Cute Santa

Merry Christmas! My husband just finished making me watch Elf (which is a horrible awkward movie, by the way) so this post is going up late. I figured it was only fair to humor him since his Christmas was so thoroughly downsized (to…just me) for COVID. 

Colors:
~ Red glitter: Emily de Molly – LE28
~ Nude: Zoya – Chantal
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Gold: OPI – All Sparkly And Gold
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Pink: Zoya – Jordan

Anyway, I painted these cute minimalist santas last year, and I am quite happy with how they turned out! As far as impressive manis go, these are not that, but they get the point across. I am particularly proud of the weird stylized santa hat on my thumb. Hope you all had a great holiday season, whatever you celebrated, and stayed safe!

Ursula

And the second lead-up-to-my-birthday post: the villain side of Monday’s manicure! I have to say, I ADORE these. I was inspired by Hot Pink Zebra Polish and of course Chalkboard Nails. The end result is a bit of both and a bit of my own flare. These posts are making me think I should do another disney villian/hero set! If I ever have time for it…

Colors:
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Light purple: Sally Hansen – Lacey Lilac
~ Dark purple: L’oreal – Paparazzi Pleaser
~ Grey-purple: Nails Inc – Regents Place
~ Light blue: Philly Loves Lacquer – Love Those Wildwood Days
~ Light teal: Love & Beauty – Teal
~ Dark teal: Zoya – Cecilia
~ Yellow: OPI – Never a Dulles Moment

Any requests if I were do to a next set (with my longer nails and steadier hand? Yes, these too were from 2017). Hope you enjoyed!

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!

Nutcracker

I actually wore these to Thanksgiving, but that is when the Christmas decorations go up! The story here is that my mother-in-law collects nutcrackers. She probably has around 100 total, it is pretty incredible. I wanted to do some nails that she would enjoy!

As such, these were inspired by the adorably painted and carved toys, not the ballet! Usually I would be doing the ballet, but not this year. I should mention that this was a little bit of striping tape and a LOT of freehand, and I am quite proud of his face!

This is only 5 colors, and a lot of different golden studs. You have no idea how many photos of nutcrackers I looked at when trying to decide what to make what color and which body part to paint.

Also, because I am a dork, there are three sizes of studs on here! Caviar beads on my pinky, normal sized studs on my middle finger, and some small ones on my thumb. I finally have enough different sizes to do stuff like this!

Colors:
~ Red: Pure Ice – Siren
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Nude: OPI – Be There in a Prosecco

If you liked this or want me to be happy (either works!) please go vote for this design at Nail Polish Canada so I can win some free polish! The link is here. Thank you guys!

Hop On!

It’s the friday before easter! This only matters because it means I have to take a plane tonight :-p. Somehow, I’ve been wearing these nails all week and none of the fellows, residents, attendings, or patients noticed! My fellow med student did, at least!

The art was inspired by this pin. I just really like the periwinkle color coupled with the egg pattern! Of course, I had to add an easter bunny. The nails on my other hand don’t quite match (and don’t look very easter-y so they’ll be posted at a later point).

My ACTUAL easter nails are red, like the eggs used to crack each other at a greek easter party. It’s an odd tradition, since there are easily twice as many eggs as people at a given party and no one wants to eat them after they are all smashed up!

Colors:
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Purple: Nails Inc – Regents Place
~ Teal: L’oreal – Not a Cloud in Sight
~ Pink: Revlon – Bubbly
~ Light pink: Wet n’ Wild – Tickled Pink
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black

Anyway, happy friday and happy easter if you celebrate! I’ll be busy trying to avoid chametz (bread things) since it is still passover, but hopefully there will be chocolate mousse or truffles for me to eat for dessert and not just cake!

Patches and Scarecrow

It’s Black Friday! I had plans to go shopping, but they did not pan out…yet somehow I ended up posting late anyway, whoops!

Regardless, have some pretty appropriately fall-themed nail art! I know it isn’t turkeys, but this was the best I could come up with before the actual holiday 😀

The design was inspired by sensationails4u. I ended up using slightly duskier/darker colors for my patches than her, which I think works really well! More fall, less party. Or something. Scarecrow!

