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.

Triangulated Pastel Gradients

Colors! Colors galore! Oh my goodness so many colors. I made a light-to-dark gradient of each shade, and then tried to find a tone-matching holo that I could lightly paint over top. Voila! Honestly the nails looked awesome even before I added the stamp.

Colors:
~ Light mint: Zoya – Tiana
~ Mint: Zoya – Cecilia
~ Mint holo: ORLY – Sparking Garbage
~ Light blue: Zoya – Blu
~ Blue: Zoya – Ling
~ Blue holo: Milani – Cyberspace
~ Light purple: Zoya – Abby
~ Purple: Zoya – Landon
~ Purple holo: Milani – Hi-Res
~ Light pink: Zoya – Jordan
~ Pink: Zoya – Ciara
~ Pink holo: Milani – Digital
~ Light orange: Maybelline – Bleached in Peach
~ Orange: ULTA – Sun of a Gun
~ Orange holo: Nabi – Brone
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Stamp: BC – 04

That said, geometric stamps only make things better, so I went and played with triangles! I never use this particular design because for some reason it strikes me as awkward, but my nails were short enough that I could get away with not using the whole stamp design. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this return to full color! 😀

Fall-themed Roses

I went to a wedding where the bridesmaids were all dressed in different fall colors, and it was stunning! My assigned color was red, but the colors ranged from coral and orange through a deep plum. Of course, I painted my nails to match :-). Oddly enough, the only roses in the actual bouquets (which I helped make) were orange! Go figure.

Colors:
~ Red holo: A England – Rosebower
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Light orange: Maybelline – Bleached in Peach
~ Orange: OPI – Freedom of Peach
~ Dark orange: ULTA – Sun of a Gun
~ Light purple: Zoya – Malia
~ Purple: Zoya – Landon
~ Dark purple: Zoya – Lael
~ Red: OPI – All I want for Christmas (is OPI)
~ Dark red: OPI – Visions of Love
~ Green: Zoya – Tilda
~ Dark green: Zoya – Shawn
~ Stamp: BM – 209

Hope you enjoyed! It feels like I should be moving on to winter manicures…its been below 40 for the past few days even though Thanksgiving hasn’t happened yet!

Fall Bloom

There isn’t much better than fall-themed flowers! This was chosen after I modeled a few other possible designs over this pretty gradient. In retrospect, although I like the end product, I wish I had picked a different stamp that let through more of the underlying colors! Because fall gradients are the best gradients 🙂

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
~ Stamp: Whats Up Nails – B005

I feel like I probably overuse floral stamping, but I can’t really find it in myself to be upset about this. Flowers are pretty! Gradients are awesome! Combining them is fun! Anyway, that’s all for today, hope you enjoyed and happy Friday!

Yellow and Purple Meshwork

This was just a simple yellow-orange-red-purple gradient, with a dark purple holo stamped over it! I have been waiting for the right time to use this particular image, and I quite like how it came out. It also is suitably fall-themed so I have saved it for now 😀

Colors:
~ Yellow: OPI – Never a Dulles Moment
~ Orange: ULTA – Sun of a Gun
~ Red: Pure Ice – Siren
~ Purple: Zoya – Lael
~ Purple holo: A England – Let Me In
~ Gold: Zoya – Faye
~ Stamp: Moyra – 54 Matrix

Ugh I miss gradients. Although, I always hate when my nails are curved! Square (or squoval I suppose) or bust. None of this oval nonsense! Hope you enjoyed, stay tuned for MORE autumn nail art this Friday! Although it isn’t orange/red because I can, occasionally, vary my pallet :-p

Autumn Canopy

More fall! This was one basically just an excuse to make a whole bunch of dots. And we all know how much I love dots! The design was inspired by Snacks on Rotation although mine are much darker since I don’t have a gradient leaf stamp!

Colors:
~ Brown holo: Darling Diva – Brown Diamond
~ Brown: Zoya – Louise
~ Dark red: OPI – Visions of Love
~ Red: OPI – All I Want for Christmas (is OPI)
~ Dark orange: Essie – Playing Koi
~ Orange: ULTA – Sun of a Gun
~ Red shimmer: ILNP – The Magician
~ Stamp: EdM – 07

Hope you enjoyed! Happy fall weather, and pumpkin spice everything if you are into that!

Shining Leaves

It’s fall! The 31 Day Challenge has ended, so it is certainly October. More than that, the weather in St Louis just went from the 90s (it was TERRIBLE) to daily highs in the 70s! Hurray!

In honor of the newfound cold and frosty world (ok, there has not yet even been close to a frost, but still, not sweating in tank tops because it is chilly out makes me very happy), I am going to finally start posting Fall manicures! Beginning with this one. Basically, I just double stamped silver, then a smooth of red and orange polishes. Voila!

Colors:
~ Grey flakie: Polished for Days – Grey Opal
~ Dark red: OPI – Visions of Love
~ Red: OPI – All I Want for Christmas (is OPI)
~ Dark orange: Essie – Playing Koi
~ Orange: ULTA – Sun of a Gun
~ Silver: Nails Inc – South Kensington
~ Stamp: BP – 19

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed! And I hope this weather lasts, because it is the only time of the year that anyone will voluntarily find me outside!

