Ominous Forest Skies

This is an oddly dark manicure. I am not usually so goth! I just saw a stamp I liked but had no idea how to use it, and wanted to use a magnetic polish…so I put the two thoughts together. The end result is stormy, dark, and surprisingly pretty.

Colors:
~ Silver magnetic: Nails Inc – Trafalgar Square
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Stamp: Nicole Diary – 090

When I moved my nails the appearance of silver clouds would shift (thanks magnetic polish!) and I really loved the effect. I finally bought one of those ring magnets to play with my polish, and have yet to use it! I need to remember how pretty magnetic polish is so I reach for it shortly 😀 Hope you enjoyed!

Blooming Siren

This manicure is both simple and wrongly colored. That is to say, the base looks nothing like it does in real life! It is one of those super saturated purples that of course in photos ends up being blue. That is why the only photo of the nail art is from outside – the sunlight is the only way I could find to show the real color! 😦

Colors:
~ Blurple: Polish for Days – Siren
~ Silver: Nails Inc – South Kensington
~ Stamp: BC – 10

What you see here are three thin coats of Siren by Polished for Days. As mentioned above, it is much more purple than it looks here. The polish has a bright purple base with blue shimmer, pink flakie shards, and holo. So the end result is a beautiful deep blurple…that of course photographs blue. It makes me sad, but it happens! Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed!

Sienna Drapery

Maybe its because I am a doctor and love microscopy, but I see cells everywhere I look! These, to me, realllllly look like muscle cells. Spindle shaped, clusters of blue nuclei…anyway. They also might look like folds of cloth to more *ahem* normal folks so I decided to title this post after drapery and not immunofloresence staining.

The base polish her is a new-to-me polish called Sienna by Polished for Days. I have had my eyes on this polish (and others by PfD) for months just waiting for a sale! I maaaay have gone overboard 😀 but I can’t really regret it. PfD does the best flakie polishes! Anyway, Sienna is busy: dark blue base loaded with magenta/gold shimmer, scattered holo, and flakes that shift from a deep vibrant blue to gold. I may be obsessed. It is very pretty.

Colors:
~ Blue/red/gold shimmer: Polished for Days – Sienna
~ Silver: Nails Inc – South Kensington
~ Blue: Zoya – Ryan
~ Stamp: Lina – @urbannailart collab

I seem to be using the urban nail art collaboration plate a lot, I had been on the fence about buying it initially but I ended up loving it! Go figure. Anyway, hope you all enjoyed!

Dividing Roses

Oh how I wish this plate was better etched, the designs are so pretty! This is the companion piece to the pink/periwinkle/purple floral art I posted last week. I liked the stamping plate soo much that I wanted to use it again immediately. Again, it did not work to my satisfaction! Maybe it will work better with more intense dedicated stamping polishes…but I have my doubts.

Colors:
~ Light purple: Zoya – Abby
~ Periwinkle: Nails Inc – Regents Place
~ Yellow jelly – Esmalta De Kelly – Yellow Soap Bubbles
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Pink jelly: Zoya – Paloma
~ Stamps: Born Pretty – Flower Tango L002

Anyway, hope you enjoyed the roses! I have decided it is time to post spring-themed manicures (can you tell?) because it is April and I have a bunch of them sitting in my to-be-edited folder.

Pastel Geometric Floral

his was full-on inspired by the demo art on this stamping plate’s shopping page. Unfortunately, the plate was just not well etched enough to really pull this off! I do love the images but I could barely make the stamps pick up even with all my tricks and my best stamper head. 😦

Colors:
~ Pink: Zoya – Jordan
~ Purple: Zoya – Abby
~ Periwinkle: Nails Inc – Regents Place
~ Green: Zoya – Tiana
~ Glitter: Cult Nails – Center of Attention
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamps: Born Pretty – Flower Tango L002

Regardless, the manicure ended up pretty. The caveat of course is that I went over a fair amount of the black lines by hand, since they did not end up picking up enough to call it a stamp. If you guys want to pick this up for yourselves (and cross your fingers that you get a better etched plate than I did!) you can find it here for $3.99.

Purple Tribal Suns

I wanted to use this particular stamp, so I did! I have been waiting to use it for over a year now, and just didn’t have a polish I wanted to cover up 90%. I did it anyway, because there has been so much purple recently that covering it with MORE PURPLE just seemed logical.

