Abstract Minimalism

You guys, I don’t know what this is. Born Pretty Store sent me an un-asked for plate to review…and it is a mix of weird abstract flowers/animals, funky cats, and nude people?! I can’t wear naked people on my nails to work! Artistic it might be but appropriate it is NOT. So, I grabbed the only three images on the plate that I could even imagine what to do with, and googled “minimalist rose”. The very first hit is the rose on my middle finger – I think Born Pretty did the same thing and just turned it into a stamp! Anyway. All the google images were white-on-black so I just decided to reverse that idea and leave it alone. This plate was, at least, very well stamped. Even the tiny dots transferred perfectly onto my pointer finger!

Of course, I can’t make a mix-and-match with only three images. So I used two of the scribble images from a different plate (my ring finger and thumb) in an attempt to tie this all together. All in all I do not love this manicure. My style tends towards the orange and colorful. However, it gave me a chance to use this black glitter…I don’t think I have touched this polish in 3 years! And it still works perfectly. Score one for Sinful Colors 🙂

Colors:
~ Black glitter: Sinful Colors – Secret Admirer
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Stamps: Born Pretty – Artist L004, Lina – Make Your Mark 02

If you want to see what you can do with some artistic minimalism/naked people, Artist L004 is available at the Born Pretty Store for $3.99. Good luck?

Shimmer Lace with Subtle Multichrome Accents

That is one hell of a title. But I couldn’t think of a better one! We have a pastel nude shimmery base (which is quite pretty), some lace, and then some awesome accents in a pastel multichrome and silver holo glitter. I honestly kind of love this manicure!

The base is two coats of Anthos by Sayuri, one of the monthly offerings (I cannot remember if this is from PPU or one of the other monthly polish groups). Anthos is a pastel pink that leans mauve, which is just filled with scattered holo, some tiny red glitters, and lots of translucent orange/pink flakie shards. The fact that it covers in just two coats is icing on the cake. This is a beautiful subtle sparkly polish, perfect for work! (Adding a bunch of glitter is less work-appropriate, but no one has complained in months).

Colors:
~ Nude shimmer holo: Sayuri – Anthos
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Pink pastel multichrome: POP Polish – Watermellon Bubbleslick
~ Silver holo: FUN Lacquer – 24 Karat Diamond
~ Stamp: BP – L084

For whatever reason, I just wanted to use one of the pastel slicks from POP Polish. It worked surprisingly well! Of course, Emily de Molly has made a surprisingly similar polish at this point so now I need to buy that and compare the two. I am getting off track, but so be it! Regardless, I hope you enjoyed it :-p

Medusa

This manicure was inspired by a stamping plate. I was sent plate Artist L005 to review from the Born Pretty store, and it is a weird plate! Typically Born Pretty lets me chose my own items to review, but this round they sent plates unprompted. And what they sent me was NOT my typical style! This plate has a lot of odd semi-people (bodies with plants as heads, tears, barbed wire…) honestly, very little that I would chose to wear and almost nothing that I think would be appropriate to wear to the hospital! And then I found Medusa.

I have been wanting to do a Medusa-inspired manicure for years. I adore Greek mythology, but faces are incredibly difficult! This face works beautifully. The plate is perfectly etched and every detail picked up nicely (I do wish I liked the patterns more!), making it quite easy to make an advanced stamping decal. The other snake patterns came from other plates, and honestly don’t pick up as well! Go figure.

Colors:
~ Green shimmer: Great Lakes – O R’lyeh?
~ Gold glitter: ILNP – Sparks May Fly
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Red: OPI – All I Want for Christmas (is OPI)
~ Nude: CND – Cashmere Wrap
~ Stamps: Born Pretty – Artist L005, Whats Up Nails – B025, Moyra – 32 Nature

I spent longer than I strictly needed to picking what base to use as the background for Medusa’s face. The green was an easy pick, I adore R’lyeh! If you want to challenge yourself to figure out what on earth to do with this stamping plate, you can find it for $3.99 here. Enjoy!

