Golden Lace

You guys. THIS POLISH. I feel like I say that about every polish that I pick up from the Polish Pickup Pack! I’ve been buying ~2 polishes every other month, since for some reason they seem to alternate off-months with things I love. I need to stop buying so many new polishes but each is more strange and incredible than the last!

This is one I was hesitant about, since some of the swatch photos looked incredible and others looked forgettable. However, I have never owned a CbL polish and have always wanted one…and they are known for their holos! So I went with it and I am glad I did. This polish is awesome!

What you see here are three thin coats of Frohe Feiertage! (which I will never ever spell correctly without looking at the bottle). I probably could have gotten away with two if I was more careful. the polish dries a bit gritty, so this is with top coat. That said, this is such a pretty polish! It is from the December Polish Pickup, and thus is no longer available, but if you like funky cool polishes I recommend you join the fb group! You never have to buy anything if you don’t want.

The weird thing about this polish is that I couldn’t actuality tell what color it was. Supposedly the base is a silver holo, but honestly it is so full of shimmer and glitter that it isn’t remotely silver! The polish is swimming with gold and silver glitters, and packed with so much copper-to-gold shimmer that the overall look is a rose gold with flecks of gold and silver in it. I bought it to replace one of my favorite Mentality polishes when it turned out that Mentality was destroying my nails -_- and it is, if anything, much prettier than that darn polish!

Colors:
~ Rose gold glitter: Colors by Llarowe – Frohe Feiertage!
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamp: Born Pretty – L020

Of course, being me, I ended up adding a floral lace stamp over the polish because I didn’t want to cover too much of it. Hope you enjoyed!

Russet Hearts of Lace

This mani ended up being a lot of fun! There are no stereotypical Valentine’s colors, but there are hearts and it is somewhat elegant. Subverting tropes!

I wanted to see what a lace patterned stamp would look like over a magnetic polish, and I figured my copper/burgundy magnetic was perfect for Valentine’s Day! It also helped that I was sent the ideal stamping plate to review from the Born Pretty Store (I love lace stamps, and this plate is chock full of them), AND  was sent two new magnets to play with!

For years, I have only had one, somewhat weak, wavy-patterned magnet to work with. Now, I have three! The one I am showing here is a simple diagonal line design, but it is very strong and the lines come through beautifully. I am so happy. This magnet is from the Born Pretty Store as well, and is listed as “N02”, on sale for $1.49. I should probably mention that it comes with a sticker over it with the pattern printed on it…that sticker is what holds the magnet to it’s positioning stick (so don’t remove it like I did or the magnet falls right out). Clearly, the magnet is strong enough to work through the sticker!

As mentioned above, I also love this stamp. The plate has a whole bunch of lace designs, and this one is entirely hearts! There are three large hearts (which mostly face in different directions from each other) so I used each of them on a nail, ergo all my nails are slightly different! I like it. I am also officially a fan of stamping lace over magnetic designs! The stamp is on sale right now for $2.99 over at the Born Pretty Store.

Colors:
~ Copper: Masura – Evening Before the Fireplace
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamp: BP – L084

That’s all for today! My last heart-themed post will go up on Wednesday, and then we can move onto things like flowers and geometric patterns. :-p I also realized that due to my ridiculous backlog of posts, the actual post where this is a new polish hasn’t gone up yet! Whoops. At some point you’ll see this same base with a wavy design but suffice to say I wanted some multicolored magnet polishes and bought two Masuras….and they are (as expected) amazing. Sorry!

Bordered Blue Swirls

I bought this awesome indigo dress with a lace overlay, so I had to create some matching nails when I wore it to a wedding! I wish I had a photo of the dress ready to go, it was quite pretty 🙂

This is basically just blue and black quasi-lace. I thought lace alone was boring, so I only put that on my accent nails. The other nails got a thick black border and a swirly center. The blue polish I used as a base is one of those semi-metallic polishes that has a lot more depth depending on the angle, so they came out looking cool…but only if you got them in the right light! Otherwise the pattern was almost too subtle.

