Gently Swirled

This mani is a mess. I wanted to make something subtle and swirly, and decided to give Sandy a second shot. The first time I used this polish it took 4 coats and was still barely opaque…and since it has a lot of glitter and flakies, it was quite thick. This mani ALSO took 4 coats and honestly I give up. Sandy is moving to my “pretend this is a topper” section in my nail art room.

It also doesn’t help that on my easier-to-image left hand I decided to plan out where each part of my swirly stamp was going to go…and on my right hand I just winged it. The right hand looked much better in the end! But I took very few photos because the photos of my left always come out better. Silly me.

Colors:
~ Grey shimmer: KBShimmer – Sandy
~ White: LA Girl – White On
~ Stamp: Moyra – 50 Ornaments 3

In the end, this mani was a bit of a bust. It fulfilled its purpose, which was to be subtle, but I didn’t love it. Ah well, on to next week!

Icy Winds

I wanted something that looked like icy wind blowing, so I ended up with this! Just the stamp over the (admittedly awesome) base wasn’t interesting enough, so me being me, I added some dots. I kinda love it!

It also ended up accidentally being incredibly timely, as we are supposed to have a “massive” (about 1ft) snow storm in the next 48 hours and they are making beds at the hospital for the doctors to sleep there if we need to. Luckily, I live walking distance away. I cannot imaging having to sleep in the hospital (if I am not on overnight call)!

Colors:
~ Purple/grey shimmer: Emily de Molly – Shadow on the Moon
~ Silver: A England – Excalibur Renaissance
~ Purple: Sinful Colors – Muse
~ Stamp: BP – 21

That’s it for today! Icy winds on my nails and outside 🙂 Hope you enjoyed!

Swirling Flakes on Grey

I just keep wearing this polish! Grey Opal might be my favorite buy from Polish Pickup Pack (its from probably a year ago at this point), because it is amazingly shimmery and flakie-y, but it still just subtle enough to totally get away with in the hospital!

I also finally used up my bottle of the original Excalibur (my go-to silver polish for just about anything), and about a year ago bought a replacement (this is the best stamping silver ever), but now it is “Renaissance” because they replaced Excalibur with some weird gold/silver flake combo which, while pretty, does not at ALL serve the purpose of the original bottle. That said, this formula is still fantastic 😀

Colors:
~ Grey flakie: Polished for Days – Grey Opal
~ Silver: A England – Excalibur Renaissance
~ Stamps: BP (asian) – L008, BP – 185, BM – 319, BM – 232

Super simple, but quite pretty! And work-appropriate as long as no one notices all the colors hidden in the flakies. Win for everyone! Hope you enjoyed and happy Friday 🙂

Feminine Circuitry

I was at a loss for what to call thing or even think about this mani…I don’t personally like it, which is a bit annoying since I know just how long it’s going to take to remove all that glitter! Anyway, my husband said it looked like a motherboard for women, so here we are

Colors:
~ White/pink/black glitter: Emily de Molly – Sakura
~ Nude sheer: Sephora X – Marvelous
~ Grey holo: A England – Fated Prince
~ Stamp: Lina – Make Your Mark 02

I used three coats of Sakura, which I still love. But I decided that was a little stark for the hospital, so I added a coat of a nude-clear before top coating. I also messed around with 4 different colors of stamp before choosing a deep grey holo…and I still don’t like. I should have picked a different stamp! Anyway, only two photos because I ran out of time. Oops!

Shower Curtain

This title is odd. I was trying to figure out what this mani looked like, and my husband thinks it looks like ikea furniture. Honestly, I can kinda see it. I got a new stamper for free for buying farrrr too many stamping plates from Whats up Nails during their stamping sale. Ooops! Anwyay the stamper is huge and squishy and SUPER see-through and honestly worked perfectly on the first try. It is also amazing for layering. My older (and beloved) clear stamper couldn’t have aligned these so easily!

So anyway I wanted to stamp this fun triangle pattern in black, and then go over it shifted in white to make a funky striped triangle pattern. I did that on my middle and ring fingers (and it was so easy to align, it was almost unfair, this stamper is awesome). Then I decided that I liked the design better with just the black stamp alone! So I left my other three fingers without any white at all.

Colors:
~ Grey holo: Emily de Molly – Crystal Crown
~ White: LA Girl – White On
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamp: Moyra – Matrix 54

The sad end to this story is that I got a bit of polish on the covered end of the stamper, and I tried to wipe it off with acetone. I should have known better. DO NOT USE ACETONE ON PLASTIC…now it is no longer opaque! I want to cut the end off so that the whole thing is hollow (and useable) but I can’t find my hand-saw. So, sadly, I am now back to one useable see-through stamper.