Glimmering Leaves

Simple but so good! This, despite being a manicure that took maybe 30 minutes (color nails green, stamp with black, color in with shimmer multichrome) is one of my favorite looks in the near past. I don’t usually like things that are so minimal, but the colors work, the stamping was perfect, and it just came together really well!

It helps that I have a new pretty green creme to work with, Josie by Zoya. I have been using Josie a lot (partially because the polish has been sitting in my two-swatch section on my desk, and partially because it is a very pretty green). It is a true medium-tone green, just a hair brighter than neutral, and honestly doesn’t seem to lean blue or yellow. This is two coats. I love it 😀

I do a little regret adding the glittery polish over the top of the stamp rather than under. It means that in indirect light you can’t see the veins in the leaves, all you see are the glitters! But the glitters are so pretty that I mostly don’t care.

Colors:
~ Green creme: Zoya – Josie
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Pink shimmer: POP Polish – Watermelon Bubbleslick
~ Stamp: UC – Lovely Leaves 02

That’s all for today! Hope you all enjoyed :-D. Friday’s is slightly more involved but less elegant, if you can call something green elegant!

Abstract Rainbow Stripes

What to say about this manicure. It is weird. I don’t usually do a gradient from yellow…most gradients go over white! I also don’t usually alternate nails quite as markedly as this. However, since I wanted the whole thing to glow in the dark like crazy, I was stuck using Dayglow as a base which dictated how the rest of the manicure looked!

Dayglow is one of those polishes that I forget I own until I see someone else’s cool glow in the dark manicure. And then I decided that I absolutely need to do one. There was no particular inspiration for this manicure…I just wanted some combination of glow in the dark and rainbows! Honestly, I think it looks pretty cool if rather odd.

Colors:
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Glow-in-the-dark: Serum No 5: Dayglow
~ Red: Zoya – Sooki
~ Orange: Zoya – Thandie
~ Yellow: OPI – Never a Dulles Moment
~ Green: Zoya – Josie
~ Blue: Zoya – Sia
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamps: Lina – Make Your Mark 02

That’s all for today! I feel like a bright rainbow is suitably summer-like for todays 100 degree and 99% humidity, but then again I wore this back in the winter *shrug*. Hope you enjoyed!

Safari Sunset

Scenery plates make awesome nail art surprisingly easy. All I had to do for this one was gradient, then stamp! The gradient, of course, took longer than anything else, and the result was very fun to wear! Once the gradient was done I actually painted over the whole thing with a yellow jelly polish to brighten the red and oranges, since the base polish was red (rather than white or yellow which are my go-to in a gradient like this).

The base color is a new-to-me red polish called Sookie by Zoya. This is three thin coats. The polish is very pretty and quite bright (I don’t know that neon red is a thing, but this is close), and covers well. It also, shockingly, removed very easily for a red! Most of my reds turn my cuticles red as the polish comes off, and this one played nicely.

I am actually really happy with how my yellow stamping polish gradiented, I wasn’t expecting to get much yellow tone over such a bright red!

Colors:
~ Red: Zoya – Sooki
~ Orange: ULTA – Sun of a Gun
~ Yellow: Stamping polish
~ Yellow jelly: Soap Bubbles Yellow
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamp: BM – XL204

That’s all for today, hope you enjoyed! My formal neurology residency starts today (as opposed to the medicine intern year I have been doing for the past 12 months) so my time is going to become even MORE limited. I will try to keep posting, but if the blog has some random blank days, I’m sorry! Blame work :-p

Forest Floor

Greeeen! I finally transferred a bunch of photos from my camera to my computer, so I can go back to posting seasonally-appropriate nail art! This one is just bright pretty green leaves, but they were fun to make!

The inspiration for this was a layered stamping plate sent to me from the Born Pretty Store to review. It has lots of deconstructed leaves, and a few deconstructed flowers. It is overall pretty great! The lines were crisp and picked up well, and the overlapping patterns fit nicely with each other. Since I really only used green (and gold) it is a bit harder to see some of the details of the layered design, but I promise its well done! I should be using this plate again come fall for some fun red/orange leaves 🙂

Colors:
~ Magentic green: Masura – Emerald Cat
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Dark green: Sinful Colors – Last Chance
~ Green: Zoya – Josie
~ Rose gold: Essie – Penny Talk
~ Stamps: BP – Overprint L002

If you are interested in some pretty layering leaves for yourself, head over to the Born Pretty Store. This plate is available for $2.99!

