Pink Along the Circle

I have no idea. I just started playing with things and ended up here? I wanted grey, red, and pink, and somehow wound up turning to this pattern.

I started with a light grey base and layered one coat of a glitter polish overtop, to give it some flakies. I then stamped, and dotted the rest of the pattern. The only really fun part of this design is that I mixed red and white and just swirled them together, so the dot color is variegated.

Colors:
~ Light grey: Zoya – Dove
~ Grey glitter: Polished for Days – Grey Opal
~ Dark red: OPI – Visions of Love
~ White: LA Girl – White On
~ Red: Pure Ice – Siren
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamp: BM – S101

That’s it for today! A bit of an odd design with a bit of an odd collection of colors, but overall not terrible :-p.

Golden Highlights

Kinda 1920s, yah? Honestly, if I had been thinking about it more I would have reversed the stamps, I like the idea of the spread fan shape coming from my free edge better, but too late! Also, my gold stamping polish has official run out and I will need more.

Honestly, I just wanted to play with 212 again, it is a subtle yet pretty polish, and one of the first I ever bought when I got into nail polish in 2012. My obsession with various types and finishes of polishes have varied over the years, and the dark vampy jellies with subtle shimmer and flakies (ok, I think in that particular family I really only own two polishes) don’t get worn very much at all! So here is some love, 212.

Colors:
~ Black with glitter: OPI – 212
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Stamp: MoYou – Steampunk 06

That’s it for today! Hope you enjoyed. Friday is…more stamping. I feel like I hardly have time to do freehand anymore, everything is stamps!

Love Above

This mani is a bit of nail art, some swatching, and a small amount of comparison. When Zoya did their New Years sale, I bought 4 new polishes that I intended to replace some terrible polishes that I own, and to fill a few gaps. This is the first of them!

What you see here are three thin coats of Jordan. I bought this polish to replaced Tickled Pink by Wet n’ Wild which takes 4 coats and is incredibly thick. I wanted to compare the two, so I put Tickled Pink on my ring finger, and Jordan on all the others. I cannot tell the difference! Which is to say that the swatches of Jordan online are accurate. I was hoping Jordan would be a two-coater, but for a pastel 3 isn’t terrible. This is just a nice pastel pink creme. No frills.

Colors:
~ Pastel pink: Zoya – Jordan
~ Pastel pink: Wet n’ Wild – Tickled pink (ring finger only)
~ Pink: Zoya – Ciara
~ Dark pink: OPI – Vision of Love
~ Dark pink holo: A England – Let Me In
~ Stamp: B Loves Plates (from the tiny heart next to the plate name)

I then added a gradient, and stamped a tiny pink heart near my cuticle. Super easy, but quite pretty! I do wish I had started the gradient a biiit close to my free edge, but it still looks nice! It was a really quite fitting manicure to wear right before Valentine’s day…so I hope you guys all have a great (and chocolate-filled) tomorrow!

Highly Contrasted

So, being honest, I don’t love this mani. I was a little pressed for time and wanted to both stamp something cool, and use the colors that the nail polish base was designed after. Since the polish is called You Look Like Seafood in honor of Tamatoa from Moana, that meant fuchsia and gold. And unfortunately, this is where I ended up!

This is three thin coats of You Look Like Seafood! by Dreamland polish. I love love  LOVE this nail polish…the blue base, the pink shimmer, the flakies, the whole thing is stunning. I also really only needed two coats, I added the third just for a bit more depth. That said, I hate the brush on the polish! There was no way NOT to flood my pinky as the brush was both wide and not curved. 😦

Colors:
~ Blue multi-glitter: Dreamland – You Look Like Seafood!
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Pink: OPI – Cute Little Vixen
~ Stamp: Moyra – 60 Cuts

This was also the first time I played with the Moyra Cuts plate, I have used it many times since but I was still working with how to stamp large swatches here! Luckily my polishes were quite opaque :-p. Hope you enjoyed this more than I did!

Red and Green Strokes

One day closer to gift-day (aka Christmas) and one more red/green manicure!

I started with red glitter, then double stamped with a white-to-green and green-to-white gradient (I don’t know why) and when that just looked messy I stamped with dark red. Despite the completely unplanned and frequently ugly nature of this manicure as it developed, I actually quite like the end result!

Colors:
~ Red glitter: KBShimmer – Ruby
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Green: Zoya – Tilda
~ Dark red: OPI – Visions of Love
~ Stamps: Lina – Make Your Mark 02, BM – XL205

I think that is all for today. If you haven’t yet, please go vote for flightofwhimsy at the Nail Art Canada holiday contest! Hope you enjoyed!

