Monochrome Color-blocking

I’ve been wanting to do a comparison between my blue-grey-with-gold-glitter polishes for a while now, and I finally figured out a way to do it that shouldn’t get me in trouble in the hospital! Elegant color blocks.

The design was loosely inspired off Sassy Shelly’s post, obviously with different colors. I ended up doing different design on my two hands, mostly because I didn’t feel like worrying overly much about line placement on my right hand (which as you can see currently has teeny tiny rounded nails).

Sadly, I actually think I like the random placement from my right hand better than the planned-out design on my left! Whoops.

Regardless, as you can see, the lightest polish (Memory Palace by Cadillacquer) is a pale grey with a blue tint, holo sparkle, and copper flakies. The medium dark (Timeless Vow by ILNP) is a blue with a grey tint, completely filled with holo sparkle and a smattering of gold flakies…it is more of a metallic-finish than the other two. The darkest (Yuna by Zoya) is a deep grey with a blue tint, filled with gold-green shimmer.

I thought the sparkle in these colors would all be complementary, but they are actually all different! I still think the design works :-). I also don’t think I had ever quite focused on the pretty golden flecks in Yuna before!

So there you have it! Memory Palace and Yuna are both grey-with-blue, while Timeless Vow is a blue-with-grey that has a much more metallic/holo finish. I am glad I own them all!

Hope you enjoyed!

Wafting Folds

Something about monochrome is just so…elegant. I usually prefer using colors, but I had a hunch that I could get away with a bit more of a daring design in the hospital if I stuck to a colorless (but not glitter-less) design.

I basically just made a gradient of my subtly holo monochrome polishes, and then stamped over them in black. I decided to alight the ‘folds’ in the stamp along the length of my nail, just for fun.

So, very simple mani in the end, but I like it! Its far classier than most of my more recent attempts 🙂

Colors
~ White: Emily de Molly – Crystal Crown
~ Grey: A England – Fated Prince
~ Black: Wet n’ Wild – Black Creme
~ Stamp: BP – 21

Hope you enjoyed! We will return to my regular method of Paint Things Colorful with the next post, I promise!

Forest Vines

It’s a Monday, which means more nail art! This particular post has it’s origin in a rather weird place: my name.

I decided that, since Zoya makes the best creme polishes, it was about time that I buy the polish closest to my name which happens to be Evvie. Apparently there used to be a polish named Eva (!!!) but it has been discontinued so I won’t ever own the polish that is ACTUALLY my name. But this is close!

Shown here is two thin coats of Evvie a darkened teal-grey. It is not a color I would ever choose normally, because I tend to go for jewel toned dark colors, not greyed-out dark colors! That being said, this polish ended up being really elegant and somewhat subtle. I like it!

The art was inspired by La Paillette Frondeuse. However, once I was done free-handing the vines and flowers on my left hand, I decided I didn’t want to spend all that time replicating it on my Cinderella hand…so I tried to stamp instead! The colors came out a bit different (because stamping) but I actually like it better! Unfortunately, I didn’t decide that until after I had removed the mani so I don’t have as many photos of my right hand as I would like.

Colors
~ Grey: Zoya – Evvie
~ Green: Zoya – Tilda
~ Light green: Zoya – Tiana
~ Blue: Zoya – Yummy
~ Light blue: Zoya – Blu
~ Pink: Sinful Colors – Pink Forever
~ Light pink: ULTA – Baby Doll
~ White: Wet n’ Wild – French White Creme

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed! It’s probably odd that I bought a polish just because it has a name similar to one of my nicknames, but still. It’s fun!

Interwoven

I can’t tell if I love or hate the random disappearing nature of this mani…the silver is there one second and gone the next! You can see what I’m talking about best in the sunlight photos.

Regardless, this mani came out alright! I didn’t want the lines matching up exactly and I was stuck using different angles from the same not-so-large image, but it works somehow! Even if you can’t see part of the design half the time :-p

It also gave me an excuse to use Black Satin by OPI again…I don’t think I’ve touched this polish in the last year! Whoops! I would say I use polishes that I won less than polishes that I bought (simply cause I think of the ones I paid for more) but I don’t think that’s universally true…I just don’t wear that much almost-black!

Colors
~ Dark grey: OPI – Black Satin
~ Light grey: Zoya – Dove
~ Silver: Revlon – Metallic
~ Stamp: BP – L050

Anyway I hope you guys enjoyed, and happy Friday!

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!

Grey Marble

A somewhat simple mani (made by smushing colors on with saran wrap), and then some striping tape! It ended up looking far more elegant than I intended it to 🙂

The base here is a pale grey creme called Dove, by Zoya. I’ve been in the market for a light grey for a while, since my last one ran out….around 2 years ago. Whoops. Dove covered perfectly in two thin coats, and reminded me why I love buying cremes from Zoya! This isn’t a shocking color, but it is pretty. Not that many brands have a grey creme in stock at all times, so I’m glad Zoya does!

The art itself was my (successful?) attempt to make my nails look like marbled granite. I know most people start with a white base (and if I ever do this again, I am likely to as well) when they try to create a white/grey/silver granite look but I wanted to see what it looked like all grey! And I needed to use Dove in a way that would look cool but be subtle enough for work.

I actually took a whole bunch of photos before adding the striping tape, because I wasn’t sure if I would like it. I really did though, so there are no photos here of the silver-less manicure!

Colors
~ White: Wet n’ Wild – French White Creme
~ Light grey: Zoya – Dove
~ Dark grey: WOW – #333
~ Black: Wet n’ Wild – Black Creme
~ Silver: A England – Excalibur

Hope you enjoyed! Stay tuned for another swatch on Wednesday.

Tribal Memories

Another swatch post today, with some fun (but simple) stamps!

The base here is my first ever Cadillacquer polish, and I have to say I really like the color! This is three coats of Memory Palace it does not have the densest pigment (hence needing 3 coats) but it went on like a dream and dried at a normal speed. However, the bottle brush was a bit too wide and took some maneuvering to not flood my cuticles.

Memory Palace is a pale blue-grey with golden flakes and subtle holo shimmer. I need to do a comparison between this and Timeless Vow from ILNP, since both are blue-grey with holo (although just from the bottles, Memory Palace is  much paler, almost a white-grey-blue than Timesless Vow, and Timeless Vow has more holo).

I’m not going to lie and say I don’t love this polish for its name…although I thought it was inspired by Sherlock and it turns out the actual inspiration was Hannibal, whoops!

Colors
~ Blue grey: Cadillacquer – Memory Palace
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold
~ White: Wet n’ Wild – French White Creme
~ Stamp: BM – 605

That’s all for today! Hope you enjoyed 🙂