Draped in Mauve

I thought this would end up elegant, and it somewhat did? Mostly it ended up being glittery!

I wanted to use one of the stamping plates I was sent to review from the Born Pretty Store, but I also wanted to see if I could layer a jelly polish in a way that looked cool! I quite like the idea, but I think I would rather have used silver with blue, not copper-gold with purple :-p

That said, this was SUPER FREAKING GLITTERY in the sunlight, because some of the ILNP polishes just do that. It’s magic 🙂 you could even see the glitter through the purple! Which was the point.

Colors:
~ Gold: ILNP – Clockwork
~ Purple: Zoya – Katherine
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamp: BP – L070

This plate has a lot of cool somewhat-geometric patterns, and is very well etched despite the very thin lines. I like it! If you want to pick up one for yourself, head over to the Born Pretty Store, you can find it for $2.99. Enjoy!

Entrancing

This post is going to be a bit nuts because I am going to review THREE Born Pretty Store products! So lets get started…

The three things I have for review in this post are a stamping plate, liquid latex, and a shimmery powder. The first two a pretty straight forward. I was sent a very pretty geometric plate to review, with lots of triangular patterns! I really love geometric designs right now. However, this plate was a bit tricky. It was well-etched but NOT completely flat…it had that whole beveled edge thing that a lot of plates are doing. That said, the designs around the edge (which is to say most of them, since this plate was square) were very difficult to pick up evenly. I ended up bending the edge of the plate up so I could get a clean pick-up. In the end, both images that I used worked, but it took some finagling to get the corner image correct! I think it was worth it, as the images are so darn fun.

My second item was liquid latex. I was sent two colors from the same line, a lavender (which I used here) and a bright green. Usually, I use the Glisten and Glow latex barrier, which is a bright neon pink, and is very thick. Compared to that, this lavender was unfortunately lacking. The latex has a faint color to it, and the lavender hue blended in so well that I couldn’t actually find the edge of the latex! This made it difficult to make sure that it was aligned properly with the edge of the nail polish. The second, and much larger, problem, was that this was VERY sticky. One would think that would not be a problem, but it meant that when I pulled it up, it actually lifted the polish on my nails! The polish was 90% dry (since I was adding powder it wasn’t 100% dry) but I had to go back and rescue the nails. On my right hand I used my old latex around the nail and the Born Pretty latex on the finger to keep it clean and it worked beautifully. On a positive note, it is very thin, spreads, well, and dries like a dream. My advice would be not to use this as your only latex barrier as I would not recommend using it on the actual nail edge, but to buy it as a cheap supplement to cover your fingers (aka for things like water-marbling).

The last item was something I did not request to review. By accident, I was sent this awesome shifty powder that is intended to be used with gel polish. However, I do not work with gel polish! So I tried this over regular polish and it worked great. The finish I got was no 100% smooth (you can still see the glitter aspect of the powder) but I also do not know with certainty that this finish is not what was intended…because I have no idea what they sent me! Anyway. It is a very fine (but not super-fine) shimmery glitter. The glitter itself is a clear-white color with a green glint. Over black (I tested it) it is a bright emerald that shifts to a bright pink at angles. I tried it over a pale grey for more of a unicorn (and work-friendly) pattern! Over the light grey, you can clearly see the bright teal-green shimmer, and a lavender (pinkish purple) in direct lighting. It is very shiny!

Per the recommendation of the internet, I used a water-based polish as a top coat (Nfu-Oh Aqua Base…which is really NOT a top coat) since regular top coat supposedly turns the powder into true glitter. I don’t know what it would have done to this, but I figured since I have an aqua polish I should use it!

Other than the stamp and the powder, the three polishes I used here were Snow me White by Sinful Colors, Dove by Zoya as the base for the powder, and Evvie by Zoya for the darker grey-green highlights. I like the hand with dots better than the ones with lines, but then again I always like dots!

That is all for today! The Born Pretty Store website is back up, so here are some links! The shifting color powder can be found here for $2.99 for 0.2g. The geometric stamping plate can be found here and is currently on sale for 99 cents. Although, I cannot recommend the latex as your only latex, if you want something cheap for larger areas not directly around your nail beds, you can find it here for $2.99…which is really very cheap, I think they figured out that the quality is not the best!

Neon Print

Gradient time! Gradients are one of my favorite things to do with my nails, since it allows me to use a bunch of colors. And then, typically, cover the gradient with a stamp for added design :-p

When I was putting this together, I thought the colors might actually be too bright (because wow, neon). I was initially planning to cover more of the gradient as a result, but I like the amount showing! I ended up using another Born Pretty Store stamp, but this one works like a charm. I’ve actually even used the super-coverage designs on this plate and they stamped beautifully, which I’ve never had work for me before!

So, when it comes to gradients this hurts my eyes but is awesome, and when it comes to stamping plates this one makes me very happy, both for the etching and for the variety in patterns. Win-win!

Colors:
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Yellow: Love & Beauty – Yellow
~ Teal: Salon Perfect – Escape to Neverland
~ Blue: Maybelline – Shocking Seas
~ Stamp: BP – L049

Tomorrows post is ALSO with neons, although only one color rather than three. If you like the stamping plate and want to pick it up for yourself, you can find it at the Born Pretty Store for $2.99. Enjoy!

Shattered Foil

Day one of the 31 Day Challenge: Red! These nails are a mix of red and black and I don’t even know what, but I figure that they count 🙂

Both the deep red polish that I used as a base and the flakies that I put on top of it are new. The flakies were sent to me from the Born Pretty Store for review, so here we go!

The flakies themselves are these small iridescent shards with irregular boarders. Some are larger, and some are mostly just dust. The ones I that I got are primarily red, but shift through gold and to a bright emerald green with little provocation. I applied these using regular polish. Basically, while your top coat is tacky (about 30 seconds after application of a thin coat, if you are using quick-dry top coat), gently pat on the shards using the tip of your finger (finger into the pot of flakies, and then onto nye nail). Repeat this step until the nail is as covered as you’d like it to be. Of note: do not get your dipping finger wet (in water or polish) or you will pick up too many flakies and end up with a white iridescent patch (as on my pointer finger) rather than the colors you intended. Monolayer of flakies is best!

The other new item here is my red base, an OPI polish that I picked up on sale from ULTA. This is two thin coats of Magala Wine, a beautiful dark pink-leaning red. In direct light is a deep pink, while in shade it is a burgundy red. I really like this color! It also applied really smoothly.

Colors:
~ Red: OPI – Magala Wine
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Flakies: Born Pretty – Chameleon Cloud #1 (red)
~ Stamp: BPL – 003

Oddly, in direct like the flakies faded away, so I am glad I did the red-to-black gradient! In indirect light though you could barely see the base color, it was awesome. You can pick up the flakies from the Born Pretty Store for $2.59 for 0.2g.

Stay tuned for Day 2: Orange tomorrow!

Polish Color Buttons

Since this is about polish but is not nail art (nor are any nails featured) I figured I should post this on a weekend! Last time the Born Pretty Store sent me items to review, they also threw in some polish buttons. Now, I’ve never needed to label the top of my polish bottles with paint since they are all nicely displayed (on spice racks from Ikea) and have swatches hanging on the wall…but multichromes can be difficult. Looking at the bottle will not always tell you which shift you actually will see on the nail, and swatch sticks do not at ALL capture the colors! So…I decided to try painting mutlichromes onto the color buttons to see if it would help.

Low and behold, it actually did! You can actually get a pretty good idea of the primary and secondary shift colors, as well as the holo burden in each polish.

As to the color buttons themselves, you have to paint them before putting them on the cap (obviously) but painting them in the sheet the were sent in leaves the sides bare. SO you either need to do a last swipe around the edge to get rid of white space or deal with it. The design isn’t perfect. That said, the buttons are SUPER sticky and are perfectly sized.

I don’t know that I would go out of my way to buy these, but I have enough from just one sheet to show off all my multichrome polishes with around half the available buttons left. If you like this idea, you can find them for $1.99 for a sheet of 25 buttons at the Born Pretty Store!

Murky Pond Blooms

This started out as a comparison between my three murky gold-green polishes. As it turns out, I REALLY love this color (as it stands my #1 lemming right now is Nine Zero Lacquer Singer’s Auto Salvage, which is basically the same color as all of these but with an intense amount of glitter). Anyway, I wanted to see how they stacked up! Of course, I had to add nail art too…I was wearing a cool shirt and I decided to model my nails after the shirt I had on (which is sad because I couldn’t wear it again the next day and perfectly match my nails, but oh well)!

In a Trance by Cult Nails (ring finger) has the least amount of shimmer, but covers nicely in three coats. It is the most understated of the three, but looks the most elegant on. Fotheringhay Castle by A England (pointer and pinky) is the only one with holo shimmer, and has more of a deep/metallic finish than the other two. It is almost a one-coater, which is incredible. Wallis by Butter London (middle finger) actually has a deep blue base with copious gold glitter, with the end result being this tarnished green-gold. It is deeper than the other two, but since the base is a jelly it takes 3-4 coats. That being said, it likely remains my favorite. I just cannot get over the depth and shimmer!

I ended up sponging on black polish somewhat randomly, and then double stamping the result with a plate sent to me from the Born Pretty Store. The plate has some fantastic geometric and random element patterns! I used two of them here, one in gold and then one in black. It looks wonderfully random! The plate is BPX – L020

I ended up hand-painting some roses and leaves to finish off the design. There was a part of me that wanted to leave the mani without the flowers…but the shirt I was inspired by has flowers and I actually think it really lightened up the resulting nails!

I am not going to list all the polishes I used…suffice to say it was a lot. If you want to pick up this random fun stamping plate for yourself, head over to the Born Pretty Store! The plate is currently on sale for $2.99, and personally I love the wacky designs on it! Don’t forget my 15% off code, LY5X31!

Hope you enjoyed!

Flame

I spent a long time trying to figure out how to use this plate, which was sent to me for review from the Born Pretty Store. Fire-colored gradient with black stamping? Gradient stamping? I tried doing yellow and orange and red…but they didn’t pop against black! So I had the brilliant idea of layering them over GOLD. Because that just sounded like fun.

I ended up using a gold glitter rather than a metallic, so the fire looks a little more granular. I think if I were to do this again, I’d try it with a metallic and see what happens! I do like this quite a bit though.

In the end, each nail got stamped 4 times: twice in gold with the two overlaid designs, once with a yellow-orange blotted mix, and finally with a purple-red mix. Surprisingly, this didn’t take that long! Mostly because the plate was so well-etched that transferring the designs was a piece of cake. Even the solid body of the bird on my thumb!

Colors
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Gold: Sally Hansen – Go for Gold
~ Yellow: WOW – #301
~ Orange: ULTA – Sun of a Gun
~ Red: Pure Ice – Siren
~ Purple: Zoya – Margo
~ Dark purple: Zoya – Monica
~ Stamp: BP – X012 (Exoticism)

That’s it for today…awesome fire! I’ve honestly had my eyes on this stamp forever because I love flames but I HATE hand-painting them! And this stamp has SO MANY FLAMES. You can pick it up for yourself at the Born Pretty Store on sale for $1.99. Don’t forget to use my 15% off coded, LY5X31!