Neon Rainbow Webs

My birthday is tomorrow! Which means that this is the official RAINBOW WEEK! I have had a tradition for the past few years of painting my nails with crazy awesome rainbows on my birthday, because rainbows are just the best. This week will show three of my rainbow nails in honor of my birthday 🙂 including my birthday nails that I actually wore last year (because heaven forbid I actually edit nails in time to post them within a week of painting them).

Colors:
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Pink: Revlon – Bubbly
~ Orange: Zoya – Thandie
~ Yellow: OPI – Never a Dulles Moment
~ Green: Zoya – Tilda
~ Blue: Zoya – Yummy
~ Purple: Zoya – Malia
~ Gold: Zoya – Ziv
~ Gold holo: FUN Lacquer – Million Dollar Dream
~ Stamp: Nicole Diary – 156

Today’s manicure was approached with the thought: what would Claire Estelle do? She has stopped posting, but back in the day she had the BEST rainbow neons, glitters, and random bits of color. I browsed her IG for a bit (not that I don’t already have most of her posts favorited, because again, rainbows) and settled on this idea! It took some effort but wow was it ever glittery! I started with a pinwheel stamping rainbow (basically going clockwise around from pink through to purple) and gradiented a different orientation of that same pinwheel on each nail. The end result was a somewhat random looking array of rainbow colors. I then added the black stamp, the gold through the line at the middle (both a simple glittery gold and then a chunky gold holo on top), and finally some black dots with gold centers. Voila! Hope you enjoyed…and stay tuned for more rainbows!!!

Queen Charlotte Regal Garb

This was another manicure designed after some of the outrageously beautiful dresses in season 1 of the show Bridgerton. This one is modeled after the epic red and blue gown worn by the actress playing Queen Charlotte. I tried to capture the shiftiness of the blue using a multichrome but it only somewhat worked. Regardless, I like the end result! The inspiration is dramatic!

Much like Monday’s post, I decided to post this now since season 2 was just released, and I will be starting to watch it this week because I am behind. I hope the gowns are just as beautiful! And of course, the queens hairstyles just as magnificent.

BRIDGERTON GOLDA ROSHEUVEL as QUEEN CHARLOTTE in episode 108 of BRIDGERTON Cr. LIAM DANIEL/NETFLIX © 2020

Colors:
~ Red metallic: OPI – Cute Little Vixen
~ Blue multichrome: ILNP – Birefringence
~ Gold: Salon Perfect – Gold Leaf
~ Silver: Revlon – Metallic
~ Stamp: BC – 06

The whole design for this manicure is freehand, other than the background gold embroidery pattern on the red section; I hand-added the flowers in silver though! Unfortunately, although the very fine gold pattern is true to what gold embroidery looks like, you almost cannot make it out against the metallic burgundy of the base. Oh well, it was still fun to wear! Hope you enjoyed 🙂

Tie Dye Eggs

Guys, I am PROUD of this one! I had this negative space stamp for easter eggs. And I had seen other people with the idea of tie dye (aka water marble) negative space eggs. But I decided to do them over a GLOW IN THE DARK white base and decorate a few of the eggs on each nail with the same color! The end result (since the base was white) is pretty tie dye eggs, some with designs, where the eggs themselves glow faintly in the dark and the designs glow brightly! The white I used as the stamp is not GITD and so it blocks out the light. I am happy 😀

Colors:
~ White GITD: Serum No5 – Pure Glow Getter
~ Pink: Zoya – Jordan
~ Orange: Forumla X – Incandescent
~ Yellow: OPI – Never a Dulles Moment
~ Green: KBShimmer – Lime All Right
~ Blue: Zoya – Yummy
~ Purple: Zoya – Abby
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Stamp: Whats Up Nails – B017

Here again I ran into the issue of the glow is not super bright, but it worked for my purposes! You can kinda tell with the GITD photo. Then again, I only charged using indoor light not daylight. I also am not sure why I wanted both my easter manicures to be GITD? I guess if I am using it on one hand I should just go to both :-p Enjoy!

