Phoenix

I have done phoenix nails before, but possibly never this insanely bright! I got lucky that one of my stamping plates already had all these images, or I would have been painting flames for years :-p

The design itself was inspired by @nails4cocktails, although I didn’t have holo polish in the right colors, so I just added some shimmer on top. I really need to get Fairy Dust by China Glaze, I keep winging it with my glitter toppers!

Colors:
~ Yellow: WOW – #301
~ Orange: Zoya – Thandie
~ Red: Pure Ice – Siren
~ Shimmer: Sally Hansen – Diamond
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamp: Exoticism BPX – L012

Hope you enjoyed! I do love flames 😀 even if I often can’t wear them on my nails because they are too disruptive at work. Maybe next year I can have more fun with my nails NOT on weekends!

Astral Shifts

Ok, so, I love this mani. I love how it looks, I love the colors, and I LOVE the magnet! I got a new magnetic polish from the Born Pretty Store to review…and somehow, unlike every other magnetic polish I own, this one works like a charm. Maybe I am just getting better, but the design on my pointer finger stayed looking perfect for three days. Most magnetic polishes just can’t do that!

Anyway, this is two coats of Astral Realm over black. The first coat was thin and the second coat was thick; I magnetized both times (and again when I put top coat on, although the magnetic particles didn’t actually move). Astral Realm is a multichrome magnetic. I was doubtful at first, but its actually true! The shift is a bit more subtle than pure multichromes of the same color range, but it is definitely there. This polish shifts from a bright fuchsia to pink (the primary colors) and then to orange and gold. I even saw hints of green at sharp angles!

I got a whole bunch of compliments on this at work. People were stopping me as I was typing on the computer to ask me how I got my nails to look like this :-D. I also love the stamps! When Whats Up Nails had their stamping sale, this is one of the 6 plates (oops!) that I picked up! I bought it on a whim but it has turned out to possibly be my favorite of the bunch. Stars! Moons! A super fancy sun! Anyway.

It is rare that I only use three colors in a mani, especially when only two of them are visible! But the magnetic polish was cool enough that I thought adding anything else to this would be a waste.

Colors:
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Magnetic multichrome: Born Pretty (Magnetic Aurora Series) – Astral Realm
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Stamp: BM – XL213

That’s all for today! I hope you enjoyed! In case anyone was curious…my pinky I just magnetized the very edge of my cuticle, for the ring and middle I used one of those strong magnetics to make a line (diagonal vs horizontal), my pointer I used a repeating diagonal line full-nail magnet, and my thumb I pushed around the polish using the rounded head of a strong double-sided magnetic wand. You can pick up Astral Realm at the Born Pretty Store for $5.39, which is a lot for a tiny 6ml bottle, but it does work!

Twisted Triangles

How about some silver triangles on a multichrome glitter base? Don’t mind if I do!

I don’t really know where this manicure came from, just that I wanted to play with Aurora and felt like using a funky triangle stamp. I do love funky geometric stamps! Lets be honest, a lot of stamps are things I could do freehand if I just had enough time. But perfect swirls and perfect geometric lines I could not do without hours! Which is probably why most of my favorite stamps are either straight lines or swirly bits.

Colors:
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Multichrome: piCture pOlish – Aurora
~ Silver: A England – Excalibur
~ Stamp: Whats Up Nails – B015

That’s it for today! But happy Friday, and I hope you enjoyed the multichrome shininess of Aurora as much as I did! It almost doesn’t matter in this age of a million multichromes, but I had Aurora long before multichrome toppers were much of a thing :-p yes I am a hipster nail polish owner.

Skyline Sunset

Remember how I said on Monday that most of my nail art was mimicking someone or another? Well, todays post is a good example of that!

This design was inspired by Cathy at More Nail Polish, which I figured was fitting since she is usually the queen of the 31 Day Challenge (although she is participating late this year since she is on an extended vacation at the moment)! Also, I just love cityscape nail art.

