Ocean Nails

Arden: All my kids at church have been on spring break for the last couple of weeks, and it's made me miss getting a spring break pretty bad!  Why can't they give you a mandatory week off work every spring?  There's just something about spring that makes you want to jet off to somewhere sandy and warm. 

My manicure today is inspired by this picture of the ocean I took at the beach a couple of years ago on spring break.  Isn't it beautiful?

I love how the ocean water changes from green to blue, so I created a manicure that did the same!

I worked on one nail at a time, and tried to apply each color while the previous color was still wet so they could swirl together a little.  (It's kinda hard to see this effect in the darker colors, but it come across pretty well with the lighter colors.)
 
Colors used (from dark to light):
Butter London Blue Coat
Color Club Blue Velvet
Butter London Blagger
Julep Diana
Essie Mint Candy Apple

I then added a top coat of Girly Bits Cosmic Ocean to give them that cool, glittery ocean look!

This post is part of a spring nail art competition Julep is holding; they are by far my favorite nail polish company, so you should definitely go check out their colors and consider getting some yourself!

33DC: One Manicure Three Patterns/Slow Swatching: Girly Bits Cosmic Ocean

Hi Y'all It's Lisl! I'm playing maaajor catch-up with the 33 Day Challenge right now, I think this is last Friday's challenge prompt? Anyway, here it is!  The prompt was "three patterns."  Obviously, in the picture above I have not shown my three patterns yet, but just you wait! It is coming.

I first wanted to slow-swatch (my special word for when I very lazily swatch one polish at a time) of Girly Bits Cosmic Ocean, which Arden got me for my birthday like a million months ago!  Oh my goodness, guys, it is just amazing.

It's like this blue-green shimmer wonderfulness that, here, I layered over Sally Hansen X-treme Wear Black Out, but you can layer it over anything! Arden layered it over dark blue and it was so, so great. I couldn't get all the beautiful facets of the color to come through. Sometimes it is super green and it looks like the parts of space where bad guys live, sometimes it is blue-green and it looks like dragon scales, sometimes it is blue-blue and it looks like the sea!

So for my three patterns I chose zig-zaggy, stripey, and whatever you would call the pattern on my ring finger.  You can read more about how I did it after the jump!

As Seen on Pinterest: Koi Goldfish Nails

Arden: Hey everyone!  Today's prompt in the 33 Day Challenge is to create something inspired from Pinterest, which means it's time for a new installment of my series "As Seen on Pinterest."  The manicure I have for today is one I did several months ago (seriously, I think it was back in September) and for some reason never posted on the blog.  It was inspired by this manicure by Elizabeth of Did My Nails, which I found on Pinterest and instantly had to try!

*Full disclosure: I did these nails so long ago, I don't remember all of the polishes I used.  I'll try to guess as well as I can!*

I started with a base coat of Sally Hansen Barracuda.  Then I used Saran Wrap to dab on several other blue/blueish green polishes to make the water for the koi pond.  I added a layer of Revlon Snowflurries and ended up with this:

I liked it, but felt like it might be a little too busy for the background of my fish, so I added two layers of one of Lisl's new birthday polishes-- Girly Bits Cosmic Ocean.

Then it was time to paint on my fish!  Using our set of acrylic paints, I painted a little koi fish on each nail.  Sadly, my fish were not nearly as beautiful as the originals (mine look a little like goldfish with turtle bodies), but they still looked pretty cool.

I was pretty proud of myself for my ability to draw koi using my non-dominant hand, so here's a picture!

What do you think?  Like the koi? Think they don't look anything like fish?  Weigh in in the comments!  And be sure to check out everyone else's entries today below.