Colors
~ Blue: Zoya – Ling
~ Orange: ULTA – Sun of a Gun
~ Red: OPI – All I Want For Christmas (is OPI)
~ Green: Zoya – Shawn
~ Nude: Zoya – Chantal
~ Black: Wet n’ Wild – Black Creme
~ White: Wet n’ Wild – French White Creme
~ Yellow: WOW – #301
~ Brown: Zoya – Dea
~ Pink: Essie – Eternal Optimist
~ Light brown: KBShimmer – Orange You Glad I Didn’t Say Banana + Zoya – Dea

That is a lot of colors. And yes, I had to custom-mix the light brown because somehow I don’t own one (I should fix that…any favorite light brown creme polishes I should look into?). Hope you enjoyed your Friday!

The Nightmare Before Christmas

Happy night-before-Halloween! I’ve been planning all week to show this one today, because it is my favorite :-D! Nightmare Before Christmas nail art 🙂

What I love about this movie is that it (much like Love Actually) is technically a christmas movie, not a halloween move (and similarly not a valentine’s day movie). Don’t get me wrong, I love watching the Nightmare Before Christmas during Halloween (it, along with Hocus Pocus and Rocky Horror Picture Show are my staple movies for Halloween weekend), but it is a christmas movie! Regardless, it has a wonderful art style.

This mani was inspired by @mypolishworld. I have seen quite a few Nightmare Before Christmas manis floating around, but hers was the first to catch my eye, so I went with it! I do wish I could get thinner lines out of my black polish, but it is beginning to get stringy so poor Jack’s teeth look a bit..crooked. I also wished I had thought to paint Zero on one of my nails, he is so cute!

Colors
~ Light grey: Wet n’ Wild – Sidewalkers
~ Dark grey: WOW – #333
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ White: Salon Perfect – Snow me White
~ Yellow: WOW – #301
~ Light yellow: Maybelline – Citrus Collide

I hope you get lots of candy, fun costumes, and spooky nail art this weekend! Enjoy!

Wicked

Today’s prompt was “song” but I decided to go with “musical” instead, because there are too many songs and I gave up trying to pick one to turn into a mani! That being said, I am (back) on a Les Mis kick (best musical ever) and wanted to paint at Les Mis mani but decided a French flag was dumb, so we get one of the many other musicals I love, Wicked!

I have to say, the lighting in Defying Gravity is one of my two favorite light-induced moments in musicals ever (the other being Mirror Blue Night in Spring Awakening), but its easy to come up with something fairly straightforward to paint that is Wicked-related, so here we go!

The inspiration came from a mani by Brit Nails, which was a great (and fast) idea to do most nails as a gradient! And since Elphaba is infinitely cooler than Glinda, there is no white-and-pink here.

Colors
~ Green: Salon Perfect – Loopy Lime
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Red: Pure Ice – Siren
~ Dark red: OPI – Visions of Love
~ Grey: WOW – #333
~ Black/white glitter: Maybelline – Clearly Spotted

Simple yet awesome! And no I have “no one mourns the wicked” stuck in my head. Song accomplished! Enjoy!

Penguined

Animal print day! I’ve already done a lot of zebra stuff, and I despair of leopard print, so I just went with animals. Namely, penguins!

I initially wanted to do a different accessory for each penguin, but it is summer and so a scarf seemed out of place…and I didn’t really think a necklace would look good and I was official out of ideas. So bow and bow tie it is!

After matting the penguins I went back and made their eyes glossy…matte eyes look creepy and dead and I don’t like it :-p

Colors
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ White: Salon Perfect – Sugar Cube
~ Yellow: WOW – #301
~ Orange: Zoya – Thandie
~ Pink: Revlon – Bubbly
~ Dark pink: Zoya – Ciara
~ Dark red: OPI – Visions of Love
~ Red: Pure Ice – Siren

Fuzzy! I always find animal-themes to be some of the hardest to do, because I’m just not good at eyes, Or animals. Except butterfly wings, but I’ve done those many times at this point and it feels like cheating! So I hope you enjoyed these penguins 🙂

In Shallow Waters

This post fill many requirements. It is my “nautical” post for the OMD2 Challenge, my “summer nail art” entry for the Nail Polish Canada summer contest (which you guys should TOTALLY GO VOTE FOR) and the tutorial for it will (hopefully) be published at Nail It! Magazine in the next week or so…once I write it up.