Santa Claus is Coming to Town

This is my entry for this years nail art canada holiday challenge! I have entered for the past 5 or so years, and last year I won the internal competition! Most years I just pick my very favorite holiday mani that I had done up to that point…but this year I painted something specifically for the challenge. I have to say I am quite pleased! The design itself was based off a press-on nail set by Project Nails.

I started with a blue holographic base (mostly because I wanted to use a one-coat base and the halo hues collection from Color Club are basically magic). I then brush-gradiented using blue and purple scattered holo crellies and splotched on some dark teal jelly. Once that was all top coated and dry, it was design time!

I basically freehanded some rooftops, then a moon, then snow, and finally windows and sled. The hardest part of the whole thing was certainly the reindeer, I still don’t love them but without using acrylic I think this is the best I can do! The only part of this mani that isn’t free-handed is the stars: those are stamps. The top of the moon was made from playing with variations of white and yellow to make a little gradient.

Colors:
~ Blue holo: Color Club – Over the Moon
~ Blue scattered holo: Milani – Cyberspace
~ Purple scattered holo: Milani – Hi-Res
~ Teal jelly: Zoya – Frida
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Yellow: OPI – Never a Dulles Moment
~ Light orange: KBShimmer – Orange You Glad I Didn’t Say Banana
~ Stamp: BM – XL213

Please go vote for this entry in the challenge, it would be amazing to win! You can find the link here and sprinkled throughout the rest of this post. I will keep posting the link for the remainder of the contest. Hope you enjoyed, and thank you for voting!!

Dotted Circles

This mani took a bit of work because of the double stamping! And also because working with sheer polish makes me nervous so it takes a lot longer to get anything done.

The steps to this one were basically sheer polish, stamp with gold dots, then stamp with rainbow dots. The exciting part was that I got a liquid metallic polish from Sally Hansen (back when mirror nails were all the rage) to stamp! It is such a perfect shiny gold but it usually dries to fast for stamping. Which goes to show that this plate is well etched. And since I was stamping in colors over it, I didn’t care if every part of the design was 100% filled in. I’ll have to play with it some more in the near future!

Colors:
~ Sheer nude: Sephora X – Marvelous
~ Gold: Sally Hansen – Liquid Gold
~ Blue: Zoya – Sia
~ Purple: Zoya – Landon
~ Pink: Zoya – Ciara
~ Red: Pure Ice – Siren
~ Orange: ULTA – Sun of a Gun
~ Yellow: OPI – Never a Dulles Moment
~ Green: Zoya – Shawn
~ Teal: OPI – Stay off the Lawn!!
~ Stamps: Moyra – 54 Matrix

That is a LOT of colors. Anyway, hope you enjoyed! Maybe I’ll actually have some seasonal nails up starting next week? I have a bunch of snowflake and dark color manis done, but I haven’t even put them on my computer much less edited them yet!

Moroccan Tiles in Nude

Copycat Claws posted a blue-and-white moroccan tile design that I love and want to copy… but while I am in the hospital I should probably avoid bright blue nails! At least as I started out. So I decided that if I couldn’t do blue, I could at least try nude! (To be fair I pained these back in July, before I realized no one would care much about my nails). That said, these came out well if I do say so myself!

I used four nude-toned polishes and two shimmery toppers to make this. Since I only have one clear stamper that works well, I had to do each nail individually. It wasn’t DIFFICULT but I did take a long time!

Colors:
~ Gold shimmer topper: OPI – Ski Slope Sweetie
~ Pink shimmer topper: Sally Hansen – Platinum
~ Pastel nude: OPI – Be There in a Prosecco
~ Medium pastel nude: Essence – I Nude It
~ Mauve nude: CND – Cashmere Wrap
~ Holo shard nude: piCture pOlish – Cherish
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Stamp: BM – XL205

I’ll meet o keep in mind that I have to try this in blue at a later point! I do admit though, it isn’t very harvest-y, and unfortunately I have to admit I didn;t have time to put together a real Thanksgiving mani! But the rest of this week is at least fall-themed :-p. Hope you enjoyed!

Purple and Gold Galaxies

This mani tried so hard, but ultimately fell to the age-old adage: do not stamp over glitter with glitter (use a creme or a metallic). I started with a purple/gold multichrome but I was working too fast and my nails bubbled! So obviously I had to make a galaxy…but every time I tried to sponge on a new color I ended up hating it! I ended up just covering all the other sponged work with a dark purple glitter and some gold. Oh well!

