Poppy print

The sun is shining, and I'm feelin' fine. Happy weekend, everyone! Today I have this pretty poppy print that was inspired by my Rowan skirt from Club Monaco (kind of obsessed with their clothing recently). I love having my nails match my clothing. Gives me some kind of weird sense of accomplishment.

I started with two coats of OPI My Vampire Is Buff for the base. I didn't think I could love another neutral base as much as I loved OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls, but I was wrong. For the blue brushstrokes, I dipped the tips of a fan brush into Essie Bobbing for Baubles, getting the excess off before making quick, random, short strokes. Then with a normal striper brush, I made thicker strokes of blue, and added accents of red with Sally Hansen Kook-A-Mango.

For the poppies, I painted the shape of my flower with Zoya Arizona, so I have a bit of orange peeking through. Then I painted over the flower again with my red. Finally, I went back in with my blue and base colour for the poppy centres and extra details.

I love these designs where I don't have to worry so much about being neat. It's a much more free way of painting.

Gettin' my glow on

Who says glow-in-the-dark polish is just for Halloween? I had fun this week trying it out with American Apparel's glow-in-the-dark colour, Moon. This goes on sheer and glows the traditional fluorescent green. I used two coats over two coats of OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls. I haven't tried layering with other colours, but I'm fairly certain the base needs to be light for the glow to show. I originally had one coat of Moon, but I found two gave it extra glowing power.

I had some fun and painted little skulls on each nail. Looking back, they kinda look like some kind of skull jellyfish. Moon gives a semi-matte finish, and I really liked how it looked. After I painted on the skulls, I put a coat of Gosh matte topcoat over to mattify everything.

On my other hand, I had a different type of glow going on. One of the NEON variety! This is two coats of American Apparel's Neon Red.

My camera had a hard time getting the colour right. The second picture is more colour accurate, though it makes my hands look really red. I really loved the colour. Bright, but not eye-searingly so, and a very pretty shade. The consistency is a jelly/creme hybrid, and also dries to a semi-matte finish.

I've been doing really simple stuff lately as I'm going through exams. Please stick with me, I hope to get back into the groove of things soon! See ya!

Nail Art: The Cat in the Hat for Makeup Savvy Nail Challenge

My friend over at Lacqueerisa informed me about Makeup Savvy's 15 Day Nail Challenge previously, and while I enjoyed looking at her entries, the timing wasn't right for me to get in on the challenges myself. However, seeing as the theme for the last challenge is "Anything!", I thought, well heck, maybe I can squeeze in one entry before it ends. I know I'm late to the party, but better late than never?

I saw "The Cat in the Hat" on my bookshelf the other day and remembered how much I loved this book. So came forth these themed nails.

My favourite nails

Pages of inspiration

Polishes:

Left to right: American Apparel "Peacock", Sally Hansen "Kook-A-Mango", Sally Hansen "Blue Away", Sally Hansen "White On", Sally Hansen "Black Out"

If there's anything you'd like to know how I did, just ask! In general, I painted the outlines before filling in the colour. Everything was done with nail art brushes.

Possibly more Dr. Seuess themed nails to come? Mmm green eggs and ham. Any other Dr. Seuss stories you think would make a good nail design?