Abstract Minimalism

You guys, I don’t know what this is. Born Pretty Store sent me an un-asked for plate to review…and it is a mix of weird abstract flowers/animals, funky cats, and nude people?! I can’t wear naked people on my nails to work! Artistic it might be but appropriate it is NOT. So, I grabbed the only three images on the plate that I could even imagine what to do with, and googled “minimalist rose”. The very first hit is the rose on my middle finger – I think Born Pretty did the same thing and just turned it into a stamp! Anyway. All the google images were white-on-black so I just decided to reverse that idea and leave it alone. This plate was, at least, very well stamped. Even the tiny dots transferred perfectly onto my pointer finger!

Of course, I can’t make a mix-and-match with only three images. So I used two of the scribble images from a different plate (my ring finger and thumb) in an attempt to tie this all together. All in all I do not love this manicure. My style tends towards the orange and colorful. However, it gave me a chance to use this black glitter…I don’t think I have touched this polish in 3 years! And it still works perfectly. Score one for Sinful Colors 🙂

Colors:
~ Black glitter: Sinful Colors – Secret Admirer
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Stamps: Born Pretty – Artist L004, Lina – Make Your Mark 02

If you want to see what you can do with some artistic minimalism/naked people, Artist L004 is available at the Born Pretty Store for $3.99. Good luck?

Bright Teal and Dark Roses

This was fun, and almost-but-not-quite perfect! Regardless of the imprecations (entirely my fault with color selection) I enjoyed wearing this! I also don’t know why I don’t actually have more floral manicures to post. What have I been painting if not flower?!

The design was inspired by @ponkle. In retrospect I wish I had used a brighter pink for the base of the roses! This ended up looking almost neon-with-goth because of the dark roses. I love it anyway. Of course, I also cheated. The dots are freehand and everything else is stamping 🙂

Colors:
~ Teal: Emily de Molly – Glee Ridden
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Light pink: Zoya – Jordan
~ Pink: Love & Beauty – Pink
~ Dark pink: Zoya – Ciara
~ Light green: Zoya – Josie
~ Dark green: Zoya – Shawn
~ Stamps: BP – L020, MoYou London – Frenchy 14

Short and sweet today, but with pretty pictures of course! Hope you enjoyed!

Flowers Trailing Dots

This was a brushstroke marble, and it only kind of worked. I used different wet polishes gently brushed over each other to make a sideways pattern, and then transferred it with a stamper. The pattern looked cool on my mat, but when it transferred it got blurry! This was a class example of an over-engineered design. I wish I had just stamped without adding glitter. Oops!

Colors:
~ Light purple: Zoya – Abby
~ Purple: L’oreal – Royalty Reinvented
~ Teal: Zoya – Wednesday
~ Neon teal: Emily de Molly – Glee Ridden
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Grey glitter: Emily de Molly – Shadow on the Moon
~ Stamp: Whats Up Nails – B005

Of course, the sun also did not want to cooperate with me during the days I wore this manicure, so unfortunately all you get are indoor photos! I swear the flowers were glittery…they were just leo smushed. To make up for this poor showing, on friday you get neon rainbows! Ok? Ok.

Trailing Vines to Silver

This was simple, but fun! And for once my propensity to add dots to everything definitely made the mani better :-p

I just really wanted to use Sapphire in a manicure. It has been a while, and it is a close-to-perfect blue. That said, with the silver and white and pink of this manicure it looks black! Oops. I don’t know why I decided to try and gradient a white cream to a silver holo, but it somewhat worked? I think I might stick with the same type of finish for gradients in the future. But you don’t learn anything without experimentation!

Colors:
~ Dark blue with glitter: KBShimmer – Sapphire
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Silver holo: Color Club – Harp On It
~ Light pink: Zoya – Jordan
~ Stamp: UC – Lovely Leaves 02

Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed! This week was fantastically easy for me compared to the previous weeks, and next week will be worse again. So I apologize in advance if I miss a post!

Blossoms on Blue

If I am being completely honest, I do not like this manicure. The blue polish was just a tad too sheer to totally cover the beautiful pink glittery base, which made the whole design look shimmery. I wish the blue had remained creme! Oh well. Its a fun stamp anyway.

Colors:
~ Pink glitter: ILNP – Rosewater
~ Blue: Zoya – Ryan
~ Stamp: MoYou – Porcelain 01

Only two photos today because by the time the sun came out I had enough tip wear that the photos are not fit for consumption! Oops :-p Hope you enjoyed anyway!

Purple Petals

More flowers! I figure it is nearing the end of spring so I need to get them posted now :-D. This was another straight forward color-in-some-petals mani. It didn’t come out quite as lovely as the pink one from two weeks ago, but I still like it!