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!

Pagoda and Maple

I love this mani. The leaves are upside-down from where they should be (oops) but it still looks awesome. Also, I finally did a stamp transfer to make a mirror image! That has NEVER worked for me before!

The base polish here is a new-to-me beauty called Darling, Red Isn’t Your Color by Cadillaquer. It is an off-white jelly base filled with tiny red glitters and small and medium black glitters. It is subtle and amazing and I love it. I am always looking for more off-white crellies and this is a success! This is three thin coats.

I then stamped in black, colored the leaves in pale grey and the roof in two different shades of red (you can’t really see the gradient but it made me happy), and voila! Next time I do this (cause lets be honest, this combination of designs is happening again) I will make sure the maple leaves point DOWN not UP. Oops!

Colors:
~ White crelly: Cadillacquer – Darling, Red Isn’t Your Color
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Grey: Zoya – Dove
~ Red: OPI – All I Want for Christmas (is OPI)
~ Dark red: OPI – Visions of Love
~ Stamps: MoYou – Porcelain 01

That’s it for today! Happy Friday. It is currently only in the low 80s in St Louis…I hope this cooler weather holds until I have a few days off next week!!

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!

Neon Fronds

This mani was fun to wear and a pain in the butt to photograph! Also a pain to edit. That bright orange-red is really messing with my color correction!

The base polish here is a new-to-me beauty called End of Silence by Cadillaquer. This polish covered perfectly in three thin coats, and dried quickly (although if my memory serves me right it dried semi-matte due to the neon component). Regardless, the application was smooth despite the glitters. Honestly, my only complaint is that the color is SO BRIGHT that it is spazzing out my camera! And let’s be honest, that is hardly a complaint.

I ended up stamping some negative space leaves, just because. Obviously my black polish is not intended as a stamping polish, but the end result was a red-grey that I didn’t mind. I did end up adding pale peach highlights to the long stems of the leaves, because why not? They picked up the color of the glitters. This whole mani took maybe 45 minutes.

Colors:
~ Neon coral: Cadillacquer: End of Silence
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Pink: L’oreal – Orange you Jealous?
~ Stamp: UC – Lovely Leaves 2

That’s it for today! Hope you enjoyed. Friday’s post is…remarkably colorful :-p

Helenium in Pink

Apparently a helenium (also called sneezeweed) is a flower whose petals bend distinctly downward. Turns out it is generally a yellow/orange/red flower, and I painted it in pink, but it is the only flower I can easily find with petals like this! Also hi, enjoy some pink flowers 🙂

The base color here is a new-to-me pastel multichrome by POP Polish called Watermelon Bubbleslick. I bought two of these “pastel multichromes” because I had to see if they compared to their swatches…and honestly they do. Of all of the polishes in the pastel “slick” collection this is the one I wanted the most. And it does not disappoint! It is made up of tiny flakes, so it doesn’t have the mirror-metallic appearance of many of the darker multichromes. Despite that, it is stunning. It took 3 coats for full coverage, but it dries fast. It goes from a vivid bright pink, through silver/pale blue and right to bright green just on my nail…without moving the nail. I don’t need to even tilt my fingers to see the colors. Its astounding! At $16 its still pretty pricy, but I don’t own anything like this.

I then went and advanced stamped some flowers. I used all 4 stampers in my collection (one on each of my four fingers…my thumb was a re-use) and I have to say I have NO IDEA how we all stamped for so many years before clear stampers! Don’t get me wrong, of my 3 clear stampers I only LIKE one of them (although all three picked up this image nicely) but trying to use my old Nosh double-headed pink opaque stamper and position it was a nightmare. Anyway. In retrospect I should have used pinks that were closer to each other in hue for the petals, but I was having fun. Maybe next time I’ll actually make it match better :-p

Colors:
~ Pink/green multichrome: POP Polish – Watermellon Bubbleslick
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Light pink: Zoya – Jordan
~ Pink: Revlon – Bubbly
~ Dark pink: Zoya – Kelsey
~ Dark magenta: Zoya – Morgan
~ Stamp: Moyra – 45 I Fill You

If you can’t tell the difference between Kelsey and Morgan I won’t tell anyone…I’m not sure I can either! Whoops. Anyway, this manicure was a lot of fun to make, more fun to wear, and even looking at it makes me want to put Watermelon Bubbleslick back on! I imagine this will get a lot of use in the summer :-D. Hope you enjoyed!

