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! 

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.

Lava Flows

I just trailed a bunch of different colors with my red spotted polish until I got a mix I liked! This either looks like fall leaves of lava going around greenery. I went with lava. Sadly, all the yellow got swallowed by the orange and red! Either way, I do think it looks rather cool 😀

Colors:
~ Red: Dance Legend – Spot It Red
~ Orange: Wet n’ Wild – Sunny Side Up
~ Yellow: OPI – Never a Dulles Moment
~ Green: Zoya – Tilda

I think I’ve been doing roughly one spot-syle manicure a month, which given how many polishes I have and that I only own three spot polishes is actually a rather high number. But its fun! And easy! And makes REALLY cool designs! Anyway, hope you enjoyed. 

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!

Exploding Pastels

I have failed, slightly. I managed to make every day of posting line up with the corresponding day of the 31 Day Challenge, except this. The final day, and I have failed! Really, I just did not have time to make a tutorial, so I decided to instead go with the 31st day of the Challenge prompt, honor nails you love.

This nail art was inspired by @urbannailart and other than not having the best hand at curlicues yet, I actually think I did it justice! I need a grainier black holo, apparently. I adore most things that Urban Nail Art puts together, they are both colorful and innovative!

Colors:
~ Sheer nude: Sephora X – Marvelous
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ White: LA Girl – White On
~ Pastel green: Maybelline – Green with Envy
~ Blue: KBShimmer – I’d Rather be with Blue
~ Pastel purple: Sally Hansen – Lacey Lilac
~ Pastel pink: Wet n’ Wild – Tickled Pink
~ Pastel yellow: Maybelline – Citrus Collide
~ Black holo: A England – Fated Prince
~ Stamp: BM – 616

Of course, the sun did not cooperate, so there are not as many photos as I would like, sorry! Overall, I hope you enjoyed my nail art for the 31 Day Challenge as much as I enjoyed creating them! The next few weeks will be not nearly as pretty; all my good art is used up :-p. Phew! Also, apparently yesterday was my 7th blogaversary. 7 years of Flight of Whimsy! I am almost impressed with myself!

Scales of Many Colors

Personally, this is one of my favorite designs this year for the 31 Day Challenge. Today is animal day, and I figure a mermaid is an animal! And of course, what could be better than a pastel rainbow mermaid 🙂

Loosely inspired by @nails4cocktails, and I kinda love it! It came out much more vibrant than I expected, I tried to do a pastel gradient set to start but the colors just never got dark enough. But then the gradients were done and they were too bright! So I added back the pastels as part of the advanced stamping and voila! It works 😀

Colors:
~ White: LA Girl – White On
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Pink: Revlon – Bubbly
~ Light pink: Wet n’ Wild – Tickled Pink
~ Pastel orange: Maybelline – Bleached in Peach
~ Yellow: OPI – Never a Dulles Moment
~ Pastel yellow: Maybelline – Citrus Collide
~ Green-yellow: Essie – The More the Merrier
~ Green: Zoya – Tilda
~ Pastel green: Zoya – Tiana
~ Pastel mint: Glitter Gal – No Worries
~ Blue: Zoya – Rocky
~ Pastel blue: Zoya – Blu
~ Light blurple: Nails Inc – Regents Place
~ Purple: Zoya – Malia
~ Pastel purple: Sally Hansen – Lacey Lilac
~ Stamp: hehe – 024

This took a LOT of colors, and for once they are not all Zoya polishes despite being all cremes! Unfortunately, my Maybelline pastel polishes are running on empty, so someone needs to release an excellent pastel rainbow set at some point. And yes, I know we are about to get fall/winter collections and that they will not be pastel, but I can hope!

Pastel Tri-Angles

Happy 31 Day Challenge! This year, like last year, I am still only going to post three times a week, but on the days I post it will (hopefully) match that days prompt. As today is day 2, the prompt today is “orange”. Here we go!

This was surprisingly hard to make. I wanted pastel colors, but my pastel polishes are not the most opaque things! So, in order to make decals that I could cut into geometric shapes and put on my nails, I had to use more than expected layers of polish. The end result was a bit chunky and required two coats of top coat.

