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?