The base here is yet another new polish. What you see here is three thin coats of Zoya Abby. I had been looking for a pale purple creme to replace my almost empty go-to of Sally Hansen Lacey Lilac, and I think I found it! It makes me a tad bit sad that this isn’t one of those perfect two-coat Zoya cremes, but it dries fast enough that 3 coats is acceptable.

Colors:
~ Light purple: Zoya – Abby
~ Purple: Zoya – Malia
~ Dark purple: L’oreal – Paparazzi Pleaser
~ Dark blurple: Zoya – Danielle
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamp: Moyra – 45 I Fill You

I wish I had a bit of a BETTER gradient for the purple petals (two of the purples are very dark!) but oh well! This seems to be a theme. Oops! Hope you enjoyed!

Taking Off Purple

This is a comparison AND nail art! I wanted to compare all of my pastel purples, specifically to see if my newest was a good replacement! What you see here are two coats of the sadly dried up Lacey Lilac by Sally Hansen on my pinky and thumb, 4 coats of Essie Full Steam Ahead on my middle finger (I love this polish but FOUR coats is too many), and three coats of Abby on my pointer and ring finger.

In the end, Abby and Lilac are very close, so I am happy! Steam is a bit darker, a bit more blue-tinged, and has subtle shimmer. It remains a very pretty polish that I sadly have little use for because I can seldom wait for 4 coats of polish to dry!

Of course, then I added a gradient and just had fun with stamping one design a different angels. I am so happy I bought a bunch more Moyra stamping plates!

Colors:
~ Pastel purple: Zoya – Abby
~ Pastel purple: Sally Hansen – Lacey Lilac
~ Light purple: Essie – Full Steam Ahead
~ Purple: Zoya – Malia
~ Dark purple: Zoya – Danielle
~ Stamp: Moyra – 32 Nature

Hope you enjoyed! I think there are going to be a few more swatches with nail art this week. We shall see if I can get them edited up in time!

Helenium in Pink

Apparently a helenium (also called sneezeweed) is a flower whose petals bend distinctly downward. Turns out it is generally a yellow/orange/red flower, and I painted it in pink, but it is the only flower I can easily find with petals like this! Also hi, enjoy some pink flowers 🙂

The base color here is a new-to-me pastel multichrome by POP Polish called Watermelon Bubbleslick. I bought two of these “pastel multichromes” because I had to see if they compared to their swatches…and honestly they do. Of all of the polishes in the pastel “slick” collection this is the one I wanted the most. And it does not disappoint! It is made up of tiny flakes, so it doesn’t have the mirror-metallic appearance of many of the darker multichromes. Despite that, it is stunning. It took 3 coats for full coverage, but it dries fast. It goes from a vivid bright pink, through silver/pale blue and right to bright green just on my nail…without moving the nail. I don’t need to even tilt my fingers to see the colors. Its astounding! At $16 its still pretty pricy, but I don’t own anything like this.

I then went and advanced stamped some flowers. I used all 4 stampers in my collection (one on each of my four fingers…my thumb was a re-use) and I have to say I have NO IDEA how we all stamped for so many years before clear stampers! Don’t get me wrong, of my 3 clear stampers I only LIKE one of them (although all three picked up this image nicely) but trying to use my old Nosh double-headed pink opaque stamper and position it was a nightmare. Anyway. In retrospect I should have used pinks that were closer to each other in hue for the petals, but I was having fun. Maybe next time I’ll actually make it match better :-p

Colors:
~ Pink/green multichrome: POP Polish – Watermellon Bubbleslick
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Light pink: Zoya – Jordan
~ Pink: Revlon – Bubbly
~ Dark pink: Zoya – Kelsey
~ Dark magenta: Zoya – Morgan
~ Stamp: Moyra – 45 I Fill You

If you can’t tell the difference between Kelsey and Morgan I won’t tell anyone…I’m not sure I can either! Whoops. Anyway, this manicure was a lot of fun to make, more fun to wear, and even looking at it makes me want to put Watermelon Bubbleslick back on! I imagine this will get a lot of use in the summer :-D. Hope you enjoyed!

Pink Petal Gradient

Oops! I meant to post this on Friday but I ended up accidentally throwing a party instead and forgot. Sorry! Anyway, This was just a fun little floral! Fitting for almost-summer.

The new polish here is called Morgan by Zoya. What you see here is three thin coats, although I could have gotten away with two thicker coats. This is a bright blue-leaning pink, and it is quite pretty! I have been hunting for more medium tone pink cremes, and although this one is slightly darker than I was hoping for, the color borders on neon and it was fun to wear.

Colors:
~ Light pink: Revlon – Bubbly
~ Pink: Zoya – Morgan
~ Dark pink: Zoya – Ciara
~ Stamp: Moyra – 32 Nature

I don’t have much else to say, I like gradients and flower petals! At least on nails. In real life, flower petals would make me sneeze terribly. Hope you enjoyed!

