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 😀

Mountain Sunset

Happy 31 Day Challenge! It isn’t quite the same without Cathy (from More Nail Polish) but she is on vacation so we shall have to try without her guidance! Anyway. I am, as I mentioned last week, obviously not participating daily. However, I have lined up my M-W-F posts for the next month with that day’s theme to the best of my ability! Since today is day 3 and thus the ‘yellow’ them and I HATE the color yellow, I went ahead and combined orange and yellow together. Ta-da!

When putting this mani together I went ahead and grabbed most of my orange polishes. And some yellows. And then I realized that I think I only own two polish colors with ‘?’ in the name. They are apparently both orange and both involve puns/jokes. Go figure!

The design itself was inspired by @lieve91, and for once I sort of think I did it justice? Regardless I really like how this came out! It isn’t entirely orange or yellow but it fits the theme ENOUGH.

Colors:
~Pastel yellow: Maybelline – Citrus Collide
~Orange-yellow: KBShimmer – Orange you Glad I Didnt say Bananna?
~Bright red: OPI – All I Want for Christmas (is OPI)
~Dark purple: Zoya – Monica
~Dark blue: Maybelline – Midnight Swim
~Pastel orange: Maybelline – Bleached in Peach
~Pink-orange: Maybelline – Orange you Jealous?
~Dark pink: OPI – Malaga Wine
~Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~Gold glitter: Sephora – I Found a Pot of Gold!

Hope you enjoyed! On Wednesday I will post to the day 5 prompt of ‘blue’ and it might be my favorite mani of the year. I’ll let you guys decide! :-p

Flaming Pink

Whoops! I apparently forgot to write this post until this moment! So it’s going to be a bit short (and forgive me if it is disjointed, I am very sleep deprived).

The art here is inspired by urban nail art…but for some reason I didn’t copy over the link? I don’t even know. Tired Eva makes bad decisions about planing and the like. Either way, urban nail art had a pink shimmery gradient and black flames, and I decided I wanted the same! But then I went and picked the WRONG base polish…

So, my background color here is the second lightest of the pinks (the absolute lightest is really more of a pale orange so I went with the medium one for the base under the gradient), and that was a crucial error. It is a polish called Peony by Ruby Wing, and I hate it. Really, I do. It is both scented AND filled with undissolved chunks of something. This polish makes me tear my hair out! I meed to find a buy a dupe so I can get rid of it.

Colors:
~ Pastel peach: Maybelline – Bleached in Peach
~ Light coral: Ruby Wing – Peony
~ Bright coral: Essie – Sunday Funday
~ Bright pink: Zoya – Kelsey
~ Shimmer: ILNP – The Magician
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black

What’s even worse is that I forgot one other crucial fact about Peony: it is a solar-active polish that changes color in sunlight. When I was going through the photos I started getting upset…all the ones taken outside in the sun looked like there was no gradient! And then I realized Peony’s color range is coral pink to bright pink-red. So my gradient disappeared to just bright red in the sun. :-(. I give up! The indoor photos are good, the single outdoor one is just sad.

Blue Damask

Well, today is my first call day in the CCU, so I am about to start at 28 hour shift (oh wow this is going to be exhausting).

Anyway, this mani is basically the same mani as Fashioned Darkly from March of last year, but done in blue and silver rather than red and gold! I loved that mani and I was wearing a dress to a wedding that I thought would go well…in blue. So, ta-da!

I don’t love it as much as the original, but I did enjoy wearing it! And somehow the black stamp held up even though I didn’t top coat it. Yay!

Colors:
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Blue: Maybelline – Shocking Seas
~ Silver: A England – Excalibur
~ Stamp: JQ – L20

Short and sweet for today. Monday’s post, assuming I get around to posting it, is bright and colorful :-p. Enjoy!

Golden Shadowed Leaves

This is a bit of a sad day: tomorrow I leave Philly for St Louis. So, this is my last nail art post while in Philadelphia. Philly was where I first discovered nail art, and in the last 7 years my collection has gone from 2 polishes to over 400. I was thinking of posting a pretty skyline design I did, but I ran out of time to edit it (this is becoming a theme) so you’ll have to make do with some shimmery leaves.

This is the mani I created out of my pastel teal swatches, and so there are more teals than you might imagine! I did a dry brush of each of the 4 colors (three cremes and one holo) over each other, and then double stamped over the top with a gold glitter and then a green holo glitter. I really like how it came out!

