Glacier Lake by Moonlight

There is a LOT going on in this manicure. Water. Mountains. Glaciers. Moon. I wanted to play with this layering plate that I received to review from the born pretty store. While the designs are nothing short of excellent, the etching could use some work! The end result is very cool looking, but I have a hunch that if I hadn’t told my husband what was supposed to be on my nails that he would just have been confused!

Colors:
~ Blue holo: Zoya – Dream
~ Blue: Zoya – Yummy
~ Light blue: Zoya – Blu
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Stamps: Nicole Diary – 122

In retrospect, I probably could have done without the glaciers :-p. Anyway, I want to play with this plate some more and see if I can come up with a polish or three that will stamp well despite the mediocre etching. Hopefully if you guys own this plate yours is better etched! It is still on the born pretty store for $2.99 if you want to risk it. Also, I hope you enjoyed this mani!

Cosmic Geometry

This just came out super pretty. Yes, the stamping is hard to see (this is what I get for putting silver holo over a dense holo blue) but the base color is just so nice, and when I went back and hand-accentuated the silver bits…I’m happy! Even if you can hardly see it, I promise the stamp is pretty :-p

Colors:
~ Blue holo: ILNP – Downpour
~ Silver holo: Color Club – Harp On It
~ Stamps: Nicole Diary – 145

The stamping plate I used here, which is full of fun geometric patterns (although lets be honest, the nail art world appears to have moved on from its geometric craze and into a sort of a minimalistic leaves phase) can be found here for $2.99. Hope you enjoyed! 

Beaded Brown

Simple brown gradient with brown and then gold stamps! Of course with this type of stamp I always add some freehand dots to make it even prettier 😀

Colors: 
~ Nude: Zoya – Chantal
~ Dark brown: Zoya – Louise
~ Brown: Zoya – Dea
~ Light brown: Zoya – Flynn
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Stamps: Nicole Diary – L28 

I actually really like how this manicure came out. It was fast, easy, elegant, and fun to wear. Its also quite seasonally appropriate without being either drab or too orange/purple/green! 😀 Hope you enjoyed as much as I did! If you want to pick up this stamping plate (which I have to admit is actually a rather awesome one) you can find it here for $6.99.

Modernized Blue

I keep seeing manicures where people just sort of blob on complimentary colors and drag them down, and provide a minimalist stamp over it. So I decided to try it! Of course, I decided to be so subtle about the color drag idea that it is almost invisible, but the inspiration was there. Also, I do love these stamps.

Colors:
~ Dark blue metallic: Zoya – Ibiza
~ Blue: Zoya – Sia
~ Neon blue: Sinful Colors – Endless Blue
~ Silver: A England – Excalibur
~ Stamp: Nicole Diary – 145

You can find the stamping plate for yourself for $2.99 here. Hope you enjoyed all the blue, and the semi-modern look! I’ve been seeing it everywhere but if I am honest I don’t love it on myself. Live and learn!

Water Ripples

I have not made a water ripple manicure in literally years, but I saw this design on a plate I was sent to review and I knew I had to play with it! I started with a blue metallic base covered with blue flakies, over which I stamped in white. However, the white was too stark, so I covered it in various densities of a teal jelly to make it look a little more water-like. I am pretty happy with the result!

Colors:
~ Metallic blue: Zoya – Estelle
~ Blue flakies: Zoya – Maisie
~ Teal jelly: Zoya – Frida
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Stamp: Nicole Diary – L21

You can find the stamp for yourself at the born pretty store here, where it is currently $6.99 (but if you wait a few days I bet it will come down, they have sales almost every week!). Hope you enjoyed, and happy Friday!!

Vibrant Jelly Net

I just wanted rainbows, so I made rainbows! This is just a bunch of jelly polishes painted in a random pattern over a silver holographic base. I like using holo rather than just plain white because it hides the mistakes and bald patches a bit better…I can pretend they are intentional :-p

Colors:
~ Silver holo: Darling Diva – Diamond
~ Red jelly: Zoya – Aphrodite
~ Pink jelly: Zoya – Paloma
~ Yellow jelly: Esmalta da Kelly – Yellow Soap Bubble
~ Blue jelly: Zoya – Frida
~ Stamps: Born Pretty – Texture L002

The stamp here is from another new born pretty plate, this one being better etched! It didn’t need any touch-ups and you can clearly see the design even around the rainbows. Honestly the reason the black here doesn’t look great is I had just opened a new bottle of polish, and since i don’t use stamping polish it was too thin (aka…new) to be excellent for stamping! Oops. You can find this stamping plate with all its weird leafy and bubble-like glory here for $3.99.

