Rowdy Roses

Technically, I painted these around Valentine’s day. However, roses are good any time, so they are being posted now! In retrospect, I wish I had not made the backgrounds holographic, I think the art would have popped more against a creme background. Live and learn! Besides, I like making my backgrounds more sparkly than would otherwise be indicated :-p

Colors:
~ White holo: Emily de Molly – Crystal Crown
~ Red creme: Pure Ice – Siren
~ Red holo: A England – Rosebower
~ Green: Zoya – Josie
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamps: BP – L067, UC – Lovely Leaves 2

On a separate topic: things are going sideways in the US. At the moment, the city that I live in has a curfew, and honestly all but one of the 4 cities I have lived in at any point in my life are doing the same. The systemic racism and violence is (finally) being called out, which is (sadly) provoking violence. To all my readers in the USA: stay safe, stay strong, and do what you can to support your community. To my international readers: yes, all of this is exactly as terrible as it looks. If you feel so motivated, please encourage your leadership to sanction the USA; sadly I don’t think Trump listens to anything except his pride and his wallet, so if his income can be hurt we might actually see some change.

Failed Quartz

I was trying to make a pseudo-marble manicure (since everyone else seems to e making marble nails) and I wanted something pretty and subtle…so I went with a light grey and pale pink. And then I added another shade of pink. And a blush. And then it was too pink and the grey looked blue so I added white. And then some rose gold glitter…and the whole thing just took a life of its own!

Colors:
~ Grey: Formula X – Delightful
~ Pink: Zoya – Jordan
~ Nude: CND – Cashmere Wrap
~ Blush: KBShimmer – Caught on Tape
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Rose gold: ILNP – Juliette

In the end although I do think these nails look cool, they look nothing like I intended. I will have to re-try the marble theme at some point! And maybe they will actually end up marble-like by the time I am done :-p. Hope you enjoyed!

Perfectly Pinked

Ok, I really like this one. I don’t know how the colors work together or why this design caught my eye, but here we are! Honestly I think a real gold rather than a rose gold would have gone better with all the pinks…but you can hardly tell. Girly and glittery to the rescue!

Colors:
~ Rose gold: ILNP – Juliette
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Light pink: Zoya – Jordan
~ Pink: Revlon – Bubbly
~ Dark coral: Essie – Sunday Funday
~ Stamp: MoYou – Frenchy 14

Really the moral of this manicure is if you add enough glitter and colorful distraction, everything looks good. Again, this manicure should not work. I like it anyway :-D. Hope you enjoyed, and happy Friday!

Art Deco French

My work passed a regulation that french nails were ok but nail art was not. They neglected to mention which COLORS were acceptable, and did not specify how far one had to go before french became art…so in protest (and in acknowledgement that nobody actually cares) I did a fancy blue-and-silver “french” art deco design.

Colors:
~ Blue holo: ILNP – Downpour
~ Silver: A England – Excalibur Renaissance
~ Stamp: MoYou – Steampunk 06

As expected, not a single person noticed or commented. I have since gone back to my regularly colorful nails (well, slightly toned down, its been a while since I had the courage to do full-on rainbows). Anyway, hope you enjoyed these not-subtle semi-french nails!

Regional Trails

I have an apology to make: this polish is impossible to photograph. I feel like there usually the most difficulty taking photos of purples (they come out blue) and neons (they come out super washed out) but something about this polish made it super hard! So, that is why the in the sunlight photo looks so different from my indoor lighting photos…and honestly none of them are accurate!

Anyway, I really like this new polish. Its a deep blue-leaning green with a squishy feel and SILVER SHARDS. It looks awesome. I am going to use it as grass. So much grass. Anyway, this is two coats of Region Specific by Emily de Molly. The polish is probably closest in color to the indoor nail art photo; it is less blue than my swatch photo, not quite as green as my sunlight photo, and certainly not that bright! I hope that helps a little? I feel like the swatches I have seen of it online make it look a little too bright and a little too green. That said, it is a beautiful color!

Colors:
~ Green with silver shards: Emily de Molly – Region Specific
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Green: Zoya – Tilda
~ Stamp: Lina – @urbannailart collab

I ended up covering it with a stamping gradient of pastel mint green to white, just to see what would happen. The gradient is subtle but I like it! Anyway, I hope you enjoyed, and I am sorry about the odd variation in nail polish color, I promise I tried!

Ominous Forest Skies

This is an oddly dark manicure. I am not usually so goth! I just saw a stamp I liked but had no idea how to use it, and wanted to use a magnetic polish…so I put the two thoughts together. The end result is stormy, dark, and surprisingly pretty.

Colors:
~ Silver magnetic: Nails Inc – Trafalgar Square
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Stamp: Nicole Diary – 090

When I moved my nails the appearance of silver clouds would shift (thanks magnetic polish!) and I really loved the effect. I finally bought one of those ring magnets to play with my polish, and have yet to use it! I need to remember how pretty magnetic polish is so I reach for it shortly 😀 Hope you enjoyed!

Orange Ombre Crests

I don’t know that I have ever done an orange ombre. To be fair, I don’t know that I would have had enough polishes to even attempt this until recently…and even so I need a new pastel orange, this one is officially empty! I decided of course that ombre wasn’t enough to quality as nail art, so I added a white stamp (that shows up better over the darker colors) and voila!

Colors:
~ Pastel orange: Maybelline – Bleached in Peach
~ Light orange: KBShimmer – Papaya Don’t Preach
~ Coral: L’oreal – Orange you Jealous?
~ Bright orange/pink: WOW – #371
~ Pink: Zoya – Kelsey
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Stamp: BC – 04

Sadly, the polish on my ring finger (the KBShimmer one) is so neon that it bleaches itself in photos. I tried to bring out the color a bit more, but I don’t know if I succeeded! The ombre was really quite fun. I always want to do gradients instead, but this showcases the colors better and is much much easier! I’ll have to keep that in mind :-p. Hope you enjoyed!

Blooming Siren

This manicure is both simple and wrongly colored. That is to say, the base looks nothing like it does in real life! It is one of those super saturated purples that of course in photos ends up being blue. That is why the only photo of the nail art is from outside – the sunlight is the only way I could find to show the real color! 😦

Colors:
~ Blurple: Polish for Days – Siren
~ Silver: Nails Inc – South Kensington
~ Stamp: BC – 10

What you see here are three thin coats of Siren by Polished for Days. As mentioned above, it is much more purple than it looks here. The polish has a bright purple base with blue shimmer, pink flakie shards, and holo. So the end result is a beautiful deep blurple…that of course photographs blue. It makes me sad, but it happens! Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed!

Chinoise Bridge

This was honestly a great idea and a very poor execution. The biggest issue I have with stamping is positioning the stamp on my nails. This got much MUCH easier with the advent of clear stamper heads (I look back at my first few years of blogging and am both horrified and impressed with the tools we had and how we made them work). That said, unlike a regular single color stamped image which can be easily wiped off with a bit of acetone, an advanced stamping design cannot. It lives forever. Which is to say I had a LOT of trouble positioning the stamps for this manicure and it shows!

Colors:
~ Red metallic: Zoya – Isla
~ Red creme: Pure Ice – Siren
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Stamp: MoYou – Porcelain 01

Please don’t judge my stamping position too harshly, I did try! Anyway, hope you enjoyed all the red and gold, and how much my nails look like elegant slightly lopsided bridges :-p Happy friday!

Carrot Gems

I didn’t know what else to title this! It ended up looking somewhat like a gemstone…with tiny carrots? I basically just stamped in black but didn’t like how that looked, so I grabbed a complimentary color to my shifty base which ended up being a dark orange. I overlaid some of the black patterns with orange…and then added black dots. The end result is actually really cool looking but I had no idea where I was going with this and can hardly take credit for it!

Colors:
~ Orange/green multichrome: Ethereal – Rainforest
~ Orange: ULTA – Sun of a Gun
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamp: BP – L049

That’s all I have for today! I spent the 5 days I wore this manicure being constantly distracted by the glitter and the shifting colors, so kudos to Ethereal Lacquer I suppose! Hope you all enjoyed 🙂 (And sorry this is late! I totally forgot to pre-post before my 28 hour shift in the hospital.)

Interwoven Cheers

This was another pick a polish and a stamp manicure! I own a lot of polishes (no, really?) some of which are great for nail art (cremes, jellies, neutrals) and some of which are just so darn complicated on their own that all I can really get away with is stamping over them with one color. Cheers to the Holidays is one of the latter types of polishes, but it does make for a pretty manicure in a pinch! That said, this is one of the few polishes I own that I was really disappointed by: it is a holographic multichrome but it isn’t SPECIAL (I have maybe four multichromes that I would consider special for one reason or another) and I thought it would be. The photos on the FUN Lacquer website honestly made it look more spectacular than it is.

Colors:
~ Purple multichrome: FUN Lacquer – Cheers to the Holidays (H)
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Stamp: EdM – 22

Not much else to say today. I don’t know if others have been misled by polishes in pictures in the past! Its why I love it when brands send to multiple swatters, although there are some people who can literally make anything look good. Regardless, something like 95% of my polish collection is exactly what I expected it to be, and a fair number of the remaining 5% were drugstore polishes that just smell funny but work fine :-p. Anyway, hope you enjoyed!

Neutral Bubbles on Teal

I wanted to make a mix of neutral colored bubbles, but I couldn’t decide what color to put them over! For some reason I decided a pale teal would do the trick, and here we are. In retrospect I wish I had gone with black (or one of my neutral creme polishes that I didn’t use for the bubbles) but too late! The end result is honestly rather weird, but this took hours (coloring in all the bubbles) so I am posting it anyway!

Colors:
~ Teal: Glitter Gal – No Worries
~ Pastel nude creme: OPI – Be There in a Prosecco
~ Nude with gold shimmer: Essence – I Nude It
~ Nude holo: Picture Polish – Cherish
~ Nude shimmer: ULTA – Freshwater Pearl
~ Taupe creme: KBShimmer – Caught on Tape
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Stamp: Whats up Nails – B015

Moral of the story: If you are going to spend a very long time doing reverse stamping, make sure you have a PLAN or all your hard work is going to end up looking rather half-assed!

Fancy Teal Tips

Yet ANOTHER fun manicure with a bright weird base color and a design from the UrbanNailArt collab plate. I am seriously glad I bought it! Sadly, the silver I used on my tips is a tad overwhelming, but you can still see the cool semi-foil below 🙂

The base here is three thin coats of Near and Far by Emily de Molly. This is a “pastel” multichrome, and honestly it is lighter in shade than most of my multichromes but I would not call this color pastel! I will need to do a comparison with the other similar multichromes I own just to see how much lighter it really is. Regardless, it is a very pretty and very shifty color! I captured the bright teal flash, as well as shifts to blue, indigo, and purple.

Colors:
~ Teal/purple multichrome: Emily de Molly – Near and Far
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Silver: A England – Excalibur (renaissance)
~ Stamps: Moyra – 32 Nature, Lina – @urbannailart collab

I honestly especially love how this polish looks in the sunlight, you get an eyeful of the purple flash. Many multichromes have a fun sun feature, but this one really wowed me! Anyway, hope you enjoyed!

Elegant Grey Floral

Apparently I have a thing for thinking that grey with silver or white is elegant? I don’t know. I do think these are pretty despite the boring color palette! I actually was surprised to find these in my things I have painted folder, I forgot I ever made them! Oops 😀

Colors:
~ Grey: Zoya – Dove
~ Shimmer white: Revlon – Calla Lily
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Orange silver glitter: ILNP – Fired Up
~ Stamp: MoYou – Porcelain 01

I am really glad I started adding tiny bits of glitter in certain nail designs. I don’t remember who I saw using that idea on IG recently, but it has gotten me back into the habit (especially since I really cannot wear 3D pieces like rhinestones to the hospital at the current moment) and i love it! Anyway, hope you all enjoyed!

Sienna Drapery

Maybe its because I am a doctor and love microscopy, but I see cells everywhere I look! These, to me, realllllly look like muscle cells. Spindle shaped, clusters of blue nuclei…anyway. They also might look like folds of cloth to more *ahem* normal folks so I decided to title this post after drapery and not immunofloresence staining.

The base polish her is a new-to-me polish called Sienna by Polished for Days. I have had my eyes on this polish (and others by PfD) for months just waiting for a sale! I maaaay have gone overboard 😀 but I can’t really regret it. PfD does the best flakie polishes! Anyway, Sienna is busy: dark blue base loaded with magenta/gold shimmer, scattered holo, and flakes that shift from a deep vibrant blue to gold. I may be obsessed. It is very pretty.

Colors:
~ Blue/red/gold shimmer: Polished for Days – Sienna
~ Silver: Nails Inc – South Kensington
~ Blue: Zoya – Ryan
~ Stamp: Lina – @urbannailart collab

I seem to be using the urban nail art collaboration plate a lot, I had been on the fence about buying it initially but I ended up loving it! Go figure. Anyway, hope you all enjoyed!

Pale Purple Risen

A simple manicure, but honestly not a bad one! I wanted a tone-on-tone and I realized it had been a while since I had used my one purple foil to stamp. I picked a stamp that I like (honestly I probably over-use this stamp given how many others I have) and just went to town! The end result is admittedly subtle, but also pretty.

