Blooming Blossoms

I decided that I wanted to make a set of pink gradient-like flowers on a beautiful teal (rather than green) background, and this is where I ended up! I was torn between tulips and cherry blossoms, and so actually went with neither, but ended up with pink in shades of cherry blossom. I don’t understand my brain either! I also have to say, this may be some of the most perfect advanced stamping I have ever done, my colors are IN THE LINES. Go me!

Colors:
~ Bright teal: Emily de Molly – Glee Ridden
~ Light teal: Glitter Gal – No Worries
~ Teal: L’oreal – Not a Cloud in Sight
~ Dark teal: Zoya – Cecilia
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Dark red: OPI – Visions of Love
~ Dark pink: Zoya – Ciara
~ Pink: Zoya – Kelsey
~ Light pink: Zoya – Tobey
~ Pastel pink: Zoya – Jordan
~ Stamp: Moyra – 45 I Fill You

I was also supposed to post this on Wednesday and had different art lined up for today, but real life interfered so here we are. Still floral, just late! Enjoy.

Stained Glass Bees

It is tradition for Jewish New Year (a holiday called Rosh Hashana) to eat apples dipped in honey to symbolize the sweetness of the coming year. However, I find painting apples on my nails a bit juvenile, and I have done honey a few times now. I have not painted many bees! And then I found this inspiration by @nailscassi and just knew that I needed a creative interpretation and to make stained glass bee nails for Rosh Hashana. I actually demoed this twice: once with cream polishes for the art, and once with holos, and the holos just looked better. The only downside is that the bee wings, because holo greys out white, blend a tad too well with the background. Oh well!



Colors:

~ Grey holo: Cadillacquer – Memory Palace
~ Flakies: Emily de Molly – Cohesion 

~ Black: Pueen – Black Jack
~ Red holo: A England – Rosebower
~ Green holo: A England – Dragon
~ Black holo: A England – Fated Prince
~ Gold holo: ILNP – Sparks May Fly
~ Silver holo: Darling Diva – Diamond
~ Stamp: EDK – Mosaic

Now…Rosh Hashanah isn’t until the fall, but I feel like bees are more appropriate for the spring. Which means I am posting it now rather than waiting for early October because, bees! Hopefully I remember that I did this and can reference it again in October, but for now enjoy your random spring bees that were intended for a celebration of honey in the fall :-p

Another Heart Gradient

Happy valentine’s day! I think I paint pretty much these exact nails every year, because they are so classically valentines. That said, I apparently forgot to make a dummy post (basically just a list of the polishes I used) for this! So…in short I actually have no idea what I did. It looks like a light pink/red/dark pink gradient with a stamped pink heart. Simple enough…but I own at least 3 of each color that could conceivably be on these nails. So sorry, I will not be giving colors!

I think today I also need to give a shout-out to my sister, as it is also her birthday. I always felt a tad bit bad for her since she would automatically get heart-themed cards and chocolates on her birthday, rather than twice a year (birthday + valentines) but I think it has worked out ok for her. Happy birthday!

It is also, I think, ash Wednesday? As not a christian I have no idea what that is actually about, but it seems like a lot of things happening at once today. Enjoy these heart nails regardless!

Chaotic Hearts

I have never used this stamp despite owning this plate for years, because I could never figure out what to do with it! It is two designs that when placed next to each other form a heart, and are made up of smaller cutesy hearts. This time, I had an idea. Voila! Now some of them are upside down, but since love sends you for a tailspin at times, that seems appropriate. I even like the dots I added!

Colors:

~ Black/red multichrome: ILNP – Eclipse
~ Pink stamping: Born Pretty – Crimson Cheeks
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Stamp: BM – 620

I don’t know that I will turn this stamp into an annual use thing (like the one I posted Wednesday), but at least I got to use it once! Hope you enjoyed, and happy almost Valentine’s day!

