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!

Shadow Swirls on Brown

One final Fall-themed mani! I think there are still some brown/gold/red ones coming up, but I figured those could be holiday-themed as well so I moved them later. Also, sorry, I totally forgot to post this during normal people hours (my sister made me paint her nails, funnily enough).

This mani was my attempt at late-fall shadow stamping. That is to say, I wanted to use a glittery golden-brown with gold, but I also wanted to give the gold stamp a black shadow! In retrospect, this would have worked a lot better if I had used a lighter brown base. With this dark brown it was both hard to see where I had placed the initial black stamp so that I could stamp over it in gold, and hard to see the shadow in the final design!

That said, I maintain that I like this design. Glittery and brown and gold? And somewhat geometric? Yep.

Colors:
~ Brown: Spa Ritual – Starry Night
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Stamp: BP – 021

Well, also, this is Black Friday…so I hope you all had happy shopping! I had to stop myself from buying wayyy too much on-sale polish. But I want them alllll!

Harvest Patches

Fall-themed patchwark nail art! I rather love this design. I wanted to make some fun patches (because I loved the piece I did last year) and use only fall colors. Voila!

I realize this isn’t exactly Thanksgiving-themed, but it is close. Also, Wednesday’s post is 100% Thanksgiving (with turkeys and everything). Besides, scarecrows are maybe a holiday thing? Unless you live on a farm and use them for something other than looking cute :-p

In order to put this together, I had to come up with a set of three oranges that worked well together. In the end I just ended up using the oranges from the Washington DC collection, they were released last autumn and they are still seasonal!

Colors:
~ Light orange: Maybelline – Bleached in Peach
~ Orange: OPI – Freedom of Peach
~ Dark orange: OPI – Yank my Doodle
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Snow me Black

Yes, there are a few stamps on there. No, I did not write down the plates that I used (sorry)! But they look cool! Hope you enjoyed 🙂

Turning Leaves

I took far too many photos of this mani! Moreover, my favorite ended up being one I casually snapped while walking to the grocery store (hence the odd lighting) but LOOK AT THE SHIFT!

The theme here was end-of-autumn leaves, when the leaves themselves are red-to-brown, so I used a bunch of red and pink and copper multichromes! This is the companion piece to the one from last week. Oddly, while I liked that one better while I was wearing it, I like this one better in photos!

You can maybe see the shift in the leaves? I can at least, so I am happy. This might be one of the first multi-shaded multichrome designs where I think the shift is both visible and adds something to the mani. Finally!

There is in fact one more leaf-themed mani coming up prior to Halloween, but just one (and its next week)! Friday’s post is a little more…thematic.

Colors:
~ Green: ILNP – Mutagen
~ Pink-to-gold holo: Enchanted Polish – I Am the Walrus
~ Rose-to-gold: ILNP – Greatness
~ Copper-to-brown: Born Pretty – 212
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Stamp: BPX-L018

That’s all for today! Stay tuned for something that is actually Halloween-themed rather than fall-themed :-p

Falling Leaves

I did two VERY similar manicures…one on each hand. Mostly because mutlichromes are fun and I at this point have too many of them :-p.

The other mani is shiftier, and will go up next week so that I don’t bore you guys with the same manicure twice, more-or-less. This one, although it shifts less, I actually think I like better (and that’s unusual)! The colors came together really well.

I started with a green multichrome base (this one shifts from an emerald green to a bright teal, and a deeper blue at steep angles) and then used advanced stamping (aka coloring in the design on the stamper) to add the leaves. Two of the leaf colors are multichromes, although the golden-brown one barely shifts (its mostly a gold to greenish-grey, but it was already a grey-gold to start with). The other one shifts from copper to brown, which is again, not a super big shift. I like it anyway!

Colors:
~ Green: ILNP – Reminisce
~ Gold: Revlon – Hypnotize
~ Copper-to-brown: Born Pretty – 212
~ Gold-to-olive: Catrice – Genius in the Bottle
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Stamp: BPX – L018

I will admit to staring at my nails and moving them around trying to capture the right angles for these photos…but I just gave up and picked ones that looked pretty and glow-y instead. So, pretend that they can shift at least a little? Meh. Still pretty! Now if only it would COOL DOWN around here…it should not be 80 degrees out in Philly in mid-October!

Patches and Scarecrow

It’s Black Friday! I had plans to go shopping, but they did not pan out…yet somehow I ended up posting late anyway, whoops!

Regardless, have some pretty appropriately fall-themed nail art! I know it isn’t turkeys, but this was the best I could come up with before the actual holiday 😀

The design was inspired by sensationails4u. I ended up using slightly duskier/darker colors for my patches than her, which I think works really well! More fall, less party. Or something. Scarecrow!

Colors
~ Blue: Zoya – Ling
~ Orange: ULTA – Sun of a Gun
~ Red: OPI – All I Want For Christmas (is OPI)
~ Green: Zoya – Shawn
~ Nude: Zoya – Chantal
~ Black: Wet n’ Wild – Black Creme
~ White: Wet n’ Wild – French White Creme
~ Yellow: WOW – #301
~ Brown: Zoya – Dea
~ Pink: Essie – Eternal Optimist
~ Light brown: KBShimmer – Orange You Glad I Didn’t Say Banana + Zoya – Dea

That is a lot of colors. And yes, I had to custom-mix the light brown because somehow I don’t own one (I should fix that…any favorite light brown creme polishes I should look into?). Hope you enjoyed your Friday!

Leaves of Fall

I needed something fast, fall-themed, and elegant enough not to (hopefully) get me in trouble in the hospital, and this is what I came up with!

It isn’t exactly a Halloween mani, but the colors are right so I’m just gonna post it now! I am actually hanging out on my “mini-moon” which is apparently what you call something that is too short to be a honeymoon (which is happening next year) but is still a small post-wedding vacation. Go figure!

The leaf pattern is stamped with a random mix of yellow and orange which was visible in real life, but unfortunately not particularly easy to see in the photos. Sorry!

Colors
~ Red: A England – Rosebower
~ Orange: Mentality – Orange Opaque
~ Yellow: Mentality – Yellow Opaque
~ Stamp: BP – 19

Hope you enjoyed! Happy Halloween!