Elaborate Eggs

Time for an easter themed manicure! I bought this stamping plate months ago and have been saving it for use in early spring…and despite that, I almost missed it! But here we have it, a very elaborate easter egg manicure. It took a full hour to hand-paint all the colors on the eggs, but I think it was worth it. The bunny is from a different plate, but it just isn’t easter without a bunny!

I also had the brilliant idea to make my base using a green glow in the dark polish, so that when it was dark out the eggs and rabbit would be outlined. It worked! And it looks pretty darn cool. The polish is Glowin’ of Eden by Serum No 5, and this is three gloopy coats. GITD polishes are always harder to use than regular polish, and honestly this was the easiest of the 4 that I have (mostly because I went with thin coats instead of just trying to do two thicker ones). It does glow, but the glow is not easily identifiable as green. Oh well!

Colors:
~ Green GITD: Serum No5: Glowin’ of Eden
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Pink: Zoya – Sandy
~ Yellow: OPI – Never a Dulles Moment
~ Blue: Zoya – Yummy
~ Purple: Zoya – Malia
~ Stamps: Whats Up Nails – B017, BM – 302

Overall a very cute manicure (if I do say so myself) but a mediocre GITD polish. I have worn it again since, and, when charged directly by the sun, it is glow-y. But otherwise it is not that impressive. Then again, I compare all GITD polishes to Dayglow and nothing matches up to that insane brightness!

Hope you enjoyed anyway 🙂

Perpetual Sky

This ended up pretty cool looking, and was quite fun to do! It was inspired by @nailsandtowel, but honestly also by one of the pixar SparkShorts. If you’ve seen if you’ll know what I am talking about, if not go watch Day & Night, and enjoy it! It is decidedly cute, and I had just shown it to my husband for the first time when I remembered saving this design on IG, and went back and painted it 🙂

Colors:
~ Light blue: Essie – Rock the Boat
~ Dark blue: A England – Tristam
~ Yellow: OPI – Never a Dulles Moment
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White

Cute and accomplished! I really can’t ask more from nail art. Even if I didn’t actually do any art on two of the fingers, hah! Hope you enjoyed!

Feather Curls

Holo base with some elegant curling stamps. This one was fun to create and find the right stamping designs for! And of course, added dots for contrast. Because what is a manicure on Flight of Whimsy without at least 15 extraneous dots?

Colors:
~ Gold holo: CbL – Frohe Feiertage!
~ Orange: OPI – Freedom of Peach
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Stamps: BC – 04, Whats Up Nails – A010

I know it seems weird to consider something a ‘subtle holo’ but it makes me happy to collect a bunch of nude/pale random holos that I can pretend to wear in gut hospital, even if I am (finally!) in lab! Which means that later this year when I get around to posting the polish I am wearing now, that there will be lots of bright colors and crazy patterns!

Hazy Crazy

This was my attempt at a very loose dry brush gradient. I don’t know why I made it and it didn’t quite work, but I still like the end result even if I wouldn’t do it again! I basically started with white, used a dry brush to apply yellow to my cuticle, orange just above it and overlapping it, then red, then purple. The yellow kinda got lost in the end.

Colors:
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Yellow: OPI – Never a Dulles Moment
~ Orange: Zoya- Thandie
~ Red: Zoya – Sooki
~ Purple: OPI – I Manicure for Beads
~ Stamp: B Loves Plates – 03 Mind Blown

I said on Monday that it was time for some bright colors, and this seems like a fitting start! Friday (assuming I get it done in time) will be more glittery. Hope you enjoyed!

Divided Magenta

This qualifies as valentines-adjucent due to being pink….ish. It was pink-purple but I’m counting it. Regardless, I just kept going and going with this one. Metallic base, then some rainbow flakies, followed by a diagonal half-nail matching creme color, white stamps of different designs, pink jelly polish over half, and some dots. It is very very busy! And honestly I don’t love it, but you can only win some nail art designs!

