Dotted Circles

This mani took a bit of work because of the double stamping! And also because working with sheer polish makes me nervous so it takes a lot longer to get anything done.

The steps to this one were basically sheer polish, stamp with gold dots, then stamp with rainbow dots. The exciting part was that I got a liquid metallic polish from Sally Hansen (back when mirror nails were all the rage) to stamp! It is such a perfect shiny gold but it usually dries to fast for stamping. Which goes to show that this plate is well etched. And since I was stamping in colors over it, I didn’t care if every part of the design was 100% filled in. I’ll have to play with it some more in the near future!

Colors:
~ Sheer nude: Sephora X – Marvelous
~ Gold: Sally Hansen – Liquid Gold
~ Blue: Zoya – Sia
~ Purple: Zoya – Landon
~ Pink: Zoya – Ciara
~ Red: Pure Ice – Siren
~ Orange: ULTA – Sun of a Gun
~ Yellow: OPI – Never a Dulles Moment
~ Green: Zoya – Shawn
~ Teal: OPI – Stay off the Lawn!!
~ Stamps: Moyra – 54 Matrix

That is a LOT of colors. Anyway, hope you enjoyed! Maybe I’ll actually have some seasonal nails up starting next week? I have a bunch of snowflake and dark color manis done, but I haven’t even put them on my computer much less edited them yet!

Bronze Leaning Leaves

Although I don’t think the photos came out that well, I LOVED wearing this mani! The dark olive green with copper and stamped with copper…and just ugh. It was so shimmery!

I don’t have much else to say about this mani really? It has double stamping, which I remain proud of, and I absolutely love Nerida Singer when I can talk myself into wearing this polish. I still own too many olive green polishes and I refuse to part with any of them!

Colors:
~ Green: Blush Lacquers – Nerida Singer
~ Copper: Pure Ice – Magic
~ Gold: Sally Hansen – Go for Gold
~ Stamp: Whats up Nails – B005

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed! Friday’s post is a bit less exciting (I don’t like the mani, but I feel compelled to post my failures so others do not repeat them!) so I wanted something pretty in advance!

Oranged Lines

Honestly, I was aiming for a completely different manicure when I started this, but my gradient came out all wrong so I ended up with this instead!

I was going for a light orange-orange-red-purple style, and as you can see it is 95% orange an 5% red with no purple at all! I tried. I really did. In retrospect, I should have known it wasn’t going to work since the purple I was trying to use is currently a dried up blobby mess. Live and learn!

I ended up deciding that all gradients (as long as the colors aren’t terrible and need to be flat-out started over) look good with some geometric patterns. I wanted something a bit more delicate so I went with this design, and of course added colors to the dots and diamonds. I think this is the third time I have done this same thing with different colors.

Colors:
~ Pastel orange: Maybelline – Bleached in Peach
~ Orange: ULTA – Sun of a Gun
~ Red: Pure Ice – Siren
~ Neon purple: Sinful Colors – Dream On
~ Dark purple: L’Oreal – Paparazzi Pleaser
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamp: EdM – 03

That’s all for today! There is a similar gradient floating around on the blog too, since I was on night float and thus was able to do slightly different nails (and keep this poor blog running)! Hope you enjoy!

Orange Passing Purple

This mani stirs some mixed feelings: on the one hand, it is pretty cool looking! On the other hand, the gradient isn’t what I was going for and the lines, as the are freehanded, are not even close to perfect.

I was inspired by @aissandra. Somehow, despite her nails being shorter than mine, she managed to get more gradient going! I have to wonder if that is because she was using higher quality or more opaque polish. I happen to know that the neon purple I tried to use is a dried up mess and need to be thinned dramatically or thrown out!

The real moral is that I need a better neon pastel (wow) orange, and despite having a truly staggering number of purple polishes, I need something that is a bright indigo-leaning creme! In case the swatching extravaganza earlier this year didn’t clue anyone in, I own far too many jewel tone purple metallics. Specifically. Anyway.

