Grey Fade Flower

I was too lazy to actually sponge on a gradient, so I somewhat freehanded the gradient? It was much less messy to clean up but also a lot less smooth. I added some glitter over the top to hide just how step-wise the gradient was! Oops. That said I still like the design a lot 🙂 it helps that it is one of my favorite stamps!

Colors:
~ Light grey: Formula X – Delightful
~ Grey: Zoya – Dove
~ Dark grey: WOW – #333
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Glitter: Different Dimension – Intergalactic Dolphin
~ Stamp: Whats up Nails – B005

I am finishing up posting a combination of cold-feeling and fall-feeling manicures (in preparation for Thanksgiving) before moving into winter. I have SO MANY backlogged snowflake manicures. Be prepared! 

Bright Patches

I wanted to test out the orange jelly polish from Born Pretty. The color ended up being a little more brown-toned than I wanted, but since I picked it out myself I can hardly complain! It is a nice normal jelly so I am overall quite happy 😀

Colors:
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Red jelly: Zoya – Aphrodite
~ Orange jelly: Born Pretty – Arcadia
~ Yellow jelly: Esmalta da Kelly – Yellow Soap Bubbles
~ Pink jelly: Zoya – Paloma
~ Pink creme: Zoya – Kelsey 
~ Orange creme: Formula X – Incandescent 
~ Yellow creme: WOW – #301
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamp: Nicole Diary – L28

I should probably use this by itself at some point to give a better view of the polish, but I just enjoy mixing jellies with other jellies! Oh well. The tone is the brown-orange you can see by itself on most nails. To pick up this polish, you can find it here for $3.99. Enjoy!

Dark Roses on Grey

While I actually rather love how this mani came out, I like the inspiration better and am likely to try again in the future with a different color palette! I saw these nails at @billythebrime_nails and fell in love. Grey. Swirls. Roses. Moody yet awesome. How could I resist? And they fit so well for flower day in the 31 Day Challenge!

If I’m being honest, I liked my own mani better before I added the roses. The variegated grey background with darker grey swirls was elegant and very pretty. However, when I added the roses I realized I had made three mistakes: I used pink-based-reds for the roses (so when I mixed white with red I got pink rather than a deep orange-red…next time I need to aim for orange/red not pink/red), the roses are too small, and my swirls aren’t dark enough! They looked great on their own, but with the roses they just looked a little flat. 

Colors:
~ Light grey: Zoya – Dove
~ Grey: WOW – #333
~ Dark grey: Zoya – Evvie
~ White: LA Girl – White On
~ Light red: Pure Ice – Siren
~ Red: OPI – All I Want for Christmas (is OPI)
~ Dark red: OPI – Visions of Love
~ Stamp: Moyra – 50 Ornaments 3

I ended up going over by hand on some of the swirls nearest the roses, to make them appear bolder. It ended up giving my swirls an almost gradient appearance, which I quite like, but again I like Billy’s version better! Surprisingly, these nails took under an hour to do, so I’ll probably try them again sometime, with a few modifications! Hope you enjoyed! 

Fishing at Sunrise

Rainbow day is my favorite day in the 31 day challenge! This time I pulled some nail art from the vault and went with a weird combination of stamping gradient and advanced stamping (kinda). This particular design was inspired by Sylvia Lopic Nails. By far the hardest part of this mani was getting my yellow polish to gradient. It just isn’t pigmented enough!

Colors:
~ Purple: Zoya – Malia
~ Hot pink: WOW – 371
~ Pink: Zoya – Kelsey 
~ Yellow: OPI – Never a Dulles Moment
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Blue: Zoya – Ling
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Green: Zoya – Josie 
~ Stamp: BM – XL204

Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed! This was fun to make and fun to wear. I want to play with this plate again sometime soon; I do love easy panoramas! 

6 Shades of Grey

I hate how long striping tape takes but I do adore the end result. To be honest this manicure was almost shades of gold/green/teal, but in an odd move I decide to start with a black base instead and the rest was history. Does make it perfect for the black and white day of the 31 day challenge though!

What you see here are two coats of Naughty Newton by Formula X over one coat of a black creme (as always, Sinful Colors Black on Black). I imagine this will be a pain in the butt to remove because the glitter sin Newton are the thicker grittier type. As a result, however, they are unbelievably sparkly! If I didn’t already own both Zoya Storm and Stella Chroma Karavaki I think I would be more excited about this. It is an undeniably pretty polish, and is somewhat interesting. It is a black very sheer jelly with copious silver holo glitters and small black glitters. Obviously you can’t see the black glitters over black, but it does make me wonder how this would look over just about any other color!

Colors:
~ Black glitter: Forumla X – Naughty Newton
~ Pastel grey: Forumla X – Delightful
~ Light grey: Zoya – Dove
~ Grey: WOW – #333
~ Dark grey: Zoya – Evvie
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black

The medium-dark grey shade is a 50/50 mix of 333 and Evvie, I just don’t have a good medium-dark grey that doesn’t have shimmers in it. Also, Evvie is green-tinged and I wanted to make sure that didn’t stand out. The end result is boring in terms of colors but quite pretty in terms of presentation! Hope you enjoyed! 

