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!

Dotted Circles

This mani took a bit of work because of the double stamping! And also because working with sheer polish makes me nervous so it takes a lot longer to get anything done.

The steps to this one were basically sheer polish, stamp with gold dots, then stamp with rainbow dots. The exciting part was that I got a liquid metallic polish from Sally Hansen (back when mirror nails were all the rage) to stamp! It is such a perfect shiny gold but it usually dries to fast for stamping. Which goes to show that this plate is well etched. And since I was stamping in colors over it, I didn’t care if every part of the design was 100% filled in. I’ll have to play with it some more in the near future!

Colors:
~ Sheer nude: Sephora X – Marvelous
~ Gold: Sally Hansen – Liquid Gold
~ Blue: Zoya – Sia
~ Purple: Zoya – Landon
~ Pink: Zoya – Ciara
~ Red: Pure Ice – Siren
~ Orange: ULTA – Sun of a Gun
~ Yellow: OPI – Never a Dulles Moment
~ Green: Zoya – Shawn
~ Teal: OPI – Stay off the Lawn!!
~ Stamps: Moyra – 54 Matrix

That is a LOT of colors. Anyway, hope you enjoyed! Maybe I’ll actually have some seasonal nails up starting next week? I have a bunch of snowflake and dark color manis done, but I haven’t even put them on my computer much less edited them yet!

Oranged Lines

Honestly, I was aiming for a completely different manicure when I started this, but my gradient came out all wrong so I ended up with this instead!

I was going for a light orange-orange-red-purple style, and as you can see it is 95% orange an 5% red with no purple at all! I tried. I really did. In retrospect, I should have known it wasn’t going to work since the purple I was trying to use is currently a dried up blobby mess. Live and learn!

I ended up deciding that all gradients (as long as the colors aren’t terrible and need to be flat-out started over) look good with some geometric patterns. I wanted something a bit more delicate so I went with this design, and of course added colors to the dots and diamonds. I think this is the third time I have done this same thing with different colors.

Colors:
~ Pastel orange: Maybelline – Bleached in Peach
~ Orange: ULTA – Sun of a Gun
~ Red: Pure Ice – Siren
~ Neon purple: Sinful Colors – Dream On
~ Dark purple: L’Oreal – Paparazzi Pleaser
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamp: EdM – 03

That’s all for today! There is a similar gradient floating around on the blog too, since I was on night float and thus was able to do slightly different nails (and keep this poor blog running)! Hope you enjoy!

Orange Passing Purple

This mani stirs some mixed feelings: on the one hand, it is pretty cool looking! On the other hand, the gradient isn’t what I was going for and the lines, as the are freehanded, are not even close to perfect.

I was inspired by @aissandra. Somehow, despite her nails being shorter than mine, she managed to get more gradient going! I have to wonder if that is because she was using higher quality or more opaque polish. I happen to know that the neon purple I tried to use is a dried up mess and need to be thinned dramatically or thrown out!

The real moral is that I need a better neon pastel (wow) orange, and despite having a truly staggering number of purple polishes, I need something that is a bright indigo-leaning creme! In case the swatching extravaganza earlier this year didn’t clue anyone in, I own far too many jewel tone purple metallics. Specifically. Anyway.

Colors:
~ Pastel orange: Maybelline – Bleached in Peach
~ Orange: ULTA – Sun of a Gun
~ Red: Pure Ice – Siren
~ Neon purple: Sinful Colors – Dream On
~ Dark purple: L’Oreal – Paparazzi Pleaser

That’s all for today! Hope you enjoyed, and wish me luck acquiring more purple polish 😀

Cascading Rainbow Dots

This was a lot of fun, and not nearly as time consuming as I had feared! I was searching for some inspiration to use for the 31 Day Challenge options for art, flag, or supernatural (since I only post one out of every three days), and was stumped on flag. Then I remember my day 5/blue nails and how much I loved the porcelain, so I went searching for vases or ceramic art. And I ended up somehow on teacups…and with this.

