Perfect Curliques

I don’t think I have ever had stamps that lined up so nearly perfectly. I used my cleanest and clearest jelly stamper, but still, I am happy with how these turned out! This is a very simple manicure, just a glittery base with a blue polish stamped on top, but with clean lines and complementary colors, it works well I think!

Colors:
~ Pink/blue shimmer flakie: Polishes for Days – Fireflies
~ Blue: Zoya – Ryan
~ Stamp: Moyra – 50 Ornaments 3

It bums me out a bit that despite theoretically having more time (being in lab instead of in the hospital) I am voluntarily working nearly as many hours as I was when I was a resident in the hospital! And since I set my own schedule, I am getting to work later and leaving later, so I just don’t have the time I need to paint my nails more than once a week! I am running out of my nail art backlog, a thing which I thought would never happen. Eek! Whats more, even on weekends, I only have time for stamping art! I haven’t done freehand in WEEKS. So, while this may be pretty, it isn’t quite as intricate as I had hoped to be doing at this point in the year. Wish me luck on making some freehand rainbows next week….my birthday is coming up and it IS tradition, but I need to have time to make it happen!

Stained Glass Lilies

I have been wanting to do a stained glass manicure forever, but I was lacking many things: inspiring images, appropriate jelly polishes, and an appropriate base. I now have ALL (well, most) of these and decided to make a go at it! I realized that Cohesion, which I bought as a topper, would work GREAT over a subtle nude base as a “clear” shimmer stained glass window. I also realized that the recent white glitter collection by Emily de Molly is embedded in perfect jewel tone jellies, which are a pain to get out because there is SO MUCH GLITTER but work great for lead lighting, And finally, I bought a hot neon orange-red jelly polish while in Greece, that pairs wonderful with my existing pink jelly polish. What does this mean? Stained glass flowers!

Colors:s
~ Nude: Formula X – Marvelous
~ Flakies: Emily de Molly – Cohesion
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Green jelly: Emily de Molly – Green Light
~ Pink jelly: Zoya – Paloma
~ Neon orange jelly: Azade – S220
~ Stamp: EDK – Mosaic

These are, in my opinion, probably the best stained glass nail art I have ever done. Now, that is not exactly a high bar…but still! I cannot wait to use more of the images on this plate, and maybe to get myself some better jelly polishes (mostly a real yellow and a green) to play with. Enjoy!

Flamingo Sunset

While in Greece in April, one of the polishes I found was a particular pastel neon coral, an orange-learning pink. I took one look at it and decided it looked like a flamingo (well, my first thought was “shrimp!” and my second thought was flamingo) and that it needed to come home with me. So, obviously, I used it in a flamingo-themed coral-pink manicure.

This is two thin coats of #152 by Studio Seven7een, a Greek brand. It covered beautifully and cleaned up beautifully, and fits right in with all the pastel corals that I have accidentally bought in the last year (…this is the third. Oops). The bottle is a bit funny shaped, but I like the color and the application, so that is fine. This brand appears to make mostly nudes/pinks/reds and the occasional purple, but they do know what they are doing with their consistency!

Colors:
~ Pastel coral: SEVEN7EEN – #152
~ Coral: L’oreal – Orange you Jealous?
~ Neon pink: WOW – #371
~ Holo glitter: China Glaze – Fairy Dust
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamps: Moyra – 106 Picturesque

This gradient involves 2 foreign polishes! WOW is an Israeli brand. I love the overall neon coral sunset look, the fronds, the branches, and of course the flamingo on my pointer! I thought about adding more, but it was already a little…crowded. Overall, despite being a simple gradient and some stamps (ok, a lot of stamps) this came out quite pretty! And fits well with how awfully hot it has gotten. Hope you enjoyed!

Punchy Flowers

I knew I wanted to use this base polish, and I had no plans other than that. So what do you do when you are handed a silvery-pink super sparkly shimmer? Add flowers! It is spring time after all.

The base color here is three thin coats of Binky Bunnies by Leesha’s Lacquer. The maker of Leesha’s Lacquer has three rabbits, and when rabbits are very happy they do this adorable vertical jump called a binky. I can see why a bunny might be happy if they have a silvery-white polish swimming with pink glitter, holo glitter, shimmer, and some amount of this newfangled reflective glitter named after them! Honestly, this polish reminds me of a harder-to-remove Rosewater by ILNP. It is stunning, but I don’t really see the reflective glitter even under direct light? It makes it harder to apply the polish, gives it texture, and makes it much harder to remove…but I don’t know that I feel it adds much to the overall depth of the polish. I could just be bitter about glitter removal, but I don’t understand the current furore over reflective glitters.

