Pastel Splotch Circuit

I have no idea where I was going with this, no plan, and no purpose (that appears to be a trend this week). I just went for it! I painted each nail a different pastel color, splotched the other colors over the base color, and then stamped in a white geometric-ish pattern. The end result was cool if confusing.

Colors:
~ Pastel purple: Zoya – Abby
~ Pastel pink: Zoya – Jordan
~ Pastel orange: Zoya – Cole
~ Pastel yellow: Maybelline – Citrus Collide
~ Pastel green: Zoya – Tiana
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Stamp: EdM – 11

You may also ask why I featured the entire rainbow EXCEPT for blue. I grabbed a nail polish for each nail (5 in total) and then didn’t have a blue nail. I absolutely should have put blue on anyway, but I did not do that. So here we are!

Pastel Rainbow Rose

It is time for (slightly?) valentines-themed nail art! So today there are more flowers. I started with a super shimmer pastel foil multichrome, and then picked all the colors it reflected and made a loose freehand rose! The end result looked surprisingly incredible, especially when my nails shifted or caught the light and all the colors reflected in the background. Unfortunately all of that detail doesn’t come through in a static image, but it still looks pretty!

Colors:
~ Pink foil chrome: POP polish – Watermelon Bubbleslick
~ Pastel purple: Zoya – Abby
~ Pastel pink: Zoya – Jordan
~ Pastel orange: Zoya – Cole
~ Pastel yellow: Maybelline – Citrus Collide
~ Pastel green: Zoya – Tiana

The nails honestly get increasingly absurd from here; turns out I don’t paint with much in the way of pink, and I haven’t done many hearts in the last year either! Oops. Enjoy anyway?

Under the Sea

No, this is not a Little Mermaid reference, although it should be! This is instead a red-tinged ocean manicure :-D. And since today’s theme in the 31 day challenge was ‘inspired by a song’ I figured it fit! Unfortunately the stamping plate that has the fish is somewhat under-etched…so I stamped 2-3 times over each fish design which is why the edges are rather fuzzy. That said, I love clear stampers!

Colors:
~ Royal blue (base): Zoya – Ibiza
~ Blue with red shimmer: Illyrian – Narrow Sea
~ Green: Essie – the More the Merrier
~ Pastel blue: Zoya – Blu
~ Blue: Zoya – Yummy
~ Darker blue: Maybelline – Shocking Seas
~ Light teal: L’oreal – Not a Cloud in Sight
~ Teal: Zoya – Rocky
~ Stamps: hehe – 012, UC – Lovely Leaves 2

I really love the overall color pallet and look of this design, although I do wish my fish stamps worked better. I might need more stamps (ha!). Anyway, hope you enjoyed! It is so weird to think that we are entering the final few days of the 31 day challenge for this year!

Sunflower Morning

Omg I love this manicure! Look at the detailed stamp! And those ladybugs! This is basically the perfect summer manicure and I am proud of myself. It helps that the stamped worked perfectly (that happens to rarely!) and that the base color somehow just complimented the whole thing. I feel as though I usually reach for a complicated holo/glitter background and it ends up detracting from the final design! But this totally worked. Score 1 to Eva!

Colors:
~ Pink holo: Femme Fatale – Mr Pinchy
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Light yellow: Maybelline – Citrus Collide
~ Yellow: OPI – Never a Dulles Moment
~ Green: Zoya – Tilda
~ Dark brown: Zoya – Louise
~ Light brown: Zoya – Flynn
~ Red: Pure Ice – Siren
~ Stamp: Nicole Diary – L21

I wanted to post a link to the born pretty store plate because it worked so darn well…but they stopped carrying it! I guess the good ones sell out fast. Anyway, hope that you enjoyed this summer nail art, stay tuned for more this week!

Microbes

You guys, this stamping plate is AMAZING. I don’t always but something from the Polish Pickup when it goes live monthly, but when I saw this stamping plate I HAD TO HAVE IT. Brains and test tubes and pi and microbes and omg I am so happy. Also, this was a super fun polish so there is that. (Almost) this entire manicure is PPU 😀

As mentioned the base here is a new polish from Polish Pickup, Salt Lake Serenity by Painted Polish. It is a very pretty dusky purple jelly swimming with flakies that shift from pink to orange to green. I am a sucker for dusky purple and anything with flakies, so here we are! This is three thin coats (I could have gotten away with two) and I have to say, this manicure lasted for a full 7 days. I don’t know if its because I took time in between coats (which lets be honest I don’t usually have time to do) or if the polish just agreed with me, but I love it!

