Complicated Lace Drape

You guys, I just had a DAY (but Eva, it’s only 3pm! Yes but I woke up at 5:30, so it’s been a whole day and I am over it). Which means that today’s post will be short and sweet because I mostly want to bang my head into a wall. Repeatedly. And this mani? Not helping.

The base here is three coats of Delaney by Zoya. In the bottle this has a bit of a duochrome/multichrome finish, but that did not translate to the nail (which was pretty much as expected). This is, I think, the last of my haul from winning the Nail Art Canada holiday challenge…and of all the Zoya polishes I received, this is the one I was least excited about. So it went lest. This polish is basically a muted dull metallic purple, and I already have Zoya Gadia, which is amazing. So yah, this is three thin coats, and it looks fine but I have prettier version of this in my stash already.

For the design, I ended up doing a purple-to-white lace stamping gradient, getting bored, and adding a metric ton of dots! I think I went overboard I really need to stop trying to do lace gradients over purple, this is probably the third time I have tried something like this, and to date I have liked none of them!

Colors:
~ Purple metallic: Zoya – Delaney
~ Purple creme: L’Oreal – Royalty Reinvented
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Gold: Sally Hansen – Go for Gold
~ Stamp: BP – L084

And that’s all for today! I know it isn’t great, but I’m working off my backlog. This one and the next post are just not my favorites, but then it should get good again (I tend to edit the photos in waves of things-I-love and things-I-dislike, and we are in a dislike wave, Monday’s post was the end of a love wave). Ok. Too much train of thought. Enjoy!

Grungy Floral Lace

I don’t really know what else to call this? The background is a bit grungy and I should really not have stamped over it with lace, because it really just came out looking messy.

The base of this is my swatch test for Mauve Nudes, which I then haphazardly dry-brushed over with each color. I went, for some reason that I cannot come up with in hindsight, with a lace floral stamp? And then colored in the flowers with jelly polish and added a gold bead to the middle. I think if the background was a consistent color rather than a mess, that this would have looked good! But alas, it does not.

Colors:
~ Tan nude: Zoya – Chantal
~ Pastel nude: Essense – I Nude It
~ Peach nude: CND – Cashmere Wrap
~ Pastel mauve: KBShimmer – Caught on Tape
~ Mauve: Zoya – Rue
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Pink jelly: Zoya – Paloma
~ Red jelly: OPI – My Wish List is You
~ Orange jelly: custom made
~ Stamp: BP – L084

So, that is a lot of colors for something that looks like it has at maximum 5 colors. Oh well! At least I tried?

I think I need to stay away from lace on nudes for a while, or just lace stamps n general. The last few manis that I have tried with them just don’t end up looking good!

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. 😀