Robin with Berries

Last year there was apparently a challenge to paint either birds or berries (not sure which) that many of the nail artists I follow took part in. One particular entry by @nbnailart caught my eye, and I had to try and recreate it! My bird is a bit disproportionate, but I loved her use (and my copy) of using rhinestones to create 3D berries. Overall, these nails just looked lovely.

Colors:

~ Grey: Formula X – Delightful
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Black: Maybelline- Onyx Rush
~ Red: Zoya – Sooki
~ Dark red: OPI – Visions of Love
~ Brown: Zoya – Louise

Now of course, I use nbnailart as inspiration at least once a month, because her skills with nails are stunning and almost attainable. Oh well, enjoy this cute robin!

Gingerbread Fantasy

I really wanted to make some elaborate gingerbread nails, to celebrate one of my favorite snacks over the holidays (and the only holiday treat that I am good at baking…despite being Jewish, even the latkes fall to my husband to make)! I was inspired by @nbnailart to create these absolutely fantastic nails, and I have to say I am pleased with how they came out! They are 100% freehand and took a little over two hours to complete.

Colors:

~ Blue: Makeup Selective – 105
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Black: Maybelline – Onyx Rush
~ Pink: Zoya – Sandy
~ Red: Zoya – Sooki
~ Orange: Zoya – Thandie
~ Yellow: OPI – Never a Dulles Moment
~ Green: Zoya – Tilda
~ Dark green: Zoya – Hunter
~ Purple: OPI – I Manicure for Beads
~ Light brown: Zoya – Flynn
~ Brown: Zoya – Dea
~ White glitter: Emily de Molly – Pale Landscape

I hope you all had a wonderful (and gingerbread) filled holiday! I can’t promise that there will be any post on Wednesday because I will be driving most of the day tomorrow to get home from my in-laws, but hopefully my New Years post ends up completed shortly! Enjoy!

Glowing Christmas Lights

This is the second time I have done glow-in-the-dark Christmas lights, but the last time I made the individual lights glow, and this time I made the whole nail glow! These were a lot of fun to put together, and made me smile in the dark. Just a win all around! And I think the green shifty shimmer added an extra dazzle factor 🙂

Colors:
~ White GITD: Serum No 5 – Pure Glow Getter

~ Green shimmer: Ethereal – Rainforest
~ Black: Maybelline – Onyx Rush
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Neon red: Emily de Moly – LE 199
~ Neon orange: Emily de Molly – LE 197
~ Neon yellow: Emily de Molly – LE 196
~ Neon green: KBShimmer – Race Against Slime
~ Blue: Zoya – Ling
~ Purple: OPI – I Manicure for Beads

Look at that awesome glow! I charged these in the sun, and the white was bright enough that you could see the color of the overlaying lights in the dark 🙂

Only one more Christmas post this year, coming (hopefully) on Christmas Day! Hope you enjoyed and that you either have some fun colorful lights up or see them around town. Enjoy!

Gnome Santa

Santa with a big gnome-like nose was all the rage last year, so I had to jump on the bandwagon! It was a very cute design idea. I mostly just made a big-nosed Santa and made the rest up. As usual, I had to drag out my Nabi red holographic polish for his outfit, because it just LOOKS like velvet in a really incredible way.

Colors:
~ Red holo: Nabi – Red
~ Nude: Zoya – Chantal
~ Light pink: Seven7een – 152
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Black: Maybelline – Onyx Rush
~ Gold glitter: Salon Perfect – Gold Leaf
~ Stamps: Nicole Diary – 120

I think I (on average) do one Santa mani a year, and this one fits nicely! Hope you enjoyed. The next few nail art posts will all be Christmas themed, if I can get them edited in time.

Axonal Neuronal Proteins

This is the other (more interesting) hand from the last neurology conference that I attended! Of course I had to have appropriate neuron nails. Since much of what I am doing now involves making my neurons glow green or red, I decided to mimic that on my nails. But I couldn’t do something simple, no. I started with a black/red multichrome to evoke the red bleed-through and background that appears on a lot of immunofluorescent imaging. I then painted on a neon green neuron, added a blue nucleus (since the typical nuclear DAPI stain is bright blue), and added tiny red dots in what I decided were the long axons of my neurons. Voila! Somewhat scientifically appropriate neuron nails.

