2015 Valentine's Day Challenge - Love & Kisses

Happy belated Valentine's Day! I'm here, late again, for the last installment of the Valentine's Day Challenge. My life has been so hectic recently, which is not a good excuse because everyone is busy, am I right? Alas, here I am, with my last mani anyway.

I did a pink french tip with fun hearts that ended up look like stickers.

French tip color is Color Club Ultraviolet. Hearts were done with black acrylic paint and Color Club Foil Me Once. I love that color for nail art! It's gorgeous and opaque. Easy to work with.

Below is a picture inside in dimmer light with Color Club Ultraviolet. I love the turquoise sheen.

This was a fun challenge and even though I didn't quite finish it with the group, it was a blast. Hope everyone else enjoyed it as much as I did. 

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2015 Valentine's Day Challenge - Roses

Everything is coming up roses - isn't that the saying? Love it.

I chose to do a lilac one brush stroke rose. At my wedding, I held sterling roses. They are so beautiful.

Base color is Glitter Gal Suede 3D/Holo. Very pretty neutral medium brown/tan with white and purple water-based, nontoxic acrylic paint using the one stroke technique. There are tons of tutorials and videos on this technique if you haven't seen how to do it yet!

I think my thumb and forefinger had the best roses.

Purple is always so hard to capture correctly. Here is an inside picture (plus a striped sock in the background! ugh) that shoes the purple better. 

Picture of my right hand. My left hand is not as good at nail art and it turned out more like multicolored blobs, but they were good enough to wear to work!

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2015 Valentine's Day Challenge - Red Passion

Hello lovelies! Halfway through the challenge already, can you believe it? Time flies, that's for sure.

Today is Red Passion. For some reason, when I think of intense passion, I think of black and red. It might be because those are my husband's favorite colors in combination.

I chose to do a simple black nail with Wet N Wild Black Creme with a glitter gradient of Wet N Wild On The 101. Please excuse the extra dry skin. I just washed my hands from doing my makeup and didn't notice it until I started editing pictures... Gotta love macro.

I'm still working on these glitter gradients. They're tough to get right.

My thumb was my favorite. More nail space to get a good gradient. There would be ore pictures but I smudged them while photographing. How exactly, I have no idea.

I'll show you one anyway, just for effect. Squint a little and you might not notice the smudge! haha

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2015 Valentine's Day Challenge - Glitter Hearts

Hello everyone! I'm a day late with this post and I am so sorry. I had a family emergency and had to leave town abruptly and just got back in. My husband was unpacking the car while I was getting my nail stuff out. Priorities!

I chose to do some light pink glitter hearts over a dark grey flat color. Zoya Loredana is supposed to be a matte but it didn't look very matte today and I haven't unpacked my matte topcoats yet or I would have slapped that on.

The hearts were done using Color Club Foil Me Once, a fantastic light pink foil that is fairly opaque in one coat so it created a nice pink base for the glitter. OPI Teenage Dream was dabbed on the hearts.

I didn't use a top coat as I wanted Loredana to remain flat/matte and the hearts to stand out. Since I dabbed the polish, it's almost a 3-D effect. Ha!

The glitter is so beautiful and multidimensional but I couldn't quite capture it. I did lots of pics in full sunlight but it didn't quite work. You kind of get the idea though I hope!

Again, sorry I'm late on this one! Hopefully there will be no more emergencies.

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2015 Valentine's Day Challenge - Soft Pink

Another day, another mani. That's my motto.

I did makeup for today's theme but the pictures did not turn out well. I still haven't figured out the lighting in this new house. I may need to break down and buy some daylight bulbs and set up a lightbox for nails and makeup. I was lucky at my old place, we had tons of good lighting. That's how I remember it anyway!

I went straight with this one and just used a soft pink. OPI Suzi Pedal Faster is a fantastic cool light pink with silver shimmer. Very soft. I love it. It did require three coats for full coverage, but OPI has such a fantastic formula it didn't matter. Still dried easily and quickly.

That picture was the only color accurate one I could get without getting crazy with the editing. 

I only had one good picture of the makeup and it's included below. Lips!

Benefit Posie-tint which is a soft but still bright pink lip stain that I adore and wear often. I think it's the best of the entire tint collection.

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2015 Valentine's Day Challenge - Romantic Lace

Hello lovelies! So I've run into some trouble since moving recently, which includes losing my cable to transfer photos from my camera to my computer. I'm on the hunt but have only figured that out this morning. So you get phone camera photos. Sorry! Boy am I glad I took some on the phone though, or this would have been a disaster!

When I think of romantic lace, I generally think of something soft, like white lace on a light pink or beige, but I decided to be a little risqué and do black lace on a bright color.

Base color is OPI A Definite Moust-Have from the 2013 Minnie Mouse Collection. Lacework done with a Sharpie marker. I may have to do more nail art work with markers. My problem is that I have trouble getting rounded edges with a brush.


   

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