Pink Swoop Gradient

I was sent to pink polishes to review from the Warm Tea Series from Born Pretty. These are very small bottles of quite potent stamping polish. I do wish I had been given two different color families, but theses ones gradiented together well! I wanted to test them over a dark base to prove that they, especially the lighter pink, would work. Voila!

Of course, in retrospect, it might have been a better test of their ability to not put them over something quite so glittery, but I have to admit the effect in the sun was dazzling! This has also convinced me that at some point I really do need to go out and buy some more dedicated stamping polishes. My regular cremes would never be able to do this!

Colors:
~ Purple holo: Emily de Molly – State of Mind
~ Light pink: Born Pretty – Warm Tea, Cherry Blossoms
~ Dark pink: Born Pretty – Warm Tea, Crimson Cheeks
~ Stamp: EdM – 21

Hope you enjoyed! If you want to pick up either the lighter pink or the darker pink stamping polish you can find them here for $1.99 each. That said, keep in mind that these are very small polish bottles, only 6ml!

Shimmer Lace with Subtle Multichrome Accents

That is one hell of a title. But I couldn’t think of a better one! We have a pastel nude shimmery base (which is quite pretty), some lace, and then some awesome accents in a pastel multichrome and silver holo glitter. I honestly kind of love this manicure!

The base is two coats of Anthos by Sayuri, one of the monthly offerings (I cannot remember if this is from PPU or one of the other monthly polish groups). Anthos is a pastel pink that leans mauve, which is just filled with scattered holo, some tiny red glitters, and lots of translucent orange/pink flakie shards. The fact that it covers in just two coats is icing on the cake. This is a beautiful subtle sparkly polish, perfect for work! (Adding a bunch of glitter is less work-appropriate, but no one has complained in months).

Colors:
~ Nude shimmer holo: Sayuri – Anthos
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Pink pastel multichrome: POP Polish – Watermellon Bubbleslick
~ Silver holo: FUN Lacquer – 24 Karat Diamond
~ Stamp: BP – L084

For whatever reason, I just wanted to use one of the pastel slicks from POP Polish. It worked surprisingly well! Of course, Emily de Molly has made a surprisingly similar polish at this point so now I need to buy that and compare the two. I am getting off track, but so be it! Regardless, I hope you enjoyed it :-p

Glimmering Leaves

Simple but so good! This, despite being a manicure that took maybe 30 minutes (color nails green, stamp with black, color in with shimmer multichrome) is one of my favorite looks in the near past. I don’t usually like things that are so minimal, but the colors work, the stamping was perfect, and it just came together really well!

It helps that I have a new pretty green creme to work with, Josie by Zoya. I have been using Josie a lot (partially because the polish has been sitting in my two-swatch section on my desk, and partially because it is a very pretty green). It is a true medium-tone green, just a hair brighter than neutral, and honestly doesn’t seem to lean blue or yellow. This is two coats. I love it 😀

I do a little regret adding the glittery polish over the top of the stamp rather than under. It means that in indirect light you can’t see the veins in the leaves, all you see are the glitters! But the glitters are so pretty that I mostly don’t care.

Colors:
~ Green creme: Zoya – Josie
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Pink shimmer: POP Polish – Watermelon Bubbleslick
~ Stamp: UC – Lovely Leaves 02

That’s all for today! Hope you all enjoyed :-D. Friday’s is slightly more involved but less elegant, if you can call something green elegant!

Bright Teal and Dark Roses

This was fun, and almost-but-not-quite perfect! Regardless of the imprecations (entirely my fault with color selection) I enjoyed wearing this! I also don’t know why I don’t actually have more floral manicures to post. What have I been painting if not flower?!

The design was inspired by @ponkle. In retrospect I wish I had used a brighter pink for the base of the roses! This ended up looking almost neon-with-goth because of the dark roses. I love it anyway. Of course, I also cheated. The dots are freehand and everything else is stamping 🙂

Colors:
~ Teal: Emily de Molly – Glee Ridden
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Light pink: Zoya – Jordan
~ Pink: Love & Beauty – Pink
~ Dark pink: Zoya – Ciara
~ Light green: Zoya – Josie
~ Dark green: Zoya – Shawn
~ Stamps: BP – L020, MoYou London – Frenchy 14

Short and sweet today, but with pretty pictures of course! Hope you enjoyed!

