Stars and Stripes! (Well... Dots and Stripes, anyway)

Happy 4th of July!

I used Urban Outfitters Silver Holo (dupe for Color Club Harp on It) with Jade Vermelho Surreal on top for the stripes and Rescue Beauty Lounge Dead Calm with OPI DS Glamour on top for the blue base with Silver Holo dots.

Color Club Harp on It is still readily available right now, and Jade Vermelho Surreal goes in and out of stock on Llarowe and Ninja Polish. RBL Dead Calm and OPI DS Glamour are both discontinued and most likely going to be hard to find, but Glamour has some "dupes" being made more recently (one is Glamorous by Ninja Polish). Dead Calm is a dark blue creme, so there are probably some similar polishes out there.

Color Blind Test

Sarah at Chalkboard Nails is having a contest with a theme of "dotting tool," and this is the one I'm entering. As soon as I heard "dot" I thought of the color blind tests that are made up of colorful dots, and I was so excited to create this!

I started with a white backgroung and used three of each "shade" (blue, green, red, and orange) to first draw out each number in dots then fill in the rest of the nail with the opposite shade.

Then, just because I wanted to see how good I was at picking the colors, I changed it to black and white to see if the numbers were still readable:

I dunno about you, but I can only MAYBE pick out the "8" on the pinky in this pic... the others seem to have disappeared!

The numbers in the picture are representative of the night of Chief's and my first date... can you see it?

Funky Half Moon

I came up with this idea just this morning and figured I'd wait to try it until the China Glaze Anchor's Away collection came out (for the navy and the red). As you can see, I didn't make it that long before trying it out.


I used Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear White On for the base (plus a coat of SV), then used Liquid Palisade to form the half moons and just painted over with RBL Dead Calm (navy), and OPI Monsooner of Later (red... I know it looks orange here, but it is a bright orange-red in person). One note about Liquid Palisade. It's pretty awesome, but make sure you give yourself an extra "tail" with which to pull it off once you've painted over it, and probably pull it off with tweezers (I didn't do either and got blue and red all over my other hand's fingers...). After I let it dry just a bit, I dotted White On in little dots (freehand with a dotting tool).

I like this one, but it takes awhile and I don't think I have the patience to complete the design on my other hand as well. I think it looks sort of nautical, or like a polka-dotted dress.

What does this design remind you of? Have you tried/do you like the half-moon manicures?

Ugly Mint Pants

So I was out with my friend, Ryan, yesterday and we saw this guys crossing the street in these hideous mint pants paired with a watermelon red shirt... oh it was horrendous. I knew I HAD to make a nail art design out of it. And here it is:


I used Quirius Erin Island and China Glaze High Hopes. Isn't it wonderfully gross?? I dunno, I don't think it quite captures how atrocious this outfit was. Anyway, I tried...