Colors:
~ Nude holo: CbL – Froge Feiertage!
~ Pastel pink: Wet n’ Wild – Tickled Pink
~ Pastel orange: Maybelline – Bleached in Peach
~ Pastel yellow: Maybelline – Citrus Collide
~ Stamp: Moyra 60 – Cuts, BP – L002

I can’t wait to see what everyone else is posting! If you want to join along, check out More Nail Polish’s links and instructions :-D. Happy painting!

Love Above

This mani is a bit of nail art, some swatching, and a small amount of comparison. When Zoya did their New Years sale, I bought 4 new polishes that I intended to replace some terrible polishes that I own, and to fill a few gaps. This is the first of them!

What you see here are three thin coats of Jordan. I bought this polish to replaced Tickled Pink by Wet n’ Wild which takes 4 coats and is incredibly thick. I wanted to compare the two, so I put Tickled Pink on my ring finger, and Jordan on all the others. I cannot tell the difference! Which is to say that the swatches of Jordan online are accurate. I was hoping Jordan would be a two-coater, but for a pastel 3 isn’t terrible. This is just a nice pastel pink creme. No frills.

Colors:
~ Pastel pink: Zoya – Jordan
~ Pastel pink: Wet n’ Wild – Tickled pink (ring finger only)
~ Pink: Zoya – Ciara
~ Dark pink: OPI – Vision of Love
~ Dark pink holo: A England – Let Me In
~ Stamp: B Loves Plates (from the tiny heart next to the plate name)

I then added a gradient, and stamped a tiny pink heart near my cuticle. Super easy, but quite pretty! I do wish I had started the gradient a biiit close to my free edge, but it still looks nice! It was a really quite fitting manicure to wear right before Valentine’s day…so I hope you guys all have a great (and chocolate-filled) tomorrow!

Pink Pastiche

Is this really pastiche? Not so much. A lot of my nail art apes that of other artists that I’ve seen and liked…this was sort of a general “I like things that are somewhat pastel and look like watercolor and flowers” and I tried to make it happen!

It turns out, of course, that I also like things that glitter. The end result of this mani was actually pretty fun, but I just kept adding more things! Lines and more lines and dots…In the end I wish I had used a lighter silver holo base for my accent nail, but I love the pink shine to Rosewater!

Colors:
~ Silver pink holo: ILNP – Rosewater
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Pastel pink: Wet n’ Wild – Tickled Pink
~ Pink: Sinful Colors – Pink Forever
~ Neon pink: Revlon – Bubbly
~ Neon coral: L’oreal – Orange you Jealous?
~ Stamps: What’s Up Nails – B015, Lina Make Your Mark – 02

That’s it for now! Hope you enjoyed this oddly pink interlude!

Soft Pink Floral

I was torn whether to post this for flower day or color day, and I realized that the whole purpose of this mani was that it was pink. Lots of pink. And a few colors that go well with pink, like gold and white. So voila! Inspired by the color pink and things one wears with pink.

The design was inspired by Nails by Erin. However, when I finished trying to mimic her, I decided I didn’t like how boring my white nails were! And as previously mentioned, gold looks good with pink, so I added some gold glitter to the top of my all-white nails, and I kinda love it!

My only real complaint about this mani is that I used red striping tape to make the negative space lines and it kinda bled? So my naked nails look a little red-der than usual and the white has a red tinge. Oh well! Still looks cool :-p

Colors:
~ White: LA Girl – White On
~ Light pink: Wet n’ Wild – Tickled Pink
~ Pink: Revlon – Bubbly
~ Gold: Sally Hansen – Go for Gold
~ Gold glitter: Sephora – I Found a Pot of Gold!

I am kind of amazed that the 31 Day Challenge is almost over! I remember this being a LOT harder to keep up with…but then again this is the only year that I didn’t post daily. This M-W-F posting schedule really makes my life at lot easier! And hopefully I can keep it up. Thus far in residency no one has made a fuss about my colorful nails (then again, I haven’t been painting rainbows or neons yet).