Bright Quadrants

Rainbow(ish) bright colors! I just wanted to play with some pastel and darker cremes in the same color family. My nails were quite short so I went for a stamp that I can only use with short nails, and voila!

In the end this is more colorful than really, anything else. But it mad me happy to wear it, and it summer, so be it! It also really proves to me that I own a truly ridiculous number of Zoya creme polishes. To be fair, I purposely buy most of my cremes from Zoya, but this is next level!

Colors:
~ Light mint: Zoya – Tiana
~ Mint: Zoya – Cecilia
~ Light blue: Zoya – Blu
~ Blue: Zoya – Ling
~ Light purple: Zoya – Abby
~ Purple: Zoya – Landon
~ Light pink: Zoya – Jordan
~ Pink: Zoya – Kelsey
~ Light orange: Maybelline – Bleached in Peach
~ Orange: ULTA – Sun of a Gun
~ Stamp: MoYou – Pro 02

Hope you enjoyed! Happy Friday 😀

Rainbow Fronds

I have no idea what I was going for here! The Overprint stamping series by Born Pretty has lots of awesome layered stamps, and I wanted to use the one that looked like a frond. It has a version where you can cover either the middle part of the tips of the leaves, and I wanted to fiddle with it!

I ended up using a bunch of neon polishes (don’t ask me which, I don’t remember) and layering them over each other in sets of pink, orange, yellow, and purple. I decided, somehow, that the end result wasn’t exciting enough, so I added more fronds to the rims of my nails. The end result is interesting? But super weird!

The base color is Reminisce by ILNP, although with how much I have covered it up,  you can hardly see the shift! The stamping plate is Overprint L002 from the Born Pretty Store.

I really don’t know you guys. This is a weird one, even for me! Also, sorry. I have completely lost track of days and obviously meant to post this yesterday!

Pastel 4th of July

Since I was in the cardiac intensive care unit over the fourth of July last year, I needed nails that celebrated the holiday without being super blingy! I decided to make some pastel toned flags…and then to use grey-out holo polish so it was a bit more subtle indoors (it helped that OUTDOORS my nails were super glittery) 🙂

This mani, predictably, took quite some time since I had to use an infinite number of strips of striping tape! That said, I think the end result was worth it. These came out pretty darn cool! Even if they were far more subtle than my typical 4th of July art!

Colors:
~ Silver holo: Nabi – Silver
~ Pink: Milani – Digital
~ Blue: Nabi – Sky Blue
~ Silver: A England – Excalibur

I hope all of my American readers get to enjoy the fireworks tomorrow! I am off tomorrow night, so if I am lucky and we don’t get a deluge of rain, I will hopefully see some colorful explosions myself!

Cutting in with Holo

Happy birthday to me! And its been pretty incredible so far…my intern year is finally over which both means I get a full week off (wow) and that I don’t have to do internal medicine anymore! Yay! Also, a friend of mine took my last ED shift so I didn’t even have to work and overnight into my birthday! Win all around 😀

Of course, no birthday is complete without some awesome nail art! I am currently wearing rainbows (obviously) but I figured it was about time to post these ones! I was inspired by @urbannailart and just ran with it!

I ended up duplicating her idea, that is to say cutting triangles out of silver to make the design, but since she used foil and I just used polish they were MUCH harder to place. I kinda wish I had just freehanded them! Oy. Still came out pretty nicely but it took much longer than expected!

Colors:
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Purple: L’Oreal – Paparazzi Pleaser
~ Pink: Zoya – Kelsey
~ Orange: OPI – Freedom of Peach
~ Silver holo: Color Club – Harp on It

Hope you enjoyed! I am looking forward to doing some more neon/crazy designs at home while I have the time and freedom to be out of the hospital!

Rainbow Gradient

Rainbow time! it has been a LONG time since I posted a rainbow (or painted a rainbow honestly). I need to do more rainbows!

So, anyway, this is a simple rainbow gradient. I went with fairly neon colors because…well, I felt like it. At some point I’ll need to do a pastel and dark rainbow with my newer wider selection of colors (again, it’s been a while).

