Dark Laces

I have been sitting on this mani for months, but I figured fall was a good time to post it! I loved doing this one, but the laces took forever, so that I ran out of time to add enough top coat to smooth everything out. So, I am sorry for the slightly uneven finish!

The design was inspired by @banicured_ although her’s were all in white. The laces stand out more against the white, but there is nothing like a jewel-toned ombre to make me happy! Also, I wanted to see how OPI’s Stay Off the Lawn stacked up against some of my other darker colors.

It makes me a little sad how infrequently I can get away with doing manicures that show even a bit of my naked nail. I wear too much blue (and green, and even certain pinks) and my poor nails look like splatter paintings. I had to wait until they cleared up just to do this!

Colors:
~ Sheer: Sephora X – Marvelous
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Green: Zoya – Shawn
~ Teal: OPI – Stay Off the Lawn!!
~ Blue: Maybelline – Shocking Seas
~ Purple: L’Oreal – Paparazzi Pleaser
~ Pink: Zoya – Margo

That’s all for today! Hope you enjoyed 🙂

Running in Circles

This is the companion piece to my Day 11 nails (dots) from the 31 Day Challenge. However, these have minimal polka dots and maximal stamping, so I didn’t think they’d qualify!

Since I had to wear this mani to the clinic, I needed to make sure my hands were close enough to matching that no one would notice on first glance. Of course, if I was really thinking, I probably would NOT have chosen a neon pink background if that was my goal…

Regardless, I stamped some fun concentric circles (which were part of a buffet-style plate so I had to carefully clean off the surrounding patterns) and then added some extra dots. The result was a little boring, so I threw on some glitter polish in random parts of the stamp as well!

Colors:
~ Pink: Essie – Sunday Funday
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Glitter: Sally Hansen – Diamonds
~ Stamp: BM – S101

That is it for today! Hope you enjoyed, even if it was a little redundant. Next week starts my fall-themed designs in ernest, so I needed to finish showing neon colors!

Glitter Flowers

For the past few years, I’ve tried to do my “honor nails you love” final day of the 31 Day Challenge after one of the manis actually entered into the challenge. This year was troublesome, because there were so many awesome designs! A few were amazing, but far too complicated. So, I settle on this!

The design is inspired by Glitterfingersss glitter day prompt. I did not want to use lose glitter, so I ended up grabbing my new-and-untried crazy silver holo glitter bomb polish, and painting on some flowers! All in all, I don’t know how much this resemble’s gliterfingerss’ original, but I still like it. It is suitably glitter and flowery, even if the base and colors are different!

The base itself is a magnificent (if overpriced) polish called 24 Karat Diamond by F.U.N. Lacquer. I recently bought three of their polishes when LiveLovePolish had a sale. They are honestly too expensive to be worth it for me, but darn do they make pretty polish! 24 Karat Diamond is small silver holographic hexes suspended in a clear base. This took four very thin coats for opacity, and honestly the coats dried surprisingly fast. I don’t love the four-coat problem, but I imagine that next time I will put it over a silver (or silver holo) base and use 2-3 coats. I also wanted to make it as opaque as I could, or I would have stopped at three coats. Despite that, this polish is MESMERIZING. I have not seen intense shifty glittery holo like this…maybe ever. Certainly not in my collection. It is as though someone took Harp On It by Color Club and broke it into individual tiny rainbows, that still somehow look truly silver. I cannot wait to play with this more!

All that said, this polish took a good 30 minutes to remove and there is STILL glitter around my nails (I just took it off). The polish itself is not particularly top coat hungry, and a single coat of Seche Vite was enough to smooth it out. I could not stop staring at my fingernails! I think this might be more of an accent nail type polish in the future, given the removal time, but we shall see!

Colors:
~ Silver holo: F.U.N. Lacquer – 24 Karat Diamond
~ Pink jelly: Zoya – Paloma
~ Purple jelly: Zoya – Katherine
~ Teal jelly: Zoya – Freida
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White

I am glad that I did not end up stamping on either the roses or the leaves, as I was initially planning. Something about this being fully free-handed makes me happy! And this is it for the 31 Day Challenge. I am so glad that I kept up! I am proud, even if this is my last year. I’ll do a re-cap tomorrow, and then on to new nail art!

Marchesa Gradient Gown

Day 25’s theme is “fashion” which is a bit of a problem, as I am still wearing the same clothing I wore in high school (and I’m 29). That said, this years was a little easier than most! I’m also a little late in posting since I was traveling all day, oops!

While searching for fashionable gowns on google, I stumbled across an absolutely stunning dress by Marchesa. I want it. The colors and the pattern and the fabric and most especially the cut of the skirt. So, of course, I had to try and recreate it on my nails!

This mani took two days, mostly because I wanted a completely dry base color before I was willing to attempt to make a gradient using metallic polish. Usually, I end up with bubbles and messes galore, and I happen to be attending a wedding this weekend so my nails need to be flawless! So, I painted on the hot pink metallic base (Petites Color Fever – Raspberry Ice), waited a day, and THEN did the gradient (OPI – Cute Little Vixen and Confetti – Masquerade Ball). Success!

Initially, I was not going to put anything over my accent nail (which was going to be a black jelly with a pink-to-black stamp, but I gave up and grabbed one of my favorite glitterbomb polishes instead, The Unloved by Emily de Molly), but it looked too bright next to the completed gradient so I added a stamp that reminded me of the top of the Marchesa dress (BP – L049). I think it came out really well!