Orange-y Swoopy Flower

This is a week of fails before we get to a month of good things (the 31 Day Nail Art Challenge)! Which is to say, prepare for a week of things I don’t love very much.

This came about because typically the color combo of yellow-orange-pink-neon purple is a good one! And my nails were short enough to use the MoYou plate I have. Ultimately, this did not come out how I envisioned at all.

Colors:

~ Yellow: OPI – Never a Dulles Moment

~ Orange: ULTA – Sun of a Gun

~ Pink: Zoya – Margo

~ Purple: Zoya – Landon

~ Stamp: MoYou – Pro 02

That’s it for today! I think the next two posts this week are slightly better, but at least this one is colorful?

Bright Quadrants

Rainbow(ish) bright colors! I just wanted to play with some pastel and darker cremes in the same color family. My nails were quite short so I went for a stamp that I can only use with short nails, and voila!

In the end this is more colorful than really, anything else. But it mad me happy to wear it, and it summer, so be it! It also really proves to me that I own a truly ridiculous number of Zoya creme polishes. To be fair, I purposely buy most of my cremes from Zoya, but this is next level!

Colors:
~ Light mint: Zoya – Tiana
~ Mint: Zoya – Cecilia
~ Light blue: Zoya – Blu
~ Blue: Zoya – Ling
~ Light purple: Zoya – Abby
~ Purple: Zoya – Landon
~ Light pink: Zoya – Jordan
~ Pink: Zoya – Kelsey
~ Light orange: Maybelline – Bleached in Peach
~ Orange: ULTA – Sun of a Gun
~ Stamp: MoYou – Pro 02

Hope you enjoyed! Happy Friday 😀

Safari Sunset

Scenery plates make awesome nail art surprisingly easy. All I had to do for this one was gradient, then stamp! The gradient, of course, took longer than anything else, and the result was very fun to wear! Once the gradient was done I actually painted over the whole thing with a yellow jelly polish to brighten the red and oranges, since the base polish was red (rather than white or yellow which are my go-to in a gradient like this).

The base color is a new-to-me red polish called Sookie by Zoya. This is three thin coats. The polish is very pretty and quite bright (I don’t know that neon red is a thing, but this is close), and covers well. It also, shockingly, removed very easily for a red! Most of my reds turn my cuticles red as the polish comes off, and this one played nicely.

I am actually really happy with how my yellow stamping polish gradiented, I wasn’t expecting to get much yellow tone over such a bright red!

Colors:
~ Red: Zoya – Sooki
~ Orange: ULTA – Sun of a Gun
~ Yellow: Stamping polish
~ Yellow jelly: Soap Bubbles Yellow
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamp: BM – XL204

That’s all for today, hope you enjoyed! My formal neurology residency starts today (as opposed to the medicine intern year I have been doing for the past 12 months) so my time is going to become even MORE limited. I will try to keep posting, but if the blog has some random blank days, I’m sorry! Blame work :-p

Shifting Purple Swirls

I loved wearing this manicure. Purple, swirls, and gradients? Yes please! It helped that making this was straightforward but it was eye-catching and looked quite complicated!

Really, this is a gradient stamp on an already existing gradient. I started with a purple gradient (lightest at the cuticle, darkest at the free edge) and then stamped a more subtle gradient (darkest at the cuticle, lightest at the free edge) over it. So many gradients! I honestly don’t know why I haven’t tried this idea again the past few months, it looks so cool 🙂

Colors:
~ Light pink: ULTA – Baby Doll
~ Light purple: Zoya – Malia
~ Light periwinkle: Nails Inc – Regents Place
~ Purple: Zoya – Landon
~ Periwinkle: Zoya – Danielle
~ Stamp: Born Pretty (not in English) – L005

That’s all for today! Some more fun weird stamping combinations coming on Wednesday, and one of my favorite new polishes on Friday! Also, my posts are finally going to get longer now that the “hard” part of my year is over, the next 4 weeks are pretty darn straight-forward. Hope you enjoyed!

Jupiter in Purple

I love this mani. I have been meaning to make a watermable with glitter so that it looks variegated (instead of just swoopy lines, to get some irregularity) and this worked! It kinda looks like the surface of Jupiter to me, if Jupiter was purple and the red spot was also purple (my middle finger tip).

I’m not going to lie, the sparkly stripe down the middle of my ring finger was…augmented…with extra polish. There was already some glitter there, but I wanted MORE. It was so shiny!

Colors:
~ Light pink: ULTA – Baby Doll
~ Shimmery lilac: Ethereal Lacquer – Little Oysters
~ Light periwinkle: Nails Inc – Regents Place
~ Purple: L’oreal – Royalty Reinvented
~ Periwinkle: Zoya – Danielle
~ Purple/green glitter: Polished for Days – From the Land of Oz

In retrospect, I think these also look a bit like geode nails? People were obsessed with those for a while, and the craze somewhat seems to have died down. I never did paint my own geode nails, and I should honestly do that sometime soon! The ones others have done a pretty :-D. Hope you enjoyed these!