Colors:
~ Bright pink: Zoya – Kelsey
~ Bright orange: Zoya – Thandie
~ Yellow: OPI – Never a Dulles Moment
~ Neon green: Salon Perfect – Loopy Lime
~ Blue: Zoya – Ling
~ Purple: Zoya – Margo

That’s all I have for today! Hope you enjoyed, and happy weekend!

Neon Fronds

This mani was fun to wear and a pain in the butt to photograph! Also a pain to edit. That bright orange-red is really messing with my color correction!

The base polish here is a new-to-me beauty called End of Silence by Cadillaquer. This polish covered perfectly in three thin coats, and dried quickly (although if my memory serves me right it dried semi-matte due to the neon component). Regardless, the application was smooth despite the glitters. Honestly, my only complaint is that the color is SO BRIGHT that it is spazzing out my camera! And let’s be honest, that is hardly a complaint.

I ended up stamping some negative space leaves, just because. Obviously my black polish is not intended as a stamping polish, but the end result was a red-grey that I didn’t mind. I did end up adding pale peach highlights to the long stems of the leaves, because why not? They picked up the color of the glitters. This whole mani took maybe 45 minutes.

Colors:
~ Neon coral: Cadillacquer: End of Silence
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Pink: L’oreal – Orange you Jealous?
~ Stamp: UC – Lovely Leaves 2

That’s it for today! Hope you enjoyed. Friday’s post is…remarkably colorful :-p

Helenium in Pink

Apparently a helenium (also called sneezeweed) is a flower whose petals bend distinctly downward. Turns out it is generally a yellow/orange/red flower, and I painted it in pink, but it is the only flower I can easily find with petals like this! Also hi, enjoy some pink flowers 🙂

The base color here is a new-to-me pastel multichrome by POP Polish called Watermelon Bubbleslick. I bought two of these “pastel multichromes” because I had to see if they compared to their swatches…and honestly they do. Of all of the polishes in the pastel “slick” collection this is the one I wanted the most. And it does not disappoint! It is made up of tiny flakes, so it doesn’t have the mirror-metallic appearance of many of the darker multichromes. Despite that, it is stunning. It took 3 coats for full coverage, but it dries fast. It goes from a vivid bright pink, through silver/pale blue and right to bright green just on my nail…without moving the nail. I don’t need to even tilt my fingers to see the colors. Its astounding! At $16 its still pretty pricy, but I don’t own anything like this.

I then went and advanced stamped some flowers. I used all 4 stampers in my collection (one on each of my four fingers…my thumb was a re-use) and I have to say I have NO IDEA how we all stamped for so many years before clear stampers! Don’t get me wrong, of my 3 clear stampers I only LIKE one of them (although all three picked up this image nicely) but trying to use my old Nosh double-headed pink opaque stamper and position it was a nightmare. Anyway. In retrospect I should have used pinks that were closer to each other in hue for the petals, but I was having fun. Maybe next time I’ll actually make it match better :-p

Colors:
~ Pink/green multichrome: POP Polish – Watermellon Bubbleslick
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Light pink: Zoya – Jordan
~ Pink: Revlon – Bubbly
~ Dark pink: Zoya – Kelsey
~ Dark magenta: Zoya – Morgan
~ Stamp: Moyra – 45 I Fill You

If you can’t tell the difference between Kelsey and Morgan I won’t tell anyone…I’m not sure I can either! Whoops. Anyway, this manicure was a lot of fun to make, more fun to wear, and even looking at it makes me want to put Watermelon Bubbleslick back on! I imagine this will get a lot of use in the summer :-D. Hope you enjoyed!

Shifting Purple Swirls

I loved wearing this manicure. Purple, swirls, and gradients? Yes please! It helped that making this was straightforward but it was eye-catching and looked quite complicated!

Really, this is a gradient stamp on an already existing gradient. I started with a purple gradient (lightest at the cuticle, darkest at the free edge) and then stamped a more subtle gradient (darkest at the cuticle, lightest at the free edge) over it. So many gradients! I honestly don’t know why I haven’t tried this idea again the past few months, it looks so cool 🙂

Colors:
~ Light pink: ULTA – Baby Doll
~ Light purple: Zoya – Malia
~ Light periwinkle: Nails Inc – Regents Place
~ Purple: Zoya – Landon
~ Periwinkle: Zoya – Danielle
~ Stamp: Born Pretty (not in English) – L005

That’s all for today! Some more fun weird stamping combinations coming on Wednesday, and one of my favorite new polishes on Friday! Also, my posts are finally going to get longer now that the “hard” part of my year is over, the next 4 weeks are pretty darn straight-forward. Hope you enjoyed!

