Flaming Pink

Whoops! I apparently forgot to write this post until this moment! So it’s going to be a bit short (and forgive me if it is disjointed, I am very sleep deprived).

The art here is inspired by urban nail art…but for some reason I didn’t copy over the link? I don’t even know. Tired Eva makes bad decisions about planing and the like. Either way, urban nail art had a pink shimmery gradient and black flames, and I decided I wanted the same! But then I went and picked the WRONG base polish…

So, my background color here is the second lightest of the pinks (the absolute lightest is really more of a pale orange so I went with the medium one for the base under the gradient), and that was a crucial error. It is a polish called Peony by Ruby Wing, and I hate it. Really, I do. It is both scented AND filled with undissolved chunks of something. This polish makes me tear my hair out! I meed to find a buy a dupe so I can get rid of it.

Colors:
~ Pastel peach: Maybelline – Bleached in Peach
~ Light coral: Ruby Wing – Peony
~ Bright coral: Essie – Sunday Funday
~ Bright pink: Zoya – Kelsey
~ Shimmer: ILNP – The Magician
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black

What’s even worse is that I forgot one other crucial fact about Peony: it is a solar-active polish that changes color in sunlight. When I was going through the photos I started getting upset…all the ones taken outside in the sun looked like there was no gradient! And then I realized Peony’s color range is coral pink to bright pink-red. So my gradient disappeared to just bright red in the sun. :-(. I give up! The indoor photos are good, the single outdoor one is just sad.

Funky Dotted Pink

I don’t know what I was thinking with this. I wanted to use my pale pink swatch test nails to make something….and it got out of hand. This would actually have been a really cool mani if I just stuck to one of the paler pinks as my base! As it is with the weird background dotted gradient…nope.

So I started by making a dotted gradient from lightest to darkest color, interspersing the creme polishes with the shimmers. That looked ok. Then I stamped with a neon teal, which still looked ok. Then I added black. I just wish my nail tips weren’t so much darker! I love the pink/teal/black idea. Oh well.

Colors:
~ Teal: Emily de Molly – Glee Ridden
~ Pastel pink creme: ULTA – Baby Doll
~ Pastel pink shimmer: OPI – The Color that Keeps on Giving
~ Nude creme: KBShimmer – Caught on Tape
~ Nude shimmer: ULTA – Freshwater Pearl
~ Dark nude creme: Wet n’ Wild – Private Viewing
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamp: Whats Up Nails – B015

In other news, this is my first Whats Up Nails stamping plate, and I love it!! It is wonderfully etched and I wish I had done this mani better service. It is one of the only plates I own where I can really see myself using every single damn image. I am impressed! Despite how awful these look, you will be seeing a lot more of these designs. Anyway, happy Friday, and I promise next weeks manis are better!

Vibrant Mess

I saw this mani by @chrisslypaws and I just KNEW I had to duplicate it! It was one of the first things I made with the Make Your Mark 02 plate. Its neon and gradient-y and awesome!

I think I really just like designs that are messy but with purpose. After all the experimenting with ways to mix 5 different colors together (for my swatch tests and subsequent nail art) I ended up just thinking that messy pseudo-modern art is really fun for nails 🙂

This mani was really quite easy, given that its a two-color gradient over white with a black stamp. I also forgot how gratifying a two-color gradient can be, since I usually reach for a minimum of 3 colors (and usually more like 5 because I like color). It was fun!

Colors:
~ Hot pink: Zoya – Kelsey
~ Blue: Zoya – Ling
~ Neon blue: Sinful Colors – Endless Blue
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamp: Lina – Make Your Mark 02

That said, I can’t tell if my plate isn’t etched as deeply as it should be? I need to play around with it some more because the black just isn’t as black as I’d like. However, I love the mani anyway! Hope you enjoyed 😀

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!

