Abstraction in Gold

This mani only worked because my nails are currently short enough that I could turn the stamp sideways and use different parts on each nail! I Initially wanted to do gold on some pastel background, but decided that dark red would look better. It totally does. I also almost got in trouble at the hospital for wearing nail art too visibly! Oops!

Regardless, this nail art was incredibly easy and surprisingly striking. It took a total of 30 minutes (and most of that was waiting for the red base to dry). Success!

Colors:
~ Red: Zoya – India
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Stamp: BM – XL204

That’s it for today! Simple stamps. Wednesday’s post is a lot more involved…stamping and gradients oh my!

Marching Copper Trees

To be fair, when I painted these (well, stamped them) it was a few weeks out from Christmas. I always thought this particular stamp looked rather like christmas trees if you only used half of it! Otherwise it looks like stylized stalactites and stalagmites.

Of course, any manicure using an awesome mutlichrome and a rose gold stamping polish is going to look pretty good. This was easy to make pretty!

Colors:
~ Red-gold multichrome: ILNP – Greatness
~ Rose gold: Essie – Penny Talk
~ Stamp: BM – XL158

Short, sweet, and straightforward! If it helps, the reason this post is so short is that I am taking Step 3 of the medical board exam tomorrow. And Friday. Because of course it is a two day test *grumble grumble* but after this Friday I am free again!

Candystripped

You guys, I am terrible! I am sorry it has been a week since my last post…I just didn’t have time to put together any of this since then! I was at my in-laws for Christmas and then my sister (and her adorable puppy) came to visit me, and there wasn’t time for photo editing! I am wearing the same design on my nails that I placed a week ago. A WEEK. And it is chipped and awful. Sorry nails!

Anyway, this design was supposed to be candy canes, and was intended to go up last Wednesday just after Christmas. I failed. But I am going to post it anyway!

The base color here is three thin coats of Aphrodite by Zoya, which is a pretty orange-leaning bright red with glitter, but unfortunately is not QUITE opaque. I will likely end up using this as a jelly rather than a glitter crelly due to the three coat problem! But I love how bright it is. I bought Aphrodite (and like 15 other polishes) during black friday/cyber monday deals.

Colors:
~ Red glitter: Zoya – Aphrodite
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Stamp: Born Pretty – Halloween L004

Sorry for the late post, and I hope you enjoyed anyway! Happy new years!!! (I swear I also had a real new years post but of course it isn’t edited yet. C’est la vie!)

Red and Green Strokes

One day closer to gift-day (aka Christmas) and one more red/green manicure!

I started with red glitter, then double stamped with a white-to-green and green-to-white gradient (I don’t know why) and when that just looked messy I stamped with dark red. Despite the completely unplanned and frequently ugly nature of this manicure as it developed, I actually quite like the end result!

Colors:
~ Red glitter: KBShimmer – Ruby
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Green: Zoya – Tilda
~ Dark red: OPI – Visions of Love
~ Stamps: Lina – Make Your Mark 02, BM – XL205

I think that is all for today. If you haven’t yet, please go vote for flightofwhimsy at the Nail Art Canada holiday contest! Hope you enjoyed!

Golden Hoops on Red

I feel like this is a very descriptive title. And I feel like this mani would have been boring…if not for the fact that the red base is a thermal! I didn’t bother trying to catch all the color shifting, since this is an old one that you guys have seen before. BUT, I did capture it how it existed 90% of the time: as a gradient!

This was basically just me having fun with thermal polish and a swoopy stamp. Of course, I used gold, because what else does one use with red? As a result it accidentally came out Christmas-y!

Colors:
~ Red thermal: Bow Polish – Hex
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Stamp: Moyra – 54 Matrix

So, super simple for today. Hope you enjoyed!

Interlocking Greatness

Yes, it is a pun off the name of the polish, yes I am a goofball! Also, today formally begins the series of holiday-appropriate nail art. This one was painted during autumn but is honestly more red/green than orange/green which was the initial intent!

Anyway, this is a very very simple manicure (as many are during things like residency). Just a polish and a stamp. Now, the polish happens to be a multichrome, and the stamp is a holo. Honestly, I didn’t think this color combo would work that well, but Dragon stamps amazingly well (I just need to acknowledge that A England makes polishes that stamp like magic).

Colors:
~ Copper/purple multichrome: ILNP – Greatness
~ Green: A England – Dragon
~ Stamp: EdM – 17

That’s it for today! Hope you enjoyed, and stay tuned for progressively more snow-themed and Christmas manis! My one hanukah mani is getting punted to next year :-p

Flowering in Gold

So this mani came out better than expected! I wanted a copperish-green and I almost missed entirely! I started of with a coat of Dragon, which is of course totally opaque in a single coat…and then decided it was too dark! So I topped it with a thin coat of a different green and then STAMPED with Dragon (and some gold). Voila!

