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!

Pumpkins and Webs

Happy almost-halloween! This year my husband and I ended up at two different pumpkin carving events, so now we have four pumpkins. Which is double our previous yearly count of pumpkins. I carved a set: a dragon and a castle. My husband carved a pokemon (because of course he did)…and a pumpkin. Into his pumpkin. He is an absolute dork!

Anyway, I have a bunch of fall manis lined up, but I only did one halloween manicure this year! I kinda forgot that October meant Halloween. Oops. I’ll do better next year! This year’s halloween mani is decided to stamping jack-o-lanterns. I received another plate to review from the Born Pretty Store (which was thankfully well-etched) and went to town! Unfortunately, the dark orange I used for the pumpkins is more a jelly than a cream, but I still got away with single-pass stamping on some nails (thumb and ring finger). That said, I am not surprised I had to double stamp, I need to stop using glitter polish bases! But when trying to pick a base color my head just went ‘GOOOOLD’ so here we are!

Colors:
~ Gold: ILNP – Fame
~ Dark orange: Essie – Playing Koi
~ Yellow: WOW – #301
~ Bright orange: Nubar – Hot Orange
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamp: BP – Halloween – L004

Hope you enjoyed! And I hope everyone gets lots of candy and tasty treats. If you want to pick up this pumpkin and web-decked plate, head over to the Born Pretty Store where you can find it on sale for $2.99.

Leave for the Tropics

These are one of my favorite nail designs that I have done recently (…that was not in the 31 Day Challenge, which is where I usually put my favorites). It is a bit of the wrong season, but it was 70 degrees out yesterday so it totally still feels almost-tropical! Basically I love these and I wanted to post them now :-p

These nails are based around water decals from the Born Pretty Store: all the leaves are decals! Which is absolutely amazing because they have white backgrounds and beautiful cut out edges and show up perfectly against a dark green base. I love when I don’t have to use a white base for water decals!!

The flowers I added by hand, because what is a mani with fun leaves without a few dotted petals? I like how colorful it is 🙂 but really I cannot wait to use the rest of these decals, maybe in spring when it is appropriate! But who knows. Snow leaves? I can make that a thing, perhaps!

Colors:
~ Dark green: Sinful Colors – Last Chance
~ Pink: Revlon – Bubbly
~ White: LA Girl – White On
~ Yellow: OPI – Never a Dulles Moment
~ Dark pink: Zoya – Ciara

Hope you enjoyed these tropical nails in the Fall! I think the rest of this month will be a bit more Autumn-themed. I even have some pumpkins! October rather snuck up on me thought, so I only really have one Halloween manicure (which, the holiday is next week, how did that happen)! Hopefully I remember next year in advance and can put together some more fun seasonal manis :-p  Anyway, these decals are currently on sale for $1.59 for a set of three sheets, and I strongly recommend them.

Pinned Petals

This idea got into my head and I just had to run with it! I wanted to make a purple-white-floral overlay, and then add a rectangular stud to make it look like they were being buckled together. Ta-da!

I made nail art using the full nail water decal that you see spread across the tips of my nails here, but honestly I like the way this came out better. Don’t get me wrong, the whole decal is stunning, but there is something about this mani that keeps me coming back to it.

Also the base color here is yet another polish pickup pack shade, this is called Just One Look by Painted Polish, and it is from the August options. This is three thin coats and I adore this polish! It goes on a little thick, but the pastel purple is stunning and I love the linear holo background with the larger holo glitters!

Colors:
~ Pastel purple: Painted Polish – Just One Look
~ White: LA Girl – White On
~ Decal: Born Pretty – A055

The born pretty store is having a rather impressive sale right now, so you can find this set of decals (with two others) on sale for 99 cents here! Gotta say, I love that these are opaque and yet thin, so if you are into decals I recommend them! Enjoy!

Neutral Quilted Flowers

This might be neutral and nude-toned, but it is at least moderately interesting! However, it was a challenge to put together.

I have to say that while I love the designs on this plate, the version of the plate that I was sent is very poorly etched! I managed to get the designs to pick up but it took a lot of finagling. Also, one of the reasons I wanted this plate so badly was the two-step stamping flowers, and with plates that are not deeply etched there is no hope of getting large areas of solid color (and even if you could you would need 2-3 coats of the stamp to be opaque) so the primary reason I wanted this plate doesn’t work. That said, the designs are pretty and I can hope it is only the copy I got!

Colors:
~ Pastel pink: OPI – Be there in a Prosecco
~ Pink: Essie – Eternal Optomist
~ Dark brown: Zoya – Louise
~ Stamp: Born Pretty – Flower Yarn S002

That’s it for today! Hope your day goes well, and if you want to invest in some pretty quilted-looking flowers for yourself you can find them at the Born Pretty Store for $1.99. Enjoy!

Astral Shifts

Ok, so, I love this mani. I love how it looks, I love the colors, and I LOVE the magnet! I got a new magnetic polish from the Born Pretty Store to review…and somehow, unlike every other magnetic polish I own, this one works like a charm. Maybe I am just getting better, but the design on my pointer finger stayed looking perfect for three days. Most magnetic polishes just can’t do that!

Anyway, this is two coats of Astral Realm over black. The first coat was thin and the second coat was thick; I magnetized both times (and again when I put top coat on, although the magnetic particles didn’t actually move). Astral Realm is a multichrome magnetic. I was doubtful at first, but its actually true! The shift is a bit more subtle than pure multichromes of the same color range, but it is definitely there. This polish shifts from a bright fuchsia to pink (the primary colors) and then to orange and gold. I even saw hints of green at sharp angles!

I got a whole bunch of compliments on this at work. People were stopping me as I was typing on the computer to ask me how I got my nails to look like this :-D. I also love the stamps! When Whats Up Nails had their stamping sale, this is one of the 6 plates (oops!) that I picked up! I bought it on a whim but it has turned out to possibly be my favorite of the bunch. Stars! Moons! A super fancy sun! Anyway.

It is rare that I only use three colors in a mani, especially when only two of them are visible! But the magnetic polish was cool enough that I thought adding anything else to this would be a waste.

Colors:
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Magnetic multichrome: Born Pretty (Magnetic Aurora Series) – Astral Realm
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Stamp: BM – XL213

That’s all for today! I hope you enjoyed! In case anyone was curious…my pinky I just magnetized the very edge of my cuticle, for the ring and middle I used one of those strong magnetics to make a line (diagonal vs horizontal), my pointer I used a repeating diagonal line full-nail magnet, and my thumb I pushed around the polish using the rounded head of a strong double-sided magnetic wand. You can pick up Astral Realm at the Born Pretty Store for $5.39, which is a lot for a tiny 6ml bottle, but it does work!

Right Angled

MOAR MAGNETS! This mani and Friday’s mani were actually painted a few weeks apart, but I ended up editing them next to each other? Who knows. This was a super duper simple mani that I painted on my way out the door, on the assumption that anything magnetic looks cool even if I have no tools!

I don’t remember why, but a lot of my polish stuff was inaccessible for a few weeks (pre-moving moving things?), so I had grabbed some simple and easy-to-make-manicure supplies including this polish, the magnet, and some gold polish. So please pardon the not perfectly straight lines, everything was free-handed!

Colors:
~ Copper magnetic: Masura – Evening Before the Fireplace
~ Gold: Essie: Good as Gold

I do love Masura magnetic polishes, the bottle is very pretty and the polish works like a dream. Anyway, the magnet can again be found at the Born Pretty Store if you’d like one for yourself for cheap! Hope you enjoyed 🙂

Teal Magnetic Swirls

Magnets! I love magnetics. They make my nails look cool with little-to-no effort on my part other than holding still for a few seconds. Stamping over them just looks so cool!

Anyway, this was basically just having fun with straight magnets and some silver stamps. The magnetic polish is a teal-to-black called Whitehall by Nails Inc. The silver is Excalibur by A England and the stamp is from Moyra plate 50 – Ornaments 3.

To make this, I applied the straight line magnet on a diagonal on all the nails except my thumb. The magnet is super strong the raised teal line was incredibly sharp…until it wasn’t. As always happens, the magnetic turning point blurred as the polish dried, so I went from a super sharp line to a smudge, but it still looks cool. Honestly, maybe I need thinner coats of polish! On my thumb I tried to create a curved pattern using the small circular end of the magnetic stick. I love it. I think making this nail was more fun than using the straight line!

The double-headed magnet that I used is from the Born Pretty Store, and it is both cheap and works well. You can find it for $2.99.

Enjoy!

Rose Gold Rows

This is a super complicated mani, but I kinda love it. I was sent some very tiny rose gold caviar beads to review from the Born Pretty Store, and I went to town with them!

Most of my caviar beads are what I would consider standard size…which is easily twice the size of these ones. Look at how many pretty rows are on my middle finger! I ended up mix-and-matching with a fishtail, some other studs, and basic diagonals. I had seen a similar mani online, but I didn’t want to use a black base so I settled on a very dark blue with subtle gold shimmer 🙂

Colors:
~ Dark blue: Zoya – Blake
~ Rose gold metallic: Essie – Penny Talk
~ Rose gold glitter: ILNP – Juliette

I have never really tried to place a bunch of studs and then surround them with caviar beads, mostly because my other caviar beads are larger, and the whole thing takes forever. That said, I did my middle finger first (well, I did the polish-only nails first, but it was the first nails with 3D elements) and since that only took 10 minutes, I went ahead and did the others with lots of tiny beads too. Success!

If you want to pick up these tiny beads for yourself, head over to the Born Pretty Store, where you can find them for $1.79. I kinda love them, and can’t wait to figure out ways to use them now!

Lavender and Pink Petals

Today is something pretty but very very simple: water decals! And really nothing else.

I wasn’t sure if these were opaque or not (I have been burned too many times not to assume I need a coordinating pastel-colored base polish), so I started with a base of Royalty Reinvented by L’Oreal. Truthfully, I didn’t need it. These water decals are 100% opaque and amazing. I soaked for 40-60 seconds and they came off easily, repositioned well, and stretched to fit my curves nails without ripping.

I feel like it is rather rare to find full-nail water decals that just work, so this was quite refreshing. Both thin enough to follow nail curves but thick enough to maintain their color and consistency. Win all around!

If you like these, or think you might just want to play around with some quick easy nail art a-la-water decals, head over to the Born Pretty Store. These particular decals are currently 99 cents.

Prismatic Braid

Omg you guys. YOU GUYS. So, first off, I am super freaking proud because LOOK I DID A FOIL TRANSFER. Now, I cannot totally lay claim to this, because everything in this mani is new…new base polish, new foil transfer glue, new foils. Somehow, it worked!

To start with, the base color is two thin coats of Landon by Zoya, a mid-tone slightly dusty purple creme. The polish is pretty enough, but honestly I prefer my mid-toned purple with a pink (or even true purple) tint and not grey-out like this! Anyway, Landon is pretty enough but a bit more wintry than I am currently feeling!

However, then I added holographic foil. Because. And it is amazing. I requested some holographic nail foils from the Born Pretty Store when they asked me what I wanted to review most recently, and I asked for foil glue as well since previously I had used regular nail polish. The foil glue was a bit…tricky. I tried to just paint it on but it shrunk to just the center of my nails. So I tried to paint it on thickly and it kinda worked…so I just gave up and dapped it on a few times in places that it wasn’t covering. Despite the headache of doing things that way, it dried quickly and clearly covered all right!

I then cut the foil I wanted to use (this set comes with 12 designs….three of which were a little poorly printed and looked blob-y and the rest of which were awesome) and went and applied the foil once the glue was completely dry. Ta-da! These worked basically perfectly. I smushed them down with a makeup sponge instead of just using my finger, and I think that helped.

So, you can find 12 foil designs, of which this is one, at the Born Pretty Store for $1.79, and the foil glue for $5.29. Hope you enjoyed! I know I did 😀

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!