Interwoven Cheers

This was another pick a polish and a stamp manicure! I own a lot of polishes (no, really?) some of which are great for nail art (cremes, jellies, neutrals) and some of which are just so darn complicated on their own that all I can really get away with is stamping over them with one color. Cheers to the Holidays is one of the latter types of polishes, but it does make for a pretty manicure in a pinch! That said, this is one of the few polishes I own that I was really disappointed by: it is a holographic multichrome but it isn’t SPECIAL (I have maybe four multichromes that I would consider special for one reason or another) and I thought it would be. The photos on the FUN Lacquer website honestly made it look more spectacular than it is.

Colors:
~ Purple multichrome: FUN Lacquer – Cheers to the Holidays (H)
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Stamp: EdM – 22

Not much else to say today. I don’t know if others have been misled by polishes in pictures in the past! Its why I love it when brands send to multiple swatters, although there are some people who can literally make anything look good. Regardless, something like 95% of my polish collection is exactly what I expected it to be, and a fair number of the remaining 5% were drugstore polishes that just smell funny but work fine :-p. Anyway, hope you enjoyed!

Pale Purple Risen

A simple manicure, but honestly not a bad one! I wanted a tone-on-tone and I realized it had been a while since I had used my one purple foil to stamp. I picked a stamp that I like (honestly I probably over-use this stamp given how many others I have) and just went to town! The end result is admittedly subtle, but also pretty.

Colors:
~ Light purple: Ethereal – Little Oysters
~ Purple metallic: Zoya – Rea
~ Stamp: BP – 17

That’s all for today! There is no real theme to this week as you can probably tell, just whatever I had lying around in my not yet posted folder. Hope you enjoyed!

Shimmer Flowers

This ended up being oddly delicate? I didn’t mean it to be but its actually rather pretty! Between the pastel grey-green base, the thin black lines, and the scattered gold glitter, I’ll take it!

This mani (by which I mean this base polish) exists because a coworker tipped me off that a local St Louis tchotchke (turns out I’ve never had to spell tchotchke before!) store was selling old Formula X polishes for $1 each. These used to be something like $12 each at Sephora (and I think I bought 4 of them when they were on some kind of sale) and this random odds and ends store had HUNDREDS of these polishes in boxes! So, of course, I pawed through them and ended up buying 12 polishes. For $12. Now, one was a top coat and one was a base coat (I had to test them…) but still. I am so happy!

Anyway. I doubt this polish is really available to purchase anywhere but I am going to review it regardless because it is new to me. This is two thin coats of Quantum by Forumula X. It is a pretty, subtle, pale grey-green and I quite like it! It is a bit more neutral than I usually reach for, but I don’t own anything quite like it and it was easy to wear and to match to things. I have already worn it again and I only bought the polish 3 months ago.

Colors:
~ Grey-green: Factor X – Quantum
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Gold glitter: Salon Perfect – Gold Leaf
~ Gold shimmer: Sephora by OPI – I Found a Pot of Gold
~ Stamp: Lina – Urbannailart

Hope you enjoyed this delicate art! I promise we are coming to the end of flower power posts. I just figured I would dump all my flower manicures online while it was still spring time! 😀

Subtle Purple Engraving

Super simple and super tiny nails today! After the Christmas holidays my nails broke down to tiny nubbins. Which means I was too lazy to do any real nail art on them, and just went ahead and stamped! And for some reason I was in a tone-on-tone mood (I think I wore these at the same time as Monday’s nails). Voila!

Colors:
~ Dark purple: Station – Happy Wine-y People
~ Purple holo: A England – Let Me In
~ Stamp: EdM – 06

So, not the most exciting manicure in the world, but cute enough! Hope you enjoyed. I remain incredibly jet lagged but quite happy (well, not to be back in the hospital, but certainly to be sleeping in my own bed)!

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

Rungs

This mani ended up boring and almost ugly. I like the base polish a lot but every time I try to come up with some color to use over it, I turn to dark purple-grey or gold! And for some reason most of the designs end up wonky looking.

I don’t know why I picked this stamp (which seems to be a trend this week) but it ended up looking like rungs on a ladder or maybe the straps on a fancy jacket? If fancy jackets came in murky purple tones? I don’t know!

