Dark Laces

I have been sitting on this mani for months, but I figured fall was a good time to post it! I loved doing this one, but the laces took forever, so that I ran out of time to add enough top coat to smooth everything out. So, I am sorry for the slightly uneven finish!

The design was inspired by @banicured_ although her’s were all in white. The laces stand out more against the white, but there is nothing like a jewel-toned ombre to make me happy! Also, I wanted to see how OPI’s Stay Off the Lawn stacked up against some of my other darker colors.

It makes me a little sad how infrequently I can get away with doing manicures that show even a bit of my naked nail. I wear too much blue (and green, and even certain pinks) and my poor nails look like splatter paintings. I had to wait until they cleared up just to do this!

Colors:
~ Sheer: Sephora X – Marvelous
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Green: Zoya – Shawn
~ Teal: OPI – Stay Off the Lawn!!
~ Blue: Maybelline – Shocking Seas
~ Purple: L’Oreal – Paparazzi Pleaser
~ Pink: Zoya – Margo

That’s all for today! Hope you enjoyed 🙂

Magic Trick

One eight hour exam done, one nine hour exam to go…and then I am free of massive standardized tests for a year! In celebration, this post has far too many photos of shifting awesomeness.

I wanted to replicate this art by Nail Art Sakura, and I almost did? The plate I used isn’t quite as well etched so the black isn’t as dark as I would like, but otherwise it’s pretty close!

The base color here is two thin coats of ILNP The Magician over black. I tried to use only one coat, butt was not quite enough glitter! I have since used this polish again, and one thicker coat also does the trick. Regardless, here, two was perfect! The Magician is primarily a red-copper glitter. It shifts to copper, gold, pale green, and emerald at sharp angles. I used it over black to get the maximum shift, but honestly it looks really cool over many darker colors (my favorite thus far is deep blue). Regardless, shifty awesomeness!

I think you guys can see why I took so many photos. And why I couldn’t pick which ones to post! The only sad thing is that in sunlight you mostly just see the bright red-copper, with maybe a hint of green-gold at the edges of the nail.

Colors:
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Shimmer multichrome: ILNP – The Magician
~ Stamp: BP – 77

This is also a really fall-appropriate color (it will make a re-appearance within the next month)! I technically did this mani back in July, but I’ve been saving it since no one wants to see such dark colors in the middle of the summer :-p

Hope you enjoyed! Unfortunately, this is my favorite mani for this week…you’ll see why!

Draped in Mauve

I thought this would end up elegant, and it somewhat did? Mostly it ended up being glittery!

I wanted to use one of the stamping plates I was sent to review from the Born Pretty Store, but I also wanted to see if I could layer a jelly polish in a way that looked cool! I quite like the idea, but I think I would rather have used silver with blue, not copper-gold with purple :-p

That said, this was SUPER FREAKING GLITTERY in the sunlight, because some of the ILNP polishes just do that. It’s magic 🙂 you could even see the glitter through the purple! Which was the point.

Colors:
~ Gold: ILNP – Clockwork
~ Purple: Zoya – Katherine
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamp: BP – L070

This plate has a lot of cool somewhat-geometric patterns, and is very well etched despite the very thin lines. I like it! If you want to pick up one for yourself, head over to the Born Pretty Store, you can find it for $2.99. Enjoy!

Make Your Own Marble

Every year on “tutorial” day I am torn: do I make nail art based on someone else’s tutorial or do I make new nail art and my own tutorial? I had more time than usual this year (I got out of the clinic early) so I went with the make-your-own!

One really cool idea that I’ve been seeing around is geode nails…but all the good ones are made with either 400 layers of polish, acrylic paint, or gel polish. I will do none of those. I also have seen a lot of marble nails (the stone, not watermarble) and I wanted to see if I could combine the two! Plus, bonus water decals.

Basically, I wanted to demonstrate how you turn a rather unimpressive water decal into something glittery, and then unique. See below for actual steps…

1. Coat your nails in a base coat of your choice. Then paint your nails white and top coat (I used Snow me White by Sinful Colors as my white)
2. Remove the clear layer from the top of your water decal, and cut into nail-sized pieces.
3. Soak the decal in water for 15-45 seconds (if it has a clear background, closer to 15, if, like mine, it has a solid white background, more like 45). Apply to your nail, position to taste. Blot to dry, and clean around your nail beds to remove the excess decal with acetone.
4. Snazz it up! Pick the color you think would look best glitter-ized (likely not the most common color, so here I would not have picked white or blue) and add a coarse glitter. I picked the yellow, and covered it with gold glitter (Million Dollar Dream by F.U.N.).
5. You can stop here, if you want glittery marbled nails…or you can go on and personalize with stamping decals. In this case, I grabbed geometric triangle images (ND-104 and BP-L054).
6. Chose your two colors: the stamp and the inner colored part (I went with Black on Black by Sinful Colors for the stamp, and #333 by WOW for the inside part). Pick up the stamp, ideally on a clear stamper, and then color it in with your chosen polish.
7. To apply the decal to your nail, paint a thin coat of quick-dry clear polish, and when it is barely tacky (70% dried), use the stamper to transfer the design. Obviously you’ll be going one nail at a time for this part, unless you have numerous stampers.
8. Add whatever else you want (I ended up adding a golden circular glitter), clean your nails, top coat, and you’re done!

