Animalistic Week--Cheetah or Leopard or Leopard or Cheetah!

Hi Readers!  Well some bad news--almost fate worse than death to a new blogger--my camera broke!  Yep looks like the shutter is stuck.  I've got a birthday coming up so i'm asking for a new one, in the meantime I'm going to do the best I can with my photo program.  The flash pics don't look too bad but holy cow the outdoor/non flash pics are blindingly white AND cruddy!  I hope you'll all bear with me for a few weeks.


Ok so here's the news on War Horse which I saw with my mom yesterday--fantastic BUT a bawlfest!  I was crying 10 minutes into the movie lol!  It was a wonderful story though and the cinematography was incredible.  If you love sweeping epics and movies that tug at your heart strings I highly recommend it.


And now for our Animalistic Week--is it cheetah or leopard, leopard or cheetah??? IT'S BOTH!
True story readers someone had me convinced the cheetah and leopard were really the same animal we just call them different names.  I really was believing this for about a week UNTIL I thought to myself I really think he means the cougar and mountain lion are the same.  So naturally I looked it up and YEP cougar and mountain lion are the same animal BUT the cheetah and the leopard are not!


So first up lets do the mani's.  This is mani--cheetah

This is as fixed as I can get it! Sorry!!!
Here it is with flash, flash seems to work better

Next up lets look at mani--leopard!

And here it is with flash

They both look really similar!  BUT just like the real cheetah and leopard their spots are different.  A cheetah doesn't have any opening in it's spots and they are a solid color.  The leopard has multi colors in it's spots which are really called rosettes!
To do both of these mani's I used an underwear of Zoya Pasha followed by 3 coats of Sinful Color's All About U (which is a FANTASTIC gold glass fleck polish) For the cheetah I simply stamped with Kleancolor Black using BM211.  For the leopard I went a bit further after stamping with Kleancolor Black using Konad M57 I took some OPI Brisbane Bronze and filled it the open spots.
Let's look at a side by side of this manis

Now lets look and a side by side pic of a cheetah and a leopard animal!

How'd I do???


Here are our cheetah and leopard facts: Cheetahs are the fastest in the big cat group and can run up to 70 miles per hour, which is faster than any other animal. Cheetahs have what's known as "tear" tracks that run down the corners of each eye and around the nose and mouth this actually serves as anti-glare during daytime hunting.  The cheetah has non retractable claws.  Cheetahs cannot roar like a lion or tiger but they do purr.  Next up Leopard--the leopard is pound for pound the strongest climber of all the big cats.  The rosettes or spots of the East African leopard are round while in South African leopards they are square.  The leopard can both roar and purr.  It marks it territory by leaving claw marks in trees.  The leopard has many prey to choose from; antelope, monkeys, baboons, warthogs, rodents and hares but only one predator--man.
Here are a couple of cheetah pictures I found

You can really see the "tear" markings there.
Here is a cheetah running full out! Look at the stretch he has!!

Here's a leopard!! King of his kingdom!

If you look closely at the leopard you can see the different colors in his spots and also that it is not closed.


Just for fun here's a picture of leopard nail polish ring I've made for a few people!

Well readers this concludes our Animalistic Week!  I know I had a lot of fun doing these manis and looking up the fun facts.  I hope you enjoyed them too!  I'd have to say my favorite mani of the whole week was Tiger though--how about you?


Again I'd like to say I'm sorry about the quality of these pictures!  I hope you'll bear with me for awhile until I can get a new camera!

Animalistic Week--Zebra!

Hi Readers!!!  Welcome to the weekend!  Anyone have anything exciting going on this weekend?  My mom and I are going to see War Horse today and it's the Packers vs The Giants on Sunday.  I'm not an Eli Manning fan AT ALL so I will cry a zillion tears if we cannot crush him to the ground on Sunday.  On the plus side I'll be at my little sister's enjoying the game and time with family is always a good time!


Okay so lets see what's today is in Animalistic Week . . . it's Zebra!  Here are our zebra facts for the day: just like the tiger a zebra's stripes are unique and no two zebras have the same stripe pattern.  Zebras are not solitary animals and live in herds. Zebras are loyal to their family and if a zebra is wounded by a lion or tiger the other zebras in the family will come to it's aid by circling it and trying to drive off the predator.  Zebras live up to 25 years and are about as tall as a 6 foot man.


