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 🙂