Vibrant Mess

I saw this mani by @chrisslypaws and I just KNEW I had to duplicate it! It was one of the first things I made with the Make Your Mark 02 plate. Its neon and gradient-y and awesome!

I think I really just like designs that are messy but with purpose. After all the experimenting with ways to mix 5 different colors together (for my swatch tests and subsequent nail art) I ended up just thinking that messy pseudo-modern art is really fun for nails 🙂

This mani was really quite easy, given that its a two-color gradient over white with a black stamp. I also forgot how gratifying a two-color gradient can be, since I usually reach for a minimum of 3 colors (and usually more like 5 because I like color). It was fun!

Colors:
~ Hot pink: Zoya – Kelsey
~ Blue: Zoya – Ling
~ Neon blue: Sinful Colors – Endless Blue
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamp: Lina – Make Your Mark 02

That said, I can’t tell if my plate isn’t etched as deeply as it should be? I need to play around with it some more because the black just isn’t as black as I’d like. However, I love the mani anyway! Hope you enjoyed 😀

Blue Damask

Well, today is my first call day in the CCU, so I am about to start at 28 hour shift (oh wow this is going to be exhausting).

Anyway, this mani is basically the same mani as Fashioned Darkly from March of last year, but done in blue and silver rather than red and gold! I loved that mani and I was wearing a dress to a wedding that I thought would go well…in blue. So, ta-da!

I don’t love it as much as the original, but I did enjoy wearing it! And somehow the black stamp held up even though I didn’t top coat it. Yay!

Colors:
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Blue: Maybelline – Shocking Seas
~ Silver: A England – Excalibur
~ Stamp: JQ – L20

Short and sweet for today. Monday’s post, assuming I get around to posting it, is bright and colorful :-p. Enjoy!

Down the Incline

This was a fun mani to put together! I always love combining multichromes an seeing what comes out of them. This was especially rewarding because I had never come up with an idea on how to use these stamps before and I love how it came out!

So, between a multichrome gradient and two different colored stamps, I ended up with a big of a complicated mani. I don’t care. For once, complicated works!

Also, this mani is a bit of a temporal milestone: I officially start residency tomorrow (in the cardiac intensive care unit) AND it’s my 30th birthday tomorrow. So, I am leaving behind my 20’s, and starting to care for really sick patients in one go. This also means that, while I will try, my posting schedule is likely to get a bit wonky while I am staffing the CCU!

Colors:
~ Muted gold multichrome: Born Pretty – 212 (over black creme)
~ Bright gold multichrome: ILNP – Greatness
~ Dark purple multichrome: ILNP – Undenied
~ Bright purple multichrome: ILNP – Tilted
~ Purple holo multichrome: Enchanted Polish – I am the Walrus
~ Rose gold: Essie – Penny Talk
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamps: [not in english] – L005

I only used two multichromes in the gradient on these nails, so while the other colors do shine through, the primary purple is Undenied, and the primary gold is Greatness. Hope you enjoyed, and happy early birthday to me!

Grungy Floral Lace

I don’t really know what else to call this? The background is a bit grungy and I should really not have stamped over it with lace, because it really just came out looking messy.

The base of this is my swatch test for Mauve Nudes, which I then haphazardly dry-brushed over with each color. I went, for some reason that I cannot come up with in hindsight, with a lace floral stamp? And then colored in the flowers with jelly polish and added a gold bead to the middle. I think if the background was a consistent color rather than a mess, that this would have looked good! But alas, it does not.

Colors:
~ Tan nude: Zoya – Chantal
~ Pastel nude: Essense – I Nude It
~ Peach nude: CND – Cashmere Wrap
~ Pastel mauve: KBShimmer – Caught on Tape
~ Mauve: Zoya – Rue
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Pink jelly: Zoya – Paloma
~ Red jelly: OPI – My Wish List is You
~ Orange jelly: custom made
~ Stamp: BP – L084

So, that is a lot of colors for something that looks like it has at maximum 5 colors. Oh well! At least I tried?

I think I need to stay away from lace on nudes for a while, or just lace stamps n general. The last few manis that I have tried with them just don’t end up looking good!

Daffodil Garden

I have no excuse for this going up in the afternoon…I finished editing last night and just forgot that today is a Wednesday! Anyway. I painted these in early April, as the daffodils were finally emerging from the (very late) snow! I also rather like that I found a way to use this stamp that doesn’t make all my fingers look the same 🙂

Since this was painted on top of a swatch test post, I started with a different color blue polish on each nail. To make them uniform, I basically dry-brushed each color over the others so the end result was a medium light blue with shimmer in it. I wanted there to be a faint wispy cloud background, and I think it looks rather cool! You can see that best on my pinky and thumb.

