Glowing from Within

I seldom say this, but I regret buying this polish! A England went on sale at Color4Nails which meant I just had to buy a bunch of them. I only actually wanted one, but I purchased 3 (because of course). Thus far, I was happy with the two I bought…and this was the third, which I bought almost as an afterthought. I wish I hadn’t!

It’s not that this isn’t a pretty color, because it is. Its mostly just that I thought this polish would be red with gold flakes, and it is really an orange metallic with gold flakes. I don’t usually wear orange polish, and I already have an orange metallic! Oh well, now I own another I suppose. And it is a pretty polish, it just isn’t something I’m likely to wear often.

The polish itself is called Gloriana from A England. On the website it is listed as a “chili-pepper red with fine and ultra fine golden sparkle” but I have to disagree. Fundamentally, this is dark orange that leans red, that has a metallic finish and copious golden glass flecks. It covered nicely in two coats, but it is not a red!

I was having a hard time deciding between stamping with gold or black, but everything I saw with either color online was disappointing (I guess not a lot of people use this for nail art), so I ended up covering it with a red-to-black gradient using Siren by Pure Ice, Visions of Love by OPI, and Black Creme by Wet n’ Wild. The stamp is from Bundle Monster plate XL209.

In the end the mani is pretty enough,,,I was just expecting a red polish. In retrospect, I should have known from looking at everyone’s swatches! Oh well :-p at least I got a pretty purple and mossy green!

Vines Through the Swamp

Don’t ask me about the title. I thought that as lovely as the base is, it looks like a swamp. And then I got stuck into thinking about Shrek and now “I’m a Believer” is stuck in my head on repeat.

Anyway. This is one of the A England polishes that I picked up a few months ago during the color4nails sale (because I couldn’t resist) and it is LOVELY. Now, at least part of that is because I simply love this type of murky green-brown, but a lot of it has to do with the polish itself! (Actually, I have a post that I’m working on that compares the three green-brown polishes I own. Yes, I own three of them. Because this color is magnificent).

Shown here is two thin coats of Fotheringhay Castle by A England. I almost could have gotten away with one! Adina’s version of this particular color is a deep murky green-gold with scattered fine holo shimmer. The holo is less noticeable than most other A England holos, but the finish is stunning and you can certainly see the shimmer! I’m quite happy with this 😀

Colors:
~ Green: A England – Fotheringhay Castle
~ Gold shimmer: Sally Hansen – Go for Gold
~ Gold metallic: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Light pink: ULTA – Babydoll
~ Pink: Essie – Eternal Optimist

I ended up triple stamping with two Bundle Monster plates: once with a gold shimmer that ended up very faint because the plate was not etched well, once with gold metallic swirls, and then over that using black polish and the same swirls. It came out pretty well for all that stamping madness!

Hope you enjoyed!

Geometric Expression

I bought a bunch of OPI polishes recently…and this was one of my unplanned buys. They were having a buy-two-get-one-free sale so of course I had to leave with 6 polishes rather than the 4 I really wanted! Well, there were 6 but two of them were not in stock 😦

I have been in the hunt for a nude/pale-pink/grey and I thought this might be it! Until I swatched it on a nail stick and realized that it is a PERFECT DUPE for a (much cheaper) polish that I already own! Grrrrrr…I don’t usually buy perfect dupes. I feel rather dumb right now.

Regardless, this is three thin coats of Be There in a Prosecco by OPI. Despite taking 3 coats, it goes on better than my OTHER light pink nude creme polish (which takes 4 and even then has leveling problems). The polish is a very pale pink creme. I’ll do a comparison to the dupe sometime soon! As soon as I get over my disappointment.

Colors
~ Nude: OPI – Be There in a Prosecco
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Black: Wet n’ Wild – Black Creme
~ Gold: ILNP – Clockwork
~ Purple: Zoya – Rue
~ Stamps: BP – L054, 77

The one benefit of this is that I made something cool and geometric! Honestly, I just wanted to color in some geometric stamps, and this made it possible without standing out too much in the hospital.