I did have to scour a bunch of plates for actual designs though! And with the combo of green and reddish-gold I think it totally works for a quasi-thanksgiving manicure 😀

Colors:
~ Dark green holo: A England – Dragon
~ Lighter green with copper: Blush Lacquers – Nerida Singer
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Stamps: Whats Up Nails – B005, BPX – L018, BP – L067, BM – XL472

Luckily, I have part of tomorrow off, so I can at least join my husband and some of our residency friends for dinner, although I am on and overnight call on Friday into Saturday, so I have to hope that whatever awesome nail polish sales happen Friday will be ongoing until Sunday! I also need to apologize for some of the atrocious spelling and grammar at the end of Monday’s post, I should not write blog posts while exhausted. Oops! Hope you enjoyed!

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 😀

Darkened Red

This mani was a bit of a flop for me. I wanted to use a few of my favorite but seldom-worn polishes, and for some reason I decided to use all of them together. The end result was a little TOO shiny, if that is a thing!

I knew I wanted to use Briarwood, because this polish GLOWS and yet I never reach for it! When perusing my nail polish supply, I realized that I am the Walrus matches Briarwood really well, so I made some chevrons. And then I wanted to delineate between the two colors, so why not some red-gold glitter? The end result was certainly glittery, but I feel like I maybe would have benefited from a cream polish in there. Somewhere. Just to tone down the shimmery finish a tad. Oops!

Colors:
~ Vampy red holo: A England – Briarwood
~ Copper/red multichrome: Enchanted Polish – I am the Walrus
~ Golden copper glitter: CbL – Frohe Feiertage!

I will say that in reality the shiftiness of Walrus was super cool, but it doesn’t come through in the photos because it was such a small patch of nail. Anyway, hope you enjoyed at least a little! Friday’s post is super colorful but has appropriate cream polishes :-p

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!

Mountain Sunset

Happy 31 Day Challenge! It isn’t quite the same without Cathy (from More Nail Polish) but she is on vacation so we shall have to try without her guidance! Anyway. I am, as I mentioned last week, obviously not participating daily. However, I have lined up my M-W-F posts for the next month with that day’s theme to the best of my ability! Since today is day 3 and thus the ‘yellow’ them and I HATE the color yellow, I went ahead and combined orange and yellow together. Ta-da!

When putting this mani together I went ahead and grabbed most of my orange polishes. And some yellows. And then I realized that I think I only own two polish colors with ‘?’ in the name. They are apparently both orange and both involve puns/jokes. Go figure!

The design itself was inspired by @lieve91, and for once I sort of think I did it justice? Regardless I really like how this came out! It isn’t entirely orange or yellow but it fits the theme ENOUGH.

Colors:
~Pastel yellow: Maybelline – Citrus Collide
~Orange-yellow: KBShimmer – Orange you Glad I Didnt say Bananna?
~Bright red: OPI – All I Want for Christmas (is OPI)
~Dark purple: Zoya – Monica
~Dark blue: Maybelline – Midnight Swim
~Pastel orange: Maybelline – Bleached in Peach
~Pink-orange: Maybelline – Orange you Jealous?
~Dark pink: OPI – Malaga Wine
~Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~Gold glitter: Sephora – I Found a Pot of Gold!

Hope you enjoyed! On Wednesday I will post to the day 5 prompt of ‘blue’ and it might be my favorite mani of the year. I’ll let you guys decide! :-p

Right Angled

MOAR MAGNETS! This mani and Friday’s mani were actually painted a few weeks apart, but I ended up editing them next to each other? Who knows. This was a super duper simple mani that I painted on my way out the door, on the assumption that anything magnetic looks cool even if I have no tools!

I don’t remember why, but a lot of my polish stuff was inaccessible for a few weeks (pre-moving moving things?), so I had grabbed some simple and easy-to-make-manicure supplies including this polish, the magnet, and some gold polish. So please pardon the not perfectly straight lines, everything was free-handed!

Colors:
~ Copper magnetic: Masura – Evening Before the Fireplace
~ Gold: Essie: Good as Gold

I do love Masura magnetic polishes, the bottle is very pretty and the polish works like a dream. Anyway, the magnet can again be found at the Born Pretty Store if you’d like one for yourself for cheap! Hope you enjoyed 🙂

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!

Grungy Floral Lace

I don’t really know what else to call this? The background is a bit grungy and I should really not have stamped over it with lace, because it really just came out looking messy.

