Jewish Star-Flakes

Happy Hanukkah! It is always a struggle to think of a unique and pretty set of nails for Hanukkah. Candles alone look a bit silly, Jewish stars are hard to paint, and menorahs are overdone. I did a menorah anyway. But then I had a genius idea…many of the snowflake stamps I have look like 6-pointed stars, so what if I hand-drew a Jewish star around the snowflake?! Genius. It looks a bit silly, but I was happy. It also helps that my base polish (intended to look like flecks of candle spark) was stunning!

Colors:

~ Blue with iridescent squares: Emily de Molly – LE 302
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Orange shimmer: POP Polish – Slick Day of Summer
~ Yellow: Toyoko – Yellow
~ Stamps: Nicole Diary – 120

I finally purchased a Hanukkah-specific stamping plate (maybe the only of its kind?) so for next year I will have more uniform nail art, and easier to paint. Stamps really do make life easier. Enjoy!

Apples and Honey

Happy Jewish New Year! I went looking for some inspiration nail art for Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, and came up with very little. It is tradition to dip apples in honey as a wish for a sweet and whole new year, so I decided I would make some apple and honey nails! Hopefully this can inspire other people down the line, who knows. It has also been a while since I have done any freehand nail art, even simple stuff, so I was excited to paint these.

Colors:
~ Red: Zoya – Sooki
~ Nude: Essence – I Nude It
~ Brown: Zoya – Dea
~ Green: Zoya – Tilda
~ Gold: Revlon – Hypnotize
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White

One of the emeritus professors at my university gifted me some honey, so I am going to try my hand at making honey cake tonight. We will see how it goes! I don’t think anyone from my lab follows this blog, but we will know later this week if my results are edible. Enjoy!

Jewish Stained Glass

I don’t know exactly where I was going with this, but I ended up creating a stained glass-like base using blobbed on jelly polishes, and then putting a jewish star stamp (highlighted in silver) over it. And I actually really love the end result? Since today is Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the jewish year, I figured it was fitting to post this nail art today.

Colors:
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Pink jelly: Zoya – Paloma
~ Yellow jelly: Love & Beauty – Yellow
~ Light yellow jelly: Esmalta da Kelly – Yellow Soap Bubbles
~ Teal jelly: Zoya – Frida
~ Silver: Nails Inc – South Kensington
~ Silver glitter: FUN Lacquer – 24 Karat Diamond
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamp: BP – L049

Traditionally on Yom Kippur, jews are supposed to fast and atone for the sins of the past year, to start the new year (which began 11 days ago with Rosh Hashanah) with a clean slate. Since I am working in the hospital today, I will be eating so I do not pass out, but saving a life is a good deed so I am exempt from fasting! Anyway, hope you enjoyed and easy fast for all the jews reading this!

Pink Jewish Stars

I also painted these for Hannukah, so they had to be both jewish and weird! And as a result I am also using them for passover :-p. I don’t know how I ended up with this color combination, and honestly I wish I had used a white stamping base not a silver one, but the end result was kinda cool! I don’t think I had noticed before that this particular stamp contained a jewish star, but now I have a hunch that at least once a year I will be doing a similar design to this but with different color combinations.

Colors:
~ Light blue: Zoya – Rocky
~ Blue: Zoya – Ling
~ Dark blue: Zoya – Sia
~ Blurple: Zoya – Danielle
~ Silver: A England – Excalibur
~ Pink: Revlon – Bubbly
~ Stamp: EdM 17

Anyway, hope you enjoyed! And sorry for only two posts this week, I just got back from Greece and jet lag is real. As is me playing catch-up on Facebook and IG and posting all the blog posts from the past two weeks to my other sites since I definitely did not do that while I was on vacation!

Jewish Geometry

I don’t even know. I painted these a few months ago over hanukkah, I wanted blue and silver and a jewish star, and I just sort of ran with the design and freehanded some geometric patterns. It is far from perfect but the whole thing took 30 minutes so I am counting it as a win! Since I don’t otherwise have jew-leaning nails to post during passover, these are now passover nails! Voila.

Colors:
~ Blue metallic: Sally Hansen – Blue my Mind
~ Silver: Darling Diva – Diamond
~ Blue glitter: KBShimmer – Gaia

Very simple but they do get the job done! And will serve as a reminder while I (sadly) consume matzah for the next few days (yuck). This week is going to be a sad food week in my house, with my husband trying to do orthodox lent and not eat meat, and me off most carbs until saturday!

Hanukiah

Technically a menorah is a hanukiah specifically made for Haunkkah, and these candle holders on my nails have 14 candles so whoops! Anyway. I wanted to do something with striping tape that was evocative of Hanukkah without being quite as in-your-face as painting menorahs (again). So I settled on a candle-like striping tape gradient of silver to blue, and then aded some jewish stars. So much for not in your face!

Colors:
~ Blue: ILNP – Downpour
~ Silver: Revlon – Metallic

In terms of colors this was very easy! For a two color mani it does look great if I say so myself :-p Anyway, happy Hanukkah and enjoy all the fried foods you can stomach for the next few days! Hope you all enjoyed.

Magen David

Today you guys get my only holiday-appropriate mani! Happy Hanukkah! This was more complicated than it needed to be, since I had to pull out all the diamond glitters from the polish and then place them.

I started with one coat of Midnight Swim on all my nails, since it is both super-saturated and a rather nice color! All the nails but my accent nails then got two coats of Turbulence, which remains my favorite polish ever. Seriously. If you like glitter polishes, buy this!!!

While Turbulence was drying, I hand-picked some of the diamond glitters out of the polish and wiped them on a paper towel before sticking them onto my nail in a Star of David pattern (that’s what Magen David means- star/shield of David). That was not exciting enough, so I added some other glitters and then outlined the star in silver!

Colors
~ Dark blue: Maybelline – Midnight Swim
~ Blue glitter mix: Emily de Molly – Turbulence
~ Silver: Revlon – Metallic

Hope you enjoyed! I actually DO get to eat latkes tonight with a friend! 😀

Matzoh

Happy friday, and Passover! Yes, I know Passover started a week ago…but seeing as I painted these a week ago I’m going to consider this decent turn-around! I present my Passover nails: matzoh!

I got the idea from Wacki Laki although hers really look more matzoh-like than mine. Ooops! I need more light browns apparently!

I started with a base of Arriccio by Mentality, a lovely matte slightly textured polish that worked perfectly! I sponged on a bit of Gesso (from the same collection) to lighten the background a bit…and then went to work with two shades of brown and a black. My matzoh is a bit more burnt than normal, but its going to taste horrible (burnt or otherwise) so I don’t know that it matters. Gross.

Colors
~ Nude: Mentality – Arriccio
~ Light nude: Mentality – Gesso
~ Light brown: Zoya – Dea
~ Dark brown: Zoya – Louise
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black

I am so close to being able to eat cake and bagels again! Oh Sunday….anyway, hope you enjoyed!