As mentioned above, I also wish I hadn’t stamped with a glitter. Metallics just work much better. I was trying to make everything sparkly but the end result is that it is difficult to see the designs! I’ll need to re-use this stamp again soon, it is super cool.

Colors:
~ Purple/gold multichrome: ILNP – Masquerade
~ Grey with gold shimmer: Zoya – Yuna
~ Purple creme: Zoya – Margo
~ Purple glitter: Zoya – Valerie
~ Chunky gold glitter: OPI – All Sparkly and Gold
~ Gold glitter: Sally Hansen – Go for Gold
~ Stamp: BM – XL213

Every time I work with Valerie I wish I used it more, but I am always afraid to! Zoya keeps discontinuing their prettiest polish. Zoya: MORE GLITTERS! YOUR GLITTERS ARE GREAT! Anyway…hope you enjoyed! And let the moral be do not stamp with glitter over a glittery base!

Swirling Wind

I don’t know what I was aiming for with this mani! I wanted something that looked cold and windy (it snowed for the first time on Friday, and is supposed to snow again today) and it felt appropriate! I started with a grey-white shimmery base and added some stamped swirls, and then colored them in. I don’t know if this was the best idea, or if I should have gone for some creme polishes to color in the wind!

Regardless, the base color her is a new polish called Sandy by KBShimmer. It is from the August PPP. The swatches I saw made it look beautiful, which it is, but I didn’t look correctly at the layer count. This is three THICK coats, and the second time I wore it, it took 4 coats! No one has time for that. So, while I do like how it looks, I think I am relegating it to a topper. Fail.

That said, the polish is a pretty pale grey with lots of purple shimmer than shits to blue, and tons of silver holo shards. I am currently into polishes with silver shards, for whoever reason! The base is a crelly for ease of sparkle, but I know (because I own) crellys that are 2-3 coats and not 3-4 coats. This polish is not easy to use.

Colors:
~ Grey with shimmer: KBShimmer – Sandy
~ Purple shimmer: OPI – Ink
~ Grey holo: Emily de Molly – Shadow on the Moon
~ Stamp: BM – XL213

So, windy and long-winded (I think I’m funny). Overall, this mani was more time-consuming than pretty, and most of that is due to the base color. Live and learn! Hope you enjoyed 🙂

Pink and Brown Floral Mix

I have no idea where I was going with this. Two nails stamped in pink and three in brown? Over two different bases? And some other browns? This was poorly executed. However, I had just chopped my nails off so I wasn’t feeling drawn to doing something very involved on these tiny nails!

It also looks vaguely harvest-y with the brown and the nude, so I figured posting it now wouldn’t be too strange. I just need to remember to stick to stamping, at the very least, with the same color on every nail OR different colors on every nail. This mani is a bit of a color and contrast disaster!

Colors:
~ Pastel pink: OPI – Be there in a Prosecco
~ Pink: Essie – Eternal Optomist
~ Light brown: Zoya – Flynn
~ Brown: Zoya – Dea
~ Dark brown: Zoya – Louise
~ Stamps: BP – L084, BM – S107

So, not my best work. Not quite a fail, but close. Don’t make my same mistakes!

Leave for the Tropics

These are one of my favorite nail designs that I have done recently (…that was not in the 31 Day Challenge, which is where I usually put my favorites). It is a bit of the wrong season, but it was 70 degrees out yesterday so it totally still feels almost-tropical! Basically I love these and I wanted to post them now :-p

These nails are based around water decals from the Born Pretty Store: all the leaves are decals! Which is absolutely amazing because they have white backgrounds and beautiful cut out edges and show up perfectly against a dark green base. I love when I don’t have to use a white base for water decals!!

The flowers I added by hand, because what is a mani with fun leaves without a few dotted petals? I like how colorful it is 🙂 but really I cannot wait to use the rest of these decals, maybe in spring when it is appropriate! But who knows. Snow leaves? I can make that a thing, perhaps!

Colors:
~ Dark green: Sinful Colors – Last Chance
~ Pink: Revlon – Bubbly
~ White: LA Girl – White On
~ Yellow: OPI – Never a Dulles Moment
~ Dark pink: Zoya – Ciara

Hope you enjoyed these tropical nails in the Fall! I think the rest of this month will be a bit more Autumn-themed. I even have some pumpkins! October rather snuck up on me thought, so I only really have one Halloween manicure (which, the holiday is next week, how did that happen)! Hopefully I remember next year in advance and can put together some more fun seasonal manis :-p  Anyway, these decals are currently on sale for $1.59 for a set of three sheets, and I strongly recommend them.

