Lady's Man, Man's Man, Man About Town

One of my guilty pleasures is this movie Down With Love. It's set in the sixties, and Renee Zellweger's character writes a book about letting women have sex like a man, without falling in love, and she denounces Ewan McGregor's character as the worst kind of man. So of course, Ewan McGregor assumes a fake identity to make her fall in love so that he can write an expose about her. While Ewan McGregor is all kinds of sexy, the best part of the movie is their respective best friends' relationship.

So I did some Down With Love nails:

My base color is Nicole by OPI How Fairy Nice of You! I used a nail art brush to paint on the arrows and the broken heart in Essie Off the Shoulder. As per usual, everything's topped with Sally Hansen Dries Instantly. 

My nails are meant to look like the book cover in the movie, but I may have neglected to check what the actual color scheme was before I painted my nails. The nail colors are inversions of the movie colors, but I don't care too much. 

This is another one where I like my right hand better than my left hand. The heart shards don't match up on my left hand, and once again, I was to lazy to redo them. That seems to be a common theme in my life.

Harry Potter, Harry Potter, Ooo Harry Potter

Saturday night, one of my school's organizations hosted a Harry Potter trivia night. Of course, I did my nails for good luck, and it totally worked-- I won! (It could also be due to the fact that I've dedicated a large chunk of my life to reading and watching Harry Potter, but I prefer to think the nails brought me good luck.)

Weirdly enough, I actually prefer my right hand for this mani. I hadn't quite perfected my striping technique on my left hand, and I was way too lazy to redo it. Also, I'm such a Harry Potter nerd that I did the houses in order of how much I like them. I started with my own house (Slytherin 4 Lyfe), followed by Hufflepuff, and so on and so forth. Yes, Gryffindor is my least favorite; sorry, not sorry. 

For all of my nails, I started with the metallic color (or yellow, in Hufflepuff's case), and let them dry completely before placing my striping tape. Then, I did the color one nail at a time, taking the tape off as I went. My thumb has a free handed lightening bolt. 

Slytherin: Sinful Colors San Francisco over Essie No PLace Like Chrome

Hufflepuff: OPI Baby It's Coal Outside over Sally Hansen Lightening

Ravenclaw: OPI Into the Night over Essie Penny Talk

Gryffindor: Sally Hansen Red Carpet over Revlon Golden

Thumb: Revlon Celestial Fix over Revlon Spirit with Claire's Nail Art Pen 

Everything topped with Sally Hansen Dries Instantly

I seriously LOVED having this on my nails, but there were a few things that bothered me. First, my "bronze" for Ravenclaw came out a bit pinker than I would have liked. Second, the green I used was pretty terrible quality (it was the only option that fit, color wise) so the top coat made it streak which gave the silver a bit of a yellowish tint. Gross. Lastly, while I adore the stars and moons on my thumb, there were also little bits of glitter that mostly just looked like bubbles over the white. 

Here's my right hand with the iffy striping technique:

Overall, I love love loved these nails. Anything Harry Potter themed is an A+ in my book. 

Halloween Part 2

One set of Halloween nails wasn't enough. I had a Halloween party to go to last weekend, and since I kind of threw my costume together, I decided that I needed to put a lot of effort into my nails.

I've been waiting to use this one Halloween glitter polish for AGES. It was in my Introductory Grab Bag from Llarowe, but of course I got it last January. I've been waiting for so long to break it out, and I'm so happy that I didn't forget about it.

Are you ready for all this Halloween goodness?

BAM. Does it get anymore Halloween-y? My Halloween glitter is Naild' It Candy Corn. I liked the polish a lot, but I thought the copper glitter overpowered a lot of the classic Halloween colors. It had orange, yellow, black, and white mini-hexes with a few black and white bars. I didn't even know about the big white hexes until one showed up on my brush. I tried to dig for another big hex glitter, but I never found one. Even though the copper glitter was the main focus, everything is forgiven because it's SO SHINY! The shine doesn't come out great in my pictures, but trust me, I could look at my glitter nails at different angles for a solid five minutes. 

All of the orange polish is OPI A Roll in the Hague and the black polish is Essie Licorice. I free-handed the spider web and the half moon with a nail art brush, and then I tried the sugar-spun technique on my pinkie. I really loved this effect, but I think it could have come out a lot better if I had a bit more patience and waited the full 10 minutes before trying to put the black on my nail. 

Last but not least, I valiantly tried to stamp again. Needless to say, it didn't work out. I had this cute little Winstonia stamp that said Boo! but after a few terrible attempts, I replaced it with the half moon and a little black rhinestone that I attatched with nail glue. I topped everything off with a coat of Sally Hansen Dries Instantly (two coats on the glitter), and I was ready to party. 

Summer in the City

I'm home for the summer! And by that, I mean I'm home for about 10 more days until I leave for my job as a camp counselor in Minnesota. As we slide into summer, I wanted to highlight the bright colors that come with the season. I'm from New Orleans, so summer is hot and humid, which to me, translates to brights and neons, none of that pastel nonsense.

Much to my dismay, I'm unable to travel with my full collection; most of my polish will be gathering dust in my roommate's basement until we go back to school. Devastated as I am, this is really just an opportunity for me to buy more nail polish.

I used some of my new China Glazes--White on White and Sun Worshiper--as well as OPI A Good Mandarin is Hard to Find. The flowers have touches of Nails Inc. Brompton Place and Essie Mint Candy Apple. The flowers are free handed; my ring finger uses nail tape, and my thumb was done with  Winstonia's plate W111.

Against the wall? Not really working for me. 

With flash? I'm thinking it's a bad idea.

I'm still working on what hand position, location, and lighting are going to work best for me, so hang in there. It can only get better (hopefully).

Street Art

Today, my nails were inspired by street art. More specifically, they were inspired by the Sally Hansen nail art competition, whose theme this month happens to be street art. Like actual graffiti, I wanted my nails to look like they had been painted and re-painted.

I started off with a single coat of Sally Hansen Hi-Res, a pink shimmer. Over that, I made sure that I had almost no polish on my brush before painting a very sparse and spotty white coat. Over the splotchy white, I news-printed, and stuck a few scraps of the actual paper to some of the spots that didn't turn out as well. On five or six of my nails, I partially covered the nail with Revlon Hazy, like graffiti that gets painted over. 

The caution tape is Sally Hansen Lightening; the green arrows are Sally Hansen Mint Spirit; my left thumb is a bit hard to make out, but it's meant to look like a graffiti 'LLY,' the end of Sally. The 'graffiti' letters are done in Blue Me Away! topped with Mermaid's Tale, both Sally Hansen, and both of those colors can be spotted on my pinkie too. Anywhere that there's a shimmer, it's Sally Hansen Diamonds. 

Some of my nails were inspired by well known street art. The two nails on the right were based on this Banksy work, but I could only manage the hand letting go of the string and the balloon itself.

 

               

My right thumb is based on Invader's work. Invader, if you're not familiar, is a French street artist named because he creates mosaics of characters from the arcade game Space Invaders. I couldn't manage squares, but I mimicked the mosaic style with my dotting tool.

The red polish is Essie Russian Roulette; white is Milani White; black is a nail art pen from Claire's.

That's it for my first nail art post! I know the pictures aren't the best quality, nor do they have great lighting, but I'll work on that. Hope you liked it!