Purple and Gold Galaxies

This mani tried so hard, but ultimately fell to the age-old adage: do not stamp over glitter with glitter (use a creme or a metallic). I started with a purple/gold multichrome but I was working too fast and my nails bubbled! So obviously I had to make a galaxy…but every time I tried to sponge on a new color I ended up hating it! I ended up just covering all the other sponged work with a dark purple glitter and some gold. Oh well!

As mentioned above, I also wish I hadn’t stamped with a glitter. Metallics just work much better. I was trying to make everything sparkly but the end result is that it is difficult to see the designs! I’ll need to re-use this stamp again soon, it is super cool.

Colors:
~ Purple/gold multichrome: ILNP – Masquerade
~ Grey with gold shimmer: Zoya – Yuna
~ Purple creme: Zoya – Margo
~ Purple glitter: Zoya – Valerie
~ Chunky gold glitter: OPI – All Sparkly and Gold
~ Gold glitter: Sally Hansen – Go for Gold
~ Stamp: BM – XL213

Every time I work with Valerie I wish I used it more, but I am always afraid to! Zoya keeps discontinuing their prettiest polish. Zoya: MORE GLITTERS! YOUR GLITTERS ARE GREAT! Anyway…hope you enjoyed! And let the moral be do not stamp with glitter over a glittery base!

Swirling Wind

I don’t know what I was aiming for with this mani! I wanted something that looked cold and windy (it snowed for the first time on Friday, and is supposed to snow again today) and it felt appropriate! I started with a grey-white shimmery base and added some stamped swirls, and then colored them in. I don’t know if this was the best idea, or if I should have gone for some creme polishes to color in the wind!

Regardless, the base color her is a new polish called Sandy by KBShimmer. It is from the August PPP. The swatches I saw made it look beautiful, which it is, but I didn’t look correctly at the layer count. This is three THICK coats, and the second time I wore it, it took 4 coats! No one has time for that. So, while I do like how it looks, I think I am relegating it to a topper. Fail.

That said, the polish is a pretty pale grey with lots of purple shimmer than shits to blue, and tons of silver holo shards. I am currently into polishes with silver shards, for whoever reason! The base is a crelly for ease of sparkle, but I know (because I own) crellys that are 2-3 coats and not 3-4 coats. This polish is not easy to use.

Colors:
~ Grey with shimmer: KBShimmer – Sandy
~ Purple shimmer: OPI – Ink
~ Grey holo: Emily de Molly – Shadow on the Moon
~ Stamp: BM – XL213

So, windy and long-winded (I think I’m funny). Overall, this mani was more time-consuming than pretty, and most of that is due to the base color. Live and learn! Hope you enjoyed 🙂

Grey Dragonscale

I need to preface all of this with the fact that i don’t like this mani. my initial idea was to stamp in white over the shimmery grey base but I thought that would be too boring….in retrospect i definitely wish i had gone that route! this color combo is a bit drab.

I bought this color by KBShimer off of one of the monthly sale groups and I am honestly disappointed! The polish is a bit thick and despite that this is 3 coats and I could still see nail line. I usually trust KBShimmer, and I am aware that they have been doing a visible nail line thing for the last release or so (which is why I haven’t bought any of their polishes in a year other than this) but pooh! I am not happy. I’ll have a post with an actual polish review hopefully sometime soon. But the polish is a bit of a flop and the nail art is ALSO a bit of a flop.

Colors:
~ Grey shimmer: KBShimmer – Sandy
~ Dark purple creme: Sinful Colors – Muse
~ Dark purple multichrome: Essie – For the Twill of It
~ Stamp: Whats Up Nails – B025

Anyway, happy Friday! I am somehow falling wayyy behind and have none of th art lined up for next week yet so lets see what I end up posting!

Holland

The final day of the 31 Day Challenge of 2018 is here! I only participated in about half (a little under half if we’re being honest) of the total and I am still exhausted. Major kudos to all of you who were following along, and to my past self who somehow managed to post daily!

Anyway, today is “honor nails you love” and I have a bit of a different thing happening. Probably 25-30% of all my nail art is based either loosely or exactly on designs I have seen other people do. This time around, I decided to do a design off of the website for a product! Although it is also the nail art used by that product.