Colors:
~ Pastel orange: Maybelline – Bleached in Peach
~ Orange: ULTA – Sun of a Gun
~ Red: Pure Ice – Siren
~ Neon purple: Sinful Colors – Dream On
~ Dark purple: L’Oreal – Paparazzi Pleaser

That’s all for today! Hope you enjoyed, and wish me luck acquiring more purple polish 😀

Phoenix

I have done phoenix nails before, but possibly never this insanely bright! I got lucky that one of my stamping plates already had all these images, or I would have been painting flames for years :-p

The design itself was inspired by @nails4cocktails, although I didn’t have holo polish in the right colors, so I just added some shimmer on top. I really need to get Fairy Dust by China Glaze, I keep winging it with my glitter toppers!

Colors:
~ Yellow: WOW – #301
~ Orange: Zoya – Thandie
~ Red: Pure Ice – Siren
~ Shimmer: Sally Hansen – Diamond
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamp: Exoticism BPX – L012

Hope you enjoyed! I do love flames 😀 even if I often can’t wear them on my nails because they are too disruptive at work. Maybe next year I can have more fun with my nails NOT on weekends!

Cascading Rainbow Dots

This was a lot of fun, and not nearly as time consuming as I had feared! I was searching for some inspiration to use for the 31 Day Challenge options for art, flag, or supernatural (since I only post one out of every three days), and was stumped on flag. Then I remember my day 5/blue nails and how much I loved the porcelain, so I went searching for vases or ceramic art. And I ended up somehow on teacups…and with this.

The inspiration for this design really is art, but its teacup glass art! I don’t know where I can buy this set but I WANT it. It is so pretty! Unfortunately, using this design meant I needed to have my nails mostly naked underneath to mimic the see-through glass, and that I had to double dot with gold and a color!

Despite that, the art only took maybe 1.5 hours, which is pretty good for lots of dots! I am very grateful that I have real dotting tools now…trying to get this mani sizes of dots out of my hairpins and paperclips would have been difficult.

Colors:
~ Sheer nude: Sephora X – Marvelous
~ Gold: Sally Hansen – Liquid Gold
~ Blue: Zoya – Sia
~ Purple: Zoya – Landon
~ Pink: Zoya – Ciara
~ Red: Pure Ice – Siren
~ Orange: ULTA – Sun of a Gun
~ Yellow: OPI – Never a Dulles Moment
~ Green: Zoya – Shawn
~ Teal: OPI – Stay off the Lawn!!

This also gave me a chance to use Liquid Gold, which I bought back when metallic semi-foil polishes (that show every ridge and divot in the nail) were a huge craze. I only ever got a gold and a silver, and I seldom use them because top coat ruined the finish and they, as mentioned, show every nail problem! They work really well for dots though 😀

Hope you enjoyed! There is only one day left in the challenge for me, and it is inspired by others! Since something like 60% of all my nail art is inspired by SOMETHING, I think I might just grab one from the vault again.

Flag Nails

Happy 4th of July! I am on call overnight tonight, which is incredibly unfortunate, because I love fireworks! Maybe if I’m lucky I can sneak off to the tall tower in the hospital and watch the fireworks from there.

Anyway, these nails are actually from LAST 4th of July, because I didn’t get them edited in time. I do, in fact, have flags on my nails right now, but you shall see them next year! Also, this means that you get to see some freehand today, rather than more stamping (which, lets be honest, will be back on Friday). Today is also the first time I’ll be wearing really visible nail art to the hospital…so we will see what happens. Hopefully everyone either ignores it or is cool with it!

The design here was inspired by badgirlnails because she does wonderful skittlettes. And also because I really never use some of my crazy holographic glitters.

Colors:
~ Red: Pure Ice – Siren
~ Blue: Sinful Colors – Endless Blue
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Silver glitter: Emily de Molly – Stockpile

Anyway, hope you enjoy the fireworks (if you are in the US), and if not then I hope it isn’t too hot out wherever you are!

