HPB Present Dusty Pastel Gradient

Hey hey hey! It's a Saturday and while I normally don't post on Saturdays, I need to squeak one more post in-- for the monthly Hobby Polish Bloggers monthly nail art round up! The theme for this month is Dusty Colors and for awhile I was stumped, mainly because no polishes sprang to mind and I was dreading having to search through my stash for something to use. And then I stumbled across a display of the new Sinful Colors Porcelain Mattes and grabbed them all (of course!) and I thought these fit the bill. I would call them dusty pastels-- they certainly aren't bright and have a certain muted quality to them that I associate with the term "dusty."

First I applied two coats of Glazy Sunday, which is a "delicate dusty rose." (Look, even has dusty in the description!). Then I applied a liquid latex barrier-- this is seriously a game changer when it comes to doing gradients. Then I sponged on Glazy Sunday, Cheshire China (a light lavender) and 
She's Gone Matte (a mint green). Because they were mattes, they were thicker which meant they were easy to sponge and not too sheer. I was worried the polish might dry too quickly but that wasn't a problem! Here's the finished product:

I am so proud of this gradient! I know I have done gradients before, but I feel like this is my best one yet. Practice makes perfect!I wore this for probably four days, which is really unusual for me (usually every mani is 2 days) and it was hard to remove it. Couldn't have turned out better if I had wanted it too! This is the first time I've used the latex barrier and will definitely do so every time I do a gradient in the future. Hope you enjoyed this manicure!

An InLinkz Link-up

Pink To Black manicure

Hi all! I have a slightly different post to share with you today. I usually don't use my blog as a soap box, because in general I consider nail polish and blogging to be my hobby and I tend to keep things happy and upbeat because this is one of my escapes. However, this is the month of October, which we are all aware is when we are inundated with advertisements and campaigns urging us to support breast cancer awareness, in addition to an overload of pink items. The sad fact is, though, that while we are all aware of breast cancer these days, there is still a lack of funding for real, hard research that finds ways to cure breast cancer (or any cancer, really, but October focuses on breast cancer).

I have a friend who is dying of metastatic breast cancer. She is 39 years old (only seven years older than I am!) and has two children and a husband she will leave behind when her disease inevitably kills her, unless a cure is found. And that cure comes from research, bench science, clinical trials-- not awareness campaigns. My friend founded an organization called METUP, which is an activism organization that is bringing attention to those living with metastatic breast cancer and to campaign for more funding to be directed to research for a cure. Today they are staging a die-in in Washington DC and I wanted to create a manicure in solidary. The METUP logo is the ubiquitous pink ribbon, but you come to the ends, the ribbon becomes tattered and fades to black.

This logo inspired my manicure idea-- to create a pink to black gradient on my nails. For this manicure I used Colors by Llarowe Engorgeous, Fancy Lacquer Come To The Dark Side, and Colors by Llarowe Luke, I am Your Father. I painted two coats of Engorgeous, and then I sponged on Come To The Dark Side and Luke, I am Your Father. The last one proved to be a bit sheer while I was trying to sponge it on, so I ended up painting a stripe of it on the free edge of my nail, then sponging more grey and black on top of it to create the the gradient effect.

Artificial light (flash):

I'm really happy with how this turned out and I definitely managed to to capture the idea I had in my mind. I think the grey helped ease the transition from the pink to black.

So, while I feel that whatever causes you choose to support are your own business and you should never feel coerced to give money where you don't want to, if you are motivated to give to a breast cancer charity this month, I would encourage you to donate to one of the charities listed here to give to groups that support breast cancer research, especially metastatic breast cancer instead of just awareness campaigns.

Note: I am in no affiliated with any of the organizations I have mentioned/linked in this post-- I am merely promoting a cause I feel deserves the attention.

Football Friday: Arizona Edition (Part I)

This is probably my last big Football Friday manicure, as we've got between 2-3 weeks before our babies are born! So I except the next few posts (assuming there are ones) will probably be fairly simple. Tomorrow we start Pac-12 play against the Arizona Wildcats (and then later on will play Arizona State, hence the Part I). Last year we lost terribly to Arizona, but this year is more difficult to predict-- it's early in the season and neither team is really proven, though theoretically UW has played the more difficult schedule thus far. I'm also making the decision to skip this game and I'm glad, because there's supposed to be a huge rain and wind storm hitting the Seattle area and that doesn't seem appealing to me at all. 

This week I went back to my favorite nail art technique, a sponge gradient. I wanted to play off our uniforms a little so I used FingerPaints Bare No Secrets as my base and then sponged FingerPaints A Grape Catch on top of it. Then to add to zing, I layered Wet n Wild 18K Gold over it. I really like how this manicure turned out. It's subtle, but still spirited.

Artificial light - flash:

Artificial light:

Natural light - shade:

Go Dawgs! Beat the Wildcats!