Yellow and Purple Meshwork

This was just a simple yellow-orange-red-purple gradient, with a dark purple holo stamped over it! I have been waiting for the right time to use this particular image, and I quite like how it came out. It also is suitably fall-themed so I have saved it for now 😀

Colors:
~ Yellow: OPI – Never a Dulles Moment
~ Orange: ULTA – Sun of a Gun
~ Red: Pure Ice – Siren
~ Purple: Zoya – Lael
~ Purple holo: A England – Let Me In
~ Gold: Zoya – Faye
~ Stamp: Moyra – 54 Matrix

Ugh I miss gradients. Although, I always hate when my nails are curved! Square (or squoval I suppose) or bust. None of this oval nonsense! Hope you enjoyed, stay tuned for MORE autumn nail art this Friday! Although it isn’t orange/red because I can, occasionally, vary my pallet :-p

Red Roses and Black Lace

A member of my husband’s family was very ill, and we were preparing for the likelihood that we would have to attend a funeral within a week. With that in mind, I went for a week-and-a-half with dark, appropriately somber, nails. These nails arose from that period of time, and I am not embarrassed to say that I love them (the person in question passed away later, so these did not end up being funeral nails, merely vampy nails with a funeral in mind).

Since these were intended for a particular occasion, and to match a particular (black) outfit, I consider them somewhat fashionable, and am posing them for “fashion” day in the 31 Day Challenge!

Colors:
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Red glitter: Chirality – Ragnarok You Like a Hurricane
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Red: City Colors – Masquerade
~ Dark red: Zoya – Isla
~ Darkest red: Confetti – Masquerade Ball
~ Green: Zoya – Josie
~ Stamps: BP – L002, L003, MoYou Frenchy 14

That’s all for today! Stay tuned for some more awesome nail art on Friday. Hope you enjoyed, despite the somber tone!

Abstract Sky

Ok, so this isn’t QUITE a fail, it just isn’t nearly as good as I expected. Of course, I now own the item I wanted to use (gold glitter for stamping) but I didn’t have it when I painted these! Oops.

The base color here is two coats of Gaia by KBShimmer from Jan 2019 PPP. This is a deep blue jelly that appears cobalt due to all the glitters: iridescent shards that shift teal to purple and coarse silver holo glitters. Both are plentiful. This polish takes just a bit of spreading due to the flakie load, but it dries down nicely on the nail! I love it.

The design was inspired by de_briz. So, I started with Gaia, then layered on some MORE flakies (just for fun) and then stamped some dots in black. Sadly, my plate with swirly dots does not stamp well! This is doubly sad because the swirly dot design is literally mine…I had done it years ago and when the “make your own” stamping plate series became a thing I submitted it, and it got in. So this pattern was designed by me…and this plate hardly stamped. So, I started in black (which is not visible at all) and then tried to go over it in gold…and it was patchy and awful. So I top coated and tried to convince myself it was good enough. However, if I am anything in the nail art world, I am the woman who adds too many dots…so I fixed it by going over every dot by hand. With the same gold. I have to say, it looks much better. I also didn’t bother top coating at the end since the gold polish is a quick dry that actually lives up to its name, and I do love vaguely textured nails!

Colors:

~ Blue glitter: KBShimmer – Gaia

~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black

~ Gold glitter: Sally Hansen – Go for Gold

~Stamp: BM – 607

~Flakies: orange/green from the Born Pretty Store

That’s it for today! I’ll have to try something like this mani without spending an extra hour free handing the dots next time. Live and learn!

Murky Geometry

Sometimes you have a polish that you like. It is quite pretty and you know you really want to use it…but it is such an awkward color that you never know what to pair it with! That is my primary problem with this polish. So, obviously, I am stuck reaching for black, white, gold or silver. This time, I went with gold.

I don’t know why I went with a geometric set of designs except that it had been a while since I last used this stamping plate! The combo came out rather nicely, although it was hard to see the design in sunlight due to the reflectiveness of the gold polish! :-p

Colors:
~ Purple-grey: Quixotic Polish – It Rubbed Off From Friction
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Stamps: Moyra – 54 Matrix

That’s it for today! This was a pretty straight forward and simple week. I am in the process of deciding how much I can contribute to the 31 Day Challenge this year…we shall see! I have a hunch its going to be a “on days I usually post just try to post something theme-appropriate” like last year.

