Challenge Week 14: Stripe mani

I am very late with updating my challenges but life in general and going on Easter Vacation in particular meant a lot to me and my family, so I decided not to beat myself up about it.

I don't think it is any secret that I love Cult Nails. I have quite an extensive collection and with good reason: The formula is awesome, colours are outstanding, they are affordable and Maria Morrison, the creative genius behind it, is a total sweet heart.

I find myself returning to those polishes again and again when considering what to choose for my challenges - and this was no exception.

For the first time I swatched!!! I did this manicure and immediately removed it!! That was all kinds of crazy to me since I wear my manis for at least two days, but hey there is always a first :D.

The colours I chose are:

• Bad Devious Nature, a bubble gum pink that was a lab fail, but she liked it so much she is selling it as a regular colour now.

• Feel Me Up, an egg yolk yellow (I know Maria has described it as buttercup yellow, but my eyes see this totally as an egg yolk!!) This is not available for purchase.

Bad D.N. as base colour and Feel Me Up for stripes, and did an accent ring finger with Feel Me Up as base and Bad D.N. for stripes:

 

 

Though I only wore this shortly it made me feel happy, so I might try it as a regular mani another time.

Challenge Week 3: Colour Block Mani

I must say I am surprising myself - I am now in week 3 of the 52 week challenge and I am actually keeping up. It is fun and educational for me since a lot of what is going on is totally new to me. Which is especially true with this challenge.

I was a little unsure how I should go about it since we've already established that my free hand skills leaves a lot to be desired. But thinking about it I decided that the best way to do this was to combine the colour blocking with a tape mani, though this would also be uncharted territory. So off I went and once more had to admit defeit.

Point in case:

What I really forgot was that the formula on these Cult Nails colours are a little special. They are very jelly like with the first coat and totally opaque in second. But that really got in the way of getting a good result - the pink and blue are nowhere near the opacity I was aiming at. Then take in to consideration that though having dapped the tape numerous times I was still able to peel layers of the yellow polish=epic fail.

And then to add insult to injury, I really wasn't succeeding in getting those lovely sharp lines going. The tape really didn't like to cooperate - and smudge city here we come...though there are some huge problems here I really like what I was aiming at and hopefully I will be able to do something more accomplished at a later date.

These were the colours that I used, they are all from Cult Nails and extremely limited - though Maria has been talking about having them all as part of future collections:

Feel Me Up - a butter cup yellow though on my fingers it looks like egg yolk.

Bad Devious Nature - a true pink that I really like.

Tied Up - Smurf Blue!! Beware of Stains.

I really enjoyed this and with some practice I think I could actually do this without total failure.