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-June #3

I did some stamping! Glad I thought of it, I love how this manicure turned out.

That is two coats of OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls over OPI Nail Envy Matte, topped with a coat of Seche Vite, just in case I would have to remove a stamped image-it preserves the base color.

Then I tried a technique, new to me, but you have probably seen it before. Instead of one color polish being used, you put two colors on the plate and then scrape. I think it worked really well with my purple and pink!

I used another Vivid Lacquer plate, VL008-love the kitty!

This plate has a series of he-loves-me, he-loves-me-not images and then the one in the lower corner I used for most of my fingers. Under my fingers is the reverse image which I used on my accent nails. I love all her plates, and hint, hint, she's working on her next ones, watch for them here.

CritiqueCorner
Gee, since it tends to come up every time, should I actually make it a feature highlighting what I did wrong or what I think looks wrong? Two things this time-in the second photo you can see on my ring finger that I had to double stamp, somehow the original didn't go all the way down to the base of my nail, and in this last photo you can see it is darker along the edge? Well, I learned that you should always topcoat your stamped image before trying to clean up the edges. I took a very obvious wedge out of the image with my clean up tool. I corrected it by scraping up some of the polish that had been scraped off the plate and applying it to fill in the color. I suppose I should have just taken the whole thing off and restamped, but I guess I was just a bit too lazy.

Take a look at what the other Tarts have accomplished with this third manicure of June-how many ways can we all combine purple, pink and red? So many great ideas!

Adios!
~~Lizajane

Tri-Polish Challenge-June #2

Red, Purple, and Pink! Love all three of these color separately, and together, but I think I chose particularly "wintery" versions of each. Because that is what I love!

I tried to do that three dimensional look with dots, but it ended up just being "offset dots", mainly because I used the same dotting tool to do both colors, and I think that a smaller one should have been used for the second set, this time in pink.

Offset dots are cool, though, too!

I have no idea what I did to get a black background, LOL.
All three colors went together nicely, two coats of my purple-Orchid Express, and then dots with Isla and Rose Radiance, Seche Vite to topcoat.

Next mani, I think I need to stamp, because that is another reason why I chose these colors, all three stamp wonderfully!

I am pretty impressed with all the manicures other Tarts are putting out there, and I probably will copy at least one of them! Look at what they did for this month's second installment-

Adios!
~~Lizajane

Tri-Polish Challenge-June #1

Third Tuesday of June, so it is time for the first of this month's Tri-Polish Challenge manicures.
Basic Rules of this challenge:

• Three colors selected by and posted on The Crumpet's Facebook page.
• Select a polish to represent each of those colors.
• Do four manicures, at least one using all three colors, and all of them using at least two of the colors.
• You can also use black, white, silver, gold, and glitter topcoats.
• Post the manis on your blog or straight to the Nail Tarts FB page and link up using Inlinkz.
• Profit. 

OK, maybe not profit.

This month the colors are Red, Purple, and Pink. Here are my polishes:

 That there is Zoya Isla (my tip top favorite red!), Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Orchid Express, and Orly Rose Radiance.

 Full sunlight

Today, I am only using two, the purple and the red, along with my silver striper and tape as a tool. This is so simple and graphic, I love it!

Even fuller sunlight

This mani succumbed to my inability to stop when I am ahead.

I thought it would be cool to make pyramids on either side of the stripe, don't ask me why. But when it got this far, I realized I wouldn't be able to do that.

Inside, indirect sunlight

Oh, well. In other colors, this would have been a cool football or baseball or patchwork manicure.

Take a look at the other Tarts and their manicures-pretty much bound to be better than this. Better luck next time, Lizajane!

 

 

Adios!
~~Lizajane

Untried Polish Challenge-Three Colors

Going back to the Three Colors of untried polishes, then I will be back on track with Jo at Just Add Polish. Even though skipping around is allowed, I feel like going along.

I changed my initial plans on this mani completely, I initially planned on using the Zang Toi Trio from Zoya, but I got inspired and did this:

I used my usual OPI Matte Nail Envy and then dotted on some pansies with Orly Royal Velvet. That is the PERFECT pansy color, blue and purple and rich and deep. SO love this color!
That's one color.
Next, I added some black stems with my striper and then picked up my fan brush. I first used OPI Nein, Nein, Nein, Okay Fine!, brushed as a grassy French, and then Julep Piper over, to lighten the grass.
That's two and three colors.
I went back and used my yellow striper for the centers .
A quick coat of  SV , hoping and praying that it wouldn't smudge, and there we go!

The thumb only got the grass, not really sold on that.
One more shot, in my car, afternoon light rather than morning:

This is a far more Spring-y mani than anything I would have come up with using the Zang Toi Trio, gorgeous colors though they are.

Take a bit to check out the other blogger's creativity.

Masha at Lost In Lacquer
Raine at Lacquer Lily

Amy at Fancy Side

Amanda at Designer Nail Accents

Sam at Polished Art

Jo at Just Add Polish

Patricia at Polished and Glittered

Blueberry Pie at Blueberry Nails

Kristina at Lacquer Fetish

Until Friday!
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~~
 

Flip Flop February-Day 20

I can fool myself the rest of the month that I chose my manicure design because it was new to me, but today, I chose easy.
Yes, it is new to me, but the V Gap is definitely easier than flowers.

That being said, I really enjoyed this mani.

As you might have noticed, I have a bit of a Fly By The Seat Of My Pants attitude, added to an "Directions Are More Of A Guide" mindset.
So this mani started out like in the picture above, with Rimmel Black Satin, Orly Androgynie and Butter London Knees Up.
And that is a perfectly fine mani.
But it didn't really fit the bill.
So I changed it up, making the "V" deeper.

There we go!
As you can see, I reversed the colors on my thumb.
This is a very different from my normal style manicure, but I liked it a lot!

And today, I saw a star with this style on her nails!
Vanessa Hudgens! (Image ganked from tomandlorenzo.com, check them out, they are fun despite their horribly out of touch attitude about manicures.)

This will be something to pull out and do again sometime, unlike certain other techniques (I'm looking at you, Sugar Spun!)

Treat yourself to the art that everyone else has done for today's challenge!

Adios!
Lizajane~~

Flip/Flop February-Day 3

OK, moving right along, today is day three of Jilltastic Nail Design's 28 day Challenge, Flip Flop February.
Today our options are Watermarble and Dry Marble.
I have done a Watermarble previously and thought I would try a dry marble, sometimes known as needle marbling.
I put down a base of Orly Ma Cherie on my thumb, pinkie and middle finger, and China Glaze White on White on the other two fingers and then let it dry.
Next I painted stripes of those two colors and Rimmel's Black Satin down the length of the nail.
I took a safety pin that I had made unsafe and scratched back and forth, dragging the polish from one color into the others.
This technique seriously reminded me of marbling a cake, so I figure that is where the name came from.

Not the world's most successful needle marbling, but it was a new technique for me.
When I do this again, I will choose colors that are closer to each other.
I think the contrast was too high for this.
But here, have a close up of the thumb, the most successful attempt.

You can see the black dragged into the white and the white dragged into the black.
Maybe next time I will try going the other direction.
This was fun!

I can't wait to see all the marbling done dry or with water!
Check them all out!

Adios!
Lizajane~~