Challenge #6: GRAYdient (aka FAIL!)

When I saw "gradient" was one of the inspirations for this challenge, I cogitated for awhile, mentally pouring over all the different creme options I had, or maybe even a holo gradient, but I kinda already did that this past summer... And then KABOOM!, outta the blue, I knew exactly what I should do: a GRAYdient!!!!!!!  Puns and plays on words are totally my thang, so don't that just beat all! :D  LOL

I laid down two perfect, smooth, shiny coats of Cult Nails Tempest.  Seriously, I was rubbing my nails ALL DAY.  Now that I've used it for a full mani, I would recommend it as the  ultimate white creme. PERFECTION!

And then I grabbed my grays; note that the night before I did this, a perusal of Wal-Mart's beauty aisle endcaps rewarded me Pure Ice's Kiss Me Here, which I'd been looking for since I saw it on my friend Essie's blog last spring!  Who woulda thought that a Pure Ice polish would be so stinkin' hard to find?!  Well it was, and it also happened to be the perfect gray to complete the GRAYdient!  'Twas meant to be!

Or NOT.  Uhhhh...NOPE.  Just no. :(  THIS LOOKS AWFUL!

Why did mine look more like color bands than a smooth, melty blend?! And patchy and ugggh... Well, for some reason I thought you were supposed to take a tiny piece of sponge and sponge on the colors one at a time.
After some research & consulting experienced nail art blogs, I discovered you're supposed to use a wedge makeup sponge & paint all the colors on in strips and use it rather like one big foamy stamp! DUH.  Oh well, I am now "in the know" for the next time I attempt a gradient.  But for now, I'm going to chalk this up as a learning experience and move on to the next mani!

BUT first... 

after that horror, I will give you a nice gray to feast your eyes on:

GRAY HOLO!!!  :D  This is Hit Polish Pewter Goblet.  Not a strong linear holo, but very purty nonetheless, and it satisfied my desire for Too Fancy Lacquer's Silent Night at a much  lower price!  Unfortunately, Hit Polish closed up shop as of a couple weeks ago due to a new business venture for her & her hubby.

This is one coat Pewter Goblet over two coats Kiss Me Here.  PG is a tad sheer on its own, and KMH really is the PERFECT MATCH to go under it.  Polish serendipity, I tell ya!  These photos are without topcoat - it's just that shiny. :)  PG actually felt a bit thick and gloopy to me, but a thin-medium coat was perfect, dried fairly quickly, and obviously, produces a nice holo effect.  

And I happened to be wearing a gray sweatshirt, so hey, why not do a good ol' Essie "sweater shot?!" :D  Except I'm clearly not her, so it didn't really turn out... I'm blaming it in part on the fact that I was operating the camera with my non-dominant hand! lol

Neon nailsies and a bit o' life!

Hello and Happy Saturday evening to you all!  Since I was off work on Friday and going out of town, I decided to do a "funky" mani with neons (love 'em but I feel weird wearing them to work) and attempt a technique I've never tried before but recently saw in a tutorial video on YouTube.  It did NOT turn out like I envisioned because I could not find a small enough brush. :(  But it was still kinda cool, and I enjoyed it for a couple days. :)

First of all, can I say that as much as I love the neon mint color of ChG's Highlight of My Summer, the formula is HORRENDOUS!  :O  It gets sooo streaky, and yet, giant ridges build up in other places and it's just a royal pain in the butt to get decent coverage.  I think this is three coats.  Dry time was decent at least.  The accent nails are a polish I've showed you before; Maybelline Pretty in Polka.  I love their jelly/black & white glitter polishes! Drops of Jade is also in my stash. ;) 

As you might have guessed, the technique is one-stroke brush flowers, but mine did not really turn out.  I stupidly got the white and the pink (NYC French White Tip & Sinful Colors 24/7) reversed for the first two.  I'm not even going to try to describe it, so if you want to see how the pros do it, watch this awesome video!

So, since I only have & only wanted  to show you one photo of that mess, on to "life!"

Last weekend my little brother and I made the long-ish (6 hr) trek to New Ulm, MN to visit our mom's sisters and their "kids."  We're actually all around the same age...my brother and I both have cousins there that are the same age as us, and one that is smack dab in between us. :)  It was a really nice weekend and it felt good to finally reconnect with them.  It'd been YEARS since my brother saw that side of the family, and about 2 years since I'd been to New Ulm for a visit.  Plus it was nice to have someone to share the boring drive with - other than when he was driving like a boy and ruining my gas mileage!

Clockwise from R:  Jane (my aunt), Hannah (her daughter), me, Morgan (my brother)

Here's us having a sushi FEAST at a pretty spectacular place in Mankato. :)  Thankfully, we all enjoy sushi and so I thought lunch in the big city was in order!  Hannah had heard of this new place from a couple friends and they happened to have a $15.99/person all you can eat sushi lunch special.  I don't know how the 4 of us managed to eat only 3 rounds of 3 rolls...plus the most amazing crab rangoons as an appetizer - they were seriously to DIE for - like Turkish delight or something! lol
Somehow the sushi was very filling and totally delicious.  Mmmm.  Darn, now I want sushi!  :P

It was Oktoberfest while we were there - New Ulm is a very  German town, complete with a Glockenspiel & it's home to Schell's Brewery, so Saturday afternoon we walked around downtown and happened to catch the petting zoo as they were packing up...

