Shimmer Leaves

Happy almost Thanksgiving! You guys almost didn’t get a post today because I almost ran out out of to edit my nails! As it stands this is going to be a bit less polished than usual (hah, nail polish puns) because there just wasn’t time! It’s pretty anyway, and hopefully you will all be too distracted by the epic color shift to notice anything else :-p

Colors:
~ Red/gold multichrome: ILNP – Greatness
~ Red/orange/green glitter: POP Polish – Slick Days of Summer
~ Blue: Zoya – Blake
~ Stamp: BM – XL209

The colors for this were just perfect for fall! I don’t know why I never thought to stamp in dark blue over red/orange before, but it is one of my new favorite color combinations. Somehow it just contrasts a bit better than black! Anyway. By the time I get out of the hospital it will be tomorrow, and then there will be Friendsgiving time! My husband is abandoning me this year (he gets time off to go home) so I get to eat with all the other wonderful people in my life who want to potluck with me! Hope you guys enjoyed the nails, and have great meals wherever you are!

Dark Indian Corn

I made two styles of indian corn, this is the darker version! You saw the lighter version a week ago. I started with a yellow base and dry-brushed on a lighter shade of yellow. Then I stamped with white, and vaguely colored in some corn bits with grey and red. Then I stamped again in brown. Sadly my brown stamp was not nearly as opaque as I would have liked!

Colors:
~ Yellow: OPI – Never a Dulles Momen
~ Light yellow: Maybelline – Citrus Collide
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Red: OPI – Vision of Love
~ Grey: WOW – #333
~ Brown: Zoya – Flynn
~ Dark brown: Zoya – Dea
~ Stamp: Moyra – 32 Nature

The husk is hand-painted, but it doesn’t make up for the fact that neither the white nor the brown were dark enough to work. Maybe if I had actually colored in the corn kernels on the stamper this would have worked better, but as it stands it just looks messy. Oh well, other corn for the win! What are your thoughts?

Light Indian Corn

I made two styles of indian corn and this is the lighter one! The other one will likely be posted in the next two weeks. This one was made using a light brown base, over which I stamped the corn image in white. When that was dry, I then smushed a bunch of colors (yellow, light yellow, red, and grey) onto the stamping plate and stamped over the white with the colors. The end result is less identifiably corn, but still cool! However, it looked too pastel, so I used a yellow jelly polish over the top to deepen the colors.

Colors:
~ Yellow: OPI – Never a Dulles Momen
~ Light yellow: Maybelline – Citrus Collide
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Red: OPI – Vision of Love
~ Grey: WOW – #333
~ Brown: Zoya – Flynn
~ Dark brown: Zoya – Dea
~ Pale nude: Sephora X – Marvelous
~ Yellow jelly: Esmalta da Kelly – Yellow Soap Bubble
~ Stamp: Moyra – 32 Nature

Of course, one cannot just have kernels, so I added some hand-painted husks. Overall this was quite fun to make and wear, and I enjoyed comparing the two manicures! You guys will have to let me know (after you see the other one) which one you prefer! Hope you enjoyed 🙂

Windblown Leaves

Yet another fall manicure! Maybe I should start interspersing some random non-fall themed ones at some point. I am still enjoying this, so you all must be too! Of course, it helps that yesterday was the nicest day we have had in weeks. That said, it is forecasted to snow today. The weather is very confused!

Colors:
~ Brown: Zoya – Louise
~ Shimmer: ILNP – The Magician
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Stamp: BP – Halloween L004

I was a bit sad after I bought The Magician because I had been hoping for a topper with a little more kick. All the photos that I had seen of this polish online made it look like wonderful shifty magic, yet all it ever did for me was add a subtle red scattered shimmer. I have since learned to enjoy the subtleness if i want something slightly more than a cream polish but less than a glitter overload! Anyway, thats all for today. Hope you enjoyed!

