Orange Marsh Sunset

I wanted to make a beautiful sunset water scene using this stamping plate, and I succeeded in all but one aspect: I used the wrong colors. The whole thing is so darn brown instead of a bright orange! I figured I would start with the darkest orange and gradient on some lighter colors, and well it worked in theory, the brown undertones of the darkest orange out-shown the yellow and red of the brighter orange polishes! The end result is rather dreary looking. Next time, brighter colors!

Colors:
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Pastel orange: Zoya – Cole
~ Orange: ULTA – Sun of a Gun
~ Dark orange: Essie – Playing Koi
~ Gold: Sephora – I Found a Pot of Gold!
~ Stamps: Moyra – 106 Picturesque

Looking at this manicure now just makes me happy that I got this stamping plate, and reminds me that I need to use it more in the next few weeks. It makes beautiful scenes. Hope you enjoyed! And sorry, I am out of any and all fall-themed nail art, so you guys get non-themed random designs for a bit!

Pumpkin Top

This was another smush marble design. I wanted to make it look like there were jack o’lantern faces on the tops of pumpkins! If I am being honest the idea flopped miserably (these look nothing like pumpkin tops) and I forgot that this plate barely stamps. Despite that, I had made the decals (which were a pain to get onto my nails) and so I wore the resulting manicure for 5 days anyway. Not my best work!

Colors:
~ Light orange: Forumla X – Incandescent
~ Orange: ULTA – Sun of a Gun
~ Brown: Zoya – Louise
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamps: Born Pretty – Halloween L004

I actually don’t think I have ANY other pumpkins to post at this point! its going to be fully Halloween spookiness or dead leaves from here on out :-p Enjoy

Orange Fog

This was intended to be the spooky backdrop to some creepy eyes, but I liked the background section so much that I didn’t want to risk messing it up by adding eyes! So we ended up with this, a Halloween-colored foggy creepy forest. It was also, notably, my first ever successful radial gradient 😀

Colors:
~ Light orange: KBShimmer – Orange You Glad I Didn’t Say Banana?
~ Orange: ULTA – Sun of a Gun
~ Brown: Zoya – Louise
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Silver: A England – Excalibur (renaissance)
~ Stamp: BM – XL472

Maybe I will try this again this year (these are from last year) but with purple! Or green. Creepy green forest fog. Hope you enjoyed! 

Double Webs

This I enjoyed making, even if I wanted to tear my hair out. I decided that the smush marble technique would be perfect to make something that looked like but was not quite a spider web. Turns out I was correct…but I had to make 11 smush marbles to end up with even 5 usable patterns, and even so, only 3 of them actually looked web-like. Well, the end results were also a bit too dark for me, so I gave up and added some gold spider web and spiders with stamps. And then I added a lot of glitter polish to the spiders after top coat to make them 3D. It was fun.

Colors:
~ Light orange: KBShimmer – Papaya Don’t Preach
~ Orange: ULTA – Sun of a Gun
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Gold glitter: Zoya – Tomoko
~ Stamps: BP – Halloween L004

Smush marbles always take longer than I think they should, mostly because getting them onto the nail and CLEANING my fingers after they are in place takes forever. Note to myself for next time! Hope you enjoyed 🙂

Fall Fox

I decided to start this year with a less-spooky manicure, and went for something distinctly autumn but also cute! I spent probably an hour browsing the internet for something to inspire me, before ending up with the adorable fox manicure. I have seen multiple versions of this manicure and I mostly ended up tweaking bits of all of them to make my own. Voila! I also only used 4 colors which made me very happy.

Colors:
~ Grey: Forumla X – Delightful
~ Orange: ULTA – Sun of a Gun
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamps: BM – XL472

I should add that most “paw print” nail art is not any particular animal. I had started making my paw prints when I decided to look at what fox prints actually look like, and was mildly horrified at myself. I ended up not changing the pad of the foot design (since it was already on the nail) but I did give the poor fox some actual claws. I like it, and I hope you do too!

