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!

Daffodil Garden

I have no excuse for this going up in the afternoon…I finished editing last night and just forgot that today is a Wednesday! Anyway. I painted these in early April, as the daffodils were finally emerging from the (very late) snow! I also rather like that I found a way to use this stamp that doesn’t make all my fingers look the same 🙂

Since this was painted on top of a swatch test post, I started with a different color blue polish on each nail. To make them uniform, I basically dry-brushed each color over the others so the end result was a medium light blue with shimmer in it. I wanted there to be a faint wispy cloud background, and I think it looks rather cool! You can see that best on my pinky and thumb.

After the blue cloudy background had dried, I used advanced stamping (aka coloring in the stamp while it is on the stamper) and applied it to my nails. One of my last minute decisions with this was to use a dark orange in the very center of the flowers and then a lighter yellow-leaning peach for the rest of the middle. I love how it came out! I ended up goggle image searching daffodils to make sure I had the right shade of orange (all the daffodils near my apartment are yellow-on-yellow which is not nearly as much fun), and it also gave me a chance to use Freedom of Peach again! I don’t like this color on my nails as a base but it clearly works as flower centers :-p

Colors:
~ Pastel blue: Sally Hansen – Breezy Blue
~ Light blue: Essie – Rock the Boat
~ Pink shimmer: Sinful Colors – Cinderella
~ Medium blue: KBShimmer – I’d Rather be with Blue
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Orange: ULTA – Sun of a Gun
~ Peach: OPI – Freedom of Peach
~ Yellow: OPI – Never a Dulles Moment
~ Green: Zoya – Shawn
~ Stamp: BP – L067

I know the daffodils have all died, but I wanted to make sure that this got posted SOMETIME in the spring! Hope you enjoyed!

Aloha

Finally, nail art and no more swatch comparisons! I thought I would open with the nails I painted for my Honeymoon back in March 🙂

Since I was traveling to Hawaii, I wanted some fun tropical nails! I didn’t have any stamping plates that were quite the correct flower, and the few hibiscus ones I have are…not the prettiest. So I tried to turn some flowers INTO something vaguely Hawaiian! I also couldn’t make up my mind between two different designs, so I just went ahead and used both. The mani ended up a bit busier than I intended (oops) but I still like it!

Colors:
~ Purple: Emily de Molly – Traverse the Skies
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ White: LA Girl – White On
~ Orange: KBShimmer – Orange You Glad I Didn’t Say Banana?
~ Pink: Wet n’ Wild – Tickled Pink
~ Dark green: Zoya – Shawn
~ Green: Sinful Colors – Exotic Green
~ Stamps: BP – 067, Chic Peek BM – XL472

I also wish I had done some lava nails, since that may have been the single coolest thing I’ve ever seen (well, hottest really I suppose). Since my visit, the volcano on Hawaii has started erupting again, which is incredibly unfortunate for the people who live on the slopes of the volcano!

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the tropical nails! Hopefully I can get my act together and actually have something to post the rest of this week as well 😀

Fiery Ripples

This mani is simple, but looked kinda amazing. And I had nothing to do with that fact. It was 110% the polish that I used!

Anyway, the polish of the day is Fired Up by ILNP. This polish is amazing. What you see here are three thin coats. First off, I had 0 clean up with this. Nothing. The polish was perfect to apply, which is fairly rare. Second, the color is drop dead gorgeous. It is a silver-white scattered holographic base swimming with bright orange shimmer that shifts through gold to green at sharp angles (you can see the green reflection off neighboring nails). I love it.

Once that I was dry, I stamped with a swishy ripple design from one of the born pretty store plates that is labeled in non-english, so I cannot type it up! but it is full of pseudo water marble patterns. The white polish is, as always, Snow me White by Sinful Colors.

And that’s it, that’s the mani. I feel like I usually have a bunch more to say, but I am too busy staring at these photos to say much. I love the polish. I want to wear it again right now.

For those of you who are curious, the only other similar polish I own is Rosewater by ILNP (they came out with a whole line of them) and I think the shimmer in Fired Up is maybe a hair more intense…but mostly Rosewater is a vibrant pink and Fired Up is a bright orange. Same basic concept otherwise!