Colors:
~ Purple-grey: ILNP – Long Walks
~ Dark purple-grey: Sinful Colors – Muse
~ Gold: Sally Hansen – Go for Gold
~ Stamp: EdM – 01

Anyway, leaving all this aside, the 31 Day Challenge starts this weekend! I am not going to be participating every day because I don’t have enough manis backlogged and I certainly don’t have enough time to paint and edit that much, but I am going to keep to posting three times a week and matching my nails of the day to that days prompt! I think there will be a few where I jump a day forward or backwards, but I should have most of them sorted out. I love seeing what everyone puts together for the #31DC2018!

Fiery Ripples

This mani is simple, but looked kinda amazing. And I had nothing to do with that fact. It was 110% the polish that I used!

Anyway, the polish of the day is Fired Up by ILNP. This polish is amazing. What you see here are three thin coats. First off, I had 0 clean up with this. Nothing. The polish was perfect to apply, which is fairly rare. Second, the color is drop dead gorgeous. It is a silver-white scattered holographic base swimming with bright orange shimmer that shifts through gold to green at sharp angles (you can see the green reflection off neighboring nails). I love it.

Once that I was dry, I stamped with a swishy ripple design from one of the born pretty store plates that is labeled in non-english, so I cannot type it up! but it is full of pseudo water marble patterns. The white polish is, as always, Snow me White by Sinful Colors.

And that’s it, that’s the mani. I feel like I usually have a bunch more to say, but I am too busy staring at these photos to say much. I love the polish. I want to wear it again right now.

For those of you who are curious, the only other similar polish I own is Rosewater by ILNP (they came out with a whole line of them) and I think the shimmer in Fired Up is maybe a hair more intense…but mostly Rosewater is a vibrant pink and Fired Up is a bright orange. Same basic concept otherwise!

Hope you enjoyed! My plan for next week is a bit different…I am going to put together swatch test comparisons for a bunch of similar polishes that I own, in an effort to help others makes buying polish easier, but mostly because I need to destash some of my polish before I move! Oops. So, stay tuned for swatch comparisons!

Strands and Bubbles

This is a pretty simple mani, but I am still quite proud of it! I am pleased, not because it is in and of itself impressive, but because I painted it while on my honeymoon!

I needed something quick, easy, and somewhat tropical. I thought these looked like bubbles, so I went with it! I also had only really brought teal and blue polishes with me, so I had a rather limited set of options :-p

All said and done I think I painted my nails twice while on my honeymoon? The other design is even simpler! But never let it be said that my nails chip.

Colors:
~ Teal holo: Powder Perfect – There Be Mermaids!
~ Pastel teal: Zoya – Tiana
~ Blue: OPI – Holidazed Over You

That’s all for today! I just felt like I should throw in some non-stamped manis every now and then. I’ve been so busy recently that I feel like all I have time for is stamps, and gradients under them if I’m lucky!

Blurple Smush Stars

This design is based of a technique totally new to me, and I love it! It takes little while to create (mostly because you need to let the design dry on a silicone mat before applying it to your nails) but it is pretty darn cool looking. I am calling it a squish design 🙂

I was inspired by @alla_nails. Seriously though, this technique is amazing, and now I wish I owned a white polish that separated into cells (one of those intentionally spotty ones) because the designs you can make with one of THOSE is even cooler.

The base polish that I used is yet another new one, called Danielle by Zoya. Danielle is a dark blurple creme, and is a true blurple, which is to say it is an almost perfect 50/50 mix of blue and purple. It is basically a dark periwinkle and is unique in my collection. Amazingly, this polish was almost a one-coater. I should just trust Zoya with cremes by this point, everything they make is magical. All of their cremes in the holiday collection have had phenomenal consistencies and pigmentation. So yah, I used two thin coats here but I really could have gotten away with one slightly thicker one.

Actually getting the cool designs from the mat onto my nails was painful! I wanted to make very thin decals (since my nails are so curved) but the first one I tried to remove cracked! So I added top coat before removing them from the mat and they were thick enough to make wrinkles :-(. That said, I still think they look awesome! I might just use an even thicker coat of the dark base polish next time. I didn’t make any type of a video, but you can find the one from @alla_nails that I used here.

Colors:
~ Dark periwinkle: Zoya – Danielle
~ Periwinkle: Nails Inc – Regents Place
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White

I have been experimenting using this type of design with other colors, we will see what I come up with! It works best with contrast (dark color with white, light color with black). Hope you enjoyed!

Flakie Overlay

I think the theme of this week is “things Eva matted.” However, unlike Monday’s post, I am really sad that this mani did not end up glossy!

The design was inspired by @kgrdnr, as many good things are. I mostly just wanted to use Ski Lodge by ILNP because it somehow found its way onto my desk. However, then I decided it wasn’t quite glittery enough, and I added some flakies over top. Voila!

