Hello and welcome!  This week’s design and inspiration is a bit more abstract than normal.

It may be August, and my boyfriend and I may have moved in together in January, but we are finally having a house warming party!  Originally I had planned to do a design with houses, maybe a stamp of some kind, or a home sweet home kind of feel.  But a few months back, China Glaze released their Sesame Street collection with one particular polish catching my attention:  Living in the Elmo-ment.  And would you like to take a guess what street we live on?  It’s named Elmo!  So I just knew I had to use this polish.  Then I ended up busy getting the house ready, with no real time to think of a design, so I went with some good old fashioned V vinyls.

What I Used:

• Base Coat:  Orly – Bonder
• 1st Color:  China Glaze – Living in the Elmo-ment
• 2nd Color:  OPI – Dutch Tulips
• 3rd Color:  Sally Hansen Color Therapy – Glow with the Flow
• Top Coat:  Essie – Speed Setter
• Maniology Poli-Peel cuticle protector
• Twinkled T Deep V vinyls
• Maniology double sided nail art brush & dotting tool
• Twinkled T clean up brush, size #2
• nail polish remover

I started with my Orly base coat, because I figured I could make this an all drugstore polish mani.  Then I applied two coats of China Glaze – Living in the Elmo-ment.  It was pretty textured from all of the glitter, and I didn’t want that to mess with the vinyls, so I applied some top coat to smooth them out.

Then I place the first Deep V vinyl on my nail, but it was just too skinny for the look I was going for.  So I put two together, overlapping a bit, in order to get the width that I wanted.  After applying the pinkish-red creme polish, I lifted the two vinyls immediately.

Two coats of China Glaze – Living in the Elmo-ment

Had to double up on the Deep V vinyls

After that first nail, I realized 1) you couldn’t tell the difference between the two polishes, and 2) I should probably apply liquid latex to keep the clean up to a minimum.  So I kept going.  This time with liquid latex around anything that would cause a mess.  And tried to think of solutions to problem number one.

The solution I came up with was to add gold lines in between the two colors.  For the first time, I used the long bristle nail art brush in my set, and I’m really upset that I haven’t tried it sooner.  It just made it so much easier to make the lines.  I thought I’d have no control with it, but for straight lines at least, you just drag the brush in one direction and you’re done.

I continued, but added liquid latex

Added the gold lines to distinguish the colors

This design is more simple than I planned, but I’m still too excited about the polish name matching perfectly to worry about that.  If I had the time, I think the only thing I would change is the second polish, since it matched too closely to the glitter.  But sometimes you just have to go with what you have.

Final look – left hand

Final look – right hand

Hope everyone enjoyed their week!

Update:

Ugh, my poor right hand.  That middle finger was attacked.  Part of me wants to blame it on the base coat, since I’ve noticed I get more chipping with it.  But I always make things worse with my constant picking.  I should start looking up tips on how to stop this bad habit.

I wrecked my poor thumb nail

My middle finger did not make it