Unfortunately some of the stamping decals bubbled a bit, so the top coat looks uneven. Oops! Hope you enjoyed anyway!

Resigned Lines

I really need to cut it out with the geometric designs! I actually was deciding between 4 different ideas for this, and I like how it came out but you can barely see the background pattern!

I started with three coats of my nude polish, then water-spotted on (aka spread on water and spritzed on hairspray to make holes before dipping my nails) white polish. I added some golden dots and glitter for contrast, and then free-handed straight lines.

The final step was stamping on the geometric images and adding rose gold dots over the parts that were super black. To my eye (because I knew what to look for) the white waterspotting was visible and quite pretty, but you can barely see it in the photos! Darn.

Colors
~ Nude: OPI – Be There in a Prosecco
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Black: Wet n’ Wild – Black Creme
~ Gold glitter: ILNP – Clockwork
~ Rose gold metallic: Essie – Penny Talk
~ Purple: Zoya – Rue
~ Stamps: BP – L054

It also doesn’t help that there was a lot of texture to this mani, so the whole thing doesn’t look super smooth with top coat. Overall, not my best work oops!

Golden Lined Earth

I couldn’t help but think that this mani ended up looking like dirt with veins of gold in it. I was hesitant about this mani but I really like how it came out!

These colors are the same (other than the gold) to those used in an earlier mani, Coffee and Cream Chevrons. I wore these to work, so I needed my hands to look as similar as possible…without requiring me to freehand more chevrons! I settled on a gradient with gold lines.

The gradient is over a base of Zoya Flynn rather than a white base. It made the whole thing darker, which I like, but meant that the palest brown stood out less. I think if I were to re-do this I would use the lightest brown (Zoya Chantal) as the base color rather than Flynn or a white.

Colors
~ Lightest brown: Zoya – Chantal
~ Light brown: Zoya – Flynn
~ Brown: Zoya – Dea
~ Dark brown: Zoya – Louise
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Stamp: BM – 316

Maybe I should have stamped the same pattern on each nail rather than rotating the image, but I always like changing it up just a bit! Oh well. Hope you enjoyed!

Interlocking

Fun with grey, stamps, and shimmery gold. Honestly, the gold glitter polish ended up looking silver (don’t ask me how…I’m assuming the polish is actually silver glitter in a gold-tinted base?) so it doesn’t quite match the glitter in the grey polish, but oh well!

Each nail is slightly different! I think the middle finger looks best, but even with my clear stamper these were hard to position. I was going for interlocking chain links, and it kind of worked?

I don’t really have much else to say about this mani. It ended up being surprisingly subtle, but still fun to look at. The glittery design disappeared in the sun!

Colors
~ Grey shimmer: Zoya – Yuna
~ Light grey: Zoya – Dove
~ Gold: Salon Perfect – Gold Leaf
~ Stamp: BP – L050

Happy Friday!

Fashioned Darkly

This is going to be a week of my recent favorite manis (stemming back to around January) to celebrate that I am done with clerkships! For the rest of medical school, I do not have to take any class I don’t want to. I also don’t have to take another multiple choice exam (other than the boards, but oh well) until I graduate. This is amazing. So, pretty nail art!

Today’s post is probably my favorite overall out of my recent works. The design was inspired by @i_annylook, who I just discovered and has some really awesome nail art! I need to go try all of it 🙂

I actually really like the concept behind this too…a gradient and then a gradient stamp using one of the same colors from the underlying gradient, but with the stamp interrupted. I don’t have many stamping designs that I think would work well for this, but I’m going to have to go find some!

Colors
~ Red: Pure Ice – Siren
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Matte: KBShimmer – Oh Matte!
~ Stamp: JQ – L20

Also, matting things just makes them better. I think I’d matte approximately 50% of everything I do…except that the design doesn’t last as long with matte top coat! Especially on surgical things where we are required to wash our hands with really harsh chemicals before doing anything. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed! Stay tuned for more awesome stuff this week 😀