Orange Butterflies

This manicure is simple, but fun. I cannot even count how many times I have done butterfly (or dragonfly) wings. It’s a lot! This particular design got me bonus points in the hospital though, because I was on pediatrics at the time and they made a small child not only smile, but talk to us (“butterflies!”) when she had previously refused. So, win one for nail art! It also goes well for the animal theme of the 31 day challenge.

Colors:
~ Light orange: Formula X – Incandescent
~ Orange: ULTA – Sun of a Gun
~ Red: Zoya – Sooki
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White

Bug nails are pretty much the only animal patterns that I like, I don’t particularly care for zebra nails and I actively dislike leopard print things. So, I have done butterflies multiple times, dragonflies, bees, and ladybugs. I don’t like buts in real life, but apparently I do on my nails! Hope you enjoyed 🙂

Simple Dark Sunset

I was feeling lazy and decided to do a simple manicure…I can’t remember the last time I just did a gradient without any stamping or freehand design over the top. That said, it meant I spent more time on the actual smoothness of the gradient. I am pretty happy with the result, surprisingly!

Colors:
~ Yellow: KBShimmer – Orange You Glad I Didn’t Say Banana
~ Orange: ULTA – Sun of a Gun
~ Red: OPI – Visions of Love
~ Brown: Zoya – Louise
~ Gold glitter: Sephora by OPI – I Found a Pot of

I probably won’t go back to doing simple unadorned gradients anytime soon, but it was fun and soothing to do this one. So maybe one or two more with different glitters :-p who knows! Hope you enjoyed! And welcome back home from vacation to me 😀

Flaming Spirals

I adore the combination of blurple and orange/flame colors. I really wanted to use shades of orange again a dark blurple, and this is what I came up with. The advanced stamping of the yellow-orange flames took longer than I expected, but the end result was pretty cool! I only intended to do 3 nails (not 4) which is why they look a bit stretched out, and in retrospect I wish I had stuck to my original plan and had one plain nail or nail with dots! That said, I do love my pinky too 😀

Colors:
~ Blurple: Zoya – Danielle
~ Yellow: KBShimmer – Orange You Glad I Didn’t Say Banana?
~ Light orange: Formula X – Incandescent 
~ Orange: Ulta – Sun of a Gun
~ Dark orange: Essie – Playing Koi
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamp: Moyra 50 – Ornaments 3 

Manicures like this take a bunch of time because of the whole coloring-in-the-lines and waiting for polish to dry before transferring it, but I can’t help but love them! If I had more time I think most of my nails would either be some nuts color combination advanced stamping, or pure freehand. Anyway, hope you enjoyed! 

Unicorn Holo Twilight

This was a fun somewhat whimsical manicure! I had been staring at this stamping design for some time, but was unsure how to make it work between negative space and positive space. So I went full glitter. I didn’t think the white would stand out perfectly against the glitter background that I chose (because I don’t own stamping polish, and although I do love my white polish it isn’t THAT pigmented), so I stamped in orange first and used that as sort of a shadow and stamping base. Not going to lie, I do love how it came out! I tried to add a yellow jelly moon into the moon area on my pointer, but its soo faint against the glitter that you can hardly see it. Oops!

Colors:
~ Holo: ILNP – Fired Up
~ Orange: ULTA – Sun of a Gun
~ Yellow jelly: Orange Soap Bubble
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Stamp: M035

At some point I will do this design again with a tad more color, but this was a decent start I think! I should probably have gone for slightly less of a glittery background if I wanted the stamp to stand out! Hope you enjoyed 🙂 

Orange Slices

I was looking through old geometric manicures on my own blog (I know, I’m strange) and i found this, and decided that it was time to recreate the same mani with different colors! Since it was just before Thanksgiving I decided to use oranges and golds. I am pretty happy with the result, even if it is less subtle than the original. I also somehow managed to forget how hard it is to remove darn textured glitter polish. Yikes.