What I am trying to say is that today’s post was inspired by, of all things, the stamping plate website itself! I cannot find the original artist (and trust me, I’ve been looking) but I literally bought this plate because this image showed up in my email and I needed to replicate it! So voila. I think I’ve done a pretty good job honestly!

Colors:
~ Blue: Zoya – Yummy
~ Blue shimmer: Sinful Colors – Cinderella
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ White: LA Girl – White On
~ Light grey: Zoya – Dove
~ Dark grey: WOW – #333
~ Light green: Zoya – Tilda
~ Dark green: Sinful Colors – Exotic Green
~ Stamp: BM – XL204

And that’s all for the 31 Day Challenge! Hopefully I will still be around and posting next year, but as residency gets harder we shall see! I am still painting my nails and enjoying it, so I am hopefully. As it turns out, yesterday was my 6 year blogaversary, so I have been blogging for longer than I thought! Go me?

Floating Feathers

As it stands, this is my least favorite mani that I have pre-set for this month. I was trying to go for something cute and whimsical…but it honestly just came out boring. Sorry!

I did stick to the black/white/grey theme at least, unlike in previous years when I added color pops. Maybe that is why I don’t like it though, color is my jam!

Colors:
~ Grey holo: Emily de Molly – Crystal Crown
~ White: LA Girl – White On
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamp: Lina – Make Your Mark 02

Anyway, this post is a bit lackluster but next weeks is much better, stay tuned for gradient day on Monday! Happy weekend 🙂

Rungs

This mani ended up boring and almost ugly. I like the base polish a lot but every time I try to come up with some color to use over it, I turn to dark purple-grey or gold! And for some reason most of the designs end up wonky looking.

I don’t know why I picked this stamp (which seems to be a trend this week) but it ended up looking like rungs on a ladder or maybe the straps on a fancy jacket? If fancy jackets came in murky purple tones? I don’t know!

Colors:
~ Purple-grey: ILNP – Long Walks
~ Dark purple-grey: Sinful Colors – Muse
~ Gold: Sally Hansen – Go for Gold
~ Stamp: EdM – 01

Anyway, leaving all this aside, the 31 Day Challenge starts this weekend! I am not going to be participating every day because I don’t have enough manis backlogged and I certainly don’t have enough time to paint and edit that much, but I am going to keep to posting three times a week and matching my nails of the day to that days prompt! I think there will be a few where I jump a day forward or backwards, but I should have most of them sorted out. I love seeing what everyone puts together for the #31DC2018!

Trailing Flowers

YOU GUYS. This polish is amazing. And I quite like the design I ended up with as well! I am drooling over my own photos. This is rare.

The polish here is called Grey Opal by Polished for Days. It is yet another excellent example of why everyone should join the Polish Pickup Pack! Grey Opal covered perfectly in two thin coats, and control of the polish was excellent. Honestly, I have been painting my nails for years and even so I almost always need to clean around my cuticles with acetone after I am done applying my base color. With this polish, I had no need…it went exactly and ONLY where I wanted it to go! I am impressed.

The polish has a grey jelly base with lots of silver shards, coral shifting flakies, and teal shifting flakies. It is very fun to look at, between the orange and the teal and the glitter! It somehow manages to be both fun and elegant. I loved this polish so much I ended up checking out the Polished for Days store and OMG it is amazing. I want most of it (many of the polishes seem to have as much depth to them as this one, which is just incredible) and I officially have a new indie polish crush for jelly/flakie/shard combos!

Anyway, I ended up making floral stamping decals using a coral polish that more or less matched the pink-orange shade of the flakies, and just going with it. I did paint in some green leaves, but they barely ever made it onto the nail (they were all off the edge, oops)! I want to say this is fitting because yesterday was the first day of spring…but it is 32 degrees out and snowing!

Colors:
~ Grey glitter: Polished for Days – Grey Opal
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Coral: L’Oreal – Orange You Jealous
~ Teal: Essie – Naughty Nautical
~ Stamp: BM – XL158

Hope you enjoyed! And seriously, if you are as addicted to polish as I am (which if you are reading this, I assume you are) go check out the Polish Pickup Pack. And thank me later 😀

Encroaching Stone

A lot of the time, I go into a mani not knowing what I want…other than that I have a new tool to play with (in this case, a stamping plate) and that I want to use one of my favorite polishes that I wear infrequently.

After I put Shadow on the Moon on my nails (and wow these photos never do it justice, I love this polish!) I messed around with which stamped design I wanted to use. I ended up settling on one that looked like bare tree branches…but stamping them in silver and black to look like veins in stone.

