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!

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!

Purple Waves

Sorry this post is going up late, I didn’t bring my laptop on my vacation last week so I only got around to editing this today! Oops 😀

That said, this really is not my best work! I had a decent idea of what I wanted going in, but I was impatient and the whole thing fell apart a bit. The design was created using stickers from the Born Pretty Store that I was sent to review. They work well, but there was a bit of a learning curve! Also I need a holo top coat. Trying to use this odd flakie one I have is just sad.

Colors:
~ Light purple: Essie – Full Steam Ahead
~ Purple: L’oreal – Paparazzi Pleaser
~ Shimmer: Sally Hansen – Diamond

If you want to pick up these particular stickers  (or any of the rest in the set, and there are a LOT of designs), you can find them at the Born Pretty Store on sale for $1.99. Enjoy!