Rough Squovals

This mani was kinda fun? I don’t love it but it was playful at least! I more or less just grabbed a polish that I hadn’t used in a while (I do love my glitter bombs but they are a pain in the butt to remove, so lets be hones, I do not wear them often) and stamped over it! The whole manicure took maybe 40 minutes and 30 of those minutes were waiting for Rough Sketch to dry.

Colors:
~ Teal with glitter: Emily de Molly – Rough Sketch
~ Purple: Zoya – Monica
~ Stamp: MoYou London – Pro 02

I find myself reaching for MoYou plates when my nails are particularly short, because I bought the “normal” plates and not the “XL” plates. I turns out normal means itsy bitsy nails. I can’t wear these stamps when my fingernails are even close to my preferred length! I do love the designs on this plate, but honestly that is just poor planning from MoYou’s part! Anyway, hope you enjoyed!

Pointy Pink Angles

Another pink over teal mani! But this one is ALL SHINY. I kinda wish I had used a creme base honestly, but somehow the silver is metallic, the pink is metallic, and the teal has pink metallic shimmer. This was really quite shiny!

I’m pretty sure this is double stamped with the same gradient, which is why some of the lines aren’t exactly these same thickness? Or maybe the stamp just looks like that. I am far too lazy to check!

Colors:
~ Teal: Emily de Molly – Pending Perfection
~ Pink: Petites Color Fever – Raspberry Ice
~ Silver: A England – Excalibur Renaissance
~ Stamp: Whats Up Nails – B015

Not much going on here other than stamps, but at least it’s colorful! Hope you enjoyed.

Embracing Blurple

This came out better than I expected! It is very hard to see the teal metallic stamping polish, but the colors go nicely and I have missed geometrics 🙂

When I start a manicure I generally have an idea in mind ahead of time. With this one, I just went “i want to use that one sparkly blurple with teal flakie polish” and tried to find coordinating colors. Don’t ask me why coloring in some of the thinnest lines on one of my stamping plates was deemed a good idea, but the result is pretty cool!

I need to remember to buy more flakie polishes, they have wonderful color shifts and finishes but are not difficult to remove. Also they tend to have enough going on in them that even if you paint quickly enough to cause bubbles (because rushes are a real thing) you can’t see them!

Colors:
~ Blurple glitter: Polished For Days – From the Land of Oz
~ Teal: Opaque teal stamping
~ Light purple: Sally Hansen – Lacey Lilac
~ Purple: Nails Inc – Regents Place
~ Dark purple: Zoya – Danielle
~ Stamps: Moyra – 54 Matrix

That’s all for today. Hope you enjoyed!

Working Machines

I have a degree in engineering from undergrad, and I have always loved putting little bits of electronics on my nails! There was no particular inspiration for this manicure, I just saw the image on the Matrix plate and decided I wanted to go for it 🙂

I also decided that the dark greenish-grey of Yuna would make a perfect base, especially with the scattered golden glitter! I think I was right. This mani is a bit busy but I kinda love it.

Colors:
~ Dark teal: Zoya – Yuna
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Stamps: BM – 415, Moyra – 54 Matrix

Again, a fast easy manicure! I swear I will have time to edit some of my more intricate nail art soon. I’m currently still in relax-from-step-3-but-freak-out-about-buying-a-house mode. It is a very complicated mode. Hope you enjoyed!

Pink Bricks in a Teal Wall

I don’t know where I was going with this mani, or why it makes me think of Pink Floyd, but here we are! Not another neon brick in the wall. Of course, in this particular scenario the bricks are truly pink and the grout is teal.

This mani was a bit of a mess. I started with a teal base, and then stamped a pink gradient over it. However, the pink did not come out as brightly as I wanted (in retrospect I should have used white first) so I stamped the same gradient again to brighten the color. Which worked…but since I used a different part of the stamp and frequently a different orientation on each nail, getting the same gradient was really difficult! I then decided it wasn’t pink enough so I added some Magician free-handed over the pink. So now there is also glitter.

Colors:
~ Teal: Emily de Molly – Glee Ridden
~ Pink: Revlon – Bubbly
~ Dark pink: Stamping polish
~ Pink shimmer topper: ILNP – The Magician
~ Stamp: Whats Up Nails – B015

In the end I wish I had just used striping tape. Generally that would take longer, but with how much time I spent on these I doubt it! I also messed up my thumb, I decided to add bright pink dots for no apparent reason. So you don’t get to see much of my poor weird-looking thumb.

Today is also a sad day, because my husband and I finally put in an offer for a (wonderful) house, and someone out-competed us (buy paying in cash, which is remarkable). I am sad! It had a perfect little nail art room and everything.