The inspiration for this design really is art, but its teacup glass art! I don’t know where I can buy this set but I WANT it. It is so pretty! Unfortunately, using this design meant I needed to have my nails mostly naked underneath to mimic the see-through glass, and that I had to double dot with gold and a color!

Despite that, the art only took maybe 1.5 hours, which is pretty good for lots of dots! I am very grateful that I have real dotting tools now…trying to get this mani sizes of dots out of my hairpins and paperclips would have been difficult.

Colors:
~ Sheer nude: Sephora X – Marvelous
~ Gold: Sally Hansen – Liquid Gold
~ Blue: Zoya – Sia
~ Purple: Zoya – Landon
~ Pink: Zoya – Ciara
~ Red: Pure Ice – Siren
~ Orange: ULTA – Sun of a Gun
~ Yellow: OPI – Never a Dulles Moment
~ Green: Zoya – Shawn
~ Teal: OPI – Stay off the Lawn!!

This also gave me a chance to use Liquid Gold, which I bought back when metallic semi-foil polishes (that show every ridge and divot in the nail) were a huge craze. I only ever got a gold and a silver, and I seldom use them because top coat ruined the finish and they, as mentioned, show every nail problem! They work really well for dots though 😀

Hope you enjoyed! There is only one day left in the challenge for me, and it is inspired by others! Since something like 60% of all my nail art is inspired by SOMETHING, I think I might just grab one from the vault again.

EKG

EKG, also known as an ECG, is short for echocardiogram, and it is how we analyze heart rhythms in the hospital. Since I have been on some form of cardiology for MONTHS at this point, I though it was high time I did EKG nails!

The study also tends to be a very discernible pattern (in fact the heart rhythm is defined by the pattern we see on EKG) so I thought it would be pretty funny to use this design for my “pattern” day in the 31 day challenge!

Basically I am trying to be clever. Anyone in the medical field would hopefully ALSO think I was being clever, but otherwise these just look like pink boxed paper with some black squiggles.

Of note, real EKGs don’t actually have pink sparkly hearts in them :-p

Colors:
~ Pastel pink: ULTA – Baby Doll
~ Light pink: Sinful Colors – Pink Forever
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Pink glitter: Zoya – Alegra
~ Stamps: BP – L002, BM – 620

I was super proud of these when I did them, because  I had to double stamp the black lines….my stamp had much wider spaced crosshatches and I wanted tiny narrow ones to match the spacing of the black EKG lines! Voila.

Gnarly Blossoms

I know it isn’t spring anymore, but I got the PERFECT base color and I just had to make this! I’ll likely do it again next year so it fits :-D. Also, flower day anyone? 😀

This awesome design was inspired by ruthsnailart which I have recently become obsessed with. If we are being honest, I added too many cherry blossoms (I like her slightly more minimalist design) but this still looks pretty epic!

The base is a stunning periwinkle blue/purple polish with copious pink-gold shimmer and silver flakies called Traverse the Skies by Emily de Molly. I have had my eyes on this polish ever since it came out, and it does not disappoint! I love it. It is super interesting (both in terms of color and finish), and is just close enough to purple that I’ve also already worn it to the hospital. This is three thin coats, although I probably could have gotten away with two if I was more careful.

What you probably can’t tell is that there are THREE colors of brown in the tree branches (and an additional three colors of pink in the blossoms) and putting this all together took longer than I thought it would. That said, it was worth it! I am impressed.

Colors:
~ Periwinkle: Emily de Molly – Traverse the Skies
~ Dark brown: Zoya – Louise
~ Brown: Zoya – Dea
~ Light brown: Zoya – Flynn
~ Dark pink: Clinique – Pinkini
~ Pink: Wet n’ Wild – Tickled Pink
~ Light pink: ULTA – Baby Doll

That’s about it for this one! I’ve never made cherry blossoms this way before (usually I try to make little flowers rather than dots) but I really like this. Hope you enjoyed it, happy flowers day!