Colors:
~ Purple flakies: Painted Polish – Salt Lake Serenity
~ Pastel teal: Maybelline – Green with Envy
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamp: Hit the Bottle – For the Love of Science

I also figured now was a good time for a PSA to the nail art world keep wearing your masks and washing your hands! We are close to being able to really get back to living our lives but we have to keep trying and being safe. Good luck to all of you getting the vaccine! I swear it ins’t that painful. You’ve got this 😀

Blocking Pink Blooms

You guys I have no idea where I was going with this. I wanted to make a green gradient, so I did. Then I wanted to add some geometric black lines, so I did. I decided that wasn’t good enough, so I decided to add some complicated flowers, so I did. This is the end result. The black lines did not come out as dark as I wanted so I went over quite a few of them myself (which is why they are a bit irregular) but it also allowed me to make some go on top of and others underneath the flowers! The end result is very strange, but for some reason my husband loved it?

The base beneath all this nonsense is a new-to-me neon green polish called Race Against Slime by KBShimmer. It is a very nice very bright green! This is two coats. It was slightly thick (as one expects from a neon) and dried down semi-matte, so it will need a shiny top coat. Overall though, decent application and excellent saturation!

Colors:
~ Neon green: KBShimmer – Race Against Slime
~ Pastel green: Maybelline – Green with Envy
~ Green: Zoya – Shawn
~ Dark green: Sinful Colors – Last Chance
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Light pink: Revlon – Bubbly
~ Dark pink: Zoya – Kelsey
~ Stamps: Nicole Diary – L21

All the flowers are from a stamping plate that I THINK I have shown before, but on the off chance that I have not, here is the link. Lots of leaves and flowers and it picks up quite nicely! Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this neon pink/green confusion of a manicure! And happy inauguration day 😀 😀

Butterflies on Pink

In retrospect I have no idea why I went with a bright pink base for this manicure, I think something a bit more subtle might have looked better! That said, this ended up colorful and fun. I also ended up using most of my bright yellows, greens, and oranges all in one place, so that was fun? I wanted to post this in 2020, and since we have entered October I figured this was my last chance! Time to start on fall manis next week 😀

Colors:
~ Pink: Zoya – Jordan
~ Shimmer: Different Dimension – Intergalactic Dolphin
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Pastel yellow: Maybelline – Citrus Collide
~ Neon yellow: Love & Beauty – Yellow
~ Yellow: OPI – Never a Dulles Moment
~ Pastel orange: Forumla X – Incandescent 
~ Orange: Zoya – Thandie
~ Dark orange: Essie – Playing Koi 
~ Pastel green: OPI – Did It On ‘Em
~ Green: Zoya – Tilda
~ Stamps: Nicole Diary – L21

This manicure features a set of stamps from a plate sent to me for review from Born Pretty, the Nicole Diary stamping plate L21. It has a lot of fantastic leaves and flowers, and seems to be right up the alley of what everyone else is doing (lots of leaves). You can find it here for $6.99. Anyway, hope you enjoyed the last of summer manicure!

Neon Bonds

This manicure ended up far exceeding my expectations. I saw a super pretty accent nail (by an artist that I can no longer find, and despite KNOWING that I saved it on either pinterest or IG it is just gone, sorry original artist!) and decided I needed to make it happen. Instead of free-handing lines, I decided to paint a bunch of polish onto one of my larger stampers (although I could have just used my mat), wait for it to try, and then cut it into strips. The strips were imperfectly sized but not hard to work with, and they gave the end design some fascinating depth! I almost wish I had taken photos before top coat. Of course, I then finished it with matte coat because that is what the original artist had done. I do love it, but the depth is lost! I am posting it today because it reminds me of the LGBT flag, and that deserves to be on my blog for the 31 day challenge Flag Day.

Colors:
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Neon pink: Zoya – Kelsey
~ Neon orange: Nubar – Hot Orange
~ Neon pastel yellow: Maybelline – Citrus Collide
~ Neon green: Salon Perfect – Loopy Lime
~ Blue: Zoya – Yummy
~ Purple: Zoya – Malia

I repeated the same basic pattern on my thumb, and then was at a loss. The original design called for a matte black pinky and shiny neon orange pointer and middle fingers, but I am morally opposed to mixing gloss and matte nails. I also don’t like having that many boring empty nails. I ended up playing with adding stripes of color vs black vs a mix to the other nails, but it looked too busy. I settled on this, two simple black stripes of different sizes on one nail. Of course, I matted the whole thing as well. This was a surprisingly quick manicure, mostly because once the nail were ready for the stripes, the polish was already dry, and there was no free-handing at all. Just scissors and some creative cutting! Hope you enjoyed! 