Despite being really simple, I think this came out rather awesome. I have missed working with dark greens (they are not an approved-of color in the hospital or on the interview trail), and holographic + flakie polishes are an awesome combination.

Colors:
~ Dark green creme: Sinful Colors – Last Chance
~ Dark green holo: ILNP – Ski Lodge
~ Green flakies: Lyn B Designs – The Speed of Light, you Know
~ Gold: Salon Perfect – Gold Leaf
~ Matte: KBShimmer – Oh Matte!

Regardless, you can also see why I am sad I matted this! Usually I am all-for matted flakies, but I ended up removing some of the depth in the design and certainly in getting rid of the awesome holo inherent in Ski Lodge. Oops! I’ll likely try a similar design with a different color, and I just need to remember to keep it glossy 🙂

Shifting Silver Cracks

Another new polish! This one is super shifty and cool :-). I could hardly bear to cover it, so I did a truly minimal design!

What you see here is two thin coats of State of Mind by Emily de Molly. When I first saw this polish online I knew I had to have it…precisely because I had absolutely no idea what the actual color of the polish was! It looked very different in various photos, but all of them looked awesome. As it turns out, the polish is a multichrome that shifts from a dusty pink, through copper, and to olive green. It is a deeper color than most that I own. On top of that, it has a bright pink-fuschia shimmer, as well as copper multichrome shards (you can see them in indirect light). It ALSO has an intense linear holo finish that glows bright purple (I don’t know how Hayley made the holo a different color than the polish, but its magical). Basically, this polish is confusing and super pretty.

The design, such as it is, was inspired by MarnieLP but I might have to try this again with better tape placement now that I know how the spacing goes. I love the idea! Maybe the next crazy weird polish I get 😀

Colors:
~ Purple holo multichrome: Emily de Molly – State of Mind
~ Silver: Nails Inc – South Kensington

I wish my camera was better at capturing purples…the polish is a bit brighter and quite a bit more pink-toned than it looks under indirect light in my photos. I tried to color correct, but my fingers looked like zombies so I left it this way.

Hope you enjoyed!

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!

Blue Swirl Through

Unfortunately I didn’t even write down what polishes I used when I put this together, I need to start keeping track of which polishes I bring with me on trips! You might be able to tell by the crummy quality of the photos just how much I had to color-correct this mani (my nails were BRIGHT red, darn lighting) so I really can’t pinpoint the polish!

That being said, I’m guessing the light blue is Yummy by Zoya, but that’s all I’ve got! The darker blue is probably Song, just because I feel like I reach for Song before Tart. Some day I will learn!

This also took forever to edit, because as I mentioned I didn’t have my usual nail art photo set-up. The worst part? I actually BROUGHT my lighting rig with me, I just didn’t set it up! *head desk*

Ok, just enjoy the photos. Maybe. I am done explaining the wreck that was putting this together! Hence most of the photos are sunlight photos taken on my iPhone…it was not worth the editing for the others!

Hope you enjoyed! And darn this daylight savings time 😦

Dust and Shadow

It has been a trend with me recently that I want to buy one polish from a certain brand, but I feel silly ordered just one…so I get the one I wanted and one that I pick at the last minute. And end up loving more than the one I initially thought I wanted! This is the…third? Fourth? time that it has happened to me in in a few months.

Regardless, Shadow on the Moon is stunning. Truly stunning. This is a medium-gray polish filled with coarse holo glitter, small circular holo glitter, and saturated with pink shimmer. I love it! Shown here is two easy coats with top coat. As I mentioned, I almost didn’t buy this polish but I am sooo glad I did…it is subtle and elegant but hopelessly complex. It is absolutely going to make my top 10 polishes of 2017.

I also didn’t want to cover too much of this color, so I decided to just go with stripes. Every time I turn to striping tape I think “oh, this will be easy and pretty” and each time I end with “WHY DID I THINK I’D BE DONE IN LESS THAN 3 HOURS OMFG”. So, there’s that. Also, don’t use pastel almost-jellies over dark colors…it will take 3 passes to cover the underlying color and your nails will be bumpy!

Colors
~ Grey holo: Emily de Molly – Shadow on the Moon
~ Dark grey: Sinful Colors – Muse
~ Light pink: ULTA – Baby Doll

It is hard to tell, but those lighter color stripes are a pale pink! I was trying to match the pink shimmer in the grey polish…but I should have gone a shade or two darker. Oh well. Still looks cool.

Hope you enjoyed!