Colors:

~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Red/black multichrome: ILNP – Eclipse
~ Green: KBShimmer – Race Against Slime
~ Blue: Zoya – Sia
~ Red: Emily de Molly – LE 199

I think I am only attending one neuroscience conference this year, which is a bit sad since I like having more than one set of nails that are neuron/science each year. I suppose I could do this without the provocation of attending a conference, but this type of hand-drawn art takes hours! Oh well, enjoy!

And just for fun, this lighting made the red/black shift in Eclipse look particularly excellent, so I am including it. Enjoy!

Turkey Feathers

I never know what to paint for Thanksgiving. Fall-themed does not seem specific enough, food is weird, and pilgrims are jerks. So, turkey! Again. This time with bonus feathers. I lost the post where I got the idea for this design, but decided to try and stamp everything but the turkey body as opposed to freehand it all. The end result was hideous, so I went back over all my feathers/leaves by hand using the same color combination and ended up here. Its a bit messy, but whatever. My husband, the day before Thanksgiving, looks at my hand and goes “why did you paint a girl with big hair?” Because apparently context clues are irrelevant to him. I then took a poll at Thanksgiving, and everyone else agreed it was a turkey without prompting. Take that, husband!

Colors:

~ Light orange: OPI – Freedom of Peach
~ Dark brown: Zoya – Louise
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Black: Maybelline – Onyx Rush
~ Yellow: OPI – Never a Dulles Moment
~ Orange: Emily de Molly – LE 197
~ Hot red: Emily de Molly – LE 199
~ Red: OPI – All I Want for Christmas (is OPI)
~ Dark red: OPI – Visions of Love
~ Stamps: UC – Lovely Leaves 2, BP – L008

If I wanted to do this again I think it would be a lot easier now that I have actual stamping polishes! My regular polishes just aren’t quite pigmented enough to show up over darker colors, or with the vibrancy that I would have liked. Win for stamping polish. Happy Thanksgiving!

Leaves of Many Colors

Fall nail colors! Leaves! Terribly messy clean up! This design was inspired by @asp2016 and fully painted with stamping polish. This was excellent because it meant I only needed to passes with the makeup sponge to get all the vibrant colors on the nails, and the black negative space stamp actually WORKED. It was also miserable cleaning up that much pigmentation from around my nail beds DESPITE using liquid latex barrier. I easily spent 3x more time cleaning than I did gradienting and stamping.

Colors:

~ Yellow: Zoya – Darcy
~ Red: Pueen – So Red
~ Yellow: Pueen – Bright Yellow
~ Green: Pueen – Amazon Moss
~ Black: Pueen – Black Jack
~ Stamp: Uber Chic – Lovely Leaves 2

I think I need to be more meticulous with my latex barrier in the future to make designs like this take less time. Enjoy!

Falling Leaves Overlay

Every time I try to make a manicure with a cool design and a multichrome with some negative space, it fails. This is attempt #4 (I think) and each time I want to bang my head into a wall. This took way longer than it should have and STILL does not look great. Oy!

Colors:
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Red/orange multichrome: ILNP – Greatness
~ Dark teal: ILNP – St George
~ Green/gold shimmer: Blush Lacquers – Nerida Singer
~ Stamps: Uber Chic – Lovely Leaves 2

I need to stop trying to make negative space manicures with multichromes, they are just too hard to get even on the nail in this setting. And stop picking designs that need to be colored in if I AM going to use negative space. Live and learn…eventually.

Double Crazy Gradient

What better way to play with stamping polish then by stamping a gradient in one set of colors, and topping it with a gradient of a different set of colors? Especially if the stamp is absolutely bonkers. Voila!

