FiA#13 Fall Flair!

OH MY GOSH! Do you know what I realized? This prompt is Fall Flair which means I CAN DO ARGYLE even though I don't own a sweater with that on it! EXCITEMENT.

Here we go!

Because I knew I wanted to use Julep Otte, I tried to find a pattern/colour combination that would look good with it. And I did!

Thanks Google!

Then I googled for a tutorial and it turns out to be from one of my favourite blogs: Kelsie's Nail Files! Time to practice my taping!

So, like I said, started with Julep Otte. After that, I taped and used Golden Rose 187, which is a dark grey. I still have to get to swatching that one..

It's obvious I fail a taping.

 For the rest of the hand, I used my dotting tool heavily laden with polish and poked the triangles on.

It kinda looks better.

 One more technique. I picked up my paintbrush and painted crosses then filled them in.

It all looks just as bad =P It's fine from far away, but clearly I'm not QUITE up to some of my favourite blogger's standards with this stuff... Especially tape. Gah, tape. I put a layer of topcoat on, which really smoothed everything out, and put on some crap tv to wait for it to dry before the last step.

Ulta Snow White, as usual.

I tried doing connect the dots on the thumb here, and then gave up and pulled the paintbrush.

Welp... I can't do straight thin lines. Buuut that's what you're getting today. Sorry for the lack of clean up. I think those white lines are a great argument for why I need to get on buying striping tape... I also fully intended to get a picture after clean up but forgot as soon as I did it. Sorry!

It's over! Whaaat? Guess what though? Dec 1st (hopefully) we're starting winter! =D See y'all there!
Hannah from Polished Prisms
Stephanie from A Little Polish
Suer from Creative Nail Design By Sue
Katee from A Girl And Her Polish
Ashley from One Nail to Another
Karine Assemien from Karine's Vernis Club
Kayono Lan (aka Johanna) from Neues vom Kellerkind
Charlotte-Louise from Charlotte's Nails
Alyson Epstein from Beads. Nails. Food.
Maribeth from Obsessive Cosmetic Hoarders Unite
Becky from Glam Fiend
Angie from Our Painted World
Alethia from Never-Ending Nail Art
Sarah from Dakila's
Amanda from Mandy's Polish
Lisa from Lisa's Nail Obsession
Kelly from Nails for the Sake of Sanity
Stephanie from All Things Beautiful
Martina from From Head to Foot

FiA#12 Harvest

So for the Americans, this is Thanksgiving but of course we're not all from USA and "Harvest" was chosen to allow a little more elbow room =)

There were several ideas bouncing around in my head and one of them was the Cornucopia. Unfortunately, I couldn't find the full myth of the Cornucopia, because I'm fairly certain all the things in it fell out in groups (fruits then meat then blah blah blah) but of course the internet failed me.

The other image I always get when someone says Harvest is fields and fields of wheat (amber grain US homies!). That's what I went to try. I'm giving you a step by step and I didn't clean up before I took each picture, so forgive me for the mess, please <3.

I started with Ulta Snow White.

It's still disappointingly gloopy. Bah. To help it smooth out, I put on a layer of my Golden Rose Clear Topcoat (non-quick dry) and VERY PATIENTLY waited.

After that torture, I tried sponging on Essence You Belong to Me next, to make up a sky, but the sponge wasn't letting go of the colour, so I glooped some on and then tried to blend it with the sponge. Unfortunately there was NO transition. Oh well, watercolour clouds!

After that I picked up some orange - yellow spectrum colours and started striping with a cheapie paintbrush. Y'know those ones that  you get in the kids watercolour sets in elementary school? The ones you're forced to buy EVERY YEAR and use once in five? Yeah I thinned it out. Works really well actually, for messy striping like this =)

Julep Parker

Julep Daisy

Joe Mocha

Essence Wanna Be Your Sunshine

Julep Otte

The brown might be a bit much, but I actually kind of like my nails. I maybe should have put Otte before WBYS but oh well, I like it. It was missing something though...

I added Rainbow Honey The Worst Possible Thing to my ring finger as an accent (I wanted it to look like butterflies frolicking or something) =) With some Ulta X-Dry on top, I went about my clean up.

Another incident where my off-hand (the left) turned out better than my right.

We're nearing the end aaahhh! Who's excited for winter? There's another challenge in the works~

Check everyone else!

