Children’s Arches

The scrubs at the Children’s Hospital where my husband works (and where I briefly worked on my pediatric neurology block) are a beautiful shade of darkish teal. So, I decided to paint my nails to match! Of course, I could have gone with a creme color, but thats boring. So I went with a metallic! And then I decided that since the “n” in Children’s was shaped like the St Louis arch, that I would grab my most arch-like stamp and play with it. This was the (rather abstract) result!

Colors:
~ Teal metallic: P2 – Lost in Paradise
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Teal: Emily de Molly – Glee Ridden
~ Stamps: BP – L050

I had planned to get rid of Lost in Paradise because I never ever wear it. I am glad I still had it on my give-to-a-new-home shelf, its pretty! Although being honest this is the first time I have worn it in at least 3 years, and I have a very similar but more opaque polish that I am keeping. Hopefully it finds a new home soon! All of that being said, I found this manicure a little boring and I am too lazy right now to edit two photos of a boring manicure so you only get one :-p

Golden Veined

Oh god this was SUCH a disaster. I spent almost 2 hours making a super complicated manicure just to cover it up because it looked SO BAD. I started with a pretty purple-with-blue-glitters over a purple creme base, all is well. I then, for some ill-defined reason, decided to make gradient purple scales? Starting with the same shade of dark purple so it blended all the way into the polish? Gradiented to pink? When that looked awful I made an inner lining of the lighter color below for each of the scales and that looked WORSE. It looked like some pink-purple spreading tumor from my nail beds. I decided the problem was the darkest purple blending into the glitter purple base, so I outlined it in chunky gold glitter and somehow that just made everything worse. It was a failure. So I gave up and asked my husband what he would do to salvage it, and his answer was “make up something teal” to pick up the teal glitters in the polish. 

Colors:
~ Purple cream: L’oreal – Paparazzi Pleaser
~ Purple with blue glitter: Emily de Molly – Open Season
~ Gold glitter: OPI – All Sparkly and Gold
~ Teal: Color Fever – Fiji
~ Gold: Salon Perfect – Gold Leaf

I will never say this on my nail blog again but…my husband was right. I covered the purple-pink monstrosity that I spent hours creating with a super opaque teal metallic, leaving a thin golden rim, and it already looked better. I then added gold veins to the teal and it almost looked like an intentional passable manicure. Only I knew what horrors lay beneath. 

Teal Gradient Chevrons

Straight forward, easy, and pretty colored! All you can ask for in a nail design :-D. These were painted in the spring, but the color just lend themselves so well to frost and winter, so I figured I would post them here! 

Colors: 
~ Light teal: Wet n’ Wild – I Need A Refresh-Mint
~ Teal: Zoya – Cecilia
~ Dark teal: OPI – Stay Off the Lawn!!
~ Light purple: Zoya – Malia 
~ Purple: Zoya – Landon
~ Dark purple: Zoya – Lael

Hope you enjoyed! Stay tuned for the New Years nails on Friday; the top 10 posts will come next week! 

Snow Pond Mani

The name says it all! This was 4 layers of snowflakes (three that got covered with a jelly polish and one left white) it honestly ended up too busy and I wish I had done one less layer! And of course, a cute snowman. I did him off to the side because I had seen something similar on IG, but it looks a bit strange honestly! 

Colors:
~ Blue: Zoya – Ling
~ Blue jelly: Zoya – Frida
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Silver shimmer: KBShimmer – I Only Have Ice For You
~ Pink: Essie – The Girls are Out
~ Orange: Zoya – Thandie
~ Stamps: Nicole Diary – 120

I think I am going to have to try another snowflake pond-style manicure this year, with slightly fewer layers. Maybe fewer flakes per nail, keep it a bit simpler. We shall see! Hope you enjoyed 🙂 

Teal Snowflake Echoes

I have NO idea where I was going with this. Pale snowflake with a darker central snowflake? What if snowflakes made ripples? Who knows! I do, as always, love the base color though. Gets me every time.