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!

Highlighted in Orange

Oooooh another neon orange manicure! I had to stop myself from overdoing this one. I knew I wanted to use End of Silence, but I also knew I didn’t want it on every nail. Instead of my go-to plan (aka use white as a base for all nail art) I decided to pair End of Silence with a light lilac with pink/gold shimmer, because the swatch sticks happen to be lying next to each other. I thought the color of Little Oysters perfectly matched the shade of the glitters in End of Silence. So, unusual pairing but I really like the result!

The white was stamped, however the orange and gold were added by hand. I initially tried to use End of Silence as the orange highlights, but it is both a jelly and full of largish glitter…so that ended quickly. I ended up grabbing my neon orange cream and using that instead. It is just a hair darker, but that works well for something that I don’t want many coats of to be opaque!

Colors:
~ Orange glitter: Cadillacquer – End of Silence
~ Lilac: Ethereal Lacquer – Little Oysters
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Orange: Julep – Natasha
~ Gold: Sally Hansen – Go for Gold
~ Stamp: Whats Up Nails – B015

I don’t know why I have stopped doing geometric manicures, this one was both fun and pretty! I suppose I will have to start up again :-p. Hope you enjoyed!

Purple and Gold Tilt Marble

I don’t know the actual name for this technique, but I am going to call it tilt marbling. Water marbling uses water, dry marbling happens directly on your nail, and tilt marbling happens on an external surface by adding lots of polish and tilting the surface to get a cool pattern. In this case, I used a base of magnetic purple (inspired by Urban Nail Art, which was genius), then red creme, yellow creme, and gold sparkle polish, and tilted my stamper until my pattern was perfect. I would then try and re-center the blob of polish so one area wasn’t thicker than anything else.

Because I did this on the stamper, it was very easy to remove. Had I done this on my mat I imagine I would have needed to add top coat to thicken the decal before I could apply it, and I love my decals thin. Luckily, I have three largish stampers and was able to cover all 5 nails by just making the decals cover most of the stamper face and then cutting them in half.

Colors:
~ Purple magnetic: Nails Inc – Houses of Parliament
~ Red: Zoya – Sookie
~ Yellow: KBShimmer – Orange You Glad I Didn’t Say Banana
~ Glitter: Zoya – Faye

In retrospect, I do wish I had used less gold glitter. I tried to cut it down by the time I reached my third stamper head, and even so it took over! I do love that I used (and then magnetized) the purple polish, you can see the magnet effect best at the tip of my middle finger, and it looks awesome. Next time I do this, I might use two magnetic polishes. We shall see! Hope you enjoyed!

Cracked Garnet

I couldn’t decide if this mani reminded me more of golden tree branches (which was the intention) or a broken gemstone (which is equally cool), so I went with gemstone! Either way, these nails ended up beautifully sparkly.

I seldom reach for my pure flakie top coats. Honestly, I feel like they overwhelm the color under them (which I suppose is the point) but I feel bad covering up my base color! In this case I used a purple I don’t like much, which made me feel overall better for the focus being on the flakies :-p

Colors:
~ Dark purple: Station – Happy Wine-y People
~ Orange glitter: Born Pretty – Raging Fire
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Stamp: BM – XL472

Happy Friday, and I hope you enjoyed! Its >90 degrees in St Louis right now, and absolutely miserable with humidity. I don’t understand this weather, it was in the 40s less than a week ago!

Elegant Array

I love this stamp. I love love love this stamp. I didn’t even notice it when I bought the plate originally, but it is amazing! It also helps that the base color is elegant, but mostly the stamp is amazing.

Usually when I finish stamping I decide that the design just isn’t enough…that I need something else. Since it is me, this something else is usually dots. I did not even touch this design!

Colors:
~ Grey: Zoya – Yuna
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Stamp: MoYou – Porcelain 01

That’s about it. I am neck-deep in online estate sales right now trying to buy house furniture! Hope you enjoyed 🙂

Ionian Arches

This was simple but a lot of fun to wear! I figured that pairing a magnetic polish (and magnetizing it sideways) with a weird 1920’s style stamp would look awesome. Voila! Of course, it also gave me an excuse to play with a cool new-to-me stamping plate from MoYou’s steampunk collection.

