31 Day Challenge: Violet

The base coat for this mani is Essie DJ Play That Song, which I totally had to use because *ahem* I happen to be DJ. Yay! It's a fun life, but not the road to riches.

I used acrylic paints to add the details to the "One Eyed One Horned Flying Purple People Eater" but in retrospect I should have added wings. 

Click here to see my violet nails from 2011, the tragic Buffy themed nails.

Reinventing the Half Moon Manicure

Ok, so I am not really reinventing the Half Moon mani, but I did try something I have never done before and I did it using only nail polish, no acrylic paints, which is usually what I would reach for with something like this.

I present the Apple Half Moon Manicure! Yes, it is very simple but I like the way it turned out. I used Essie Adore-A-Ball as my base color, then added a tiny half moon of Sinful Colors Innocent, a beautiful apple green colored polish. I modeled this after the Sebastopol Gravenstein Apple, which has lovely red, green, yellow, and white stripes along its skin. Using my nail art brush and tiny amounts of various other nail polishes, I added the stripes. I think I used Sinful Colors Snow Me White, OPI Big Hair Big Nails, and Orly Fresh for the stripes. 

Next I mixed a tiny bit of Wet N Wild Ebony Hates Chris with the Sinful Color Innocent green shade. Again using my tiny nail art brush, I carefully applied it to the top of the apple to give the impression of shading where the stem sits. Then I mixed Wet N Wild Ebony Hates Chris together with OPI San Tan-tonio to make the stem. I added highlights to the top of the apple using Sinful Colors Snow Me White mixed with Innocent, and also a tiny bit of pure Snow Me White. I topped it with Seche Vite quick drying top coat. 

I think this is a fun, unexpected way to wear a half moon manicure. I was inspired to try this reinvention manicure by The Lacquer Legion. Each month there will be a new theme for a nail challenge. This one was really fun! Be sure to check out The Lacquer Legion on facebook.

Have a great day!

Groundhog Day!

It's the 20 year anniversary of the best movie about a rodent EVAR. Groundhog Day is such a fun movie, and I am shocked that Bill Murray did not win an Oscar for his performance as Phil Connors, the snarky weatherman who hates covering Groundhog Day every year. I did this quick nail art as an homage to little Phil The Groundhog. Will he see his shadow on Saturday, or won't he?

Super kawaii! It better be an early spring, or the groundhog gets it!

I started with a base of Essie Bikini So Teeny. I get lots of compliments on this color, it is so striking! And it really levels well, so easy to apply.

I added the artwork using acrylic craft paints.

After all of the artwork was done, I applied a topcoat of Seche Vite to seal it in and protect it. "This is pitiful. A thousand people freezing their butts off waiting to worship a rat. What a hype. Groundhog Day used to mean something in this town. They used to pull the hog out, and they used to eat it. You're hypocrites, all of you!"

Happy Groundhog Day!

Gradient Graveyard

I've been a little bit behind on the Halloween Challenge posts. Sorry about that! I have been covering for coworkers and just did a major broadcast from Napa that required three trips to the site to get it done. I would prefer not to drive to Napa again any time soon, LOL.

Today I am combining two of the challenge topics together: gradient (today's challenge) and graveyard. They really work well together!

Creeeeeepy! It is supposed to look like the mist on a an overcast day in a sinister graveyard. And who is that specter amongst the tombstones?!?! Run! Save yourselves!!!!

I started with Essie Blanc for my base, then did a gradient using Essie Blanc, Zoya Dove, and a franken of Wet n Wild black and white. I searched through my stash to see if I had a dark grey that might work, but realized I only had light greys. And like 5 bottles of basically the same grey color. Don't tell my husband, ha ha.

Then I used white and black acrylic paints to make the graveyard and spooky ghosty guy. Making the items in the background lighter makes them appear to be further away. Be sure to check out the other people who did a Halloween Challenge today too! 

My next etsy sale is coming up this evening in about 2 hours, so if you were looking for my Halloween collection of polishes, this will be your last chance! Here is the link to my store. The sale will be at 6:30pm Pacific Time (9:30pm Eastern) today, October 22nd.

