Interlocking Greatness

Yes, it is a pun off the name of the polish, yes I am a goofball! Also, today formally begins the series of holiday-appropriate nail art. This one was painted during autumn but is honestly more red/green than orange/green which was the initial intent!

Anyway, this is a very very simple manicure (as many are during things like residency). Just a polish and a stamp. Now, the polish happens to be a multichrome, and the stamp is a holo. Honestly, I didn’t think this color combo would work that well, but Dragon stamps amazingly well (I just need to acknowledge that A England makes polishes that stamp like magic).

Colors:
~ Copper/purple multichrome: ILNP – Greatness
~ Green: A England – Dragon
~ Stamp: EdM – 17

That’s it for today! Hope you enjoyed, and stay tuned for progressively more snow-themed and Christmas manis! My one hanukah mani is getting punted to next year :-p

Oranged Lines

Honestly, I was aiming for a completely different manicure when I started this, but my gradient came out all wrong so I ended up with this instead!

I was going for a light orange-orange-red-purple style, and as you can see it is 95% orange an 5% red with no purple at all! I tried. I really did. In retrospect, I should have known it wasn’t going to work since the purple I was trying to use is currently a dried up blobby mess. Live and learn!

I ended up deciding that all gradients (as long as the colors aren’t terrible and need to be flat-out started over) look good with some geometric patterns. I wanted something a bit more delicate so I went with this design, and of course added colors to the dots and diamonds. I think this is the third time I have done this same thing with different colors.

Colors:
~ Pastel orange: Maybelline – Bleached in Peach
~ Orange: ULTA – Sun of a Gun
~ Red: Pure Ice – Siren
~ Neon purple: Sinful Colors – Dream On
~ Dark purple: L’Oreal – Paparazzi Pleaser
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamp: EdM – 03

That’s all for today! There is a similar gradient floating around on the blog too, since I was on night float and thus was able to do slightly different nails (and keep this poor blog running)! Hope you enjoy!

Stained Glass

I’ve been doing so much stamping (mostly due to lack of time) that I haven’t been using many of my inspiration photos recently! This is another stamping day, but this one comes with inspiration, and is super glittery.

Years ago, I saw this stained glass mani at Emily de Molly and I died inside. I wanted the polish and the stamp and the whole thing. I finally bought the stamping plate, and thanks to the Polish Pickup Pack, I owned the perfect polish. This mani makes me so happy!

What you see here are three thin coats of Playing With Fire, which is a black opal inspired polish by Ever After. It is stunning! Black jelly base loaded with orange, red and a few green color-shifting flakes as well as tiny blue holographic hex glitters and even tinier green microglitter squares. I hope this polish is easier to take off than it looks, because it looks like a glitterbomb, but all the glitter is flakies!

Unfortunately, the polish is no longer available since it was one of the January polish pickup options, but since I’ve been buying 1-3 polishes per month with polish pickup, I have no shortage of incredible new polishes to play with!

Colors:
~ Black glitter: Ever After – Playing with Fire
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Stamp: EdM – 01

So, super simple mani, incredibly glittery, and I finally fulfilled my dreams of making stained glass on my nails!

Rungs

This mani ended up boring and almost ugly. I like the base polish a lot but every time I try to come up with some color to use over it, I turn to dark purple-grey or gold! And for some reason most of the designs end up wonky looking.

I don’t know why I picked this stamp (which seems to be a trend this week) but it ended up looking like rungs on a ladder or maybe the straps on a fancy jacket? If fancy jackets came in murky purple tones? I don’t know!

Colors:
~ Purple-grey: ILNP – Long Walks
~ Dark purple-grey: Sinful Colors – Muse
~ Gold: Sally Hansen – Go for Gold
~ Stamp: EdM – 01

Anyway, leaving all this aside, the 31 Day Challenge starts this weekend! I am not going to be participating every day because I don’t have enough manis backlogged and I certainly don’t have enough time to paint and edit that much, but I am going to keep to posting three times a week and matching my nails of the day to that days prompt! I think there will be a few where I jump a day forward or backwards, but I should have most of them sorted out. I love seeing what everyone puts together for the #31DC2018!

Silver No Holo

So, this is a bit of a fail. I was sent a water-based base coat/top coat to review from the Born Pretty Store, with the intent to use it as a protective layer for foils. I have one water based top coat, but it is a mess to use and takes a very long time to dry. Needless to say, at least that one works, this one does not!

I started by painting my nails with a faintly holographic silver polish, Diamond by Darling Diva. I then top coated with my standard top coat (Seche Vite) and waited for the nails to dry.

After they were totally dry, I painted them with JNR Star Glue, which is also from the born pretty store and is basically Elmer’s glue in a nail polish bottle. It works great…as does Elmer’s glue. Once the white faded to clear, I threw on some silver vaguely disco-ball-eque foils, which looked amazing. I wish I had taken photos at this stage, since I had two perfect nails (which never happens) and most of the other nails looked pretty darn good!

I then added the Born Pretty water based base coat, and let it dry. Unlike regular top coat, the foils only shrunk and shriveled up a bit, but you could still see the design in the foil. I stamped with Sinful Colors Black on Black using plate EdM 17, and then added another layer of normal top coat. With my usual aqua base, adding regular top coat does not ruin the foil finish. This time, it did. What ever is in Born Pretty’s water base does not protect the underlying foil from being destroyed by regular top coat.

So, in the end, I have a fun silver and black geometric design, but I do not have silver holographic disco ball nails. You can find the water base at the Born Pretty Store for $3.99, but I cannot recommend it since my nails still ended up effectively foil-less!

Echoing Sparks

Something simple, yet rather unique! For this mani I grabbed (yet another, omg) new polish and stamped on it. I wanted something weird looking but somewhat geometric, and luckily I totally own that stamp!

The base here is one of the ILNP holiday collection polishes, called Sparks May Fly. What you see here are three thin coats of this odd-colored polish! It is a carmel-toned brown (a brownish gold) filled with glitter and holographic shards. I don’t own anything else like this, despite owning a lot of dark golds! I honestly don’t love this color against my skin, but I love how odd the color is (dark mustard? I don’t even know how to describe it) and it works well with nail art.

I stamped over Sparks May Fly with this super funky pattern from one of my Emily de Molly plates. I had just grabbed a new bottle of black polish, so it didn’t stamp quite as well as I had hoped (I need to wait for it to thicken up a bit before it will really stamp well) so sorry for the slightly see-through stamp!

Colors:
~ Gold: ILNP – Sparks May Fly
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamp: EdM – 21

The polish looked really cool in direct sunlight, but my camera wasn’t cooperating! I didn’t notice until later, but most of the images are out of focus

Hope you enjoyed!

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!