Colors:
~ Pastel blue: Zoya – Blu
~ Bright pink: Zoya – Kelsey
~ Bright purple: Sinful Colors – Dream On
~ Bright blue: Sinful Colors – Endless Blue
~ Black: Sinful Colors- Black on Black
~ Holo: Orly – Sparkling Garbage

This has also reminded me that I really need to invest in a sparkly holo top coat, sparkling garbage is excellent but it turns everything under it a shade of pale teal! Not ideal when working with pinks. :-p Hope you enjoyed!

Holland

The final day of the 31 Day Challenge of 2018 is here! I only participated in about half (a little under half if we’re being honest) of the total and I am still exhausted. Major kudos to all of you who were following along, and to my past self who somehow managed to post daily!

Anyway, today is “honor nails you love” and I have a bit of a different thing happening. Probably 25-30% of all my nail art is based either loosely or exactly on designs I have seen other people do. This time around, I decided to do a design off of the website for a product! Although it is also the nail art used by that product.

What I am trying to say is that today’s post was inspired by, of all things, the stamping plate website itself! I cannot find the original artist (and trust me, I’ve been looking) but I literally bought this plate because this image showed up in my email and I needed to replicate it! So voila. I think I’ve done a pretty good job honestly!

Colors:
~ Blue: Zoya – Yummy
~ Blue shimmer: Sinful Colors – Cinderella
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ White: LA Girl – White On
~ Light grey: Zoya – Dove
~ Dark grey: WOW – #333
~ Light green: Zoya – Tilda
~ Dark green: Sinful Colors – Exotic Green
~ Stamp: BM – XL204

And that’s all for the 31 Day Challenge! Hopefully I will still be around and posting next year, but as residency gets harder we shall see! I am still painting my nails and enjoying it, so I am hopefully. As it turns out, yesterday was my 6 year blogaversary, so I have been blogging for longer than I thought! Go me?

EKG

EKG, also known as an ECG, is short for echocardiogram, and it is how we analyze heart rhythms in the hospital. Since I have been on some form of cardiology for MONTHS at this point, I though it was high time I did EKG nails!

The study also tends to be a very discernible pattern (in fact the heart rhythm is defined by the pattern we see on EKG) so I thought it would be pretty funny to use this design for my “pattern” day in the 31 day challenge!

Basically I am trying to be clever. Anyone in the medical field would hopefully ALSO think I was being clever, but otherwise these just look like pink boxed paper with some black squiggles.

Of note, real EKGs don’t actually have pink sparkly hearts in them :-p

Colors:
~ Pastel pink: ULTA – Baby Doll
~ Light pink: Sinful Colors – Pink Forever
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Pink glitter: Zoya – Alegra
~ Stamps: BP – L002, BM – 620

I was super proud of these when I did them, because  I had to double stamp the black lines….my stamp had much wider spaced crosshatches and I wanted tiny narrow ones to match the spacing of the black EKG lines! Voila.

Stained Glass

I’ve been doing so much stamping (mostly due to lack of time) that I haven’t been using many of my inspiration photos recently! This is another stamping day, but this one comes with inspiration, and is super glittery.

Years ago, I saw this stained glass mani at Emily de Molly and I died inside. I wanted the polish and the stamp and the whole thing. I finally bought the stamping plate, and thanks to the Polish Pickup Pack, I owned the perfect polish. This mani makes me so happy!

What you see here are three thin coats of Playing With Fire, which is a black opal inspired polish by Ever After. It is stunning! Black jelly base loaded with orange, red and a few green color-shifting flakes as well as tiny blue holographic hex glitters and even tinier green microglitter squares. I hope this polish is easier to take off than it looks, because it looks like a glitterbomb, but all the glitter is flakies!

Unfortunately, the polish is no longer available since it was one of the January polish pickup options, but since I’ve been buying 1-3 polishes per month with polish pickup, I have no shortage of incredible new polishes to play with!

Colors:
~ Black glitter: Ever After – Playing with Fire
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Stamp: EdM – 01

So, super simple mani, incredibly glittery, and I finally fulfilled my dreams of making stained glass on my nails!