Fun with Neon Stripes and Dots!

Oh man, where to start!
It's been a a little over a month since my last post here. So sorry about that! In the last month I have had a friend come visit for 10 days, went to Munich, Vienna, and Salzburg, caught up on the language school that I missed while we were traveling, spent 2 weeks in the U.S. doing Maid of Honor stuff for a friend's wedding and packing in as much friends, family, and fun as we could, recovering from stupid jet lag, and finally jumping back in and catching up on language school again!

That's a lot to cram into a month!

Anyway,  during that time, I still painted my nails of course and managed to take pictures. Part of why I haven't posted lately is because it is a PITA (pain in the ***) to watermark photos.
So from now on, I'm most likely not going to bother with them. Please don't try to pass off my photos as your own (although apparently some people in the blog world are doing just that) and if you repost the pictures or pin them, please include a link back to me. Art is to be shared and enjoyed. I'm not making a living out of this, so I really don't see the need in "claiming" my specific pictures. (And I'm just too lazy. lol)

So on with the pictures! Even though I have some pictures from a month ago, I'm going to begin posts again with my current nails. The inspiration behind this design came from several places...
The Adventures in Stamping group challenge was a gradient and/or multiple images.

Pictures that were posted like this one from www.Spellbindingnails.com/  made me really want to do a gradient.

There was also a photo on my pinterest board for nail art of someone who did 4 horizontal stripes on each nail in a sort of gradient. I'd show you, but pinterest is acting up right now. I tried that the other night, but didn't have enough time to really do it justice, so I removed the whole stupid mess.
I ended up mixing the sort of gradient idea and put them into stripes. I originally wanted to stamp over the stripes, but as I was laying the tape for the stripes, I was inspired to try something else.

On one hand, I used black for the accents because the brights all seemed a little too matchy matchy.

On the other hand, I used the neon pink for accent dots and did an accent stripe on the thick pink line on the middle finger and thumb with the tangerine-ish yellow-orange.

 

Of course after spending so much time taping off sections, I had to go and smudge a finger on each hand. It's hardly noticeable, and in these pictures I can't really tell (so hopefully neither can you). :)
Lately I've been doing a lot of solid color manis and while that's great for lots of people, I just wasn't happy with them no matter what color it was. So a few days ago I vowed to myself that I won't bother doing my nails unless I have the time, motivation, and inspiration to create something I will be really happy with.
I hope you're happy to see a new post! I know I am! :)
How have you been?? And for those of you in the U.S. hogging all the 90 degree weather, please send some of it my way. It's been a high of 50(!) since Saturday. I am sooo cold right now! lol.

PCFC - Mr. Sky 3/9

I have a couple of the challenge manicures done, but I have a friend visiting from the US so I haven't been blogging much.

Here is my Mr. Sky! I had no idea what this meant, so I just took it literally. I thought about adding little black sunglasses and a smile the way I drew all of my suns growing up, but decided that would probably just mess it up. :)

I really like how my left hand turned out! I love the suns, but they turned out a little less defined on my right hand.

I used a light blue Color Club and sponged a darker CC blue over it for the base. I used a dotting tool to free hand the clouds after my cloud stamping plate wasn't cooperating. I also used a dotting tool for the birds and the suns/rays.

Here is the slightly wonky right hand.

These pictures make the birds look like they are flying upside down. lol.

What do you think?

My Spooky Anniversary Stamping

I saw this Spooky Stamping technique by Chalkboard Nails and was super excited to try it! Back in September I used someone's (can't remember at the moment) tutorial on how to make owls. I had also recently been gifted the OPI mini Halloween set. I did glow-in-the-dark/black stripes on 8 of my fingers and owl accent fingers, but I never would have thought to stamp over glow-in-the-dark polish to get the same effect. Genius!

I asked the boyfriend to pick out the designs and colors for our anniversary date nail art and he picked a shockingly bright (in person) yellow by Color Club with black stamping. Here is how it came out!

Clearly I messed up the plaid stamp, but rather than try to piece a second stamp onto the first, I decided it was "artistic" this way (ha!). :)

It's a shame you can't see how alarmingly bright this yellow is in these pictures.

Here you can see the glow-in-the-dark! So neat! It was a lot brighter/clearer in person, but I don't have a fancy pants camera to capture it accurately. I still think these pictures are pretty freaking cool!

I hated taking these nails off, but I wasn't really experiencing their cool effect even at night, so I left them for a few days and then moved on. I'm sure I'll be trying this again sometime soon!

What do you think? Were you as impressed by Chalkboard Nails' post as I was?

100 Follower giveaway at Smashley Sparkles!

Now don't everyone go enter this giveaway at once, but it is for a bottle of DS Sapphire. Be still my heart!

Here is the link: http://smashleysparkles.blogspot.com/2012/02/100-follower-giveaway.html

And while you're there, show her some blog love and check out her other posts!

Love Yourself No Matter What Nail Art

My good friend Claire from my birthday group wrote this lovely post about how we as women are too hard on ourselves and others, even about our nail art. She suggested a sort of challenge where we each do whatever we want to our nails, whether that be fancy art that takes hours or just a simple 1 color manicure, whatever makes you happy that day. :)

Here is what made me happy today:

I didn't sleep well last night and I have been feeling ill and feverish for the last 2 days. While sitting in language school, all I wanted was to come home and change my polish. My boyfriend gave me a bit of grief for taking off my pink polka dot mani already because I had it on for "one day and it's awesome." lol. I agreed that I still really liked the white nails, so I used them to inspire the other nails.

 

This time around I just stuck with the cluster doticure and limited my colors to 4 of each shade. I used 4 different sized dotting tools, but you can't really tell the difference between the 4. I still like them though. :) They are bright and fun and make me happy. 




I had done a rainbow doticure in the past, which I have included pictures of below. I REALLY didn't care about clean up until the last few months. I also didn't understand that you didn't HAVE to paint all the way to the cuticle and both sides to make it look good. Ha, ha! That's why it looks like a child painted the base color for me. Strike that, I bet a child could have done better. I'm glad I have gotten better at this.

 

A lot of people didn't like the gray/black nail I threw in to break up all the brights, but I was pretty smitten with it. I needed an accent to break thinks up a bit. I used the black dots in the rainbow nails to ground the colors a bit. They needed dimension and the black lends that to the brights. :)

Have you tried a doticure in the past? I think this design really shows how beautiful a simple dotting tool can be. If you give this manicure a shot, please send me a link to your pictures of it so I can ooh and ahh over them. :)

Another giveaway!

Here is a fantastic giveaway offered by Lacquered Lover!

This one is amazing and I really hope to win! I don't own any Manglaze polish yet, but I would love to see what all the buzz is about!

Enter here. :)

PishPosh and Polish giveaway!

One of the lovely ladies from my birthday group is having a giveaway over at PishPosh and Polish!

Check it out! Follow her and enter her giveaway. :)

http://pishposhandpolish.blogspot.com/2012/02/very-british-giveaway.html