Abstractions

This mani is both a success and a disappointment…because I absolutely LOVE the base polish, but I had such a hard time picking what I was going to do once the polish was on!

I tried three different stamps with four different color polishes before settling on this design! And it wasn’t even my decision…I got so fed up of things I didn’t like that I shoved my nails in front of my husbands face and demanded to know what matched. He said “silver” so I just went with it!

I think I just default to EdM plate 03 if I don’t want to cover too much of a really pretty polish. It isn’t a terrible idea, but I have so many other plates!

Regardless, what you see here is three thin coats of Illyrian Polish Eleven, with two thick coats of top coat. This polish is a really cool mix of colors and finishes, especially since for me mixing reddish-purple with orange and gold is basically the height of nail polish. So, this polish has a wine-colored jelly base, and is filled with small and medium glitters that shift from red, through orange and gold, and finally to green. It also has a lot off scattered holo glitters which show up in the sunlight. Overall, this polish is amazing…BUT you will need two coats of top coat to smooth out the finish. It isn’t that the glitters stick up, but you will get uneven flatness over the larger glitters (as one does). Worth it!

Colors:
~ Purple glitter: Illyrian – Eleven
~ Silver: A England – Excalibur
~ Stamps: EdM – 03

Ok, now that I am done drooling over this polish, I need to come up with other ways to wear it. Any suggestions? I don’t want to cover it but wearing polish alone is not fun enough! 😀 Also, this is my first Illyrian Polish, and I can safely say that I love their polishes! It went on well and had surprisingly good spread and pigmentation for a jelly with that much glitter!

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 🙂

Falling Leaves

I did two VERY similar manicures…one on each hand. Mostly because mutlichromes are fun and I at this point have too many of them :-p.

The other mani is shiftier, and will go up next week so that I don’t bore you guys with the same manicure twice, more-or-less. This one, although it shifts less, I actually think I like better (and that’s unusual)! The colors came together really well.

I started with a green multichrome base (this one shifts from an emerald green to a bright teal, and a deeper blue at steep angles) and then used advanced stamping (aka coloring in the design on the stamper) to add the leaves. Two of the leaf colors are multichromes, although the golden-brown one barely shifts (its mostly a gold to greenish-grey, but it was already a grey-gold to start with). The other one shifts from copper to brown, which is again, not a super big shift. I like it anyway!

Colors:
~ Green: ILNP – Reminisce
~ Gold: Revlon – Hypnotize
~ Copper-to-brown: Born Pretty – 212
~ Gold-to-olive: Catrice – Genius in the Bottle
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Stamp: BPX – L018

I will admit to staring at my nails and moving them around trying to capture the right angles for these photos…but I just gave up and picked ones that looked pretty and glow-y instead. So, pretend that they can shift at least a little? Meh. Still pretty! Now if only it would COOL DOWN around here…it should not be 80 degrees out in Philly in mid-October!

Running in Circles

This is the companion piece to my Day 11 nails (dots) from the 31 Day Challenge. However, these have minimal polka dots and maximal stamping, so I didn’t think they’d qualify!

Since I had to wear this mani to the clinic, I needed to make sure my hands were close enough to matching that no one would notice on first glance. Of course, if I was really thinking, I probably would NOT have chosen a neon pink background if that was my goal…

Regardless, I stamped some fun concentric circles (which were part of a buffet-style plate so I had to carefully clean off the surrounding patterns) and then added some extra dots. The result was a little boring, so I threw on some glitter polish in random parts of the stamp as well!

Colors:
~ Pink: Essie – Sunday Funday
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Glitter: Sally Hansen – Diamonds
~ Stamp: BM – S101

That is it for today! Hope you enjoyed, even if it was a little redundant. Next week starts my fall-themed designs in ernest, so I needed to finish showing neon colors!

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

Magic Trick

One eight hour exam done, one nine hour exam to go…and then I am free of massive standardized tests for a year! In celebration, this post has far too many photos of shifting awesomeness.

I wanted to replicate this art by Nail Art Sakura, and I almost did? The plate I used isn’t quite as well etched so the black isn’t as dark as I would like, but otherwise it’s pretty close!

The base color here is two thin coats of ILNP The Magician over black. I tried to use only one coat, butt was not quite enough glitter! I have since used this polish again, and one thicker coat also does the trick. Regardless, here, two was perfect! The Magician is primarily a red-copper glitter. It shifts to copper, gold, pale green, and emerald at sharp angles. I used it over black to get the maximum shift, but honestly it looks really cool over many darker colors (my favorite thus far is deep blue). Regardless, shifty awesomeness!

I think you guys can see why I took so many photos. And why I couldn’t pick which ones to post! The only sad thing is that in sunlight you mostly just see the bright red-copper, with maybe a hint of green-gold at the edges of the nail.

Colors:
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Shimmer multichrome: ILNP – The Magician
~ Stamp: BP – 77

This is also a really fall-appropriate color (it will make a re-appearance within the next month)! I technically did this mani back in July, but I’ve been saving it since no one wants to see such dark colors in the middle of the summer :-p

Hope you enjoyed! Unfortunately, this is my favorite mani for this week…you’ll see why!

Overcast

This is what happens when I come home in a rush from out-of-state and need to be in the hospital the next day but am currently wearing something brightly colored and intricately patterned. Basically, this is just sad.

I usually plan out my manis a little in advance…just in terms of color or inspiration or a specific stamp to use. In this case I had a boring pink that I was going to stamp with white and grey…and decided not to use pink. So I of course grabbed the darkest grey I own. Which was a terrible idea, because my nails looked like Wolverine claws!

I tried to fix that by adding a layer of white-tinted polish with gold flecks in it, but it only ended up looking super uneven. So then I knew I NEEDED a full-coverage stamp, but I couldn’t do black (which would have looked nice) because that is far too dark for the hospital. I settled on a lighter grey. And honestly, its ok but it certainly isn’t good! Yikes.

Colors:
~ Dark grey: Zoya – Evie
~ Sheer white: Revlon – Calla Lilly
~ Light grey: Zoya – Dove
~ Stamp: BP – L049

Sorry this is so drab, I wish I had something prettier to show today. It gets better later next week, I promise! Although, since I am taking an 8-hour long exam tomorrow, grey nails seem fitting :-/. Cya on the other side!