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!

Pink and Gold with Flowers

How about something pink and gold? I figure with the flowers it is suitably summer-y too!

The design was inspired by Nails by Erin but my pink base is an AWFUL polish that takes 3 coats and never dries (I need a better barbie pink) and so I wanted to do more things with those nails. I don’t know if this  counts as over doing it, but I actually liked it!

Using Erin’s nails as a template got me very excited about gold dots. I love adding dots to things. In this case, added too many gold dots to things…specifically my middle finger. Oops. it would have looked better with more white space 😀

Colors:
~ White: LA Girl – White On
~ Pastel pink: Wet n’ Wild – Tickled Pink
~ Pink: Revlon – Bubbly
~ Dark green: Salon Perfect – Escape to Neverland
~ Green: Zoya – Tilda
~ Gold: Sally Hansen – Go for Gold

I am quite proud of the roses though! I hope you enjoyed them too.

Trellis of Roses

She what I meant by how I have enough flower manis? But they are so pretty!

Anyway, this mani harkens back to mid-2017 when I briefly had oval nails. That was mostly because the sides of my nails had cracked on 3 fingers, but I kinda hated it! I know a lot of nail artists (and really just people with nails in general) who can pull off and look good with oval nails, but I don’t think I’m one of them!

The pretty trellis design was inspired by @mvargas_nails. I am glad I went with a pastel blue base, it pops nicely with both the lines and the flowers! I am also quite proud that I freehanded these lines (although tbh you can kinda tell).

Colors:
~ Blue: Zoya – Blu
~ Black: Wet n’ Wild – Black Creme
~ Hot pink: WOW – #371
~ Pink: Wet n’ Wild – Tickled Pink
~ Light pink: L’oreal – Boho Babe
~ Green: Zoya – Tilda
~ Dark green: Zoya – Shawn

That’s it for today! Happy Friday and I hope you enjoyed this week of manis that I’ve been saving in the vault because I really liked them 😀

Funky Dotted Pink

I don’t know what I was thinking with this. I wanted to use my pale pink swatch test nails to make something….and it got out of hand. This would actually have been a really cool mani if I just stuck to one of the paler pinks as my base! As it is with the weird background dotted gradient…nope.

So I started by making a dotted gradient from lightest to darkest color, interspersing the creme polishes with the shimmers. That looked ok. Then I stamped with a neon teal, which still looked ok. Then I added black. I just wish my nail tips weren’t so much darker! I love the pink/teal/black idea. Oh well.

Colors:
~ Teal: Emily de Molly – Glee Ridden
~ Pastel pink creme: ULTA – Baby Doll
~ Pastel pink shimmer: OPI – The Color that Keeps on Giving
~ Nude creme: KBShimmer – Caught on Tape
~ Nude shimmer: ULTA – Freshwater Pearl
~ Dark nude creme: Wet n’ Wild – Private Viewing
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamp: Whats Up Nails – B015

In other news, this is my first Whats Up Nails stamping plate, and I love it!! It is wonderfully etched and I wish I had done this mani better service. It is one of the only plates I own where I can really see myself using every single damn image. I am impressed! Despite how awful these look, you will be seeing a lot more of these designs. Anyway, happy Friday, and I promise next weeks manis are better!

Aloha

Finally, nail art and no more swatch comparisons! I thought I would open with the nails I painted for my Honeymoon back in March 🙂

Since I was traveling to Hawaii, I wanted some fun tropical nails! I didn’t have any stamping plates that were quite the correct flower, and the few hibiscus ones I have are…not the prettiest. So I tried to turn some flowers INTO something vaguely Hawaiian! I also couldn’t make up my mind between two different designs, so I just went ahead and used both. The mani ended up a bit busier than I intended (oops) but I still like it!