I am going to consider the fashion day a success this year, which might actually be a first for me! Also, my nails are super glittery and metallic. But I have to admit, I am not looking forward to trying to remove that glitter polish!

The Rainbow Fish

I love painting nails inspired by children’s books…and I’ve been wanting to try The Rainbow Fish for a while! I just haven’t had the time (until now).

The inspiration came from Adventures in Acetone, although I decided to stay true to the book and use only creme polishes for the scales other than the rainbow silver scales. I do wish, in retrospect, that I had used a lighter pink (even though I don’t actually have a good one)!

The story is about the joy that one person can get from sharing. Its quite a nice message! It also was one of my favorite books growing up (not that I wanted to be taught to share with my sisters) but because the shiny fish scales were just so pretty. This mani is a bit darker than I imagine the fish being, but still pretty and suitably colorful! Who wants to play with silver holo? 🙂

Colors:
~ Light blue: Zoya – Yummy
~ Blue: Maybelline – Shocking Seas
~ Dark blue: Zoya – Sia
~ Teal: Salon Perfect – Escape to Neverland
~ Purple: L’oreal – Paparazzi Pleaser
~ Pink: Zoya – Ciara
~ Holo: Color Club – Harp On It
~ Yellow: WOW – #301

These took FOREVER to paint because I had to do one scale at a time, and couldn’t put two wet dots next to each other or they’d run! I still love the end result though 😀 Hope you enjoyed! It looks like I wasn’t the only one to do Rainbow Fish this year!

Madoka Magica

The nails for Day 23 (movie or TV show) are near and dear to me. I spent hours agonizing over what color and shapes to use on this, and it will make absolutely no sense to anyone who hasn’t seen the show and epilogue movie of Madoka Magica.

So, Madoka Magica is a TV show (on netflix) of the “magical girl” genre (think Sailor Moon) but which was created at a show rather than a comic and as such has a wonderful but concise plot line (somehow without any plot holes!), interesting characters, and an incredibly compelling story. It also has some of the most amazing art I have seen in recent memory. There are a number of animes and other cartoons which I cannot watch because they aren’t pretty enough…either the art style is too juvenile or just too simple, or the animation is terrible. Madoka Magica is BEAUTIFUL.

My strong recommendation is that all of you go watch it, there are only 12 20-minute episodes and a short movie. Independent of that, let me explain a little about what is going on on my nails. Each nail represents one of the magical girls in the TV show. I initially got really excited because as each girl accepts a contract to become a magical girl, they get markings on their nails to denote the shape and color of their magic.

Each marker has a link to an image of the nails on the character, if you are interested! My pinky is Sayaka, whose marker is a blue “C” and who has a magical talent with swords and a yearning for music (hence music notes). My ring finger is Mami, whose marker is some type of golden-orange cross-thing, and who has a magical talent with muskets and a yearning for family (her symbol tends to be flowers). My middle finger is the titular character Madoka, whose marker is a pink teardrop, and who has a magical talent that varies somewhat (bow and arrow, and spoilers) and yearns to protect others (and really likes butterflies). My pointer is Homura (who is my favorite character), whose marker is a purple diamond, and whose talent lies in controlling time (hence gears and clocks). Homura’s one desire is to protect Madoka. My thumb was inspired by Kyoko, whose symbol is a red oval, has an affinity for spears and magical fences, and yearns for food (i did a fence background rather than food). Not pictured is probably the cutest/creepiest character, Kyubey.

I used two colors (plus white) per nail, and 1-2 stamps for the background images (music notes, flowers, butterflies, gears and clocks, fences), so I am not going to list them all here! If you are curious about a particular color, I am happy to share it…but I doubt anyone actually cares 🙂

So now, please stare at the beautiful art that I found of these 5 characters (I don’t know who made the art and it is not from the TV show) but if you find yourself enticed, go watch! It is a really good expenditure of time. 😀

A P!nk Reason

For Day 22 of the 31 Day Challenge, the theme was “song”. I’ve always had trouble with this one, since I can never decide if I want to do music in general, or the theme of a song, or something about the music video.

This year, I decided to be inspired by both the artist (P!nk) and the visuals of the song. I went with the song Just Give Me A Reason, which is depressing but I love the vocals! In the music video, P!nk sports her pale pink/white hair with a pink ribbon, and is wearing a pale pink lace dress. There are also a number of scenes featuring an off-white mattress. I just went with it!

My pinky, pointer, and thumb are all intended to be different bits of lace. My ring finger is a mattress (maybe, if you squint) although I should probably have used the quilting method. My middle finger is intended to be her hair, with the ribbon. I went a bit dark with the pink shade in the hair, but I still like it!

Colors:
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Pale pink: OPI – Be There In a Prosecco
~ Light pink: Wet n’ Wild – Tickled Pink
~ Pink: Revlon – Bubbly
~ Dark pink: Zoya – Ciara

This mani is brought to you by clear stampers (seriously, I double stamped/shadow stamped all the nails except my middle finger which is TRIPLE stamped)! And too many stamping plates. The lace is from plates BP-L008, BP-L020, and EdM01. The hair and ribbon are from BM-S108 and BM-317.  The mattress is from BM-209. Yikes! Hope you enjoyed, and go listen to the song!