Hannah from Polished Prisms
Stephanie from A Little Polish
Suer from Creative Nail Design By Sue
Katee from A Girl And Her Polish
Ashley from One Nail to Another
Karine Assemien from Karine's Vernis Club
Kayono Lan (aka Johanna) from Neues vom Kellerkind
Charlotte-Louise from Charlotte's Nails
Alyson Epstein from Beads. Nails. Food.
Maribeth from Obsessive Cosmetic Hoarders Unite
Becky from Glam Fiend
Angie from Our Painted World
Alethia from Never-Ending Nail Art
Sarah from Dakila's
Amanda from Mandy's Polish
Lisa from Lisa's Nail Obsession
Kelly from Nails for the Sake of Sanity
Stephanie from All Things Beautiful
Martina from From Head to Foot

FiA#11 Autumn Dots

I'm doing the catch-up grind, have you noticed? After this I can slow down a bit because I'll be on track but if that's the reason I sucked so hard at this dotticure, then I'm sorry. In my opinion, I just kind of suck at all of them... except the fish... Wait... that's the only other one I did. Okay so it's just this one == I'm sorry!

I started with Julep Leslie, which as I mentioned reminds me of wet cement. I live near Vancouver, and we are famous for RAIN (over here anyway) and I have a lot of bus stops to walk to in this rain.. or snow, or mist, or other wet weather. Fall is always better for it because the leaves strewn on the sidewalks are gorgeous in colour, and that's what I was trying to capture here.

I basically just took my larger dotting tool because I knew the dots would come out different sizes and I poked at my nails randomly with different colours. I used Julep January and Parker, China Glaze Riveting and Electrify, Essence Wanna Be Your Sunshine, KleanColor Bright Gold. Apparently I completely forgot about China Glaze Harvest Moon, because I didn't use it. Lame.

Whenever I do something like this where I don't like it and it's a bit of a mess I cover it up with glitter. In this case, Sally Hansen Urban Chic, a scattered holo topcoat you've seen before on my Galaxy Nails. From afar, all you see is fire colours and rainbow glitter.

So in conclusion, for me this is "meh" and everyone else in the group is way better at dotting than me =P I used the peel off glue basecoat though so it'll be off by tomorrow and I can do something else.

When I went outside, I found it looked a lot better...

Oh the wonders of natural lighting!

This is actually quite nice...

My glue base is acting up already on my ring finger here. Just pretend it's cracked pavement or something.

I like it a lot more outside.

[Side Story
My boyfriend said: "Leaves on pavement isn't really my first thought looking at these..."
Me: And that's the difference between 'based on' and 'inspired by'." AMIRITE?]

What do you think? Total fail? What would you have done differently with this idea (keeping it mind the use of dotting tools was mandatory)?

Everyone else's is SO CUTE >_<
Hannah from Polished Prisms
Stephanie from A Little Polish
Suer from Creative Nail Design By Sue
Katee from A Girl And Her Polish
Ashley from One Nail to Another
Karine Assemien from Karine's Vernis Club
Kayono Lan (aka Johanna) from Neues vom Kellerkind
Charlotte-Louise from Charlotte's Nails
Alyson Epstein from Beads. Nails. Food.
Maribeth from Obsessive Cosmetic Hoarders Unite
Becky from Glam Fiend
Angie from Our Painted World
Alethia from Never-Ending Nail Art
Sarah from Dakila's
Amanda from Mandy's Polish
Lisa from Lisa's Nail Obsession
Kelly from Nails for the Sake of Sanity
Stephanie from All Things Beautiful
Martina from From Head to Foot

FiA#10 Favourite Sweater

This one had me stumped. My favourite sweater feels like wearing a hug, but it's got snowflakes on it and it's not winter yet, so I didn't want to do it =( Another time! The rest of my sweaters cause me some problems because they're solid colour cable-knit. So, well, that leaves me with a cable-knit pattern to attempt. I decided I wanted to put down a solid colour and draw over it in Sharpie.

I picked one of the sweaters I have from Bluenotes.

A very old photo of me in this sweater.... Ugh my hair O_o;

I chose Color Club Electro-Midnight

 After it dried, I drew on some stripes and on the index finger I tried to do the crossing that I think of when one says "cable-knit". Since it's Remembrance Day in Canada, I added a little poppy as well =)

The poppy is Revlon Get Reddy and LA Colors striper

This isn't my favourite design to be honest. I took it off and started planning my Autumn Dotticure (expect that soon!). Hopefully next time this comes up I'll have some more interesting sweaters =P

Check everyone else! They have much more interesting clothing.
Hannah from Polished Prisms
Stephanie from A Little Polish
Suer from Creative Nail Design By Sue
Katee from A Girl And Her Polish
Ashley from One Nail to Another
Karine Assemien from Karine's Vernis Club
Kayono Lan (aka Johanna) from Neues vom Kellerkind
Charlotte-Louise from Charlotte's Nails
Alyson Epstein from Beads. Nails. Food.
Maribeth from Obsessive Cosmetic Hoarders Unite
Becky from Glam Fiend
Angie from Our Painted World
Alethia from Never-Ending Nail Art
Sarah from Dakila's
Amanda from Mandy's Polish
Lisa from Lisa's Nail Obsession
Kelly from Nails for the Sake of Sanity
Stephanie from All Things Beautiful
Martina from From Head to Foot