Colors:
~ Magenta metallic: OPI – Cute Little Vixen
~ Magenta creme: OPI – Malaga Wine
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Rainbow flakies: Emily de Molly – Cohesion
~ Pink jelly: Zoya – Paloma
~ Stamps: BP – 21

I keep doing this, going all out on a crazy fun base design and then flubbing the overlay stamping. I am wearing a design RIGHT NOW that if I had stopped maybe two steps earlier would look much better than it does. Dots do NOT always help! Anyway, hope you enjoyed!

Linked in Orange

Holo base, fun stamp, and dots. Absolutely my jam! This was very easy and looked rather more fun than I intended it to, not that I am complaining at all. It helps that the base is such a holographic fun polish!

Colors:
~ Orange silver holo: ILNP – Fired Up
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Orange: OPI – Freedom of Peach
~ Stamp: Whats Up Nails – B039

I feel like I should use more oranges. I only ever go for them around halloween and they are useful for so much more than pumpkins and leaves! Anyway, hope you enjoyed!

Dark Flowers and Branches

I saw this manicure by @ruthsnailart and I really just wanted to re-create it. I so rarely see a dark shimmer base with dark flowers that really pops (the orange glitter dots) and somehow feels somber despite being floral. I made me think of rain. I also think that at this point 50% of the nails I recreate are from Ruth.

Colors:
~ Grey metallic: Essie – For the Twill of it
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Brown: Zoya – Dea
~ Purple: L’oreal – Paparazzi Pleaser
~ Green: Zoya – Shawn
~ Orange glitter: OPI – DS Indulgence

Hope you enjoyed the dark dreary flowers on this cold winter day! Or at least enjoyed the nails if not the day. Happy Friday!

Silver Lace with Blue

I don’t know what I was going for here. Silver and blue with a lace-like pattern? I was loosely inspired by a negative space manicure I had seen but I didn’t want to show my scraped up nails, so I used silver instead. And then just kept going and adding design elements? I rather wish I had not put the lines in on my pointer finger and used smaller black rhinestones for my middle finger! Oh well.

Colors:
~ Silver: OPI – Ornament to be Together
~ Blue: Zoya – Ling
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamps: BP – L084, Hit the Bottle – For the Love of Science

I don’t know why but I have decided to post an entirely blue-themed set of nail art this week. I guess I’ve been leaning into blue a lot for the past few months, I don’t know! So I hope you like the color blue (or want to extrapolate and pretend I used purple or green or something). Anyway, enjoy!

Geometric Christmas Sweater

I have a secret: this design is from an easter plate, and was supposed to be for an easter egg. I have repurposed it and it tickles me. I added some dark gold glitter dots and stripes for a bit more interest, but otherwise this is just a moderately complicated stamp! I do wish there were more Hanukkah stamps though. Or even things I could PRETEND were Hanukkah stamps. Hooray for another year of hand-painted candles.

Colors:
~ Grey: Formula X – Marvelous
~ Red: OPI – All I Want for Christmas (is OPI)
~ Green: Zoya – Shawn
~ Gold: ILNP – Sparks May Fly
~ Stamp: Whats Up Nails – B017

I have finished editing the rest of the designs for this week, and honestly, I feel like I need to up my Christmas game again. The ones I have painted this year will be posted next year, and at least I have a santa in the mix! I suppose this is what happens when I off-post by a full year. Anyway, hope you enjoyed!

Icicles on Brick

I finally did a semi-successful brick manicure! I have tried this a few times before and never been happy with the results. This one used a variegated grey base (that you can barely see), three shades of red for stamping, and then of course some white and silver freehanded icicles.

Colors:
~ Grey: Cirque – Hatch
~ Bright red: Pure Ice – Siren
~ Brick red: KBShimmer – Chia-huahua
~ Dark red: OPI – Visions of Love
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Holo: Different Dimension – Diamond
~ Stamp: Lina – Make Your Mark 02

The weather has been just downright weird this week. The high was in the 20s on Tuesday but today the high is almost 70. Overnight it got below freezing. The midwest is a strange strange place! No icicles yet though :-p Hope you enjoyed!