Orange Ombre Crests

I don’t know that I have ever done an orange ombre. To be fair, I don’t know that I would have had enough polishes to even attempt this until recently…and even so I need a new pastel orange, this one is officially empty! I decided of course that ombre wasn’t enough to quality as nail art, so I added a white stamp (that shows up better over the darker colors) and voila!

Colors:
~ Pastel orange: Maybelline – Bleached in Peach
~ Light orange: KBShimmer – Papaya Don’t Preach
~ Coral: L’oreal – Orange you Jealous?
~ Bright orange/pink: WOW – #371
~ Pink: Zoya – Kelsey
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Stamp: BC – 04

Sadly, the polish on my ring finger (the KBShimmer one) is so neon that it bleaches itself in photos. I tried to bring out the color a bit more, but I don’t know if I succeeded! The ombre was really quite fun. I always want to do gradients instead, but this showcases the colors better and is much much easier! I’ll have to keep that in mind :-p. Hope you enjoyed!

Dark Indian Corn

I made two styles of indian corn, this is the darker version! You saw the lighter version a week ago. I started with a yellow base and dry-brushed on a lighter shade of yellow. Then I stamped with white, and vaguely colored in some corn bits with grey and red. Then I stamped again in brown. Sadly my brown stamp was not nearly as opaque as I would have liked!

Colors:
~ Yellow: OPI – Never a Dulles Momen
~ Light yellow: Maybelline – Citrus Collide
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Red: OPI – Vision of Love
~ Grey: WOW – #333
~ Brown: Zoya – Flynn
~ Dark brown: Zoya – Dea
~ Stamp: Moyra – 32 Nature

The husk is hand-painted, but it doesn’t make up for the fact that neither the white nor the brown were dark enough to work. Maybe if I had actually colored in the corn kernels on the stamper this would have worked better, but as it stands it just looks messy. Oh well, other corn for the win! What are your thoughts?

Light Indian Corn

I made two styles of indian corn and this is the lighter one! The other one will likely be posted in the next two weeks. This one was made using a light brown base, over which I stamped the corn image in white. When that was dry, I then smushed a bunch of colors (yellow, light yellow, red, and grey) onto the stamping plate and stamped over the white with the colors. The end result is less identifiably corn, but still cool! However, it looked too pastel, so I used a yellow jelly polish over the top to deepen the colors.

Colors:
~ Yellow: OPI – Never a Dulles Momen
~ Light yellow: Maybelline – Citrus Collide
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Red: OPI – Vision of Love
~ Grey: WOW – #333
~ Brown: Zoya – Flynn
~ Dark brown: Zoya – Dea
~ Pale nude: Sephora X – Marvelous
~ Yellow jelly: Esmalta da Kelly – Yellow Soap Bubble
~ Stamp: Moyra – 32 Nature

Of course, one cannot just have kernels, so I added some hand-painted husks. Overall this was quite fun to make and wear, and I enjoyed comparing the two manicures! You guys will have to let me know (after you see the other one) which one you prefer! Hope you enjoyed 🙂

Fall-themed Roses

I went to a wedding where the bridesmaids were all dressed in different fall colors, and it was stunning! My assigned color was red, but the colors ranged from coral and orange through a deep plum. Of course, I painted my nails to match :-). Oddly enough, the only roses in the actual bouquets (which I helped make) were orange! Go figure.

Colors:
~ Red holo: A England – Rosebower
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Light orange: Maybelline – Bleached in Peach
~ Orange: OPI – Freedom of Peach
~ Dark orange: ULTA – Sun of a Gun
~ Light purple: Zoya – Malia
~ Purple: Zoya – Landon
~ Dark purple: Zoya – Lael
~ Red: OPI – All I want for Christmas (is OPI)
~ Dark red: OPI – Visions of Love
~ Green: Zoya – Tilda
~ Dark green: Zoya – Shawn
~ Stamp: BM – 209

Hope you enjoyed! It feels like I should be moving on to winter manicures…its been below 40 for the past few days even though Thanksgiving hasn’t happened yet!

Green and Gold Undulation

There are so many awesome things about this manicure, where to start. New base polish, fun stamp, rhinestone (its been so long!), general shiftiness. Basically, all the things. Now, don’t get me wrong, the overall effect was odd looking but I do love it anyway :-p

The base polish here is one of the June PPU polishes, Rainforest by Ethereal Lacquer (it occurred to be last Friday that I was showing you a manicure where I used this polish for layering without showing you a swatch first!). This polish is insane. It is more or less a pastel multichrome, blue-green base with yellow-orange flash. In direct light it appears a bright golden orange with green at the edges, and in indirect light it is a green with teal and orange. Unfortunately, in order to be this absurdly shifty, it is not particularly opaque. This is four medium coats and in direct light or backlight of any intensity there is very visible nail line. I usually hate that, but I was less bothered than usual because I was too busy staring at the shifts!