Dragon Scales

Dragons scales using Dragon! Because I had to. This also ended up rather chrome-y because I went for a silver metallic base. I kinda like it! The end effect a was a bit like nail foils.

This week is going to be a random mishmash of nail art that doesn’t fit well with anything else. At this point (in real time) I am working towards Valentine’s nail art because I know that I won’t get any edited if I wait for February! So these have nothing to do with really, anything, but they were shiny 🙂

Colors:
~ Silver: Nails Inc – South Kensington
~ Teal: A England – St George
~ Green: A England – Dragon
~ Moss: A England – Fotheringhay Castle
~ Stamp: Whats Up Nails – B025

Hope you enjoyed! More utter randomness on Wednesday!

Teal and Silver Mishmash

Sorry that the posts this week have been late/only a few photos, I’ve been sick! My husband it a pediatrician which means the kiddos give him lots of bugs. This time they gave him a respiratory virus and he had the courtesy to pass it on to me first time I’ve been sent home early from the hospital!

Anyway, on to nail art! This design was loosely inspired by @gabbysnailart. I love the colors but I personally wanted more glitter. Of course, the glitter is a LOT harder to remove than creme polish, but it is so sparkly! I don’t know what I thought I was doing stamping with Rosewater and then trying to color over the stamp, but here we are!

Colors:
~ Teal: Emily de Molly – Glee Ridden
~ Silvery-pink holo: ILNP – Rosewater
~ Coarse holo glitter: FUN Lacquer – 24 Karat Diamond
~ Stamps: Whats Up Nails – B015, Moyra – 60 Cuts

Hope you enjoyed (despite the late post)! If I’m lucky today will be the last day I feel terrible and my posts will get longer.

Swirling Flakes

Snowflakes! More snowflakes! Snowflakes on a windy background! I decided I wanted more color so on top of Downpour (the dark blue) I dry marbled some Party Favor (teal), then stamped with Yummy (lighter blue) before stamping with silver.

Unfortunately, despite my best efforts, for some reason most of the photos came out blurry. So today there are only a few photos (although 3 does tend to be normal for me now) and I did my best to pick in-focus ones!

Colors:
~ Dark blue holo: ILNP – Downpour
~ Dark teal holo: ILNP – Party Favor
~ Blue: Zoya – Yummy
~ Silver: A England – Excalibur (Renaissance)
~ Stamps: BM – XL213, 323, BP – 185

Maybe I should have posted something a bit more Christmas-y today, but all my manis got pushed back a day, so my official christmas mani will go up on Wednesday and holiday nails will continue through Friday. Oops! Enjoy anyway :-p

Brightly Stripped

Neon colors are the BEST when I don’t have any interviews! This was inspired by a pinterest pin, but I couldn’t find the original nail artist so you’ll just have to trust me that this is a bit more neon and less pastel, but otherwise close :-p

Two brightly colored manis in one week? Yes please! This the focus of this mani is the stripes I figured it fit well for today. It was painted last Fall (which tells you guys how long I’ve been saving some of these manis).

At some point I need to create a folder of ‘colors that work well together that you’d never guess but should absolutely combine’ because without the inspiration for this mani, I would never have thrown coral with neon green and teal! But it works 🙂

Colors:
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Neon pink: WOW – #371
~ Coral: L’Oreal – Orange you Jealous?
~ Neon green: Essie – The More the Merrier
~ Neon teal: Emily de Molly – Glee Ridden
~ Blue: Zoya – Ling
~ Purple: Zoya – Malia
~ Neon purple: Sinful Colors – Dream On

I also just thought I should share, I am for some reason playing “this is halloween” on repeat on my computer and it is making me very happy :-). Hope you enjoyed!

Popping Teal Bubbles

See, no more magnets! Instead you get a multichrome topper over not black? I don’t know what I was thinking but here we go!

I wanted to try Aurora over a dark teal base. And then I decided that bubbles were appropriate? My nails under this are a DISASTER. I painted these just after I finished moving apartments, and my ring finger tore to the quick (and is heavily patched), AND my middle finger somehow shattered, but I was able to file the surface to somewhat smooth and apply 4 coats of base coat in a desperate attempt to hold it together, and my pointer folded down the middle. I won’t even mention my poor short thumb nail…I lost both corners on subsequent days! Suffice to say my nails are a disaster and this is one of the last right-handed manis you guys will be seeing for a while!

Despite all the devastation, I think the mani looks surprisingly cool? The teal base blunted a bit of the color shift in Aurora but you can still see both the green and certainly the purple shift. Also, I like this stamp!