I am glad I went for the dry brush technique, the bases all ended up looking roughly the same by the time I got to stamping. I also think this is the first time I’ve actually liked stamping the same image twice? Usually I try too hard or the colors are awkward together. But green and gold always works!

Colors:
~ Pastel mints: Zoya – Tiana, Maybelline – Green with Envy, Glitter Gal – No Worries
~ Mint holo: Serum No. 5 – Jaded
~ Gold: Sally Hansen – Go for Gold
~ Green: A England – Dragon
~ Stamp: BPX – L018

Initially, I was going to stamp gold then black, but my eyes fell on Dragon which I haven’t used in probably a year, and I grabbed it. A England polishes always stamp so well! It makes sense, since basically all of them are one-coaters. Adina is nuts. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed! And goodbye Philly! My next post will be from St Louis…but since I move in on Monday we probably won’t have internet for a few days. Sorry! I will also have some freehand art up eventually…I do have some in the vault I just haven’t edited that either, I know it’s been a lot of stamping post recently!

Swatch Test: Light Blues and Pastel Teals

Light blues: I should start by saint that hate light blue polish. I kept thinking as I was laying out these polishes “why do I never wear any of these?” I feel like for all of my other swatch tests (and there will be quite a few more) there were a couple polishes I gravitated towards for base colors or nail art, and with this set of blue there was nothing that I found exciting. To be fair, if I need a pastel blue I grab Zoya Blu and if I need a medium blue I grab one of my other three blue Zoya cremes…so it is really only the range between pastel and medium blue where I have this problem.

From pinky to pointer:
~ Pinky: Sally Hansen – Breezy Blue
~ Ring: Essie – Rock the Boat
~ Middle: Sinful Colors – Cinderella
~ Pointer: KBShimmer – I’d Rather be with Blue

While swatching, I realized WHY I hate using these shades of blue. None of them are opaque enough! Ugh. Breezy took three THICK coats and even so was barely opaque. Cinderella was legitimately still see-through where my free edge is and this was with three thick coats. Boat only took three regular coats but is a bit thicker than I would like as a polish, and Rather is both a bit thick and dries matte (which is why these swatch photos do not have top coat). In summary, all of these polishes took three coats, and Breezy and Cinderella were still not quite opaque at three thick coats. That said, I do love the pink shimmer in Cinderella (I would believe this polish to be the color of glass slippers), and the slightly grey finish to Boat. I cannot stand the subtle frost in Breezy, and I am probably just getting rid of this polish since I have Blu which I know I love.

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Pastel teals: I own three very very similar pastel teal polishes because unlike the blues, I love pastel teal! It is such a pretty soft color. I basically wanted a pale teal and a pale green…but a pale green looks much like a pale teal! The three of these (minus my pinky of course) ended up being very close in color, but not quite dupes!

From pinky to pointer:
~ Pinky: Serum No. 5 – Jaded
~ Ring: Zoya – Tiana
~ Middle: Glitter Gal – No Worries
~ Pointer: Maybelline – Green with Envy

The holo polish, Jaded, took only two thin coats, the rest were three. Worries was slightly more jelly-like than the other two, and so I used thicker coats, but it dried quickly so overall the finishes were the same. In terms of comparisons, Tiana is the palest of the three, while Worries is the closest to green rather than teal. Envy is slightly more blue and slightly brighter than Tiana, but they are very close! It does have a better formula (thinner but just as pigmented). I bought Worries and Tiana when I ran out of my first bottle of Envy (this is my third, I think) and since I use pastels a lot I just kept all three. I don’t honestly think I need them all, but I think I might keep them anyway? Tiana is the one that I could part with most easily, as Worries is more green and Envy does have the best finish! I just threw Jaded in since the base color is the same, but wheeee holo!

The Ocean is Kooky Dooks

I knew I wanted to make beautiful tropical sea nails just before I left for my honeymoon to Hawaii. I also sweet talked my husband into watching Moana (for like the 20394830th time) in preparation, and somehow these nails came out looking like Moana ocean! I am pleased.

I love how these nails looked in person, but between the dark blue and the bright teal, in photos I ended up with lobster fingers! I’ve tried to somewhat color adjust for that, but I don’t know how successful I really way.