Then, of course, I stamped, dotted, and added a rhinestone. I got a weirdly high number of compliments on this manicure (random cashiers, my chief in the hospital, multiple nurses) so I was quite pleased! It was darn busy and very odd looking, but the shiftiness and the wavy/sharp background sealed it.

Colors:
~ Green/gold: Ethereal Lacquer – Rainforest
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Mint: Maybelline – Green with Envy
~ Stamp: L078 from Born Pretty

Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed! This was a fun one to wear and fun(ish) to edit. I am trying to keep with the fall color scheme this week at least, lets see how long I can keep it going for! I also cannot remember if I ever showed off this plate before, but is a new favorite of mine (it has so many swoopy awesome things!) and you can find it here for $3.59.

Exploding Pastels

I have failed, slightly. I managed to make every day of posting line up with the corresponding day of the 31 Day Challenge, except this. The final day, and I have failed! Really, I just did not have time to make a tutorial, so I decided to instead go with the 31st day of the Challenge prompt, honor nails you love.

This nail art was inspired by @urbannailart and other than not having the best hand at curlicues yet, I actually think I did it justice! I need a grainier black holo, apparently. I adore most things that Urban Nail Art puts together, they are both colorful and innovative!

Colors:
~ Sheer nude: Sephora X – Marvelous
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ White: LA Girl – White On
~ Pastel green: Maybelline – Green with Envy
~ Blue: KBShimmer – I’d Rather be with Blue
~ Pastel purple: Sally Hansen – Lacey Lilac
~ Pastel pink: Wet n’ Wild – Tickled Pink
~ Pastel yellow: Maybelline – Citrus Collide
~ Black holo: A England – Fated Prince
~ Stamp: BM – 616

Of course, the sun did not cooperate, so there are not as many photos as I would like, sorry! Overall, I hope you enjoyed my nail art for the 31 Day Challenge as much as I enjoyed creating them! The next few weeks will be not nearly as pretty; all my good art is used up :-p. Phew! Also, apparently yesterday was my 7th blogaversary. 7 years of Flight of Whimsy! I am almost impressed with myself!

Dry Marble Firemaze

So, this was a LOT of fun. I know the prompt is water marble, and this is a dry marble, but it was incredibly fun to put together and the two water marbles that I made for today both came out rather poorly, so you get this instead! After, what is the 31 Day Challenge about if not weird pretty new things?

I started with a yellow base, and dry marbled the rest of the colors using a fan brush. I think this might be the first (or second) time I have ever even touched my fan brush. The red and dark orange got overwhelming (fanning on colors was so fun!) so I added some additional yellow at the end. After all that, I added a maze stamp. Voila!

Colors:
~ Pastel yellow: Maybelline – Citrus Collide
~ Yellow: OPI – Never a Dulles Moment
~ Orange: OPI – Freedom of Peach
~ Dark orange: Essie – Playing Koi
~ Red: Pure Ice – Siren
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Stamp: BM – 609

I think this is the first year I haven’t posted a real water marble for water marble day, but you guys will just have to forgive my dry marble replacement :-p. Next Monday’s (assuming I get it put together) will be excellent so be excited!

Scales of Many Colors

Personally, this is one of my favorite designs this year for the 31 Day Challenge. Today is animal day, and I figure a mermaid is an animal! And of course, what could be better than a pastel rainbow mermaid 🙂

Loosely inspired by @nails4cocktails, and I kinda love it! It came out much more vibrant than I expected, I tried to do a pastel gradient set to start but the colors just never got dark enough. But then the gradients were done and they were too bright! So I added back the pastels as part of the advanced stamping and voila! It works 😀

Colors:
~ White: LA Girl – White On
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Pink: Revlon – Bubbly
~ Light pink: Wet n’ Wild – Tickled Pink
~ Pastel orange: Maybelline – Bleached in Peach
~ Yellow: OPI – Never a Dulles Moment
~ Pastel yellow: Maybelline – Citrus Collide
~ Green-yellow: Essie – The More the Merrier
~ Green: Zoya – Tilda
~ Pastel green: Zoya – Tiana
~ Pastel mint: Glitter Gal – No Worries
~ Blue: Zoya – Rocky
~ Pastel blue: Zoya – Blu
~ Light blurple: Nails Inc – Regents Place
~ Purple: Zoya – Malia
~ Pastel purple: Sally Hansen – Lacey Lilac
~ Stamp: hehe – 024

This took a LOT of colors, and for once they are not all Zoya polishes despite being all cremes! Unfortunately, my Maybelline pastel polishes are running on empty, so someone needs to release an excellent pastel rainbow set at some point. And yes, I know we are about to get fall/winter collections and that they will not be pastel, but I can hope!