Colors:
~ Teal: OPI – Get Off the Lawn!
~ Multichrome: piCture pOlish – Aurora
~ Silver: Nails Inc – South Kensington
~ Stamp: Whats Up Nails – B015

That’s all for today! Next week we move on to less…experimental…manis (even if they will mostly be left-handed). Enjoy!

Teal Magnetic Swirls

Magnets! I love magnetics. They make my nails look cool with little-to-no effort on my part other than holding still for a few seconds. Stamping over them just looks so cool!

Anyway, this was basically just having fun with straight magnets and some silver stamps. The magnetic polish is a teal-to-black called Whitehall by Nails Inc. The silver is Excalibur by A England and the stamp is from Moyra plate 50 – Ornaments 3.

To make this, I applied the straight line magnet on a diagonal on all the nails except my thumb. The magnet is super strong the raised teal line was incredibly sharp…until it wasn’t. As always happens, the magnetic turning point blurred as the polish dried, so I went from a super sharp line to a smudge, but it still looks cool. Honestly, maybe I need thinner coats of polish! On my thumb I tried to create a curved pattern using the small circular end of the magnetic stick. I love it. I think making this nail was more fun than using the straight line!

The double-headed magnet that I used is from the Born Pretty Store, and it is both cheap and works well. You can find it for $2.99.

Enjoy!

Messy Green-Blue Gradient

Sometime, I just want to throw together a bunch of bright colors and play with stamps. The Make Your Mark plate series by Lina makes that REALLY EASY. So here is another mani using it!

I feel like I’ve been using a lot of vampy metallic bases, or pastel ones. Not so much neon. That changes today. Hello neon!

To make this mani, I started with a light green base, then tried to create a gradient over it using greens and teals. But, the teal was too dark! So I switched to a bright blue. After that was dry, I double stamped using two similar designs from the same plate in white then black.

Colors:
~ Light green: Zoya – Tilda
~ Yellow: Yellow Opaque
~ Neon green: Salon Perfect – Loopy Lime
~ Dark teal: OPI – Stay Off the Lawn!!
~ Blue: Zoya – Ling
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Stamp: Lina – Make Your Mark 02

That’s all for today! I am too tired to write a longer post, so I’ll just let you enjoy the photos. Happy Friday!

Ocean Surf

Summer time! Well, sort of. In St Louis it went from 99 degrees and sunny to 75 and raining. I prefer the colder and rainier, but it makes this less fitting! Anyway, I really like the mani 🙂

The design was inspired by the ever-awesome Copycat Claws (and yes I saw this posted a year ago and have been waiting to do my own version since then)! Unfortunately the shell and starfish charms that I own are SIGNIFICANTLY smaller than I expected, and than were required for this mani. So I improvised.

I started with a teal creme polish, and topped it with a darker teal jelly. Once that was dry, I stamped using white polish. I then topped the white stamp with two coats of the same teal jelly polish. On the nails with sand and water, I blobbed the teal jelly in a haphazard pattern somewhat overlapping the textured glitter to make it look like sand underwater. I then then added white surf by hand using part of an (unused) kitchen sponge. Since my textured polish is pretty simple, over the textured glitter I dabbed on some gold holo glitters for a more interesting base.

Unfortunately, the ocean charms I have are rather small! I ended up sponging on some white polish so they would stand out against the gold base, since the charms and the textured polish were almost exactly the same color! Yikes. Even sadder, the pearl charms I have are much larger than, say, the starfish and clamshell charms, so I grabbed some cute pink rhinestones instead and am going to pretend they are sea glass 😀

Colors:
~ Teal creme: Zoya – Cecilia
~ Teal jelly: Zoya – Frida
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Gold textured: Zoya – Tomoko
~ Gold holo glitter: Cult Nails – Walk of Shame
~ Stamp: Geometry BPX – L020

Anyway, that’s all for today! I hope you enjoyed 🙂 Stay tuned for some more pretty nail art this week!

Neon Slices

I have to admit, I had no idea the rabbit hole I was getting myself into when I made these. I saw a pin that I liked on pinterest, and just decided to re-create it.

Then of course I decided to use more neon colors that the original (which may have been a mistake since, again, these were worn to see patients), and since my nails were longer I went ahead and added a flair of double lines on my nails. The doubles were only on my left hand, my right hand recently had a collision with a car door and thus has short nails.