Colors:
~ Teal with pink shimmer: Emily de Molly – Pending Perfection
~ Teal: Zoya – Cecilia
~ Dark teal: A England – St George
~ Stamps: EdM – 09, BM – 323

In retrospect I wish I had managed to center these a little better, but the end result was actually pretty cool! I don’t usually try to line up my contrasting double stamps and this is why. But I do like it! Happy MORE snowflake  mani :-p

Snowflake Ripples

You guys, I magnetized a stamp! And it kinda sorta worked! How cool is that. Its honestly a bit hard to tell but the darker teal (the snowflakes) are magnetic. It doesn’t help that I actually forgot that I made this manicure, it doesn’t help that I think I used this exact snowflake stamp maybe 5 times last year (I almost don’t want to count in the coming weeks as I post them, but I know that I will).

Colors:
~ Teal holo: Powder Perfect – There be Mermaids!
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Dark teal magnetic: Nails Inc – Whitehall
~ Stamps: L078, B Loves Plates – 03 Mind Blown, BM – 323

Anyway, I hope you enjoy! It hasn’t snowed yet but it is really beginning to get cold out. I hate scraping the frost off my car, but life is life! Stay safe and warm. 

Bright Pink Slices

Why? I don’t know. Vacation was starting, I like bright colors, and whenever I use Pending Perfection I have an unavoidable need to pair it with pink. Blame the shimmer! Sadly, the pink gradient I made out of the middle portion of my nail hardly shows up (yes, there is both a light pink and a dark pink), but at least the glitter came through!

Colors:
~ Teal shimmer: Emily de Molly – Pending Perfection
~ Pink: Revlon – Bubbly
~ Dark pink: Zoya – Kelsey
~ Holo topper: China Glaze – Fairy Dust

Hopefully I will be able to get some more fall-appropriate nails lined up for next week. We shall see. Hope you enjoyed! 

Abstract Succulents

Guys I don’t know. I wanted some teal-on-teal action, and for some reason I gravitated towards this stamp. I like what the nails ended up looking like, but I cannot decide if I think they are more succulnet-like or alien-head-like! So I went with the plants :-p

Colors:
~ Nabi – Ocean Blue
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Teal: Zoya – Wednesday
~ Stamp: MoYou – Frenchy 14 

Even staring at these again to edit and color correct them, I have no idea what I was thinking here! Oh well, it was fun anyway. Hope you enjoyed! 

Haunted Sunset

This is one of the best designs I have made in a while, and it was for Halloween! Oh well, still worth it :-p. I saw these beautiful nails by @nails4cocktails and I just knew I had to recreate them! Sadly, I own none of the stamps that she does so it took me a lot longer to freehand everything, but it was very rewarding! I need to remember to do more freehand…when I have more time. These came out awesome and they only took a few (~2) hours!

Colors:
~ Yellow: KBShimmer – Orange you Glad I Didn’t Say Banana?|
~ Teal: Zoya – Rocky
~ Purple: Zoya – Danielle
~ Blue: Zoya – Ryan
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Yellow jelly: Esmalta da Kelly – Yellow Soap Bubbles
~ Holo glitter: Wet n’ Wild – Kaleidoscope 

Anyway, happy Halloween! I hope you all have safe and socially distant plans for tomorrow night, and that everyone gets to enjoy both candy AND not catching the plague :-p.

Bright Flowery Teal

I have literally been saving this manicure for year so I can post it! Talk about inspired by a color :-D. The design itself is from @evgeshkammm because lets be honest it would never would have occurred to me to do naked nails by myself (I still hate seeing visible nail line, but it kinda works here?). Ugh, neons are the best! 

Colors:
~ Teal: Emily de Molly – Glee Ridden
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Nude: Sephora X – Marvelous
~ Stamps: BP – L052, L008

Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed the stamps + freehand + geometric neon naked mani! This is a weird combo that I will likely never attempt again but I enjoyed it at the time! 

Glitter Grip

I was on vacation while I wore these nails, and if I am honest they survived 6 days of archery, boating, more boating, more archery, and a bit of zip lining better than expected! Also they were super glittery 😀

Colors:
~ Bright teal: Emily de Molly – Glee Ridden
~ Dark teal: OPI – Stay Off the Lawn!!
~ Pink glitter: POP Polish – Watermelon Bubbleslick

I think I mentioned a while ago that I was into doing deep V nails. This is one of the designs from that genre (again, not sure why I did a whole bunch of them in the span of a month, but I did do them!). Very easy, but quite pretty! Hope you enjoyed 😀

Water Ripples

I have not made a water ripple manicure in literally years, but I saw this design on a plate I was sent to review and I knew I had to play with it! I started with a blue metallic base covered with blue flakies, over which I stamped in white. However, the white was too stark, so I covered it in various densities of a teal jelly to make it look a little more water-like. I am pretty happy with the result!

