The Mani-Logues: August 2012

Hello all! Lots going on in my world lately, keeping my from blogging more often... but I plan on posting here and there until all the events and what not are passed. My little girl Violet will be turning 1 year old on Monday the 20th so I have been VERY busy planning and creating some DIY decorations etc for her Yo Gabba Gabba party :) It is EXHAUSTING but fun... and I cannot wait to come back full time to blog and show off all the pretty polish that I have accumulated since I last posted!

Today I have one of the new (and NOW FOR SALE) artisan polishes from The Nail Junkie, in a shade called BEE. FYI IT IS PERFECT FOR PITTSBURGH STEELERS FANS! GO BLACK AND GOLD!

If you have read my previous posts on The Nail Junkie artisan polish (Violet matte, Daffodil matte, Rose matte, their toppers, and Grape jelly), you know that these may look one way in the bottle and show much different (in a good way!) on the nail.

The new shade, Bee, in the bottle looks like a solid bright butter yellow cream with small black hexagonal matte glitter bits... until you look closer and see all the bright yellow shimmer and realize THIS IS NO CREAM! I only needed 2 coats, but I am a creature of habit and brush on that 3rd coat anyway. The yellow was brighter on the nail than in the bottle, but only a bit more. With the polish she always includes a stack of felt squares for easy polish removal, and an extra goodie... this one was a WONDERFUL lanolin and natural oil based cuticle balm, she calls Cutie Balm (cute indeed!), that I will be reviewing and showing off in a future post! keep a look out :)

This would also be a pretty good stamping polish if you can get the black glitter out of the way.
That black glitter is another good thing I liked about this shade, in each of my pictures below... the 1st 2nd and then 3rd layers applied... all had the same amount of glitter on the nail... a REALLY good thing when it comes to polish like this. I cannot stand when you are trying to apply more coats of polish and it only ends up swiping off all the glitter with each brush stroke, so this polish NOT doing that made me SUPER happy! The formulas with the polish are always consistently good and easy to work with. I did have problems with it not drying properly, however I found that was due to a humidity spike where I live.

I cannot wait to put this on Violet's little toes for Pittsburgh Steelers football nights!

Here is.... BEE:

Isn't BEE pretty?!

how do I always manage to nick my poor index nail :(

Close up on that sweet shimmer!

LOVE LOVE LOVE

BEE!

bzzzzzzzzzzzzz....

like?! go buy!

Visit SHOP.NAILJUNKIE.COM to purchase any of the matte pastels, jelly fruits, and/or the new animal shades for $10 each with free domestic (USA) shipping and $5 flat rate (no bottle min or max) international shipping. All details on the polish and purchasing are listed above the images to order on the Nail Junkie shop site!

---Cas

When I received my 1st Melmer (a perfect and affordable -use your coupons!-storage container from Michael's crafts store, thanks to my BFF Traci) to hold my polish I knew there was NO WAY I would leave it plain white... it needed to be colorful and awesome like all the pretties inside of it!

I knew right away what I wanted to paint on one side, THE TARDIS from Doctor Who! No no NOT just because I am a DW FanGirl, but because the Melmer is very much like the Tardis... they are bigger on the inside than they look outside! The Melmer fits about 100 average shaped/sized bottles of polish (I consider average, easy to find polish like OPI and China Glaze) in each of it's 3 drawers and has little pegs on the top to stack with more Melmers!!!

I think that EVERYONE should have the Tardis on their Melmer, so this is how I painted one side of mine!

Obviously you will want to remove your drawers, will make this a lot easier on you! haha

I wanted to do a space/galaxy look on the top of the Melmer since I may stack another on top of it and didn't want to really put too detailed of a painting. I went with a Mars Black acrylic paint to start and a few streaks of a dark grey acrylic paint blended around.
For the Tardis side, I went with a mixture of cobalt acrylic and a touch of blue lake acrylic in one thick coat.

** I did get a few sandwich containers to prop the box up while working, it is easier to paint on an angle.

Next up I took a few pinches of holographic silver glitter, in bits just smaller than average confetti circles, and sprinkled it all over in swirls around the black paint. Then took a sponge and pressed them down and smoothed some around into the paint more, this gave me the space look I wanted. I suggest getting some clear lacquer (spray is easiest) to coat the top of it so you don't start chipping off glitter bits all over everything.

FYI that is OPI Pompeii Purple up on muh NAILZ, I'm now obsessed with iridescent shades!

I let this dry and applied my clear lacquer and waited for that to dry to add a little spoiler.

I got out my roll of painter's masking tape and evenly marked off the top banner of the police box, painted an even coat of Dark Cobalt blue acrylic and let it dry. Then I marked off evenly where I wanted the middle text block to read 'PUBLIC CALL' and etched in the text with a dotting tool (it's okay if you do this sloppy its just to give you an idea for when you are to start painting the text).

While still slightly tacky, I started by painting the P and marking the points for the C, so that I could figure the position of the middle 4 letters. I always like to do a stippling technique and then do my solid vertical lines, and it helps keep everything spaced nicely and the same size letters. Once you do this you will cover up the etching into the tacky paint, and if you miss a few lines like I did, just touch them up with the Dark Cobalt acrylic paint :)

You'll want to do the same but obviously larger, for your left and right text. Once dry, I removed the painter's masking tape and got to work on taping out the 12 rectangles for the windows...

I cut thin strips of the tape to make the windows in a grid, picture explains it all. Painted the windows with Titanium White acrylic like the lettering at the top. Once it dried I peeled off the tape and took a very thin long brush and put a thin shadow outline on the left and bottom side of every white rectangle to give them some depth... I mean.. they ARE windows... ;P

(for some reason the only picture I took of this step was a junky iPhone picture, I apologize!)

I did the same thin strips of tape for the boxes under the window sets, these are directly under and the same width as the window sets. I then put more tape inside the tape boxes, leaving a naked gap the same thickness as between the window rectangles, and painted those the Dark Cobalt blue. Once they dried I removed the tape to begin taping off and making a perfect rectangle inside the bottom left box I just painted....

For the white post on the bottom left, I used titanium white and a speck of light grey (lacquerheads, think opi skull & glossbones grey.. heh), I did a thin coat of this I really did not want it as bright as the windows and the text at the top. For the text in the white post, I waited for the white box to dry completely (very important or you will ruin your sharpie or pen or whatever you use) and I used a fine point sharpie to write out the text and then went over that with my Mars Black acrylic paint. Looking through the pictures, I am really not happy with how the text turned out in the white box so I will most definitely be re-doing this. which will suck.

Here is Sexy... my Tardis.