Colors:
~ Light purple glitter: Painted Polish – Just One Look
~ Purple: Nails Inc – Regents Place
~ Dark purple: Zoya – Danielle
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamp: BP – L052

I even managed to refrain from adding a dot to the center of the design in the base of my nails. :-p we all know how much I love adding dots! Anyway, hope you all enjoyed!

Pointed Periwinkle Gradient

This was just for fun! I had a full afternoon off (that never happens!) and decided that meant I had enough time to play with stamping tape. I used a three-color gradient and then a two-color over it (my darker purple was not transferring enough hue so I used a darker blue and then covered it with the purple again). Then I decided I wanted more design so I stamped a diamond at the bottom. I quite liked these!

Colors:
~ Light periwinkle: Nails Inc – Regents Place
~ Periwinkle: Zoya – Danielle
~ Blue: OPI – Yoga-ta Get This Blue!
~ Stamp: EdM – 03

I feel like I go through cycles with colors. Sometimes I will end up using reds for a whole month, then purples. I try to remind myself to vary it, but I end up stuck in a color-loving rut! These, clearly, happened in a purple-centric time for me. Friday’s nails did too :-p stay tuned! Hope you enjoyed 🙂

Shining Leaves

It’s fall! The 31 Day Challenge has ended, so it is certainly October. More than that, the weather in St Louis just went from the 90s (it was TERRIBLE) to daily highs in the 70s! Hurray!

In honor of the newfound cold and frosty world (ok, there has not yet even been close to a frost, but still, not sweating in tank tops because it is chilly out makes me very happy), I am going to finally start posting Fall manicures! Beginning with this one. Basically, I just double stamped silver, then a smooth of red and orange polishes. Voila!

Colors:
~ Grey flakie: Polished for Days – Grey Opal
~ Dark red: OPI – Visions of Love
~ Red: OPI – All I Want for Christmas (is OPI)
~ Dark orange: Essie – Playing Koi
~ Orange: ULTA – Sun of a Gun
~ Silver: Nails Inc – South Kensington
~ Stamp: BP – 19

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed! And I hope this weather lasts, because it is the only time of the year that anyone will voluntarily find me outside!

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!

Purple and Gold Tilt Marble

I don’t know the actual name for this technique, but I am going to call it tilt marbling. Water marbling uses water, dry marbling happens directly on your nail, and tilt marbling happens on an external surface by adding lots of polish and tilting the surface to get a cool pattern. In this case, I used a base of magnetic purple (inspired by Urban Nail Art, which was genius), then red creme, yellow creme, and gold sparkle polish, and tilted my stamper until my pattern was perfect. I would then try and re-center the blob of polish so one area wasn’t thicker than anything else.

Because I did this on the stamper, it was very easy to remove. Had I done this on my mat I imagine I would have needed to add top coat to thicken the decal before I could apply it, and I love my decals thin. Luckily, I have three largish stampers and was able to cover all 5 nails by just making the decals cover most of the stamper face and then cutting them in half.

Colors:
~ Purple magnetic: Nails Inc – Houses of Parliament
~ Red: Zoya – Sookie
~ Yellow: KBShimmer – Orange You Glad I Didn’t Say Banana
~ Glitter: Zoya – Faye

In retrospect, I do wish I had used less gold glitter. I tried to cut it down by the time I reached my third stamper head, and even so it took over! I do love that I used (and then magnetized) the purple polish, you can see the magnet effect best at the tip of my middle finger, and it looks awesome. Next time I do this, I might use two magnetic polishes. We shall see! Hope you enjoyed!

Shifting Purple Swirls

I loved wearing this manicure. Purple, swirls, and gradients? Yes please! It helped that making this was straightforward but it was eye-catching and looked quite complicated!