Pink Petal Gradient

Oops! I meant to post this on Friday but I ended up accidentally throwing a party instead and forgot. Sorry! Anyway, This was just a fun little floral! Fitting for almost-summer.

The new polish here is called Morgan by Zoya. What you see here is three thin coats, although I could have gotten away with two thicker coats. This is a bright blue-leaning pink, and it is quite pretty! I have been hunting for more medium tone pink cremes, and although this one is slightly darker than I was hoping for, the color borders on neon and it was fun to wear.

Colors:
~ Light pink: Revlon – Bubbly
~ Pink: Zoya – Morgan
~ Dark pink: Zoya – Ciara
~ Stamp: Moyra – 32 Nature

I don’t have much else to say, I like gradients and flower petals! At least on nails. In real life, flower petals would make me sneeze terribly. Hope you enjoyed!

Sakura, Shattered

This was just fun to put together! This time I did two coats of Sakura over a white creme just to save some polish on Sakura. It looks just as good! I don’t know why I decided a gradient shattered stamp over it would be a good idea, but I like the end result. Was this still painful to remove? Yes. Was it worth it? Yep!

Colors:
~ White with pink: Emily de Molly – Sakura
~ Pink: Zoya – Ciara
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ White (base): Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Stamp: Moyra – 32 Nature

Short and sweet today! Hope you enjoyed, stay tuned for a little more color later this week :-p

Sunset Wheat

I’m back! I never really left…but I did move! The new house is utterly incredible and farrr larger than we need (there are 5 bedrooms, 5!! And 8 fireplaces. Who needs 8 fireplaces?). Anyway, I only finally unpacked the nail polish two days ago, so I have been stuck working with 8 polishes for almost a month! You will see a lot of rainbow cremes coming up. This one is from the vault, I just didn’t get around to editing it before the move! This will be a theme. Regardless, sorry for disappearing on everyone for a month!

This mani was fun! A gradient, a stamp, and some fireflies! Its a weird sideways take on that famous bit of nail art by Chalkboardnails…although honestly they look very little alike. Of course, I ended up ripping the back of my middle finger open, so you guys also get the beautiful view of a bandaid :-p

Colors:
~ Pink: Essie – Sunday Funday
~ Yellow: Stamping polish
~ Shimmer: ILNP – The Magician
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Purple jelly: Zoya – Katherine
~ Purple: Zoya – Margo
~ Stamp: BPX – L018

Hope you enjoyed! And I will do my darndest to keep this blog updated. I have a whole lot of unshared manicures, but my time is getting tight! Although if anyone knows where to get decent (and cheap) antique furniture in St Louis I would be thrilled!

Jupiter in Purple

I love this mani. I have been meaning to make a watermable with glitter so that it looks variegated (instead of just swoopy lines, to get some irregularity) and this worked! It kinda looks like the surface of Jupiter to me, if Jupiter was purple and the red spot was also purple (my middle finger tip).

I’m not going to lie, the sparkly stripe down the middle of my ring finger was…augmented…with extra polish. There was already some glitter there, but I wanted MORE. It was so shiny!

Colors:
~ Light pink: ULTA – Baby Doll
~ Shimmery lilac: Ethereal Lacquer – Little Oysters
~ Light periwinkle: Nails Inc – Regents Place
~ Purple: L’oreal – Royalty Reinvented
~ Periwinkle: Zoya – Danielle
~ Purple/green glitter: Polished for Days – From the Land of Oz

In retrospect, I think these also look a bit like geode nails? People were obsessed with those for a while, and the craze somewhat seems to have died down. I never did paint my own geode nails, and I should honestly do that sometime soon! The ones others have done a pretty :-D. Hope you enjoyed these!

Pink and Red Tread

This features another of the Zoya polishes that I bought to replace an existing polish; in this case my favorite mid-tone pink is simply empty. I tried to use it on my thumb and couldn’t get enough out of the bottle (although I did end up using a tiny sample size pink that is almost identical for comparison) Unlike my pale pink adventure, this pink polish is not nearly as close in color, nor is it as easy to use!