Colors:
~ Grey magnetic: Nails Inc – Trafalgar Square
~ Rose gold: Essie – Penny Talk|
~ Stamp: MoYou – Steampunk 06

Hope you enjoyed! I know there are only two photos, but when there is no sunlight AND my nails are tiny I don’t tend to take as many pictures!

(just FYI: I am moving these next two weeks, and there is a chance that I don’t get around to editing nail art and posting. I will be back! But if the blog is post-less for the next twoish weeks it is because I am moving and did not appropriately edit nail art in advance!)

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 😀

Archways

I decided to use a different gold for stamping this time as I have finally run out of my go-to stamping gold (Good as Gold by Essie) and this one does NOT work as well! The image actually picks up, it just won’t transfer because the polish dries so fast that I can’t stamp quickly enough. I need more Essie! I ended up having to hand-paint some of these gold lines, and since my nails were so itty bitty I wasn’t super invested. In retrospect, I am pretty unhappy about that because the manicure ended up quite pretty!

I also finally invested in some MoYou stamping plates (I owned none) when they had their cyber Monday sale….and I have to say I don’t love most of them. The designs are great and the etching is good (on all but one plate), but they are so small! I usually wear my nails longish, and the plates I got just won’t cover my whole nail. Maybe I should have gone with the fewer designs per plate setup, but then only the very center of each image would transfer. Its rather annoying!

Colors:
~ Black with glitter: KBShimmer – Dark & Twisty
~ Gold: Sally Hansen – Liquid Gold
~ Stamp: MoYou – Steampunk 06

Overall, another manicure with a lot of potential and mediocre execution. I also only have two photos because I did these as I came back from winter break and was too busy unpacking to take many nail photos. Also, apparently St Louis does NOT get sun in the winter (I thought Boston was bad, this is worse!) so there are no sunlight photos for this mani…or for a lot of the upcoming ones as well. Sorry!

Interlocking Chevrons

I love the concept behind this nail art, but I’m honestly not sure I love the execution? I think this design is busy enough that it would work better as an accent nail and not a full mani. So, just pick one or two nails and stare at them I guess!

This mani was time-consuming because instead of using striping tape I used stamps and freehand to make everything. Basically, I stamped the initial gold triangle at my cuticle with Penny Talk and then filled in the design (which was hollow) with Juliette. Once that was top coated and dried, I did the rest. I stamped with a black creme polish the black chevrons, and then the rose gold chevron again (each was an individual stamp…so there are 4 stamps on each nail except my thumb which was 6). I then colored in the black stamps with Storm, and did my best to spare the crossing rose gold. I could have just stamped with Penny Talk after the black was all dry, but that would be ANOTHER layer of top coat and drying and I was feeling lazy. So I colored around it :-p….it probably took longer anyway.

Colors:
~ Nude: piCture pOlish – Cherish
~ Rose gold metallic: Essie – Penny Talk
~ Gold glitter: ILNP – Juliette
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Black with holo: Zoya – Storm
~ Stamp: Moyra – 60 Cuts

Again, needlessly complicated, but in the end kinda cool? I’ve been back on a bit of a geometric kick recently. I wish I had time for some freehand, I’ve been feeling inspired! That’s all for today, for Friday we get back to colors and some flowers! Hope you enjoyed 🙂

Golden Highlights

Kinda 1920s, yah? Honestly, if I had been thinking about it more I would have reversed the stamps, I like the idea of the spread fan shape coming from my free edge better, but too late! Also, my gold stamping polish has official run out and I will need more.

Honestly, I just wanted to play with 212 again, it is a subtle yet pretty polish, and one of the first I ever bought when I got into nail polish in 2012. My obsession with various types and finishes of polishes have varied over the years, and the dark vampy jellies with subtle shimmer and flakies (ok, I think in that particular family I really only own two polishes) don’t get worn very much at all! So here is some love, 212.

Colors:
~ Black with glitter: OPI – 212
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Stamp: MoYou – Steampunk 06

That’s it for today! Hope you enjoyed. Friday is…more stamping. I feel like I hardly have time to do freehand anymore, everything is stamps!