Rubber Duckie Nails and Giveaway!

Here are some Rubber Duckie nails I have entered into Chalkboard Nails nail art contest. Sarah said we couldn't use acrylic paints, so I didn't, but DANG it is a lot harder to do nail art with nail polish. Sarah's contest is for either warm colors or cool colors, so I went with warm. :)

My technique for this art was similar to working with acrylic paints (but more of a pain in the butt), and I used the same small nail art brush I normally use. I painted white silhouettes of duckies on my nails first to make sure the colors would pop.

Here are the polishes I used in this manicure. The base color is Essie "Orange, It's Obvious!" Love that color! And I don't remember the names of all the others, but there you go.

I just hit my ONE YEAR BLOGIVERSARY for Sonoma Nail Art. Yay! So to celebrate, I am giving away one set of my Halloween Nail Art polishes. :) I will do a simple Rafflecopter giveaway. This is open INTERNATIONALLY, so everyone can enter. I do ask you to be a follower of my blog, and you can get an additional entry for following my facebook fan page. Deadline for entry is 9/19/12 and winner will be announced on 9/20/12. Please make sure you leave an email address so I can contact you if you are the winner.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

And finally! This is also the 120th post on my blog. Every 20 posts, I make a donation to Women's Recovery Services in Sonoma County. They help women transitioning out of addiction, and I think this is a great way to have my blog do a little bit of good. We all know that a pretty manicure can really boost your self esteem, and I want to help empower woman in my community to feel good about themselves and improve their lives. If you would like to make a donation, click here to find out more about Women's Recovery Services. 

Monochrome Monday

Late in posting, sorry about that! A few of my polish friends and I decided to do monochrome manicures today, and here is mine. 

It's Rick and Ilsa from Casablanca! Okay, my Bogart is not great (his face is too long), but I think I got Ingrid Bergman fairly well! On my index and pinky finger are sections of film. (Film is that stuff that movies used to be recorded onto, I know so retro!)

I started with white nails using Essie Blanc for the base, (oooo, I just realized that I used a polish called Blanc for my Casablanca nail art!! I'm so cool!) and then used only black and white acrylic paints to make the artwork on my nails. 

Here you can see Rick has more shading and I adjusted a few things, but still is face is too long. I am very happy with Ilsa. :) Topped with Seche Vite and cut! Print, that's a wrap. 

It's All Greek Key To Me

Here is my entry for the Chalkboard Nails Dotting Tool Contest. Sarah's rules are that you can only use a dotting tool (and the brush on your nail polish bottles) to make your entry. No acrylic paints, no tiny nail art brushes. Boo. But it was a great way to challenge myself. Here is what I came up with:

It's a Greek 'key' design! It looks kind of like mosaic. I like it!

I started with a base of Essie Borrowed and Blue. I really love this shade. I've used it before on one of my first blog posts when I did the raven mani. Check that out here. 

I used my smallest dotting tool to make a sort of french mani with dark blue polish and a sort of teal blue polish. This mani on its own would look pretty cool.

Then I did the Greek key design. There was actually quite a bit of counting and plotting to do this. Grrr.... I was told there would be no math! :)

Here is the Greek key design completed. Seeing as this was kind of a pain to do, I just did one more key design on my ring finger and called it a night. 

Even one accent nail is still fun!

Polishes used in this manicure: China Glaze Happy Go Lucky, China Glaze Aqua Baby, Essie Borrowed and Blue, and Pure Ice French Kiss. I used OPI Nail Envy for my base coat and Seche Vite for my top coat. 

You still have time to enter Sarah's contest! Check out all of the fun entries, there's some great talent out there. :)

Writer's Block Nails and 500 Followers Winner!