Golden Roses on Red

This is getting posted today because it was the only thing I had time to edit last night (well, let’s be honest…this morning. It is currently 1am). Anyway, it wasn’t sunny outside at any point while I had these on my nails, so there are no outdoor photos! Made it easier to put together the post.

For this mani, I ended up swirling my dark red swatch test glitters together and making a random red background. With all the various red glitters and gold glitters, the final design is more sparkly than I would usually go for! There are 4 reds and 3 golds involved! Yikes. I need to make up my mind which colors to use and what to do!

Colors:
~ Glittery red: Shimmer Polish – Eva
~ Holo red: Zoya – Blaze
~ Juicy red: Pure Ice – All Nighter
~ Dark red: Zoya – India
~ Gold glitter: Sally Hansen – Go for Gold
~ Gold metallic: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Gold holo accent: ILNP – Clockwork
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamps: BM – XL158, BP – L002

That said, I did get to use my layered stamping plate (all the flowers are a gold stamp then a black stamp) and I love it! It isn’t as though it actually takes less time to double stamp than it does to simply color in a single stamp, but it makes me happy anyway. Hope you enjoyed!

Swatch Test: Purple/Gold Multichromes and Dark Red Glitters

Purple/Gold Multichromes: Basically, there are two “families” of multichromes here, the red-gold-green type and the indigo-fuschia-gold type. And of course, one holo of the red to green variety because holos are awesome so why not!

Pinky to thumb:
~ Pinky: Born Pretty – 212 (over black creme)
~ Ring: ILNP – Greatness
~ Middle: ILNP – Undenied
~ Pointer: ILNP – Tilted
~ Thumb: Enchanted Polish – I am the Walrus

All 5 polishes took three coats, although Undenied could likely have been opaque at two. The contrasts are interesting. Tilted is a bit more sheer and so you get more of the shift (it goes indigo to green through magenta and orange) but the shift only shows up at a more dramatic angle…most of the time it really is just a purple. Undenied only goes indigo to magenta and is a darker color, but the shift to the magenta happens at a less sharp angle so you can really see the shift easily. I don’t know which I like better, but I am parting with one of them!

212 and Greatness are kinda similar, Greatness starts red and goes to orange and gold, while 212 really starts orange-red and goes to gold. 212 is much less impressive, but does have the benefit of really looking like fall leaves! Walrus has almost the exact shift of Greatness, but obviously has scattered holo to it.

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Dark Red Glitters: So this was a bit of a pain, because I again wanted to get rid of a few and I don’t know what to do! The colors I thought I would dislike in hindsight are some of the prettier ones!

From pinky to pointer (my thumb was also Blaze, so I didn’t show it here):
~ Pinky: Shimmer Polish – Eva
~ Ring: Zoya – Blaze
~ Middle: Pure Ice – All Nighter
~ Pointer: Zoya – India

So, both Zoyas (Blaze and India) were two-coaters, Eva and Nighter were three. I like Nighter more than I remember! It is surprisingly juicy. Despite sharing a name, I still hate Eva. She is a pain in the butt to remove since the polish is 100% glitter, does not cover evenly, and honestly still shows some nail line at 3 coats. I want to keep the polish because it shares my name, but I am also never likely to use it again! Maybe I can try and make dragon eggs out of it. I don’t know. Ugh.I am definitely keeping India and Nighter. I should keep Blaze as it was one of my very first Zoyas (I got Blaze, Storm, and Ziv in one of the New Years sales back in 2012), even if calling it a scattered holo now makes me laugh. It is barely a holo at all! Indie polishes are awesome for holo 🙂 This week, I think I have only decided to get rid of 3 polishes, I am far below what I was aiming for!

Magical

This is a bit dark for an interview mani, but I don’t care! I wanted to create something using copper shimmer so here we go. Completely by accident, two of the polishes that I picked out had names about magic! So I chose an appropriate title :-p

This ended up being another of my favorite designs from the work-appropriate theme I had to use for interviews, but I think that was mostly because I knew I was breaking a few unofficial rules by using darker shades! Also, secret color-shifting shimmer.