Colors:
~ Light orange: Formula X – Incandescent
~ Orange: ULTA – Sun of a Gun
~ Dark orange: Essie – Playing Koi
~ Gold textured: Zoya – Solange 

Honestly, despite how long it takes, scotch tape based manicures end up being some of the cleanest and most dramatic manicures I have seen. This is all in basically one color, and despite that, it looks fairly elegant and is easily identifiable. I have a hunch I am going to do this in another color in the not-too-distant future! Maybe with swoops though instead of straight lines. We shall see! Any color palette preferences? :-p

Blurple Sunset Curls

Ok this was fun! I love a good yellow-to-red (or, in this case, dark pink) gradient, and putting a purple-blue over orange is one of my favorite colors. It is also fun to post today because the bright colors remind me of the sun. Which I have not seen in weeks. You guys, the HIGH outside has been <10 degrees for >7 days. I don’t know what is going on. I do not live in Boston anymore, and this poor city is not prepared! It has been snowing for three days now and everything is shut down. What is more, despite these bright sunny nails, my poor hands are freezing! Our HOT WATER froze in the kitchen. Its abysmal! 

Colors:
~ Yellow: KBShimmer – Orange You Glad I Didn’t Say Banana?
~ Orange: Ulta – Sun of a Gun
~ Pink: OPI – All I Want for Christmas (is OPI)
~ Purple: Zoya – Danielle
~ Glitter: ILNP – The Magician
~ Stamp: Moyra 50 – Ornaments 3

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed both my little rant about my (cold) life and the brighter colors of this manicure! St Louis is not intended to thaw until this coming weekend, so I will try and keep posting brightly colored manicures to remind us all that spring (or, at least not the frigid depths) are coming shortly. 

Leaves on Woodgrain

I wanted to do a woodgrain manicure, but that was too simple! So I went and added some bright leaves. The base was a medium brown with lighter brown dry-brushed on. The stamp was two shades of darker brown. The leaves were advanced stamped (ooooh, aaaah) to make it more colorful, and to make them stand out. I like the end result and it is very appropriately autumn, but with the advanced stamping it took quite a bit longer! 

Colors:
~ Light brown: Zoya – Chantal
~ Brown: Zoya – Flynn
~ Dark brown: Zoya – Dea
~ Darkest brown: Zoya – Louise
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Red: OPI – All I Want for Christmas (is OPI)
~ Orange: ULTA – Sun of a Gun
~ Yellow: OPI – Never a Dulles Moment 
~ Stamps: BM – 608, UC – Lovely Leaves 2

I am so happy, the leaves on the trees in front of my house have finally started to change colors and it is pretty! I think last fall I was too caught up in life to notice things like the leaves changing. Anyway, hope you all enjoyed! 

Leaves on Stumps

You guys. When I made this I saw so proud of myself for layered stamping (this was last year) and now looking at it, it is way too busy and just NO. Also, my stamps are almost see-through and this whole thing is a mess. So you only get one photo…my indoor photos look like I forgot to add top coat and I am not forcing those images on you! Anyway, to make this overly complicated manicure I decided to use two different wood stump stamps that I had never touched. One as it turns out is negative space and the other is…positive space? Standard? Who knows. I didn’t like how it looked with just the wood grain, so I added fall leaves and then dots because I cannot leave well enough alone! 

Colors:
~ Light brown: Zoya – Chantal
~ Brown: Zoya – Flynn
~ Dark brown: Zoya – Dea
~ Darkest brown: Zoya – Louise
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Red: OPI – All I Want for Christmas (is OPI)
~ Orange: ULTA – Sun of a Gun
~ Yellow: OPI – Never a Dulles Moment 
~ Stamps: Whats Up Nails – B005, Moyra – 32 Nature, UC – Lovely Leaves 2 

Anyway, sorry about this mess. I have some prettier leaf-themed manicures coming up, I promise! 

