Showing posts with label sponged. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sponged. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Zoya Diva Collection Gradient

This month's pain doc appointment came around and I was feeling the urge to break into the fall colors. I decided to go with the Zoya Diva collection, a collection of metallic polishes that absolutely sing to me. I chose three colors: Elisa (red), Suri (purple), and Song (blue). I had a feeling these would be absolutely gorgeous together, and they really were.
However, I had a small problem. I didn't take my own advice and either tape around my nails or use a cuticle cream before stamping on the gradient. This left me with a lot of heavily pigmented color around my nails, and oh my gosh, was that ever annoying!

I cleaned around my cuticles, I swear I did. In fact, I cleaned around my cuticles for 75 minutes with acetone. No wimpy polish remover would work for this, and I was prepared. I went in with the big guns, and the big guns failed. After 75 minutes of cleanup, I finally gave up and said to heck with it, what I had was good enough.

This was very, very depressing. It didn't look quite this bad in person, but you could still see that I had pretty screwed-up cuticles. So, learn from my mistakes:  if you do a gradient like this, please use tape or something. This is just no fun to clean up!

... it sure was pretty, though. :D


Polishes were provided by Zoya for consideration.
See my disclosure statement for more information.

Sunday, April 15, 2012

Princess P-Nut's Zebra Nails

Ahh, weekends! We went to our friend's house again yesterday and this time I brought my nail polishes with me! I'd planned to do nails for more than just her daughter, but the fibro monster reared its head and said, "Nope, you're done!" At least I was able to get hers done!

We decided to call her Princess P'nut, courtesy of her mom. They'd seen my video on making sponged ombre nails and P'nut was really wanting rainbow nails. She also loved the zebra, so together we picked out the colors for her gradient. She chose different colors than I'd used, and I think they worked well together!

She also chose to put rainbow sparkles over the rainbow gradient but under the zebra stripes, unlike the way I'd done mine. I used Jessica Silver Holographic topcoat for the sparkles this time. I love that polish!

Since I'd left my acrylic paints at home, I used Princess P'Nut's acrylic craft paints to do the zebra stripes. As you can see, they came out just as well as with my artist's grade acrylic. Proof that you don't need to spend a ton on acrylic paints!

However, it's obvious that even though I brought my cleanup brush, I'm just not as good at cleanup on other people as I am on myself. I clearly missed lots of stuff, but my that point I was pretty tired and shaky. Ah well, it'll come off in the bath!

Princess P'nut absolutely loved her nails, and kept looking at them off and on. I was so happy! I love sharing the fun of nail art, and she definitely enjoyed it!

The rest of the day was lots of fun too! P'nut's mom made burrito fixings, and those were absolutely delicious! Then she'd made a blackberry cobbler, and we brought chocolate chip cookies. Way too much deliciousness... but who's complaining?

I can't talk about visiting without mention the snugglebunny animals. When I first sat down, Rico ran over and hopped into my lap! He let me scritch him for 10 minutes or so, then was finished. Cats are so mercurial!

Later in the day, we all went to sit in the grass and watch the chickens play in the leaves... such cuties! My husband snapped this gorgeous shot of Rico blatantly ignoring the chickens. He's so beautiful!

There's just something about orange cats that I love. I've yet to meet an orange tabby that wasn't a sweetiepie!

Finally, I have to share this picture of Boo the dachshund. Poor baby had been lying on the back sofa cushions and ended up slipping down behind them. He tried and tried to get out, but his little legs were just too short! Meanie that I am, I just had to get a picture of him looking so dejected.

We helped him up not long after this photo was taken. Surprisingly enough, he ended up sitting on my lap for a good two hours! Normally if his favorite person is home, he's sitting with her. But even though she was home, he'd decided he was snuggling me instead!

At one point, he'd been lying with his front half draped across my lap. He stretched and rolled over onto his back, with his little front legs sort of poking into the air, and he leaned his head back and started making the cutest little wheezy whimpers of contentment! I was absolutely squeeful!

So yea... yesterday was filled with lots of laughter, good food and good friends. You can't ask for more than that!

There's a reason I'm not a nail tech.
See my disclosure statement for more information.

Monday, April 2, 2012

A video tutorial on doing a sponged gradient nail!

I got such a great response to the sponged gradient tutorial I did. Unfortunately, quite a few people posted that they didn't quite follow my steps, so I decided the best thing to do was to do a video tutorial! That way, it's clear what I'm doing and when.

Recording the video didn't take all that long, but holy cow did editing it take a long time! Thankfully it didn't make me want to scream or cry this time. I just need more experience editing, which is a good thing. That means you'll get lots more videos to come!



I'm also working on the followup to this video, where I'll show you how to add the zebra stripes. That's actually a pretty doable process, if I can get the energy and the time to shoot it!

Since I'm doing more videos now, why not leave me a comment to let me know what sort of tutorials you'd like to see? I have several planned, but I'm always looking for more ideas.

Thanks for watching, and if you liked this video why not thumb it up and subscribe? It would totally make my day!
Wheee, I'm finally enjoying making videos!.
See my disclosure statement for more information.