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 😀

Swatch Test: Mauve Nudes and Pastel Pinks

Mauve Nudes: I don’t know why I compared these exact colors. I guess I wanted to get a sense of how purple/grey each was? No dupes here!

From pinky to thumb:
~ Pinky: Zoya – Chantal
~ Ringe: Essense – I Nude It
~ Middle: CND – Cashmere Wrap
~ Pointer: KBShimmer – Caught on Tape
~ Thumb: Zoya – Rue

Every single polish took three thin coats, but all applied well. In terms of colors, Chantal is the most yellow-leaning, while Nude is the palest by far but also leans a bit yellow-pink. Cashmere, Tape, and Rue are almost a gradient of pastel mauve to true mauve. I mostly wanted to reassure myself that Tape and Cashmere weren’t dupes for each other or anything else, and they aren’t! I also quite like both of them, even if they are boring colors!

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Pastel Pinks: So, I wanted to compare my pale pinks and my pale pink shimmer/frosts. Mostly the frosts if I’m being honest! No dupes here, but some of the colors are downright ugly! I also re-used Tape (from above) to compare a pale mauve to a pale pink.

From pinky to thumb:
~ Pinky: ULTA – Baby Doll
~ Ring: KBShimmer – Caught on Tape
~ Middle: OPI – The Color that Keeps on Giving
~ Ring: ULTA – Freshwater Pearl
~ Thumb: Wet n’ Wild – Private Viewing

All the polishes took 3 coats except Tape, which took two (I guess I used thicker coats). For the cremes, Doll is more of a true pastel pink than Tape, and is also a bit paler. Private is its own thing and I should have known I didn’t own any dupes! I hate how it looks of me, but it is a useful skin tone color for nail art. For the shimmers, Pearl is more of a nude frost and Giving is a true pink frost. They are actually quite different…and unsurprisingly I like Peal a lot better! I can see Giving coming in useful….if and only if (hah I just tried to write iff which means the same thing but in python, whoops) someone tells me I need to wear a baby pink shimmer to a wedding. I don’t think that will happen, so away it goes!

Swatch Test: Pastel Nudes

Why oh why do I have so many nude polishes? I will end up doing three, yes THREE comparison posts with nudes (pastel nudes, which are up today, pinky nudes, and neutral nudes, both of which will be co-posted on Wednesday). Anyway, on to the “pastel” nudes!

These are the lightest nudes in my collection, which is to say pale creme colored polishes. I have, today, two cremes, one jelly, one shimmer, and one holo. Three of them ended up being identical and I am certainly parting with one! The others I will keep, just because nudes are darn useful (especially given that I start working in the hospital full-time in June).

From thumb to pinky, we have:
~ NYC – Prospect Park Bloom
~ OPI – Be There in a Prosecco
~ L’oreal – Boho Babe
~ Essence – I Nude It
~ Picture Polish – Cherish

Prospect Park Bloom took three thick coats and was STILL not completely opaque. It also basically didn’t dry. It was 99 cents, which was why I bought it initially, but I think I’m going to let it go! Cherish stands out because it is both darker and filled with holo shards. I Nude It has very very subtle shimmer that puts it in a hair darker than Boho Babe and Prosecco, which are to my eye complete dupes. I like the brush that L’oreal uses much better than the giant OPI brush, but Prosecco has a bit more polish than Boho, and both work fine.

I decided to go with an art deco pattern, since my nails are STILL pointy-shaped and I really only like geometric things on pointy nails. The stamp is from BP plate L054, the source of most of my geometric patterns! I then colored bits of the design in gold (after stamping, I really should have colored in the design on the stamper head, but this was faster), and added some black and gold dots. I was debating throwing in a fourth color (likely red) but decided to leave it as-is. The dots really helped! For once my “if it doesn’t look completed, add dots” worked 🙂

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed! And maybe this was useful (basically, you can pay $5 for L’oreal that is the same color and ease of use as a $10 OPI). Also sorry this post is late…but I technically made it up before midnight so Monday!!