Nail Art Challenge: Party Animal!

The Polish Swap Society Facebook Group is having an 8-week Nail Art Challenge and I decided to join in.

Week 1 is Party Animal Theme. Basically you choose an animal of your choice. I decided to do my 2 Dogs and my Cat! 

I used 2 different tutorials and adapted them to fit my vision:

Cat: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QsRnVDhY5bo

Dogs: http://www.nuthinbutanailthing.com/2013/08/dog-nail-art-tutorial.html

I practiced fine tuning my idea on some swatch sticks. Translating the colors of my dogs was the hardest part. My tuxedo cat was easy-peasy.

I started with a base color of Essence Nail Art Twins in Bella. These are HTF and I recently got lucky and got them from a stash sale. My main reason for choosing this color is that it is easily a one coater and it would dry quickly so I could start the nail art. I also knew I would be using the glitter in Edward on a few of my nails. (No, I am not a Twilight fan; I just love the color of this set)

Thumb: My cat, Squeekie. She's a tuxedo cat so her character was pretty easy to do. I used a reinforcement sticker cut in half to create the top of her head and ears. I think it came out looking a lot like Pusheen The Cat.

Black - ManGlaze, Matte Is Murder

White Tummy - ManGlaze, Mayonnaise

Eyes, Ears, Nose - Acrylic paint (works better with a dotting tool than actual nail polish)

Middle: My Lhasa-Shih-Poo, Penny. This was pretty hard because I needed a color to break up her face and ears. After about 4 tests on nail sticks I got it. This one reminds me of Gromet from Wallace & Gromet.

Brown - Barielle, Tan Blazer

Taupe - Deborah Lippmann, Putty In Your Hands (this is the transition color I went with)

Nose - ManGlaze, Matte Is Murder

Eyes - Acrylic paint

Ring: My Maltepoo, Nikki. This one was even harder. She's white but has a very slight apricot tint to her ears so I used that to break up her ears and face. This one took me forever to fine tune because I had to use a white base first to make it show up against the teal base.

White - I used 2 different whites; China Glaze, White On White was used as a white base and then I did Nikki's face in ManGlaze, Mayonnaise.

Ears - Barielle, Uptown Girl; it's on the sheer side and that's why I needed the white base.

Nose - Barielle, No Not Now

Eyes - Acrylic paint (this one was a bit tricky; I had to do a large black dot, a smaller white dot inside of the black dot, and then an even smaller black dot inside the white)

On my right hand I did white paw prints using this tutorial:

http://pinkii-life-g3lakmini.blogspot.com/2012/08/easy-nail-art-dog-paws-nail-art.html?m=0

I used white acrylic paint. Instead of drawing lines for the toes I just did dots.

I added a coat of glitter (Essence Nail Art Twins in Edward) to my index and pinky nails. All nails got a coat of Gelous & In A Hurry. Got a tiny bit of smudging but not too bad. 

Love how these turned out but then again they took me 4 hours so I should hope they would come out nice. ;) Of course I have to include photos of my pets as well: