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.

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!

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!

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!

Pressed Leaves on Papaya

This manicure is a combination of many pretty things, that when put together, makes a surprisingly ugly end result. A nice gradient, some pretty glitter, a fun leaf stamp…and it did not work! Anyway, here are the individual pieces.

The base color is a new-to-me polish, three thin coats of Papaya Don’t Preach by KBShimmer. I wanted a pastel neon orange, and what I ended up with was a light neon orange…which is very pretty, I will absolutely use, and is not what I was going for! Oops. Darn comparison photos, it looked lighter in swatches (lets be honest, that is true of most neons, cameras just cannot handle them). As neons do, this dried semi-gloss, photos here are with top coat. It has a nice even glide to it and is quite a fun color! It is just too dark for what I had in mind.

Colors:
~ Orange: KBShimmer – Papaya Don’t Preach
~ Pink: Zoya – Ciara
~ Purple: Zoya – Landon
~ Glitter: China Glaze – Fairy Dust
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Stamps: BP – Texture L002

I am also, FINALLY, the proud owner of Fairy Floss by China Glaze. I have wanted this scattered holo top coat for years but never wanted to pay full price for it. Well, I found it on sale for $5 and decided it was coming home with me this time. It makes gradients better, and I needed it! Ahhh, wonderful glitter :-). So, different pieces…odd end result. Hope you can enjoy somewhat!

Planets in Orbit

Space!! Space is the best. I don’t remember why in retrospect I made all the various space things purple instead of varying the color scheme, but the end result is more uniform than I had remembered! Regardless, this was quite fun to wear 🙂

Colors:
~ Black holo: Zoya – Storm
~ Purple: Zoya – Landon
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Stamps: BM – XL213

Nothing much else to offer today. Hope you are all finding something fun to do (perhaps nail painting?) in this time of staying inside and away from friends. Regardless, I hope you are all staying entertained and good luck avoiding virus exposure!

Dangling Sky

I just saw this one stamp and knew I needed to use it. I do not regret that decision. This whole design was based around being able to use the stamp that you can see on my ring finger and thumb. With that in mind I REALLY should have chose a photo that shows my full thumb! Oops

Colors:
~ Dark blue: Zoya – Blake
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Purple: Zoya – Landon
~ Stamps: Nicole Diary – 090, BM – XL213

I was still (as mentioned on Wednesday) in a purple phase at this point. But honestly its such a cool color! And it pairs well with just about everything! Also, stars and moons…and just general awesomeness in the sky 🙂 Hope you all enjoyed!

Orange Conifer

I love so much about this manicure. The color, the funky plants, how much it shimmered…half of these photos were just snapped randomly but had such a cool color mix that I had to post them! I don’t know why I haven’t worn this polish again since I bought it a few months ago, but now I know what I am putting on next!

Just look at the shifty awesome-ness!

The base here is the other “pastel multichrome” that I bought to play with from POP Polish. This is three thin coats of Slick Days of Summer. Much like the pink Watermelon Bubbleslick, Summer isn’t exactly a perfect multichrome, which is to say the polish isn’t smooth like a metallic, rather it is a collection of tiny flakes which you can see based on how they scatter light. Other than that…it is pretty much perfect. It is a bright red/orange through orange to apple green multichrome, and you can honestly see all of the colors just on regular glances. None of this contort-your-hand-backwards nonsense!

I then went ahead and did some advance stamping. I decided to color-match to the orange, and just grabbed some polishes in the color family I wanted. Then I found the PERFECT stamp. Its halfway between a pine cone (hence conifer) and a flower! I die.

Colors:
~ Orange multichrome: POP Polish – Slick Days of Summer
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Light green: Zoya – Tilda
~ Dark green: Zoya – Shawn
~ Light peach: OPI – Freedom to Peach
~ Peach: OPI – Yank my Doodle
~ Dark orange: Essie – Playing Koi
~ Stamp: Moyra – 45 I Fill You

Also this stamping plate is made of amazing images. I want to color them all in…but it takes hours!! That said, I have a full week of next week (omg) so maybe I will actually get around to it. Who knows? Hope you enjoyed!

Purple Petals

More flowers! I figure it is nearing the end of spring so I need to get them posted now :-D. This was another straight forward color-in-some-petals mani. It didn’t come out quite as lovely as the pink one from two weeks ago, but I still like it!

The base here is yet another new polish. What you see here is three thin coats of Zoya Abby. I had been looking for a pale purple creme to replace my almost empty go-to of Sally Hansen Lacey Lilac, and I think I found it! It makes me a tad bit sad that this isn’t one of those perfect two-coat Zoya cremes, but it dries fast enough that 3 coats is acceptable.

Colors:
~ Light purple: Zoya – Abby
~ Purple: Zoya – Malia
~ Dark purple: L’oreal – Paparazzi Pleaser
~ Dark blurple: Zoya – Danielle
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamp: Moyra – 45 I Fill You

I wish I had a bit of a BETTER gradient for the purple petals (two of the purples are very dark!) but oh well! This seems to be a theme. Oops! Hope you enjoyed!

Sprouting Purple Blossom

Hand-painted floral gradient time…happy Spring! It certainly feels like it here, we had a truly impressive lightening storm followed by monsoon-level rain. I spent a large portion of my evening just staring out the window in a dark room!

Anyway, it is also new polish time! This is three coats of Little Oysters by Ethereal Lacquer. This was a limited time buy (from one of the custom groups I am a part of) and I love it! I am actually wearing it (again) as I write this. The polish itself is a bit thick, however it is very opaque and I probably could have gotten away with two coats! It is a greyed-out pastel lilac with copious pink shimmer that shifts to yellow-gold at sharp angles. It looks grey, purple, pink, and sometimes yellow.

I decided I wanted to replicate some of the cool designs I had seen online with this particular stamp, but using purple rather than a multi-color gradient. In retrospect it would have been much easier to actually do a gradient, rather than hand-painting each layer of petals directly on the stamper head! But the end result is pretty cool.

Colors:
~ Pastel purple shimmer: Ethereal Lacquer – Little Oysters
~ Light purple: Essie – Full Steam Ahead
~ Purple: L’Oreal – Royalty Reinvented
~ Dark purple: Zoya – Malia
~ Stamp: Whats up Nails – B005

Hope you enjoyed! It is a lot of fun to do stamping with just a touch extra, although in this case it took much longer to complete!

Embracing Blurple

This came out better than I expected! It is very hard to see the teal metallic stamping polish, but the colors go nicely and I have missed geometrics 🙂

When I start a manicure I generally have an idea in mind ahead of time. With this one, I just went “i want to use that one sparkly blurple with teal flakie polish” and tried to find coordinating colors. Don’t ask me why coloring in some of the thinnest lines on one of my stamping plates was deemed a good idea, but the result is pretty cool!

I need to remember to buy more flakie polishes, they have wonderful color shifts and finishes but are not difficult to remove. Also they tend to have enough going on in them that even if you paint quickly enough to cause bubbles (because rushes are a real thing) you can’t see them!

Colors:
~ Blurple glitter: Polished For Days – From the Land of Oz
~ Teal: Opaque teal stamping
~ Light purple: Sally Hansen – Lacey Lilac
~ Purple: Nails Inc – Regents Place
~ Dark purple: Zoya – Danielle
~ Stamps: Moyra – 54 Matrix

That’s all for today. Hope you enjoyed!

Blooming Mauve

This mani is halfway between winter and spring: winter colors but with flowers and a butterfly! Given how cold (and snowy) it continues to be, I thought that was fitting.

This is a new-to-me polish, and I love it. For some reason I am super into shimmers right now, and this is subtle, elegant, and loaded with shimmer! What you see here is three thin coats of Quixotic Polish – It Rubbed Off From Friction. This polish is one of my only purchases from Hella Handmade Creations (I usually stick to Polish Pickup). The polish is is a beautiful dark grey-mauve swimming with pink shimmer, which also has a scattering of holo glitter. That said, while I love the color of the polish, it was a little thick and hard to work with.

I then made some stamping decals/advanced stamping (aka coloring the stamp in while it is on the stamper) using silver and purple. The color combo could have been a bit better, but it wasn’t terrible. I rather wish I had used black not silver! Or maybe simply white.

Colors:
~ Mauve: Quixotic Polish – It Rubbed Off From Friction
~ Silver: Nails Inc – South Kensington
~ Purple: Essie – Full Steam Ahead
~ Stamps: Whats Up Nails – B005, BM – XL204

That’s all for today, happy Friday! Hope you enjoyed.

Orchid over Purple

More blurple! I don’t know…I haven’t had a chance to transfer a lot of my newer designs onto my computer yet and I am running out of options. These are from early fall. And, of course, feature a darker periwinkle.

I wanted to play with floral stamps because, in general, I either want to be playing with stamps that are flowers, swirls, or purely geometric. I have a LOT of similarly themed stamping plates!

Colors:
~ Purple glitter: Polished for Days – From the Land of Oz
~ Purple: Nails Inc – Regents Place
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamps: BP – L067, BM – XL472

This was fun just because the base is so SPARKLY and how often do you get to color in orchids? Not often! Anyway, hope you enjoyed, and hopefully I will get my life together enough that I can post something more winter-themed come Wednesday!

Flowers on the Diagonal

More flowers! And yes, these were supposed to go up on Friday after Thanksgiving, and instead I was distracted by buying too much polish. And too many stamping plates (who am I kidding, no such thing!). Regardless, this makes me feel better about not posting black nails for black friday :-p

More places that I love ended up having sales than I expected, but I wasn’t too terrible? I think I ended up with 9 new polishes and 7 stamping plates. Oh well!

Colors:
~ Purple glitter: Polished for Days – From the Land of Oz
~ Purple: Nails Inc – Regents Place
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamps: BP – L002, BM – 616

Hope you enjoyed these glowing blurple flowers and lines, and had fun picking up deals!

Moroccan Tiles in Nude

Copycat Claws posted a blue-and-white moroccan tile design that I love and want to copy… but while I am in the hospital I should probably avoid bright blue nails! At least as I started out. So I decided that if I couldn’t do blue, I could at least try nude! (To be fair I pained these back in July, before I realized no one would care much about my nails). That said, these came out well if I do say so myself!

I used four nude-toned polishes and two shimmery toppers to make this. Since I only have one clear stamper that works well, I had to do each nail individually. It wasn’t DIFFICULT but I did take a long time!

Colors:
~ Gold shimmer topper: OPI – Ski Slope Sweetie
~ Pink shimmer topper: Sally Hansen – Platinum
~ Pastel nude: OPI – Be There in a Prosecco
~ Medium pastel nude: Essence – I Nude It
~ Mauve nude: CND – Cashmere Wrap
~ Holo shard nude: piCture pOlish – Cherish
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Stamp: BM – XL205

I’ll meet o keep in mind that I have to try this in blue at a later point! I do admit though, it isn’t very harvest-y, and unfortunately I have to admit I didn;t have time to put together a real Thanksgiving mani! But the rest of this week is at least fall-themed :-p. Hope you enjoyed!

Daffodil Garden

I have no excuse for this going up in the afternoon…I finished editing last night and just forgot that today is a Wednesday! Anyway. I painted these in early April, as the daffodils were finally emerging from the (very late) snow! I also rather like that I found a way to use this stamp that doesn’t make all my fingers look the same 🙂

Since this was painted on top of a swatch test post, I started with a different color blue polish on each nail. To make them uniform, I basically dry-brushed each color over the others so the end result was a medium light blue with shimmer in it. I wanted there to be a faint wispy cloud background, and I think it looks rather cool! You can see that best on my pinky and thumb.

After the blue cloudy background had dried, I used advanced stamping (aka coloring in the stamp while it is on the stamper) and applied it to my nails. One of my last minute decisions with this was to use a dark orange in the very center of the flowers and then a lighter yellow-leaning peach for the rest of the middle. I love how it came out! I ended up goggle image searching daffodils to make sure I had the right shade of orange (all the daffodils near my apartment are yellow-on-yellow which is not nearly as much fun), and it also gave me a chance to use Freedom of Peach again! I don’t like this color on my nails as a base but it clearly works as flower centers :-p

Colors:
~ Pastel blue: Sally Hansen – Breezy Blue
~ Light blue: Essie – Rock the Boat
~ Pink shimmer: Sinful Colors – Cinderella
~ Medium blue: KBShimmer – I’d Rather be with Blue
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Orange: ULTA – Sun of a Gun
~ Peach: OPI – Freedom of Peach
~ Yellow: OPI – Never a Dulles Moment
~ Green: Zoya – Shawn
~ Stamp: BP – L067

I know the daffodils have all died, but I wanted to make sure that this got posted SOMETIME in the spring! Hope you enjoyed!

Aloha

Finally, nail art and no more swatch comparisons! I thought I would open with the nails I painted for my Honeymoon back in March 🙂

Since I was traveling to Hawaii, I wanted some fun tropical nails! I didn’t have any stamping plates that were quite the correct flower, and the few hibiscus ones I have are…not the prettiest. So I tried to turn some flowers INTO something vaguely Hawaiian! I also couldn’t make up my mind between two different designs, so I just went ahead and used both. The mani ended up a bit busier than I intended (oops) but I still like it!

Colors:
~ Purple: Emily de Molly – Traverse the Skies
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ White: LA Girl – White On
~ Orange: KBShimmer – Orange You Glad I Didn’t Say Banana?
~ Pink: Wet n’ Wild – Tickled Pink
~ Dark green: Zoya – Shawn
~ Green: Sinful Colors – Exotic Green
~ Stamps: BP – 067, Chic Peek BM – XL472

I also wish I had done some lava nails, since that may have been the single coolest thing I’ve ever seen (well, hottest really I suppose). Since my visit, the volcano on Hawaii has started erupting again, which is incredibly unfortunate for the people who live on the slopes of the volcano!

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the tropical nails! Hopefully I can get my act together and actually have something to post the rest of this week as well 😀

Winged Love

In my head, the name of this mani is all Shakespeare-ified (Wing’ed Love) but I figured adding an apostrophe would confuse everyone…and I left it in normal English. Anyway, today starts my Valentine’s manis and I wanted to do something with birds!