The double stamping (silver and white) looked fun, but there is a part of me that wonders if the mani would have looked better with just a single stamp? I will never know!

Colors:
~ Neon teal: Emily de Molly – Glee Ridden
~ Teal: Zoya – Cecilia
~ Dark blue: Maybelline – Midnight Swim
~ Silver: Revlon – Metallic
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Stamps: Geometry BPX – L020

That’s all for today! I thought I would throw in a mani that didn’t have a brand new polish in it for the first time in a while :-p Enjoy!

Tropical Fronds

I am in Hawaii right now! Or, at least I should be. I am very excited. I was waiting to post these nails (which I painted back in December in honor of my cruise to the Caribbean) until the start of my next tropical vacation because I am a dork.

The design here was inspired by clairestelle8 and I honestly think I did a pretty decent job replicating her design! Unfortunately, the base gradient which looked really vibrant on my nails did not translate well in the photos. It isn’t pastel!

For the design itself, I had to hand-stamp each leaf, since I didn’t have a plate with thick enough frond leaves to work. Surprisingly, it didn’t take too long! Also, I didn’t like the idea of using a white border for flowers, so I used the darker of the blues instead, and I wish there was a tiny bit more delineation between the flower and the surroundings.

Colors:
~ Pink: Revlon – Bubbly
~ Yellow: Maybelline – Citrus Collide
~ Green: Essie – The More the Merrier
~ Teal: Emily de Molly – Glee Ridden
~ Blue: Zoya – Yummy
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Stamps: BPX – L018, BM – XL472, 313, 318

That’s all for today! Sorry preemptively for not responding to any comments for the next two weeks, meanwhile I hope you guys enjoy the posts I have lined up!

Hearts Galore

Happy Valentine’s Day! And happy birthday to my baby sister. She gets extra chocolate :-p

This is the mani out of the 5 that I chose to post today in particular because it both has the MOST hearts, and is primarily pink so I figured it fit the theme best! But seriously, SOOO many hearts. Wow.

The base here is yet another new polish from the holiday sets that I won from Nail Polish Canada, and yet another Zoya! This is Kelsey, a bright pink with blue undertones. This polish manages to be a dark-toned neon, which is pretty darn cool. My camera freaked out. The polish also covers well in two thin coats…and I probably could have gotten away with one thick coat instead…Zoya has been killing it with the consistency of the cremes in this collection! I don’t even like pinks and this is an awesome color. And finish. And everything.

This is also another stamp that I’ve had for a while and just…never used. I chose to stamp with a pale grey rather than a white polish, and I regret that a little…I had to double stamp the flower design because the grey didn’t stand out as much as I wanted! Although I do think coloring in the flowers with a bright pink chunky glitter was awesome 🙂

Colors:
~ Pink: Zoya – Kelsey
~ Grey: Maybelline – Bare Escape
~ Green: Zoya – Tilda
~ Pink glitter: Different Dimension – Cranfairy
~ Stamp: BM – XL205

That’s all for today! I hope you get a lot of chocolate, maybe some flowers, and suitable affection from everyone (partners, pets, kids…all that jazz)!

Harvest Patches

Fall-themed patchwark nail art! I rather love this design. I wanted to make some fun patches (because I loved the piece I did last year) and use only fall colors. Voila!

I realize this isn’t exactly Thanksgiving-themed, but it is close. Also, Wednesday’s post is 100% Thanksgiving (with turkeys and everything). Besides, scarecrows are maybe a holiday thing? Unless you live on a farm and use them for something other than looking cute :-p

In order to put this together, I had to come up with a set of three oranges that worked well together. In the end I just ended up using the oranges from the Washington DC collection, they were released last autumn and they are still seasonal!

Colors:
~ Light orange: Maybelline – Bleached in Peach
~ Orange: OPI – Freedom of Peach
~ Dark orange: OPI – Yank my Doodle
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Snow me Black

Yes, there are a few stamps on there. No, I did not write down the plates that I used (sorry)! But they look cool! Hope you enjoyed 🙂

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 🙂

Crossing Teal

I both love and hate this manicure. I love how the colors came together, and I really do like the pattern on my accent nail. But I hate the shimmery teal!

