Mint Mani for TaliaJoy

I'm a day late with posting this, but I really wanted to take part in Nail Polish Wars' wonderful idea to create a mint manicure in honor of Talia Castellano aka TaliaJoy18. If you have not heard of Talia, she was a beautiful 13 year old girl, a talented make-up and nail artist, honorary Cover Girl and an all around sweetheart who never stopped smiling. Sadly, she lost her battle with cancer last Tuesday. Her last Instagram pic was a mint manicure, so to honor her here this is my mint mani...

Sunday Stamping: New Year Party Nails

I'm not fully back to blogging from all the holiday madness, but I didn't want to miss out on the last Sunday Stamping challenge this year. The challenge is to create New Year party nails. Even though this manicure won't last until actual New Years eve, since I have something else in mind, it was fun to make...

Hanukkah

Today I wanted to show you my first Hanukkah manicure this year. I showed a sneak peek of it on my Facebook page a few days ago, so you might have seen it if you follow me there. I "lit" the candles one at a time, but of course I'm not patient enough to wear this for eight days, so they all got done on the same day. There is a little animation treat when you get down to the bottom of the post...

Polish Days: MAN-icure

You may have already heard the term Movember combining the words men and November. It is a wonderful month long event to raise awareness for men's health such as prostate and testicular cancer. According to Wikipedia, Movember started when a group of young men decided to raise awareness by growing moustaches during the month of November. Moustaches have since become the symbol of Movember.

It is only fitting then, that this month's theme for Polish Days is a MAN-icure to honor the event or the special men in our lives. I toyed with the idea of just doing the iconic moustache, but ended up with something a bit different and personal for me...

Nail-aween Challenge Day 8: Witch

I hope you are all having a bewitching Friday. I'm trying to keep up with the Nail-aween challenge with just a few days left until the big day. The witchy manicure kind of had me stumped, the only thing I knew for sure was the witch was going to be stamped. I first thought to put her over a moon background, then maybe some sort of orange gradient and finally settled on a night sky using a few of my piCture pOlish favorites...

Nail-aween Challenge Day 7: Spiders

In typical spider fashion, Day 7 of the Nail-aween challenge just snuck up on me. I'm not really ready to admit that Halloween is just a week away. For today's spider challenge I was really excited to play with the spiderweb pattern on the first Bundle Monster set. It may seem insignificant  but I'm pretty sure I bought the whole set just for that pattern. It is really one of those patterns I can picture a dozen or more different manicures with. Here is one that has actually made it onto the nails...

Sunday Stamping: Halloween

Just ten days left until the spooky day of Halloween so it is no surprise that the popular vote for this week's Sunday Stamping challenge in Adventure is Stamping is a Halloween themed manicure. I chose to skip the really dark and scary for today and go for cute instead. The idea for the manicure came from the fact that we are having some friends over later today to carve pumpkins. It only seemed fitting that I dig up all the jack-o-lantern images to play with for inspiration...

Sunday Stamping: Gold, Silver & Bronze

It is official, some manicure should just stay in my head and never be translated onto nail. I think this is one of them. This week the in the group Adventures in Stamping the challenge was to create a mani with gold, silver or bronze. Naturally my mind went straight to the Olympics and dreaming up this mess, which I swear looked much better in my head...

Sunday Stamping: Pet Day

After my failed Sunday Stamping attempt, I decided to rethink the mani and come up with something else. I was still set on a kitty manicure so I picked two other kitties that I liked. Somehow these are a little more Halloween to me which is why I didn't choose them at first, but I really like how this turned out...

Sunday Stamping: The Sky's the Limit

It is Sunday again, which means another edition of Sunday Stamping in the group Adventures in Stamping. The challenge for today is "The Sky's the Limit." The title first had me fooled into thinking it was a free for all, but turns out it had to be something sky related including things that can be found in the sky such as clouds, birds, etc...

Mother's Day and Sunday Stamping

First I would like to wish all the moms out there a very Happy Mother's Day! I wish you all a wonderful day and hope you get spoiled as you deserve! May you always 'bee' happy! :)

The manicure today had a lot of self-imposed requirements to meet. I wanted it to be Spring-like, have flowers for Mother's Day and use a stamping plate ending in 5 (the theme for today's Sunday Stamping challenge in the group Adventures in Stamping). I'm quite happy to say that all the requirements were met and I can rest easy.

Curious Puppy Prints...

I often get the urge to try a gradient with similar colors within a collection. Just as often it doesn't work out as I imagined since the colors are too similar. Such was the case with Color Club Incognito and Give Me a Hint. Give Me a Hint turned out to be too light and sheer to create a nice gradient. Rather than give up and start over, I added Barielle Tight Knit into the mix to darken up the tip of the gradient.

piCture pOlish Denim with Lace

Today I went with something simple and classic... denim and lace. Denim is a lovely piCture pOlish lacquer. It is really one of those polishes that I had to see in person to appreciate. The swatches online just can't capture the true complexity of this polish. To make it classy I added lace using Wet 'n Wild French White Creme and the Shany stamp SH21.

Sunday Stamping using Multiple Stamps Over a Gradient

After taking two weeks off from Sunday Stamping challenges, I am excited to once again participate. Every week the members of the group Adventures in Stamping vote on a challenge theme. For the first time this week there was a tie between choices, stamping over a gradient and stamping using multiple stamps. Since both won, I thought it would be fun to combine both challenges in the same manicure.

Hawaiian Sunset

This is an exciting post for me because it means that tomorrow I will be heading off on my vacation to Hawaii. I will be sneaking away with my mom for some much needed rest and relaxation as we leave our boys to fend for themselves. To mark the occasion, I created a Hawaiian Sunset manicure. I've seen ones like this before and have always wanted to try it...

I started out with two coats of Color Club Almost Famous (yellow) and sponged towards the base of the nail with Color Club Warhol (neon pink). These are both from the Color Club POPtastic collection and happen to be the same colors used in the flames manicure a few months ago. On top of Warhol, at the base of the nail, I sponged Sinful Colors Let's Talk, a pretty metallic purple. The tip was then sponged with Wet 'n Wild Black Creme.

The palm tree was stamped using Wet 'n Wild Black Creme and Shany plate SC19. Since the stamped palm tree is just an outline and I wanted it fully shaded, I filled in the shape with a small detail brush and black acrylic paint. I love how this turned out. I'm hoping to see a sunset just like this...

Here was the image that I used for inspirations. I found it here. Such an amazing sunset...

Source

I would love to know what you think of this!

Also, just to let you know, I have prepared swatches and some nail art for the time that I will be gone. I do not plan on having internet access, so I will respond to any comments left when I return! :D

Thanks for looking!
Anutka :)