Hope you enjoyed! My plan for next week is a bit different…I am going to put together swatch test comparisons for a bunch of similar polishes that I own, in an effort to help others makes buying polish easier, but mostly because I need to destash some of my polish before I move! Oops. So, stay tuned for swatch comparisons!

Pink Explosion

Today is a celebration…sort of. The final rank list is in for residency, and there is nothing more me, my husband, or any of our prospective schools can do! Which means that we are fleeing to Hawaii for two weeks starting tomorrow. I should have internet during our travels, but I doubt I’ll spend much time on it in Hawaii! I’ve never been before and I am very excited. It also helps that this is vacation is a little more extravagant than usual, since it is also our honeymoon (yes, we got married over a year ago).

The other fun bit about this, is that the mani shown here was painted on a moving cruise ship, on my last vacation to the carribbean with my in-laws! In retrospect, trying to create a pattern of nested dots while on a moving boat that is slowly but surely rocking side-to-side was NOT my best idea. Ooops!

Colors:
~ Blue: Philly Loves Lacquer – Love Those Wildwood Days
~ Pink: Clinique – Pinkini
~ Orange: Julep – Natasha
~ Gold: Zoya – Severine

Wish me luck on my adventures! I have enough posts pre-prepared that the blog should not be without new nail art while I am gone, but things might be a little slow to start up again when I get back, especially since I find out where I matched for residency 48 hours after I return…and I imagine things are going to get a bit chaotic!

Fiery Warmth

This mani is quite random…and was very painful to make trying to line up all those straight lines! That said, I love how bright it came out!

The initial idea was to create a blanket or scarf pattern on my nails, like a knit. I also one I wanted to use warm fire colors (oranges and reds and yellows) and the plan was to use a purple…but when I tried that it overwhelmed everything else so I removed it. Somehow, we ended up here!

I didn’t actually know I had this many plaid-like patterns among my stamping plates. I also did not fully figure on how darn difficult lining up those thin silver stripes would be. I almost resorted to using striping tape, but decided I really did want a 100% stamped mani. Ouch.

Colors:
~ Yellow: KBShimmer – Orange You Glad I Didn’t Say Banana?
~ Orange: Essie – Playing Koi
~ Red: OPI – Visions of Love
~ Silver: A England – Excalibur
~ Stamps: hehe – 028, BM – XL205

 So what do you think? Does it look even a little scarf/blanket-like? Or just very warm-toned? :-p

Darkened Desert

This mani isn’t quite winter-themed, but I think the dark colors work regardless. Also, I really couldn’t think of what to call this mani but the colors remind me of the Southwest so desert it is!

What you see here are two coats of O R’YLEH (which, how do I correctly uncapitolize? O R’yleh? O R’Yleh?) by Great Lakes Lacquer. This polish really could have been opaque in one coat but I didn’t know that, so my application was uneven. That said, the polish is a bit thicker than I expected and you need to work fast or it will dry and drag.

The polish itself is beautiful, with a dark green base with lots of holo shimmer. It also has a multichrome shimmer to it that shifts from bright fuchsia pink through copper and to gold. It’s a chameleon! Unfortunately, it was also a Polish Pickup Pack October exclusive, so as far as I know there is no way to buy it. But if you like the concept, think about joining the PPP before this month’s offers are gone too!

Colors:
~ Green: Great Lakes Lacquer – O R’YLEH
~ Rose gold: Essie – Penny Talk
~ Orange: ULTA – Sun of a Gun
~ Yellow: KBShimmer – Orange You Glad I Didn’t Say Banana?
~ Teal: Zoya – Wednesday
~ Stamp: BM – XL205

I don’t know exactly how I ended up with this color scheme, but it doesn’t look half bad. I wouldn’t typically mix orange, teal, and yellow (ewwww yellow) with something like a deep green. Or a rose gold!

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed, and happy almost New Years! I don’t plan at this moment to have a special New Years post, but maybe I can find something I haven’t had time to post that I sufficiently glittery. If not, I’ll just kick off my “top 10 of 2017” posts with regards to my favorite polishes and nail art.