Basically, I found this small stamp I had never used (despite owning the plate for years) and wanted to create a mani around it. That is the two doves image on my middle finger. I ended up using birds from 3 different stamping plates and leaves from a fourth. So. Many. Stamps!

This mani also uses the first of the polishes that I won from the Nail Polish Canada holiday nail art challenge! I ended up with 21 new polish (omg) about 2/3 of which I adore and 1/3 of which I would never have picked. This is one of the ones I would not have gone for. This is Once in a Blue Moon by ORLY, and is actually a nice pale blue-grey color, and is a two-coater which is great. However…it is also a frost. Can the nail polish community at large just agree to stop making frosty polishes? There are brush strokes all over the place and I would much rather see this as a shimmer or metallic, or even a creme. Also, I hate the ORLY brushes, they are far too wide for my poor pinky nail! All-in-all, I don’t know that I am going to try very hard to keep this particular color…it might end up going to my sister.

Colors:
~ Blue: ORLY – Once in a Blue Moon
~ Green: Zoya – Shawn
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Pink: Revlon – Bubbly
~ Stamps: BM – XL472, BC – 06, BP – L067, EdM – 07

Now I sort of wish I had tried to double stamp the birds in white, but it looks alright as it is! I am also glad that the border images from BM – XL472 seem to fit my nails :-).

That’s all for today, hope you enjoyed and get ready for more love-themed manis!

Shifted Average

A couple months ago I joined a group called the Polish Pickup Pack. I had been seeing ‘boxes’ for a while where every month they advertised a different set of polish but you had to buy all of them! Then PPP came along…and its actually quite cool! A whole bunch of indie polish makers each create a polish around a theme (mythical creatures, gemstones, holidays), and you can buy, or not buy, anything you want. Unfortunately, they only sell the polish for one week out of a month, and once that one week is over the polish will never be sold again. That said, I have picked up some REALLY cool polish!

The one I am showing you here is from the October theme of “mythical creatures”, although I only received it in November since it takes a while for the makers to actually bottle and then ship all the polish. Still, this polish is freaking beautiful and worth waiting for! I have found in any given month that some of the polishes are really NOT my style, and some months many are right up my alley.

This is three coats of Not Your Average Seahorse by Blush Lacquers. I have never tried a Blush polish before, but they killed it with this one! I don’t actually know how to describe this. The base is a deep navy blue jelly with a scattered holo finish. However, it also has a bright orange to gold to green shimmer that is made up of tiny flakies (wow), PLUS actual larger flakies that are green to purple to pink. It is ridiculous and I love it. I actually put it on my shelf with my multichrome polishes despite it not TECHNICALLY being a multichrome, because it doesn’t fit anywhere else!

Anyway. I then colored in a triangular stamp with some black to add a bit of contrast, and stamped in gold. I do a bit wish that I had kept the black stripes in the same location on each nail, but I was going for something a bit more interesting? Regardless, I think it looks pretty cool!

Colors:
~ Blue shifting: Blush Lacquers – Not Your Average Seahorse
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamp: BP – L070

I bought one more polish from this particular month’s polish pickup pack that I’ll have up on the blog in a bit, and two from the December theme. Nothing struck my fancy from November. Regardless, if you are interested, you can join the Facebook group or just check out the offerings at the beginning of each month. I am a fan!

Foiled Foliage

I think I am pun-y! Well, it isn’t a pun, the title is basically just alliteration but it still makes me happy. As does this mani! It is technically still autumn…and currently the ground in Philly is completely covered in leaves. It is pretty, crunchy, and utterly ridiculous. When I walk outside I feel like I am eating leaves!

The base polish here is intended, I think, as a topper…but I wanted to make it opaque! This is three coats of Raging Fire by Born Pretty over one thin coat of a dark red base. Honestly, this polish was almost completely opaque at two coats! The final coat was mostly for my pinky, which I had painted more sparsely than the others. Despite looking uneven, the glitter was actually quite smooth after one coat of top coat. That said, the polish itself is thick and a bit goopy…good for dense flakie placement but it would have been difficult to get a light coat of polish.

The flakies themselves shift from pink/red to orange/copper to gold and emerald green at sharp angles. Since the flakes are at slightly different angles to each other, it is actually easy to get the whole color shift! It was mesmerizing.

I then made stamping decals using a left design from plate Floral BPX-L018 with Essie Good as Gold and colored in between the leaves with OPI Visions of Love. It looks quite fun and glittery! I know I could have instead just painted the leaves of the stamping decal with flakies…but this was so much more fun :-p

And, surprisingly, this was pretty easy to remove! Since they are flakies and not true glitter, they dissolve with acetone. The dark red was more painful since the color tends to stain my cuticles. If you want to pick up this flakie polish for yourself, head over to the Born Pretty Store, where you can find it on sale for $3.69. Enjoy!