I Was Getting Artsy!

I love the gradient type of manicures, and so I had to try that yet again. I also discovered some nail art on DeviantArt, and thought it would be fun to try some of those out, so these next few manis are definitely nail art as opposed to just plain colors. I'm rather proud of them.

Let's start with my rainbow manicure, which is one of my favorites ever to date. Here are the polishes I used.

This mani took me quite a while, but I didn't care once I saw the results. I started by doing a stripe of each color on each side of the nail, and then a blend of the two in the middle.

Up close it looks a little sloppy, but I figured out how to deal with that pretty quickly.

I slapped a coat of SH Salon Silver Lining over the top. The little bit of silver and micro-glitter helped blur the lines a bit, and smooth everything out.

Sure, up close you can see the lines a bit, but from a distance, it looked pretty seamless.

I had a blast doing it, even if it was harder than just painting my nails any ole color.

Of course, now that I have an airbrush, I'll probably be able to do this much better. And easier.

I'll always be really proud of this one though, as it's my first rainbow.

I got TONS of compliments on my nails while I wore this.

My daughters have told me they want rainbows at least once this summer. 

These colors are all really pretty on their own too.

Here it is with flash.

As long as I was having fun, I thought I'd use different colors on my right hand.

I think it turned out looking pretty good as well.

The blending didn't go quite as easily, at least to me, but then again, I'm right-handed.

In the end, though, it was still pretty nice, and I was thrilled with it.

After that, I got inspired to try this mani, found on DeviantArt (done by Tartofraises), a manicure called 'Forest', seen here.
My base was the SH Insta-Dri in Jade Jump.

It's a nice minty green, with great coverage.

I really like the way it looks.

With flash, too.

Next, add the stripes.

I used a random paintbrush for this.

With flash you can see the shimmer in the darker green (Flaunt Emerald).

After that, I went with Lippmann Stardust for the silver dots.

Of course, I used my dotting tools for those.

I think they show up nicely and add good contrast.

This could be done with any colors, but I really like these greens.

If I get better at painting the strips and so on, these kinds of manis will look even better.

In the end, I was pretty happy with this one.

So, after those two turned out so well, I took inspiration from another mani on DeviantArt, although I cannot find the link! So I can't tell you who I should credit for this one. Of course, I changed it, it was originally done in pink, and I chose to go with lime instead.

Out Loud Lime was an awful one to work with. The formula was tough to work with, gloopy and just kinda bleh.

I freehanded the lines, and I think I did a pretty great job.

Okay, I'm just going to share one more for now, and then get my butt out to mow the lawn. Yeah, all this green reminded me that I need to get it done. Haha. This mani is copied from Polishaholic, who has some totally awesome manis on a regular basis. So let's see how I did.

Not a bad start, although I kind of suck at freehanding stars. The dots were tough to do as well for some reason.

With a nice layer of top coat over it, I think it looks pretty okay.

Of course, I was hoping it would look as good as Polishaholic's, but I'm not complaining.

This gold is a really nice one.

I should have used smaller dots for sure. Some of them got too overlappy.

And of course, flash reveals the mistakes even more. Ultimately though, I had fun, and it was pretty cool.

Okay, with that, I think I'll get my work done, and quit procrastinating. Blarghh! I wish my lawn could mow itself. And that the garbage took itself to the curb without my help. Haha. While we're at it, the animals should not only be able to feed and clean up after themselves, but make MY dinner too! Bwahahahaha! Okay, I'm really going now. See you soon!