The interesting part of this mani is that it is a duplicate of one I did almost exactly a year ago. Only this time, I have longer nails. And slightly more time. That being said, I still love fish. And seahorses. And just summer underwater stuff in general. So if I had to re-do one mani, I think this wasn’t a bad one to choose!

Colors:
– Light blue: Maybelline – Green with Envy
– Medium blue: L’oreal – Not a Cloud in Sight
– Dark blue: Maybelline – Shocking Seas
– Green: Essie – The More The Merrier
– Coral: L’oreal – Orange You Jealous?
– Light purple: L’oreal – Royalty Reinvented
– Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
– White: Wet n’ Wild – French White Creme

If you like these, please vote! It’s been a while since I won anything. And if you want to know how I put these together, head over to Nail It! Magazine in a few days!

Cow-abunga!

Cute art time! I have been meaning to make cows for a while. My initial intent was just spots with a cow face as an accent nail, but this post by imichelley convinced me otherwise!

The accent nail is supposed to be a sultry she-cow…but it just looks evil. Apparently I can’t do cow eyeliner? That makes some sense…I can’d do human eyeliner either! (No, really. Don’t ask, I’ve almost poked my eyeball out more than once).

Colors

• White: Zoya – Purity
• Pink: Sinful Colors – Pink Forever
• Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black

My only word of advice if you want to try this, try to keep the pink layers thin! The polish was not completely dry even after a few hours and it wrinkled when I showered because it was so thick. Sad!

Nerdtastic Tuesday: Super Mushroom

It has been a while since I have done nerdy nails. Too many elegant things recently! Time for fun. And what is more fun than the speed-boost-giving super mushroom from mariokart? NOTHING!

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this, but I have only actually played three video games (I have watched many, but not played many). Those three: portal 2, rock band, and mariokart. There is nothing on this planet that can make me curse and threaten to kill people more than mariokart. Except maybe my sister. But you get the idea.

The red super mushrooms bestow a speed boost during the race. And they are fun! At some point I will do “real” mario nails….but I did these on a Tuesday night so I needed something easy.

Colors

• Red: Pure Ice – Siren
• White: Zoya – Purity
• Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
• Top Coat: Glisten & Glow – HK Girl

Andddd now I am humming mariokart music. Darn! Enjoy :-p

Sheeeeeep!

Today, we have the second of the new polishes from Paint Shop Polish: Bennett Witch*! Now, before I rush into this, I need to clarify that I LOVE GREEN GLITTER JELLIES. You have been warned. I also love cute things. Like sheep.

Bennett Witch is a new limited edition polish from the Vampire Diaries collection. It is a mix of various shades and sizes of green glitter, suspended in a blue-green base. I played with this polish on a swatch wheel before realized that it would take 3+ layers to be opaque on its own, and that I actually wanted to use it over a light yellow-green color rather than trying to tone match with a dark green. What you see here is three thin coats of Bennett Witch over one coat of The More The Merrier by essie.

This polish is awesome. It went on really nicely, and I got great jelly and glitter coverage. I worked with thin coats to avoid dragging, but I didn’t need to worry! That being said, I didn’t try fishing for glitter in this polish, and as a result did not pull out any large green squares that were floating around. They made it onto the brush once or twice, but never out of the bottle. I don’t feel bad, I really like the green hexes in squishy jelly! As with Wolf Boy, Bennett Witch only needed one coat of top coat to lie smooth. The glitters in this polish are light, medium, and dark green hexes of various sizes, a few bar glitters, and a smattering of green squares. Depending on what color you layer this over, I bet you could accent either the lighter or darker glitters!

I decided (since it is spring) to accent this with some sheep-based nail art! My little barn now consists of 4 white sheep and one grey sheep. They are so cute!