Working Machines

I have a degree in engineering from undergrad, and I have always loved putting little bits of electronics on my nails! There was no particular inspiration for this manicure, I just saw the image on the Matrix plate and decided I wanted to go for it 🙂

I also decided that the dark greenish-grey of Yuna would make a perfect base, especially with the scattered golden glitter! I think I was right. This mani is a bit busy but I kinda love it.

Colors:
~ Dark teal: Zoya – Yuna
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Stamps: BM – 415, Moyra – 54 Matrix

Again, a fast easy manicure! I swear I will have time to edit some of my more intricate nail art soon. I’m currently still in relax-from-step-3-but-freak-out-about-buying-a-house mode. It is a very complicated mode. Hope you enjoyed!

Abstraction in Gold

This mani only worked because my nails are currently short enough that I could turn the stamp sideways and use different parts on each nail! I Initially wanted to do gold on some pastel background, but decided that dark red would look better. It totally does. I also almost got in trouble at the hospital for wearing nail art too visibly! Oops!

Regardless, this nail art was incredibly easy and surprisingly striking. It took a total of 30 minutes (and most of that was waiting for the red base to dry). Success!

Colors:
~ Red: Zoya – India
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Stamp: BM – XL204

That’s it for today! Simple stamps. Wednesday’s post is a lot more involved…stamping and gradients oh my!

Marching Copper Trees

To be fair, when I painted these (well, stamped them) it was a few weeks out from Christmas. I always thought this particular stamp looked rather like christmas trees if you only used half of it! Otherwise it looks like stylized stalactites and stalagmites.

Of course, any manicure using an awesome mutlichrome and a rose gold stamping polish is going to look pretty good. This was easy to make pretty!

Colors:
~ Red-gold multichrome: ILNP – Greatness
~ Rose gold: Essie – Penny Talk
~ Stamp: BM – XL158

Short, sweet, and straightforward! If it helps, the reason this post is so short is that I am taking Step 3 of the medical board exam tomorrow. And Friday. Because of course it is a two day test *grumble grumble* but after this Friday I am free again!

Highly Contrasted

So, being honest, I don’t love this mani. I was a little pressed for time and wanted to both stamp something cool, and use the colors that the nail polish base was designed after. Since the polish is called You Look Like Seafood in honor of Tamatoa from Moana, that meant fuchsia and gold. And unfortunately, this is where I ended up!

This is three thin coats of You Look Like Seafood! by Dreamland polish. I love love  LOVE this nail polish…the blue base, the pink shimmer, the flakies, the whole thing is stunning. I also really only needed two coats, I added the third just for a bit more depth. That said, I hate the brush on the polish! There was no way NOT to flood my pinky as the brush was both wide and not curved. 😦

Colors:
~ Blue multi-glitter: Dreamland – You Look Like Seafood!
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Pink: OPI – Cute Little Vixen
~ Stamp: Moyra – 60 Cuts

This was also the first time I played with the Moyra Cuts plate, I have used it many times since but I was still working with how to stamp large swatches here! Luckily my polishes were quite opaque :-p. Hope you enjoyed this more than I did!

Green on Golden Gateways

This was INTENDED to be my New Years manicure, but I decided it made more sense to post my Top 10 early and these late! But, they are sparkly, shifty, and weirdly colored (which I think will end up being a theme this week).

I am not sure why I decided that Walrus went well with Chance, but I was fiddling with colors and I ended up here. Orange with green is not my typical go-to but I kinda like how it turned out! I also really like this stamp 😀

Colors:
~ Gold/Copper multichrome: Enchanted Polish – I am the Walrus
~ Green: Sinful Colors – Last Chance
~ Stamp: Moyra – Ornaments

That’s it for today! Wednesday is going to be more weird glittery shifty things that kinda don’t go with their corresponding stamp color. *shrug* happy New Year?

Golden Hoops on Red

I feel like this is a very descriptive title. And I feel like this mani would have been boring…if not for the fact that the red base is a thermal! I didn’t bother trying to catch all the color shifting, since this is an old one that you guys have seen before. BUT, I did capture it how it existed 90% of the time: as a gradient!

This was basically just me having fun with thermal polish and a swoopy stamp. Of course, I used gold, because what else does one use with red? As a result it accidentally came out Christmas-y!

Colors:
~ Red thermal: Bow Polish – Hex
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Stamp: Moyra – 54 Matrix

So, super simple for today. Hope you enjoyed!