Roses on Red

Not infrequently, I get my inspiration for my manicure from the name of the polish I decide to wear. This is one of those times!

I knew I wanted to wear red, so I grabbed an elegant looking shimmery red from my collection, and went with it. The polish just happened to be called Rosebower, so when I was stumped as to what to do with the mani, I just went ahead and added golden roses!

Of course, random blobs of gold polish do not much resemble roses, so I added black borders, and then some black background pattern (leaves? brambles? who knows!). The end result was a bit elegant and a bit wonky, but I like it!

Colors:

~ Red: A England – Rosebower

~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black

~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold

I have so many fun glittery polishes that I’ve only worn once or twice…I wish I could make myself stop buying polish and just have fun wearing the ones I already own! Hope you enjoyed.

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!

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!