The photos did not come out as well as I would have liked, and the sun did not particularly cooperate! But I loved wearing this mani and it was different from my usual designs!

Colors:
~ Grey glitter: Emily de Molly – Shadow on the Moon
~ Silver: A England – Excalibur
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamp: BM – XL472

Happy Friday! I hope you enjoyed 🙂

Starlight

It turns out that thermal polishes are only intended to be good for 6 months…so all of my beautiful thermals are becoming less shift-y! Which clearly means I just need to use them more. It also means I wish my favorite brands would stop releasing thermals because I don’t want to buy things that stop working 😦

This was my trial with my shiftiest thermal, a clear-to-black with scattered holo shards, that used to have a darn impressive color range. The base here is actually a holographic blue-grey, but once I put the thermal top coat over it most of the color just went grey. This top coat used to be almost entirely see-through, and I am sad about this change! However, the shift is still VERY prominent so I am ok with it.

I think I want to try stamping with this polish at some point? I don’t know if it is quite opaque enough even in cold/black form but I am curious! Now I just need to plan up things to do with the other…6 or so…thermal polishes that I own. Two others are already shift-less 😦 (but luckily for both I liked the cold color better, which is where they stayed).

Colors:
~ Blue: Milani – Cyberspace
~ Grey/Black shift: Bow Polish – Black Thermo Top Coat
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Stamps: BPX – L020, BM – 206, 607

Happy Friday! Next week is one of my last required classes for medical school, and our “rank list” goes in for where we want to go for residency. Mine has been in for about two weeks already, but I will certainly be double-checking! And I will be fleeing to Hawaii on my much-delayed honeymoon for two weeks after that, so I will be pre-posting. 😀

Hearts Galore

Happy Valentine’s Day! And happy birthday to my baby sister. She gets extra chocolate :-p

This is the mani out of the 5 that I chose to post today in particular because it both has the MOST hearts, and is primarily pink so I figured it fit the theme best! But seriously, SOOO many hearts. Wow.

The base here is yet another new polish from the holiday sets that I won from Nail Polish Canada, and yet another Zoya! This is Kelsey, a bright pink with blue undertones. This polish manages to be a dark-toned neon, which is pretty darn cool. My camera freaked out. The polish also covers well in two thin coats…and I probably could have gotten away with one thick coat instead…Zoya has been killing it with the consistency of the cremes in this collection! I don’t even like pinks and this is an awesome color. And finish. And everything.

This is also another stamp that I’ve had for a while and just…never used. I chose to stamp with a pale grey rather than a white polish, and I regret that a little…I had to double stamp the flower design because the grey didn’t stand out as much as I wanted! Although I do think coloring in the flowers with a bright pink chunky glitter was awesome 🙂

Colors:
~ Pink: Zoya – Kelsey
~ Grey: Maybelline – Bare Escape
~ Green: Zoya – Tilda
~ Pink glitter: Different Dimension – Cranfairy
~ Stamp: BM – XL205

That’s all for today! I hope you get a lot of chocolate, maybe some flowers, and suitable affection from everyone (partners, pets, kids…all that jazz)!

Stormy Heart

This is it, the final boring mani that I wore to interviews! Although if I am being honest, this one is not all that boring. It is also February  which means I am permitted to start posting hearts (not that I have any other pink manis prepared…I spent the last few weeks wearing subtle pink and so I have been avoiding the color altogether. Can I make a blue Valentine’s mani???). Anyway, have some shimmer and some hearts!

I knew what I wanted to do with this mani, and trialled three different grey/grey combos before settling on this one. I am a little sad because the hearts take up so much space you can barely see the base! This only matters because the base is Crystal Crown, which I have just now realized was discontinued at some point in the past. This is awful because it is easily my most-used grey, and the bottle is half empty! Ooops. I need to keep a better eye on when indie polishes discontinue my favorites!

But anyway, this was basically advanced stamping with grey and white over grey. It looks rather nice for all that, and was suitably almost-subtle and heart-shaped!

Colors:
~ Grey shimmer: Emily de Molly – Crystal Crown
~ Grey: Zoya – Dove
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Stamp: BM – 620

Happy Friday! And this ends the run of boring manis. Now all I need to do is actually pick where I want to be next year (and for the next 10 or so years, yikes!) and get started on some actual Valentine’s manis!

