Tri-Polish Challenge-Pippa loves the Packers, and they love her back

Today is the last day with our lovely red, yellow and greens. Next month, Crumpet assigned us lilac, pink, and blue. Oh, my.

Pippa has been somewhat neglected this challenge. Probably because the other two are just so gorgeous, and yellow is hard to whip into shape. So I decided to try the reciprocal gradient again, this time with higher contrast colors.

I have to say, I like this much better than the other day's.

This second pic shows the two yellow application techniques I used. Pinky (on the left) got the yellow sponged on (tiny corner of a sponge torn off and held with a hemostat), but by my middle finger (on the right) I had decided to just use the brushes. First layer was sponged for both colors, so you do get SOME of that softer gradient.

Only problem, for me, is that I live in Green Bay Packer country, and I just can't see this color combination without thinking of them. And I usually don't start thinking of them until the pre-season is over.

So check out the rest of the Nail Tart's designs by following the links below.
See you next month.

Adios!
~~Lizajane

Tri-Polish Challenge-August #3-Dragons in the Roses

Happy Heat Wave here! Summer is back, as expected at the end of August in the US.
My hot polishes for this month's Tri-Polish Challenge are A. England BriarRose, Zoya Pippa, and A. England Dragon.

This time I am only using the two A. Englands.
I have loved the Reciprocal Gradient since I first saw it this spring, so I was looking forward to trying this.

I dunno.
Maybe next time I will use more contrasting colors. These are too close in value.

I painted on one coat of Briar Rose, then painted a swipe of  Briar Rose and Dragon next to each other on a sponge, then sponged the colors on. After letting them dry for a bit, I put manicure tape on. Then more polish on the sponge and more dabbing on, but in the opposite direction.

After some half-hearted cleanup, I topped it off with Seche Vite.

Next time will be better. And there WILL be a next time. This isn't as clean as I would want. Next time I think I will use just a small piece of sponge and dab them on separately. That will make for better color saturation and more precise application.

I wonder what the other Tarts are doing today. Let's take a look in the links below.

Adios!
~~Lizajane

Let Freedom Ring!

Independence Day this week, Thursday, so I felt like celebrating with a little Red, White and Blue!

Base color of Zoya Purity, then a coat of Pure Ice Freedom, and then a gradient of L'oreal Miss Pixie. Miss Pixie is a jelly, so the gradient just about did itself!  Freedom is lumpy bumpy, so I put on two coats of Gelous and then finished it off with Seche Vite.

There were a few silver stars in Freedom, but at least in my application, they tended to get lost amongst the other glitters.

Considering two weeks ago I was swearing off glitter, this is pretty amazing. But it is for a HOLIDAY!

Happy Fourth of July to the 'Mericans, Happy Canada (yesterday) to the Canadians. Happy Summer to all of us!

Adios!
~~Lizajane

Tri-Polish Challenge-June #4

Yay! We made it through another month of the Tri-Polish Challenge! For some reason, it seems that a number of people had inspiration issues this month. I decided after my second manicure that I didn't love the polishes that I chose, but I managed to get ideas anyway.

 (You are given colors and have to select a polish for each to use in four manis, and you can use black, white, gold, silver and glitter topcoats, too.)

All along I wanted to do a gradient, and Tuesday was filled with tape manis, so here we go with my combination of the two.

I had a couple of days of wear on my base colors of Llarowe's P38 over Zoya FeiFei, so it was nicely dry for the tape application. I then took a little torn piece of my makeup sponge, clicked it with the hemostat and dabbed on the purple, then the pink, and then the red. I then took the tape off and tossed on a coat of Seche Vite.

This is a more distinct gradient rather than a smooth one.

Pretty happy with this iteration of  these colors! This works for me-although I had envisioned over white, I couldn't pass up the black.

Thanks again Debbie Crumpet for setting up this challenge. Sometimes more challenging than others-I suppose, for me at least, I don't want to be a copycat, but there are so many gorgeous manicures that the Tarts come up with! So take a look at today's offerings by clicking on the Inlinkz below.

Adios!
~~Lizajane

Tri-Polish Challenge-April 2013-Second manicure

Hey there!
Just a super quickie today-my tummy isn't doing well, probably because I have been skimping on sleep this week.

Used just two of the colors for this one, a subtle in real life gradient of the orange and pink.

I liked this one a lot, wore it for two days, maybe three.
Why do I rarely do gradients? I love them.

Oh, yeah. The clean up.

Check out the other manicures, they always are so creative!

Time to head to bed and try to catch up.

Adios!
~~Lizajane

Flip Flop February-Day 26

Whew!
This challenge is almost complete!
It has been so fun, and I will miss taking a look at everyone's manis every day.

Today we are offered an opportunity to do a Theme that we Missed or to use our favorite polish.
I did a Gradient, since I did a Skittle on Day 1.

This is a glitter gradient with Orly Rose Radiance (previously untried) and Butter London Rosie Lee.
It was really simple to do, just brushing on glitter over the base color starting from the cuticle edge and dragging outward, repeating, stopping a little earlier to get some build up.

I wonder what the others are revisiting, or what their favorite polishes are.
I know I have a hard time deciding nowadays-always used to be Zoya Isla, but now?
Too many choices.

Adios!
Lizajane~~