I think there is a pattern in all of this: when in doubt, I will use swirly stamps for interviews. I have a hunch that when I finally get the rest of the art edited this will really play true…I finally had my very last interview last week (YAY!!!) so I can finally start putting color back on my nails, but you guys won’t see them for a few weeks yet!

Colors:
~ Purple: ILNP – Long Walks
~ Shifting shimmer: ILNP – The Magician
~ Copper: Pure Ice – Magic
~ Stamp: BM – 607

I spent a few weeks feeling angry at myself for buying The Magician from ILNP since I rarely use toppers, but I actually really like this one, and I think I should get some good use out of it. Hope you enjoyed!

Nutcracker

I actually wore these to Thanksgiving, but that is when the Christmas decorations go up! The story here is that my mother-in-law collects nutcrackers. She probably has around 100 total, it is pretty incredible. I wanted to do some nails that she would enjoy!

As such, these were inspired by the adorably painted and carved toys, not the ballet! Usually I would be doing the ballet, but not this year. I should mention that this was a little bit of striping tape and a LOT of freehand, and I am quite proud of his face!

This is only 5 colors, and a lot of different golden studs. You have no idea how many photos of nutcrackers I looked at when trying to decide what to make what color and which body part to paint.

Also, because I am a dork, there are three sizes of studs on here! Caviar beads on my pinky, normal sized studs on my middle finger, and some small ones on my thumb. I finally have enough different sizes to do stuff like this!

Colors:
~ Red: Pure Ice – Siren
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Nude: OPI – Be There in a Prosecco

If you liked this or want me to be happy (either works!) please go vote for this design at Nail Polish Canada so I can win some free polish! The link is here. Thank you guys!

Proud

You were promised colors, and here they are! It has been farrrr too long since I did a rainbow manicure. Moreover, I miss them…since I am currently on the interview trail for residency, my nails for the past two weeks have been incredibly boring! I am going to do a few weeks worth of “work-appropriate” nail art posts at some point, that are basically what I am forcing myself to wear during November and December as I fly all over the country.

Anyway, this mani serves many purposes: I painted it for my birthday (ergo rainbows), and to celebrate being done with my hardest medical rotation (ergo not subtle mani). Also, I went to San Francisco (ergo bright colored mani), and attended the Pride parade while I was there (ergo more rainbows)!

What that actually means…yes, I painted this back in June. I just never got around to posting them for whatever reason! So rainbows it is 🙂

Colors:
~ Red: Pure Ice – Siren
~ Orange: Zoya – Thandie
~ Yellow: WOW – #301
~ Green: Zoya – Tilda
~ Blue: Zoya – Yummy
~ Purple: Sephora X – Ignition
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Black: Sinful Colos – Black on Black
~ Stamp: BP – L050

I had to modify the gradient for my pinky nail, because it was just too short for all the colors as I had them arraigned. Hopefully it doesn’t look too bad! Hope you enjoyed 🙂

Pool Floating

I know it is getting just a bit cold to go swimming, but I painted these back in August so it was appropriate then! Besides, there are totally indoor pools, right?

The design was inspired by pricelessnails. Unfortunately, I did not quite figure out the spacing for my inner tube (the pink thing) so it is a bit…squished…compared to hers.

This is another new polish for me! What you see here is two thin coats of Glee Ridden by Emily de Molly. I have so many manis that I want to do that need a neon teal, and this looked perfect! It is, as expected, a very nice opaque neon teal creme. The color is slightly greener than turquoise, but very very bright! I am a fan.

I think I maybe should have done a bit more of a subtle gradient (that blue is darker than I expected, the polish used to be a semi-jelly and I think its congealed a bit), but this still came out well! I love how the waterspotting worked. I got a new white polish not too long ago so it actually spread on the water!

