Crumpets Nail Tarts: Green Freestyle ft. MoYou London Festive

Hello Readers!

This week's prompt for Crumpet's Nail Tarts  is "green freestyle", so green is what I did! At first I was kind of interpreting "freestyle" as anything you feel like you wanna do (*gosh*) but then somebody posted saying maybe it means techniques such as dry brushing, blobbicure, fan brushing, etc. I had already been planning on doing a Lady Liberty themed mani, and I thought a fan brushed background would actually be perfect for it, so I ran with that.

Besides, it's been a while- ok, like a really long time- since I've done a fan brush mani. And they are fun! I have done dry brushing more recently, but I though fan brushing would give me the kind of distressed look I was going for here.

I basically raided the "green" section of my nail polish shelf to grab several shades that I though would be statuesque, and added in a gold for good measure. I started off with the Sinful Colors "Works Like a Charm" (two coats) and then just placed one green polish at a time onto my silicone mat and then applied it to my fan brush, then brushed it lightly over my nails.

My Statue of Liberty image comes from this MoYou London plate, from the Festive collection. I really liked the idea of having the stamping images be silhouettes against the green background, so I had to scrounge through all my plates to find images to pair with this that were also solid.

...but, while scrounging, I found this plate and the "I <3 NY" image, and I thought it would go perfectly with my theme. Finding a silhouette of a cityscape was a little trickier, however- apparently I just don't have any traditional ones. I almost had to resort to freehand (which may have been scary) but I found this:

A hehe (most likely knock-off) plate from the Harry Potter line, with that image of Hogwarts. Yeah, it's not actually a cityscape, but I figured it'd do.

Thanks for stopping by today! As always, links to the rest of the Crumpet's Nail Tart participants are in the link-up below!

Nail Crazies Unite: Ugly *Harry Potter* Sweater

Hello Readers!

For this week's challenge we are over in the Nail Crazies group with an "ugly sweater" prompt. Originally I was going to use my Bundle Monster Christmas-sweater themed plate to go with a classic ugly sweater look, but then I remembered Harry Potter.

For those not familiar with the story (or those who need a refresher), every year at Christmas-time Mrs. Weasley would knit sweaters for each of her children for Christmas, and also one for Harry. Ron always bemoaned the "ugly" maroon sweater he was inevitably given by his mother, though Harry quite appreciated receiving any Christmas gifts at all.

My design is based off of Harry's first year at Hogwarts, and the sweaters that were received by various characters in the book.

Harry's is the green, Ron's is red, and of course I had to include Fred and George, as it reminds me on one of my favorite jokes in the book:

“You haven't got a letter on yours," George observed. "I suppose she thinks you don't forget your name. But we're not stupid-we know we're called Gred and Forge.”

So for these fingers, I basically started with a nude base and then painted over it in the appropriate color. I left some nude at the top to represent the character's neckline when they are wearing the sweater.