31DC2012: Day 13 - Animal Print

Hi girlies. Today's mani is animal print! :) When I first got into nails I was all about zebra print manis on my disgusting acrylic nails. :/ (Btw, when I say disgusting acrylics, I mean that because I did them on myself. Acrylics don't ALWAYS look horrible. When done right and taken care of they can look quite natural). I would only do zebra print on my nails and I was actually okay at it!
Anyway I am over the zebra print now but I think leopard/cheetah (what is the difference, because I sure can't tell the difference!) pattern is cute so that's what I've got to show you! :)

I started with a base of Ulta3 - Soft Hydrangea, a very pretty light blue with a hidden subtle shimmer, from the new Pretty Pastels collection. It took two coats to be opaque, but it was a little patchy. The formula wasn't amazing, it was kinda thick. And the Ulta3 brushes are really not my fave. But hey, for a $2 polish what can you expect. ;) The colour is pretty enough for me to deal with it.

I topped the base with a coat of Sinful Colors - Cinderella, which is very sheer but basically the same colour as Soft Hydrangea with a SUPER pretty pink/orange micro-glitter throughout. This one was sent to me by Gaby aka lacquerloon on Instagram! Definitely go and check out her nails right now! They're amazingly long and beautiful. *-* I absolutely LOVE Cinderella. This polish can be bought in the US for only $1 when on sale (regularly $2), which I believe is quite often! If you're in the US and don't own it, it is a total must have! :)

For the leopard accent, I used a tutorial by Sarah at Chalkboard Nails! It's an awesome tutorial and definitely helped me to do leopard print manis! I used China Glaze - Dorothy Who for the dots and a regular black polish for the outlines, with a small dotting tool. :) I absolutely love the look! I was sure I wasn't going to love this mani when I started it but I absolutely loved it!

Tomorrow I have some sad, short nails to show you. :( I mentioned that I chipped a corner of my nail off and you can definitely tell in these photos. It was bugging me so much so I filed them all down. I keep reminding myself that they will grow back but it's gonna take at least a month for them to get back to a length that I like on myself and in photos. *sigh* Looking at my photos in this post makes me so sad. LOL.

Elissa