I'm baaaaack!

My apologies to those of you who read my blog - I have been AWOL for far too long.  This means this will be a long post.....I must catch up!  Here we go:

The company I work for (RE/MAX Results) had a booth at the Minnesota State Fair this year.  I decided to go and help out a bit before I stuffed my face full of fried food.  :)  I figured this would be a nice occasion to try something a bit more....complex.  Best way I can think to describe it.  I wanted to try to recreate the RE/MAX Results logo.  This involved 5 different polishes and quite a bit of work.  First, I painted all of my nails with 2 coats of Essie Blanc.  Then I decided that I would need to mix my own light blue - I did this using Essie Blanc and Sinful Colors Aquamarine.  I used this to add a gradient to all my nails.  THEN I got out the reinforcer stickers (you know, the ones that look like donuts that you use to reinforce paper that has been 3-hole-punched?) and placed them on each nail, then painted the tips white to create the "swoosh."  Using a small brush (I just got a new set of nail art brushes and I LOVE them!) I added some Revlon Snow Bunny to the tips - this was the closest I could get to the grey-ish part of the swoosh.  Final touch: I used my small brush again to paint 2 Rs on my thumb.  One red for RE/MAX, one blue for Results.



I follow a few different nail blogs and I've been seeing a lot of them doing 31-day challenges.  I've decided to give it a shot as well - this will be especially difficult for me because I just moved in to a new apartment and most of my belongings are still in boxes, but hey.  I think I can make this work.  I found this particular one on Chalkboard Nails.



Since I don't have internet in my new place yet (thanks for that, CenturyLink....how long does it take to just switch my service over to the new place, which is only 4 blocks away?), I wasn't able to post on the first day of the challenge.  But I'm hoping that's okay.  Here are my red nails for day 1!

Not the greatest photo, I know...but it's the best I can do for now.  The effect on this is pretty subtle - I thought it would be a bit more obvious, but that's life for you.  Here you see 2 coats of OPI Mrs. O'Leary's BBQ, then some SpaRitual Epicurean on the tips.  I'm still playing around with gradients...I think I'm getting a little bit better at them. 

Stay tuned for day 2 - I should be posting my orange and yellow nails later on today.  :)