Monochromatic Medly

Hi again. It's still all kinds of pukey at my house, so we'll look at another blast from the past. Anything to distract me, yes?

This design is another monochromatic look. I was again looking to show that you don't need a ton of colors or tools to make pretty nail art. I think it worked decently!

The steps for this one are simple, and could be switched up easily based on whatever you have on hand. You don't need a lot to do this.

Supplies needed:

• base coat
• three shades of nail polish: a dark shade, a medium shade, and a light shade.
• accent pieces
• top coat
• something to make blobs with

For accent pieces, you could use just about anything: glitter polish, glitter in various sizes or shapes, striping tape, rhinestones, flat-backed pearls, or stickers. This would be gorgeous with a line of tiny swarovski crystals accenting the line, or with little flower rhinestones. You could also accent a few of the light-colored blobs with glitter polish for a bit more shine. What can I say, I'm all about the glitter!

It breaks down something like this:

1. Paint your nails with your base coat.
2. Paint your nails with your darkest color. For this design I used black.
3. Paint one corner with your midtone color. I used silver.
4. Paint splotches of your lightest color over the darkest color. I used white.
5. Add a line of accent pieces along the midtone color. I used silver holographic rhombus glitter from Born Pretty.
6. Add topcoat.

A design like this can also be tweaked to fit different situations. You could replace the spotches with little hearts for valentine's day, use purple green and gold for Mardi Gras, use earth tones for fall or pastels for spring. You could use tiny flower stickers in place of the white blobs, or shiny hearts.

It really is up to you, and can be silly, bright or elegant. I worked up quite a few variations, just to give you an idea of just how versatile this type of design is!

 

 

 

So again, I feel like I can't say this often enough: experiment! Play with your polishes, try things out together. Try different colors together to see if they work, and if you like it, go for it! It's only nail polish, and no mistakes are permanent!

Til next time!

Rhombus glitter was provided by Born Pretty for consideration.

See my disclosure statement for more information.

Making Faces With My Husband

Let me start by saying my husband rarely shows any interest in my nails. He thinks nail art is kind of silly, but he loves how much fun I have with my nail art and my blog. But recently he happened to be looking over my shoulder while I was cropping some pictures. Things got interesting then...

I was working on these photos of the stamped Bordello nails with a coat of Maybelline's Matte Maker. The matte topcoat did something interesting to Bordello- the satin finish somehow highlighted the shimmer in it, causing it to have a sheen almost like fabric. It's almost magical, really, seeing the change it made. I think I'll be using this Matte Maker again, perhaps to highlight areas on a nail design instead of over the entire nail.

Whew, that was long-winded! Anyway, so I'm working on a closeup of my thumbnail to show the pattern when my husband said, "That looks like a face!"

I turned to him, raised an eyebrow and said, "... wait, what?"

"A face," he continued. "You know, the eyes would go there, and the mouth..." He gestured with his hands, pointing in the general direction of my thumbnail photo.

I didn't know what to say, really. "I love you baby, but you're kinda weird," I said to him, giggling.

For some reason, he wouldn't take no for an answer. "No, really! Do it! Draw a face!"

So I did. He sat with me and told me where to put what, what colors to choose, even where to put the highlight in the eyes. It was cute, and I had to share. I had to tell him that it wasn't exactly what i would have drawn, though. Then he told me fine, to draw my own...

And so I did.

Mine was girlier. I think she could use some hair, too, but overall I think you get the idea. He liked my drawing too, and said she was cuter than his.

Then he dared me to post it to my blog. How could I say no? Besides, I thought it might make someone giggle...

Right?

Anyone?

Please tell me I haven't lost my mind. Please? :D

Manicure is done with Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab's Claw Polish in Bordello, Maybelline  Matte Gold stamped using Konad image plate m79, topped with a coat of Seche Vite, then a coat of Maybelline's Matte Maker top coat. BPAL's Bordello was provided by the company for evaluation.

Nail Art Mockups In My Sketchbook

Eek! This was supposed to post and didn't. I'm going to backdate it and put it up anyway. Sorry for the weirdness you may have to deal with!

I've kept a sketchbook for years. It goes back to when I was in art school. Those teachers made us buy a sketchbook every semester, the fancy hard-back kind with the special paper inside. I was always so intimidated by those books that it was too hard to let go and let myself doodle in them. We didn't have a lot of money back then, so the idea of spending $25 on a sketchbook to doodle in and goof off? It felt like sacrilege! Hardback sketchbooks deserved actual art on their pages, things that were more finished. My poor doodles and scribbles felt as if I was defacing the pages instead of building my skills!

Even now, 12 years later, most of those books are mostly empty. I still feel weird putting my strange rambles and doodles into them, because it feels like my scribblings aren't worthy of such a quality book. The good news is that I've found a way around that idea. Instead of using the giant, expensive sketchbooks I go to Office Depot or one of the big-box stores and get cheap notebooks. Some have unlined paper, some have lined paper, some even have graph paper! Because they're so inexpensive, I can write grocery lists or poetry on them, I can sketch things that are bizarre and silly. They're my sketchbooks, and I'd be lost without them.

I don't just sketch in them. There are lists of things to do, ideas for stories, ideas for nail art,  character studies. I'll list quotes from the moment, observations from daily life, descriptions of events that made me laugh. Sometimes I'll jot down funny things that happened to me along with a sketch to convey information. It's a small, working record of my life, both creative and not, that I can flip through for inspiration for for reminders to do things I need to do.

One thing I've recently started doing is creating mock-ups of nail art designs. My sketchbook works perfectly for this, since the nail polish doesn't seep through the page. It sits nicely on top, dries quickly, and creates a permanent record of nail art inspiration for me! I'll also jot down where the idea came from, like in this picture to the right. Luxuriousnails on youtube does wonderful nail art. Check her out!

Not all of my nail art mock-ups are done with nail polish, though. Sometimes I'll be sitting and doodling, playing with variations on a theme. In this photo, I was playing with variations on bold graphic visual elements, like concentric squares and varying sizes of circles. I very much enjoy bold elements like these, although repeating them with nail polish can be quite a chore. I have plans to try out my gel pens with a pale polish, or my opaque gel pens with a darker polish. I love the idea of neons on black... I think neon bubbles on black could be lots of fun!

I have more pics after the jump...