Winter Camo and Dots

I, like many women, have a husband obsessed with camo.  I swear he has a radar for it or something!  We could be in Home Goods and he will find the one thing with camo on it!  Anyway, it was his turn to pick my polish and he wanted camo.  So, he chose some Russian "winter" camo pattern for me to emulate.

This is my masterpiece (not!):

Here is the pattern I was supposed to copy.  Let's just say that my first camo attempt was not as expected...

I'm not entirely sure how I didn't grasp the horizontal line concept here and got so far off track.  As it was a "dots" challenge month, I had to incorporate some and they turned out to be my favorite part of the mani.

Here is what I used for this look:

I started with a white undie over my base coat to help the holo pop.  It's too bad I haven't learned how to properly capture holo polish with my camera and a light box.  Something to work toward in 2015.  This is a photo I took with my phone when there was a glimpse of sunshine while at work.

Take A Trek was slightly disappointing in application as it was streaky on the first coat.  I was thicker with it on the second coat and it evened out fairly well.  The shimmer is beautiful on it!  So much so, that I decided to put it on my toes.  Too bad my toes aren't seeing any kind of sunshine or publicity these days (winter).  LOL!  I tried my camo technique with the other colors and used them for dotting as well.  I topped everything off with a coat of Seche Vite.

Stripes #3: Witch's Tights

With a little Halloween inspiration, I created another stripes mani.  I also added a little matte finish to my accent nail.  More on that experience later...

Here is what I used for this mani:

This reminded me of those tights witch's wear in figurines or those Halloween decorations you can buy all over the place.  For this look, I used my typical base coat and one layer of Sinful Colors Snow Me White.  I used 2 coats of Meg for the green nails and 2 coats of Creative Fantasy for the purple ones.  I then added 2 coats of I Love You to the purple nails for a glitter effect as the Creative Fantasy dries with a kind of "rubber" look.

For my accent nail, I added 2 coats of Watch It Glitter.  I then added a layer of Seche Vite (on all of my nails except the accent nail) to seal it all in and begin the striping tape detail.  These stripes came with a lot of trial and error but I finally settled on two layers of striping tape to get the desired width between stripes.

I cut about 75 pieces of tape for this mani - I always test my designs on my right hand since I can't photograph that hand as easily, it helps me to finalize a design without having to start over.  LOL!  I worked on one nail at a time for this look.  Once the tape was positioned onto the nail, I painted 2 coats of Ebony Hates Chris on top.  Then, I carefully pulled the tape off the nail while the polish was still fairly wet.

After the polish was dry, I added a final layer of Seche Vite to the nails except for my accent nail.  I tried several things with the matte finish on my right hand first...I will admit that I love the look of matte nails on other people...just not so much on myself.  This makes me so sad.  I tried making the black stripes matte at first.  I just didn't like it.  I tried making the whole nail matte, and I didn't like it.  I don't know if it is my matte polish or just me.  It seems like the polish is too waxy or something.  Anyway, I have seen so many people put the matte finish over the glitter with astounding results so I tried it.  I LOVED that!  So, I just have the matte finish on my accent nail.  Not that you can really tell from the photos though.  I realized that it just takes longer to set than normal and not dent or smudge when touched.  Now that I have that learning, I will have to try more of it.

That was a bit long-winded, but thanks for reading through it.  :)