Colors:
~ Metallic blue: Zoya – Estelle
~ Blue flakies: Zoya – Maisie
~ Teal jelly: Zoya – Frida
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Stamp: Nicole Diary – L21

You can find the stamp for yourself at the born pretty store here, where it is currently $6.99 (but if you wait a few days I bet it will come down, they have sales almost every week!). Hope you enjoyed, and happy Friday!!

Double Teal Braids

You guys. I forgot how messy and time-consuming braided nails were. I thought these would be fast and easy and I was WRONG. Of course I also had to go make it much more complicated for myself. However, the end result was rather cool (if somewhat messy and very time consuming)! And please ignore my pinky, the lines got all skinny at the end

Colors:
~ Light teal: Wet n’ Wild – I Need A Refresh-Mint
~ Teal: Zoya – Cecilia
~ Dark teal: OPI – Stay Off the Lawn!!
~ Light purple: L’Oreal – Royalty Reinvented
~ Purple: Zoya – Landon
~ Dark purple: Zoya – Lael

I started with a teal braid. Most of my braids were off-center, some were SEVERELY off-center. So I decided to fix it by adding lines of similarly toned purples. That did add some fun variety, but it also somewhat exacerbated the problem. So on the two most egregious nails (my thumb and ring finger) I went back and added a weave! I made it up as I went, but it looked pretty cool when all was said and done. Then I added more purple to the weave (Oy Vey). Anyway, hope you enjoyed! I think this ended up being more time-consuming than it was pretty, but so be it!

Neutral Water

Just a simple shimmery nude polish, white stamp, and teal dots. Why teal? I dunno. Wanted them to match my other hand at the time :-p. The other hand, in my (currently, boring) defense was a bit cooler! Oh well. One week of semi-fails, and hopefully next week I will finally transfer all the backlog of nail art from March and get working on them! So yes, this week is the dregs of nail art that I just hadn’t posted yet.

Colors:
~ Teal: Glitter Gal – No Worries
~ Nude shimmer: ULTA – Freshwater Pearl
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Stamps: BP – L003

Dreg is such a cool word, honestly! Ok, hope you all enjoyed, and if we are lucky and I get my act together, next week will have prettier nails!

Angled Hatches

This ended up a bit more dramatic than I intended, and I love it. On the examples page for this stamping plate, they show someone using gold, black, and a blue textured polish over this particular design. I didn’t love the way they used it, but it directly inspired what I went for with this! And this was a lot of fun, making it up as I went 🙂

The base here is a polish I have been lemming after for years: Cirque Hatch. This polish has been out for a while, and if I am honest it hardly counts as a lemming because it is still in stock all over the place. I just hadn’t wanted to pay the full price for it. So, when I found it on sale…voila! This is three thin coats (I was done in two coats but I wanted a third to try and keep my nails from breaking. For what its worth I wore this for and entire week without even tip wear, I am very impressed). Hatch is a very pale grey with tiny darker grey glitters and very small black shards. The overall appearance is a subtle birds egg shell. I adore it.

Colors:
~ Grey: Cirque – Hatch
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Silver: A England – Excalibur (Renaissance)
~ Teal textured: Julie G – Rock Candy
~ Stamp: Moyra – 54 Matrix

That’s it for today, other than to apologize that this was supposed to go up yesterday! I ended up liking this manicure enough that I did a bunch more geometric manicures shortly thereafter, you will likely see them in the next few weeks :-p. Hope you enjoyed!

Neutral Bubbles on Teal

I wanted to make a mix of neutral colored bubbles, but I couldn’t decide what color to put them over! For some reason I decided a pale teal would do the trick, and here we are. In retrospect I wish I had gone with black (or one of my neutral creme polishes that I didn’t use for the bubbles) but too late! The end result is honestly rather weird, but this took hours (coloring in all the bubbles) so I am posting it anyway!

