Wednesday 29 January 2014

Llama Nails Holiday Challenge week 15 - Chinese New Year

Hey y'all!

Today is a remarkable day for me.  It is the conclusion of my first ever nail art challenge!  Oddly, it isn't the first one I've ended, but it is the end of the first one I started.  Confused?  S'okay, no worries.  Today's theme is Chinese New Year, so here's my digits!  My fingers, not my phone number.  Sorry.


Red and gold/yellow are both very traditional Chinese New Year colors, so I've incorporated them both here.  This festive look was created by starting with one coat of elf Red on all nails.  On my middle finger, I then layered two coats of Rimmel Precious Stones in Ruby Crush.  On all my other nails, I did a dry marble with Ruby Crush and OPI Honey Ryder.  The liquid sand formula of Honey Ryder and the full-coverage glitter of Ruby Crush seemed to mix really well together, so I was quite pleased.


Did you know that 2014 is the Year of the Horse in the Chinese zodiac?  Tis true, so I've drawn the character for Horse on my middle finger with my Kiss black striping paint and a trimmed detail brush.  If you look carefully, you can see that the character actually sort of looks like a horse, with the four pegs on the bottom being his legs, and the triple-crossed vertical line being his mane, and the other long line forming his neck, body, and swooping down to make his tail.


I think maybe you can see it a little better in the picture above, but I apologize for the glare.  I just couldn't capture the sparkle in my lightbox, so I brought them out under the bulb and tried my best.  I highlighted around the character with Belle Glamour Golden Snitch to bring it out a bit more.


Finally, to pull the whole thing together, I stamped an image from BM-406 on the rest of the nails, and of course topped it off with SV. 

So, yeah... I'm pretty happy with myself for completing all of this challenge, even though everyone that started it kind of dropped out except for Angie of OurPaintedWorld.  You should definitely drop by and see her page, because she's also doing a challenge with the The Lacquer Legion, and it's pretty stinkin cool.  As for me, I'm still doing Tri-Polish on Tuesdays and will be dropping in and out of the GOT Polish on Thursdays (mostly due to time constraints and not having a vast assortment of polishes which fit the criteria for "oldie", but I will also be doing the next Llama Nails challenge, which is all about different techniques, and it starts up next Wednesday.  No rest for the wicked!  Hope you'll stay with me to see all those designs.

Also, since I don't want to limit this blog to nail art only, I've set a goal to try to swatch through my train case of untrieds by the end of March so that I can make room for some of the new stuff I have coming in.  Hopefully that means I'll have some new polishes to show you on Saturdays, and if I do it right, I'll try to participate in some Sunday Stamping (probably over Saturday's swatches, lol!).  Also, I've had a couple of requests to do a few more video tutorials, so I will try to find time to start filming the first one in the next couple of weeks.  Do you have any tutorial requests for me?  Sound off in the comments!

Hope you're all having a great week!






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