Golden Veined

Oh god this was SUCH a disaster. I spent almost 2 hours making a super complicated manicure just to cover it up because it looked SO BAD. I started with a pretty purple-with-blue-glitters over a purple creme base, all is well. I then, for some ill-defined reason, decided to make gradient purple scales? Starting with the same shade of dark purple so it blended all the way into the polish? Gradiented to pink? When that looked awful I made an inner lining of the lighter color below for each of the scales and that looked WORSE. It looked like some pink-purple spreading tumor from my nail beds. I decided the problem was the darkest purple blending into the glitter purple base, so I outlined it in chunky gold glitter and somehow that just made everything worse. It was a failure. So I gave up and asked my husband what he would do to salvage it, and his answer was “make up something teal” to pick up the teal glitters in the polish. 

Colors:
~ Purple cream: L’oreal – Paparazzi Pleaser
~ Purple with blue glitter: Emily de Molly – Open Season
~ Gold glitter: OPI – All Sparkly and Gold
~ Teal: Color Fever – Fiji
~ Gold: Salon Perfect – Gold Leaf

I will never say this on my nail blog again but…my husband was right. I covered the purple-pink monstrosity that I spent hours creating with a super opaque teal metallic, leaving a thin golden rim, and it already looked better. I then added gold veins to the teal and it almost looked like an intentional passable manicure. Only I knew what horrors lay beneath. 

Darkly Golden Gone

I have achieved the pinnacle of nail art…which is to say that a design I found in 2016 and was never able to paint (missing the correct color and could not do the striping tape needed due to time constraints and a desire to keep my sanity) has finally been completed! I have this file with all of my dream manicures (at least those that I might some day do…there are many freehand artists out there that I simply cannot hope to compete with) and this was one of the older ones in that file. Victory is so pretty!

So, this design came from @natalia_engineer, only her version was much much simpler: she used a magnetic polish to create her gradient, and her black pattern was made from water decals. I ended up using 5 polishes to create a similar gradient, and a stamping plate for the chevrons! I still count it as a win. Also now I want that magnetic polish.

Colors:
~ Dark gold holo: ILNP – Sparks May Fly
~ Gold glitter: Zoya – Ziv
~ Dark brown with glitter: Spa Ritual – Starry Night
~ Brown: Zoya – Dea
~ Dark brown: Zoya – Louise
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamp: MoYou – Pro 02 

I started with my darkest gold glitter, Sparks May Fly by ILNP. Its a nice honey-gold that actually looks terrible on me by itself. I then tried to do a gold-to-brown gradient using glittery polishes (Zoya Ziv, ILNP Sparks May Fly, Spa Ritual Starry Night) but all I got was glitter, and the brown from Starry Night didn’t transfer at all. So I decided to do a creme gradient with Zoya Dea and Louise to get the brown tones, and then just dry marble over them with a bit more of Sparks May Fly and Starry Night. Success! Although Ziv left a MESS at my cuticles (pretty polish, pain in the butt to clean up). When all of that was done I got to the stamping part, and voila! Awesome manicure :-D, and HAPPY NEW YEAR. We have a vaccine and a new president, so 2021 will absolutely be better than 2020.

Wintry Mix

I love this! How cute is that snowman? And the reindeer might be *ahem* oversized but its still adorable. Its a reindeer-with-its-face-in-the-camera. Lets go with that. This is probably overall my favorite winter manicure from last year (yes, I post around a full year delayed. I do not have my life enough together to post just after I paint).

Colors:
~ Blue metallic: Zoya – Tart
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Brown: Zoya – Flynn
~ Light brown: Zoya – Chantal
~ Dark brown: Zoya – Dea
~ Red glitter: KBShimmer – Ruby
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Orange: Essie – Playing Koi
~ Green: Zoya – Tilda
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Red: OPI – All I Want For Christmas (is OPI)
~ Stamps: Nicole Diary – 120 

Lots of colors and designs and I still cannot get over that snowman! Anyway, I hope you enjoyed! I am going to finish up with some winter/New Years manicures this week, and spend the early part of next week on my top 10 posts for both polishes and nail art. Hope you enjoyed! 

