From the Bottom

I had such high hopes for this mani, and they just didn’t pan out! Turns out tiny thin lines are HARD. Especially with slightly goopy polish. Oh well!

I was trying to imitate this design by Kira Sweet. I have  to assume she used either acrylic or paint and not polish to get those tiny lines! My freehand just can’t measure up

The base color here is another of my new OPI polishes, Yank my Doodle. I really wanted this one when I saw it in the store because it looked like a fun mix between coral, orange, and brown. Think of the possibilities! The truth is though, I don’t actually much like it on my nails its a little too dark. That being said, it self-leveled nicely and covered well in three thin coats. Maybe I’d like it better if I liked the nail art more?

The white used here was my standard Snow me White by Sinful Colors…which I can no longer find at my local Rite Aid! So now where do I get my white when this one runs out? *gasp*

Anyway, even if this isn’t the best mani ever, I hope you enjoyed it! I should stay away from super intricate freehand for the near future :-p

Burnished Copper

The Born Pretty Store sent me another nail polish! Since I get to chose which colors I want, I of course went after a multichrome…and then stamped over it.

I’ve had my eye on any number of copper-based multichrome polishes (hilariously, when I ordered this polish I owned 0 and I now own 3, oops), and I thought I would give this one a try! Unlike many of the other multi chromes I’ve bought, this one DOES require a black base.

I put on a black creme polish, and then added two thin coats of 212 (the polish doesn’t have a name, sadly). It went on streaky, but dried with minimal brush strokes! And two coats was more than enough, which is great seeing as how the bottle is a smaller size.

The polish also ended up being quite shifty! It is primarily a bright red-toned copper (almost but not quite pink or peach), which fades into bright orange-copper and then golden-green. I’ve certainly seen shiftier polishes, but this one isn’t bad at all! You can definitely see the multichrome-ness.

Colors:
~ Copper multichrome: Born Pretty – 212
~ Copper shimmer: Zoya – Penny
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamp: BM – XL205

I just added some stamps because I can’t leave my nails plain. I didn’t know if this would look better with gold or black, so I defaulted to black. Not bad!

If you want to pick up 212 for yourself, head over to the Born Pretty Store! The polish is currently on sale for $4.99. Don’t forget to use my 15% off code, LY5X31!

Moroccan Faded Pink

Another simple pink mani for clinic! Luckily, this time around I am allowed to have a bit of a longer free edge to my nails, and I am willing to be a TINY bit more daring and do some darker colors.

The inspiration for this came from a pinterest pin. Unfortunately, when I was putting the gradient together I didn’t have the image in front of me, and I assumed it was more pink and less white! So, I ended up doing the stamp in white since most of my nail was pink instead of the inverse. Knowing how much longer I’m going to need to wear pink nails, I imagine I will likely try the correct order of this mani (with maybe a slightly different color palette) at some point.

I almost decided not to matte the final product, but I am glad I did! It looks pretty awesome, even if it is pink. It’s also been a while since I’ve done gradients, so I am pleasantly surprised at how well this one turned out!

Colors:
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Light pink: Zoya – Rue
~ Pink: Essie – Eternal Optimist
~ Stamp: BM – XL205

Hope you enjoyed! And if I’m lucky I might get to do even more colors on a fairly regular basis after this 🙂

Green Ombre Crowns

I don’t know why I painted these. I can’t wear green in the clinics so I wanted to wear it on the weekend? It is a fun ombre at least! I need more green in my life :-p

This was an incredibly simple mani. Just creme polishes, a gold stamp, and a little golden metallic stud for some dimension. Ta-da!

Honestly, I think my green gradient is the best stepwise nail color progression among the polishes that I own, other than blue (I own a metric butt-ton of blue polishes). I can MAKE an ombre out of most other colors, but it isn’t as smooth and even as this. I don’t really own any medium-dark pinks, and I have no idea what a light red looks like (not pink!). For purples…well…I think I own too many shimmer and glitters and not enough cremes! Also the cremes I do have in purple alternate between blue-toned and pink-toned, so they don’t work that well together. Oops, I guess I’ll just need more polish! I just need to talk myself into buying creme polishes since I’ve been defaulting heavily to holos recently.

Colors
~ Lightest green: Glitter Gal – No Worries
~ Light green: Zoya – Tilda
~ Green: Sinful Colors – Exotic Green
~ Dark green: Zoya – Shawn
~ Darkest green: Sinful Colors – Last Chance
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Stamp: BP – L020

Hope you enjoyed! Happy greens 😀

Olive Tipped

While the color of these is not subtle, I was informed that as long as I was wearing “one color” that I would be permitted to wear nail polish for a day in the hospital (since I wasn’t going to the OR).

Because I am me, just to be contrary, I put on a nice olive color with shimmer…and then added a very stubble french tip in a similar shade with more glitter. I really like olive (despite HATING olives), which is the only reason I was able to sneak this by!

Hilariously, a few of the nurses complimented the color, and none of the women I was reporting to even noticed the polish. *sigh* just let me wear my polish in peace!

The creamier olive is In a Trance by Cult Nails, and the glittery olive is Wallis by Butter London. I only ended up taking sunlight photos of this, since I barely considered it art. Enjoy!

Purple Silver Dots

One of my nails broke! Not that this is a rare occurrence, but it makes me sad nonetheless. I ended up rounding off my fingernails, and didn’t want to do any dramatic nail art because I don’t like how my nails look rounded. I settled on something simple.

Being honest, I liked these better with a few less dots! Whoops. I always get carried away with dotticures I do like the contrast between the matte base and the varying levels of shiny dots. This mani has some fun texture to it!

Colors
~ Purple matte: Zoya – Iris
~ Purple: L’oreal – Royalty Reinvented
~ White: Wet n’ Wild – French White Creme
~ Silver: A England – Excalibur

That’s really all there is to say for today! Something simple and purple and textured. Hope you enjoyed!

Coffee and Cream Chevrons

All I could think when I was putting this together was how darn pretty the colors looked in a row. If I didn’t feel the urge to swatch Flynn I would have just made an ombre! However, with it done, it totally looks like an array of milky coffee to completely black coffee 😀

The base color here is Flynn, a creme from Zoya. Flynn is a perfect mix between the color of caramel and milk chocolate. That is to say, it is a medium-hue brown with a yellow-leaning base. It covered well in two thin coats (I honestly could have gotten away with one thicker coat), and self-leveled nicely. On me, the color looks one shade darker than my skin tone and was super elegant if a bit creepy!

I hand-painted the chevrons (which is why they are slightly wonky) before going through all my gold and red glitter polishes (I narrowed it down to those two families) and settling on a bronze-toned gold glitter for the accents. I really love how it turned out (and am super glad I didn’t use a red)!

Colors
~ Lightest brown: Zoya – Chantal
~ Light brown: Zoya – Flynn
~ Brown: Zoya – Dea
~ Dark brown: Zoya – Louise
~ Gold: ILNP – Clockwork

This mani also serves as a good comparison between some of the brown Zoya cremes! I was desperately trying to figure out how similar Flynn was to Dea when I was going to buy it, so maybe this’ll make someone’s life easier. For what its worth, Flynn is lighter (clearly) and yellow-toned, while Dea is darker and red-toned.

The other funny part of this, is that I’ve done something similar before! I thought I had, but I didn’t get a chance to go through my old nail art before painting this. Hilariously, I tried to pretend that one had something to do with coffee too…way back in 2013! This one looks far better (at least in terms of color gradient), and I guess the way I think about titling my posts hasn’t changed in years. Yay browns!