Now onto the mani.  Instead of just a straight forward black and white zebra I wanted to change it up a bit and went for a gradient look.  I did a base color of another cast off polish from the same gal casting off the Misslyn Black Petrol (WHICH I FOUND OUT IS NOW DISCONTINUED AND THEREFORE RARE AND HTF!) Woot!! One man's treasure truly is another man's trash! Okay ANYWAY I did a base color of Hema 42--no name on this polish.  It's like a creamy silvery white to me though.  Then I sponged on LA Colors Color Craze Live on a slant about 3/4 up on the nail.  Live is a really pretty silver metallic and hey you can't go wrong spending a buck on this polish!  Next up I sponged OPI Lucerntainly Look Marvelous about 1/4 up on the nail then finished it by stamping with Kleancolor Black using BM223.

Here it is with flash

I love this shot I took holding on to Lucerntainly Look Marvelous

I really wound up loving this mani.  I like that  it's not as stark as a black and white mani.
Here are the polishes I used to do it

So how'd I do?? Let's look at a side by side comparison

I got my zebra pic from my friend Marcy!  I didn't notice until today he was definitely rated X instead of G lol!!!  Some things are better left to the imagination trust me on this readers!!
Just for kicks here's a funny zebra pic!

Well that's it for Animalistic Week--zebra!  I'll have to report back tomorrow on how hard I bawled my head off during War Horse!

Animalistic Week--Tiger!

Hi Readers!  Welcome to the jungle!  Don't lie are you old enough to picture Axl Rose's serpentine dance when you read that????  
Today in Animalistic Week we have---TIGER!  And OMG readers did this mani impress me!  I will not lie I almost broke my arm patting myself on the back.  This is not at all what I had intended to do for this mani.  I wanted to do a white tiger BUT then my Fantasy Football winnings arrived.  This was my first year playing Fantasy Football and it was a group of nail polish friends of mine therefore the prizes were nail polish.  I actually went to the Super Bowl this year but got my butt kicked by my friend Amber. She's an amazing nail artist and has done a series on NFL nails and they are all awesome. Please check her out here.  I'm not sure how this can happen I lost the Super Bowl but my prize was a set of 3 Lippmann mini's!  After checking them out I found myself drawn to Rock Star and thought it could work in a tiger mani.  AND IT DID!


Here is the gorgeous Deborah Lippmann Rock Star

OMG did you see that  mani readers????  Here is is again!

Here it is with flash

Flash close up!!!

I just can not get over the gorgeousness that is this mani!!!  This was a labor of love and trial by error let me tell you!   To get this look I painted one coat of Deborah Lippmann Rock Star (don't have Rock Star I can tell you WetnWild Fast Dry Cougar Attack is a pretty close dupe).  First I tried stamping in white to see if that would work.  Um no totally did not work.  Tigers are not orange and white! Next I stamped with just black over the Rock Star, that also was a fail.  I knew I needed white in there somewhere so I just took my Kiss Nail Art striper in white and painted some random lines over the Rock Star.  Finally this time when I stamped with the black it worked and looked AHmazing!  
So to recap polishes used were Deborah Lippmann Rock Star, Kiss Nail art striper in white, konad black and BM16 was the plate I used.  


And an FYI on the Rock Star glitter it is a hungry hungry hippo glitter and I had to use a total of 3 coats of Seche Vite for this mani.  I did a topcoat of it before stamping the black (I always topcoat Seche Vite before stamping any image because if you make a stamping error it's easier to remove) but then after a top coating after the stamping it was STILL bumpy so another coat went on and now all is well.


My wonderful friend Claude (really it's Claudia but she tolerates me calling her Claude, and I'm forever grateful) took a picture of a tiger at the zoo and shared it with me--isn't he gorgeous????!!!!!

Claude has her own blog and it's fantastic!  Please check her out here.  I warn you though she is a fantastic stamper AND has all those cool foreign plates I haven't been able to get my hands on . . . yet.


So let's see how I did here's a side by side comparison of my mani and Claude's Tiger

OMG NAILED IT!!!!!