Colors:
~ Silver/pink shimmer: Leesha’s Lacquer – Binky Bunnies
~ Teal jelly: Zoya – Frida
~ Teal creme: Zoya – Wednesday
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamp: Lina – Urbannailart collab

I also have a confession: this is not my polish! I bought it from Polish Pickup for a friend of mine, who actually owns a bunny! She is also the source of my random bunny facts, and occasionally lets me pet her super soft fluffy rabbit, although he is an absolute jerk and also likes to eat my shoes. I hope you too learned something about rabbits today, and enjoyed the nail art!

Pastel Rainbow Mirage

This was actually the base for another nail art, but it looked so pretty that I felt the need to take some photos of it by itself! It also allows me to show off Pale Landscape by Emily de Molly, which is the excellent white glitter polish (the base is, for once, crystal clear). Its like snow!

Colors:
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Pink: Zoya – Sandy
~ Yellow: Revlon – Electric
~ Teal: Emily de Molly – Glee Ridden
~ Purple: Nails Inc – Regents Place
~ White glitter: Emily de Molly – Pale Landscape

Of course, when I realized what I had done to my nails matched my rainbow scale detail brush, I had to take a picture with it. You cannot see the full rainbow range, but I promise they matched! Hope you enjoyed todays pastel rainbow 😀

Dear Deer

I absolutely love this manicure! I had been wanting to use this scene from one of my favorite stamping plates for a while, but I couldn’t figure out what to do with it. This works so well though! A land-to-sky gradient with jelly-filled purple mountains. Cute AND appropriate 🙂

Colors:
~ Neon pastel green: KBShimmer – Lime All Right
~ Neon teal: Emily de Molly – Glee Ridden
~ Periwinkle: L’oreal – Royalty Reinvented
~ Purple jelly: Zoya – Katherine
~ Pink Jelly: Zoya – Paloma
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamp: Maniology x Clairestelle8 – M035

Honestly I can’t tell which animal I like best: the deer or the squirrel! It is a comically oversized squirrel, but that just means that it is MUCH CLOSER (perhaps close enough for my puppy to catch it :-p). I hope you enjoyed this as much as I do!

London Sunfall

Welp, this didn’t work quite how I planned. I was inspired by the demo art on this stamping plate’s website to try and double stamp this design with black-on-white, but this part of my plate just isn’t etched well enough for this to work! Instead the black looked grey (although the peek-a-boo white did look nice). Next time, just black. That said, I love the designs, and my gradient was rather pretty! You also cannot really tell that I colored the moon in with a yellow jelly. Whoops!

Colors:
~ Orange: KBShimmer – Papaya Don’t Preach
~ Pink: Zoya – Morgan
~ Purple: Zoya – Margo
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Yellow Jelly – Esmalta da Kelly – Yellow Soap Bubble
~ Holo glitter: China Glaze – Fairy Dust
~ Stamp: Maniology x Clairestelle8 – M035

In real life, the gradient was actually pretty, but in these photos it looks like a bit of a mess (and regardless, the pale orange at the tips of my nails did not survive the stamping process). Next time, I will do better!

Mermaid Scales

This polish is so INSANELY reflective that I hate to cover it up (that seems to be the theme of this week). As an alternative, this design worked! Although I do wish I had applied the pink dots with advanced stamping instead of at the end, since they are visibly dots rather than the central part of scales. Even without any further intervention, the end nail art was SO mermaid. I love it.

The base polish is three thin coats of Sea of Lies by Emily de Molly. As far as “lies” go this polish has none: it is stunningly fantastically reflective, also shifts color very visibly, goes on like a dream, and is overall just wonderful. I don’t usual wear foil type polishes because I don’t love how they look on me, but this one is an absolute winner. I held off buying it for YEARS and now I wonder what on earth I was thinking! It will likely end up in my top 10 polishes of this year.

Colors:
~ Pink/teal reflective multichrome: Emily de Molly – Sea of Lies
~ Teal: A England – Saint George
~ Pink: Zoya – Tobey
~ Stamp: BC-04

This past week has been a hot, sticky, mess. For some reason, St Louis decided to skip spring entirely, and go from highs in the 60s to highs in the 90s in two days. It was 96 a week after it snowed. What even is this weather. All of this is to say, I somewhat wish I was the mermaid that I have painted, so I could go jump in a pool and cool off! Anyway, hope you enjoyed!

Pink Jewish Stars

I also painted these for Hannukah, so they had to be both jewish and weird! And as a result I am also using them for passover :-p. I don’t know how I ended up with this color combination, and honestly I wish I had used a white stamping base not a silver one, but the end result was kinda cool! I don’t think I had noticed before that this particular stamp contained a jewish star, but now I have a hunch that at least once a year I will be doing a similar design to this but with different color combinations.