The base of this is my swatch test for Mauve Nudes, which I then haphazardly dry-brushed over with each color. I went, for some reason that I cannot come up with in hindsight, with a lace floral stamp? And then colored in the flowers with jelly polish and added a gold bead to the middle. I think if the background was a consistent color rather than a mess, that this would have looked good! But alas, it does not.

Colors:
~ Tan nude: Zoya – Chantal
~ Pastel nude: Essense – I Nude It
~ Peach nude: CND – Cashmere Wrap
~ Pastel mauve: KBShimmer – Caught on Tape
~ Mauve: Zoya – Rue
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Pink jelly: Zoya – Paloma
~ Red jelly: OPI – My Wish List is You
~ Orange jelly: custom made
~ Stamp: BP – L084

So, that is a lot of colors for something that looks like it has at maximum 5 colors. Oh well! At least I tried?

I think I need to stay away from lace on nudes for a while, or just lace stamps n general. The last few manis that I have tried with them just don’t end up looking good!

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!

Red-y Dot Pond

I saw this teeny tiny red polish, realized it was a true jelly (aka would not reach opacity by itself for at least 4 coats) and got very excited about doing a pond mani. its been years. I usually mess them up cause i get impatient, but this time i was intermittently catching up on an older tv show so i actually waited between coats! possibly my best pond yet 🙂

What you see here is two coats of My Wish List is You by OPI, and as you can tell my nail line is still quite visible and the few flecks of staining on my nails are easy to see (my thumb, not pictured, was by far the worst). The photos actually underemphasize the jelly nature, this polish would not have been wearable in two coats…but it was wonderfully squishy!

The polish ended up being as close to a neon you can get with a red? I thought it was going to be a bit darker (my OPI reds tend to dry dark) and this dried BRIGHT and almost orange. It also stayed glossy, no matte or semi-matte. This also means that my camera FREAKED out with this color, and while the pond aspect was very clear on my nails, in the photos all the red is super blown out! I tried to color adjust (and lower the saturation) and it kinda worked? So sorry. Super bright red!

In the end, I used 6 total coats of red, and 3 layers of pond-ness. The colors stayed super vibrant! I’m going to count this as a success. It is just hard to tell in the photos.

Colors:
~ Red jelly: OPI – My Wish List is You
~ White: LA Girl – White On

Super simple, kinda fun! And yet another use of my pointy nails. Oy! Hope you enjoyed.

Pinky Swirl

I haven’t done water marbling in a while, and I figured it was time! Looking at these photos, I wish I had picked a few different colors, but all said and done this at least isn’t awful (I know, high praise) :-p

I used another new polish for the base, a shimmer silver called Ornament to Be Together by OPI. Honestly, while I enjoy puns in names as much as the next nerd, OPI is making their names a little too punny and a little too long. Oy. Anyway, it took three coats of Ornament to Be Together to get to this level of coverage, and I honestly still have some visible nail line. That said, in addition to the fine silver glitter that makes up this polish there are actual holo shimmers, which is a first that I’ve seen from OPI! It doesn’t hold a candle to most indie polishes, but still. Not bad in terms of glitter payoff (but still too thin for my nail line).

Since the silver wasn’t super opaque, and one of my other OPI polishes appeared to be a jelly, I decided to try and make a jelly-based water marble where the silver shined through at least the red. It worked, but the red was so thin that the other colors pushed it out! So the shimmery red is just a red jelly with the silver shimmer shining through.

Colors:
~ Silver: OPI – Ornament to be Together
~ Coral: L’Oreal – Orange you Jealous?
~ Pink: Zoya – Kelsey
~ Red: OPI – My Wish List is You
~ Dark red: OPI – All I Want for Christmas (is OPI)

My strongest takeaway from this is that I totally need to try a full-jelly water marble over glitter at some point. I know my Zoya jellies will marble, but I tried my others and they don’t speed at all, so I would be suck with pink, red, purple, and blue, which is not the best combo. Anyone know of a yellow jelly that marbles?

Hope you enjoyed, and happy Friday!

Ups and Downs

To me, this ended up looking a bit like a red-and-black topographical map, ergo the title!

I don’t have much to say about this…my nails were short, I wanted to use Blaze by Zoya, and this stamp looked interesting. Blaze always ALWAYS goes on darker than I think it will! I still like the polish, but I don’t know how frequently I am going to keep wearing it, I have other prettier burgundies (and Zoya just isn’t the best at scattered holos).

Colors:
~ Red: Zoya – Blaze
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamp: B Loves Plates – 03 Mind Blown

Only one more pre-posted mani after this, I should be returning from Hawaii on Wednesday! I have a hunch that I won’t WANT to come back, but oh well.

Hope you enjoyed!