Colors:
~ Blue: Maybelline – Shocking Seas
~ Teal: Emily de Molly – Glee Ridden
~ Pastel teal: Zoya – Tiana
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Red: Pure Ice – Siren
~ Yellow: OPI – Never a Dulles Moment
~ Dark blue: Sinful Colors – Endless Blue
~ Pink: Clinique – Pinkini
~ Dark pink: OPI – Malaga Wine

That’s all for today. If it is warm near you, go swimming! And if not…I dunno. Dream about Hawaii?

Roses and Dots

I was torn between using these for black/white day (today) or dots day. I settled, clearly, on today! Because mostly these nails are black and white if you ignore the red. And gold. 😀

They are inspired by Nails by Cassis. That said, she had smaller roses and her nails were much longer, but mine aren’t half bad! I need more rose stamps, clearly.

This mani, despite how much I like the end result, was a pain in the butt because the rose stamps wouldn’t pick up! They are from that same darn plate I used for the Day 2 flowers (which I have a replacement of, but which did not arrive soon enough for me to make these). Also the rose I chose did not have leaves…so the leaves and buds are from a totally different plate. It works, but it was painful! I want to try this again (maybe with different colors?) with a plate that STAMPS. Since I have that now. Omg. Also smaller leaves, oops!

Colors:
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Red: Pure Ice – Siren
~ Stamps: BP – L067, L018

What do you think? Are the roses (or leaves) too big?

Flame

I spent a long time trying to figure out how to use this plate, which was sent to me for review from the Born Pretty Store. Fire-colored gradient with black stamping? Gradient stamping? I tried doing yellow and orange and red…but they didn’t pop against black! So I had the brilliant idea of layering them over GOLD. Because that just sounded like fun.

I ended up using a gold glitter rather than a metallic, so the fire looks a little more granular. I think if I were to do this again, I’d try it with a metallic and see what happens! I do like this quite a bit though.

In the end, each nail got stamped 4 times: twice in gold with the two overlaid designs, once with a yellow-orange blotted mix, and finally with a purple-red mix. Surprisingly, this didn’t take that long! Mostly because the plate was so well-etched that transferring the designs was a piece of cake. Even the solid body of the bird on my thumb!

Colors
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Gold: Sally Hansen – Go for Gold
~ Yellow: WOW – #301
~ Orange: ULTA – Sun of a Gun
~ Red: Pure Ice – Siren
~ Purple: Zoya – Margo
~ Dark purple: Zoya – Monica
~ Stamp: BP – X012 (Exoticism)

That’s it for today…awesome fire! I’ve honestly had my eyes on this stamp forever because I love flames but I HATE hand-painting them! And this stamp has SO MANY FLAMES. You can pick it up for yourself at the Born Pretty Store on sale for $1.99. Don’t forget to use my 15% off coded, LY5X31!

Glowing from Within

I seldom say this, but I regret buying this polish! A England went on sale at Color4Nails which meant I just had to buy a bunch of them. I only actually wanted one, but I purchased 3 (because of course). Thus far, I was happy with the two I bought…and this was the third, which I bought almost as an afterthought. I wish I hadn’t!

It’s not that this isn’t a pretty color, because it is. Its mostly just that I thought this polish would be red with gold flakes, and it is really an orange metallic with gold flakes. I don’t usually wear orange polish, and I already have an orange metallic! Oh well, now I own another I suppose. And it is a pretty polish, it just isn’t something I’m likely to wear often.

The polish itself is called Gloriana from A England. On the website it is listed as a “chili-pepper red with fine and ultra fine golden sparkle” but I have to disagree. Fundamentally, this is dark orange that leans red, that has a metallic finish and copious golden glass flecks. It covered nicely in two coats, but it is not a red!

I was having a hard time deciding between stamping with gold or black, but everything I saw with either color online was disappointing (I guess not a lot of people use this for nail art), so I ended up covering it with a red-to-black gradient using Siren by Pure Ice, Visions of Love by OPI, and Black Creme by Wet n’ Wild. The stamp is from Bundle Monster plate XL209.

