31DC2013: Day 17 - Glitter

Today I had a really hard time deciding if I wanted to just put some glitter polish on my nails and call it a night, or to do some nail art.

I opted for the nail art, though I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it.

First off, I wish I had started with a base color instead of doing five/six coats of Color Club Jingle Jangle on my nails. The overall feeling of my nails are thick and squishy and I have no idea if they're ever going to fully dry.

Other than that though, I really like the design and how OPI Pink Friday looks with the glitter. I do wish my pinwheel nail was a little neater, but nothing a little practice wouldn't fix :)

Unfortunately, I do not feel like these photos do the manicure much justice. It's so sparkly and awesome  but my camera was like "no, I'm going to make it look dull" so whatever. I need to find a different place to take my photos so the lighting is always consistent (aka, away from natural light).

Hopefully I'll have something posted tomorrow, but honestly, I'm leaning more towards no. I have work from 8:00a-12:00p then school from 1:00p-4:50p and right afterwards I am driving to see Yellowcard on the Ocean Avenue Acoustic tour. If not, I'll just be behind again for a little while, but I know I'll catch up :)

31DC2013: Day 16 - Tribal

Last year for tribal nails I decided to do an ikat design. I wasn't super pleased with it, but it was super easy and didn't take any time at all. This year I decided to try something a little more complicated.

The lines aren't as perfect as I'd like the, but I'm still working on that. I think part of the reason is, I need a better brush. This is the best tribal mani I've ever done, and is definitely a favorite for me for this challenge.

I used OPI Did You Ear About Van Gogh as a base and started painting stripes using Zoya Rocky. I then added thinner stripes and some dots with Pure Ice Black Out and OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls.

I'm really into this color combination, but I also just love a nude polish paired with anything.

Tomorrow is glitter and I'm having the biggest debate with myself whether I should make it super easy or complicated. I guess we'll have to see.

31DC2013: Day 15 - Delicate Print

YAYYY! I CAUGHT UP! I think we should throw me a party, shouldn't we?

Okay, probably not, but I'm happy to have caught up and to have no half-assed any of the three manicures I've done today. I'm actually quite pleased with them all, even this one.

So this wasn't exactly what I had originally planned for today. I really wanted to try out some stamping, but go figure, I couldn't find the stamper itself. I had to go with plan B which was try to paint my own delicate lacey print on, which did not work. So instead I painted little white flourishes on my middle and pinky nails and used a dotting tool for my index and ring fingers. I really like that I left the base –almost – naked, with just one coat of OPI Don't Burst My Bubble to try to cover up the staining a bit.

I used OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls for the flourishes and the polka dots and topped it all off with a coat of Seche Vite.

The flourishes kind of remind me of snowflakes a little bit, and I kind of absolutely want to do this manicure again during the winter, but with snowflakes instead of things that are trying to be snowflakes but aren't really.

Also in this manicure you can see how itty bitty my nail beds are, which I'm always self-conscious about, but I think the patterns over top help make it not so noticeable.

Tomorrow is tribal print which I'm kind of terrified of and I definitely need to cut down one of my brushes because what you see here is basically the skinniest line I'm able to obtain with my current brushes.

31DC2013: Day 14 - Flowers

Okay, I took of my shark camo, and decided to do day 14 of the challenge. I'm hoping I'll also do the delicate by the end of the day, I think I have something in mind.

This is almost sickeningly cute – pink and purples flowers and hearts – but I like it.

I used the image above as inspiration. I kinda wish I had added the little swirls inside the flowers, but it's still cute without it.

I used all OPI polishes to do this manicure – My Boyfriend Scales Walls, Steady As She Rose, Planks A Lot, and Sparrow Me The Drama.

I know delicate print was my least favorite last year, so hopefully this years manicure will go better.

31DC2013: Day 13 - Animal Print

Happy Sunday!

When I saw the prompt for animal nails, I wanted to take a different approach.

For my boyfriends birthday, back in August, I bought him these shoes (in mens of course... since they're no longer in stock I couldn't find the link to the mens). I really love them, I wish I had a pair, unfortunately they're sold out.

When I decided to do Shark Camo, originally I was going to follow the shoes and do it completely out of sharks. The more I thought about it, the more I was like no.freaking.way. Instead I did a little google search for 'shark camo' and found this image:

I figured that was way easier to tackle and went for it.

I really love these and I'm so very happy with how they came out. I used Zoya Blu as a base, Zoya Rocky and Julep Meryl for the camo pattern, and Zoya Neely for the sharks.

I wanted to catch up on the challenge by the end of today, but I'm not sure if I can get myself to take these off just yet. I love them way too much.

31DC2013: Day 12 - Stripes

Since I have time, I figured I'd do another super quick post for day 12, hopefully this will help me catch up.

For these I really wanted to use the OPI polishes I had ordered from zulily. Yeah, I got A LOT of nail mail within the past two days. They were things that I had ordered at various different times, and yet they all came in at once, but I'm not complaining :P

I really like these colors together and, of course I would. The pink and the purple are from OPI's Pirates of the Caribbean collection, I finally have completed my set :)

For this manicure, I used Sparrow Me The Drama, Planks A Lot, and French Quarter For Your Thoughts.

31DC2013: Day 11 - Polka Dots

Hi everyone! I've finally made it to the patterns portion of the 31DC2013. I'm going to do a quick post before I leave for work in about 10 minutes.

For this prompt, I just wanted to use all the Zoya polishes I had received in the mail from their BOGO and that's exactly what I did.

Very simple, but I do like it. Kinda reminds of clowns, but in a good way, or Dippin' Dots Cotton Candy flavor.

I used Blu, Micky, Yana and Rocky. I hope to catch up on posting by the end of this weekend :)