Tag Archives: Challenge

The Lazy 15: Galaxy Nails…..I don’t get Galaxy Nails!

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Hullo again. And here I am, again one day late posting my mani! I honestly did try to post this morning but the server was down on my host site seemingly. But am happy to see that everything seems to be working now:)

Continuing with The Lazy 15 Challenge, it’s manicure number 5 – Galaxy Nails.

I must say I have no idea as to when the ‘galaxy nail’ craze kicked off, if indeed it ever did. Still being in my lacquerhead infancy, it’s not a nail art style that I’m familiar or know anything about. I must say, but for this challenge, it’s also not a style of nail art that appeals to me so I would never have attempted it on my own.

I did no research in preparation for this mani, a fact that is probably utterly evident. Obviously being a (normally) avid reading of nail blogs, I’d seen a few galaxy nails but not really been that impressed by them. That’s not to take anything away from the skill of those bloggers but simply that the style doesn’t really appeal to me. Anyhow, when it came time yesterday to do my own I just kind of guessed at what was involved and had a bit of a play.

Lazy 15 – Galaxy Nails

I decided to create an A England galaxy, so I started with a base of Camelot over my usual base coat of OPI Nail Envy Matte. I then took a dotting tool and did some dotting on each nail in Lady of the Lake. It then struck me that a bunch of different sized purple dots looked nothing like a flipping galaxy so I got a bit of sponge and dabbed at the purple dots to flatten them and mess them up a bit.

I then got a fresh bit of sponge and dabbed on some Morgan Le Fey across part of each of my nails. I then applied some dots of various sizes using China Glaze White on White since A England doesn’t make a white polish.

I then repeated the sponging but with Lady of the Lake, Tristam and Dragon, dabbing a little bit of each colour in one or two spots on each nail. I then dabbed a very long, thing tipped brush into White on White and proceeded to try my hand at some freehand painting in the forms of ‘twinkles’ over one or two stars on each nail…not the most effective use of freehand I grant you but still a first for me.

Finally I loaded a sponge piece with yet more Morgan Le Fay and sponged away in order to soften and ‘hazy up’ the look. I then whacked on some Lilacquer Hong Kong Girl and attempted to clean up my cuticles since they’d been victims of multiple drive-by sponge attacks!

Lazy 15 – Galaxy Nails

As you can see, the clean up wasn’t perfect. And if my cuticles look red and sore in places that’s because they are!:( Between the weekend’s marbling efforts, normal polishing and a bit of overly zealous cuticle pruning, they’re a bit over it and I can’t really blame them.

I’ve noticed lately on Instagram a couple of Galaxy Nail manicures where clouds have been painted over in part, as if you are looking through evening clouds up into the night sky. Given the dodginess of my freehand ‘twinkles’ I decided not to attempt anything more complicated.

As you’ve probably gathered from my comments above, I didn’t really enjoy the process with this one. The final outcome was ordinary and I expected as much. Really, it was a relief to remove this manicure as it just felt like a big old mess.

So what’s the take away from this for me? I’m afraid it’s ‘I don’t DO Galaxy Nails’. And I’m ok with that. I gave it a crack and I’m pleased that I did. Not every nail art style will be to everyones’ taste:).

And whilst I’ve struggled recently to keep on top of my RSS feed and so I’ve not had a chance to see what others in this challenge have done for this one, there are bound to be some stunning efforts. You can access the inlinkz for the blog of each lovely lacquerhead taking part in this challenge by clinking on the links to either of the blogs listed below:

http://nails4dummies.blogspot.com.au

 http://phoenixnails28.blogspot.com.au

xx


The Lazy 15: Water Marbling (or be afraid, be very afraid!)

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Hullo again. Apologies as I’m a bit late with mani number four. But water marbling is completely foriegn to me and I didn’t have sufficient down time to give it a go until yesterday. And boy oh boy, do you need clear time for this!

The polishes I used for this particular attempt were all OPIs: Moonraker, Tomorrow Never Dies and Bogota Blackberry. Now both Moonraker and TND were brand new and BB I’d used once. But even so I still found it quite slow to drip into the water so I added thinner. Aside from getting the polish to drop fast enough, the other big problem I had was getting the polish to spread. I found that the first polish would generally spread ok but that subsequent to that the polish circles wouldn’t expand very far. I was using ordinary tap water and I’ve since heard that that may be an issue. I’ve bought some distiller water now but I think I need time to recover from the experience before I try water marbling again. I will try it again though!

So below is the final outcome. After five hours of messing about my desk was a pigsty so I just went outside to take these photos rather than set up the light box. Also I apologise for the cuticles – despite using scotch tape, clean up was still a bitch. Added to which I nicked my right hand middle finger cuticle which bled profusely so I did my left hand instead, not wanting my wounded right hand to be exposed to acetone. Being left handed my clean up was even more underwhelming than it would have been on my right hand.

Watermarbling attemp

Watermarbling attempt

I did a number of trial runs with different polish brands and combinations. Some of the results of these I posted on Instagram (@Lacquercarefactor). The first was a total fail but then each after that was a slight improvement. So yes, I get that this takes patience and practice:). The other thing I struggled with was that I knocked the finished product on my index nail and then a bit of dried polish landed on my middle nail whilst I was applying top coat. So I actually had to do those again. The first version of the above was better looking than this but by that stage I was over the fun of making a huge mess with polish.

Also, I’ve still not managed to get hold of the inlinkz HTML code, so here’s a link to the blogs of just a couple of the lovely Lacquerheads doing this challenge and from their posts you can access the inlinkz of everyone one else who is part of this challenge:)

http://phoenixnails28.blogspot.com.au/2012/11/lazy-15-nail-art-challenge_7077.html 

http://nails4dummies.blogspot.com.au/2012/11/the-lazy-15-mani-4-water-marble.html

Until next time:)

xx