After the blue cloudy background had dried, I used advanced stamping (aka coloring in the stamp while it is on the stamper) and applied it to my nails. One of my last minute decisions with this was to use a dark orange in the very center of the flowers and then a lighter yellow-leaning peach for the rest of the middle. I love how it came out! I ended up goggle image searching daffodils to make sure I had the right shade of orange (all the daffodils near my apartment are yellow-on-yellow which is not nearly as much fun), and it also gave me a chance to use Freedom of Peach again! I don’t like this color on my nails as a base but it clearly works as flower centers :-p

Colors:
~ Pastel blue: Sally Hansen – Breezy Blue
~ Light blue: Essie – Rock the Boat
~ Pink shimmer: Sinful Colors – Cinderella
~ Medium blue: KBShimmer – I’d Rather be with Blue
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Orange: ULTA – Sun of a Gun
~ Peach: OPI – Freedom of Peach
~ Yellow: OPI – Never a Dulles Moment
~ Green: Zoya – Shawn
~ Stamp: BP – L067

I know the daffodils have all died, but I wanted to make sure that this got posted SOMETIME in the spring! Hope you enjoyed!

Aloha

Finally, nail art and no more swatch comparisons! I thought I would open with the nails I painted for my Honeymoon back in March 🙂

Since I was traveling to Hawaii, I wanted some fun tropical nails! I didn’t have any stamping plates that were quite the correct flower, and the few hibiscus ones I have are…not the prettiest. So I tried to turn some flowers INTO something vaguely Hawaiian! I also couldn’t make up my mind between two different designs, so I just went ahead and used both. The mani ended up a bit busier than I intended (oops) but I still like it!

Colors:
~ Purple: Emily de Molly – Traverse the Skies
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ White: LA Girl – White On
~ Orange: KBShimmer – Orange You Glad I Didn’t Say Banana?
~ Pink: Wet n’ Wild – Tickled Pink
~ Dark green: Zoya – Shawn
~ Green: Sinful Colors – Exotic Green
~ Stamps: BP – 067, Chic Peek BM – XL472

I also wish I had done some lava nails, since that may have been the single coolest thing I’ve ever seen (well, hottest really I suppose). Since my visit, the volcano on Hawaii has started erupting again, which is incredibly unfortunate for the people who live on the slopes of the volcano!

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the tropical nails! Hopefully I can get my act together and actually have something to post the rest of this week as well 😀

Swatch Test: Pastel Nudes

Why oh why do I have so many nude polishes? I will end up doing three, yes THREE comparison posts with nudes (pastel nudes, which are up today, pinky nudes, and neutral nudes, both of which will be co-posted on Wednesday). Anyway, on to the “pastel” nudes!

These are the lightest nudes in my collection, which is to say pale creme colored polishes. I have, today, two cremes, one jelly, one shimmer, and one holo. Three of them ended up being identical and I am certainly parting with one! The others I will keep, just because nudes are darn useful (especially given that I start working in the hospital full-time in June).

From thumb to pinky, we have:
~ NYC – Prospect Park Bloom
~ OPI – Be There in a Prosecco
~ L’oreal – Boho Babe
~ Essence – I Nude It
~ Picture Polish – Cherish

Prospect Park Bloom took three thick coats and was STILL not completely opaque. It also basically didn’t dry. It was 99 cents, which was why I bought it initially, but I think I’m going to let it go! Cherish stands out because it is both darker and filled with holo shards. I Nude It has very very subtle shimmer that puts it in a hair darker than Boho Babe and Prosecco, which are to my eye complete dupes. I like the brush that L’oreal uses much better than the giant OPI brush, but Prosecco has a bit more polish than Boho, and both work fine.

I decided to go with an art deco pattern, since my nails are STILL pointy-shaped and I really only like geometric things on pointy nails. The stamp is from BP plate L054, the source of most of my geometric patterns! I then colored bits of the design in gold (after stamping, I really should have colored in the design on the stamper head, but this was faster), and added some black and gold dots. I was debating throwing in a fourth color (likely red) but decided to leave it as-is. The dots really helped! For once my “if it doesn’t look completed, add dots” worked 🙂

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed! And maybe this was useful (basically, you can pay $5 for L’oreal that is the same color and ease of use as a $10 OPI). Also sorry this post is late…but I technically made it up before midnight so Monday!!