Catch 22 Manicure: November’s NCC #2

Another Monday, another manicure for the Nail Challenge Collaborative! Continuing with this month’s book theme, I recreated the cover of another favorite book of mine – Catch 22 by Joseph Heller.

My Catch-22 manicure

I am admittedly not the best when it comes to intricate freehand nail art, so the little guy looks a bit silly. But I still like how this came out!

If you haven’t read Catch-22, it’s another one I’d highly recommend! It’s full of contradictions – it’s full of levity but surprisingly deep, and it’s dark but hilarious. My whole family loves this book too. My mom even once had a cat she named after the main character, Yossarian.

Here’s the book cover I tried to recreate:

Catch-22

Polishes I used:

• Base color: OPI Alpine Snow
• Blue: KBShimmer’s Low & Be Bold… such an amazing vivid blue polish! It does have a slight jelly formula, so it needs an extra coat when worn on its own. But it’s stunning!
• Freehanded the little man with more OPI Alpine Snow & then filled him in with Zoya’s Sooki… Sooki is a great primary red with a perfect formula!
• Topped it all off with some good Glisten & Glow HK Girl

So what do you think? Are you enjoying the book-themed manis this month? What’s your favorite book?

Check out some more manis by my talented NCC ladies:

 

Squish the Rainbow Leadlighting

It’s been a really long time since I’ve tried a leadlighting manicure and I recently picked up the entire Rica jelly polish collection (Squish the Rainbow), so I figured it was high time to venture back into leadlighting! If you haven’t heard of this style, it’s basically like a color-by-numbers technique using jelly polishes over a stamp.

I really just wanted to play around practicing leadlighting with different stamps. The intention was not to create a wearable manicure, but I think it actually looks pretty good!

Rica leadlighting manicure

Not bad right? It’s flowery but geometric, and the colors kind of bring it all together.

Another pic with my thumb in there

What I used for this mani:

• Base color: OPI Alpine Snow
• Stamps: MoYou London Explorer 03… such a perfect plate for this technique! All the images are detailed and have lots of areas to color in.
• Stamping polish: Rica Blackout
• Leadlighting colors: Rica Squishy Blueberry, Squishy Lime, Squishy Lemon, and Squishy Grape… These are all great jelly polishes! They worked so perfectly for leadlighting, and they look so pretty over white. LOVE!
• I applied the leadlighting colors with a tiny dotting tool to help fill in smaller areas.

This kind of manicure makes me feel like I’m a kid with a coloring book! It’s so fun and relaxing, but it does take quite awhile if the stamping images are detailed. The end game makes it totally worth it though – the manicures come out so great!

What do you think? Have you done leadlighting before? What other images do you like to use?

Simple Mani with Born Pretty Holographic Stars

Another item I was sent to review from Born Pretty was a collection of holographic stars. I don’t tend to use a lot of studs or other 3D-type additions to my manicure, but I thought I’d try these out.

 

I like the variety of colors they provide and how many stars come with it. They look like they could be a really great addition to a colorful manicure for some fun nail art. However, they don’t lay flat which isn’t the worst thing, but it bothers me. I tend not to like things on my nails that will catch on my clothes or hair. Also, some of the colors bleed a little if you put top coat over the stars. If you look at my pinky, the orange/yellow bleeds into the white polish a bit. It’s not awful, but I don’t think I’ll be using these unless it’s a short-lived mani where I don’t really need to keep the stars locked in place with top coat.

The white I used as a base color is OPI Alpine Snow, and I used Seche Vite as my top coat (which usually doesn’t smear nail art, so I figured it’d be ok over these).

And always, as a reminder, use my Born Pretty code (CXB10) to get a 10% discount!

B&W Scaled Gradient: June NCC #4

Last Nail Challenge Collaborative post for the month! I’ve actually had a difficult time thinking of different, creative manis this month. But I think I have a good one here.

I saw a beautiful scaled gradient from Simply Nailogical in neon shades and really wanted to try it out. So this is my first attempt at a scaled gradient in black and white to fit our June theme!

Definitely didn’t come out perfect, but I like it.

I used a base of OPI Alpine snow, then did my first gradient of Alpine Snow, Zoya Carey (grey creme), and Zoya Raven (black creme with slight shimmer) at the base of each nail.

Once the first gradient was done, I put a single chevron vinyl from Nail Vinyls over the black mid nail. The difficult part was covering up the bottom of the sticker while keeping the chevron detail intact. Then I sponged on another gradient at the tips of my nails. On most nails, I had to go back and touch up the black to show the detail of the chevron. But I think it looks alright!

Here are a few more pics:

And a bit closer:

I’m definitely going to have to try this design again in different colors. I think it might also be easier if the darker color of the gradient was at the base of the nail.

Thus endeth June’s Nail Challenge Collaborative! July’s challenge will be recreations of old manicures.

Check out the other manis: