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!

Silver Leaves and Pink Berries

I really like how this mani came out, but it took forever to plan! I knew I wanted something with white, grey, and pink…and trying to figure out what to use for the stamp vs the background took forever. I think I used all 5 nail demos on my silicone mat! Worth it 😀

The stamping plate I used here was sent for review from the Born Pretty Store, but it is full of fun leaves and flowers…both of which are a pain to free-hand. So, I am really glad this plate works as well as it does! It’ll be VERY useful come fall. The geometric pattern is from an Emily de Molly plate though.

You also cannot tell, but I actually used both a white and a silver to stamp, just to see how the variation looked! It’s most noticeable in the non-sunlight photos.

Colors
~ Grey: Zoya – Dove
~ Silver: A England – Excalibur
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Light pink: ULTA – Baby Doll
~ Pink: Wet n’ Wild – Tickled Pink
~ Stamps: Floral BPX-L018, EDM 03

If you want the floral stamping plate, head over to the Born Pretty store, it is currently on sale for $2.99! Don’t forget to use my code, LY5X31…although I don’t think it can be applied to things already on sale, sorry!

Burnished Copper

The Born Pretty Store sent me another nail polish! Since I get to chose which colors I want, I of course went after a multichrome…and then stamped over it.

I’ve had my eye on any number of copper-based multichrome polishes (hilariously, when I ordered this polish I owned 0 and I now own 3, oops), and I thought I would give this one a try! Unlike many of the other multi chromes I’ve bought, this one DOES require a black base.

I put on a black creme polish, and then added two thin coats of 212 (the polish doesn’t have a name, sadly). It went on streaky, but dried with minimal brush strokes! And two coats was more than enough, which is great seeing as how the bottle is a smaller size.

The polish also ended up being quite shifty! It is primarily a bright red-toned copper (almost but not quite pink or peach), which fades into bright orange-copper and then golden-green. I’ve certainly seen shiftier polishes, but this one isn’t bad at all! You can definitely see the multichrome-ness.

Colors:
~ Copper multichrome: Born Pretty – 212
~ Copper shimmer: Zoya – Penny
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamp: BM – XL205

I just added some stamps because I can’t leave my nails plain. I didn’t know if this would look better with gold or black, so I defaulted to black. Not bad!

If you want to pick up 212 for yourself, head over to the Born Pretty Store! The polish is currently on sale for $4.99. Don’t forget to use my 15% off code, LY5X31!

Antique Flowers

I’ve been debating for a few days how I wanted to wear the water decals that I got to review from the Born Pretty Store…did I just do one accent nail? Did I do two nails? Top of my nails like a french tip? Triangles? I settled on a double accent because those can be fun, and then was faced with what to do with the other nails!

I ended up using a deep red with gold glitter polish, but a deep green creme was a close second. The only grey-red that I have would have been too painful to clean so I vetoed it (why are dark blues and reds so darn hard to get out of cuticles?).

I really like how these came out! Unlike most water decals, these floral ones are both very well printed (which is to say you can’t see the individual dots of color like you can on most, these look smooth) and come with a white or pale colored backing behind each part of the design. Frequently, the entire background is clear (so you have to put the decals over white to get the correct colors) or the background is colored so it can go over any color…these are cool because the leaves and flowers have their own printed background but the base color shows through everywhere else!

Colors
~ Nude: Essence – I Nude It
~ Red: Zoya – India

This was a super quick mani, and looks rather classy if I do say so myself! Although, oddly, I like it better on my nails with curved edges than the straight edges! I’ve always been a diehard straight-nail-edge fan (and I still am…I broke one of my nails on an awkward angle so I just rounded that hand), but for some reason this one just works on the oval nails! I’m likely to cut them all straight again very soon, but it makes for a fun contrast right now! If you want to get these decals for yourself, head over to the Born Pretty Store, they are currently on sale for $0.99! Hope you enjoyed!

Hilariously, I had a day of work today and without the stress of having to go into the hospital I forgot to post this until now! Whoops 😀

Greyscale Netting

Sometimes I just like to play with monochrome! In this case, I was excited to see that I actually had enough holo polish to make a gradient! Well, technically the black polish was a creme, but over a holo it still looked suitably glittery!

I actually did a second very similar mani (different stamp) that I like much better, but I’ll show that later. This one ended up looking like netting.

Remarkably, I got away with wearing this in the hospital…pathology is much more lenient about nail polish! Maybe because there was absolutely zero patient interaction?

Colors
~ White: Emily de Molly – Crystal Crown
~ Grey: A England – Fated Prince
~ Black: Wet n’ Wild – Black Creme
~ Stamp: Born Pretty Store (asian name) – L008

Next week starts my two weeks on outpatient in this rotation block, so I should be able to wear polish again. It really makes me angry when people enforce rules (like no nail polish in the OR) that have been throughly debunked. Regardless, I hope you enjoyed this mani!