Vivid Gradient Divided

It has been a (shamefully long) time since I did a dramatic gradient with striping tape. Partially because it takes so darn long to place the striping tape, and partially because I have been doing a lot of hand-painted scenes recently! Oh well. Enjoy geometric day in the 31 day challenge!

Colors:
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Yellow: OPI – Never a Dulles Moment
~ Orange: ULTA – Sun of a Gun
~ Pink: Zoya – Veronica
~ Purple: Zoya – Danielle
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black 

I am not going to lie, this is one of my favorite gradients. I do love blues and greens and purples in general, but for an eye-catching gradient, sunset colors are where its at! Hope you all enjoyed 😀 

Halfway Circled

This was an idea I had bouncing in my head for a while: what if I took a metallic and a creme of the same shade and painted half of my nail with each? And then added stamps to the creme side? And maybe a dividing line? Well, I finally did it. And the end result was that you cannot tell I used two similar shades of nude/pink. That said, this looks like a slightly weird french design and it isn’t half bad!

Colors:
~ Nude creme: CND – Cashmere Wrap
~ Nude metallic: ULTA – Freshwater Pearl
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Stamp: BP – L003

This week has been a bit of a mix, but it was fun to post at least :-). I hope you enjoyed something between the dark and stormy, the bright and sunny, and todays pink mix! Now I just need some freehand in there somewhere…

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!

Pink Ombre Fade

I wanted to combine ombre AND gradients, but I couldn’t easily figure out how to do that in a way that wouldn’t take hours. Then I remembered I have some stamps that make cool gradient stamps. So, I ombre’ed my nails, and then stamped with the color of the base in a gradient to black on each nail. The end result looked pretty cool! I got a LOT of questions about if these particular nails were stickers when I was wearing them 😀

Colors:
~ Pastel pink: ULTA – Baby Doll
~ Light pink: Zoya – Jordan
~ Pink: Clinique – Pinkini
~ Dark pink: Zoya – Kelsey
~ Darkest pink: Zoya – Ciara
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamp: L005

I would say happy monday, but this is quite an unhappy monday! I just returned to work following a 2 week vacation (we only get three total weeks of a year) and I started today with a 28 hour shift. So, mediocre monday at best! Anyway, hope you enjoyed!

Carrot Gems

I didn’t know what else to title this! It ended up looking somewhat like a gemstone…with tiny carrots? I basically just stamped in black but didn’t like how that looked, so I grabbed a complimentary color to my shifty base which ended up being a dark orange. I overlaid some of the black patterns with orange…and then added black dots. The end result is actually really cool looking but I had no idea where I was going with this and can hardly take credit for it!

Colors:
~ Orange/green multichrome: Ethereal – Rainforest
~ Orange: ULTA – Sun of a Gun
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamp: BP – L049

That’s all I have for today! I spent the 5 days I wore this manicure being constantly distracted by the glitter and the shifting colors, so kudos to Ethereal Lacquer I suppose! Hope you all enjoyed 🙂 (And sorry this is late! I totally forgot to pre-post before my 28 hour shift in the hospital.)

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!

Sunset Skittle

This was just me testing out stamping plate designs for nails to wear to a wedding! You will see what I picked (spoiler: I picked the wrong design) in a while :-p Looking back I honestly enjoy what was on my thumb the most, both because the design is elegant and because I really liked the underlying gradient. I picked something more…floral…and regretted it!

Colors:
~ Orange: OPI – Freedom of Peach
~ Dark orange: ULTA – Sun of a Gun
~ Red: OPI – All I Want for Christmas (is OPI)
~ Purple: Zoya – Landon
~ Dark purple: Zoya – Lael
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Stamps Moyra – 45 I Fill You, BM – S10, Whats Up Nails – B005, B025, UC – Lovely Leaves 2

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed! If any of you are looking for some television to watch I strongly recommend the series Firefly! I don’t know why I decided I have the right to give out television recommendations but there you go.