Colors:
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Yellow: Pueen – Bright Yellow
~ Pink: Pueen – Neon Pink
~ Purple: Pueen – Charmed Lilac
~ Teal: Pueen – Mermaid Green
~ Red: Pueen – So Red
~ Stamp: B Loves Plates – B03 mind blown

I had held off on buying bona fide stamping polish for years. I have been painting nails with nail art for approximately 13 years at this point (oh wow) and this is the first time I have intentionally purchased a stamping polish set. I have to say, it has been nail-changing. Gradients now take 5 minutes to create (although if I am not careful with my latex barrier they take 30 minutes to clean up due to the degree of pigment in the polish). Stamps that I could not previously use due to poor etching are now usable. Its great. If you are on the fence, I strongly recommend buying dedicated stamping polish, and Pueen makes good ones (these were purchased by me, I just like them)!

Poison Apple

I was inspired by @polished_pomegranate to make a poison apple manicure. I am glad I found her inspiration post! I had put together a Halloween manicure that I did NOT like, and wanted to trade it out, quickly, for something simple. This allowed me to use my drippy stamps, (even the skull!) which I don’t know that I have touched before! And it looked both creepy and cool. Overall, excellent!

Colors:

~ Red-gold multichrome: ILNP – Greatness
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Stamps: Lina – Make Your Mark 02

This week also begins what I consider to be the REAL countdown to halloween (in terms of nail art). Although everyone else has been posting since September, and for some reason that is also when halloween decorations sprung up in our neighborhood. It is excellent, but I do NOT remember this level of dedication from my childhood!

Ghosts and Rose

The inspiration for this was an actual work of art that I found when searching for “ghost paintings” because I was tired of the same old nail art ghosts. The painting looked incredible, but I have to admit I did not do a good job translating it onto my nails. They look creepy, but they are not identifiably ghosts. And the spacing for the rose to be held in arms is all wrong. For all that, this took quite a bit of time (multiple layers of dry-marbling shades of grey + stamping + free handing a rose). Win some, loose some! The art was done by Fluke Lady.

Colors:
~ Light grey: Zoya – Dove
~ Grey: WOW #333
~ Dark grey: Bordeau – #212
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Green: Zoya – Shawn
~ Red: Zoya – Sooki
~ Dark red: OPI – All I want for Christmas (is OPI)
~ Stamp: Nicole Diary – L26

I also forgot to take photos of these nails on my camera, likely because I did them the same day as my bright spider webs from last week. Oops! Enjoy anyway :-p

Vampy Pumpkin Fail

The inspiration for this manicure, looked awesome. Dark, with leaves and cobwebs, and some cool pumpkins…and I cannot show it to you because I have lost the link! I think it came from Pinterest, which means I am never ever finding it again (if this looks like your nail design from halloweens past let me know and I will give you credit, sorry!). I will say I had success with the pumpkins (I even got some highlights and low-lights!) but the rest of this was an abysmal failure. My grey was too bright, so I ended up adding a sheer black jelly to darken the top but it just looked messy. My cobwebs were stamps, and thus not etherial enough to capture what I was going for. And my leaves…no. My husband told me it looked like I made “dirty baseballs” and I totally see where he was coming from. To add insult to injury, I was working in and out of liquid nitrogen while I was wearing these and shattered a nail due to cold. Bad Eva!

Colors:

~ Purple-grey holo: ILNP – Long Walks
~ Red: OPI – Visions of Love
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Black: Maybelline – Black to Black
~ Dark orange: Essie – Playing Koi
~ Orange: Zoya – Thandie
~ Light orange: Zoya – Cole
~ Green: Zoya – Tilda
~ Stamps: UC – Lovely Leaves 2, Born Pretty – Halloween L002, BM – XL472

So really this is just a fail all around. I cannot find the inspiration photo to credit the original (amazing) artist, and my own rendition is frightening, and not in an intentional way. Whoops. Live and learn!