Colors:
~ Light blue: Zoya – Rocky
~ Blue: Zoya – Ling
~ Dark blue: Zoya – Sia
~ Blurple: Zoya – Danielle
~ Silver: A England – Excalibur
~ Pink: Revlon – Bubbly
~ Stamp: EdM 17

Anyway, hope you enjoyed! And sorry for only two posts this week, I just got back from Greece and jet lag is real. As is me playing catch-up on Facebook and IG and posting all the blog posts from the past two weeks to my other sites since I definitely did not do that while I was on vacation!

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 🙂

Neon Butterfly Flight

This was inspired by @urbannailart and even came with a video! Honestly, I recreated her background pretty close to perfectly and I loved the look! I will need to do this dirty stamping gradient again in the future. It helps that the whole thing is neon too :-). I didn’t have the ability to stamp a full butterfly pattern with polish (I could only do the outline in black), so I went back and painted over the black stamp with teal and purple jelly polish. It isn’t quite the same pop of color, but overall I think it does a good job honoring the inspiration! My butterfly was a bit smaller than the original, so I went and added some swirls over the colored sections. Voila!

Colors:
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Hot pink: Zoya – Kelsey
~ Hot yellow: Emily de Molly – LE 196
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Teal jelly: Zoya – Frida
~ Purple jelly: Zoya – Katherine
~ Red glitter jelly: Zoya – Aphrodite
~ Stamps: Moyra – 60 Cuts, Nicole Diary – 090, BM – 314

I am glad it is spring and headed towards summer, I always feel weird posting bright designs and neons in the winter, but I feel like that is what I gravitate towards if given free reign over my collection! Anyway, hope you enjoyed!

Shattered Lace

As part of an IG challenge, there was a prompt of “double applied stamps”. I figured that just meant two stamps…but NO it turns out you can PICK UP A DESIGN INSIDE ANOTHER DESIGN. My mind was blown. I had to try it. Of course, it was also close to valentines day so I went with hot pink and lace? I don’t know. The end result is actually pretty ugly, but I am going to try this again (not near a holiday) with a better set of stamps and colors. Basically, you apply your first stamp (black lace in my case) and then using the same stamper with the design on it, you use a different color over an almost negative-space stamp. What is then left of the stamper is the first designs superimposed over the second design but only where the second design is! So cool.

Colors:
~ Hot pink: Atomic – Silicate
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Blue: Zoya – Yummy
~ Stamps: BP – L084, BM – 208

I feel like it is getting rarer and rarer that I learn an honestly new nail art technique…mild variations, sure. But this? This is cool. Now I need to find more negative-space style designs to try it out on! Hope you enjoyed the idea, even if the execution could use some work!

Holo Rainbow Bubble Warp

I don’t have ANY IDEA what I did here. Or why. I wanted to go with some of my old swoopy color change nails, but I forgot how I did them (the next one I do will be better, and I will be doing this again!) so I made all the lines mostly vertical. But uneven. The end result was a very messy rainbow. So I added a black warped grid…that was almost invisible. And then added black dots. And white dots. And for once, the dots actually saved the manicure! It still looks crazy, but it looks INTENTIONALLY crazy. Down the rainbow rabbit hole! Or into Willy Wonka’s canal I suppose.

I wanted to test a new-to-me polish, a yellow linear holo called Funshine Smoothie by ILNP. I almost never wear yellow as a base color, but it pops really well in gradients and other designs, so I am actually running out of my core yellow polishes! Anyway, this is three thin coats of Funshine Smoothie. It wasn’t quite opaque in 2 coats, but it went on perfectly (and removed perfectly a few days later) so three coats was just fine! It is a very pretty bright linear holo…for a yellow :-p

Colors:
~ Purple holo: A England – Crown of Thistles
~ Pink holo: Cupcake Polish – Berry Good Looking
~ Orange holo: Emily de Molly – Scorched Earth
~ Yellow holo: ILNP – Funshine Smoothie
~ Green holo: A England – Dragon
~ Teal holo: Powder Perfect – There be Mermaids!
~ Blue holo: Color Club – Over the Moon
~ Stamp: Nicole Diary – L28

I remember Berry Good Looking being a bright purple with magenta undertones that somehow leaned vibrant blue. The polish I have now is a bright magenta-pink. It is still insanely intense and pretty, but is not the same color as the polish I remember buying? How weird!

Flowers in the Ether

I have no idea what this manicure even is, but I think I like it? I started with a dark purple creme base. I then made a stamping gradient of a weird splotchy pattern using purple and pink holographic polishes, with pink towards my cuticle (I also forgot that the pink polish bleeds a whole bunch, oops). I decided that wasn’t interesting enough, so I added a gold floral + minimalist geometric stamp over the top? It works. Sort of.