Pastel Geometric Floral

his was full-on inspired by the demo art on this stamping plate’s shopping page. Unfortunately, the plate was just not well etched enough to really pull this off! I do love the images but I could barely make the stamps pick up even with all my tricks and my best stamper head. 😦

Colors:
~ Pink: Zoya – Jordan
~ Purple: Zoya – Abby
~ Periwinkle: Nails Inc – Regents Place
~ Green: Zoya – Tiana
~ Glitter: Cult Nails – Center of Attention
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamps: Born Pretty – Flower Tango L002

Regardless, the manicure ended up pretty. The caveat of course is that I went over a fair amount of the black lines by hand, since they did not end up picking up enough to call it a stamp. If you guys want to pick this up for yourselves (and cross your fingers that you get a better etched plate than I did!) you can find it here for $3.99.

Cosmic Threads

This manicure is pretty darn awesome. I got this, frankly, fantastic plate to review from the Born Pretty Store, and at the same time they sent me some gold powder. I decided to combine the two. Despite being a very simple manicure it looked awesome (if I do say so myself) although it required two extra layers of various to coats.

So, I started with a dark blue holographic polish (Downpour by ILNP), top coated it as usual (Seche Vite) and let it dry for the standard time (maybe 15 minutes). I then added matte top coat and let that dry. To make the gold stamping happen, I took my stamper and rubbed the gold glitter into the stamper head using the applicator/eyeshadow brush until there was a thin shiny film over the stamper head. Then I took my usual black polish (Black on Black by Sinful Colors, I didn’t even use a stamping polish not that I have many), applied it to the stamping plate, scraped it off, and picked it up using the stamper (so, business as usual). When I went to transfer the design to my nail the only part that came over was the area that had the black design under it. Clean up was a breeze.

Of course, I had to top coat with a water-based polish and wait for that to dry so as not to dull the glitter, and THEN another coat of Seche Vite. Needless to say, this mani lasted 7 days without any wear (which is what happens when you functionally use 4 layers of topcoat).

Prior to all of this, I tested a few stamping techniques with the glitter on my mat. If I stamped as normal and tried to rub glitter in over either a matte background or a normal glossy background it somewhat worked; glossy trapped more random off-target glitters than matte but neither worked very well. When I tried the apply-glitter-to-stamper over matte and glossy, the glitter only stuck exactly where the stamp was on a matte base, but stuck somewhat non-specifically for the glossy base (you could still see the design, but there was a lot more random gold around as well, and the transfer was not as crisp). Ergo, use glitter on the stamper head and apply the stamp over a matte coat of polish!

I cannot recommend either this plate (which I have already used two additional times in two weeks because the designs are incredible) or this gold glitter highly enough. The plate has since disappeared but I promise is lovely if it ever shows back up, and the glitter is $3.29, here. Hope you enjoyed these as much as I did!

Light Jade

This was a bit of an odd one to make! I used one of Born Pretty’s “blooming” polishes (in green) to make the base color. I expected this to work like a normal jelly polish and I was quite wrong. The blooming polish is very very thin, changes color depending on what you do to it, and apparently eats through white polish!

I started with a white polish base. I added the blooming ink wash polish in little dabs and strokes (you can pretty much see what I did). I then top coated and added a white stamps…which was promptly devoured! So I went back and stamped in gold which did not get eaten by the green. I don’t know why the green ate the white, and I don’t know how I ended up with a blue tone on my pointer finger. These are the mysteries of the blooming polish! Also, the green color, while pretty, really is more of a jade blue-toned-green with a hint of brown than a true green.

Colors:
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Green jelly: Born Pretty – Blooming, Constant Jade
~ Gold: Sally Hansen – Go for Gold
~ Stamps: Lina – Make Your Mark 02, BPX – L020

I do actually really like these inks, but I need to remember they wash off with water and soap, not acetone! My cuticles also stayed green for days as a result of trying acetone first and fixing the color into my nail beds. Oops! Anyway, if you want to play around with any of these polishes, you can find them for $2.99 each at this link. Enjoy!

Green and Gold Undulation

There are so many awesome things about this manicure, where to start. New base polish, fun stamp, rhinestone (its been so long!), general shiftiness. Basically, all the things. Now, don’t get me wrong, the overall effect was odd looking but I do love it anyway :-p

The base polish here is one of the June PPU polishes, Rainforest by Ethereal Lacquer (it occurred to be last Friday that I was showing you a manicure where I used this polish for layering without showing you a swatch first!). This polish is insane. It is more or less a pastel multichrome, blue-green base with yellow-orange flash. In direct light it appears a bright golden orange with green at the edges, and in indirect light it is a green with teal and orange. Unfortunately, in order to be this absurdly shifty, it is not particularly opaque. This is four medium coats and in direct light or backlight of any intensity there is very visible nail line. I usually hate that, but I was less bothered than usual because I was too busy staring at the shifts!

Then, of course, I stamped, dotted, and added a rhinestone. I got a weirdly high number of compliments on this manicure (random cashiers, my chief in the hospital, multiple nurses) so I was quite pleased! It was darn busy and very odd looking, but the shiftiness and the wavy/sharp background sealed it.

Colors:
~ Green/gold: Ethereal Lacquer – Rainforest
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Mint: Maybelline – Green with Envy
~ Stamp: L078 from Born Pretty

Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed! This was a fun one to wear and fun(ish) to edit. I am trying to keep with the fall color scheme this week at least, lets see how long I can keep it going for! I also cannot remember if I ever showed off this plate before, but is a new favorite of mine (it has so many swoopy awesome things!) and you can find it here for $3.59.

Fanned Leaves

his came out pretty cool in the end? Although my gold glitter on gold multichrome was maybe a miss, you can hardly see the glitter! I just really wanted to use this Catrice polish, and for some reason figured a tone-matched gold glitters was the best way to jazz up the stamps. Clearly it didn’t need much jazzing since it still looks reasonably good even without being able to see the glitter!

Colors:
~ Gold multichrome: Catrice – Genius in the Bottle
~ Gold glitter: ILNP – Sparks May Fly
~ Stamp: Nicole Diary – 090

The stamp itself is a pretty cool one from the Born Pretty Store. It is full of space, celestial, and nature themes, many of them with dots! I think I have used over half the stamps from the plate since I got it for review, but I can’t remember if I posted the link yet. So, you can get this stamping plate here for $2.99. Hope you enjoyed!

Abstract Sky

Ok, so this isn’t QUITE a fail, it just isn’t nearly as good as I expected. Of course, I now own the item I wanted to use (gold glitter for stamping) but I didn’t have it when I painted these! Oops.

The base color here is two coats of Gaia by KBShimmer from Jan 2019 PPP. This is a deep blue jelly that appears cobalt due to all the glitters: iridescent shards that shift teal to purple and coarse silver holo glitters. Both are plentiful. This polish takes just a bit of spreading due to the flakie load, but it dries down nicely on the nail! I love it.

The design was inspired by de_briz. So, I started with Gaia, then layered on some MORE flakies (just for fun) and then stamped some dots in black. Sadly, my plate with swirly dots does not stamp well! This is doubly sad because the swirly dot design is literally mine…I had done it years ago and when the “make your own” stamping plate series became a thing I submitted it, and it got in. So this pattern was designed by me…and this plate hardly stamped. So, I started in black (which is not visible at all) and then tried to go over it in gold…and it was patchy and awful. So I top coated and tried to convince myself it was good enough. However, if I am anything in the nail art world, I am the woman who adds too many dots…so I fixed it by going over every dot by hand. With the same gold. I have to say, it looks much better. I also didn’t bother top coating at the end since the gold polish is a quick dry that actually lives up to its name, and I do love vaguely textured nails!

Colors:

~ Blue glitter: KBShimmer – Gaia

~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black

~ Gold glitter: Sally Hansen – Go for Gold

~Stamp: BM – 607

~Flakies: orange/green from the Born Pretty Store

That’s it for today! I’ll have to try something like this mani without spending an extra hour free handing the dots next time. Live and learn!

Pink Swoop Gradient

I was sent to pink polishes to review from the Warm Tea Series from Born Pretty. These are very small bottles of quite potent stamping polish. I do wish I had been given two different color families, but theses ones gradiented together well! I wanted to test them over a dark base to prove that they, especially the lighter pink, would work. Voila!

Of course, in retrospect, it might have been a better test of their ability to not put them over something quite so glittery, but I have to admit the effect in the sun was dazzling! This has also convinced me that at some point I really do need to go out and buy some more dedicated stamping polishes. My regular cremes would never be able to do this!

Colors:
~ Purple holo: Emily de Molly – State of Mind
~ Light pink: Born Pretty – Warm Tea, Cherry Blossoms
~ Dark pink: Born Pretty – Warm Tea, Crimson Cheeks
~ Stamp: EdM – 21

Hope you enjoyed! If you want to pick up either the lighter pink or the darker pink stamping polish you can find them here for $1.99 each. That said, keep in mind that these are very small polish bottles, only 6ml!

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?

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!

Unnamed Orange

Apparently I forgot to write down what I used for this mani. At all. I have no record of ever having painted this. Ugh! That said I have a pretty good guess…

I was sent some blooming ink polishes to review from the Born Pretty Store. I figured they were like jelly polishes right? Wrong! They are incredibly thin and runny (aka ‘ink’) and have some odd properties. You can’t really layer them to make the color brighter like you can with jellies…you blob it down. You can move it around and get rid of it just by going over it again. That’s how I got the weird blobby-depth to this orange/pink mani.

Basically, there are only two colors here: white polish and orange ink (aka Flowing Fire). I started with white, and then tried to swirl on the orange. Then blob it on. Then I just had fun with it. The end result was pretty cool, and had a look that I don’t think I could have achieved with regular polish! It was a dirty orange-brown, however, and quite ugly. Then the surprises began.

1. You cannot clean this with acetone. Seriously. My cuticles were orange-pink for DAYS. I edited them here because it was so embarrassing. Do not flood your cuticles with this stuff!
2. It changes color with topcoat! It went from orange-brown to neon orange-pink. Which is to say it became much prettier and much closer to the color of the ink in the bottle
3. It will eat all color. I tried to stamp over the design in white, which worked, and then add more topcoat to seal the white design. It ate through the white! I ended up re-stamping in white and not top coating the final stamp. If you look carefully you can almost, but honestly not really, see the initial white stamp of the same patter. Omg!

So, that’s that. This was a lot of fun to make and behaved in weird unpredictable ways. Will I use it again? Yah. Will I be more careful? Absolutely! If you want to play around with these inks yourself, head over to the born pretty store where you can find it for $2.99. The particular color you see here is called Flowing Fire. Enjoy!

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!

Falling Rosy Leaves

Well, this is absolutely a fall manicure…that I am posting in the summer! Oops. I need to put the rest of my nail art (basically everything since Feburary or so) on my computer and I just haven’t gotten around to it yet! Hopefully the importing of more seasonally-appropriate nail art will happen tomorrow, but I didn’t want to leave you all without ANY designs today!

This was a very straight forward manicure, but it uses one of my favorite polishes (I do feel like I say this about every third mani…) so I like it regardless of its simplicity! It was also a fun color combo, deep murky red-blue and rose gold.

Colors:
~ Teal multichrome: Illyrian Polish – Narrow Sea
~ Rose gold: Essie – Penny Talk
~ Stamp: Floral BPX – L018

Sorry for the late post, and I hope you enjoyed! I’ll try to get back to pastels, neons, and florals by Wednesday :-p

Succulents

I’ve just seen so many people doing complicated double accent nails, and I wanted to try it! Also I love this purple.

I feel like I cheated with this because the complicated nails are just water decals. This whole mani took under an hour, and as usual, most of that was waiting for the polish to dry! Unfortunately, the decal nails did need a white base (instead of just applying them over a base-coated nail) because the decals are not opaque. They are beautiful regardless!

Colors:
~ Pastel purple: Painted Polish – Just One Look
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Water decals: Born Pretty Store – A055

The link for these decals is here. I seldom use water decals unless I have to review them, and I am regretting that decision! They are pretty and so darn fast. Hope you enjoyed!

Icy Winds

I wanted something that looked like icy wind blowing, so I ended up with this! Just the stamp over the (admittedly awesome) base wasn’t interesting enough, so me being me, I added some dots. I kinda love it!

It also ended up accidentally being incredibly timely, as we are supposed to have a “massive” (about 1ft) snow storm in the next 48 hours and they are making beds at the hospital for the doctors to sleep there if we need to. Luckily, I live walking distance away. I cannot imaging having to sleep in the hospital (if I am not on overnight call)!

Colors:
~ Purple/grey shimmer: Emily de Molly – Shadow on the Moon
~ Silver: A England – Excalibur Renaissance
~ Purple: Sinful Colors – Muse
~ Stamp: BP – 21

That’s it for today! Icy winds on my nails and outside 🙂 Hope you enjoyed!