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 😀