ABC Challenge: E is for Essie

Hello lovelies! Happy Wednesday! You know what that means....another ABC Challenge post!

Today's letter is "E", and I have to tell ya, I was excited about this one. I've had this manicure in my head forever, but never had the time between reviews to actually sit down and do it. That's one of the things I love about this challenge - it forces me to do some nail art and take a break from swatching for a day. Not that I don't love swatching and reviewing, quite the contrary! But I think a day off keeps me from burnout, and that's never a bad thing.

For my letter "e" mani, I chose Essie Miss Fancy Pants, a lovely creamy taupe, as my base color. Then I used several different sized dotting tools to add multi-sized dots in Essie Skirting The Issue, Essi Stylenomics and Essie Head Mistress. These are my faves from this collection, and the moment I saw them I knew I wanted to use them for a Dotticure. I really dig this mani too! Something about the way these colors work together, and those pops of color over a neutral base. I'm not much of a neutral girl, but Miss Fancy Pants really won me over. After I bought this I added more nudes and neutrals to my collection.

I also scaled back the number of pictures I'm posting. I LOVE seeing pictures of manicures, but I don't want everyone to scroll through 8 trillion pictures. Do you prefer my with photos with the polish bottle, or without? I never can choose.:)

 
This is my first attempt a neutral based dotticure, and I'm really feeling it. I may have to experiment with this look with more neutral bases, maybe some lighter colors that I'm not prone to wearing. It's always kind of fun to step outside of my comfort zone.

The formula on Miss Fancy Pants was excellent. I love Essie polishes, and more often than not the formula and application are excellent. 2 coats for opacity and no dragging, streaking or bubbling. I did have some little stringies attach themself to my middle nail while I was dotting, but I have a habit of just dotting away rather quickly and not watching the consistency of my polish. Patience is not a virtue with which I was blessed!

What do you think of this neutral based look?

Be sure not to miss all the "E"Manicures the ladies are posting today!






Be sure to stick around! I have White Owl Lacquers, Daring Digits, Laquerlicious and more BG Cosmetics coming up over the next few days!

Thanks for stopping by and Happy Polishing!
-Kimber

31 Day Challenge (v.2!) Day 6: Violet Nails!

Morning Ladies! I really hope this post makes sense, since I'm running on maybe 90 minutes of sleep and am still on my first cup of coffee. :)

First of all, If you haven't entered my giveaway, DO EET!!! Also, my special guest today will be "Random Cat Hair", and since he snuck into some of my pictures without my knowledge, he asks that you admire him and just kinda chuckle at his sneakiness.

Today's challenge was Violet/Purple nails, which meant that I was incredibly indecisive and didn't actually decide what I was doing until the very last second. I had actually planned on doing a checkerboard mani for these, but for some reason I really wanted to play with my dotting tools, so I went with a multi-purple mermaid scale dotticure instead. This is my first time attempting this design, and I'm fairly pleased with how it turned out. My ring finger is less than stellar, but since it's not noticable IRL, I didn't bother re-doing it. Not that I want you guys to have to see manicure wonkiness, but this mani was time consuming and by the time I was done there was no way I was re-doing anything that wasn't glaringly obvious! It was a lot of fun though, and I'll definitely be trying this with different colors in the future.

For this mani I started with a base of Color Show Iced Queen, a lovely soft yet vibrant lilac purple. hen I added the dots in a straight line using China Glaze VIII and Grape Juice, Petites Mystical, Essence Break Through and Iced Queen again. The trick here is to dot in between the row above where you're currently dotting, creating a fish-scale type effect. The hardest part was keeping my darned dots centered between the dots. I'm not good at much around 2 am, and that's when I chose to do my dotting, so a few of the lines are dotted like I just finished a plethora of jager bombs. ;)

I also don't know why my camera has decided that it really must make my hands look so lobstery, but okay. I'd rather have lobster hands and color accurate photos I suppose.

And now, without further adieu, I give you.....*drumroll please!* VIOLET NAILS (co-starring Random Cat Hair!)!!

Did you spot Random Cat Hair? That guy is a show-off, I swear.  He lives to try and sneak into my photos.

Anyway, this didn't turn out half bad for a last minute change in mani plan and my first attempt at mermaid nails sans stamping. Would you rock this look?

Our next challenge will be Black and White Nails on Friday. I'm excited about that one since it's rare that I wear either color these days!

Don't forget to check out the rest of the Varnished Vixens Violet Manis! I guarantee they rock!

-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
-Greta at How Was Your Day?
-Miss L at Beauty by Miss L 
-Gini at Sassy Paints 
-Chameleon Stampede 
-Pam at Nail-E-Glance
-Me, Myself, and Polish 
- Robin Sparkles 

Thanks for stopping by and Happy Polishing!!
-Kimber

Dastardly Dots! X Out Nail Art!

Last week I was contacted by Jamie from Guthy-Renker's (makers of ProActiv) PR Department to see if I would be interested in participating in a nail art project for their latest product, X Out. First of all, let me say how flattered I am to be asked to participate in this project. My blog is little, and I don't really promote it, so to be noticed at all is a very cool thing for me. I'm also a big fan of Pro Activ (my skin has always been a challenge, and I started using Pro Activ about 4 years ago. It made a HUGE difference for me.), which just made it even cooler.

The challenge here was to create an X Out inspired Nail Design. Since X Out's Manifesto is about "confidence and putting your best (break-out free!) face forward", they will be donating $200 per post to Pacer's National Bullying Prevention Center.  As those of you who have been reading me for awhile know, this is close to my heart since my daughter was recently bullied to the point of contemplating suicide.  Of course I'm going to want to do this! I'm also thinking of ordering some of this for my daughter. Ya know, since she is having those wild PMS breakouts like I tend to get!

And so I set to work! Here is my inspiration, the product packaging and the X Out Manifesto:

I don't know about you guys, but I had a TON of ideas buzzing around in my little head. I managed to narrow it down to 3, which I then created on a nail wheel. I had a very hard time settling on just one, but in the end I chose the simplest, yet still eye-catching design. I love how this looks, and it's received the most compliments of any mani I have ever created!

I am loving it! I decided on multi-sized, overlapping dots since it reminded me of the bubbles on the packaging. I chose to fore-go an accent nail since it ended up detracting from the mani. I had originally planned on wearing an accent nail with the "X" logo and the dots creating the shape of the banner, and it came out pretty cool, but just didn't look as clean.

To create this look I used:

1 coat OPI Nail Envy Matte
1 coat Instant Artificials Base Coat
2 coats Finger Paints Black Expressionism
several different sized dotting tools
nail art brush
L'Oreal Paparazzi Pleaser (Purple)
L'Oreal Now You Sea Me (Teal)
Milani White On The Spot
1 coat Barielle Advanced Pro Gel Top Coat
1 coat Seche Vite

What do you guys think of my Dastardly Dots? Would you wear a mani like this?

Thanks for stopping by! Don't forget to check out X Out!

Happy Polishing!
-Kimber


**All products featured in this post were purchased by me with my own money. No compensation of any sort was provided to me in exchange for the content of this post.**