In the end the mani is pretty enough,,,I was just expecting a red polish. In retrospect, I should have known from looking at everyone’s swatches! Oh well :-p at least I got a pretty purple and mossy green!

101 Dalmatians

Another Disney mani that I’ve been sitting on since 2016…July, actually. How sad is that? These are so cute though!

I wanted to do each collar a different color, but when I went back and looked, only the mom and dad dog (Perdita and Pongo) had really distinct collars that were not just the same as all the puppies!

The design itself was inspired by @banicured_. Puppies! And Disney! I’ve wanted a dog for a long time, and this makes it worse…only, I can’t imagine that I wouldn’t end up with dog hair ruining my manis!

Colors
~ White: Wet n’ Wild – French White Creme
~ Black: Wet n’ Wild – Black Creme
~ Yellow: WOW – #301
~ Red: Pure Ice – Siren
~ Blue: Zoya – Ling

I thought about writing “101” on my thumb, but honestly, this was surprisingly quick and easy and I didn’t want to ruin it with trying to make words! Or numbers. Either way.

Did any of you guys have a favorite puppy from 101 Dalmations? Hope you enjoyed!

Fashioned Darkly

This is going to be a week of my recent favorite manis (stemming back to around January) to celebrate that I am done with clerkships! For the rest of medical school, I do not have to take any class I don’t want to. I also don’t have to take another multiple choice exam (other than the boards, but oh well) until I graduate. This is amazing. So, pretty nail art!

Today’s post is probably my favorite overall out of my recent works. The design was inspired by @i_annylook, who I just discovered and has some really awesome nail art! I need to go try all of it 🙂

I actually really like the concept behind this too…a gradient and then a gradient stamp using one of the same colors from the underlying gradient, but with the stamp interrupted. I don’t have many stamping designs that I think would work well for this, but I’m going to have to go find some!

Colors
~ Red: Pure Ice – Siren
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Matte: KBShimmer – Oh Matte!
~ Stamp: JQ – L20

Also, matting things just makes them better. I think I’d matte approximately 50% of everything I do…except that the design doesn’t last as long with matte top coat! Especially on surgical things where we are required to wash our hands with really harsh chemicals before doing anything. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed! Stay tuned for more awesome stuff this week 😀

Gingerbread

Gingerbread men are totally more Christmas-themed than penguins! Unfortunately I did the spacing a bit strangely (note to my future self: do bow ties before buttons) so I don’t love these quite as much as I could but still, cute.

The designs were inspired by Ana’s ManisAna’s Manis and ka_yee_or. I wanted to do all the gingerbread things, and so I went with it! Honestly, the houses came out MUCH better than I expected.

Strangely enough, although matting down the nails didn’t actually change the color (and I did love the look afterward) it changed how my camera interpreted the color…so the matte photos needed quite a bit of color correction to make the nails look brown and not grey. They are still a little off, sorry!

Colors
~ Brown: Zoya – Dea
~ Red: Pure Ice – Siren
~ Green: Essie – The More The Merrier
~ White: Wet n’ Wild – French White Creme

That’s all for today! Go eat some cookies 😀

Paintbrushes

See, for the theme of Day 27, artwork, I decided to go with things that work to make art…in this case paintbrushes. I have no idea if anyone other than me would ever be able to identify what they are without me telling them! Oops.

To create the bristles I painted my nails a medium brown, and added a bristle-like stamp with a nude tone. I then dry-brushed on a bit of each of my intended colors to create an effect as though the paintbrushes had been previously used for the specific color.

Then I added the blobs of color and a little white crescent to indicate that they were shiny. I decided to matte the ‘brush’ part and make the paint part ‘glossy’ just for fun!

Colors
~ Brown: Zoya – Dea
~ Nude: Zoya – Chantal
~ Red: Pure Ice – Siren
~ Orange: ULTA – Sun of a Gun
~ Yellow: WOW – #301
~ Green: Salon Perfect – Escape to Neverland
~ Blue: Zoya – Ling
~ Stamp: BM – 314

So, do they look like paintbrushes? Did I succeed? 🙂