Really, this is a gradient stamp on an already existing gradient. I started with a purple gradient (lightest at the cuticle, darkest at the free edge) and then stamped a more subtle gradient (darkest at the cuticle, lightest at the free edge) over it. So many gradients! I honestly don’t know why I haven’t tried this idea again the past few months, it looks so cool 🙂

Colors:
~ Light pink: ULTA – Baby Doll
~ Light purple: Zoya – Malia
~ Light periwinkle: Nails Inc – Regents Place
~ Purple: Zoya – Landon
~ Periwinkle: Zoya – Danielle
~ Stamp: Born Pretty (not in English) – L005

That’s all for today! Some more fun weird stamping combinations coming on Wednesday, and one of my favorite new polishes on Friday! Also, my posts are finally going to get longer now that the “hard” part of my year is over, the next 4 weeks are pretty darn straight-forward. Hope you enjoyed!

Ionian Arches

This was simple but a lot of fun to wear! I figured that pairing a magnetic polish (and magnetizing it sideways) with a weird 1920’s style stamp would look awesome. Voila! Of course, it also gave me an excuse to play with a cool new-to-me stamping plate from MoYou’s steampunk collection.

Colors:
~ Grey magnetic: Nails Inc – Trafalgar Square
~ Rose gold: Essie – Penny Talk|
~ Stamp: MoYou – Steampunk 06

Hope you enjoyed! I know there are only two photos, but when there is no sunlight AND my nails are tiny I don’t tend to take as many pictures!

(just FYI: I am moving these next two weeks, and there is a chance that I don’t get around to editing nail art and posting. I will be back! But if the blog is post-less for the next twoish weeks it is because I am moving and did not appropriately edit nail art in advance!)

Jupiter in Purple

I love this mani. I have been meaning to make a watermable with glitter so that it looks variegated (instead of just swoopy lines, to get some irregularity) and this worked! It kinda looks like the surface of Jupiter to me, if Jupiter was purple and the red spot was also purple (my middle finger tip).

I’m not going to lie, the sparkly stripe down the middle of my ring finger was…augmented…with extra polish. There was already some glitter there, but I wanted MORE. It was so shiny!

Colors:
~ Light pink: ULTA – Baby Doll
~ Shimmery lilac: Ethereal Lacquer – Little Oysters
~ Light periwinkle: Nails Inc – Regents Place
~ Purple: L’oreal – Royalty Reinvented
~ Periwinkle: Zoya – Danielle
~ Purple/green glitter: Polished for Days – From the Land of Oz

In retrospect, I think these also look a bit like geode nails? People were obsessed with those for a while, and the craze somewhat seems to have died down. I never did paint my own geode nails, and I should honestly do that sometime soon! The ones others have done a pretty :-D. Hope you enjoyed these!

Embracing Blurple

This came out better than I expected! It is very hard to see the teal metallic stamping polish, but the colors go nicely and I have missed geometrics 🙂

When I start a manicure I generally have an idea in mind ahead of time. With this one, I just went “i want to use that one sparkly blurple with teal flakie polish” and tried to find coordinating colors. Don’t ask me why coloring in some of the thinnest lines on one of my stamping plates was deemed a good idea, but the result is pretty cool!

I need to remember to buy more flakie polishes, they have wonderful color shifts and finishes but are not difficult to remove. Also they tend to have enough going on in them that even if you paint quickly enough to cause bubbles (because rushes are a real thing) you can’t see them!

Colors:
~ Blurple glitter: Polished For Days – From the Land of Oz
~ Teal: Opaque teal stamping
~ Light purple: Sally Hansen – Lacey Lilac
~ Purple: Nails Inc – Regents Place
~ Dark purple: Zoya – Danielle
~ Stamps: Moyra – 54 Matrix

That’s all for today. Hope you enjoyed!

Blooming Mauve

This mani is halfway between winter and spring: winter colors but with flowers and a butterfly! Given how cold (and snowy) it continues to be, I thought that was fitting.

This is a new-to-me polish, and I love it. For some reason I am super into shimmers right now, and this is subtle, elegant, and loaded with shimmer! What you see here is three thin coats of Quixotic Polish – It Rubbed Off From Friction. This polish is one of my only purchases from Hella Handmade Creations (I usually stick to Polish Pickup). The polish is is a beautiful dark grey-mauve swimming with pink shimmer, which also has a scattering of holo glitter. That said, while I love the color of the polish, it was a little thick and hard to work with.

I then made some stamping decals/advanced stamping (aka coloring the stamp in while it is on the stamper) using silver and purple. The color combo could have been a bit better, but it wasn’t terrible. I rather wish I had used black not silver! Or maybe simply white.

