Festooned Hearts

Another new polish and another Valentine’s themed mani! I actually struggled with this one, because it turns out that despite red being a key color for Valentine’s Day art, most of the things I ran into used it as a accent color not the base color! Regardless, I am happy with how this came out (even if the stamp was shallowly etched and so I had to double stamp each nail…yikes)!

I still have nightmares from the last time I used the gold glitter polish that I gradiented onto my tips, so I am not looking forward to removing this mani! But glitter makes everything better, so I don’t regret using it (….yet).

The base here is yet another of the new polishes that I received from Nail Polish Canada, this time from Essie. The polish is called Ring in the Bling…which is a bit of an odd name for a non-blingy polish. It covered well in two thin coats (I do love how pigmented most Essie polishes are!) and is a blue-leaning red metallic. It has a little bit of an inner glow finish that somehow leans orange. I don’t know how blue and orange combine to get a red polish, but here we are! I like it, but I have many similar colors and I personally tend to prefer deeper more jewel-toned metallic polishes.

Random strangers seemed to really like this particular design, I think because the glitter caught their eye! Nothing like blingly gold on red to get people staring at your fingertips :-p

Colors:
~ Red: Essie – Ring in the Bling
~ Gold: Cult Nails – Walk of Shame
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamp: BM – 317

That’s all for today! Happy Friday! I’ll have two more Valentine’s Day posts next week (Monday and Wednesday) before getting back to normal nail art. I am mostly just doing these posts because I can finally use the heart stamps that I otherwise find tacky the rest of the year! Hope you enjoyed!

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!

Olive Tipped

While the color of these is not subtle, I was informed that as long as I was wearing “one color” that I would be permitted to wear nail polish for a day in the hospital (since I wasn’t going to the OR).

Because I am me, just to be contrary, I put on a nice olive color with shimmer…and then added a very stubble french tip in a similar shade with more glitter. I really like olive (despite HATING olives), which is the only reason I was able to sneak this by!

Hilariously, a few of the nurses complimented the color, and none of the women I was reporting to even noticed the polish. *sigh* just let me wear my polish in peace!

The creamier olive is In a Trance by Cult Nails, and the glittery olive is Wallis by Butter London. I only ended up taking sunlight photos of this, since I barely considered it art. Enjoy!

Vampy Roses

I know flowers (other than maybe poinsettias) are not considered a winter design…but I saw these and they just screamed vampy Christmas flowers to me!

The pattern was inspired by nailsandtowelnailsandtowelnailsandtowel, and I just ran with it. Luckily, I had All Sparkly and Gold by OPI just sitting around…I think this might be the first time I’ve used it since I swatched it however many years ago. Sad, but thats what happens when you have too many gold polishes! Also, I had it in my head that it was difficult to remove…and it wasn’t EASY but it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be!

I really like how this design came out. Deep red and gold is one of my favorite color combinations 🙂

Colors
~ Dark red: Confetti – Masquerade Ball
~ Gold glitter: OPI – All Sparkly And Gold
~ Gold holo glitter: Cult Nails – Walk of Shame
~ Nude: Zoya – Chantal
~ Dark green: Zoya – Shawn
~ Green: Salon Perfect – Loopy Lime

Hope you enjoyed! Get ready for MORE winter-y and holiday-y manis next week :-D.

Mossy Dots

I had been missing my somewhat signature move of curly lines + insane number of dots. So, here we go!

This version was inspired jointly by my own Chandelier Half Moons and cerita kuku. Now with mossy camo colors!

I really spent 20 minutes just picking out the colors for this mani (and in so doing rediscovered 3 colors that I NEED to use soon that I had moderately forgot I had. Oops!). The worst part is that I painted this almost a month ago, and those poor colors are STILL sitting on my nail polish bench, untouched. For shame, Eva!

Colors
~ Nude holo: Sparkly Vernis – Gilded Lemon Drops
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Moss: Cult Nails – In a Trance

No one else really liked this (probably because of the colors) but I kinda like the sparkly-camo feel! Ah well, each to their own. Hope you enjoyed!

Variations on Pink and Grey

I wanted to use gold and pink glitter, and I figured grey pairs nicely with gold and pink. That is really the only explanation I have for this mani.

I did, however, forget that the Ruby Wing polish I grabbed (the grey) turns brown in the sun, so most of my sunlight photos are slightly confused! Since I take them indoors in windows, the color doesn’t fully change, but does shift slightly. Hence, my grey nails look…brownish-grey-confused. Yay!

Colors
~ Pink: Wet n’ Wild – Tickled Pink
~ Grey: Ruby Wing – Zen Garden
~ Gold: Salon Perfect – Gold Leaf
~ Glitter: Cult Nails – Center of Attention

I enjoy doing skittle nails, because I get to try out a bunch of different designs in one mani. Then again, I need to remember to stamp using non-glitter polish. Oy.

Hope you enjoyed! There have been a rash of pink manis recently on this blog…and unfortunately thats going to continue for a little while longer!

Dune

I told myself I wasn’t going to plan designs around the OMD Challenge, and apparently I lied. I actually have products I need to review that I am putting off! That being said, today’s prompt was “book” and I could not resist trying my hand at a Dune manicure.

Dune is a sci-fi series (although the first of the series, Dune, is the best). I was going to do a plot summary here, but honestly, that would be spoilers. Suffice to say that if you haven’t read Dune and you like great literature, dystopian futures, or sci-fi in general, go do it. The book is fantastic.

I used a whole bunch of polish in this mani, so lets see if I can remember them all…

Colors
~ Light orange: Maybelline – Bleached in Peach
~ Orange: NYC – Sunny Side Up
~ Light grey: Maybelline – Bare Escape
~ Medium light grey: NYC – Sidewalkers
~ Grey: WOW – #333
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Copper: Pure Ice – Magic
~ Copper glitter: butter LONDON – Brown Sugar
~ Olive: Cult Nails – In a Trance
~ Olive glitter: butter LONDON – Wallis
~ Blue: Zoya – Yummy

Good grief. Lots of colors. The moon on my ring finger came out alright, but the worm on my middle finger is…hard to identify. To be fair, it is hard to paint a cylinder-with-teeth!

Hope you enjoyed! Desert planet done 🙂