YIKES!  I just realized I totally forgot the tiger facts!  Ok here they are! Tigers are the largest of the 4 big cat groups (I thought for sure it would have been lion) Each tiger has unique markings--no two tigers stripes are the same.  White tigers are genetic mutations and the many we see in zoos are bred that way but lots in genetic inbreeding means white tigers have more physical deformities and severe health issues than any other breed of tiger.  Tigers can live for 15 years in the wild and up to 20 years in captivity BUT more and more tigers subspecies are becoming extinct.  There were 9 subspecies of tigers but we are now down to 6 and of the 6 remaining the numbers in each subspecies is only in the thousands :(


So far I have to say this is my best mani of Animalistic Week--what do you say--agree or disagree?


Thanks for stopping by!  I hope you all have a fantastic day!!

Animalistic Week--Cow!

Hi Readers!  How's everyone's week going so far?  Here so far so good.  I got some great nail mail this week I'll be starting the week off with next week.  Weather here has been pretty nice, in the 40's a few days, so I really can't complain.  I've had a more animal print successes than failures so I'm feeling good.
I don't know if you know this but I live in Wisconsin--yep home of the Super Bowl Champions The Green Bay Packers, brats, beer and of course cows!  I know California keeps trying to say crap about their cows being better than ours but what's their state nickname?? The sunshine state!  What's Wisconsin's state nickname?? The DAIRY state! Nuff said
I've seen my fair share of cows too let me tell you--I had a Great Uncle who had a dairy farm--Uncle Don.  He was a really nice man, very patient with us whenever we came to visit--you know the country girls visiting the farm lol!


Here are our cows facts for the day: The main breeds of dairy cows are Holstein, Guernsey, Brown Swiss and Ayrshire.  It takes 12lbs of whole milk to make one gallon of ice cream and a little over 21lbs to make one pound of butter!  Hmm the rule here should be eat more ice cream lol!  Cows have an acute sense of smell and can smell something up to 6 miles away.  They drink about 35 gallons of a water a day and chew at least 50 times per minute!

Okay onto the mani!  It's just pretty straightforward black on white lol!

Here it is with flash

I think it's pretty cute actually although I wish I would have switched up the plate image rotation so the spots don't all line up in the same place on each nail--guess I only rotated for the index finger.

To do this mani I used OPI Alpine White and WetnWild Black Creme.  I stamped with BM215--there are a lot of animal print images on trusty ole BM215.

Here's a comparison of my nails with Ol' Bessie

So that's Animalistic Week--cow!  What do you think--cute or kind of blah?

True story readers when I was a little girl my Grandpa Shaw told me chocolate milk comes from brown cows.  I'm not going to lie I believed that one for a long time!

Thanks for stopping by!  I hope you all have a fantastic day!

Animalistic Week--Snake!!!!

Hi Readers!  Here we are on hump day of Animalistic Week--I wonder what's in store for us!  Ok here it is--today is sssssssssssnake!


Hmmmm how do you feel about snakes?  I think I have a love/hate relationship with them.  They really get a bad rap I know BUT they are kind of creepy!  They both fascinate and scare the bahjeebs out of me.


Here are some snake facts: unlike regular teeth a snake's teeth are hollow.  If a snake did eat a human it wouldn't have to eat again for a year--YIKES!  The Black Mamba is not only one of the deadliest of the poisonous snakes it's also really fast and can travel up to 12 miles an hour.  A rattlesnake can still bite you AFTER it's dead!!!  It's heat sensors remain active until rigor mortis sets in--WOW!


Okay onto the mani!  I actually did 2 mani's for this design--why because it's just that awesome of a design!


First up the green temple snake

Here it is with flash

Here's a pic I found of a green viper snake--how'd I do in comparison with the mani???

Before doing this mani I asked a few of my nail polish friends which one would be better the green viper or a metallic look.  It was sort of undecided so I thought why not just do both??  
I didn't really have a snake in mind for this mani.  I just liked the color combo

Here it is with flash (check out how my index finger flails out when I try to take pics of my right hand!)

It sort of looks like the bullsnake (I lived in Texas where these babies reside!)

I had the camera man around when both hands were done so I enlisted his help in getting a pic.  It didn't go well!  I guess men just do not understand the whole "nail" thing.