Red Forest Leaves

Halloween is over…so it is back to standard fall manis! This is one of my recent favorites. I honestly don’t even remember if I showed you guys this polish yet (I don’t think I have…) but I used this crazy glittery multichrome over a dark green and voila, magic! I really should post my nail art in order at some point. Basically it is a green/gold mutlichrome on its own, but over a dark polish it turns into red/gold/green and its fall magic in a bottle 😀

Colors:
~ Dark green: ILNP – Ski Lodge
~ Red/gold/green shimmer: Ethereal – Rainforest
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Stamp: UC – Lovely Leaves 2

I am not usually brave enough to stamp negative space designs, because I don’t have true stamping polish (i just use mostly dried up bottles of black and white standard polish)…but uber chic plates are just so perfectly etched that they work anyway. That’s it for today, hope you enjoyed!!

Fall Bloom

There isn’t much better than fall-themed flowers! This was chosen after I modeled a few other possible designs over this pretty gradient. In retrospect, although I like the end product, I wish I had picked a different stamp that let through more of the underlying colors! Because fall gradients are the best gradients 🙂

Colors:
~ Orange: OPI – Freedom of Peach
~ Dark orange: ULTA – Sun of a Gun
~ Red: OPI – All I Want for Christmas (is OPI)
~ Purple: Zoya – Landon
~ Dark purple: Zoya – Lael
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Stamp: Whats Up Nails – B005

I feel like I probably overuse floral stamping, but I can’t really find it in myself to be upset about this. Flowers are pretty! Gradients are awesome! Combining them is fun! Anyway, that’s all for today, hope you enjoyed and happy Friday!

Yellow and Purple Meshwork

This was just a simple yellow-orange-red-purple gradient, with a dark purple holo stamped over it! I have been waiting for the right time to use this particular image, and I quite like how it came out. It also is suitably fall-themed so I have saved it for now 😀

Colors:
~ Yellow: OPI – Never a Dulles Moment
~ Orange: ULTA – Sun of a Gun
~ Red: Pure Ice – Siren
~ Purple: Zoya – Lael
~ Purple holo: A England – Let Me In
~ Gold: Zoya – Faye
~ Stamp: Moyra – 54 Matrix

Ugh I miss gradients. Although, I always hate when my nails are curved! Square (or squoval I suppose) or bust. None of this oval nonsense! Hope you enjoyed, stay tuned for MORE autumn nail art this Friday! Although it isn’t orange/red because I can, occasionally, vary my pallet :-p

Autumn Canopy

More fall! This was one basically just an excuse to make a whole bunch of dots. And we all know how much I love dots! The design was inspired by Snacks on Rotation although mine are much darker since I don’t have a gradient leaf stamp!

Colors:
~ Brown holo: Darling Diva – Brown Diamond
~ Brown: Zoya – Louise
~ Dark red: OPI – Visions of Love
~ Red: OPI – All I Want for Christmas (is OPI)
~ Dark orange: Essie – Playing Koi
~ Orange: ULTA – Sun of a Gun
~ Red shimmer: ILNP – The Magician
~ Stamp: EdM – 07

Hope you enjoyed! Happy fall weather, and pumpkin spice everything if you are into that!

Shining Leaves

It’s fall! The 31 Day Challenge has ended, so it is certainly October. More than that, the weather in St Louis just went from the 90s (it was TERRIBLE) to daily highs in the 70s! Hurray!

In honor of the newfound cold and frosty world (ok, there has not yet even been close to a frost, but still, not sweating in tank tops because it is chilly out makes me very happy), I am going to finally start posting Fall manicures! Beginning with this one. Basically, I just double stamped silver, then a smooth of red and orange polishes. Voila!

Colors:
~ Grey flakie: Polished for Days – Grey Opal
~ Dark red: OPI – Visions of Love
~ Red: OPI – All I Want for Christmas (is OPI)
~ Dark orange: Essie – Playing Koi
~ Orange: ULTA – Sun of a Gun
~ Silver: Nails Inc – South Kensington
~ Stamp: BP – 19

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed! And I hope this weather lasts, because it is the only time of the year that anyone will voluntarily find me outside!