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!

Green/Red Mix

So, it turns out I must have at some point deleted the entry I wrote where I stated which polishes I used for this design an why. I can take a very educated guess, but I am winging it! Regardless, we have entered formally into christmas nail art week, so all this week will be reds, greens, golds, and a santa to cap it off :-p

Colors (my best guess):
~ Red glitter: China Glaze – Ruby Red Pumps
~ Green: Zoya – Shawn
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Stamps: Nicole Diary – 120

And thats it for today! I hope you guys have all come up with some fun (socially distanced) way to celebrate the holidays. Enjoy!

Holiday Vines

How about some festive vine designs? Really I just wanted to use this base polish because it is almost perfectly holiday, green with lots of red and gold shimmers and flakes! Of course I just went and covered up 90% of it, but its the though that counts :-p 

Colors:
~ Green glitter: Rogue Lacquer – Princess of the Underworld
~ Red: Covergirl – Forever Festive
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold 

Hope you enjoyed! Happy end of Hanukkah (even if I didn’t post any super hanukkah nails this year) and start of the ONE WEEK that is christmas (as opposed to my husband who believes that christmas starts the moment thanksgiving ends). Harumph! 

Powdery Gold Snowflakes

This combines a whole bunch of my favorite things: Zoya polish, snowflake stamps, glitter powder with stamping…and the end result was pretty freaking awesome 😀 I even added some textured polish dots to have something to play with! 

Colors: 
~ Purple: Zoya – Valerie
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black (with gold powder)
~ Gold textured: Zoya – Solange
~ Stamp: Nicole Diary – 120

The plate I used, Nicole Diary 120, was awesome. I love the huge variety and sizes of snowflakes! You guys saw some of this plate last week (during my first installment of purple-with-gold for winter) and I have only kept using it. I love not having to freehand the flakes, and they are so pretty and complicated! Happy purple snow-time, hope you enjoyed! 

Goldflakes

More snowflakes! I don’t know why I got into a winter-things-on-dark-purple vibe last winter but I actually think it was excellent. These nails were painted last January and I am wearing almost the exact same thing today. I was inspired. Gold on dark purple and snowflakes just works! 

Colors:
~ Purple: Zoya – Isadora
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Stamp: Nicole Diary – 120

It helps that the designs are both easy and eye-catching. The plate I used here was new to me last winter and it makes a world of difference having a plate full of snowflakes of different sizes and designs rather than having to hand-paint everything. Snowflake stamps just make winter life better. Anyway, hope you enjoyed! 

Magnetic Wrap

It has been a while since I last played with a magnetic polish, so I figured it was time! I also acquired a new ring magnet (since those seem to work so well) in the last month and I wanted to play with it! Sadly, it did not work quite as well for me as it has for others, but it was still fun. I think I need more time working with it to figure out how to make the magnetic effect stick around.

Colors:
~ Copper magnetic: Sally Hansen – Kinetic Copper
~ Gold metallic: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Gold glitter: FUN Lacquer – Million Dollar Dream
~ Stamp: Nicole Diary – 156 

Hope you are all planning a safe and happy Thanksgiving! Personally I am more looking forward to Black Friday shopping since I think we are going to be fully socially distanced. Stay safe, and hope you enjoyed the nail art!

Purple Dividing Flowers

I was feeling very very lazy with this one. So I grabbed some stickers and drew a random line down a diagonal on my nails. And added some gold dots. Thats really it, that’s the manicure. Of course, in my laziness, I totally forgot that it takes like 10 minutes a piece to remove each darn sticker, so I ended up spending more time with removal than I would have spent just free-handing the flowers!

I used a purple base that I was given as a gift just to test it out, called I Manicure for Beads by OPI. Its a pretty enough medium-dark pink-toned purple creme, covered well in two coats. Not much more to say about it!