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!

Cascading Rainbow Dots

This was a lot of fun, and not nearly as time consuming as I had feared! I was searching for some inspiration to use for the 31 Day Challenge options for art, flag, or supernatural (since I only post one out of every three days), and was stumped on flag. Then I remember my day 5/blue nails and how much I loved the porcelain, so I went searching for vases or ceramic art. And I ended up somehow on teacups…and with this.

The inspiration for this design really is art, but its teacup glass art! I don’t know where I can buy this set but I WANT it. It is so pretty! Unfortunately, using this design meant I needed to have my nails mostly naked underneath to mimic the see-through glass, and that I had to double dot with gold and a color!

Despite that, the art only took maybe 1.5 hours, which is pretty good for lots of dots! I am very grateful that I have real dotting tools now…trying to get this mani sizes of dots out of my hairpins and paperclips would have been difficult.

Colors:
~ Sheer nude: Sephora X – Marvelous
~ Gold: Sally Hansen – Liquid Gold
~ Blue: Zoya – Sia
~ Purple: Zoya – Landon
~ Pink: Zoya – Ciara
~ Red: Pure Ice – Siren
~ Orange: ULTA – Sun of a Gun
~ Yellow: OPI – Never a Dulles Moment
~ Green: Zoya – Shawn
~ Teal: OPI – Stay off the Lawn!!

This also gave me a chance to use Liquid Gold, which I bought back when metallic semi-foil polishes (that show every ridge and divot in the nail) were a huge craze. I only ever got a gold and a silver, and I seldom use them because top coat ruined the finish and they, as mentioned, show every nail problem! They work really well for dots though 😀

Hope you enjoyed! There is only one day left in the challenge for me, and it is inspired by others! Since something like 60% of all my nail art is inspired by SOMETHING, I think I might just grab one from the vault again.

Peek-a-Rainbow

Rainbow nails! Finally! This is kinda a combo of day 9 “rainbow” and day 10 “gradient” cause it is a rainbow gradient! I haven’t been brave enough to wear rainbows to the hospital yet; these are from the vault.

I absolutely love this mani. Bright colors, strips, gradients…it has it all! That said, the post going up on Wednesday for stripes day has even MORE stripes. Or at least, they are the focus of the nail art itself.

I always find myself gravitating towards sparkly polish with shimmer and flakes and holo…and then I have to remind myself that if I’m being honest I use my brightly colored creme polishes a LOT more frequently than any of my crazy glitters! Because they really are better for nail art.

That said, I have yet to buy an appropriate neon green creme, so the subtle shimmer in this mani is from the neon green polish! It was a gift, but I really need a creme variety. If you guys have any advice for bright neon green cremes let me know!

Colors:
~ Pastel green: Zoya – Tiana
~ Bright pink: Zoya – Kelsey
~ Bright orange: Zoya – Thandie
~ Yellow: OPI – Never a Dulles Moment
~ Neon green: Salon Perfect – Loopy Lime
~ Blue: Zoya – Ling
~ Purple: Zoya – Margo
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black

That’s it for today! I’m really enjoying stalking Facebook, IG, and the linkup for everyone else’s manicures! The other Eva, in particular, is – as usual – blowing everything out of the water 😀

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

Popping Teal Bubbles

See, no more magnets! Instead you get a multichrome topper over not black? I don’t know what I was thinking but here we go!

I wanted to try Aurora over a dark teal base. And then I decided that bubbles were appropriate? My nails under this are a DISASTER. I painted these just after I finished moving apartments, and my ring finger tore to the quick (and is heavily patched), AND my middle finger somehow shattered, but I was able to file the surface to somewhat smooth and apply 4 coats of base coat in a desperate attempt to hold it together, and my pointer folded down the middle. I won’t even mention my poor short thumb nail…I lost both corners on subsequent days! Suffice to say my nails are a disaster and this is one of the last right-handed manis you guys will be seeing for a while!

Despite all the devastation, I think the mani looks surprisingly cool? The teal base blunted a bit of the color shift in Aurora but you can still see both the green and certainly the purple shift. Also, I like this stamp!

Colors:
~ Teal: OPI – Get Off the Lawn!
~ Multichrome: piCture pOlish – Aurora
~ Silver: Nails Inc – South Kensington
~ Stamp: Whats Up Nails – B015

That’s all for today! Next week we move on to less…experimental…manis (even if they will mostly be left-handed). Enjoy!