I laughingly call this mani my Writer's Block Nails because I painted my digits with Essie Blanc, meaning to do something for my friend Sarah's Dotting Tool Contest, and this is what I ended up wearing for 3 days. o.O

Yeah, not very inspired. I am happy to report that I did eventually come up with a design for Sarah's contest and I will post those soon. Meanwhile, I am thrilled to announce that Courtney Young is the winner of my 500 Follower contest! I asked you to paint your nails using your favorite color (you didn't have to do any artwork, but it certainly was welcome) and submit it for voting on Facebook. Courtney's nails received the most likes and she has won a selection of 6 nail polishes in my favorite hue: blue!

Here is what Courtney said about her sushi nails: "I used Zoya Apple and did some sushi nail art over it. Thanks so much for the contest. I can't wait to see everyone else's favorites!"

There really were some great entries and I thank everyone for sending in your photos and for voting on your favorites. I loved every single entry. 

Show Me Your Mug

I did this manicure for a contest on Constantly Redone's blog. It is such a fun idea, I may have to do it again! She loves coffee mugs so she asked for manicures inspired by coffee mugs/tea cups. I absolutely adore my Starbucks coffee mug (I paid waaaaayyyy too much for it) so this is the mug I chose to depict in my manicure.

It's the Starbucks mermaid with some fun swirly designs (maybe they are coffee plant flowers and pods?) with some great coffee bean accents in bronze.

I started with a base of Essie Very Structured nail polish. This is a beautiful milk chocolate brown color, but one that my hubby prefers to call 'poo nails'. Hardy har har.

Here is the coffee mug that I used for my design. My hubs steals it all of the time, even though it is MY mug. I walked past it at Sbucks so many times when I first saw it, because it was just too expensive. Like $15 or something ridiculous. But then I finally broke down when they only had one left, and I bought it. It's such a good mug!

Here's my right hand, and I am pretty happy with how it turned out, even though some fingers were a little wonky. The middle finger is supposed to be a coffee cup in bronze, and the thumb is supposed to be a seashell in bronze. It's really hard to paint any good detail with my non-dominant hand.

All of the artwork was made with acrylic paints, and here is the nail polish base I used: Essie Very Structured. I liked this mani so much, I really want to do another set using one of the teacups from my grandma. They are so beautiful!

Every Cloud Has a Holo Lining

I think this mani was better in my head than it turned out to be... but I still like it! I tried to do a sky near dusk with pink tinged clouds floating along, and each little cloud has a silver (holographic) lining.

I started by layering a LOT of polishes, I mean TONS! In the following picture, there are 8 layers of polish. You can see that I didn't allow the polish to completely dry after each layer and when I applied Seche Vite topcoat, it freaked out! It's all squiggly. I had to wait and come back to this mani the next day and reapply a layer of Seche Vite to smooth it out. 

See, squiggly.

After I got it to smooth out a bit, I used acrylic paints to make the fluffy pink clouds. To the bottom of each cloud I applied a bit of holographic sparkle. I was a little too light handed, you can barely see the holo-y goodness. 

Here are the two hands together, and if you look closely, you can see that the underside of the clouds do shine a bit. And actually, now that I look at it from further away, it's kinda pretty like this!

Up close shot where you can see some of the holo.

The bazillion polishes I used in this mani (not counting Nail Envy and Seche Vite!): OPI What's With the Cattitude?, OPI Skull and Glossbones, Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure Delphinium, Essie Walk Down The Aisle, OPI I Juggle... Men, China Glaze OMG. Whew!

And here is a link to the song I was humming when I wrote this post. :)

31 Day Nail Art Challenge: Inspired by a Pattern

Today's nails are inspired by the pattern on Sally's dress from Nightmare Before Christmas! I thought this was a perfect way to do a Halloween pattern mani. I first saw the patchwork-style on the whole nail manicure done by Kayla Shevonne. You can see her amazing patchwork manicure by clicking here. I did not do my patchwork in the same way she did hers, by starting with the black, but I like both styles and they are really fun! Also, check out Robin Moses for more patchwork ideas. Her videos are incredibly helpful for learning new techniques.

I studied Sally's dress closely to match the fabric styles of her dress. I did all of this freehand, but you could totally stamp on the swirls on the purple instead.