Colors:
~ Purple: Emily de Molly – Traverse the Skies
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ White: LA Girl – White On
~ Orange: KBShimmer – Orange You Glad I Didn’t Say Banana?
~ Pink: Wet n’ Wild – Tickled Pink
~ Dark green: Zoya – Shawn
~ Green: Sinful Colors – Exotic Green
~ Stamps: BP – 067, Chic Peek BM – XL472

I also wish I had done some lava nails, since that may have been the single coolest thing I’ve ever seen (well, hottest really I suppose). Since my visit, the volcano on Hawaii has started erupting again, which is incredibly unfortunate for the people who live on the slopes of the volcano!

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the tropical nails! Hopefully I can get my act together and actually have something to post the rest of this week as well 😀

Swatch Test: Mauve Nudes and Pastel Pinks

Mauve Nudes: I don’t know why I compared these exact colors. I guess I wanted to get a sense of how purple/grey each was? No dupes here!

From pinky to thumb:
~ Pinky: Zoya – Chantal
~ Ringe: Essense – I Nude It
~ Middle: CND – Cashmere Wrap
~ Pointer: KBShimmer – Caught on Tape
~ Thumb: Zoya – Rue

Every single polish took three thin coats, but all applied well. In terms of colors, Chantal is the most yellow-leaning, while Nude is the palest by far but also leans a bit yellow-pink. Cashmere, Tape, and Rue are almost a gradient of pastel mauve to true mauve. I mostly wanted to reassure myself that Tape and Cashmere weren’t dupes for each other or anything else, and they aren’t! I also quite like both of them, even if they are boring colors!

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Pastel Pinks: So, I wanted to compare my pale pinks and my pale pink shimmer/frosts. Mostly the frosts if I’m being honest! No dupes here, but some of the colors are downright ugly! I also re-used Tape (from above) to compare a pale mauve to a pale pink.

From pinky to thumb:
~ Pinky: ULTA – Baby Doll
~ Ring: KBShimmer – Caught on Tape
~ Middle: OPI – The Color that Keeps on Giving
~ Ring: ULTA – Freshwater Pearl
~ Thumb: Wet n’ Wild – Private Viewing

All the polishes took 3 coats except Tape, which took two (I guess I used thicker coats). For the cremes, Doll is more of a true pastel pink than Tape, and is also a bit paler. Private is its own thing and I should have known I didn’t own any dupes! I hate how it looks of me, but it is a useful skin tone color for nail art. For the shimmers, Pearl is more of a nude frost and Giving is a true pink frost. They are actually quite different…and unsurprisingly I like Peal a lot better! I can see Giving coming in useful….if and only if (hah I just tried to write iff which means the same thing but in python, whoops) someone tells me I need to wear a baby pink shimmer to a wedding. I don’t think that will happen, so away it goes!

A P!nk Reason

For Day 22 of the 31 Day Challenge, the theme was “song”. I’ve always had trouble with this one, since I can never decide if I want to do music in general, or the theme of a song, or something about the music video.

This year, I decided to be inspired by both the artist (P!nk) and the visuals of the song. I went with the song Just Give Me A Reason, which is depressing but I love the vocals! In the music video, P!nk sports her pale pink/white hair with a pink ribbon, and is wearing a pale pink lace dress. There are also a number of scenes featuring an off-white mattress. I just went with it!

My pinky, pointer, and thumb are all intended to be different bits of lace. My ring finger is a mattress (maybe, if you squint) although I should probably have used the quilting method. My middle finger is intended to be her hair, with the ribbon. I went a bit dark with the pink shade in the hair, but I still like it!

Colors:
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Pale pink: OPI – Be There In a Prosecco
~ Light pink: Wet n’ Wild – Tickled Pink
~ Pink: Revlon – Bubbly
~ Dark pink: Zoya – Ciara

This mani is brought to you by clear stampers (seriously, I double stamped/shadow stamped all the nails except my middle finger which is TRIPLE stamped)! And too many stamping plates. The lace is from plates BP-L008, BP-L020, and EdM01. The hair and ribbon are from BM-S108 and BM-317.  The mattress is from BM-209. Yikes! Hope you enjoyed, and go listen to the song!