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!

Golden Sheaves

This is another old one, I painted these back in the fall too! They were supposed to be wheat sheaves or something, but the look mostly floral-y and very sparkly. Honestly, I keep forgetting that I own this base polish and it is so darn stunning!

I have an intense love/hate relationship with glitters. On the one hand, they are beautiful, and most of them have this jelly depth that leaves me staring at my nails whenever I wear them. On the other hand, they are a pain to apply (since, lets be honest, you have to place a lot of the glitters, especially larger ones) and the are REALLY a pain to remove!

Eleven at least isn’t that hard to get on the nail, the glitters are well-dispersed, uniform in size, and smallish. But it costs so much time to take off!!

Colors:
~ Burgundy glitter: Illyrian – Eleven
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Stamp: Floral BP – X43

I think that’s it for today! I hope you enjoyed 😀

Sprouting Purple Blossom

Hand-painted floral gradient time…happy Spring! It certainly feels like it here, we had a truly impressive lightening storm followed by monsoon-level rain. I spent a large portion of my evening just staring out the window in a dark room!

Anyway, it is also new polish time! This is three coats of Little Oysters by Ethereal Lacquer. This was a limited time buy (from one of the custom groups I am a part of) and I love it! I am actually wearing it (again) as I write this. The polish itself is a bit thick, however it is very opaque and I probably could have gotten away with two coats! It is a greyed-out pastel lilac with copious pink shimmer that shifts to yellow-gold at sharp angles. It looks grey, purple, pink, and sometimes yellow.

I decided I wanted to replicate some of the cool designs I had seen online with this particular stamp, but using purple rather than a multi-color gradient. In retrospect it would have been much easier to actually do a gradient, rather than hand-painting each layer of petals directly on the stamper head! But the end result is pretty cool.

Colors:
~ Pastel purple shimmer: Ethereal Lacquer – Little Oysters
~ Light purple: Essie – Full Steam Ahead
~ Purple: L’Oreal – Royalty Reinvented
~ Dark purple: Zoya – Malia
~ Stamp: Whats up Nails – B005

Hope you enjoyed! It is a lot of fun to do stamping with just a touch extra, although in this case it took much longer to complete!

Blooming Purple Blossom

Flowers! I feel like it has been a while since I posted something floral. Of course, it is the beginning of March so I figured it would be warm-ish out. I was wrong. It snowed yesterday and is likely to snow again on Sunday. Oh well! Flowers anyway :-p

I wanted to make a flowers-fanning-out-in-purple appearance, but the base I used has copious yellow/pink shimmer (I forgot to post the swatch before the nail art, oops!) so it kinda looks yellow-to-purple. I like it anyway but it has a very different flavor!

Colors:
~ Pastel purple shimmer: Ethereal Lacquer – Little Oysters
~ Light purple: Essie – Full Steam Ahead
~ Purple: L’Oreal – Royalty Reinvented
~ Dark purple: Zoya – Malia
~ Darkest purple: Zoya- Monica
~ Stamp: Whats up Nails – B005

I hope it is warmer wherever you are! Happy Friday!

Blooming Mauve

This mani is halfway between winter and spring: winter colors but with flowers and a butterfly! Given how cold (and snowy) it continues to be, I thought that was fitting.

This is a new-to-me polish, and I love it. For some reason I am super into shimmers right now, and this is subtle, elegant, and loaded with shimmer! What you see here is three thin coats of Quixotic Polish – It Rubbed Off From Friction. This polish is one of my only purchases from Hella Handmade Creations (I usually stick to Polish Pickup). The polish is is a beautiful dark grey-mauve swimming with pink shimmer, which also has a scattering of holo glitter. That said, while I love the color of the polish, it was a little thick and hard to work with.

I then made some stamping decals/advanced stamping (aka coloring the stamp in while it is on the stamper) using silver and purple. The color combo could have been a bit better, but it wasn’t terrible. I rather wish I had used black not silver! Or maybe simply white.

Colors:
~ Mauve: Quixotic Polish – It Rubbed Off From Friction
~ Silver: Nails Inc – South Kensington
~ Purple: Essie – Full Steam Ahead
~ Stamps: Whats Up Nails – B005, BM – XL204

That’s all for today, happy Friday! Hope you enjoyed.

Top 10 Nail Art of 2018

With the help of my ever-tolerant husband, I have picked out my top 10 posts of this year (well, 11 really). They are, surprisingly, not the most loved on instagram, but IG users have some weird preferences! Without further ado, here we go:

May 21st: Aloha (which uses one of my top 10 polishes of the year, Traverse the Skies by Emily de Molly)

June 20th: Down the Incline, because multichrome gradients are amazing

July 30th: Ocean Surf, because this might be the first 3D manicure I made that actually looked awesome. Also, beach!

