Perfectly Pinked

Ok, I really like this one. I don’t know how the colors work together or why this design caught my eye, but here we are! Honestly I think a real gold rather than a rose gold would have gone better with all the pinks…but you can hardly tell. Girly and glittery to the rescue!

Colors:
~ Rose gold: ILNP – Juliette
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Light pink: Zoya – Jordan
~ Pink: Revlon – Bubbly
~ Dark coral: Essie – Sunday Funday
~ Stamp: MoYou – Frenchy 14

Really the moral of this manicure is if you add enough glitter and colorful distraction, everything looks good. Again, this manicure should not work. I like it anyway :-D. Hope you enjoyed, and happy Friday!

Purple Lace Divided

I actually really like how this came out! This is one of those stamps that I had been wanting to use for a while, but I couldn’t figure out how simple (or complicated) i wanted to go with it. I ended up just going…purple? This really is a theme! Despite the simplicity this was fun to wear.

Colors:
~ Purple: Zoya – Abby
~ Purple metallic: Zoya – Rea
~ Stamp: BP – L084

Stamps like this make me really grateful for see-through stampers, trying to position this correctly with the old opaque stamper heads would have been absolutely impossible! Hope you all enjoyed!

Simple Mauve Lace

I wanted to see if one of the larger stamps I own could be made to stretch prettily across all my fingers. Success! Of course, nude lace stamping is never complete without some jelly accents, so this ended up a little more purple than I initially intended.

Colors:
~ Pastel mauve: KBShimmer – Caught on Tape
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Purple jelly: Zoya – Katherine
~ Stamp: BP – L084

The purple jelly had somehow migrated to the purples in my polish collection rather than the jellies (a few finishes get side aside from their color pool in my organizational setup, jellies are one of them). Luckily, I tend to remember the name of particular polishes so Katherine was easy to find! Hope you enjoyed, happy (belated) Valentine’s Day, and I hope you are all excited as I am that next week we move back to COLORS!

Simple Mixed Lace

Very simple manicure, but elegant! Sadly two of my nails broke so the edge is rounded (I don’t like my nails rounded) but this ended up looking ok despite that, somehow. This ended up being one of my favorite lace designs from the last year…maybe because the base is just slightly more interesting, but really I think it is the stamp! Anyway, these aren’t half bad :-p

Colors:
~ Nude shimmer: Sayuri – Anthos
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Stamps: BP – BC 06

Almost to valentine’s day, which means i am almost done with the boring lace nail marathon! Oh, I cannot wait to bring back colors to the blog. But I suppose if anyone is getting married and needs to pick between a bunch of similar nude and white/gold manicure this is a good little patch to come to…

Dot Floral Lace

Could this be any more boring? I don’t think so. The nude polish has the faintest hint of gold shimmer…but it doesn’t translate to the nail at all. Soooo boring.

Colors:
~ Nude: Essence – I Nude It
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Stamp: MoYou – Frenchy 14

I feel like maybe next year I should focus on more…interesting…nail designs around valentines day! Oh well, boring nude nails this year it is :-p

Faintly Floral

More to nude nails! I painted these months ago, when the hospital was, for some reason, cracking down on colorful and long nails. So for a few weeks I felt the need to blend in as much as possible. They work well for my valentines day theme though, even if these are flowers not lace!

Colors:
~ Nude with flakies: Sayuri – Anthos
~ Nude glitter: CbL – Frohe Feiertage!
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Stamp: BM – 616

I think my favorite part about these nails are the nude glitter that i used in the center of each flower. Otherwise I think this manicure would be boring…the glitter elevates it just enough! Hope you enjoyed :-p

Strips of Nude Lace

Day 2 of lace-for-valentine’s! This time around I felt the need to jazz up nude nails just a tiny bit, so you get some rose gold. I made the stamps by applying the rose gold just over the edge of the design and the white everywhere else. The end result was unbalanced, so me being me, I added some rose gold dots into the white spaces. I actually don’t hate this, for all that it is nude and boring!

Colors:
~ Nude: OPI – Be There in a Prosecco
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Rose gold: Essie – Penny Talk
~ Stamp: MoYou – Frenchy 14

Stay tuned for…more lace! And nude colors. And boring possibly-elegant things. It amazes me that I have done so many nude manicures over the last year when I gravitate so strongly towards rainbows and jewel tones! Anyway, hope you enjoyed :-p

Denuded Swirls

Today begins nude/lace nails for Valentine’s day! I didn’t set up any specific pink or heart nails, so lace will have to suffice. Unfortunately, that makes for two weeks of boring (if work-appropriate and occasionally elegant) nails!

Colors:
~ Nude: Picture Polish – Cherish
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Stamp: Moyra – 50 Ornaments 3

This one (as most of them will be) is very straight forward: nude base with a stamp! Still looks pretty enough. Hope you enjoyed!

Large Floral Lace

Random pretty manicure interlude! I realize we are only a week out from Thanksgiving and maybe I should keep posting fall-themed things, but this one was just so pretty, and the lace-like appearance with big flowers makes me think of colder weather for some reason? Probably just me. But here we are!

Colors:
~ Nude holo: CbL – Frohe Feiertage!
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Rose gold: Essie – Penny talk
~ Stamp: Moyra – 32 Nature

This manicure was embarrassingly simple but I quite like it. The color and designs came together well. Not much more to say I think, hope you enjoyed!