Colors:

• Bright green (base): Essie – The More The Merrier
• Green glitter: Paint Shop Polish – Bennett Witch
• White: Zoya – Purity
• Grey: WOW – #333
• Pink: Sinful Colors – Pink Forever
• Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
• Top coat: Glisten & Glow – HK Girl

You can find Bennett Witch for $4 or $8 in the Paint Shop Polish etsy site. Go check it out! Especially if you like green 🙂

*Polish sent for review, All opinions are my own.

Easter Eggs

Hello readers! Today I have another easter mani for you guys…eggs and a bunny! Created this using two KBShimmer polishes so it could be entered into their facebook-based contest, so if you love me/the manicure/just feel like making my day a little better (I got 5 hours of sleep. Ugh), please head over to the Facebook page (here) and “like” my mani! It’s the last one.

Honestly, the eggs didn’t come out as sharp as I would like. If these were real eggs, I would feel a bit like a 5th grader! But they are still somewhat cute. The bunny on the other hand…adorable 🙂

And yes, I know, why is my pointer my accent nail? Because I forgot and painted my ring finger white. So all that was left was my pointer and darn it I wanted a bunny! Besides, this is nail art. Do I really have to follow rules?

Colors

• Blue: KBShimmer – I’d Rather Be With Blue
• Purple: KBShimmer – Plum Tuckered Out
• Pink: Sinful Colors – Pink Forever
• Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
• White: Zoya – Purity
• Yellow: WOW – #301
• Orange: L’oreal – Orange You Jealous?
• Green: Essie – The More The Merrier

Enjoy! And happy easter weekend.

Ducky Nails

Let me preface this post by saying that YES my nails are too long. I hate it. But it needed to happen, for the adorable glory that is this manicure. I have been staring at ducky nails (as distinct from that awful acrylic trend known as duck nails) for a long while. My nails are finally long enough for beaks!

This manicure was amazingly easy. But you do need long nails to execute it, or your ducks just look…silly. Squished. To see just how easy this was, there is a tutorial at the bottom! Just keep scrolling 🙂

I really have nothing else to say about this manicure except that it was worth it. I cut my nails as soon as I took this off, and they are a more normal (and typable) length now.

Colors

• White: Zoya – Purity
• Yellow: WoW – #301
• Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black

I hope you enjoyed these little guys as much as I did making them!

Tutorial:

1. Base coat your nails, and paint them with white polish.
2. Create a rather large and curved french tip design in yellow. You can use nail guides if you like, these were free-handed.
3. Add two tiny black dots in the yellow area for nostrils, and larger black dots (or U shapes, or whatever your heart desires) in the white area for eyes.
4. For added adorableness, add small white dots in the eyes.
5. Wait a few minutes for the black polish to dry, and add top coat. Enjoy!

Guest Post: Lucy from Make Up Crazy

Lucy hails from California, and was actually the winner of my first giveaway earlier this year! Although her blog tends to feature make up, I promise she does ADORABLE nail art. Take a look!

Lucy actually put together 4 different nail art manis for this guest post! Up first is her take on Disney’s new movie Frozen! I did some rather abstract Frozen nails a few weeks ago, and her’s are so much more recognizable! We have snow (obviously), Anna and Elsa, and the gangly but loveable snowman Olaf! How great is that?

She also put together a cute little mish-mash of pink and orange. I have never been brave enough to wear these two colors together, but they do look great!

Her final two nails are two sets of holiday/Christmas designs! The first one features a snowman face, candy cane stripes, a gift, a dot tree, and a gingerbread nail.

For her final design, Lucy sent over a cake, snow, santa, and lights! So cute.

I love that all of her designs use so many colors! Thanks again Lucy for your guest post and nail art 🙂

You can find Lucy’s blog at: http://makeupcrazy1.wordpress.com/

Dancer the Reindeer

*Provided for review

Today, for your viewing pleasure, I present Dancer from Paint Shop Polish. Candi (the maker of these lovely polishes) sent me two bottles from her winter release…Dancer and Donner! I love reindeers 🙂

Dancer is a deep brick red shimmer. The polish went on easily, was opaque in two coats, and dried rather fast. Although the polish looked very streaky on application, it dried completely flat! I was impressed. This polish leans a bit more orange than any of the deep reds in my collection, and has a beautiful shimmer in the light.

I decided to compliment Dancer with reindeer! How could I not? And snow. Because reindeer and snow just make sense. I even have a reindeer tutorial that will show up on Nail It! Magazine soon!