So, this is a polish I got as a gift from a friend of mine. It is called Jade Kat, by Sinful Colors. I can see why she bought it for me, it is the type of color I tend to love: jewel toned, bright, and shimmery. Also, teal! But the polish itself is a mess. This is four thin coats (I maybe could have done three but…). I let the first two dry for over an hour (as I ate dinner and played far too many rounds of Mariokart) and the polish wasn’t dry yet! I dinged it trying to cut the striping tape apart.

Then I added two more coats, only to realize that sometime during the whole process I had developed bubbles. Tens of tiny bubbles all over my nails. Now, I’ve been painting my nails long enough to know how to avoid bubbles unless I am in a rush (or my top coat is a thickened mess) but neither was true in this case. It just bubbled at random! As a result, I really cannot recommend this polish, even if the metallic/shimmer finish is nice.

The design came from @mypolishworld. I actually like the colors and layout better than what she did, but I wouldn’t have though of a gold nail without the reference photo!

Colors:
~ Gold: ILNP – Fame
~ Light teal: Maybelline – Green with Envy
~ Teal: Emily de Molly – Glee Ridden
~ Teal shimmer: Sinful Colors – Jade Kat

That’s all for today! Maybe I’ll try this again sometime with polish that doesn’t make me want to immediately change my mani

The Rainbow Fish

I love painting nails inspired by children’s books…and I’ve been wanting to try The Rainbow Fish for a while! I just haven’t had the time (until now).

The inspiration came from Adventures in Acetone, although I decided to stay true to the book and use only creme polishes for the scales other than the rainbow silver scales. I do wish, in retrospect, that I had used a lighter pink (even though I don’t actually have a good one)!

The story is about the joy that one person can get from sharing. Its quite a nice message! It also was one of my favorite books growing up (not that I wanted to be taught to share with my sisters) but because the shiny fish scales were just so pretty. This mani is a bit darker than I imagine the fish being, but still pretty and suitably colorful! Who wants to play with silver holo? 🙂

Colors:
~ Light blue: Zoya – Yummy
~ Blue: Maybelline – Shocking Seas
~ Dark blue: Zoya – Sia
~ Teal: Salon Perfect – Escape to Neverland
~ Purple: L’oreal – Paparazzi Pleaser
~ Pink: Zoya – Ciara
~ Holo: Color Club – Harp On It
~ Yellow: WOW – #301

These took FOREVER to paint because I had to do one scale at a time, and couldn’t put two wet dots next to each other or they’d run! I still love the end result though 😀 Hope you enjoyed! It looks like I wasn’t the only one to do Rainbow Fish this year!

Pool Floating

I know it is getting just a bit cold to go swimming, but I painted these back in August so it was appropriate then! Besides, there are totally indoor pools, right?

The design was inspired by pricelessnails. Unfortunately, I did not quite figure out the spacing for my inner tube (the pink thing) so it is a bit…squished…compared to hers.

This is another new polish for me! What you see here is two thin coats of Glee Ridden by Emily de Molly. I have so many manis that I want to do that need a neon teal, and this looked perfect! It is, as expected, a very nice opaque neon teal creme. The color is slightly greener than turquoise, but very very bright! I am a fan.

I think I maybe should have done a bit more of a subtle gradient (that blue is darker than I expected, the polish used to be a semi-jelly and I think its congealed a bit), but this still came out well! I love how the waterspotting worked. I got a new white polish not too long ago so it actually spread on the water!

Colors:
~ Blue: Maybelline – Shocking Seas
~ Teal: Emily de Molly – Glee Ridden
~ Pastel teal: Zoya – Tiana
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Red: Pure Ice – Siren
~ Yellow: OPI – Never a Dulles Moment
~ Dark blue: Sinful Colors – Endless Blue
~ Pink: Clinique – Pinkini
~ Dark pink: OPI – Malaga Wine

That’s all for today. If it is warm near you, go swimming! And if not…I dunno. Dream about Hawaii?

Neon Print

Gradient time! Gradients are one of my favorite things to do with my nails, since it allows me to use a bunch of colors. And then, typically, cover the gradient with a stamp for added design :-p

When I was putting this together, I thought the colors might actually be too bright (because wow, neon). I was initially planning to cover more of the gradient as a result, but I like the amount showing! I ended up using another Born Pretty Store stamp, but this one works like a charm. I’ve actually even used the super-coverage designs on this plate and they stamped beautifully, which I’ve never had work for me before!