Colors:
~ Dark purple: Zoya – Monica
~ Purple holo: A England – Crown of Thistles
~ Pink holo: Cupcake Polish – Berry Good Looking
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Stamps: BP Texture – L002, BP Flower Tango – L002

It is always fun coming up with designs that mix two disparate stamping plates that by all right should NOT go together. But the colors worked, so be it! Hope you enjoyed 🙂

Pastel Cell Swipe

I saw this on IG, which is one of the ways I make actual acrylic paintings (!!!) but had never thought to apply the technique to polish. It was stunned. I turned around the same day and made decals on my mat using three colors I thought would go well together (before attempting a rainbow like what I saw in the IG video). Voila! I waited 3 days to apply these (oops) so they got dried out and cracked a little, but overall I am SO IMPRESSED! This is my new favorite way to use cell-making polish. Look at all that yellow-in-pink-in-yellow action!

Colors:
~ Blue cells: Baroness X – Atlantis
~ Pink: Zoya – Tobey
~ Yellow: KBShimmer – Orange You Glad I didn’t say Banana?

For something so simple this came out fantastically, even if it did over-dry. I will show the rainbow one sometime soon, it was excellent :-D. Hope you enjoyed!

Purple Moonrise

I really wanted to add a howling wolf to this manicure and I just could not figure out how or where! Next time. This design was inspired by @iamdeliasnails who was in turn initially inspired by @teenynails. I love the nail art community. I made a bright pink to light purple gradient, and stamped over the tips with purple and then black polish. Voila! Fairly easy and yet quite pretty.

Colors:
~ Light purple: Essie – Full Steam Ahead
~ Light pink: Zoya – Tobey
~ Bright pink: Zoya – Kelsey
~ Bright purple: Zoya – Landon
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Stamps: Moyra – 106 Picturesque

Does anyone have any advice on how to incorporate a wolf stamp and not make it look ridiculous next time I do something like this? If I did it in white (or light purple) it would stand out too much, but the whole thing is already black! If I did the trees in grey the wolf could be black, but that would be difficult to accomplish and still difficult to see most likely. Ugh.

Fan Flowers

There was no overall plan with this manicure, I just had a color pallet to use and went for it! I don’t know if I like the overall scheme over blue (rather than nude or light orange) but it is what it is! I love the yellow/orange/pink/purple pallet, but looking back at this I wish I had done it over a more neutral color. Maybe next time!

Colors:
~ Pastel blue: Zoya – Blue
~ Blue shimmer: Sinful Colors – Cinderella
~ Yellow: KBShimmer – Orange You Glad I Didn’t Say Banana?
~ Orange: Zoya – Thandie
~ Pink: Zoya – Morgan
~ Magenta: Zoya – Margo
~ Purple: Zoya – Danielle
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamp: Moyra – 45 I Fill You

I want to say it is getting close to spring (we are most of the way to March and its been in the 60s the past two days) but honestly it is supposed to snow and then freezing rain later this week (oh joy) so I can’t say that. I just like flowers? Anyway, hope you enjoyed!

Pastel Splotch Circuit

I have no idea where I was going with this, no plan, and no purpose (that appears to be a trend this week). I just went for it! I painted each nail a different pastel color, splotched the other colors over the base color, and then stamped in a white geometric-ish pattern. The end result was cool if confusing.

Colors:
~ Pastel purple: Zoya – Abby
~ Pastel pink: Zoya – Jordan
~ Pastel orange: Zoya – Cole
~ Pastel yellow: Maybelline – Citrus Collide
~ Pastel green: Zoya – Tiana
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Stamp: EdM – 11

You may also ask why I featured the entire rainbow EXCEPT for blue. I grabbed a nail polish for each nail (5 in total) and then didn’t have a blue nail. I absolutely should have put blue on anyway, but I did not do that. So here we are!

Golden Heart

This is needlessly complicated but almost cool? I wish I had used a less-glittery background pink. The idea was to encase a gold heart on my accent nail with a swirling cage. That worked, and I went an added swirls and occasional gold glitter to my other nails to work with it…but you almost can’t see the whole thing on top of the pink base! Oops.

Colors:
~ Pink holo: Milani – Digital
~ Pink glitter: Zoya – Mae
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Gold glitter: KBShimmer – Toast-ess with the Mostest
~ Stamps: BP – 185, Floral BP – X43

If I am being honest, I think this is the first time I have used Mae outside of swatching, and I use Toast-ess so rarely the polish has completely dried up and I am left picking out clotted glitter bits. Oh well! I suppose Valentine’s day is a good a day as any to open and play with some neglected polishes, right?