On my pinky, middle, and pointer fingers I have 3 thick coats of Zoya Kitridge. As it is touted on the website as a “5” and thus totally opaque, this polish is a lot more jelly-like than it should be! It was also supposed to be a bright “barbie” pink, but I honestly think it is too pale for that. It is a pretty enough color, but not what I was looking for! I also have two thin coats of Bubbly by Revlon on my ring finger, and a weird mix on my thumb (one coat of Pink Forever by Sinful Colors before it finally dried up, and one coat of Pinkini by Clinique which is an almost identical color). Regardless, Kitridge is too pale!

Then I went wonky. I decided to make a pink-to-red gradient, but I used a bright red rather than a dark red, and Kitridge is not opaque enough to gradient over Bubbly! So my poor ring finger just does not match. I ended up doing a kind of fun stamp up the middle of the gradient, but honestly I should have picked different colors!

Colors:
~ Light pink: Zoya – Kitridge
~ Pink: Clinique – Pinkini
~ Bright pink: Revlon – Bubbly
~ Red: Pure Ice – Siren
~ Dark red: Revlon – Valentine
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Stamp: BM – 206

So, overall, this manicure was a bit of a disaster. I blame Kitridge…I had a whole thing planned with a darker pink but it was not going to work with a medium-light pink! *sigh* I wish there were more comparisons on the internet, but at this point there are probably millions of shades and finishes of nail polish and that would be far too much to ask!

Pink Along the Circle

I have no idea. I just started playing with things and ended up here? I wanted grey, red, and pink, and somehow wound up turning to this pattern.

I started with a light grey base and layered one coat of a glitter polish overtop, to give it some flakies. I then stamped, and dotted the rest of the pattern. The only really fun part of this design is that I mixed red and white and just swirled them together, so the dot color is variegated.

Colors:
~ Light grey: Zoya – Dove
~ Grey glitter: Polished for Days – Grey Opal
~ Dark red: OPI – Visions of Love
~ White: LA Girl – White On
~ Red: Pure Ice – Siren
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamp: BM – S101

That’s it for today! A bit of an odd design with a bit of an odd collection of colors, but overall not terrible :-p.

Pointy Pink Angles

Another pink over teal mani! But this one is ALL SHINY. I kinda wish I had used a creme base honestly, but somehow the silver is metallic, the pink is metallic, and the teal has pink metallic shimmer. This was really quite shiny!

I’m pretty sure this is double stamped with the same gradient, which is why some of the lines aren’t exactly these same thickness? Or maybe the stamp just looks like that. I am far too lazy to check!

Colors:
~ Teal: Emily de Molly – Pending Perfection
~ Pink: Petites Color Fever – Raspberry Ice
~ Silver: A England – Excalibur Renaissance
~ Stamp: Whats Up Nails – B015

Not much going on here other than stamps, but at least it’s colorful! Hope you enjoyed.

Hearts and Lace

This is so pink. SO PINK. It is too pink! I used a pink with a bit of glitter and added a pink with MORE glitter and then hearts. So, Valentine’s appropriate but it kinda made me cringe to wear it!

This was two thin coats of Mae by Zoya. It’s not a bad polish, two coats is great coverage…I just don’t love it. The glitter flakes are subtle and the shimmer has very little depth. It was an easy polish to wear, but if I want a shimmery pink I either want a lot of metallic depth or a glitter madhouse. I ended up gradienting on (mostly with dry-brush since trying to use a makeup sponge just transferred the darn glitters) Alegra by Zoya, which is a true deeper pink glitter polish, and one of my first ever Zoyas. I have to say, comparing Mae to Alegra, Mae just doesn’t measure up!

Colors:
~ Pink with shimmer: Zoya – Mae
~ Pink glitter: Zoya – Alegra
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Stamp: MoYou London – Frenchy 14

Of course I saw a heart stamp and figured my nails were already pink, so why not? And then the matching french tip stamps (I do rather love that this plate has both angled tip patterns and straight across tip patterns). SO MANY HEARTS. This is probably the most girly nail art I’ve worn this year.