Glowing from Within

I seldom say this, but I regret buying this polish! A England went on sale at Color4Nails which meant I just had to buy a bunch of them. I only actually wanted one, but I purchased 3 (because of course). Thus far, I was happy with the two I bought…and this was the third, which I bought almost as an afterthought. I wish I hadn’t!

It’s not that this isn’t a pretty color, because it is. Its mostly just that I thought this polish would be red with gold flakes, and it is really an orange metallic with gold flakes. I don’t usually wear orange polish, and I already have an orange metallic! Oh well, now I own another I suppose. And it is a pretty polish, it just isn’t something I’m likely to wear often.

The polish itself is called Gloriana from A England. On the website it is listed as a “chili-pepper red with fine and ultra fine golden sparkle” but I have to disagree. Fundamentally, this is dark orange that leans red, that has a metallic finish and copious golden glass flecks. It covered nicely in two coats, but it is not a red!

I was having a hard time deciding between stamping with gold or black, but everything I saw with either color online was disappointing (I guess not a lot of people use this for nail art), so I ended up covering it with a red-to-black gradient using Siren by Pure Ice, Visions of Love by OPI, and Black Creme by Wet n’ Wild. The stamp is from Bundle Monster plate XL209.

In the end the mani is pretty enough,,,I was just expecting a red polish. In retrospect, I should have known from looking at everyone’s swatches! Oh well :-p at least I got a pretty purple and mossy green!

Cruella deVille

This is actually the first of the “newer” Disney manis that I did! I found the previous two (memo and dalmatians) in my unposted folder and decided to use them as the jumping to point to EVEN MORE DISNEY.

I actually think I ended up doing paired manis for almost everything at this point (heroine + sidekick and then one for the villain). I am not shy to say that most of my villain manis came out better than my heroine manis 😀

Obviously, this is the companion post to Wednesday’s 101 dalmations! This was inspired by Cruella deVille. You don’t get to see my thumb because it was an idea that did NO pan out properly. The rest of the mani was inspired by Hot Pink Zebra Polish!

Colors:
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Red: Covergirl – Forever Festive
~ Beige – Zoya – Charlotte
~ Pale pink: OPI – Be There in a Prosecco

The question becomes: do I want to post ALL THE DISNEY MANIS in a row? Or do a disney week per month? I don’t know! I guess we shall see next week :-D. Any requests? Specific movies you guys want to see? Painting disney is fun!

101 Dalmatians

Another Disney mani that I’ve been sitting on since 2016…July, actually. How sad is that? These are so cute though!

I wanted to do each collar a different color, but when I went back and looked, only the mom and dad dog (Perdita and Pongo) had really distinct collars that were not just the same as all the puppies!

The design itself was inspired by @banicured_. Puppies! And Disney! I’ve wanted a dog for a long time, and this makes it worse…only, I can’t imagine that I wouldn’t end up with dog hair ruining my manis!

Colors
~ White: Wet n’ Wild – French White Creme
~ Black: Wet n’ Wild – Black Creme
~ Yellow: WOW – #301
~ Red: Pure Ice – Siren
~ Blue: Zoya – Ling

I thought about writing “101” on my thumb, but honestly, this was surprisingly quick and easy and I didn’t want to ruin it with trying to make words! Or numbers. Either way.

Did any of you guys have a favorite puppy from 101 Dalmations? Hope you enjoyed!

Nemo and Dory

I painted these in May of 2016…so I should probably actually post them. I just wanted to wait until I had enough disney-themed manis to post them all in a week! Whoops.

This mani was inspired by Finding Nemo. Yes, these are super-stylized, yes I still think it’s cool!

I got the idea from Klo’s to me, although she used much brighter aqua for her underwater…I wish I had a similar blue but I just don’t! So mine is more of a teal-based blue. Either way, I loved her idea for the surf!

