Rainbow Zebra- how to do the zebra print

Whew, I finally got this one edited and uploaded! Here's the second half of the rainbow zebra tutorial... Hopefully it makes sense!

I love the metallic sparkle of the left nail. It's sponged over silver, as opposed to the right which is over white.

I love zebras. They're cute!

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Another Fail...

Once again, I've got a total failed manicure to share with you today. I was experimenting with the Jessica Heavy Petal collection polishes again, this time going for a pink look. Unfortunately, it was a complete disaster.

I'm not sure what I was going for, but this clearly isn't it. I started with a base coat of Dazed Dahlia, which is such a beautiful deep hot pink. It's vibrant, but not too vibrant in my opinion.

I then wanted some texture to the background before I started stamping. I used Rolling Rose on my striping brush and added some slashy, stripey bits. I expected the Rolling Rose to add just a bit of texture and shimmer, but instead the stripes really showed up against the background! Not ideal, but I kept right on, hoping I could salvage something from this.

I pulled out my Salon Express stamping set to add some interest to my nails. I started with CND's Green Scene and stamped a swirly sun-type design on my ring finger. BLEAH! This just did NOT work. The green is too similar in value to Dazed Dahlia, so the colors meld into each other visually. No bueno!!

At this point, I knew I was basically not going to be able to save this one. I just stamped random designs from the Salon Express plates, mainly to see how they worked. I was happy with the stamps, I just with the overall design worked better!

Finally, I'll show you a closeup of my thumb... I think I went over this with the Jessica Holographic topcoat too, but I'm not sure. The sparkles are pretty, but this is just not a good look.

I apologize for not cleaning this one up, but I knew I was taking this off as soon as I got photos of it. Keep in mind, this is not a failure of the polishes. This is purely user error- I'm the failing part of this experiment!

So, help me out here- what do you do when you try a nail design that just doesn't work? Do you keep adding to it, hoping it'll work out? Do you say to heck with it before you're finished and take it off? Do you just shrug and keep it on? Leave me a comment and let me know!

Til next time!

Polishes were provided by the brand for consideration.

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KITTY! CHICKENS! MADNESS!!

This is Dusty. She is a gorgeous, long-haired lump of love!

I had the most awesome time last night. We went to visit a friend and her daughter, and stayed through lunch, all through the afternoon and til around 7pm! Craziness, but it was lots of fun. We played on the xBox Kinect (loads of fun, although my fibro disagreed!), told silly stories and laughed entirely too much.

Best of all were the kitty snuggles! Dusty (seen to the right) spent a while on the arm of the sofa next to me, and finally I couldn't take it any longer- I had to lift her into my lap. She stayed there for an hour at least!

And yes, for the record I am allergic to cats. I took Benadryl before I got to her house, and took another dose while I was there. My face still swelled a bit and my eyes were itchy, but it's so totally worth it to get kitty snuggles!

Rico is gorgeous, but uninterested in us at the moment.

Then there was Rico, the most adorable orange tabby ever! He's just as beautiful as Dusty, but he's got a slightly neurotic obsession... he loves paper. Specifically, he loves to lie down on paper. He was snuggling on my lap when he saw someone had put a piece of paper on the floor, and he actually jumped and ran to plop down onto it! So funny...

As you can see, he also likes being under the paper. My son got the idea to put the paper on Rico and he just stayed like this for quite a while!

Then my son decided to see what all he could put on top of the kitty. Turns out? Quite a bit.



Yea.We laughed our tushies off! Too much fun... I love his reaction at the end, like, "Whoa, what the heck was THAT?!"

And with that, I think I'm going to head to bed. I'm pooped! Later!

There isn't much kitty snuggles can't cure, other than cat allergies.

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Sketchbook update!

Join me again for a walk through my sketchbooks, looking at the various things that have wandered through my mind and found an exit into the world through my pens.

What can I say, it's crowded in there, and kinda weird. Ok, very weird.

I'm going to start out with my current favorite piece. I started doodling it without intending for it to get bigger, but... well, see for yourself.

This started with lips at the bottom of the page. If you look closely, you can see notes for the blog and a blog shopping list under her hair. I figured this would just be lips, because I doodle a lot of just lips lately. But then I added a nose, and it actually looked passable for once! But the nose needed something on top of it. There was a flower under the sunglasses, so drawing an eye would have been awkward at best.

So then I had a face, with sunglasses and a nose and some seriously-injected-with-lip-fillers lips. The face seemed to need something to balance it, though, so I added a headband slightly off-center for that pseudo-hipster look. My niece had colored the heart for me at the crawfish boil recently, so all I needed to do was add the purple band.

But she clearly needed more... the headband wasn't nearly enough. I started working on bangs, but didn't like them at all. I decided to start with some curls at the top right of the headband. Once I got to a certain point, though, I realized she needed a pompadouresque poof. (Yes, I've been watching a lot of drag queen hair tutorials on youtube lately. Why do you ask?)

As you can see? Her hair kinda exploded, in a gorgeous, taste-the-rainbow kinda way. I'm still not finished with her, and my biggest regret is that she's on lined paper. BOOO! Still, I can always redo her if I get the urge. She'd be fun painted on a canvas!

Ok, since I've got an absolute ton of photos here, I'm gonna tuck them under the cut so you can skip 'em if you want and they don't clog up your feed reader. You can thank me by leaving a comment! ;)

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!.

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No April Fools Jokes Here.

Just a quick post to say I won't be doing any April Fools jokes here. I'm really not that fond of them, because I don't like trying to make my friends feel foolish. Call me crazy!! :D

That's all... there will be more fun stuff tomorrow though. Later!

No fools here, just love!

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It's Giveaway Time! Sponsored by Verve 360 hair salons in Pittsburgh.

EDIT:  I knew I'd forget something! I added two more ways to enter to the Rafflecopter widget. Also, this giveaway is open til April 10, 2012. Sorry, I'm a goofball.

Life is good! Not only have I had an awesome bump in readers lately, I've also had some really great emails. One email was from Verve 360, a fantastic group of hair salons in Pittsburgh, PA. They'd seen my recent post on making custom nail decals with scrapbook punches and really liked it!

After several emails, we decided that we were going to do a giveaway together! I'm really excited about this one, because the prize is two absolutely gorgeous Zoya polishes. I kind of wish I could enter my own giveaway!

The winner will receive two brand new bottles of Zoya polish from their True spring 2012 collection- Skylar and Lotus. Skylar is described as "a medium steel blue with a softened, dusty look and speckled by visible gold and silver shimmer flecks. A soft blue that's bold without being too dark, bright or flashy." Lotus is described as "A saturated, red-toned grape purple with speckled shimmer that reflects gold, orange and red. Bold and saturated warm color made even more interesting with color-shifting shimmer."

Entering is really simple, too. I've fallen in love with Rafflecopter for my giveaways since it makes things so easy, both for entering and for picking a winner! Unfortunately, this giveaway is only open for the continental US. One of these days, once I'm a bit ahead financially, I plan to do some international giveaways. For now, I'm limited though... I hope you guys understand!

This giveaway is open until April 10, 2012. So, go ahead and enter! :D