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!

Cruella deVille

This is actually the first of the “newer” Disney manis that I did! I found the previous two (memo and dalmatians) in my unposted folder and decided to use them as the jumping to point to EVEN MORE DISNEY.

I actually think I ended up doing paired manis for almost everything at this point (heroine + sidekick and then one for the villain). I am not shy to say that most of my villain manis came out better than my heroine manis 😀

Obviously, this is the companion post to Wednesday’s 101 dalmations! This was inspired by Cruella deVille. You don’t get to see my thumb because it was an idea that did NO pan out properly. The rest of the mani was inspired by Hot Pink Zebra Polish!

Colors:
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Red: Covergirl – Forever Festive
~ Beige – Zoya – Charlotte
~ Pale pink: OPI – Be There in a Prosecco

The question becomes: do I want to post ALL THE DISNEY MANIS in a row? Or do a disney week per month? I don’t know! I guess we shall see next week :-D. Any requests? Specific movies you guys want to see? Painting disney is fun!

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!

Orthodox Easter Eggs

Unlike ‘normal’ easter eggs, at a Greek (or maybe any type of Orthodox) easter celebration, the eggs are dyed a deep red. I’ve always thought they were pretty, so I decided to mimic the design on my nails this year! It also gives away how long ago I painted these nails, but oh well.

Although none of the eggs I interacted with over the easter weekend this year had patterns, it is apparently acceptable to scratch patterns into the red dye (especially in Russian Orthodoxy I think). So, I found a picture of some very pretty patterned red eggs, and went as close as I could with my nails.

Unfortunately, I forgot to make a post for these when I painted them…so I actually have no idea which colors I used! Sorry. All I can say for sure is that it was a LOT of reds (I think like 6 reds or so)

The saddest part for me though, was that no one recognized what I was trying to do over easter! People liked the red, but they didn’t figure out they were eggs. (To be fair, I have no idea how they could have made that jump).

Hope you enjoyed!

Lace Negative Space

This mani is a bit odd…it looked awesome in person, but the photos all came out weird! I’ve posted the ones that look best, but it still doesn’t capture how cool these actually looked.

The art itself was inspired by Baroquen Nails, as all the best negative space manis are 🙂

To make this, I started with two coats of a sheer nude, then two coats of a frankened sheer black jelly (making the right tone of jelly took forever!). Next, I stamped the lacy pattern, and then freehanded the red. Finally, I added the 3D bits!

Colors
~ Nude: Sephora X – Marvelous
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Red: Confetti – Maquerade Ball
~ Stamp: BC – 10

Hope you enjoyed! I doubt you’ll be seeing much negative space in the near future, as of right now my nails are a blotchy odd mix of yellow and bright pink. Silly staining polish!

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 😀

Sunrise in Glitter

This was a mani I did over the first week of Christmas break, with nothing but holiday-themed glitter polishes. This was a PAIN IN THE BUTT to clean up (since I had used tape…I had not thought to bring liquid latex as a barrier), but it came out quite nice! The addition of white makes it not-too-much-glitter, methinks.

I need to remember in the future to bring more creme polishes when I travel. If my sister is going to be around I tend to just bring a rainbow, but I was on my own for this part of the trip so I just grabbed some suitable “holiday” polishes. Which apparently means ALL THE FOIL GLITTERs. Never again!

Colors
~ White: Wet n’ Wild – French White Creme
~ Gold: Zoya – Ziv
~ Red: KBShimmer – Ruby
~ Dark red: Zoya – Blaze

Hilariously, it looks like I accidentally took all the Zoya Ornate collection polishes that I own with me on this trip! I ended up with Ziv and Blaze…I do also own Storm but it didn’t quite make the Christmas cut, so it was left behind. But, that is ridiculously coincidental! Ironically, I also brought my super glittery green Zoya polish which I was convinced was Logan…but I don’t own Logan, I decided to buy Ivanka as well three years ago, and somehow forgot! Clearly, I need to use green glitters more :-p

Hope you enjoyed all the glitter! I would say happy Wednesday, but today starts at 7am (although luckily it is warm enough for me to bike to the hospital rather than the 40 minute walk in the morning), so less-than-happy Wednesday!