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 😀

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!

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!

In Tron

The title of this amuses me…the design was loosely inspired by art from Tron Legacy (someday I will freehand some Tron lines and light cycles) with a dark background and bright blue with hints of orange. However, an intron is part of a gene that is coded to become a protein in biology, which just makes me smile!

Anyway, this was done for “movie” day of the 31 Day Challenge. I know today is book day, and I really wanted to honor one of my favorite authors, Marion Zimmer Bradley, but I just couldn’t work up the energy to freehand some awesome scenery. Sorry! So movie it is.

I also don’t know why I situated on Tron, it was just the first movie with a really cool aesthetic image that popped in my head.

Colors:
~ Dark blue: Zoya – Blake
~ Blue creme: Zoya – Ling
~ Light blue creme: Zoya – Rocky
~ Orange: Zoya – Thandie
~ Silver: Nails Inc – South Kensington
~ Stamp: BM – XL204

Hope you enjoyed! And we are almost done with the 31 day challenge. This is very sad for me, because a lot of my favorite nail blogs/IGs only really post nail art daily during September, and otherwise I have to wait weeks to see new art!

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

Neon Slices

I have to admit, I had no idea the rabbit hole I was getting myself into when I made these. I saw a pin that I liked on pinterest, and just decided to re-create it.

Then of course I decided to use more neon colors that the original (which may have been a mistake since, again, these were worn to see patients), and since my nails were longer I went ahead and added a flair of double lines on my nails. The doubles were only on my left hand, my right hand recently had a collision with a car door and thus has short nails.

But this is where it got nuts…I went to go find the original poster of the nail art design. And this woman has made SO MANY of these. The original mani (and the one I used as inspiration) was posted to @amvpnails over 3 years ago. Then, a few weeks later she posted a similar design with gold/pink colors. Then she seems to have noticed how popular they were and did one in blues, reds, more neons, and dark rainbows. That is a LOT of repeats! I cannot imagine repeating one design that many times, even with the color variations.

Colors:
~ Silver holo: Emily de Molly – Stockpile
~ Pink: Revlon – Bubbly
~ Orange: KBShimmer – Orange You Glad I Didn’t Say Banana
~ Green: Essie – The More the Merrier
~ Teal: Emily de Molly – Glee Ridden
~ Purple: Zoya – Malia

That’s all for today! Hope you enjoyed the neon and glitter, and the trip down some random instagramer’s memory lane!

Grungy Floral Lace

I don’t really know what else to call this? The background is a bit grungy and I should really not have stamped over it with lace, because it really just came out looking messy.

The base of this is my swatch test for Mauve Nudes, which I then haphazardly dry-brushed over with each color. I went, for some reason that I cannot come up with in hindsight, with a lace floral stamp? And then colored in the flowers with jelly polish and added a gold bead to the middle. I think if the background was a consistent color rather than a mess, that this would have looked good! But alas, it does not.

Colors:
~ Tan nude: Zoya – Chantal
~ Pastel nude: Essense – I Nude It
~ Peach nude: CND – Cashmere Wrap
~ Pastel mauve: KBShimmer – Caught on Tape
~ Mauve: Zoya – Rue
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Pink jelly: Zoya – Paloma
~ Red jelly: OPI – My Wish List is You
~ Orange jelly: custom made
~ Stamp: BP – L084

So, that is a lot of colors for something that looks like it has at maximum 5 colors. Oh well! At least I tried?

I think I need to stay away from lace on nudes for a while, or just lace stamps n general. The last few manis that I have tried with them just don’t end up looking good!