For those of you wanting to recreate these looks here are the polishes I used

For the green temple viper I used Revlon Emerald City matte suede and China Glaze Cha Cha Cha.  Both of these polishes are gorgeous and like all matte's Emerald City really came to life with topcoat.  Because I really needed the black to show up over the dark green I did use Konad Black to stamp with
For the metallic mani I used Hard Candy Mushroom and China Glaze, Adore, Harmony and Emotion.
Both of these mani's were done using BM215


While I might be afraid of snakes I don't mind wearing them on my nails at all!  Some other fantastic snakeskin mani's I've seen have been by Once Bitten, my internet daughter Rebecca Likes Nails, Chalkboard Nails (Sarah used tulle to do hers and it ROCKED, and Nailasaurus

How about you readers? Are there any snakeskin mani's you've seen and really loved?  If you didn't like snakes before how do you feel about them now?


Thanks for stopping by!  I hope everyone has a fantastic day!

Animalistic Week--Blue Poisonous Dart Frog!

Hi Readers!  Welcome to day two of Animalistic Week!  Today's animal isn't technically an animal and it's amphibian BUT since he makes for a cute as heck mani he's in! Today is poisonous dart frog--blue!  


Some facts about the poisonous dart frogs are: they are tiny! sometimes not even a full inch in length.  They are good parents and often lug newly hatched tadpoles up from the rain forest floor into the canopy and into pools of water that form in the plants up there.  Women outnumber the men in poisonous dart frog country aka South America and they fight often over territory. The most poisonous of the dart frogs is the golden and it has enough toxins to kill up to 20 adult men!


Have no fear readers my mani is the blue frog not nearly as poisonous lol!  For this mani I used OPI Suzy Says Feng Shui and Just Groovy.  I also used Hard Candy Sky.  I painted Suzy as a basecolor then I sponged on Just Groovy down the center and sponged Sky on over that.  No stamping here either ladies this baby is ALL free hand!  Looking at pics of blue frogs I dotted using WetnWild Black Creme accordingly

Here it is with flash

Side by side comparison--how'd I do????

Now I actually cannot take total credit for this mani!  My dear friend Sarah (Chalkboard Nails), who yes, sometimes lovingly refers to me as jerk, first did this mani during a challenge.  I loved it and thought I needed to do one too.  I'm sure mine is better--won't you please stop by and let her know lol


Okay day two is over I like this one better than day one--how about you?


Thanks for stopping by!  I hope you all have a fantastic day!

Animalistic Week--Giraffe!!

Hi Readers!  My blog is a week old today whoo hoo!  Not sure how or why this came to me, it might have been while searching through all my Bundle Monster plates, but I thought an animalistic week would be good featuring the many animal print designs Bundle Monster has on their plates.
Well I think this is going to be a you win some and you lose some week lol!


Today's animal is giraffe.  What a strange animal---soooooo tall! Can you imagine a sore throat in a giraffe??? Some giraffe facts are: they can be 20 feet tall with their neck being anywhere from 5 to 7 feet long!  An adult male can weigh 2600lbs!  They actually use their necks to fight and a pregnant giraffe gives birth while standing up! Whoa poor baby giraffe having to fall so far just to get born!


Okay onto the mani.  I chose China Glaze Trendsetter for two reasons the first one being it was yellow and I thought it would be good for the mani and the second reason was because it's an untried of mine!  Yes  I have more untrieds than trieds!


Here are a couple of China Glaze Trendsetter before stamping--with flash

This is what I call a pretty "ugly" color.  It reminds me of baby poo--sorry but it's true.


Here it is without flash

Yikes what a difference between the two!  Still rocking that pretty "ugly" color though

To stamp the giraffe image I used BM215 and stamped with Sally Hansen Insta Dri Coco A Gogo

Here it is with flash--not a fan of this pic at all

My friend Marcy actually WENT to Africa!  I'm so jealous!  When I was a young girl it was my dream to be a missionary in Africa and ride around in my Winnebago.  I figured if I fell in quick sand or was about to be eaten by a tiger Tarzan would save me.  My dad had to break a little girls heart by telling her Tarzan wasn't real :(  Thanks alot Dad!  


Anyway here's a side by side of my mani and Marcy's giraffe

Close but definitely no cigar!
I also ran across this adorable picture here

How cute is that????? ADORBS!
So that's day one of animalistic week!  Not a mani I love but not one I hate.  I do like Trendsetter though so I'm glad I finally dusted that off and put it on.


Thanks for stopping by I hope you all have a fantastic day!