I don’t know that I love having gone with a medium grey for my fill color, but I thought white would be too boring and gold would stand out too much. I guess I’m ok with it!

The water decals that I used were a bit of a surprise. I requested to review a 12-pack of full-nail water decals, and picked a collection of marble finishes. This particular design was the ugliest to me, so I used it hoping I could make it prettier. I was, however, not expecting the decals to have their own backing (white rather than clear) and they were thick enough that I probably didn’t need a white base! Also, they were thick and so bunched, which could have been a problem, but they actually stretched in a really fascinating way, which meant they ended forming to my nails (with a little pushing around) perfectly. I really love these decals! If you want the full set of 12 from the Born Pretty Store, you can find them here for $1.99.

Anyway, that’s it for today! One more day left in the Challenge 😀

Flags of Blue and Yellow

Initially, I was going to do the purple and yellow-sun design from Tangled for this, but I figured that I’ve done that already and I want to try and bring attention to the places hit by hurricane Irma. However, most of those flags either would not go well together or would be far too complicated to paint, so I settled on this.

This was designed around the flags for the Bahamas and Saint Lucia, but then I just went and grabbed other yellow-and-blue flags that I thought would work well together. I’m quite pleased with how this came out!

Most of the nails are vertical (so if the flag were sideways it would start at my cuticle), my thumb is horizontal, and I totally messed up the orientation of my middle finger! I like the aesthetics of it, but technically the triangle should start from the left side of my nail, not the nail base. Artistic license? Anyway, the flags are: pinky – Ukraine, ring – Bahamas, middle – Saint Lucia, pointer – Sweden, and thumb – Barbados.

Colors:
~ Yellow: WOW – #301
~ Light blue: Zoya – Rocky
~ Blue: Zoya – Ling
~ Dark blue: Zoya – Sia
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black

Usually this is one of my most dreaded prompts (up there with “supernatural” and “fashion”) but this year I’ve liked all of them! I suppose its fitting, since this is likely my last year participating in the 31 Day Challenge.

Marchesa Gradient Gown

Day 25’s theme is “fashion” which is a bit of a problem, as I am still wearing the same clothing I wore in high school (and I’m 29). That said, this years was a little easier than most! I’m also a little late in posting since I was traveling all day, oops!

While searching for fashionable gowns on google, I stumbled across an absolutely stunning dress by Marchesa. I want it. The colors and the pattern and the fabric and most especially the cut of the skirt. So, of course, I had to try and recreate it on my nails!

This mani took two days, mostly because I wanted a completely dry base color before I was willing to attempt to make a gradient using metallic polish. Usually, I end up with bubbles and messes galore, and I happen to be attending a wedding this weekend so my nails need to be flawless! So, I painted on the hot pink metallic base (Petites Color Fever – Raspberry Ice), waited a day, and THEN did the gradient (OPI – Cute Little Vixen and Confetti – Masquerade Ball). Success!

Initially, I was not going to put anything over my accent nail (which was going to be a black jelly with a pink-to-black stamp, but I gave up and grabbed one of my favorite glitterbomb polishes instead, The Unloved by Emily de Molly), but it looked too bright next to the completed gradient so I added a stamp that reminded me of the top of the Marchesa dress (BP – L049). I think it came out really well!

I am going to consider the fashion day a success this year, which might actually be a first for me! Also, my nails are super glittery and metallic. But I have to admit, I am not looking forward to trying to remove that glitter polish!

Fancy Filigree

This mani somehow got lost! As soon as I saw the day 15 prompt of “delicate print” I knew which recent mani I wanted to use…but I had no mention of it in the posts that I put together to remind me of which polish I used! Such a fail.

I am just going to take a few guesses with this mani. I know that the base I used was my newest ILNP polish called Rosewater, a fantastic silvery-white polish, filled with holographic glitters, and swimming in pink shimmer. I really do not know how to describe this polish, other than to tell you to look at the photos. The polish goes from a soft white-silver to a glaring holographic rainbow. Throughout, it has a beautiful (and not subtle) bright pink shimmer that becomes peach and gold at certain angles. I absolutely adore this polish! There are a few others in this line (the “color kissed ultra holos”) and I kind of want them all.

I don’t actually remember how many coats of Rosewater I used here though! I think it was three thin coats, but it might have been two. I don’t matter. This polish is drop-dead amazing. It is one of those “if you could only take a few polishes with you to a deserted island what would you take” polishes. Guh.

Anyway, I didn’t want to cover up too much of this fantastic base, so I added a filigree design from one of my old Born Pretty plates. The fine lines almost disappear into the shimmer that is Rosewater, but I like it! I also ended up adding gold studs (although they went in different places on my two hands, the cuticle vs the free edge, and I don’t know which I like better)!

Colors:
~ Pink shimmery holo: ILNP – Rosewater
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamp: BC – 06

Hope you enjoyed! Every time I look at these photos, I want to go run and put Rosewater back on. Its bad. I love this polish!