I had actually forgotten what a pretty color Blue my Mind is…but then I remembered that I hate how wide the Sally Hansen brushes are. Ugh!

Colors:
~ Blue: Sally Hansen – Blue my Mind
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamps: EdM – 22, BP – L020

That’s all for today! Friday’s post is significantly more colorful, I promise.

Grey Trimmed Lace

Ok, so this is super boring. Like really really painfully boring. That said, it came out nicely and no one noticed any of the art in the hospital so I’ll cal it a win. It also gave me a chance to use that darn stamp…its been staring at me for years and I never figured out why someone would need some angled lace pattern!

I don’t have much to say about this. Pink. White. Grey. Some lace. I sound like a broken record…I really hope my current stint in the outpatient clinics is more forgiving of manis! I think it will be (I am barely getting graded for this, it is for my own edification).

Colors:

~ Pink: ULTA – Baby Doll

~ Grey: Zoya – Dove

~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White

~ Stamp: BM – 323

I hate posing for bottle photos with anything but Zoya or rectangular bottles. I don’t know why, but the shape fits well in my hand. This awkward straight-edged bottle? Not so much. So, thank you brands like Zoya and Emily de Molly for making easy-to-hold bottles :-p

Thats it for boring pink manis! There is one more subtle mani but at it least it isn’t pink or nude. Oy.

Dressed in Lace

This may or may not have been directly inspired by the tagline on Cherish. And I may or may not almost have added some 3D diamond-esque rhinestones and decided that would ruin the look. You’ll never know!

This is one of the rare occasions when, despite painting both hands, you are mostly only seeing my right! When I was in the hospital I could not go off-handed (when the nail polish on one hand is different than the other) because that would be incredibly unprofessional…but the designs were seldom perfectly identical! In the case of this mani, I was moving around the stamped image from nail to nail and I actually liked my right hand better (mostly cause of my pointer finger).

Regardless, this is a bit of a boring mani, sorry! That said, after this post…there are only two hospital manis left! For a while at least (I go back to the clinic next month but there is quite a back-log of posts during my month of free time!).

Colors

~ Nude: Picture Polish – Cherish

~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White

~ Stamp: BM – 04

So yep, a bit boring, but so be it. I’ll likely get at least one of the remaining boring ones out of the way next week so we can move on to RAINBOWS and SPARKLES. 😀

Lace Negative Space

This mani is a bit odd…it looked awesome in person, but the photos all came out weird! I’ve posted the ones that look best, but it still doesn’t capture how cool these actually looked.

The art itself was inspired by Baroquen Nails, as all the best negative space manis are 🙂

To make this, I started with two coats of a sheer nude, then two coats of a frankened sheer black jelly (making the right tone of jelly took forever!). Next, I stamped the lacy pattern, and then freehanded the red. Finally, I added the 3D bits!

Colors
~ Nude: Sephora X – Marvelous
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Red: Confetti – Maquerade Ball
~ Stamp: BC – 10

Hope you enjoyed! I doubt you’ll be seeing much negative space in the near future, as of right now my nails are a blotchy odd mix of yellow and bright pink. Silly staining polish!

Simple Lace Nubbins

Ah, a throw-back to when I had to wear girly subtle nails to the clinic. Luckily, I have been able to get away with wearing more colorful nail art (as long as it looks professional) for the past month, but this was sitting in my folder so I wanted to get it posted!

There isn’t much to say about this. Its a purple-nude polish with a white lace stamp. It isn’t bad looking, it just isn’t at all exciting!

Colors
~ Nude: Zoya – Rue
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Stamp: BP – L020

I am at least glad that I’ve been stockpiling nude and nude-ish polishes, since I imagine once I actually start residency I will need to pretend I am a fairly normal polishing person who only wears nudes, pinks, and reds…rather than the purple/blue/teal/green loving fanatic that I am. Ugh!

That’s all for today! Next week should bring something more exciting than this…although if you want exciting I think Wednesday’s post counts :-p