Curled Explosions

The final purple mani this week! Although there may be more next week. I really like working with purple in the Spring.

So, I absolutely love this mani. I love it so much I split it into two parts. Last week I showed the base of this mani, Blurple Smush Stars. I actually almost left it like that, but I decided to see if partially stamping over the background would highlight just how cool it looked. I consider this a success!

I also, of course, wanted to show of a new plate from the Born Pretty Store. This is probably the plate I was most excited to get my hands on, I love swirly designs! Seriously…the two things I love most on my nails are swirls, and then geometric patterns. Its like I was made to stamp.

This plate is a smaller square plate, called BP – X43. Despite its smaller size, it has 9 full designs, all of which are well-etched and absolutely stunning. I used a different design on each nail, just to test them out. They go so well together!

Colors:
~ Dark periwinkle: Zoya – Danielle
~ Periwinkle: Nails Inc – Regents Place
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Silver: A England – Excalibur
~ Stamp: Floral BP – X43

Great stamp, great base. If you want to pick up this stamping plate for yourself, Born Pretty Store has if for $2.19. Enjoy!

Tangled Heart

Yet another two new things post! I am very excited that I have so much new nail polish, but it is also getting tiring swatching things as a focus rather than primarily doing nail art. I don’t know how those nail polish swatch bloggers do it!

Anyway, this is a shiny new polish from the OPI holiday collection, and was hands down my favorite OPI that I received (luckily, I even got a fully sized bottle rather than a mini!). The polish is called Feel the Chemis-tree, despite being a purple and in no way tree-like. OPI tends to have pun-y names, but this one misses the mark :-p. Anyway Chemis-tree covered well in two thin coats (I almost could have done one), and has a purple base with pink shimmer that shifts to gold. It is really quite beautiful!

On top of my purple base I did some layered stamping, and some simple stamps. The stamping images come from a plate sent to me to review from the Born Pretty Store, which I think was intended to be Valentine’s-themed but is mostly lots of flowers, cool lines, and hearts. But the best part? It is made to be layered! I have been waiting to get my hands on an intentionally layered stamping plate and this one does not disappoint.

I tested a few of the fine detailed lines from the flowers on this plate, and they all worked perfectly. Then I decided that I didn’t want to use flowers…and instead went with the heart with the small line made to go over it, and some larger lines. My sister thought I had used stamping tape (which with this design would have taken HOURS), I was so pleased!

Colors:
~ Purple shimmer: OPI – Feel the Chemis-tree
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Purple creme: Zoya – Monica
~ Stamp: Valentines Day BP – L002

If you want to pick up the plate for yourself, it is $2.99 over at the Born Pretty Store. Hope you enjoyed!

Silver Starred Sky

There is a lot going on with this mani, and it didn’t quite come out how I wanted! I was swatching a beautiful new polish that I didn’t want to completely cover up…and so the galaxy mani that I tried to make ended up looking meh. But…silver holographic stars fix everything, right?

Anyway, the base here is yet ANOTHER new polish, this time from ILNP, called Downpour. When I first opened the package, I think this was the polish that drew my eye the most! It is such a vibrant deep metallic-finished blue, and has copious holographic shards. I even took a macro photo just to show off how the metallic finish goes over the buried shards. I die. I love this polish. I used three thin coats for depth, but my nail line was covered in two. I should probably mention, this polish was surprisingly easy to remove as well!

I then added on lots of different shades of blue to make a galaxy design, but decided it looked too varied and more or less covered everything with Yummy, which was a mistake. I wish I had stopped at an earlier part in my design! It looks ok, but certainly not breaking any records.

When that was done, I placed some silver holographic stars that I was sent to review from the Born Pretty Store. They come in a little pot with three sizes (small, medium, and large…all three are visible on my thumb). They are awesome! I am only sad that I didn’t work with very wet base coat when I initially put the stars down, as they stick up a bit because they are so large (especially the biggest size), but I think that’s my fault! I imagine I will be using these whenever I put together a galaxy mani in the future.

Colors:
~ Dark blue holo: ILNP – Downpour
~ Dark blue metallic: Zoya – Tart
~ Blue creme: Zoya – Ling
~ Light blue creme: Zoya – Yummy
~ Pastel blue creme: Zoya – Blu
~ Holo top coat: ORLY – Sparkling Garbage
~ Silver holo: Color Club – Harp On It

Prior to this, it had been such a long time since I did a galaxy mani! I have to say, doing it with red this past summer was more fun than with blues…as the sky is blue and so everyone can already imagine what that looks like :-p. Oh well. Downpour is stunning and now I have fancy stars for my sky!

I hope you enjoyed! And if you are interested in picking up some holographic stars for yourself, head over to the Born Pretty Store where you can find them for $1.49.

Magnetic Teal Flowers

Readers, I am sorry about this. I tried so hard to make it pretty for you, and I only partly succeeded! But it wasn’t my fault…

So, I received two magnets (to go with magnetic polish) from the Born Pretty Store to review, and this is the second. It is N03, a star pattern. I have seen other people try and use star patterns online, and usually it doesn’t work well. I was hopefully with this one. When I tested it on my mat it worked well, but I forgot about the curvature of my nails! Ugh. Suffice to say the center of this magnet is useless (as it appears all star magnets are) and the side that works best is still iffy. Compared to the diagonal lines magnet (which I showed almost a month ago), this one is far less useful.

I ended up decided to stamp a floral star pattern over the magnetic art, centering the flower over the “center” of the star. The only finger that REALLY picked up the magnet (aka the one where I have the flattest nail bed) was my middle finger, and there the stamp looks great. Otherwise? Meh.

Colors:
~ Teal magnetic: Nails Inc – Whitehall
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamp: EdM – 09

I did end up loving the N02 magnet, so I can happily recommend picking it up! However, I have yet to see a star magnet that works, and this one is no exception. The magnets can be found here. Enjoy!

Starflakes

Stars and snowflakes! I painted this a while ago and was afraid I wouldn’t get around to posting it while it was still cold out. I should not have worried. It is forecast to snow tomorrow and Wednesday, oy vey!

The base here is yet another holiday polish that I won from Nail Polish Canada, this is Coalmates by OPI. What you see here are three thin coats of polish, which is a dark grey-blue jelly that looks almost black, but is filled with copious silver and blue flecks. The first coat looked grey with large amounts of glitter, but it covered in three coats and the blue came through. Honestly, this is not my favorite polish and I am glad it is a mini.

I thought it would work nicely as the base for a night sky, so I grabbed another new stamp that I was sent to review from the Born Pretty Store and went to work!

All the images here are from the same stamping plate, but the plate itself is a bit of a hodgepodge of design elements! However, it does stamp beautiful (even the tiny intricate lines, I am quite impressed).

My favorite part of this stamp is the encircled sun/moon on my middle finger. It is both intricate and absolutely beautiful. I don’t know why the stars on the other part of the image are mixed with snowflakes, but I’ll take it! This is overall a very fun plate!

If you want to pick up plate BP-185 for yourself, head over to the Born Pretty Store where it is on sale for $1.59. Hope you enjoyed!

Knotted Neon Meeting

Sorry for not posting yesterday, it was Match Day for us medical school folks and I ended up going out to celebrate with my friends (ALL of whom got our #1 choice, which is basically unheard of) and forgot to post! Anyway, this mani was a bit touch-and-go, but it came out remarkably well for something that I thought was hexed!

I wanted to use these neon gradient water decals that I was sent from the Born Pretty Store…but it turns out they need a white base (can you imagine these popping over black? I was so darn excited initially). Anyway, this necessitated me going and buying a new white polish since my poor final bottle of Snow me White by Sinful Colors is so thick that it is only suitable for stamping. Ergo, I grabbed the LA Girl white and it took three darn coats! Oh Sinful Colors, please come back to my pharmacy!

Once those three coats finally dried, I added the decals. Over white, they are wonderfully pigmented and very finely designed! I love the detail and how well the colors actually blend. However, they made for boring nails…so I color-matched the pink and blue to two creme polishes that I own and did a gradient just along the edge of my nails! The colors ended up awesome, but I really REALLY should have done the gradient FIRST. It ended up a bit messy as a result and I spent more time than I had trying to make it look symmetric from nail to nail!

Colors:
~ White: LA Girl – White On
~ Pink: Zoya – Kelsey
~ Blue: Zoya – Ling

Anyway, if you want to pick up some very bright water decals (and three sheets worth from things like full-nail swirls, to geometric patterns, to knots like these) head over to the Born Pretty Store. They are currently on sale for 99 cents! Not bad. Hope you enjoyed!

Russet Hearts of Lace

This mani ended up being a lot of fun! There are no stereotypical Valentine’s colors, but there are hearts and it is somewhat elegant. Subverting tropes!

I wanted to see what a lace patterned stamp would look like over a magnetic polish, and I figured my copper/burgundy magnetic was perfect for Valentine’s Day! It also helped that I was sent the ideal stamping plate to review from the Born Pretty Store (I love lace stamps, and this plate is chock full of them), AND  was sent two new magnets to play with!

For years, I have only had one, somewhat weak, wavy-patterned magnet to work with. Now, I have three! The one I am showing here is a simple diagonal line design, but it is very strong and the lines come through beautifully. I am so happy. This magnet is from the Born Pretty Store as well, and is listed as “N02”, on sale for $1.49. I should probably mention that it comes with a sticker over it with the pattern printed on it…that sticker is what holds the magnet to it’s positioning stick (so don’t remove it like I did or the magnet falls right out). Clearly, the magnet is strong enough to work through the sticker!

As mentioned above, I also love this stamp. The plate has a whole bunch of lace designs, and this one is entirely hearts! There are three large hearts (which mostly face in different directions from each other) so I used each of them on a nail, ergo all my nails are slightly different! I like it. I am also officially a fan of stamping lace over magnetic designs! The stamp is on sale right now for $2.99 over at the Born Pretty Store.

Colors:
~ Copper: Masura – Evening Before the Fireplace
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamp: BP – L084

That’s all for today! My last heart-themed post will go up on Wednesday, and then we can move onto things like flowers and geometric patterns. :-p I also realized that due to my ridiculous backlog of posts, the actual post where this is a new polish hasn’t gone up yet! Whoops. At some point you’ll see this same base with a wavy design but suffice to say I wanted some multicolored magnet polishes and bought two Masuras….and they are (as expected) amazing. Sorry!