Twin Dragon Nails - with Narmai Piggieluv!

Happiest of Sunday's to you all!  Today I've got a super duper, very special, and very AWESOME post for you!!

A week or so ago I contacted Narmai Piggieluv about doing a twin nail design - of a dragon!  To my absolute delight, she agreed! ^_^  This was our reference image that she suggested:

Here is a sketch Narmai found - NOT an image I own

And...here is a collage of our designs together!

When she revealed her design to me, I was absolutely blown away!!  She has always had such an incredible talent for fitting all that detail onto such tiny canvases - and let's face it, that is one darn adorable dragon!!!  I want to take it home ^_^

I decided to do a zoomed-in version for my design, because I'm not so good with putting in detail THAT tiny, and it also didn't help that my cat took off with my teeny tiny paintbrush that I use for teeny tiny details :(  I also decided not to put too much detail into color, because I really liked the grayscale look.  The only color I added was a light blue to the wings, light touches of it to the scales on the neck, and to the face.  For the background color I used "Auriga" by Different Dimension.  Here are a few more photos of my design:

Of course I posed with one of my dragon eggs! ^_^

Doing this twin design was a big deal for me, not just because it was a fun design, but because it was with Narmai.  Gonna gush here for a minute - Narmai's actually the one that got me into freehand nail art to begin with, and it ironically all started with an old dragon design of hers that she showed me last year ahead of everyone else simply because she was excited, and saw that I was excited to see what she'd be posting the next day.  That was really cool, to me, that she shared her art with me before everyone else :)  She also gave me some tips on using acrylic, and assured me regular topcoat would NOT smudge the paint :P  I owe so much of what I do with my art to Narmai giving me that nudge!!  I don't think she'll ever understand how much I really appreciate her as an artist, and as a friend ^_^  So his was most definitely a huge honor for me <3

Hope you all enjoyed our art!!!  What do you think of our dragons? :D

You-Pick-My-Art Catch-Up

Happy Tuesday, lovely people!!  I cannot tell you how nice it is to finally have time to sit down and write this post for you.  I did not anticipate just how packed full of busy my last week would be.  I had a birthday party to throw on Saturday for my son, who turned 4 today!!  It is crazy to think I have a 4-year-old!

Along with a birthday party was a really bad storm two nights ago, thanks to Hurricane Norbert.  There was a ridiculous amount of flooding, and our house got hit by lightning around 5 in the morning.  It fried our modem and knocked out our AC unit.  My husband spent the rest of the day tracking down the last Centurylink-compatible modem within a 30 mile radius.  Ridiculous.  

So, now I have internet again, and am working on finishing up editing and watermarking photos for some polish posts this week!  For now, I wanted to share pictures of the last two You-Pick-My-Art designs, since both never officially had a post!

Two weeks ago you chose "dragon" for the design, and this is what I came up with, inspired a bit by Sleeping Beauty's Maleficent dragon:

I used all metallic acrylic paint for this one over Karma's Kiss "Berry Me Deeply."  I had hoped the detail I put in the wings would stand out more, but the metallics are so powerful that it just buried any sort of detailing.  Lesson learned for next time :P

This last weekend How To Train Your Dragon won the round of voting - funny that I did a dragon two weeks in a row :D  I'm not complaining, I love dragons!  Here's the design:

I'm not exactly too happy with the outcome of this one, mostly because I saw it differently than it turned out in my head.  Hiccup was difficult to do because I just couldn't get his nose right >.<  Oh well, I'll do better next time :)  I painted this design over "Drink Up Me Hearties Yo Ho!" by Ellagee.

(Both props in the photos are dragon eggs I created, too!)

Have a wonderful day, I will have a polish post for you tomorrow!

Polish Post: Dance Legend "541" and Starlight Polish "Dragon" Pics and Review

Hello you lovely people!  I hope you had a terrific weekend :)  I had a very pleasant birthday yesterday spent with my family ^_^  I experimented with a new nail design I had never attempted before and it actually turned out pretty well!  I will be taking fancy photos today and posting tomorrow.  For now, you will just have to make due with a post of "Dragon" by Starlight Polish, and a brilliant color from Dance Legend's Confetti collection - 541.  Not sure why there are no specific names for some of the Dance Legend polishes - they are all numbered (at least on Llarowe's site where I purchase this brand), some with a name, some just the collection name.  Eh.

Outdoors in direct sunlight

Outdoors out of sunlight

Lightbox

Let's start with Dance Legend!  This polish is the first I have purchased of this brand.  I had seen a swatch of this color by The Girlie Tomboy and knew I needed it.  I am a huge fan of neons, especially in the summer.  I don't usually wear them on my fingers, I actually tend to wear them on my toesies instead.  However I was inspired to wear this polish as a manicure because it is just such a lovely neon green!!  Application was nice and smooth.  Since this is a creme color, it was a little thicker to apply, and a little streaky on the first coat.  It only took one more coat to be opaque, though, and no streaks showed through at all.  This polish also did not chip in the 3 days I had it on, so I would say it has a very good wear time.  

The topcoat is a beautiful, sparkly color called Dragon by Starlight Polish.  The company had a small sample set of 3 different sparkly topcoats that I decided to purchase and give a try.  I'm glad I did, because so far, the polish is beautiful!  Dragon is the first of the three I have used so far.  It has a gorgeous green sheen to it in the sunlight and an orange sparkle out of direct sunlight.  It is very thin, but one coat was all I needed over 541 to give it a slight sparkle.  The glitter pieces are so small in the polish that a little bit goes a long way.  Because it is so thin, if you wanted to wear only that color, I'd imagine it would take a good 4-5 coats (or more) to get it completely opaque.  I would suggest purchasing the full size bottle if you go that route, since these bottles are so small you would use up all the polish on one hand.

You can purchase Dance Legend "541" here.  It's on the lower end of the price scale for indie polishes at $9.  You can find Starlight Polish's "Dragon" here and you can follow them on Facebook here.  Give them a "like" and let them know I sent you ;)

You can find my personal Facebook page here.  Head on over and give me a "like" if you haven't already - I am having a giveaway once I reach 100 fans, and I'm nearly halfway there! 

I hope you all enjoy the rest of your Sunday!  I'll see you tomorrow with a special Birthday Mani post :)