Falling Rosy Leaves

Well, this is absolutely a fall manicure…that I am posting in the summer! Oops. I need to put the rest of my nail art (basically everything since Feburary or so) on my computer and I just haven’t gotten around to it yet! Hopefully the importing of more seasonally-appropriate nail art will happen tomorrow, but I didn’t want to leave you all without ANY designs today!

This was a very straight forward manicure, but it uses one of my favorite polishes (I do feel like I say this about every third mani…) so I like it regardless of its simplicity! It was also a fun color combo, deep murky red-blue and rose gold.

Colors:
~ Teal multichrome: Illyrian Polish – Narrow Sea
~ Rose gold: Essie – Penny Talk
~ Stamp: Floral BPX – L018

Sorry for the late post, and I hope you enjoyed! I’ll try to get back to pastels, neons, and florals by Wednesday :-p

Flowering in Gold

So this mani came out better than expected! I wanted a copperish-green and I almost missed entirely! I started of with a coat of Dragon, which is of course totally opaque in a single coat…and then decided it was too dark! So I topped it with a thin coat of a different green and then STAMPED with Dragon (and some gold). Voila!

I did have to scour a bunch of plates for actual designs though! And with the combo of green and reddish-gold I think it totally works for a quasi-thanksgiving manicure 😀

Colors:
~ Dark green holo: A England – Dragon
~ Lighter green with copper: Blush Lacquers – Nerida Singer
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Stamps: Whats Up Nails – B005, BPX – L018, BP – L067, BM – XL472

Luckily, I have part of tomorrow off, so I can at least join my husband and some of our residency friends for dinner, although I am on and overnight call on Friday into Saturday, so I have to hope that whatever awesome nail polish sales happen Friday will be ongoing until Sunday! I also need to apologize for some of the atrocious spelling and grammar at the end of Monday’s post, I should not write blog posts while exhausted. Oops! Hope you enjoyed!

Bronze Leaning Leaves

Although I don’t think the photos came out that well, I LOVED wearing this mani! The dark olive green with copper and stamped with copper…and just ugh. It was so shimmery!

I don’t have much else to say about this mani really? It has double stamping, which I remain proud of, and I absolutely love Nerida Singer when I can talk myself into wearing this polish. I still own too many olive green polishes and I refuse to part with any of them!

Colors:
~ Green: Blush Lacquers – Nerida Singer
~ Copper: Pure Ice – Magic
~ Gold: Sally Hansen – Go for Gold
~ Stamp: Whats up Nails – B005

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed! Friday’s post is a bit less exciting (I don’t like the mani, but I feel compelled to post my failures so others do not repeat them!) so I wanted something pretty in advance!

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!

Thresh

I was going to do something wheat-like, and I found this plate! It is technically feathers but I thought it looked a little like fall-themed grain, hence thresh 🙂

The base for this gradient is one of the KBShimmer 2016 ‘misfit’ polishes called Orange You Glad I Didn’t Say Banana, a pastel neon orangey-yellow. It is almost exactly the color of a goldfish snack! (I found this out while eating goldfish before I added the gradient. It was glorious). The polish is a bit streaky and chalky (as one might expect of a pastel neon), and dries to a semi-matte. I used three coats for even coverage, and although you could still a little bit see where I passed the brush, overall it looked rather nice! The color is totally unique in my collection and really quite fun. It is shown here with top coat.

I feel like I’ve been doing this color scheme gradient a lot (even if I haven’t shown some of the designs yet) but I guess it makes sense…fall and all! I tried to add yellow to the tips of my nails, but you can barely see it over the pastel orange base. Oh well, still pretty!

Colors
~ Yellow: WOW – #301
~ Light orange: KBShimmer – Orange You Glad I Didn’t Say Banana
~ Orange: ULTA – Sun of a Gun
~ Red: OPI – All I Want For Christmas (is OPI)
~ Purple: Zoya – Monica
~ Black: Mentality – Black Opaque
~ Stamp: BM – XL209

As a heads-up, I should have a post ready for Friday…but wether or not I get ANY up next week depends on how much last minute editing I can do. My wedding is this Saturday (OH SHIT) and I am still rushing around doing last minute things for that! So in advance, if there are no posts next week that’s why!

Hope you enjoyed!