Colors:
~ Purple creme: OPI – I Manicure for Beads
~ Purple holo: ILNP – Zoe
~ Gold: Zoya – Solange

Anyway, hope you enjoyed today’s easy-to-make and hard-to-remove manicure, for all that it is quite simple! Stay tuned for more purple this week :-p 

Brown n’ Gold Mix

This was inspired by @falguni_nails, but her IG appears to no longer exist! Oops. Regardless, I would seldom use different shades of brown for anything other than tree branches without outside inspiration, so this was fun! I also need to remember that carmel brown might be a stunning color but not with my skin tone. I have lobster hands 😦 but I love the design so whatever. Thats also why these images are darker than usual, no matter how I tried to color correct either my hands or the polish looked wrong, so here we are!

Colors:
~ Brown: Zoya – Flynn
~ Dark brown: Zoya – Louise
~ Rose gold metallic: Essie – Penny Talk
~ Gold metallic: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Gold glitter: ILNP – Juliette

Every bit of this mani is freehanded (this is what I do with my days off…especially when I had a cold last year and didn’t feel like exposing my germ-filled self to the outside world)! Anyway, hope you enjoyed! 

Beaded Brown

Simple brown gradient with brown and then gold stamps! Of course with this type of stamp I always add some freehand dots to make it even prettier 😀

Colors: 
~ Nude: Zoya – Chantal
~ Dark brown: Zoya – Louise
~ Brown: Zoya – Dea
~ Light brown: Zoya – Flynn
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Stamps: Nicole Diary – L28 

I actually really like how this manicure came out. It was fast, easy, elegant, and fun to wear. Its also quite seasonally appropriate without being either drab or too orange/purple/green! 😀 Hope you enjoyed as much as I did! If you want to pick up this stamping plate (which I have to admit is actually a rather awesome one) you can find it here for $6.99.

Draping Beads

This was very easy and honestly quite pretty! For the pretty drapes I think I am going to have to go with colors that are not so close to each other next time (although had you asked me before, rose gold is not that similar to nude) but anyway, I like it! 

Colors:
~ Red/gold multichrome: ILNP – Greatness
~ Rose gold: Essie – Penny Talk
~ Nude: OPI – Be There in a Prosecco 
~ Stamp: Nicole Diary – 156

The stamp itself is from a plate just full of geometric and elegantly draped designs, which I am not going to lie I think I have now used >5 times in the 3 months I have owned it (this is an impressively high number for someone who owns as many stamping plates as I do). You can find the plate for yourself here for $1.99.

Bronze Dotted Grates

I don’t know where I was going with this one. I used a magnetic polish as a base, but sadly it did not magnetize well (do magnetic polishes have a shelf life? I should look into this). I ended up just converting it to a weird dot+stamp thing. I tried to gradient the dots, and it somewhat worked? In real life you can see that the dots go up and autumn gradient, but in images it did not come through, I do wish I had used creme polishes not metallics, the gradient would have shown up better.

Colors:
~ Bronze magentic: Masura – Evening Before the Fireplace
~ Gold: Revlon – Hypnotize 
~ Dark gold: Catrice – Genius in the Bottle
~ Copper: Zoya – Penny
~ Bronze: Pure Ice – Magic
~ Red: Zoya – Isla
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamp: MoYou – Pro 02 

Regardless, this starts my month of fall-ish manicures (aka things in shades of copper and orange) so enjoy! 

Milky Way Over the City

Honestly, this was not inspired by a movie (as it should have been for Movie Day in the 31 day challenge) but there are so many movies with pretty nightscapes of cities (and this was not a particular city) so I figured I could post it today! The design itself was inspired by Urban Nail Art. I loved her milky way idea and the colors, so I went for it! The manicure is free-handed other than the stars (which were stamped), and it came out pretty darn good! 