FiA#9 Fall Ombre

Ahhh I'm falling behind! I've also run out of posts in the last week. Haven't painted my nails due to exams and papers and the TSSU, which I am part of (TA's student union) is going on strike and blahblahblah - it's just so stressful x_x This weekend was the first day I had some downtime. My last thing to do before Thursday is catch up on my psychology class for a midterm... Anyway, enough about me!

FALL. Fall colours are red, orange, yellow, gold, all those warm colours that make you think of hot drinks and blankets. I lined 'em up and picked some out. Looking at these, I knew what I wanted to end with.

Can you guess?

 From left to right: China Glaze Fast Track, KleanColor Bright Gold, Tivoli NP055, Julep Zoe and China Glaze Harvest Moon.

Surprisingly, this worked out rather well. I'm surprised because some of those colours look REAL close to each other but there's still an obvious progression. I'm getting better at this! =D

Check out the rest of the ombre/gradients the group did too!
Hannah from Polished Prisms
Stephanie from A Little Polish
Suer from Creative Nail Design By Sue
Katee from A Girl And Her Polish
Ashley from One Nail to Another
Karine Assemien from Karine's Vernis Club
Kayono Lan (aka Johanna) from Neues vom Kellerkind
Charlotte-Louise from Charlotte's Nails
Alyson Epstein from Beads. Nails. Food.
Maribeth from Obsessive Cosmetic Hoarders Unite
Becky from Glam Fiend
Angie from Our Painted World
Alethia from Never-Ending Nail Art
Sarah from Dakila's
Amanda from Mandy's Polish
Lisa from Lisa's Nail Obsession
Kelly from Nails for the Sake of Sanity
Stephanie from All Things Beautiful
Martina from From Head to Foot

FiA#8 Halloween!

This is a double-whammy nail art post (and therefore pic-heavy... sorry). It's taking care of my Halloween challenge item and also being entered into a nail art contest! I may do another Halloween manicure though, so keep your eyes open.

So I started with Del Sol Superhero on my right hand and Del Sol Chicky on my left, I did a gradient with the opposite colour on each hand. Because these are both really sheer, I brushed it on in layers instead, putting a coat down from 3/4s of the way from the tip to the tip, then from 1/2 way, then just glooping a bit on the tips themselves to get an opaque colour. Take a look.

Outside!

 I only got a picture of one hand outside because I couldn't get the other to change. Dunno what's up with today, isn't there supposed to be MORE UV light when it's cloudy?

You can see the colour comparison of fingers vs thumb

 It kinda pinked...

Anyway, the next step is to add a glow in the dark polish (WarPaint Glow-Turq) of course! You can't see much on the nails but it's kinda sparkly. My cell phone couldn't capture it in the dark, but that's coming, don't worry!

And now for the ART part of this post.

On my thumb, I used my LA Colors black striper. For the rest of my fingers, I used my trusty Sharpie.

Cemeteryyyy (What's on the pinkie??)

 Omg ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE AAHHH~~~

That's a hand coming out of the ground on the middle finger... Also, this was with my non-dominant hand

I sat on this post for DAYS waiting for the sun to come out and give me a decent colour change but alas =( And of course the day after I took it off, the sun poked out gloriously bright for almost the whole day. SIGH.

Good thing I could get some glow pics!

What do you thiiinkkk??? =D It's not as terrible as it could have been lol! And yes, that totally is a zombie pulling himself out of his grave on the pinkie!

Check all the others! Halloween is so much fun!
Hannah from Polished Prisms
Stephanie from A Little Polish
Suer from Creative Nail Design By Sue
Katee from A Girl And Her Polish
Ashley from One Nail to Another
Karine Assemien from Karine's Vernis Club
Kayono Lan (aka Johanna) from Neues vom Kellerkind
Charlotte-Louise from Charlotte's Nails
Alyson Epstein from Beads. Nails. Food.
Maribeth from Obsessive Cosmetic Hoarders Unite
Becky from Glam Fiend
Angie from Our Painted World
Alethia from Never-Ending Nail Art
Sarah from Dakila's
Amanda from Mandy's Polish
Lisa from Lisa's Nail Obsession
Kelly from Nails for the Sake of Sanity
Stephanie from All Things Beautiful
Martina from From Head to Foot