Red Maple Trees

I decided to make an all-stamping counterpart to my plum trees freehand design. All my friends agreed that the actual leaves portion of this manicure (which is 100% stamped, but using at least 3 layers per tree, usually 5-6) looks better, but that my shadow depth trees made the other manicure :-p. So now I need to re-do this with shadow trees!

Colors:
~ Grey holo: Cadillacquer – Odette
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Red: Pure Ice – Siren
~ Dark red: OPI – Visions of Love
~ Gold glitter: Emily de Molly – Chasing Gold
~ Stamps: Moyra – 106 Picturesque

I honestly meant to look up why some trees bloom in the snow (it was plum trees that inspired this initially) because that seems odd. Stay tuned for more winter-themed manicures and more christmas designs as we get closer to the end of the month!

Relaxing Sunset

This was easy and beautiful! I made a neon/pastel sunset gradient and then stamped using three dark cremes to achieve the purple (hammock), blue (water) and green (trees) that I wanted. Voila! Honestly the pictures do not do this justice, the orange-pink neon was almost glowing it was so bright.

Colors:
~ Orange neon: KBShimmer – Papaya Don’t Preach
~ Yellow: OPI – Never a Dulles Moment
~ Blue: Zoya – Yummy
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Dark purple: Zoya – Lael
~ Dark green: Sinful Colors – Last Chance
~ Dark blue: Zoya – Ryan
~ Stamps: Moyra – 106 Picturesque

I am posting this because it was 75 degrees out today! Which is just nuts for DECEMBER. I have no idea what the weather thinks it is doing. Regardless, I hope you enjoyed! Monday starts the series of winter-appropriate nails (even if it stays weirdly warm out)!

Loose Mint Swirl

I did a test: which looks better, a loose swirl polish transfer (where you just blob the polish onto a mat, scoop it up with a brush, and release it onto the nail) or a cell-creating swirl that needs to dry on the mat/stamper before use. The cell version takes much longer, and it turns out that the loose swirl was the unanimous winner! I was surprised.

Colors:
~ Pastel teal: Zoya – Tiana
~ Neon teal: Emily de Molly – Glee Ridden
~ Teal: Salon Perfect – Escape to Neverland
~ Dark teal: OPI – Stay Off the Lawn!!
~ Gold glitter: Emily de Molly – Chasing Gold

I need to remember this loose swirl technique when I don’t have time. The whole design took maybe 15 minutes, and the cleanup after (due to the thickness of the polish around my cuticles) took another 15. Thats it. Not half bad! Anyway, sorry for the skipped posts last week, I am very stressed trying to meet some deadlines at the moment! Hopefully I manage to post more than once this week. Oops!

Halloween Vortex Drip

This is a weird complicated manicure. I was (yet again) out of Halloween nail ideas, but I was playing with one of my cell-producing polishes and decided I would just force that to become a manicure. I started making decals (one for each nail) with yellow, orange, red, green, and purple (due to their halloween nature), and adding the nude cell polish and a black creme. The end results were widely varied with regards to density of color, ease of flow, and number of cells, and looked super random on my nails. I was going to stamp over them, but decided that a drip design to make it look like a halloween-colored vortex was the better solution. I have no idea what I was thinking (it was maybe 3am) and the end result is super weird, but it was fun!

Colors:
~ Red: Zoya – Sooki
~ Orange: Forumla X – Incandescent
~ Yellow: OPI – Never a Dulles Moment
~ Green: Zoya – Tilda
~ Purple: OPI – I Manicure for Beads
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Nude spot: Baroness X – Sand Ahoy!

I don’t know that I will ever do something quite as abstract as this. No one had any idea what I was attempting and overall my nails mostly looked like slime! But I guess that is part of the fun of Halloween…do weird stuff! Anyway, hope you enjoyed!

