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?