Glowing from Within

I seldom say this, but I regret buying this polish! A England went on sale at Color4Nails which meant I just had to buy a bunch of them. I only actually wanted one, but I purchased 3 (because of course). Thus far, I was happy with the two I bought…and this was the third, which I bought almost as an afterthought. I wish I hadn’t!

It’s not that this isn’t a pretty color, because it is. Its mostly just that I thought this polish would be red with gold flakes, and it is really an orange metallic with gold flakes. I don’t usually wear orange polish, and I already have an orange metallic! Oh well, now I own another I suppose. And it is a pretty polish, it just isn’t something I’m likely to wear often.

The polish itself is called Gloriana from A England. On the website it is listed as a “chili-pepper red with fine and ultra fine golden sparkle” but I have to disagree. Fundamentally, this is dark orange that leans red, that has a metallic finish and copious golden glass flecks. It covered nicely in two coats, but it is not a red!

I was having a hard time deciding between stamping with gold or black, but everything I saw with either color online was disappointing (I guess not a lot of people use this for nail art), so I ended up covering it with a red-to-black gradient using Siren by Pure Ice, Visions of Love by OPI, and Black Creme by Wet n’ Wild. The stamp is from Bundle Monster plate XL209.

In the end the mani is pretty enough,,,I was just expecting a red polish. In retrospect, I should have known from looking at everyone’s swatches! Oh well :-p at least I got a pretty purple and mossy green!

101 Dalmatians

Another Disney mani that I’ve been sitting on since 2016…July, actually. How sad is that? These are so cute though!

I wanted to do each collar a different color, but when I went back and looked, only the mom and dad dog (Perdita and Pongo) had really distinct collars that were not just the same as all the puppies!

The design itself was inspired by @banicured_. Puppies! And Disney! I’ve wanted a dog for a long time, and this makes it worse…only, I can’t imagine that I wouldn’t end up with dog hair ruining my manis!

Colors
~ White: Wet n’ Wild – French White Creme
~ Black: Wet n’ Wild – Black Creme
~ Yellow: WOW – #301
~ Red: Pure Ice – Siren
~ Blue: Zoya – Ling

I thought about writing “101” on my thumb, but honestly, this was surprisingly quick and easy and I didn’t want to ruin it with trying to make words! Or numbers. Either way.

Did any of you guys have a favorite puppy from 101 Dalmations? Hope you enjoyed!

Geometric Expression

I bought a bunch of OPI polishes recently…and this was one of my unplanned buys. They were having a buy-two-get-one-free sale so of course I had to leave with 6 polishes rather than the 4 I really wanted! Well, there were 6 but two of them were not in stock 😦

I have been in the hunt for a nude/pale-pink/grey and I thought this might be it! Until I swatched it on a nail stick and realized that it is a PERFECT DUPE for a (much cheaper) polish that I already own! Grrrrrr…I don’t usually buy perfect dupes. I feel rather dumb right now.

Regardless, this is three thin coats of Be There in a Prosecco by OPI. Despite taking 3 coats, it goes on better than my OTHER light pink nude creme polish (which takes 4 and even then has leveling problems). The polish is a very pale pink creme. I’ll do a comparison to the dupe sometime soon! As soon as I get over my disappointment.

Colors
~ Nude: OPI – Be There in a Prosecco
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Black: Wet n’ Wild – Black Creme
~ Gold: ILNP – Clockwork
~ Purple: Zoya – Rue
~ Stamps: BP – L054, 77

The one benefit of this is that I made something cool and geometric! Honestly, I just wanted to color in some geometric stamps, and this made it possible without standing out too much in the hospital.

Unfortunately some of the stamping decals bubbled a bit, so the top coat looks uneven. Oops! Hope you enjoyed anyway!

Resigned Lines

I really need to cut it out with the geometric designs! I actually was deciding between 4 different ideas for this, and I like how it came out but you can barely see the background pattern!

I started with three coats of my nude polish, then water-spotted on (aka spread on water and spritzed on hairspray to make holes before dipping my nails) white polish. I added some golden dots and glitter for contrast, and then free-handed straight lines.

The final step was stamping on the geometric images and adding rose gold dots over the parts that were super black. To my eye (because I knew what to look for) the white waterspotting was visible and quite pretty, but you can barely see it in the photos! Darn.

Colors
~ Nude: OPI – Be There in a Prosecco
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Black: Wet n’ Wild – Black Creme
~ Gold glitter: ILNP – Clockwork
~ Rose gold metallic: Essie – Penny Talk
~ Purple: Zoya – Rue
~ Stamps: BP – L054

It also doesn’t help that there was a lot of texture to this mani, so the whole thing doesn’t look super smooth with top coat. Overall, not my best work oops!

Negative Space Flowers

These came out cute! Although, sadly, they were cuter in my head. I just wanted something colorful and spring-y! I do wish that I had a left a bit more space between the flowers on some of my nails, but oh well.

The art is inspired by @lifeisbetterpolished, who has apparently changed her ID to @withlovekarissa and I had to hunt around and make sure I wasn’t tagging someone who stole her photos!

Anyway. Flowers, and negative space. I don’t usually go for negative space designs, but putting this on a white background seemed too…jarring.

Colors:
~ Sheer nude: Formula X – Marvelous
~ Pink: Wet n’ Wild – Tickled Pink
~ Orange: Wet n’ Wild – Sunny Side Up
~ Yellow: WOW – #301
~ Green: Essie – The More The Merrier
~ Blue: Essie – Rock the Boat
~ Purple: Essie – Full Steam Ahead

It is amusing that 90% of the colors I used came from two pastel collections (Wet n’ Wild and Essie)! I should go back to buying collections that come out with rainbow colors with the same finish, it makes for the best nail art! Hope you enjoyed!

Green Paisley

Something simple, something green! I don’t frequently get to wear green nails in the hospital, and it seemed like such a shame that I’ve only worn this particular green once before so I had to work with it!

Don’t ask me why I thought a paisley pattern would look good here. But I did. In retrospect, paisley is complicated enough that it would certainly look better on a bland background. Whoops!

The green is Dragon by A England. If I wasn’t covering up so much of the polish, you could see the pink shimmer. The white is French White Creme by Wet n’ Wild, and the stamp is from Bundle Monster plate S107. The design I used is off in the very corner edge of the plate.

That’s really all I have to say! My nails are just slightly too short for me to want to commit to a more impressive and time-consuming manicure, and I have a migraine. Sorry it isn’t more colorful!

More colors, or at least a little more…interesting…on Friday 🙂

Soothing Triangles

I just love teal-purple gradients. I would say that’s a problem, but I really don’t think it is!

This mani was quite simple…although not as easy as it could have been! I just wanted to do gradients on the triangular tips of my nails, like this but I decided that wasn’t quite colorful enough. So, I made the chevrons deeper and turned them into a modified version of a previous mani of mine, which can be found here.

At this point, I had three nails with some white and two nails that were just gradients. Of course, I had to bump my pointer nail, and thus got rid of my idea to just add a few dots (when in doubt I always add dots…it might NOT be the best plan!), and instead went to find a triangle stamp. I actually double stamped over the design twice to make the white really pop. I love it!

Colors
~ White: Wet n’ Wild – French White Creme
~ White stamping: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Teal: Wet n’ Wild – I Need a Refresh-Mint
~ Periwinkle: Nails Inc – Regents Place
~ Purple: Zoya – Malia
~ Stamp: BP – 77

I forgot how much I’ve missed using striping tape! It really is the best. Hope you enjoyed!