Bestie Twin Nails - Blasian Color Nation!

Okay ladies long time no post again!

Today I have a special post!  Did you know that I'm very good friends with the lovely Vicky A of Boombastic Nails?  In fact I named her blog back in the days when she was just thinking about blogging.  I may have goaded her into it because she had some of the best swatches and pictures I've ever seen how could she NOT blog!!! Lol I sound insane but she's talented and she also happens to be my nail polish/nail art bestie for today's post. 

As you know I love my Instagram and there are always tons of tags running around over there one of which is the theme - bestie twin nails.  In short you and your nail art buddy pic an idea and colors and without showing the other create some nail art.  Vicky chose the theme - using tape in nail art and then I semi chose the colors - rainbow (but then we decided on full color spectrum).  So where does the "blasian" part come from? Lol - I'm African American/Black and Vicki is Chinese.  So there we are anyway without futher ado some bestie nail art...

Mani-louge (by finger):

Reds and Oranges: Orly Cherry Bomb, OPI A Good Mandarin Is Hard To Find, Sally Hansen Hard As Nails Cardinal, Essie She's Pampered, Claire's Little Dipper, Essie Tart Deco, and Sinful Colors Orange Creme

Greens: Color Club Artsy Craft, Essie Mojito Madness, Milani Neon Fresh Teal, China Glaze Starboard, Spoiled by Wet N Wild I'm so Jaded, and Orly Green With Envy

Blues: Orly Snow Cone, Orly Sweet Peacock, L'Oreal Royally Yours, Essie Mint Candy Apple, Essie Avenue Maintain, OPI Orge The Top Blue, and Essie Bikini So Teeny

Purples: Color Club Puccilicious, Essie Play Date, Essie Boxer Shorts, L'Oreal Lacey Lilac, Orly Velvet Rope, L'Oreal Royalty Re-Invented, and Essie Go Ginza

Black and White Marble: L'Oreal I Will! and Orly Liquid Vinyl

Pretty cool right?  Even though neither of us knew which exact colors we were using it turned out so similarly!  Lol I guess we are besties after all.  Vicky's came out so perfectly I feel a little embarrassed to even put my art up next to hers *waaahhh* She is so talented!  You can see more details of her art on Boombastic Nails.

Now I know you are thinking where did YOU use tape in your mani??  Well I did.  I put down one water marble (the black and white) and then taped off sections of it and water marbled on top of the taped off sections creating a double water marble!  Crazy cool right.  I used over 30 polishes to create this manicure, and at least 4-5 different colors and 3-4 brands for each "color" of the the spectrum.! My my how overly ambitious!  Anyway I hope you enjoyed this happy un-Easter edition of Lacquer Lockdown.  May candy bunnies rain from your skies and happy Easter to those of you who celebrate it! 

Tamira :)

Halloween 2012: Crawling Marbles...

Hey polished prisoners,

You don't even want to know how excited I am for the month of October around these parts! I am so friggin' excited!!!  I want to try and post every day and get up some awesome tutorials for my Youtube for Halloween.  I have so many great ideas I can't wait to share plus the electricity is back on and I think the blogger app worked out fairly well so I've got my bases covered.  Its come to my attention that I've never done a "full" water marble mani round these parts.  Mostly I've done them as accents or as part of a trigger style mani.  So to kick off the Halloween felicitations today I'm showing you a full neon glowing creepy crawly mani.  Let's get onto the art shall we?

Mani-louge

Base colors: Essie Marshmallow and Milani Neon Totally 80's

Marble: Orly Liquid Vinyl, Milani Neon Totally 80's, Sinful Colors Let's Talk & Cloud 9

So let's talk about Totally 80's shall we? This polish is almost impossible to photograph! I had to color adjust like mad to get to the true color on screen.  It is a screaming highlighter yellow/green that hurts my eyes to look at directly in the sunlight.  Now that is saying something huh? Three coats are shown here over one thin coat of Essie's Marshmallow, and like all neons this one is a bit on the thicker side but has nice self-leveling. I fully expect to use this one again this month it's such a great base color!

So here's my first nail art of the Halloween season.  I'm looking forward to showing you so much more! Thanks for reading and I'll see you next post!  Toodles...

Falling Leaves...On Sundays I Stamp!

Hey polished prisoners,

Aigoo I am so behind schedule! Yesterday I had every intention to post up day 2 from the challenge, but I had an unexpected visit from my mum so that got blown to bits lol!  And today the AIS challenge for a Leafy mani almost stumped me.  I've told my friend Vicky from Boombastic Nails that I still have fails 9 out of 10 times when I go to stamp and today it went exactly like that.  I sort of realized these fails are the result of poor color choice, and so I'm going to be making an effort to make sure I put my stamping colors and base colors together with a bit more care in the future to prevent frustration when the colors don't show up as I've imagined them. Okay so enough rambling...let's get onto the art!

Orly's Buried Alive...wait I have to do this and then I can talk about the color.  "I shall leave you as you left me.  Buried alive...buried alive."  "Kaaaahhhhhhhhnnnnnn!!!! (echoes...echoes).  LOL!!! I'm sorry I had to and yes I'm a huge dork!  Anyway, Orly's Buried Alive looks like it should have debuted in the fall instead of the summer.  It is so rich so rich I knew when I saw the theme for this weekend that it had to be the main color for the mani.  And because I made this choice this is exactly why my first few attempts at this mani resulted in fails.  It's so dark and beautiful holos and lighter colors, even my beloved cG Passion, got sucked into its depths and disappeared never to be seen or heard of again! It took me a while to realize metallics and foils were going to be the only type of finishes that would work on this polish.

I ended up changing the base color of the water marble.

Mani-louge

Base coat: Revlon Rapid Dry Base Coat

Base colors: Orly Buried Alive (stamping) & Essie Sand Tropez (Marble)

Stamping colors: Color Club Art Club Name Unknown (green), Color Club Antiquated & Hot Like Lava, Essie Good As Gold & Nothing Else Metals, Sally Hansen Snappy Sorbet, and Konad Special Polish in Yellow

Marble colors: Color Club Artsy Crafty, Orly Buried Alive & Night Owl, OPI Big Apple Red & Lemonade Stand By Your Man, and Milani Juicy Glo

Stamping plate: BM04

Holy smokes right?!? So many freaking polishes! In my defense fall is very color rich and so even this amount of polishes doesn't quite cover the spectrum of all the beautiful colors that abound at this time of year.

I love the shimmer exploding all over this mani!

You may be asking why the water marble?  Well it was a last minute decision.  One of the things I love about marbles is that they very effectively capture the transitions of colors and fall is really all about transition.  So what do you think?  Even though this challenge pushed me and I had multiple fails I'm very happy with the final results.  Thanks for reading and stay tuned for my vintage mani for day two of the LDTTW challenge!  Toodles!