Nail Art Challenge Day One: Favorite Color

So today is the first day of Erica's Nails and More's ten-day nail art challenge. The prompt for today is *dun dun dun dun* favorite color!

Here's the list of the prompts for each day. Pretty fun, huh?

So without further ado, here's my design for day one:

My favorite color is actually orange, but for some reason I have almost no orange polish. I decided to go with my favorite polish color, which is my beautiful OPI Cajun Shrimp. I picked out a bunch of other reds and pinks and used them together in my design.

A while back I was planning to do a pencil design tutorial, but CutePolish beat me to it. I decided to change it up a bit today to incorporate my favorite color by turning them into colored pencils!

This morning I was all nice and set to paint my nails, when all of a sudden the patch on my middle finger decides to start tearing (see this album to look at the terrible tear beforehand). I had to spend more than fifteen minutes soaking off the nail glue with acetone (which really made me grimace - I never use real acetone unless I have to) and then another 15-30 minutes applying another tea bag patch.

Finally everything dried and I was all set to go. The painting didn't take too long (it was much easier than I expected) but at the end I realized that my cuticles were a dry and crusty mess. This meant another half hour or so waiting for the polish to dry, and then the time it takes to apply some cuticle cream. The edges of my patch really looks like crusty cuticles, which is going to drive me crazy, but there's nothing I can do to fix it.

I grabbed my handy dandy oh-so-wonderful Burt's Bees lemon butter cuticle cream and went to work. Have I ever mentioned how much I love the smell of this stuff? It's like heaven in a little tin.

Finally, I was FINISHED! *cue applause* and then it was time for pictures!

I think this went pretty well. My colored pencils look a bit like cupcakes, which kind of annoys me, but when  I decide to paint cupcakes on my nails I'll already know what to do. The color on my pinkie didn't show up as well as I wanted to, but you know, you live and learn, right?

Here are some more pictures:

Close-up time!

I really think I'm improving at taking pictures of my
manis without holding a bottle of polish in them!

These weren't supposed to be upside down.
Woops.

Sideways-ish picture. Just because I felt like it.

Both left and right hands. I'm glad you can't see the right
hand too well, because it just turned out... bad.

Heh. Get it? I'm holding a pencil. With pencil nails.
This idea sounded so much cooler in my head.

Here are all of the polishes I used:
Base coat: Beauty Secrets Ridge Filler
Pencil Base: Essie - Sand Trapez
Thumb: Sinful Colors - Gogo Girl
First finger: OPI - Sparrow Me the Drama
Middle finger: Sinful Colors - Boom Boom
Ring finger - OPI - Cajun Shrimp
Pinkie: OPI - Steady as she Rose

If you liked this post, stay tuned for the rest of the challenge! Don't forget to follow me here, on Facebook, and on Twitter. And please head on over and follow the most talented Erica on her blog and on Facebook.

Thanks for reading!

-Muffin