Red Roses and Black Lace

A member of my husband’s family was very ill, and we were preparing for the likelihood that we would have to attend a funeral within a week. With that in mind, I went for a week-and-a-half with dark, appropriately somber, nails. These nails arose from that period of time, and I am not embarrassed to say that I love them (the person in question passed away later, so these did not end up being funeral nails, merely vampy nails with a funeral in mind).

Since these were intended for a particular occasion, and to match a particular (black) outfit, I consider them somewhat fashionable, and am posing them for “fashion” day in the 31 Day Challenge!

Colors:
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Red glitter: Chirality – Ragnarok You Like a Hurricane
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Red: City Colors – Masquerade
~ Dark red: Zoya – Isla
~ Darkest red: Confetti – Masquerade Ball
~ Green: Zoya – Josie
~ Stamps: BP – L002, L003, MoYou Frenchy 14

That’s all for today! Stay tuned for some more awesome nail art on Friday. Hope you enjoyed, despite the somber tone!

Half Moon Lace

In general, I despite half moon nail art. I just don’t get it. At least make the design pointed or something fun! But just a half moon? Blegh. That said, after stalking the internet for an ungodly amount of time, I found a concept I didn’t hate to recreate for the 31 Day Challenge.

For this, I stamped the white curlicue design first, then stamped the half-moon in pink. The pink I chose was not nearly opaque enough to stamp that way, but it was just dark enough to provide a framework to freehand the actual half moon. Then it was just a bunch of dots-in-dots (as always, my favorite) and voila!

Colors:
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Pink: Essie – Sunday Funday
~ Stamps: Moyra – 50 Ornaments 3, 60 Cuts

Hope you enjoyed! As stated, this isn’t my favorite but at least it is colorful, and combines a few different techniques.

Shimmer Lace with Subtle Multichrome Accents

That is one hell of a title. But I couldn’t think of a better one! We have a pastel nude shimmery base (which is quite pretty), some lace, and then some awesome accents in a pastel multichrome and silver holo glitter. I honestly kind of love this manicure!

The base is two coats of Anthos by Sayuri, one of the monthly offerings (I cannot remember if this is from PPU or one of the other monthly polish groups). Anthos is a pastel pink that leans mauve, which is just filled with scattered holo, some tiny red glitters, and lots of translucent orange/pink flakie shards. The fact that it covers in just two coats is icing on the cake. This is a beautiful subtle sparkly polish, perfect for work! (Adding a bunch of glitter is less work-appropriate, but no one has complained in months).

Colors:
~ Nude shimmer holo: Sayuri – Anthos
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Pink pastel multichrome: POP Polish – Watermellon Bubbleslick
~ Silver holo: FUN Lacquer – 24 Karat Diamond
~ Stamp: BP – L084

For whatever reason, I just wanted to use one of the pastel slicks from POP Polish. It worked surprisingly well! Of course, Emily de Molly has made a surprisingly similar polish at this point so now I need to buy that and compare the two. I am getting off track, but so be it! Regardless, I hope you enjoyed it :-p

Bright Teal and Dark Roses

This was fun, and almost-but-not-quite perfect! Regardless of the imprecations (entirely my fault with color selection) I enjoyed wearing this! I also don’t know why I don’t actually have more floral manicures to post. What have I been painting if not flower?!

The design was inspired by @ponkle. In retrospect I wish I had used a brighter pink for the base of the roses! This ended up looking almost neon-with-goth because of the dark roses. I love it anyway. Of course, I also cheated. The dots are freehand and everything else is stamping 🙂

Colors:
~ Teal: Emily de Molly – Glee Ridden
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Light pink: Zoya – Jordan
~ Pink: Love & Beauty – Pink
~ Dark pink: Zoya – Ciara
~ Light green: Zoya – Josie
~ Dark green: Zoya – Shawn
~ Stamps: BP – L020, MoYou London – Frenchy 14

Short and sweet today, but with pretty pictures of course! Hope you enjoyed!

Hearts and Lace

This is so pink. SO PINK. It is too pink! I used a pink with a bit of glitter and added a pink with MORE glitter and then hearts. So, Valentine’s appropriate but it kinda made me cringe to wear it!

This was two thin coats of Mae by Zoya. It’s not a bad polish, two coats is great coverage…I just don’t love it. The glitter flakes are subtle and the shimmer has very little depth. It was an easy polish to wear, but if I want a shimmery pink I either want a lot of metallic depth or a glitter madhouse. I ended up gradienting on (mostly with dry-brush since trying to use a makeup sponge just transferred the darn glitters) Alegra by Zoya, which is a true deeper pink glitter polish, and one of my first ever Zoyas. I have to say, comparing Mae to Alegra, Mae just doesn’t measure up!

Colors:
~ Pink with shimmer: Zoya – Mae
~ Pink glitter: Zoya – Alegra
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Stamp: MoYou London – Frenchy 14

Of course I saw a heart stamp and figured my nails were already pink, so why not? And then the matching french tip stamps (I do rather love that this plate has both angled tip patterns and straight across tip patterns). SO MANY HEARTS. This is probably the most girly nail art I’ve worn this year.

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.