Dark Laces

I have been sitting on this mani for months, but I figured fall was a good time to post it! I loved doing this one, but the laces took forever, so that I ran out of time to add enough top coat to smooth everything out. So, I am sorry for the slightly uneven finish!

The design was inspired by @banicured_ although her’s were all in white. The laces stand out more against the white, but there is nothing like a jewel-toned ombre to make me happy! Also, I wanted to see how OPI’s Stay Off the Lawn stacked up against some of my other darker colors.

It makes me a little sad how infrequently I can get away with doing manicures that show even a bit of my naked nail. I wear too much blue (and green, and even certain pinks) and my poor nails look like splatter paintings. I had to wait until they cleared up just to do this!

Colors:
~ Sheer: Sephora X – Marvelous
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Green: Zoya – Shawn
~ Teal: OPI – Stay Off the Lawn!!
~ Blue: Maybelline – Shocking Seas
~ Purple: L’Oreal – Paparazzi Pleaser
~ Pink: Zoya – Margo

That’s all for today! Hope you enjoyed 🙂

Let Me Corset

Strange title, but it does make sense! I picked up a bunch of new A England polishes (ok, 3) during the color4nails sale, and I made Let Me In into a corset!

Let me in is basically a one-coater deep berry pink holographic polish. I LOVE A England polishes…they are almost all one-coaters and go on like butter. I did two coats here because I dinged a nail, not because I needed it.

I ended up free handing a corset design a-la-badgirlnails, and adding some pseudo lace tips to the end of my other nails to make them match better. I wish I had used Let Me In for the corset as well! I figured it would work better as a creme. Oops!

Colors
~ Pink holo: A England – Let Me In
~ Nude: Zoya – Chantal
~ Pink: Zoya – Veronica
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black

Hope you enjoyed! Stay tuned for more glittery A England holos in the future!

Corset me Up

I love renaissance fairs. For the first time this year, I have a costume! It is purple and white and beautiful. Of course, I had to design my nails to match my outfit, so I present purple corset nails!

And my outfit!

I actually designed these while looking at the corset (it was sitting next to me). The colors match perfectly! I even put together a tutorial (but be warned, this is not for the faint of heart. It took me almost an hour and I work rather fast).

1. Start with a purple base or a white base (for accent nails)
2. On the purple, paint a thick line of white down the middle of the nail using the polish brush (if needed, touch up the line with a fine nail art brush). On the accent nails, draw in a corset shape in purple, leaving white in the middle and along the top and bottom of the nail
3. On all nails, add in a decorative border just inside the darker purple coset part, using a lighter purple (I did this using a small dotting tool and adding dots right next to each other)
4. Then add larger silver dots (the grommets)
5. Connect the silver dots using darker purple lines. To finish it off, add a bow, or let the free straps hang loose! Cover with top coat, and voila!

I really like these nails. It has been a really long time since I last did anything lace-related, and my fine manual dexterity has (dare I say it) improved somewhat :-p

Unfortunately, my darkest purple smears with top coat. I think I knew that about this particular polish. Oops!

Sorry for the photo-spam, I just really liked this design!

Colors

• White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
• Light purple: Sally Hansen – Lacey Lilac
• Purple: Zoya – Malia
• Dark purple: Sinful Colors – Let’s Talk
• Silver: A England – Excalibur

Hope you enjoyed!