So, when it comes to gradients this hurts my eyes but is awesome, and when it comes to stamping plates this one makes me very happy, both for the etching and for the variety in patterns. Win-win!

Colors:
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Yellow: Love & Beauty – Yellow
~ Teal: Salon Perfect – Escape to Neverland
~ Blue: Maybelline – Shocking Seas
~ Stamp: BP – L049

Tomorrows post is ALSO with neons, although only one color rather than three. If you like the stamping plate and want to pick it up for yourself, you can find it at the Born Pretty Store for $2.99. Enjoy!

Nemo and Dory

I painted these in May of 2016…so I should probably actually post them. I just wanted to wait until I had enough disney-themed manis to post them all in a week! Whoops.

This mani was inspired by Finding Nemo. Yes, these are super-stylized, yes I still think it’s cool!

I got the idea from Klo’s to me, although she used much brighter aqua for her underwater…I wish I had a similar blue but I just don’t! So mine is more of a teal-based blue. Either way, I loved her idea for the surf!

Colors
~ Light teal: Maybelline – Green with Envy
~ Teal: Zoya – Wednesday
~ Light blue: Zoya – Rocky
~ Blue: Zoya – Yummy
~ Dark blue: Zoya – Ling
~ Dory blue: Sinful Colors – Endless Blue
~ Yellow: WOW – #301
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Orange: Zoya – Thandie

That’s all for today! Any other Disney or Pixar movies I should work on painting (I mean, and hopefully posting less than a year after they were initially painted)?

Neon Chevrons

I saw these on pinterest (with a nifty tutorial) months ago, and have been waiting for the perfect time to attempt them myself. Ta-da!

The design (and color choices) are lifted directly from Sassy Shelly. I’ve seen other people attempt similar things with results that I find mediocre…what struck me about these was the color combo and color order, so I tried to emulate that! I then went ahead and added a 3D glittery bit…because.

Of course, I don’t own any of the colors that she used (nor do I own any Cirque polishes, sadly, as they are expensive), so I made do with what I had. The end result was pretty good! Her white stamping polish is much better than mine, and her peachy-ornage is darker (mine is a pastel neon). I also STILL somehow don’t own just a plane holo topper. I need to get on that. So I used a coarser one which doesn’t look quite as good. I also don’t own wavy stencils, only chevron ones, so my nails have sharp points. Otherwise, I think its a pretty decent replica!

Colors
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Green: Essie – The More the Merrier
~ Blue: Zoya – Rocky
~ Purple: L’oreal – Paparazzi Pleaser
~ Pink: WOW – #371
~ Orange: Maybelline – Bleached in Peach
~ Holo: KBShimmer – I Only Have Ice for You

I basically just followed Shelly’s tutorial! It took a while mostly just to let the base colors dry, but was quite simple. This also reminds me that I should make more stamping decals! If I make them thin and use them the same day, they actually bend to my nail shape :-p

Swirled Chevrons

Another of my recent favorites! This was something I never would have thought of myself (and I actually had to do a lot of touch-ups to the middle layer to make it look how I wanted) but was really fun to do!

The design was inspired by @mymaynails although honestly I do like her colors better! I tried to color match but I don’t have a neon enough teal-blue, so I changed it up and did pale teal/hot pink/dark purple. I really need to get on a set of neons or bleached neons.

Unfortunately, this was the first time I’ve tried dry-marbling using a stamper and my results did not look a stood as hers! I ended up re-smushing some more purple and blue tones, since the pink really wanted to dominate. It ended up pretty good though!

Colors
~ Teal: Maybelline – Green with Envy
~ Pink: Revlon – Bubbly
~ Purple: Zoya – Monica

Hope you enjoyed!

Falling Flakes

Happy after-Christmas and third day of Hanukkah! I need to get a move on making some menorah nails if I want them edited within the next 5 days :-p.

These were inspired by @simplenailartdesigns, although its a bit hard to say anything with a blue gradient and snowflakes was inspired by any particular person, its such a common design!

Regardless, I like how these came out. I added little silver glitters to the center of the snowflakes a few hours later, so the sunlight photos have glittery bits too 🙂

Colors
~ Dark blue: Maybelline – Midnight Swim
~ Blue: Zoya – Ling
~ Light blue: Zoya – Blu
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Stamps: BM – 323, Born Pretty Plate – L008

Hope you enjoyed!