Sakura, Shattered

This was just fun to put together! This time I did two coats of Sakura over a white creme just to save some polish on Sakura. It looks just as good! I don’t know why I decided a gradient shattered stamp over it would be a good idea, but I like the end result. Was this still painful to remove? Yes. Was it worth it? Yep!

Colors:
~ White with pink: Emily de Molly – Sakura
~ Pink: Zoya – Ciara
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ White (base): Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Stamp: Moyra – 32 Nature

Short and sweet today! Hope you enjoyed, stay tuned for a little more color later this week :-p

Black Block on Blurple

This mani is almost cheating – I did this while on vacation so I didn’t take any non-iphone photos! Ergo the photos are easier to edit (for whatever reason my iPhone sunlight photos need a lot less color correction than my indoor photo camera, even if the details are better on that one). ANYWAY. Purple glittery goodness!

There isn’t much to say here. I used a fantastically sparkly polish and just stamped over it. The stamping plate was not quite thick enough to not be able to see the glitter through the black polish but I actually quite like it!

Colors:
~ Blurple flakie holo: Dreamland – You Look Like Seafood!
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamp: Whats Up Nails – B015

That’s all for today. Lets see if I can keep up this posting streak! My life gets a lot easier next week in terms of time, so I am hopeful :-p

Sunset Wheat

I’m back! I never really left…but I did move! The new house is utterly incredible and farrr larger than we need (there are 5 bedrooms, 5!! And 8 fireplaces. Who needs 8 fireplaces?). Anyway, I only finally unpacked the nail polish two days ago, so I have been stuck working with 8 polishes for almost a month! You will see a lot of rainbow cremes coming up. This one is from the vault, I just didn’t get around to editing it before the move! This will be a theme. Regardless, sorry for disappearing on everyone for a month!

This mani was fun! A gradient, a stamp, and some fireflies! Its a weird sideways take on that famous bit of nail art by Chalkboardnails…although honestly they look very little alike. Of course, I ended up ripping the back of my middle finger open, so you guys also get the beautiful view of a bandaid :-p

Colors:
~ Pink: Essie – Sunday Funday
~ Yellow: Stamping polish
~ Shimmer: ILNP – The Magician
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Purple jelly: Zoya – Katherine
~ Purple: Zoya – Margo
~ Stamp: BPX – L018

Hope you enjoyed! And I will do my darndest to keep this blog updated. I have a whole lot of unshared manicures, but my time is getting tight! Although if anyone knows where to get decent (and cheap) antique furniture in St Louis I would be thrilled!

Ionian Arches

This was simple but a lot of fun to wear! I figured that pairing a magnetic polish (and magnetizing it sideways) with a weird 1920’s style stamp would look awesome. Voila! Of course, it also gave me an excuse to play with a cool new-to-me stamping plate from MoYou’s steampunk collection.

Colors:
~ Grey magnetic: Nails Inc – Trafalgar Square
~ Rose gold: Essie – Penny Talk|
~ Stamp: MoYou – Steampunk 06

Hope you enjoyed! I know there are only two photos, but when there is no sunlight AND my nails are tiny I don’t tend to take as many pictures!

(just FYI: I am moving these next two weeks, and there is a chance that I don’t get around to editing nail art and posting. I will be back! But if the blog is post-less for the next twoish weeks it is because I am moving and did not appropriately edit nail art in advance!)

Archways

I decided to use a different gold for stamping this time as I have finally run out of my go-to stamping gold (Good as Gold by Essie) and this one does NOT work as well! The image actually picks up, it just won’t transfer because the polish dries so fast that I can’t stamp quickly enough. I need more Essie! I ended up having to hand-paint some of these gold lines, and since my nails were so itty bitty I wasn’t super invested. In retrospect, I am pretty unhappy about that because the manicure ended up quite pretty!