BRAINSSSSS

This was created for Halloween, because zombies. However, while I was putting this together I decided I actually wanted to make it somewhat realistic (in terms of color) so it took a lot longer than expected and I love it! It helps that I am both a neurologist and a neuroscientist, and that brains are kind of my thing. I usually don’t work with gross tissue (aka hold a brain in my hand) but I can still enjoy it!

The base polish is a new-to-me polish from Polish Pickup a while ago that I had been saving for this exact manicure called Not Such A Fungi by BKL. This is another polish that arrived together with the lovely science stamping plate of happiness, and as soon as I saw the color and the brain gyrus/sulcus stamp I knew I was going to create this manicure. The polish is a pale orange that leans nude, and is made more subtle by a healthy dose of red-to-green shifting shimmer. It took 3 coats to cover my free edge, but the end result is quite pretty and worth it. It lasted for 6 days with no tip wear, so clearly the chemistry of this polish agrees with me!

Colors:
~ Orange shimmer: BKL – Not Such A Fungi
~ Brown jelly: Born Pretty – Arcadia
~ Dark red: OPI – Visions of Love
~ Stamp: Hit the Bottle – For the Love of Science

I ended up deciding that the orange polish with dark red stamping, while realistic, was not realistic ENOUGH so I added meninges (the thin membranes around the brain that help hold some of the fluid in place) using an orange-brown jelly polish. It took a lot longer as a result, but it also looks (to me) far more realistic so I think it was worth it. I don’t know that anyone else noticed! Anyway, hope you all enjoyed!

Itinerant Traveler

I had been staring at this design on the stamping plate for SO LONG and I just had to use it. I had to. The biggest struggle was how to make the dragons stand out. The stamping plate has the dragons as part of the design, but I didn’t want them to be just black. So, I stamped over the black with multichrome (and then went back in and added more multichrome by hand because shifty dragons just make sense)!

I started with a bright green base. What you see here are two coats of OPI’s Did It On ‘Em. I hate the name, but the color is a beautiful pale grass green (a yellow-leaning bright pale green). I had been looking for a replacement for Essie The More The Merrier, and I think I have found it! Its a nice polish.

To make the base more grass-like, I dry-brushed on two more shades of green. When that was dry and top coated, I added my stamping decals, and then finished off with the multichrome dragons. I initially painted the blue sky directly on the nail after the stamp was finished, but I decided that was farrrrr to much effort and just turned it into part of the stamping decal after the first two nails 😀

Colors:
~ Pale green: OPI – Did It On ‘Em
~ Green: Zoya – Josie
~ Dark green: Zoya – Shawn
~ Blue: KBShimmer – I’d Rather be with Blue
~ Light grey: Zoya – Dove
~ Grey: WOW – #333
~ Dark grey: Zoya – Evvie
~ Pale grey with black flecks: Cirque – Hatch
~ Red: KBShimmer – Chai-huahua
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Brown: Zoya – Dea
~ Gold: Salon Perfect – Gold Leaf
~ Blue multichrome: ILNP – Birefringence
~ Stamp: Maniology – M035

Thats all for today, and fits the 31 day challenge of book, mostly because I love fantasy novels! I don’t have a specific one here, but there are so many who cares :-p. Hope you enjoyed!

Bumblebee

When I saw that I was going to have to paint something for the Yellow theme this 31 Day Challenge I was initially disheartened, I don’t like the color yellow. Then I remembered that I had not yet made bee nails, and voila!

Colors:
~ Yellow: OPI – Never a Dulles Moment
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White

This is one of the cutest manicures I have made in ages, and I adore it! I had been seeing more and more bumblebee manicures online, and then the roses in our backyard bloomed and we had our own bees! So I figured that was a sign that I needed to make this manicure. It also helped that I found (in the depths of my nail art box) some hexagon decals sent as a sample from Whats up Nails over a year ago, that were perfect! Anyway, this mani is a mix of freehand and decals and it came out great 🙂