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!