NOTW #2 Black Cats Meet

Hello Dahlings!

First things first! Greetings & Thank You to my new followers! You've doubled my follower count in about a week & I'm flabergasted to say the least. (which you'll note, I rarely say the least I can LOL) The BIG Thank You goes to Michelle from Mimi Manicures!!! She did the shout out that got y'all to wander over here & see what I'm up to these days. Thanks Mimi! You can see her AWESOME nails & the fantabulous free hand art she does on them HERE. If you haven't been over there, you're missing what I think (in my not so humble opinion) is some of the best nail art out there to be seen. I'm just sayin'!

Now for the nail art here. This Halloween mani is inspired by ProfessionalDQ's recent blue Cat Nail Art. You can watch her video on how to do it yourself HERE. She's a seriously whimsical nail diva & I luvs her stuff!

For my version I started with my No More Wraps base coat then 2 coats of Finger Paints Cop An Attitude magnetic polish & used the China Glaze Magnetix II magnet bullseye pattern. I learned something new about my nails tonight...some of them don't play well with magnetic polish. Let me 'splain. My nails are abby normal. I chewed them until I was 13 then I decided I wanted long nails. I don't know if it was all the chewing or something genetic, but my nails don't have a downward curve to them. They have the left to right, parallel to the finger curve. They curve up from the cuticle, but where most nails curve down over the tip of the finger, mine just keep going up or at best go straight. They also start to cork screw as soon as the nail gets past my finger tip. I've learned how to file them over the years so this isn't so obvious & you may notice that I don't take photos of my nails from the side or angled.  This is to avoid distraction from my nail art as some of my nails could be used to launch rockets. LOL Anywho, due to this oddity of my nails, I learned that on a couple of them I can't get the magnet close enough to the nail to get an image. I put the lil bridge on my cuticle & the other end as close to the tip of the nail as I could without actually touching the nail & nada, zip, zero image on my left pinky. My left thumb got a lil bit of image near the tip & cuticle, but the angle on that nail isn't as steep as the pinky. My right hand worked well & this is the hand you're getting to see.

While I do think this polish is fun with lil micro sparkles of orange flashing about and the application was pretty easy (not too thick or thin), clean up was a pain. I use the pointy end of my jumbo cuticle stick dipped in acetone to remove polish from the edge of my cuticles & around the nail near the skin and a stiff, short bristle, angle tip brush dipped in acetone to get polish off the skin outside of the stick's clean up area to clean out. I did this several times & I still have lil bits of copper here & there. Most annoying. At least the pattern turned out fairly decent on most of my nails.

After applying the magnetic polish I used one coat of Ruby Kisses Pitch Black Darkness with my trimmed detail brush to paint the cats. (This black polish is also good for nail stamping!) I then used Ruby Kisses Whiter Than White to make the eyes so when I added China Glaze Splish Splash & I'm With the Lifeguard (from the 2012 summer neon collection), the colors would POP. I then added China Glaze Ghoulish Glow (from the Wicked 4 bottle set) so the eyes would glow in the dark. The detail to be added was the pupils & then Seche Vite FDTC. I don't have a GITD photo as my phone couldn't pick the lil eyes in the dark. Oh well, I tried.

Ta Da! Not perfect, but pretty cute all the same. I also couldn't get a good photo of my thumb. Both have wisps of bullseye near the tip & cuticle with black paw prints meandering from tip to cuticle. I used a dotting tool to make the paw prints.

I'm going to play with the magnetic polishes I have to see if I can find a way to make the magnets work on my wonky nails. I know from swatching on a nail wheel that the Finger Paints magnet is stronger than the ones China Glaze used for both Magnetix I & II and some of the other brands of magnetic polish I have may work better as well. I'll let you know what I learn.

Thanks for stopping by!
~ Inky