Now that's not something you see in MN every day!  He was really cool... as we walked up, he kept saying: "Hello," and "I love you."  At least I think  that's what he was saying!  There was also a kangaroo, some other kind of big bird, a llama, a dromedary camel, and a couple other things I can't recall.  Hannah's 2-yr-old daughter was there before us with her dad, and she called her mom & kept repeating: "camel!" :D  It was pretty cute.  She knows a lot of animals for being only 2!

Now, on to TODAY!

I almost wan't going to include this, but since my friend's costume & my shirt kinda go (color-wise) with the mani I showed you, I figured meh why not!  Plus, I'm pretty excited that I did my first-ever 5k run/walk today!!! :D  Let me tell you, if someone said to high-school me (who about died every time we had to do laps for gym class) that in 10 years I'd be running a 5k of my own free will, I would have literally rolled on the floor laughing.  But, wonder of wonder, miracle of miracles; here I am...

Here's me and my lovely friend, Janette, who convinced me to do this with her!  So up until 8 days ago, I'd never really run a day in my life, other than when absolutely necessary. :P hehe

I have no idea what our exact times were (the timing device they were using kept freezing because it was so cold) but I'm guesstimating it was around 45 minutes?  And we walked a lot of it.  But I'm pretty proud of us!  It was surprisingly not nearly as bad as I thought and all my mental freaking out and worrying about being the last ones to finish was for naught.  We'll probably do another one in Fargo in May. :D

Oh, this guy greeted me this morning when I was about to sit down by my mirror to get ready.  I'll spare you the big photo!  Needless to say I got ready in the bathroom instead.

ISH.  I HATE spiders!  When my roommate got home, I had her kill it. :P  I'll usually kill them, but I was already on edge with nerves about the run. 

Have you ever accomplished something you never thought you'd do?  If so, I'd love to hear about it!  Thanks for stopping by and I hope you enjoyed this post even though it wasn't all about polish. ;)

When a good combo turns BAD - ChG neons + Liquid Lacquer

I was SUPER excited to do something with the Dirty Watermelons that I received in my Liquid Lacquer package last week (must've cost a fortune to ship those suckers!)... and I was equally excited to rock some of the new China Glaze neons I got prior to that. :-)

So, I selected Pool Party & Highlight of my Summer to top with said Dirty Watermelons (ugggh, my fingers are SOOO heavy! :-P sorry - I'm totally goofy tonight!), which would've been an UHmazing combo if I may say so myself, but in this instance, my darn base and top coat did me in! :-(  I used Essie Fill the Gap base, which dries to a satin finish, and fairly old-ish (& much used) Seche Vite that I tried to thin with Seche Restore, but apparently I need to add a LOT more.  This was the result:

At this point, I'd been wearing this mani for all of...hmm...24 hours?  Maybe?  It was chipping to high heaven because the base didn't adhere to it, oh, and typically unnoticeable bits of base and SV were sticking out under the polish near my cutes or over the polish and onto the cutes...UGH.  Which is super noticeable in GIANT macro photos!  Oh, AND because the SV is old, a more apropos name would be Seche Slow, so even though I thought it was dry, it got smooshed up on either side of the ring and pinkie fingers, causing ripples. -_-

I'm just SO sad that this didn't turn out. :-(  ...or stick around.  As I type this, all but one nail has spontaneously come off or been easily peeled off.  I guess the upside is I don't hafta go through the typical drama of glitter removal (even with the foil method it's still a pain in the tush!).

Pool Party's formula was terrific, but Highlight of my Summer was also a pain in the tush.  I used two coats of each, and had I not been using the glitter topper, I would've definitely needed at least another coat because it was uneven and left bald patches, and had an issue with flowing towards the cutes, so I had a really hard time not getting too close, but not leaving giant gaps around the whole nail bed.  Hence that horribly ripply edge!  I really debated about even showing you guys this mani, but I figure we're here to share failures too, right?  Besides, Dirty Watermelons is SO FUN!!  :-D

I was gonna get Jindie Nails Stop Staring at my Melons, but I saw this and decided I liked it even better.  And I'm sooo happy with my choice!  Liquid Lacquer is AWESOME...remember her special resurrection of Safety Stick - just for me?! YUP.  That's how amazing she is!  And of course, the polishes are super purty. :-D 

Dirty Watermelons contains small grey, medium pink, and darker minty green hexes, medium minty hexes, medium grey and pink circles, small black squares, large black circles, and small pink bars. :-)  Oh, and they're all matte.  Which I think is nice, since watermelons aren't holographic! ;-)  Formula was average, totally jammed with glitters, and I did invert the bottle to get the big black circles to come up.  Dab & spread method was somewhat necessary, because of course they like to congregate at the nail's free edge, otherwise.

I know, pedicures are basically a no-no on blogs, but I kinda like the effect of  my neon, ghostly toes eerily popping out of the dark background! Muahahaha!  See, don't my nails look MUCH better in not exactly macro? ;-)

And now, some extras for you - because I was home again this weekend - and I like getting glimpses into bloggers' lives:

Front yard at my parents' house

Lacey's beak is good for photographing manis ;-)

My crazy fuzzbutt, Kali

Kitty Zoey disliketh having her picture taken!  ...But I had to include this, for Liesl's sake. ;-)

Good Sabbath, everyone! (I'm not Jewish, but being involved in a Fiddler on the Roof production is making me use the lines for EVERYthing!) hahaha