But this is where it got nuts…I went to go find the original poster of the nail art design. And this woman has made SO MANY of these. The original mani (and the one I used as inspiration) was posted to @amvpnails over 3 years ago. Then, a few weeks later she posted a similar design with gold/pink colors. Then she seems to have noticed how popular they were and did one in blues, reds, more neons, and dark rainbows. That is a LOT of repeats! I cannot imagine repeating one design that many times, even with the color variations.

Colors:
~ Silver holo: Emily de Molly – Stockpile
~ Pink: Revlon – Bubbly
~ Orange: KBShimmer – Orange You Glad I Didn’t Say Banana
~ Green: Essie – The More the Merrier
~ Teal: Emily de Molly – Glee Ridden
~ Purple: Zoya – Malia

That’s all for today! Hope you enjoyed the neon and glitter, and the trip down some random instagramer’s memory lane!

Mermaiden

It has been a while since I last did mermaid nail art! Don’t ask me why though, I’ve always loved looking at pretty scales!

This design was inspired by @xnailsbymiri, although I liked my scales enough not to add the glitters or pearls (not that I own tiny pearls like that) I do own gold seashell charms but they are SO SMALL that it would have looked silly! Starfish don’t make great necklaces, but you work with what you have!

The nails with scales were actually more complicated; I made stamping decals using a gold stamp and colored them in with a dark teal creme and a teal holo. I applied the stamping decals over a light teal creme base using top coat (since that works better and is faster than my old method of coloring in the designs on my mat). Otherwise, I just added some caviar beads and a charm!

Colors:
~ Light teal creme: Zoya – Wednesday
~ Dark teal creme: Zoya – Cecilia
~ Teal holo: Powder Perfect – There be Mermaids!
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Stamps: BC – 04, BP – L003

Honestly, I used the lighter teal holo just because of its name. It is also a great color, but if I am painting mermaid scales, I need a mermaid polish! I am also glad I got these posted sometime over the summer. We shall see when my other summer nails make it up! Oops 😀

Funky Dotted Pink

I don’t know what I was thinking with this. I wanted to use my pale pink swatch test nails to make something….and it got out of hand. This would actually have been a really cool mani if I just stuck to one of the paler pinks as my base! As it is with the weird background dotted gradient…nope.

So I started by making a dotted gradient from lightest to darkest color, interspersing the creme polishes with the shimmers. That looked ok. Then I stamped with a neon teal, which still looked ok. Then I added black. I just wish my nail tips weren’t so much darker! I love the pink/teal/black idea. Oh well.

Colors:
~ Teal: Emily de Molly – Glee Ridden
~ Pastel pink creme: ULTA – Baby Doll
~ Pastel pink shimmer: OPI – The Color that Keeps on Giving
~ Nude creme: KBShimmer – Caught on Tape
~ Nude shimmer: ULTA – Freshwater Pearl
~ Dark nude creme: Wet n’ Wild – Private Viewing
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamp: Whats Up Nails – B015

In other news, this is my first Whats Up Nails stamping plate, and I love it!! It is wonderfully etched and I wish I had done this mani better service. It is one of the only plates I own where I can really see myself using every single damn image. I am impressed! Despite how awful these look, you will be seeing a lot more of these designs. Anyway, happy Friday, and I promise next weeks manis are better!

Psychedelic Flowers

Sorry you guys! My posting schedule remains wonky…just because I haven’t edited any photos yet! I’ll try to get back on track. In the meanwhile, enjoy this really weird kinda floral mani with a really pretty base!

I don’t really know what I was thinking with this design. The polish I used as a base is super pretty but very busy, so I decided to throw three metallics on top of it? Not one of my best ideas.

Anyway, the base here is three thin coats of From the Land of Oz by Polished for Days. Unfortunately, my camera is not capturing the lavender-purple base of this polish, the camera likes to think it is more blue. I only used three coats for more glitter depth, it was full coverage in two. This polish is from Polish Pickup, so isn’t available anymore…but if you aren’t yet you should all go join PPU! This coming month is a revival of past favorites and a LOT of my very favorites are coming back, so if you missed something this would be a great time to pick it up!

Colors:
~ Purple shimmer flakie: Polished for Days – From the Land of Oz
~ Silver: A England – Excalibur
~ Purple: Zoya – Delaney
~ Teal: Petites Color Fever – Figi
~ Stamp: BP – L052

So, that’s that! Again, sorry for the odd posing schedule, I’ll see what I can do about getting myself edited up!

Golden Shadowed Leaves

This is a bit of a sad day: tomorrow I leave Philly for St Louis. So, this is my last nail art post while in Philadelphia. Philly was where I first discovered nail art, and in the last 7 years my collection has gone from 2 polishes to over 400. I was thinking of posting a pretty skyline design I did, but I ran out of time to edit it (this is becoming a theme) so you’ll have to make do with some shimmery leaves.