Colors:
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Blue holo: Milani – Cyberspace
~ Pink holo: Milani – Digital
~ Hot pink: Zoya – Morgan
~ Orange glitter: OPI – DS Indulgence 
~ Gold glitter: Cult Nails – Walk of Shame
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Star stamps: BM – XL213

Making this manicure reminded me how much fun the Cult Nails glitters were; the polish company no longer exists (funny how many polishes I own at this point that the parent company doesn’t create polish anymore) so I somewhat hoard my few Cult polishes. I should honestly use them before they dry out; look at that glitter!!! Hope you enjoyed. 

Metallic Autumn Gradient

I never do gradients with metallic colors, and clearly I have been missing out! Honestly I have tried it before and it typically does not go well, so I don’t know what it is about these colors in particular that decided to work, but it is pretty! I almost added dots (as is my typical approach) and I am glad I did not! I found this sitting in the vault and decided it was perfect for Day 2: Orange of the 31 day challenge, so voila!

Colors:
~ Gold metallic: Catrice – Genius in the Bottle
~ Bronze: Pure Ice – Magic
~ Red: Zoya – Isla
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamp: MoYou – Pro 02 

I was going to save this for fall-time, but september is almost the start of autumn so it kinda counts? Even if it is still in the 80s outside! Phew. Anyway, hope you enjoyed, and stay tuned for Green day this friday! 

Blazing Twirls

Simple gold swirly stamp on a raspberry red semi-holo base! I remember back when I thought that this is what holographic polish looked like. And then I learned what true holo was! That said, this was the first Zoya polish I ever bought, so it continues to hold a special place in my heart.

Colors:
~ Red holo: Zoya – Blaze
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Stamp: Moyra – 50 Ornaments 3

Its odd, for such a simple design I think this nail art (and these photos) came out beautifully. I think a lot of how much I like a finished design has to do with my nail shape on any given day. I try to keep it consistent, but it is very hard when I keep having to file them down and cut them into funny shapes whenever I break a nail! Either way, when everything comes together shape-wise, even simple nail art is prettier 😀

Tribal Red

Ok, I really do not like this manicure. What I had in mind was something cool…and what resulted after I messed it up and got frustrated was something decidedly less cool. At least the colors are ok? It is hard to go wrong with red and gold, but this was certainly not my best work!

Colors:
~ Red glitter: Zoya – India
~ Red creme: Zoya – Sookie
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Stamp: MoYou – Pro 02

Anyway, hope you enjoyed! This week is going to be a bit…slow in terms of nail art. I am just throwing random older bits together 😀

Glittery Half Moons

You guys i have no idea where I was going with this manicure. I (for once) wanted to do a half moon design, and then decided on glittery pinks? Honestly the base color and the glitter color do not go together at all, and current me is doubting past me’s sanity. But so be it!

Colors:
~ Gold: Jade – Irresistivel
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Pink glitter: Cult – Center of Attention
~ Stamp: BP – L008

I think I should just give up on half moons as a category. The make great minimalist designs, but if we are being honest I am not so much a minimalist design kind of girl, so my half moons end up overly ornate and just a mess. Example A! Anyway, enjoy rolling your eyes at my nails today :-p

Spiky Floral Tips

The idea here was good. The execution was good. The colors? Not a great combo. Oops! I wanted some sunrise/flowers in a french tip design with neutral colors all around. I ended up with a bit of a color mess! I don’t know why I keep matching mint with nude, the colors just never come out as sharply as I want them to. This is maybe the 4th manicure with a similar color combination in the span of two months! Yikes.

Colors:
~ Pale mint holo: Cadillacquer – Memory Palace
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Nude: CND – Cashmere Wrap
~ Gold glitter: ILNP – Fame
~ Grey: Formula X – Delightful
~ Stamp: BM – 616

Anyway, hope you enjoyed! Its June, so honestly I should start posting my backlog of neon manicures, but I just haven’t had time to give them the editing they so sorely need! Hopefully next week?