I started with this lavender polish from Sally Hansen, and then added random patches of green polish. The green polish is from Claire's and it is actually a color changing polish from bright green to light green depending on your  mood. I wonder what mood I was in when I took this pic?

Then I randomly added the other colors, with a dusky blue, an orange, and a burnt umber kind of color. Saying burnt umber always reminds me of Bob Ross, and thinking of Bob Ross makes me smile. You will see that I did not include every color on every nail. I think that makes the manicure more interesting. 

Then I added details to some of the fabric using acrylic paints. Again, you could totally stamp the swirly pattern on the purple at the beginning, to save yourself some time. I tried to make the patterns match Sally's dress as well as I could. 

Here's the mani with all of the black lines and stitches added. This part is really easy. Just outline the areas and add a few stitches here and there. It doesn't have to be perfect, in fact it looks better if it isn't. Add topcoat and you are done!

Polishes used in this manicure: Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure Delphinium, butter LONDON Minger, China Glaze Happy Go Lucky, Essie Very Structured, Cult Nails Awakening, Claire's Mood Nail Polish in Happy/Earthy. (Apparently I was feeling Earthy!)

Thursday's mani: Nails inspired by Artwork. Ooo, this will be fun. :)

31 Day Nail Art Challenge: Striped Nails

Again during this challenge, I was a big stumped as to what to do for a particular style. Stripes could be the stripes on a witches stockings, totally fun. But I wanted to do something I hadn't seen before. I remembered that one member of the Addams Family always wore stripes, so that is my manicure today: Pugsley Addams!

I based my Pugsley on a drawing made by Charles "Chas" Addams, the cartoonist who originated the character in New Yorker cartoons in the 1930s. Originally, Pugsley did not have a name, he was just a member of this odd family that Addams came up with. The family was a satire of the American Ideal Family, and they loved the macabre and bizarre, and didn't understand why other people would think they were weird.  Pugsley only got a name when a television studio bought the rights to the characters and named them The Addams Family. 

Here is a drawing and description of Pugsley created by Chas Addams in 1963 for the creators of the television series. This is what Addams says about Pugsley: 

The Boy - Pugsley

"An energetic monster of a boy about nine years old - blondish red hair, popped blue eyes and a dedicated troublemaker - in other words, the kid next door. Genius in his own way, he makes toy guillotines, full-size racks, threatens to poison his sister, can turn himself into a Mr. Hyde with an ordinary chemical set. He is, nevertheless, easily controlled by Morticia, though Lurch and Gomez keep their backs to the wall at all times when he's around. His voice is hoarse." Charles Addams, 1963

I started with a brown manicure (which my annoying hubby insists are "poop" nails) and added an off white french tip to all of the nails except the ring fingers. 

I started Pugsley with a black background, since he is depicted as a cartoon, and it is easier to start with black and paint up, than to try to painstakingly outline in black afterwards. 

I mixed off white colors in acrylic paint for the flesh and shading of Pugsley. I am very happy with how the colors and feeling really matched Addams' drawing. 

Here's the scamper before I topped him with top coat. Oh! And I can't believe I haven't mentioned my stubby nails! I had two nails break when I was getting my Halloween decorations out of storage. Boo! So I cut all of my nails down and now I just have to wait for them to grow back out. 

On my right hand, I copied Chas Addams' signature. It didn't quite fit on my stubby nail, but it is really close. 

Polishes I used in this manicure: Love & Beauty in Cocoa, Essie Body Language, Cult Nails Get It On basecoat, and Cult Nails Wicked Fast topcoat. (I actually wore this manicure for two and a half days because I loved it so much! And I noticed no chips, just slight wear on my nail tips. Yay for Cult Nails base and top coats!)

I realized that I did not have a lot of stripes in this "Stripe" manicure, so on the second day I wore this manicure, I added a darker brown stripe (Revlon Chocolate Truffle) with a striper brush along the edge of the french manicure. I really like how it looks!

Tomorrow is Animal Print! I can't wait!