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 😀

Darkened Red

This mani was a bit of a flop for me. I wanted to use a few of my favorite but seldom-worn polishes, and for some reason I decided to use all of them together. The end result was a little TOO shiny, if that is a thing!

I knew I wanted to use Briarwood, because this polish GLOWS and yet I never reach for it! When perusing my nail polish supply, I realized that I am the Walrus matches Briarwood really well, so I made some chevrons. And then I wanted to delineate between the two colors, so why not some red-gold glitter? The end result was certainly glittery, but I feel like I maybe would have benefited from a cream polish in there. Somewhere. Just to tone down the shimmery finish a tad. Oops!

Colors:
~ Vampy red holo: A England – Briarwood
~ Copper/red multichrome: Enchanted Polish – I am the Walrus
~ Golden copper glitter: CbL – Frohe Feiertage!

I will say that in reality the shiftiness of Walrus was super cool, but it doesn’t come through in the photos because it was such a small patch of nail. Anyway, hope you enjoyed at least a little! Friday’s post is super colorful but has appropriate cream polishes :-p

Phoenix

I have done phoenix nails before, but possibly never this insanely bright! I got lucky that one of my stamping plates already had all these images, or I would have been painting flames for years :-p

The design itself was inspired by @nails4cocktails, although I didn’t have holo polish in the right colors, so I just added some shimmer on top. I really need to get Fairy Dust by China Glaze, I keep winging it with my glitter toppers!

Colors:
~ Yellow: WOW – #301
~ Orange: Zoya – Thandie
~ Red: Pure Ice – Siren
~ Shimmer: Sally Hansen – Diamond
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamp: Exoticism BPX – L012

Hope you enjoyed! I do love flames 😀 even if I often can’t wear them on my nails because they are too disruptive at work. Maybe next year I can have more fun with my nails NOT on weekends!

Pink Pastiche

Is this really pastiche? Not so much. A lot of my nail art apes that of other artists that I’ve seen and liked…this was sort of a general “I like things that are somewhat pastel and look like watercolor and flowers” and I tried to make it happen!

It turns out, of course, that I also like things that glitter. The end result of this mani was actually pretty fun, but I just kept adding more things! Lines and more lines and dots…In the end I wish I had used a lighter silver holo base for my accent nail, but I love the pink shine to Rosewater!

Colors:
~ Silver pink holo: ILNP – Rosewater
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Pastel pink: Wet n’ Wild – Tickled Pink
~ Pink: Sinful Colors – Pink Forever
~ Neon pink: Revlon – Bubbly
~ Neon coral: L’oreal – Orange you Jealous?
~ Stamps: What’s Up Nails – B015, Lina Make Your Mark – 02

That’s it for now! Hope you enjoyed this oddly pink interlude!

Neutral Quilted Flowers

This might be neutral and nude-toned, but it is at least moderately interesting! However, it was a challenge to put together.

I have to say that while I love the designs on this plate, the version of the plate that I was sent is very poorly etched! I managed to get the designs to pick up but it took a lot of finagling. Also, one of the reasons I wanted this plate so badly was the two-step stamping flowers, and with plates that are not deeply etched there is no hope of getting large areas of solid color (and even if you could you would need 2-3 coats of the stamp to be opaque) so the primary reason I wanted this plate doesn’t work. That said, the designs are pretty and I can hope it is only the copy I got!

Colors:
~ Pastel pink: OPI – Be there in a Prosecco
~ Pink: Essie – Eternal Optomist
~ Dark brown: Zoya – Louise
~ Stamp: Born Pretty – Flower Yarn S002

That’s it for today! Hope your day goes well, and if you want to invest in some pretty quilted-looking flowers for yourself you can find them at the Born Pretty Store for $1.99. Enjoy!

Astral Shifts

Ok, so, I love this mani. I love how it looks, I love the colors, and I LOVE the magnet! I got a new magnetic polish from the Born Pretty Store to review…and somehow, unlike every other magnetic polish I own, this one works like a charm. Maybe I am just getting better, but the design on my pointer finger stayed looking perfect for three days. Most magnetic polishes just can’t do that!

Anyway, this is two coats of Astral Realm over black. The first coat was thin and the second coat was thick; I magnetized both times (and again when I put top coat on, although the magnetic particles didn’t actually move). Astral Realm is a multichrome magnetic. I was doubtful at first, but its actually true! The shift is a bit more subtle than pure multichromes of the same color range, but it is definitely there. This polish shifts from a bright fuchsia to pink (the primary colors) and then to orange and gold. I even saw hints of green at sharp angles!

I got a whole bunch of compliments on this at work. People were stopping me as I was typing on the computer to ask me how I got my nails to look like this :-D. I also love the stamps! When Whats Up Nails had their stamping sale, this is one of the 6 plates (oops!) that I picked up! I bought it on a whim but it has turned out to possibly be my favorite of the bunch. Stars! Moons! A super fancy sun! Anyway.

It is rare that I only use three colors in a mani, especially when only two of them are visible! But the magnetic polish was cool enough that I thought adding anything else to this would be a waste.

Colors:
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Magnetic multichrome: Born Pretty (Magnetic Aurora Series) – Astral Realm
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Stamp: BM – XL213

That’s all for today! I hope you enjoyed! In case anyone was curious…my pinky I just magnetized the very edge of my cuticle, for the ring and middle I used one of those strong magnetics to make a line (diagonal vs horizontal), my pointer I used a repeating diagonal line full-nail magnet, and my thumb I pushed around the polish using the rounded head of a strong double-sided magnetic wand. You can pick up Astral Realm at the Born Pretty Store for $5.39, which is a lot for a tiny 6ml bottle, but it does work!

Twisted Triangles

How about some silver triangles on a multichrome glitter base? Don’t mind if I do!

I don’t really know where this manicure came from, just that I wanted to play with Aurora and felt like using a funky triangle stamp. I do love funky geometric stamps! Lets be honest, a lot of stamps are things I could do freehand if I just had enough time. But perfect swirls and perfect geometric lines I could not do without hours! Which is probably why most of my favorite stamps are either straight lines or swirly bits.

Colors:
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Multichrome: piCture pOlish – Aurora
~ Silver: A England – Excalibur
~ Stamp: Whats Up Nails – B015

That’s it for today! But happy Friday, and I hope you enjoyed the multichrome shininess of Aurora as much as I did! It almost doesn’t matter in this age of a million multichromes, but I had Aurora long before multichrome toppers were much of a thing :-p yes I am a hipster nail polish owner.