Colors

• Deep red: Paint Shop Polish – Dancer
• Brown: Zoya – Louise
• Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
• White: Zoya – Purity
• Red: City Color – Red

You can find Paint Shop Polish on etsy, Facebook, and twitter. There are so many lovely colors to choose from! If you don’t want to invest a lot of money, Candi offers both mini and full size polishes, including of Dancer.
I also have a 10% off coupon for you guys! Use the code PSP10 on your next order, and enjoy!

Also, don’t forget to enter my giveaway! Ends in two days 🙂 (US only)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Nerdtastic Tuesday: Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

This is the third installment in my nerdy nails agenda (there are many more in the planning stages). These nails are the embodiment of one of my favorite if wackiest book series…the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy!

My thumb has three dolphins (famous for saying “goodbye and thanks for all the fish”), the second most intelligent species on earth. The first are mice.

From pointer to pinky: DON’T PANIC (as written large on the Hitchhiker’s Guide), the green blob alien from the cover, 42 (the answer to life, the universe, and everything), and Marvin (the paranoid android with a brain the size of a planet).

The base of the mani is a polish I got from the Sephora by OPI line sale, called 212-Sephora. Its a mix of glitter in a black/very dark brown base. It was opaque at 2-3 coats. I really like the mix of glitter! Brown, orange, green, and gold, with small glitter, medium orange flakes and glitter, and holo particles. It has an interesting shine! However, it was very gritty and needed two coats of top coat once I added my design to smooth it out.

Colors

• Black glitter base: Sephora by OPI – 212-Sephora
• Gold: Maybelline – Bold Gold
• Orange: Nail Art – Orange
• Green: Nail Art – Green
• Red: City Color – Red
• White: Julie G – White Orchid
• Grey: NYC – Sidewalkers
• Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black

Enjoy! (And thanks for all the fish :-D) [Btw Doctor Who fans, do not worry…this Friday my 50th anniversary nails will go up! I’m wearing them right now. Technically they are nerdy, but I can post two nerd manis in one week if I want!]

The Golden Goose

A while back I did a guest post for Luchessa with nails based on a fairytale! I’m just going to do a brief recap here, since I took quite a few pictures :-p

The base polish is a beautiful green jelly by Sinful Colors called Exotic Green. I don’t know why, but I seem to be using my green polishes a LOT recently! I really love this color. SO SHINY.

I then painted scenes from the fairytale on my nails (a golden feather, grapes, wheat, an anchor, and the face of an old man). If you want a tutorial or would like to read my synopsis of this rather odd but cute fairytale, head over to Luchessa’s post!

Colors

• Green: Sinful Colors – Exotic Green
• Light green: Essie – The More the Merrier
• Dark green: Sinful Colors – Last Chance
• Gold: Maybelline – Bold Gold
• Bronze: Pure Ice – Magic

Hope you enjoyed!

Nerdtastic Tuesday: Psychic Pokemon

In honor of the somewhat recent release of the newest pokemon game, I am starting off my weekly “Nerdtastic Tuesdays” (where you guys get to see what nerdy concoctions I have come up with) with pokemon!

These nails were commissioned by my boyfriend for his birthday. He, predictably, wanted “pokemon!”.  When pressed for specific pokemon (rather than giving me his current team as I had anticipated) his answer was “psychic.” He then started listing specific psychic pokemon, with the instance that I have at least Abra. So…psychic pokemon!

As with my previous pokemon art, I wanted to stick to just faces. But I didn’t, mostly because I was unfamiliar with the pokemon I was using! Most of my fingers are just the faces…but my ring finger has the whole upper body. That being said, I am REALLY proud of my ring finger! Look at that detail!

From pointer to pinky, we have Natu (a small bird), Espion (cat-like), Gardevoir (ghost woman), and Abra (I have no idea. Rat?). My thumb has the ultimate in pokemon-catching, a master ball.

This nail art is 100% nail polish. Which is to say this took me close to two hours. Oops. I am not planning to list all the polish here, it would take too long. But if you are curious about a specific color let me know!

Ridiculously complicated nerdy nail art..I choose you!