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? 🙂

Stitch!

Have some animated-film nail art! I don’t actually know why I thought I’d be able to do Stitch’s face well…I am really really bad at drawing faces even on PAPER much less on NAILS. Oh well! Even if he looks like a little monster, it is still cute.

This was inspired by tinas_polish, and her Stitch is ADORABLE. Unlike my demon-spawn (which is technically l accurate, but I was trying to go for cute).

I think I have 1-2 more animated film manis ready to post after this Challenge is over! Soooo cloooose…lets see if I can make it through!

Colors
~ Red: Pure Ice – Siren
~ Pink: Love & Beauty – Pink
~ Dark blue: Sinful Colors – Endless Blue
~ Light blue: Zoya – Yummy
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White

Hope you enjoyed! O’hana 😀