A few random things

First off, I need to apologize for the wonky appearance of my nails.  I've been wearing acrylics for months and decided that I wanted to go back to natural nails. I'm slowly soaking and buffing it off a little at a time, but it's making for weird tips right now.  I was hoping that doing it this way would allow my nails time to strengthen since they are normally ravaged after acrylic removal.

I'm also not really happy with my limited options on Blogger.  So, if you see things moving around, disappearing, or appearing on my blog just ignore it and know I'm messing around with it trying to make things better... hopefully.  I'm honestly thinking about moving it entirely, but I'll make sure to let everyone know when and where.

Nail art is sort of new to me.  I've been using glitter in various forms for years.  However, stamping, freehand, dotting, etc., are all recent discoveries.  I didn't even know there was such a huge amount of nail artists on the internet until a few months (okay maybe 9 months...) ago when my husband sent me a link to Lost In Lacquer's Zelda Nails.  I thought that I could absolutely do that and then, immediately, I fell down the rabbit hole.  Hopefully, as I am finding all these new ideas I'm getting better and better at  doing them too.

So, to nails.

I'm kind of ahead on the untried polish challenge and have manicures completed and photographed for the next few so I've had time to play around.  I was watching some Youtube videos yesterday and found a really artistic freehand spooky manicure by ProfessionalDQ.  She's got great tutorials and some pretty wicked nails.  I wanted to try my hand at a replica manicure.

Here are my Something Wicked nails...

You'll notice this is actually my right hand.  I honestly think it came out better than my left oddly enough, but I'll post pics of both.  (Does it look weird to anyone else?)

I used China Glaze Liquid Leather for black base coat
I mixed China Glaze Sea Spray with the holo top coat from Liquid Sky Lacquers.
I sponged it on, then when it was about 80% dry, I used newspaper transfer to add a little interest to the background.
Using Konad Special Polish in black, white, and silver I stamped some bats, ghosts, cats, and even a spooky house (on my thumb though not pictured) from 2013 Bundle Monster Plate pack.  I'm terrible about remembering which plates though...

I topped the whole thing off with a matte top coat.

My preference was for the matte look, but my husband saw my nails after I put some cuticle oil on them and said he preferred the glossy look.

This is after a coat of Seche Vite.

Now my left hand matte, then glossy.

I realized that I need to invest in some real nail art brushes.

So it's not too bad for a first try.  I've actually been inspired to create my own vintage look which I'll be doing later today.