I also finally invested in some MoYou stamping plates (I owned none) when they had their cyber Monday sale….and I have to say I don’t love most of them. The designs are great and the etching is good (on all but one plate), but they are so small! I usually wear my nails longish, and the plates I got just won’t cover my whole nail. Maybe I should have gone with the fewer designs per plate setup, but then only the very center of each image would transfer. Its rather annoying!

Colors:
~ Black with glitter: KBShimmer – Dark & Twisty
~ Gold: Sally Hansen – Liquid Gold
~ Stamp: MoYou – Steampunk 06

Overall, another manicure with a lot of potential and mediocre execution. I also only have two photos because I did these as I came back from winter break and was too busy unpacking to take many nail photos. Also, apparently St Louis does NOT get sun in the winter (I thought Boston was bad, this is worse!) so there are no sunlight photos for this mani…or for a lot of the upcoming ones as well. Sorry!

Interlocking Chevrons

I love the concept behind this nail art, but I’m honestly not sure I love the execution? I think this design is busy enough that it would work better as an accent nail and not a full mani. So, just pick one or two nails and stare at them I guess!

This mani was time-consuming because instead of using striping tape I used stamps and freehand to make everything. Basically, I stamped the initial gold triangle at my cuticle with Penny Talk and then filled in the design (which was hollow) with Juliette. Once that was top coated and dried, I did the rest. I stamped with a black creme polish the black chevrons, and then the rose gold chevron again (each was an individual stamp…so there are 4 stamps on each nail except my thumb which was 6). I then colored in the black stamps with Storm, and did my best to spare the crossing rose gold. I could have just stamped with Penny Talk after the black was all dry, but that would be ANOTHER layer of top coat and drying and I was feeling lazy. So I colored around it :-p….it probably took longer anyway.

Colors:
~ Nude: piCture pOlish – Cherish
~ Rose gold metallic: Essie – Penny Talk
~ Gold glitter: ILNP – Juliette
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Black with holo: Zoya – Storm
~ Stamp: Moyra – 60 Cuts

Again, needlessly complicated, but in the end kinda cool? I’ve been back on a bit of a geometric kick recently. I wish I had time for some freehand, I’ve been feeling inspired! That’s all for today, for Friday we get back to colors and some flowers! Hope you enjoyed 🙂

Golden Highlights

Kinda 1920s, yah? Honestly, if I had been thinking about it more I would have reversed the stamps, I like the idea of the spread fan shape coming from my free edge better, but too late! Also, my gold stamping polish has official run out and I will need more.

Honestly, I just wanted to play with 212 again, it is a subtle yet pretty polish, and one of the first I ever bought when I got into nail polish in 2012. My obsession with various types and finishes of polishes have varied over the years, and the dark vampy jellies with subtle shimmer and flakies (ok, I think in that particular family I really only own two polishes) don’t get worn very much at all! So here is some love, 212.

Colors:
~ Black with glitter: OPI – 212
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Stamp: MoYou – Steampunk 06

That’s it for today! Hope you enjoyed. Friday is…more stamping. I feel like I hardly have time to do freehand anymore, everything is stamps!

Blue and Purple Path

Yes, there is a gradient from blue-to-purple and a black stamp. There is ALSO a reversed stamp (purple-to-blue) under the black one made of swirls, it just does’t show up well!

I couldn’t decide if this looked more like cobblestones (which was the intention) or funky corn. I have seen images on line with other bloggers using the stamp as corn and it looks amazing, so I might stick with that in the future! Although it means I will have to paint my nails yellow (wwwww).

Colors:
~ Purple metallic: Zoya – Rea
~ Blue holo: Color Club – Over the Moon
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamps: Moyra – 32 Nature

That’s it for this week! Hopefully I can get my act together and put together something a little more interested for next week (or at least aim for a theme that isn’t “stamped”). I did 3-4 valentines-themed manicures so that’s what will hopefully get posted! Hope you enjoyed 🙂