Messy Green-Blue Gradient

Sometime, I just want to throw together a bunch of bright colors and play with stamps. The Make Your Mark plate series by Lina makes that REALLY EASY. So here is another mani using it!

I feel like I’ve been using a lot of vampy metallic bases, or pastel ones. Not so much neon. That changes today. Hello neon!

To make this mani, I started with a light green base, then tried to create a gradient over it using greens and teals. But, the teal was too dark! So I switched to a bright blue. After that was dry, I double stamped using two similar designs from the same plate in white then black.

Colors:
~ Light green: Zoya – Tilda
~ Yellow: Yellow Opaque
~ Neon green: Salon Perfect – Loopy Lime
~ Dark teal: OPI – Stay Off the Lawn!!
~ Blue: Zoya – Ling
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Stamp: Lina – Make Your Mark 02

That’s all for today! I am too tired to write a longer post, so I’ll just let you enjoy the photos. Happy Friday!

Iridescent Dots and Roses

Happy Monday! No really, I mean it. Today is a good day because I start on an elective block tomorrow which means I get such things like WEEKENDS and NOT WORKING 30 HOUR CALL SHIFTS. It’s amazing. Anyway, on to nail art! In celebration of my new found freedom, this week I’m going to be posting some recent favorites that I’ve saved up, starting with this sparkly floral piece!

The base polish here is two thin coats of Holidazed Over You by OPI. This polish is a very very dark blue creme…so dark it is basically black. That said, the polish is almost a one coater! I always need more super opaque blacks (even if this IS blue), and having one in a tiny mini bottle will be useful, even if I’m just going to pretend it’s black. Oh well!

I then went and covered the polish with holographic iridescent foil from the Born Pretty Store. Most of my foil is single sheets, but this particular pattern is an entire roll! This is great because the design is fairly awesome: an array of dots with a rainbow shifting wave running through! As I tilt my nails the swirl shifts up, down, left, and right. The rainbows are incredible! I got 98% dot transfer which is really impressive. I did add a few of the missing dots using a silver metallic polish, but I think across all 5 nails I only had to add maybe 10 dots total? So win for both the foil and the foil glue!

In my continuing need to test all things related to using foil on my nails, I went hunting for a way to make foil manis last longer. The last time I used foil, I only covered it with aqua base (water-based base coat intended for some persnickety holographic polishes…and the only water-based anything that I own, unfortunately) and in the shower the whole thing started to crack and flake off! Which means it worked great for about 5 hours and then became kinda really ugly. So, this time I covered with Seche Vite after the aqua base…. and it totally worked! The aqua base seems to protect the finish and shimmer of the foil, while Seche Vite does its job and protects the mani from such hazards as water and daily life.

I kinda wish I had taken a video (not that I actually know how to get them onto the blog, but still) just so you guys could see the shifty wave pattern. It was fun! But then I decided it wasn’t enough.

I for some reason really wanted to throw on some roses over the dots! I was initially going to use layered stamping, but all the rose plates that I have contain flowers that were larger than I wanted to go with…so freehand roses it was! It’s been a while since I last freehanded flowers (yet somehow the posts I’ve put together for the next few weeks have a lot of flowers? I don’t know, I guess I lump them together thematically. Anyway), and these came out pretty good for all that I am out of practice!

Colors:
~ Dark blue: OPI – Holidazed Over You
~ Pastel pink: ULTA – Baby Doll
~ Pink: Revlon – Bubbly
~ Dark pink: Zoya – Kelsey
~ Green: Zoya – Tilda
~ Dark green: Zoya – Shawn

That’s all for today! You can pick up the roll of shifty holographic dot foil for 99 cents at the Born Pretty Store. I am super a fan! Then all you need is some freehand roses and voila! Super fun mani, if I do say so myself. Hope you enjoyed!

Scratching Purple

Yet ANOTHER purple mani! I need to clean them out of my done folder, so here we are.

This particular design started with a purple base, added gold splatter stamp, then a black stamp that kinda looks like scratches? I like it. I wanted to use a light purple sunburst pattern, but the purple wasn’t as good at covering the vibrant gold as it needed to be!

Colors:
~ Purple: OPI – Ink
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamp: Lina – Make Your Mark 02

I love layering the Make Your Mark plate! Easily one of my new favorite plates. The nails always look messy, but its an intentional kinda mess. 😀 Hope you enjoyed!