Rose Gold Roses

I feel like a LOT of my recent manis have involved flowers, so picking something for the “flowers” prompt in the 31 Day Challenge was both easy and exasperating. That said, this mani is interesting to me, because I like the concept but I hate the polish that I was trying to model! Oops. Polishes that take more than three coats to be opaque are evil.

The design was inspired by this pin, which has no watermark at all so I have no idea who’s nails those are! But it is pretty so I wanted to try it.

I got a pink glittery polish as a gift, and I wanted to test it out. On my pointer and pinky is 4 (!!!) somewhat thick coats of Gold ‘n Roses by Sinful Colors. I don’t know if this polish is meant to be a topper or not, but it is NOT opaque enough to be worth wearing on its own. The polish is primarily lots of pink shimmer/tiny glitter with larder silver shards. The color isn’t bad, but it took soo many coats that when I added top coat the whole darn thing shrunk! My free edges have their own personal angles now, distinct from the shape of the polish on the rest of the nail.

My thumb has two coats of a matched base color with two coats of Gold n’ Roses overtop, and honestly it looks very similar to the fingers with just Gold n’ Roses…so maybe that is how it should be worn? Seems like a lot of work for a mediocre polish! Also, the polish is rose gold and silver, there is no “gold” in it at all despite the name!

Colors:
~ Pink glitter: Sinful Colors – Gold n’ Roses
~ Nude: Essence – I Nude It
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Mauve: Zoya – Rue
~ Dark pink: Love & Beauty – Pink
~ Pink: Wet n’ Wild – Tickled Pink
~ Light pink: L’oreal – Boho Babe
~ Light green: Glitter Gal – No Worries
~ Green: Zoya – Shawn

I half wish that I painted over the shimmery pink sometime while I wore this to make it more interesting, or added holo topcoat. Alternatively, I bet this would have been stunning with ILNP Juliette! I don’t need any more rose gold polishes :-p. Hope you enjoyed!

Beachside

I realize that this is both blue and tan, but give JUST HOW MANY BLUE POLISHES I USED (omg) I am counting it as the day 5, Blue, post for the 31 Day Challenge.

This design was inspired by majikbeenz who actually has a lovely tutorial! Which of course I only found after I was done since I was simply using a pinterest pin. Whoops!

I basically started with a light blue base and then painted on each of the other blues. And glitters. And flakies. Oh my! I think what really makes this is the textured sand (I knew I could still find uses for those textured polishes!) and the white surf at the border with the sand.

Colors:
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Pastel blue: Zoya – Blu
~ Dark blue: Zoya – Sia
~ Medium blue: Sinful Colors – Endless Blue
~ Dark teal: Zoya – Cecilia
~ Medium teal: Essie – Naughty Nautical
~ Light teal: Wet n’ Wild – I Need a Refresh Mint
~ Flakies: Zoya – Masie
~ Teal glitter: ORLY – Sparkling Garbage
~ Gold textured: Zoya – Tomoko

What do you guys think? A fitting “blue” day? I like it at least :-p

Golden Jewel Fail

This might be the worst mani I’ve done in recent history. Like, total epic and utter fail. I am embarrassed to post this but let it stand as a lesson: Do Not Pair Nude and Awkward Golds!!!!

I couldn’t even bear to wear this particular mani for 24 hours they were soo terrible. Ugh. Once I had done one hand with the pale gold/silvery polish I hated it so much I covered the other hand with a more yellow-toned gold. It too looked awful (although to me maybe sightly less terrible).

Mistakes I made here: trying (again) to use metallic polish over tape. It never comes off correctly. Trying to use a soft gold color over a pink-based nude (a rose gold would have worked, or a yellow-based nude).

Colors:
~ Nude: L’oreal – Boho Babe
~ Gold: Sally Hansen – Liquid Gold
~ Yellow gold: Revlon – Hypnotize
~ Black: Wet n’ Wild – Black Creme

Turns out the art I was trying to replicate by Marine Loves Polish was done with nail tattoos Go figure. Win some, lose some! On a good note, the 31 Day Challenge begins on Friday! Stay tuned for some of my recent BEST work 😀