Colors
~ Light teal: Maybelline – Green with Envy
~ Teal: Zoya – Wednesday
~ Light blue: Zoya – Rocky
~ Blue: Zoya – Yummy
~ Dark blue: Zoya – Ling
~ Dory blue: Sinful Colors – Endless Blue
~ Yellow: WOW – #301
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Orange: Zoya – Thandie

That’s all for today! Any other Disney or Pixar movies I should work on painting (I mean, and hopefully posting less than a year after they were initially painted)?

Vines Through the Swamp

Don’t ask me about the title. I thought that as lovely as the base is, it looks like a swamp. And then I got stuck into thinking about Shrek and now “I’m a Believer” is stuck in my head on repeat.

Anyway. This is one of the A England polishes that I picked up a few months ago during the color4nails sale (because I couldn’t resist) and it is LOVELY. Now, at least part of that is because I simply love this type of murky green-brown, but a lot of it has to do with the polish itself! (Actually, I have a post that I’m working on that compares the three green-brown polishes I own. Yes, I own three of them. Because this color is magnificent).

Shown here is two thin coats of Fotheringhay Castle by A England. I almost could have gotten away with one! Adina’s version of this particular color is a deep murky green-gold with scattered fine holo shimmer. The holo is less noticeable than most other A England holos, but the finish is stunning and you can certainly see the shimmer! I’m quite happy with this 😀

Colors:
~ Green: A England – Fotheringhay Castle
~ Gold shimmer: Sally Hansen – Go for Gold
~ Gold metallic: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Light pink: ULTA – Babydoll
~ Pink: Essie – Eternal Optimist

I ended up triple stamping with two Bundle Monster plates: once with a gold shimmer that ended up very faint because the plate was not etched well, once with gold metallic swirls, and then over that using black polish and the same swirls. It came out pretty well for all that stamping madness!

Hope you enjoyed!

Geometric Expression

I bought a bunch of OPI polishes recently…and this was one of my unplanned buys. They were having a buy-two-get-one-free sale so of course I had to leave with 6 polishes rather than the 4 I really wanted! Well, there were 6 but two of them were not in stock 😦

I have been in the hunt for a nude/pale-pink/grey and I thought this might be it! Until I swatched it on a nail stick and realized that it is a PERFECT DUPE for a (much cheaper) polish that I already own! Grrrrrr…I don’t usually buy perfect dupes. I feel rather dumb right now.

Regardless, this is three thin coats of Be There in a Prosecco by OPI. Despite taking 3 coats, it goes on better than my OTHER light pink nude creme polish (which takes 4 and even then has leveling problems). The polish is a very pale pink creme. I’ll do a comparison to the dupe sometime soon! As soon as I get over my disappointment.

Colors
~ Nude: OPI – Be There in a Prosecco
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Black: Wet n’ Wild – Black Creme
~ Gold: ILNP – Clockwork
~ Purple: Zoya – Rue
~ Stamps: BP – L054, 77

The one benefit of this is that I made something cool and geometric! Honestly, I just wanted to color in some geometric stamps, and this made it possible without standing out too much in the hospital.

Unfortunately some of the stamping decals bubbled a bit, so the top coat looks uneven. Oops! Hope you enjoyed anyway!

Black Hills by Moonlight

As it turns out, thermal polish is only intended to change color for 6-12 months after you buy it! So, I need to get to using my pretty thermal polishes before they are relegated to regular polish!

This is supposed to be hills by daylight and moonlight in warm and cold respectively. Oddly, the blue color looks wonderfully bright in direct light…and rather dingy at all other times. So mostly this just looks like different levels of light pollution at night :-p

I did end up trying to make the sun turn dark and look like a moon…but that REALLY didn’t work, so I just re-painted that part. Whoops!

I didn’t bother listing all the polishes that I used, since there were a few in there. The base color (the one that changes color) is Winds of Change by Bow Polish. I am glad I kept the mani in the periwinkle family at least!

The really cold/dark version of this mani might have been my favorite, but it was warm enough out when I wore this that I seldom saw the dark purple! The light blue was also pretty…but by painting my tips black it made it hard to see any actual gradient!

Regardless, I hope you enjoyed! Do any of you guys have a favorite thermal mani that I should use for inspiration?