Pastel Tri-Angles

Happy 31 Day Challenge! This year, like last year, I am still only going to post three times a week, but on the days I post it will (hopefully) match that days prompt. As today is day 2, the prompt today is “orange”. Here we go!

This was surprisingly hard to make. I wanted pastel colors, but my pastel polishes are not the most opaque things! So, in order to make decals that I could cut into geometric shapes and put on my nails, I had to use more than expected layers of polish. The end result was a bit chunky and required two coats of top coat.

Colors:
~ Nude holo: CbL – Froge Feiertage!
~ Pastel pink: Wet n’ Wild – Tickled Pink
~ Pastel orange: Maybelline – Bleached in Peach
~ Pastel yellow: Maybelline – Citrus Collide
~ Stamp: Moyra 60 – Cuts, BP – L002

I can’t wait to see what everyone else is posting! If you want to join along, check out More Nail Polish’s links and instructions :-D. Happy painting!

Bright Quadrants

Rainbow(ish) bright colors! I just wanted to play with some pastel and darker cremes in the same color family. My nails were quite short so I went for a stamp that I can only use with short nails, and voila!

In the end this is more colorful than really, anything else. But it mad me happy to wear it, and it summer, so be it! It also really proves to me that I own a truly ridiculous number of Zoya creme polishes. To be fair, I purposely buy most of my cremes from Zoya, but this is next level!

Colors:
~ Light mint: Zoya – Tiana
~ Mint: Zoya – Cecilia
~ Light blue: Zoya – Blu
~ Blue: Zoya – Ling
~ Light purple: Zoya – Abby
~ Purple: Zoya – Landon
~ Light pink: Zoya – Jordan
~ Pink: Zoya – Kelsey
~ Light orange: Maybelline – Bleached in Peach
~ Orange: ULTA – Sun of a Gun
~ Stamp: MoYou – Pro 02

Hope you enjoyed! Happy Friday 😀

Oranged Lines

Honestly, I was aiming for a completely different manicure when I started this, but my gradient came out all wrong so I ended up with this instead!

I was going for a light orange-orange-red-purple style, and as you can see it is 95% orange an 5% red with no purple at all! I tried. I really did. In retrospect, I should have known it wasn’t going to work since the purple I was trying to use is currently a dried up blobby mess. Live and learn!

I ended up deciding that all gradients (as long as the colors aren’t terrible and need to be flat-out started over) look good with some geometric patterns. I wanted something a bit more delicate so I went with this design, and of course added colors to the dots and diamonds. I think this is the third time I have done this same thing with different colors.

Colors:
~ Pastel orange: Maybelline – Bleached in Peach
~ Orange: ULTA – Sun of a Gun
~ Red: Pure Ice – Siren
~ Neon purple: Sinful Colors – Dream On
~ Dark purple: L’Oreal – Paparazzi Pleaser
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamp: EdM – 03

That’s all for today! There is a similar gradient floating around on the blog too, since I was on night float and thus was able to do slightly different nails (and keep this poor blog running)! Hope you enjoy!

Orange Passing Purple

This mani stirs some mixed feelings: on the one hand, it is pretty cool looking! On the other hand, the gradient isn’t what I was going for and the lines, as the are freehanded, are not even close to perfect.

I was inspired by @aissandra. Somehow, despite her nails being shorter than mine, she managed to get more gradient going! I have to wonder if that is because she was using higher quality or more opaque polish. I happen to know that the neon purple I tried to use is a dried up mess and need to be thinned dramatically or thrown out!

The real moral is that I need a better neon pastel (wow) orange, and despite having a truly staggering number of purple polishes, I need something that is a bright indigo-leaning creme! In case the swatching extravaganza earlier this year didn’t clue anyone in, I own far too many jewel tone purple metallics. Specifically. Anyway.

Colors:
~ Pastel orange: Maybelline – Bleached in Peach
~ Orange: ULTA – Sun of a Gun
~ Red: Pure Ice – Siren
~ Neon purple: Sinful Colors – Dream On
~ Dark purple: L’Oreal – Paparazzi Pleaser

That’s all for today! Hope you enjoyed, and wish me luck acquiring more purple polish 😀