Colors:
~ Mauve: Quixotic Polish – It Rubbed Off From Friction
~ Silver: Nails Inc – South Kensington
~ Purple: Essie – Full Steam Ahead
~ Stamps: Whats Up Nails – B005, BM – XL204

That’s all for today, happy Friday! Hope you enjoyed.

Silver Swirls on Burgundy

Simple mani today! One of my most opaque polishes (I do love A England) and two complimentary stamps. This whole manicure took 20 minutes and most of that was waiting for the burgundy polish to dry!

Honestly, I feel like I should start using white or black polish to stamp (or at least a creme finish) because in half the lights things like silver and gold look black! Oh well. It is shiny, and that makes me happy!

Colors:
~ Burgundy: A England – Let Me In
~ Silver: Nails Inc – South Kensington
~ Stamps: JQ – L20, Moyra – 50 Ornaments 3

Not much else to say today. I have officially started what I think will end up being the most boring and paper-work intensive month of my 4-year residency. If history holds true, I will paint my nails a LOT (I started painting my nails 6 or so years ago on a very similar rotation), so that at least is something to look forward to! Hope you enjoyed 🙂

Dragon Scales

Dragons scales using Dragon! Because I had to. This also ended up rather chrome-y because I went for a silver metallic base. I kinda like it! The end effect a was a bit like nail foils.

This week is going to be a random mishmash of nail art that doesn’t fit well with anything else. At this point (in real time) I am working towards Valentine’s nail art because I know that I won’t get any edited if I wait for February! So these have nothing to do with really, anything, but they were shiny 🙂

Colors:
~ Silver: Nails Inc – South Kensington
~ Teal: A England – St George
~ Green: A England – Dragon
~ Moss: A England – Fotheringhay Castle
~ Stamp: Whats Up Nails – B025

Hope you enjoyed! More utter randomness on Wednesday!

Orchid over Purple

More blurple! I don’t know…I haven’t had a chance to transfer a lot of my newer designs onto my computer yet and I am running out of options. These are from early fall. And, of course, feature a darker periwinkle.

I wanted to play with floral stamps because, in general, I either want to be playing with stamps that are flowers, swirls, or purely geometric. I have a LOT of similarly themed stamping plates!

Colors:
~ Purple glitter: Polished for Days – From the Land of Oz
~ Purple: Nails Inc – Regents Place
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamps: BP – L067, BM – XL472

This was fun just because the base is so SPARKLY and how often do you get to color in orchids? Not often! Anyway, hope you enjoyed, and hopefully I will get my life together enough that I can post something more winter-themed come Wednesday!

Subtle Periwinkle Swirls

More blurple! Other than nude, purple/blurple/periwinkle is probably my most used color this year (I don’t know why). It is also easily my most-bought polish family this year!

This particular color combination was REALLY tone-on-tone, and yet worked well! The scrubs I have to wear when I am on ICU blocks and in the emergency department are a pastel periwinkle-grey…which sounds pretty but lets be honest scrubs do not look good on ANYONE (and I am no exception). That said, when my nails match my scrubs I feel a tad bit classier than I have any right to when wearing scrubs! Hence all the blurple and periwinkle nails (never fear, there are more coming in the next few weeks :-p).

Colors:
~ Periwinkle pink shimmer: Emily de Molly – Traverse the Skies
~ Periwinkle creme: Nails Inc – Regents Place
~ Stamp: Moyra – 50 Ornaments 3

I do need to remember that Regents stamps well over Traverse though, they are so close in color that I figured this wouldn’t work out well. Voila! Hope you enjoyed 🙂

Flowers on the Diagonal

More flowers! And yes, these were supposed to go up on Friday after Thanksgiving, and instead I was distracted by buying too much polish. And too many stamping plates (who am I kidding, no such thing!). Regardless, this makes me feel better about not posting black nails for black friday :-p

More places that I love ended up having sales than I expected, but I wasn’t too terrible? I think I ended up with 9 new polishes and 7 stamping plates. Oh well!

Colors:
~ Purple glitter: Polished for Days – From the Land of Oz
~ Purple: Nails Inc – Regents Place
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamps: BP – L002, BM – 616

Hope you enjoyed these glowing blurple flowers and lines, and had fun picking up deals!