Geek Nail Challenge - TV and Movies (Sea Shepherd)

Hey there everyone!! Tonight I am super excited to share my first contribution to the Geek Nail Challenge created by Sophia at Girl on a Shoestring!

When I read about this challenge, I had tons of ideas for this week (TV and movies) because I have an unhealthy obsession with both! I had most ideas for TV shows that I love though so I think I'm going to stick with that. I wasn't able to participate in the first week because we were on vacation last week! SO, I am going to make up for that a bit by posting several manis this week, and the first one: my Sea Shepherd mani, inspired by the TV show Whale Wars!
On my thumb and middle finger, I attempted to recreate the Sea Shepherd logo, which looks like this:

And the chevron colors were inspired by the new paint jobs on the boats. The pattern on the boats is not really chevron but it's always reminded me of one, so I thought it would translate into a great mani. Here's one of the boats to give you an idea if you haven't seen them:

And here are the nails!

I debated on using this mani for the last week because animal rights, etc are one of the things I kind of geek out about, but I wanted to do it today. I ended up LOVING this color combo and for my first attempt at Chevron, I think it turned out really great! A rare thing happened - I actually painted my other hand to match the left one, and I have a ten finger matching mani currently haha! I like it because it's pretty, fun, and different, yet still work appropriate. Well that's it for me tonight, I'm off to bed, but I've got another TV mani to share tomorrow so stay tuned ;] and be sure to check out what the other "geeks" have created :D Kelly

Dotting!

Hey everyone! So, it's our last night of vacation and we're just relaxing at the condo, and I came across this photo I took of a mani I forgot to post! So, figured I'd do that now. The week before we left for vacation I tried out my new dotting tool set using the red and black polishes that came with the set, which I got from Meijer in Dayton. Here is what my playing around resulted in:

It ended up looking like a ladybug, that really wasn't my intention haha but I loved it nonetheless. And I got TONS of compliments on it at work and even at the store! For the accent nail, I tried the V Gap technique I saw on Nailside and it was actually super easy and I LOVE the look! I will definitely be trying these with different colors in the future - the possibilities for color combos are endless. Anyways, my overall verdict on these dotting tools I picked up are that they do seem to create cleaner, more even dotting patterns than I've been able to get with bobby pins or toothpicks. Maybe it's just my technique, but I'm glad I got the tool and I hope to pick up some for bigger and smaller dots in the future!

Hope everyone has a great weekend, tomorrow we begin the long trek back to Ohio, BOO! :/

Kelly

Summer Challenge Day 16: Recreate Your Favorite Mani

Well, everyone, the Summer Challenge has come to an end after today. I had so much fun with it and I'm so glad I decided to take part. I was able to come in contact with so many great bloggers and I think my nail art has improved from pushing myself often! :] So with that, I present my final mani and it was inspired by the Dragonfruit design done by Kaki @ Glitter Obsession!

Overall, I am not super excited about how it turned out but it is definitely a design that made me push myself and I want to try it again sometime when I get better at nail art! The frame mani is really hard!! I tried messing with the tops of the frame near the cuticle while I was at work to try to even them out, but I only ended up making them worse! I do like the colors though, and I got a lot of compliments at work even if most people didn't know which fruit it was! :] I used Sinful Colors Snow Me White for the base, Sally Hansen Insta Dri in Sonic Bloom for the frame, and for the "seeds" I used Sinful Colors Black on Black and Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Wet Cement. So that's all for the Summer Challenge, I am headed off to work, but check out what some of the other girls have created!

Kelly