Picture Show)

I was torn between Monster Mash, Somebody's Watching Me and The Time Warp, so after googling some images for inspiration, I found the image below:

http://rugbyhair.wordpress.com/2010/03/04/top-5-reasons-why-hamilton-is-a-great-rugby-world-cup-venue-1/

I thought it'd be cool to do one of the steps on each of my nails (but I left out # 6 since I only had 5 nails). If you've seen my tennis nail art then you've seen me do a similar stick figure. I still have my spider webs on my left hand because I love them so much, so that meant I needed to do the nail art with my non-dominant hand and it needed to be simple enough.

With flash

With flash

With flash

Natural light

Natural light

Natural light

I mixed the grays with acrylic paint in two batches, which is why 2 of the figures are lighter shades than the other three. And I am not the tidiest person when painting my nails, which is why there's that dark gray dot on the tip of my ring finger. 

Since yesterday was Halloween, this will be my final challenge design. It didn't quite last 31 days, but I think it'd be weird to do Halloween designs after the day has passed.

I saw a few trick or treaters last night, but none of them rang our doorbell. :( What did you do for Halloween? Did you dress up?

Jewli's 31 Day Halloween Nail Art Challenge: Day 23 - Inspired by a Color

The color I was inspired by was Riveting by China Glaze. I just love this polish and how it glows in person. So many people have done the spider webs, but I tried one out on one nail and loved it, so I went with it. To mix it up a bit, I put a big fat black spider on my thumb. My husband called while the topcoat was drying on my thumb and I smudged the poor spider's head. I didn't have time to fix it, so please forgive me if you can see his imperfections. He's still pretty cute, if I do say so myself. :)

With flash

Without flash

Have you tried out the spider web design?

Jewli's 31 Day Halloween Nail Art Challenge: Day 22 - Based on a Book

For Day 22 I went with "based on a book." Growing up my sister and I always read the book "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark." I believe there were 3 books in a boxed set, but I absolutely remember these pictures.

http://www.squidoo.com/scary-stories-to-tell-in-the-dark

The story I remember best is called "The Girl with the Green Ribbon." I remembered it as a blue ribbon, but it's definitely the same story. The girl falls in love with a boy and she is always wearing a ribbon around her neck throughout their lives together. Her husband asks why she wears it and she tells him she can't say just yet. Then on her death bed... well you can read for yourself below:

http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/folk-tales?before=1347933543

I freehanded the girl with acrylic paints and as you can see, she has a blue ribbon. Oops. :) The base is China Glaze For Audrey. I have never really been able to draw people (other than stick figures), so I was pleased with how the girl turned out. Not as amazing as some other people can manage, but good for me. ha, ha. 

With flash

Without flash

Do you remember this story too? What other stories to you remember from these books?

Jewli's 31 Day Halloween Nail Art Challenge: Day 21 - Pattern

I am to the point in the challenge that I'm in a rut. It's to the themes that I've never worked with (ex. inspired by a song, pattern, movie, etc.). Who hasn't used a color for inspiration? All the color challenges were easy? I googled Halloween pattern and found this adorable pattern. I originally had the idea to recreate parts of the pattern on each nail so there was a bit of everything all over. Silly me, I had a mishap. If you haven't noticed, I've been doing one design on one hand and one on the other, that way I can burn through more ideas in less time. I did the last one (the violet ghost) at the same time as these. I painted the bases one night and did the details the next morning. After I finished the ghost, I realized I did the simple design with my dominant hand and left my poor non-dominant hand to do all the detail in this pattern. I am NOT ambidextrous at all, so I decided to make it a bit easier by doing one image on each nail.

I picked the devil, Frankenstein's monster, black cat, bat, and a voodoo doll. Maybe I'll incorporate the other guys later on (using my DOMINANT hand, haha!). 

Jewli's 31 Day Halloween Nail Art Challenge: Day 20 - Violet

These are another example of something that sounded super cool in my mind and didn't translate well with the execution. I received these two polishes (CG Ghoulish Glow and Bizarre Blurple) in one of my birthday packages from a lovely woman in my birthday group Momma Elizabeth yesterday. I saw swatches of Bizarre Blurple and thought it was nice, but nothing special. After putting it on, I was in love. :) And as I've said before, I will never be one to put up swatches to help people decide if you should buy a polish. I'm about the art. :)

My idea was to paint the violet base and use the Ghoulish Glow to paint an invisible ghost. Then I was going to work on my glow in the dark pictures. The first problem was that I put the GG on too thick (hoping it'd make it show up better) and it wasn't invisible by any stretch of the imagination. The second problem was that I can't make it show up in my dark pictures.

Well, on to the next one! :D