Pearly White

This mani is a bit special…I ended up doing quite a few back-to-back interviews during the fall (which I do NOT recommend, I could have used some recharging time!) but only one of those involved two interviews in different cities, which is to say I flew from one to another with an intervening weekend spend at a friend’s place.

During this weekend, I repainted my nails using polish I traveled with, since I knew that nothing I was going to be able to do would make a mani last for over a week! This means that these nails are 3 days old by the time I got home to image them, and that they were painted in my friend’s bathroom using absolutely minimal supplies. I even ran out of acetone (ergo cleaning up the stamps were…difficult). This means that these are not the best example of my work. Regardless, they are suitably subtle while still having a pop of glitter!

I can also safely say that there are only 4 remaining designs, so there will only be one more week of boring posts! Also, 3/4 have “storm” or “winter” in their titles so I am going to assume that past-me turned to a more grey-themed palette :-p

Colors:
~ Grey holo: Emily de Molly – Crystal Crown
~ Silver holo: F.U.N. Lacquer – 24k Diamond

I think it is time for me to get a head start on Valentine’s nails, and finally start planning out my honeymoon to Hawaii…only a year a half after the actual wedding! Anyway, happy Wednesday!

Mind the Grey Gaps

Happy New Years! This was not intended as a New Years mani since I wore it early in December, but it is sufficiently glittery, and all that I really have on deck at the moment so here we are!

The design was, yet again, inspired by Sveta Sanders. I should have just gone with the naked nail base, but I thought the purple and grey would go well together! I regret that decision, as it made the whole design look much darker than intended. Also, I should probably have done this mani with longer nails! And I was trying to decide between ALL of my multichromes for this mani…and ended up going with a holographic multichrome.

I feel like I should probably let you all know that I will not be responding to comments or anything for a little over a week, as I am on a cruise boat somewhere in the Caribbean! Given how cold the east coast is right now, this whole beachy summer boat thing is pretty darn awesome, or so I assume 🙂

Colors:
~ Grey: Zoya – Dove
~ Purple holo multichrome: Emily de Molly – State of Mind

The one biggest triumph here though is the design on my pointer: I need you all to know that I used striping tape to make that triangle base. And a little bit of creative polishing. I do not own those cool triangle stencils that everyone else seems to have! Anyway, happy New Years and I hope you guys all had fun last night!

Misty Forest

This mani came out better than I had hoped, but I made a crucial error…I forgot to check that my nails were even before I started! If you are ever going to paint a scene across your tips, be sure that one of them isn’t crooked (sorry 4th finger, I’m looking at you).

Regardless, this was quite fun! I wanted to do something spooky, and I realized that I had yet to use an EdM stamping plate that I picked up a while ago! Unfortunately, the plate is not etched really deeply, so although the images pick up fine, they are not incredibly dark (to be fair, I used regular polish for this…my black stamping polish finally ran out).

I ended up double stamping some of the trees, the fox, and little bits of grass, which is how I got the grey-and-black difference. I quite like it! I am also glad I went with another EdM polish for the background. 🙂

Colors:
~ Purple-grey glitter: Emily de Molly – Shadow on the Moon
~ Purple-grey: Sinful Colors – Muse
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamps: EdM – 07

A few more fall-themed and Halloween-themed manis coming up! Most make a little more sense than this, but misty and creepy forest is totally a Halloween thing! Hope you enjoyed.

Overcast

This is what happens when I come home in a rush from out-of-state and need to be in the hospital the next day but am currently wearing something brightly colored and intricately patterned. Basically, this is just sad.

I usually plan out my manis a little in advance…just in terms of color or inspiration or a specific stamp to use. In this case I had a boring pink that I was going to stamp with white and grey…and decided not to use pink. So I of course grabbed the darkest grey I own. Which was a terrible idea, because my nails looked like Wolverine claws!

I tried to fix that by adding a layer of white-tinted polish with gold flecks in it, but it only ended up looking super uneven. So then I knew I NEEDED a full-coverage stamp, but I couldn’t do black (which would have looked nice) because that is far too dark for the hospital. I settled on a lighter grey. And honestly, its ok but it certainly isn’t good! Yikes.

Colors:
~ Dark grey: Zoya – Evie
~ Sheer white: Revlon – Calla Lilly
~ Light grey: Zoya – Dove
~ Stamp: BP – L049

Sorry this is so drab, I wish I had something prettier to show today. It gets better later next week, I promise! Although, since I am taking an 8-hour long exam tomorrow, grey nails seem fitting :-/. Cya on the other side!