31 Day Challenge (v.2!) Day 16: Tribal Print

Hello Ladies! Welcome to day 16 of the 31 Day Challenge!

Today's challene is Tribal Print, and I have to be honest...I love tribal manis on other people. I love looking at them. But they just look weird on me. They just don't fit my personality at all. It probably doesn't help that I live in the Southwest, so everything out here is covered in tribal prints. Thankfully I managed to come up with a variation of tribal print that I think fits me  little better.

I started with a base of Spoiled by Wet N Wild Kickin' The Habit, an awesome fuchsia crelly. Then I taped off my nails and added a stripe down the center with Spoiled Distant Memory. Using Bundle Monster plate BM221, I stamped a tribal design over the top using Konad Black. I have to tell you, once I had the stripe done I really wanted to leave it at that. It looked really cool! But since it's a challenge mani, I kept going. My stamps aren't placed perfectly, but it's really hard to stamp when you're loaded up on albuterol. I have a cold, which means my delicate little lungs needed some extra meds to help stay open and clear, and they make me really shaky. Despite that, I do like how this turned out!

I have to say that I like this much more than last year's tribal mani....I actually took my inspiration from tribal designs hanging on the wall of Outback Steakhouse. I had Outback Nails. Funny, but yeah......

Anyway...enough of my babbling! Dayquil is making me all loopy. Here is my take on Tribal Nails:

Not perfect, but highly passable IRL. Although I really want to wear Kickin The Habit with just the stripe of Distant Memory sometime. This is definitely a more "me" Tribal mani, though. In fact, I haven't bothered to take it off yet! Mostly because I have another darned cold and am slightly miserable. ;)

What do you think of Tribal Manicures?

Be sure to check out all of the Varnished Vixens' Tribal Manis!

 Kimber at Kimber's Lacquer Korner
-Kat at Hooked On Polish
-Diana at Nails By Diana
-Aly at Wonderland Beauty
-Meredith at Perfectly Polished
-Nicole at The Color Republic
-Kate at The Painted Pony Nails
-Cee at Absolutely Cee
-Sam at Polished Art
-Nail Narcotics
-Nicole at Nicole Gets Nailed
-Shelby at Shelby's Swatches
-Stephanie Louise at All Things Beautiful
-Mixed Mama
-Joanna @ Sweet Polish of Mine
-Patty Greenberg
-Liz and Lisa @ Lozlosa 
-Mari at Nailista
-Miss L at Beauty by Miss L 
-Gini at Sassy Paints 
-Chameleon Stampede 
-Pam at Nail-E-Glance
-Me, Myself, and Polish 
- Robin Sparkles  

Hopefully I'm feeling up to playing with some Project Runway Polishes over the next day or so. Either way, I'll be back on Sunday with Glitter Nails!

Thanks for stopping by and Happy Polishing!
-Kimber

Spun Sugar Mani featuring Spoiled by Wet N Wild Distant Memory

Hi Ladies! Happy Wednesday!

Today I have a Spun Sugar Mani to share with you guys. WARNING! Bad pics, dry hands, and wonky nail shape ahead!  I wore this mani before the nail break that took my nails down to the quick, and I was still trying to find the right shape and balance for this length. My nails just didn't want to cooperate and kept flaring out at the edges. I've also been doing alot of cleaning and pulling weeds, so my hands are pretty darn dry and I keep getting stabbed with thorny weeds, so ignore the scratches and little stabs to my fingertips and cuticles please! :) We have these weeds out here that are so sharp and pointy that they will stab you through gloves! Evil! Anyway, I'm very self conscious about my hands at the moment, and really wanna cry over how dry and ragged my cuticles became almost overnight. But, until I can get a maid and a gardener, I'm stuck mucking up my hands. Waaaaaaaaah. I'm a whiner today.

For this mani I chose a base of Spoiled by Wet N Wild Distant Memory, a bright Neon Teal. I tried to capture this color as accurately as possible, but IRL it's much more vibrant and the teal is almost blinding. It's a really pretty color and I have some plans for this baby! After my base color was dry, I took my Finger Paints Black Expressionism and blobbed some down on a piece of wax paper. I let it sit for a few minutes, letting it get nice and tacky and gooey. Then I took my dotting tool, dipped it into the polish blob, and pulled the polish up from the wax paper in a string. Then I draped the polish string over my nail and repeated the process until I was satisfied with how it looked, and finally added a good coat of SV (it bubbled a little due to the space between the nail and the spun sugar...boo!). Sounds simple right? Wrong! It's messy! And getting that string of polish up onto the nail is much harder than it sounds! You should've seen the mess I made! Since my time was limited and I hadn't realized how time consuming this mani was going to be, I kept the spun sugar effect light. I think it looks kind of like raised tiger stripes on most nails. I do really like this effect and am hoping to have a chunk of time soon to play around with and create a mani with more of the spun sugar effect. Until then, have a look at what I managed to create!

Details:
1 coat Seche Recondition
1 coat Instant Artificials Base Coat
2 coats Spoiled Distant Memory
Spun Sugar Effect with Finger Paints Black Expressionism
1 thick coat Seche Vite

Please forgive my zombie hands in some pics and lobster hands in others. My camera doesn't like Teal at all. Pesky camera!! ;)

Isn't that a really cool effect? I don't think it's too bad for my first try, but I really do want to perfect this. I love how it looks without top coat and saturated with polish strings. I think maybe next time I'll load up the nails with the strings and skip the top coat. It will have to wait until I have a bit more length though. I'm not sure if I can make it work on my itty bitty super nubbins! (you'll meet those tomorrow. They've grown a bit since I had to take them all the way down, but they're still super duper right at the nail bed nubbins. I'll be honest, I hated them and wanted to cry...until I applied Julep Chloe...now I love them. But that's another post!

Distant Memory, although a lovely color, had it's issues. First off, the brush was the worst Spoiled brush I have ever encountered. It looked like a little mop that was pulled out of a garbage disposal. I couldn't get a clean line to save my life! The formula was also pretty thick and gloppy. Combine that with fast dry time and application was not pleasant. Thank god for SV! The color is gorgeous, but I think I'll swap out brushes next time I use my spoileds. I hear the brushes from Sinful Colors fit the Spoiled bottles.

Hope you're all having a happy "hump day" and thanks for stopping by!

Happy Polishing!
-Kimber