Colors:
~ Teal: Glitter Gal – No Worries
~ Pastel nude creme: OPI – Be There in a Prosecco
~ Nude with gold shimmer: Essence – I Nude It
~ Nude holo: Picture Polish – Cherish
~ Nude shimmer: ULTA – Freshwater Pearl
~ Taupe creme: KBShimmer – Caught on Tape
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Stamp: Whats up Nails – B015

Moral of the story: If you are going to spend a very long time doing reverse stamping, make sure you have a PLAN or all your hard work is going to end up looking rather half-assed!

Fancy Teal Tips

Yet ANOTHER fun manicure with a bright weird base color and a design from the UrbanNailArt collab plate. I am seriously glad I bought it! Sadly, the silver I used on my tips is a tad overwhelming, but you can still see the cool semi-foil below 🙂

The base here is three thin coats of Near and Far by Emily de Molly. This is a “pastel” multichrome, and honestly it is lighter in shade than most of my multichromes but I would not call this color pastel! I will need to do a comparison with the other similar multichromes I own just to see how much lighter it really is. Regardless, it is a very pretty and very shifty color! I captured the bright teal flash, as well as shifts to blue, indigo, and purple.

Colors:
~ Teal/purple multichrome: Emily de Molly – Near and Far
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Silver: A England – Excalibur (renaissance)
~ Stamps: Moyra – 32 Nature, Lina – @urbannailart collab

I honestly especially love how this polish looks in the sunlight, you get an eyeful of the purple flash. Many multichromes have a fun sun feature, but this one really wowed me! Anyway, hope you enjoyed!

Dotted Weave

I have NO idea why I decided on this design, and this actually looks really weird (weaved pattern with dots? muscle cells with blue nuclei? who knows!) but it was fun to make.

The base polish is another new Polished for Days concoction called Fireflies; this is the polish that first caught my eye almost a year ago and drew me to PfD. Fireflies needs three thin coats for coverage….but that just assures that you can see every ounce of the insane glittery madness within. It is a teal polish base with pink/red shimmer that shifts to gold and occasionally green, as well as holo, and large and small flakie shards that shift pink-gold-green. I could almost get away with wearing this without nail art, it is that busy!

Colors:
~ Teal/pink flakie shimmer: Polished for Days – Fireflies
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Blue: Zoya – Sia
~ Stamp: Lina – @urbannailart collab

For whatever reason, I have lately been shying away from super-over-the-top-glittery polishes; I have been going back to neutrals/greys with a bit of shimmer or single type of glitter, or creme polishes. I had to grab this polish anyway and I am glad I did! However, I got 4 other glitter polishes at the same time, and I have not felt drawn to use any of them! Silly past Eva. Hope you enjoyed!

Childish Twirls

This is a very simple manicure, but shimmery and shifty! Just what we needed after two straight weeks of boring nude lace themed nails. Of course, when I painted these my nails were an awful rounded shape, but you can’t win everything :-p

Colors:
~ Teal multichrome: Enchanted Polish – Kids
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamp: MoYou – Frenchy 14

I don’t quite know why I reach for really complicated multichromes or glitter mixes when I don’t have anything in particular in mind, but it ends up looking pretty! I just need to make sure my creme polishes also get love sometimes 😀 Hope you enjoyed!

Awkward Swirls

You guys, I think I just completely forgot to write down what I did with this manicure. I have no records of having painted it at all…but there are photos and a title attached! So I am going to have to guess at what I did. I am pretty sure I started with a blue base, painted a shimmery flakie polish over that, and then for some very odd reason stamped in a pale teal? That is the weirdest part, why would I stamp in teal?! Awkward indeed.

Colors (my best guess):
~ Blue: Zoya – Ling
~ Shimmer: KBShimmer – Sandy
~ Teal: I have no idea, I own three similar teals, sorry!
~ Stamp: Moyra – 3 Ornaments 50

I really hope there aren’t a bunch more manicures floating around that don’t have descriptions somewhere in my completed folder! I will accept one, but not more! Hope the awkward of the teal stamping didn’t turn you off this manicure!