This is the mani I created out of my pastel teal swatches, and so there are more teals than you might imagine! I did a dry brush of each of the 4 colors (three cremes and one holo) over each other, and then double stamped over the top with a gold glitter and then a green holo glitter. I really like how it came out!

I am glad I went for the dry brush technique, the bases all ended up looking roughly the same by the time I got to stamping. I also think this is the first time I’ve actually liked stamping the same image twice? Usually I try too hard or the colors are awkward together. But green and gold always works!

Colors:
~ Pastel mints: Zoya – Tiana, Maybelline – Green with Envy, Glitter Gal – No Worries
~ Mint holo: Serum No. 5 – Jaded
~ Gold: Sally Hansen – Go for Gold
~ Green: A England – Dragon
~ Stamp: BPX – L018

Initially, I was going to stamp gold then black, but my eyes fell on Dragon which I haven’t used in probably a year, and I grabbed it. A England polishes always stamp so well! It makes sense, since basically all of them are one-coaters. Adina is nuts. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed! And goodbye Philly! My next post will be from St Louis…but since I move in on Monday we probably won’t have internet for a few days. Sorry! I will also have some freehand art up eventually…I do have some in the vault I just haven’t edited that either, I know it’s been a lot of stamping post recently!

Triangulated Teal

I was so close! I tried to get this up on Monday, but none of the art was edited at all yet. So, slightly past midnight, sorry! Posting is going to get a bit hectic. I spent all day packing, and I only have a few more days to be ready to move and I am in no way packed! The nail art room is getting packaged tomorrow, which is going to be really sad (the apartment we are moving in to only has two bedrooms, not two bedrooms and a tiny study perfect for nail polish).

All this is to say that if the posts start getting hectic and delayed, I am sorry! Between packing, moving, unpacking, orientation, and then starting on an intensive care unit rotation right off the bat (which, that is going to be TERRIFYING), I have no idea when my posts will go back to normal! Nor do I really have any idea if I’ll be able to keep the nail art coming in residency, but I will try!

Anyway, today’s post was done using the teal holographic swatch comparison. The end art is a bit clumpy…the fat straight lines are from a stamp and all the rest of the embellishments were hand-painted. But, it was all I had on deck so here it is!

Colors:
~ Dark teal holo: A England – Saint George
~ Bright teal holo: Julie G – Mermaid’s Tale
~ Shimmer teal holo: ILNP – Party Favor
~ Coarse holo teal: LA Girl – Teal Dimension
~ Teal glitter: Forumla X – Outburst
~ Silver holo: Color Club – Harp On It
~ Stamp: BM – 604

That’s all for today! Hopefully I have enough down time to put together a post that is on time for Wednesday…

Swatch Test: Teal Glitters

Today’s post is going to be a bit short, because I am running low on time! I graduate on Sunday, so my family and my husband’s family are coming into town this weekend. Running rampant. We also had to cannibalize half of my ‘nail art studio’ (aka our third bedroom which has been used solely for nail art for the past 4 years) to store a metric ton of wedding gifts that are still in their boxes. Fine china and crystal glasses are overrated!!!

Anyway, this leads me to today. This is a short post comparing one of my favorite nail polish families, the teal glitters! Spoilers: I love them all and will be keeping them all. I also hope that the post I have prepared for Monday actually gets edited in time…there is a non-zero chance that with all the hubbub this weekend I just won’t have time to edit the nail photos! But we shall see.

From pinky to thumb:
~ Pinky: A England – Saint George
~ Ring: Julie G – Mermaid’s Tale
~ Middle: ILNP – Party Favor
~ Pointer: LA Girl – Teal Dimension
~ Thumb: Forumla X – Outburst

A England polishes are amazing because of how opaque they are: this is ONE coat of St George. Mermaid and Dimension both required two coats, while Outburst and Party Favor both needed three. That said, I think Party has become my go-to color for my toenails. It has been on there for a month and counting and I love it! Comparing these 5 polishes, Outburst is clearly a gitterbomb polish, but is not super opaque on it’s own. Dimension is much darker than the others and has holo shards rather than glitters. Favor and Mermaid are not too dissimilar, but Favor has a shimmer to it and a bit of a dark blue shift that Mermaid lacks, while Mermaid is just SWIMMING with glitter. George is just a beautiful one-coater in dark teal, with a subtle holo finish that mostly looks like shimmer. Ergo, keeping them all! Happy Friday!