Bright Holo Webs

This was a joint inspiration from @yagala for the webs-from-the-cuticle and @urbannailart for teal webs over an orange-to-purple gradient. I need to stop trying to freehand spiderwebs, it never comes out right. I want to do these again (maybe…now) and just put webs on all the nails over a full-nail radical gradient. Which I loved. The vibrant fall colors with the teal were incredible.

Colors:
~ Yellow holo: ILNP – Sunshine Smoothie
~ Orange holo: Emily de Molly – Scorched Earth
~ Red holo: A England – Rosebower
~ Purple holo: ILNP – Crown of Thistles
~ Purple metallic: Revlon – Wild Violets
~ Teal: Petites Color Fever – Figi
~ Stamp: Born Pretty – Halloween L004

Hilariously/sadly, I appear to have forgotten to take photos of these nails with my camera? So I only have sunlight/iphone photos. Whoops! The yellow base color was more visible indoors than in the sun, but I will live. Enjoy!

Sunset Gradient Verticies

For my birthday, I received a dress that I had wanted for months, which looks like an excellent flow-y sunset (if you are confused, check out the dress here). It didn’t fit as well as I hoped, but the colors were nonetheless excellent. Which means, of course, that I had to make a matching set of nails!

Colors:
~ Neon orange: Emily de Molly – LE 197
~ Neon red: Emily de Molly – LE 199
~ Dark red: KBShimmer – Chia-huahua
~ Purple: Zoya – Monica
~ Blue: Zoya – Ryan
~ Dark blue: Pueen – Royal Blue
~ Black: Pueen – Black Jack
~ Stamp: Moyra – 32 Nature

If anyone has suggestions on how to make thicker-than-expected pleats sit well I would be glad to hear it! The colors are so lovely but it makes me look…large. Anyway, enjoy the nails!

Autumn Trees

I know people have been posting fall and halloween nail art since the start of September, but given that halloween is (in my opinion) reserved for October (although, it does get the entire month), and that it was still 95 degrees in St Louis, I have not posted any fall nail art yet. That said, autumn officially starts this weekend! So I have my first fall-themed manicure to enjoy. This is, clearly, a tree of every orange! This was really easy but I find it eye-catching. I started with a grey holo base and on each nail, made a blob of orange/red, and then added some black branches and a trunk. Other than figuring out what order to add branches in (turns out its easier to make the whole thing look good if you start with the middle trunk…oops!), this was straightforward. I had not realized I had acquired quite this many orange cremes of different shades, but I am happy that I have!

Colors:
~ Grey holo: Cadillacquer – Memory Palace
~ Black: Maybelline – Black to Black
~ Dark red: OPI – Malaga Wine
~ Dark orange: KBShimmer – Chia-huahua
~ Orange: ULTA – Sun of a Gun
~ Bright orange: Emily de Molly – LE 197
~ Yellow: WOW – #301
~ Green: OPI – Do it on ‘em

I may try to do this again and create an internal tree gradient, but it will not have the same cute ombre pattern. Additionally, I painted these last fall (I post a lot of my manicures 1 year late since it takes me a bit to get them uploaded to the computer from my camera), I have acquired at least 4 new oranges. Maybe I should update it with REALLY all oranges rather than yellow and reds!

Apples and Honey

Happy Jewish New Year! I went looking for some inspiration nail art for Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, and came up with very little. It is tradition to dip apples in honey as a wish for a sweet and whole new year, so I decided I would make some apple and honey nails! Hopefully this can inspire other people down the line, who knows. It has also been a while since I have done any freehand nail art, even simple stuff, so I was excited to paint these.

Colors:
~ Red: Zoya – Sooki
~ Nude: Essence – I Nude It
~ Brown: Zoya – Dea
~ Green: Zoya – Tilda
~ Gold: Revlon – Hypnotize
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White

One of the emeritus professors at my university gifted me some honey, so I am going to try my hand at making honey cake tonight. We will see how it goes! I don’t think anyone from my lab follows this blog, but we will know later this week if my results are edible. Enjoy!