Colors:
~ Light purple: Ethereal – Little Oysters
~ Purple metallic: Zoya – Rea
~ Stamp: BP – 17

That’s all for today! There is no real theme to this week as you can probably tell, just whatever I had lying around in my not yet posted folder. Hope you enjoyed!

Summer Flower Gradient

I painted these in January. It was cold, there was a sleeting icy mess outside, and I decided it was time for some bright sunny colors. If the outside world would not cooperate, I would just have to make them happen myself! And that is how this manicure was born. Of course, its more fitting to post them in spring so here we are!

Colors:
~ Bright orange-yellow: KBShimmer – Orange You Glad I Didn’t Say Banana
~ Orange: Zoya – Thandie
~ Hot pink: Zoya – Morgan
~ Golden shimmer: Ethereal – Rainforest
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamp: BM – XL158

I have been on a kick of adding highlights with my few not-quite-opaque pastel multichromes, and it makes me very happy. This time I added some Rainforest over the center of the flowers just for a bit of variety! You can’t really see it in the sunlight (for example, the second photo) but indoors it was glittery and added just a little kick that I think helped overall. Hope you enjoyed 😀

Shimmer Flowers

This ended up being oddly delicate? I didn’t mean it to be but its actually rather pretty! Between the pastel grey-green base, the thin black lines, and the scattered gold glitter, I’ll take it!

This mani (by which I mean this base polish) exists because a coworker tipped me off that a local St Louis tchotchke (turns out I’ve never had to spell tchotchke before!) store was selling old Formula X polishes for $1 each. These used to be something like $12 each at Sephora (and I think I bought 4 of them when they were on some kind of sale) and this random odds and ends store had HUNDREDS of these polishes in boxes! So, of course, I pawed through them and ended up buying 12 polishes. For $12. Now, one was a top coat and one was a base coat (I had to test them…) but still. I am so happy!

Anyway. I doubt this polish is really available to purchase anywhere but I am going to review it regardless because it is new to me. This is two thin coats of Quantum by Forumula X. It is a pretty, subtle, pale grey-green and I quite like it! It is a bit more neutral than I usually reach for, but I don’t own anything quite like it and it was easy to wear and to match to things. I have already worn it again and I only bought the polish 3 months ago.

Colors:
~ Grey-green: Factor X – Quantum
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Gold glitter: Salon Perfect – Gold Leaf
~ Gold shimmer: Sephora by OPI – I Found a Pot of Gold
~ Stamp: Lina – Urbannailart

Hope you enjoyed this delicate art! I promise we are coming to the end of flower power posts. I just figured I would dump all my flower manicures online while it was still spring time! 😀

Petrified Leaves

If I am honest, I do not like this manicure at all. I like the new polish I was trying, and the stamp itself isn’t half bad…but why in gods name did I add those red-orange glitter shards? What was past Eva thinking? Bleugh! So, you only get one photo of the art. If it helps, the sun was not cooperating so it would have just been two indoor photos anyway…and the polish alone is wayyyy prettier than the design I chose to put over it. Take it or leave it!

Colors:
~ Green shimmer: Pahlish – Petrichor
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Red glitter: Born Pretty – Raging Fire
~ Stamp: UC – Lovely Leaves 2

The polish here is two coats of Petrichor by Pahlish, a polish pickup shade. It is a lovely dark green-leaning teal jelly base simply full of pink-gold-green shimmer and silver holo flakie shards. It is a busy polishes but quite pretty, goes on smoothly, and removes easily (despite the glitter load). This is probably the third almost identical shade that I own (clearly I have a type) but it still makes me happy! So, look at the pretty polish and not the ugly nail art :-p

Neon Blossoms

Oh wow these nails ended up bright. Fun, very colorful, but eye-searingly bright. Which I suppose is what happens when I reach for one of the brightest corals in my collection! This design was inspired by @nails4cocktails. I wanted something with bright colors and cherry blossoms, and this caught my eye! Hillarously, I actually did both of her cherry blossom manicures without knowing they were by the same person, within a week of each other :-p

Colors:
~ Blue shimmer: Sinful Colors – Cinderella
~ Pink: L’oreal – Orange You Jealous?
~ Neon pink glitter: Cadillacquer – End of Silence
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamp: BM – XL158

Hope you enjoyed the further flowers! Sadly the actual cherry blossoms outside are starting to fall off, although my allergies are pleased by this change (for now, until even more flowers show up to set them off again)!