31 Day Challenge, Day 12: Stripes!

Hi guys! Wow, this challenge was a TON easier than I had anticipated (I'm finding that's a theme here!). I have very little experience free-handing even something as simple as stripes, so I was dreading this one. I had planned on doing a tape mani, but even though I love how tape manis turn out, I don't like the work that goes into them. With stripes, I would have to tape off the nail to make the first stripe, then tape off to make stripe number 2 as well as tape off stripe number 1, and so on and so forth. That just seemed like a lot of work to me for a mani that I wasn't sure I would actually like! I decided to bite the bullet and freehand my stripes, and if ya'll laugh at me (I can hear some of you laughing just because I said "ya"ll"!), then so  be it, right? I'm learning, and the only way to get better at this stuff is to practice!

Having made my freehanding decision, I had to pick polishes. I knew I wanted to use 3 colors, and that I wanted them all to have the same finish, but had no idea which actual colors I wanted for my stripes. I considered using some of my recently acquired China Glaze or my unused Orly's, but in the end I settled on 2 unworns and a tried and failed (remember the bad faux-nad I posted with the blue holo, white stamping and silver bullion?).  I'm actually pleased with how it came out! My lines aren't too bad at all this time around, and I love love love the polishes I used! Another challenge mani I don't want to remove so quickly :(

For this mani I used: Milani 3d Holographics in HD, Digital, and Cyberspace. These are the only holo polishes I own, and they've been hanging out with my untrieds for a good while. I love holos, but I prefer a strong holo effect and I wasn't convinced these had it. I was wrong! For holo polishes that cost me less than $5.00, they have a decent holo effect! They are a scattered holo (I really really really want a linear holo polish, but I can't find one in my budget so that probably won't happen for a good long time *cries*) with a fairly strong effect, especially in sunlight. I had a very hard time capturing the holo in my pics since I'm still using the less than stellar camera until I can replace my good camera, and these were taken in early morning sunlight as opposed to full, direct sun, but I assure you it's there. You also get to see the result of my stabbing myself in the side of my cuticle with a pair of rally sharp and pointy tweezers (was trying desperately to remove a stray piece of fluff from my polish)!

The formula on these babies was wonderful - nice and smooth and opaque in 2 coats. I used these over my newest base coat loves, Nailtek formula II and Orly Bonder. I did use a coat of SV to top it all off, since the edges of my lines were a little thick and needed to be smoothed out. It did diminish the holo effect, but not half as much as I had expected. But again, enough babbling! On to the pics!

In the light box:

And in early morning sunlight:

And my usual bad macro shot (but at least it shows some of the shimmery holo!)

I had a lot of fun working on this one, and I think I'll be trying out some more striped manis in the future. I love that this challenge is taking me outside of my comfort zone and I'm learning a ton! I do get sad when I have to remove a mani that I really like, and I've had to change some ideas on the fly since I'll see where a fellow blogger has used the idea before I could get to it (I wrote down all my mani ideas for this challenge when I started, and I've had to change rainbow, polka dots, and a few things from the upcoming inspiration week), but overall I'm having fun with it!

Tonight is Animal Print night, and I'm really excited about it! I'm going to be using 2 colors that I have been dying to use since I picked them up and just hadn't found the right mani for them.  Now I'm going to finish my coffee while reading some awesome blogs (see blogroll!). I'm anxiously awaiting Manicure Addict's rainbow nails!!

Happy Polishing!
-Kimber