August 3rd: Messy Green Blue Gradient…I felt like I needed at least one gradient stamped with some combination of designs from Make Your Mark 02, since I did a whole bunch of them! Among the lot, I think this was my overall favorite.

September 3rd: Mountain Sunset. This begins the set from the 31 Day Challenge this year, where most of my favorite manis tend to live!

September 5th: Porcelain Roses, which have the dubious honor of having taken the longest of any nail art done in 2018 (that actually looked good) at ~4 hours. But they are SO DARN PRETTY!

September 10th: Peek-a-Rainbow, which I think wins the ‘most ridiculously rainbow’ award for the year, and also has the pleasure of being the nails I was actually wearing for my birthday.

September 14th: Gnarly Blossoms. Probably the second most time consuming manicure, and possibly my overall personal favorite. Yet again features Traverse the Skies because apparently my intricate floral nails must exist on a blurple shimmery background 😀

September 28th: Cascading Rainbow Dots, which is possibly my most original nail art of the year? Inspired by an awesome teacup. Almost equally rainbow-y to my rainbow nails two up.

October 1st: Holland, which was a direct copy from someone else’s design but is such a pretty reverse stamp scenery piece that I had to include it!

Sadly, I didn’t post any designs that I loved after the 31 Day Challenge, although I have a few saved up that I should get around to putting up shortly (if I can get my act together)!

And finally my honorable mention, because this was super easy (its just advanced stamping) but it came out so beautifully…March 21st: Trailing Flowers

Did I miss any of your particular favorites? I had an initial list of 16 that I wanted to post so there are 5 manis floating on my blog this year that almost made the cut!

Orchid over Purple

More blurple! I don’t know…I haven’t had a chance to transfer a lot of my newer designs onto my computer yet and I am running out of options. These are from early fall. And, of course, feature a darker periwinkle.

I wanted to play with floral stamps because, in general, I either want to be playing with stamps that are flowers, swirls, or purely geometric. I have a LOT of similarly themed stamping plates!

Colors:
~ Purple glitter: Polished for Days – From the Land of Oz
~ Purple: Nails Inc – Regents Place
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamps: BP – L067, BM – XL472

This was fun just because the base is so SPARKLY and how often do you get to color in orchids? Not often! Anyway, hope you enjoyed, and hopefully I will get my life together enough that I can post something more winter-themed come Wednesday!

Sheer Black Floral

This was actually the base to a much longer and more complicated manicure that you guys will see…at some point. Not now. But it is one of only two times in all of 2018 (the other being a perfect rainbow gradient that I was loathe to cover up) that I actually took pictures of the under-art nail, because it looked cool!

Which is really just a long-winded way of saying that I would have worn these even WITHOUT the glitter and pastel swirls that I ended up painting over them. Honestly, I was impressed that I liked these; that is a LOT of naked nail to be seen! I did use 3 coats of a very sheer nude so my nails don’t look as yellow and mildly stained as they really are, but still. Very naked. And not actually bad!

Colors:
~ Sheer nude: Sephora X – Marvelous
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamp: BM – 616

Hope you enjoyed! Friday I have somehow another set of blurple nails…although they are closer to periwinkle than the ones I posted on Monday. Oops! I maybe should have delayed them but I like them, so oh well :-p

Flowers on the Diagonal

More flowers! And yes, these were supposed to go up on Friday after Thanksgiving, and instead I was distracted by buying too much polish. And too many stamping plates (who am I kidding, no such thing!). Regardless, this makes me feel better about not posting black nails for black friday :-p

More places that I love ended up having sales than I expected, but I wasn’t too terrible? I think I ended up with 9 new polishes and 7 stamping plates. Oh well!

Colors:
~ Purple glitter: Polished for Days – From the Land of Oz
~ Purple: Nails Inc – Regents Place
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamps: BP – L002, BM – 616

Hope you enjoyed these glowing blurple flowers and lines, and had fun picking up deals!

Pink and Brown Floral Mix

I have no idea where I was going with this. Two nails stamped in pink and three in brown? Over two different bases? And some other browns? This was poorly executed. However, I had just chopped my nails off so I wasn’t feeling drawn to doing something very involved on these tiny nails!

It also looks vaguely harvest-y with the brown and the nude, so I figured posting it now wouldn’t be too strange. I just need to remember to stick to stamping, at the very least, with the same color on every nail OR different colors on every nail. This mani is a bit of a color and contrast disaster!

Colors:
~ Pastel pink: OPI – Be there in a Prosecco
~ Pink: Essie – Eternal Optomist
~ Light brown: Zoya – Flynn
~ Brown: Zoya – Dea
~ Dark brown: Zoya – Louise
~ Stamps: BP – L084, BM – S107

So, not my best work. Not quite a fail, but close. Don’t make my same mistakes!

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.