Purple and Grey Tips

Very simple, very easy, and surprisingly pretty! Life hardly ever works out like that :-p This is also the last post before the overwhelming wonder that is *dun dun dunnnnnn* the 31 day challenge!

Colors:
~ Purple shimmer: Painted Polish – Just One Look
~ Light grey: Formula X – Delightful
~ Dark grey: WOW – #333

I should probably try and do more nail art that is as simple as this. It works, it takes very little time, and because the nail tips are somewhat thicker, it lasts for a while without chipping off or cracking. Voila, happy purple and grey day 😀

Cyanotype Leaves

I got this idea into my head and I just could not get it out until I tried it! I love the concept, but I don’t adore the execution. I wanted to do a grey creme on a grey glittery base for subtle contrast, and then white leaves in a cyanotype-print style. It kinda worked? In retrospect, I think I needed better leave stamps! **which I now have so oh well, I guess I’ll just have to repeat this mani from last winter all over again, poor me**

Colors:
~ Grey flakie glitter: Polished for Days – Grey Opal
~ Grey: WOW – #333
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Stamps: BM – 208, XL472, UC – Lovely Leaves 2

I have so many stamping plates, but I never seem to have quite enough of exactly what I want! So once I complete a manicure missing the correct and perfect designs, I go out and buy a plate that would have made the manicure excellent. Only, I’ve already done the manicure, so what do I do with the plate at this point? I should likely start repeating manicures using proper plates that I have selected, but there is always more completely novel nail art to do instead!

Orange Ombre Crests

I don’t know that I have ever done an orange ombre. To be fair, I don’t know that I would have had enough polishes to even attempt this until recently…and even so I need a new pastel orange, this one is officially empty! I decided of course that ombre wasn’t enough to quality as nail art, so I added a white stamp (that shows up better over the darker colors) and voila!

Colors:
~ Pastel orange: Maybelline – Bleached in Peach
~ Light orange: KBShimmer – Papaya Don’t Preach
~ Coral: L’oreal – Orange you Jealous?
~ Bright orange/pink: WOW – #371
~ Pink: Zoya – Kelsey
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Stamp: BC – 04

Sadly, the polish on my ring finger (the KBShimmer one) is so neon that it bleaches itself in photos. I tried to bring out the color a bit more, but I don’t know if I succeeded! The ombre was really quite fun. I always want to do gradients instead, but this showcases the colors better and is much much easier! I’ll have to keep that in mind :-p. Hope you enjoyed!

Dark Indian Corn

I made two styles of indian corn, this is the darker version! You saw the lighter version a week ago. I started with a yellow base and dry-brushed on a lighter shade of yellow. Then I stamped with white, and vaguely colored in some corn bits with grey and red. Then I stamped again in brown. Sadly my brown stamp was not nearly as opaque as I would have liked!

Colors:
~ Yellow: OPI – Never a Dulles Momen
~ Light yellow: Maybelline – Citrus Collide
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Red: OPI – Vision of Love
~ Grey: WOW – #333
~ Brown: Zoya – Flynn
~ Dark brown: Zoya – Dea
~ Stamp: Moyra – 32 Nature

The husk is hand-painted, but it doesn’t make up for the fact that neither the white nor the brown were dark enough to work. Maybe if I had actually colored in the corn kernels on the stamper this would have worked better, but as it stands it just looks messy. Oh well, other corn for the win! What are your thoughts?

Light Indian Corn

I made two styles of indian corn and this is the lighter one! The other one will likely be posted in the next two weeks. This one was made using a light brown base, over which I stamped the corn image in white. When that was dry, I then smushed a bunch of colors (yellow, light yellow, red, and grey) onto the stamping plate and stamped over the white with the colors. The end result is less identifiably corn, but still cool! However, it looked too pastel, so I used a yellow jelly polish over the top to deepen the colors.

Colors:
~ Yellow: OPI – Never a Dulles Momen
~ Light yellow: Maybelline – Citrus Collide
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Red: OPI – Vision of Love
~ Grey: WOW – #333
~ Brown: Zoya – Flynn
~ Dark brown: Zoya – Dea
~ Pale nude: Sephora X – Marvelous
~ Yellow jelly: Esmalta da Kelly – Yellow Soap Bubble
~ Stamp: Moyra – 32 Nature

Of course, one cannot just have kernels, so I added some hand-painted husks. Overall this was quite fun to make and wear, and I enjoyed comparing the two manicures! You guys will have to let me know (after you see the other one) which one you prefer! Hope you enjoyed 🙂

Japanese Ink

I love this mani. I absolutely adore it. I feel like I am saying this a lot, but I think it might be one of my very favorites of 2019. It was time consuming (a weird mix of advanced stamping and freehand) but totally worth it! I also looked up about 15 ink paintings to get a sense of composition and color before I started :-p

Also, is there anything more fitting for “artwork” than this? I feel as though I have a lot of Japanese art around my house, but nothing quite this scroll-like!

Colors:
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Light grey: Zoya – Dove
~ Grey: WOW – # 333
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Red: Zoya – Sooki
~ Pink: Zoya – Jordan
~ Stamps: MoYou – Porcelain 01, Born Pretty – Chinese L003, UC – Lovely Leaves 2

Anyway. I hope you all enjoyed! I do not have a post ready for Monday yet because I honestly just did not have enough time to ready a tutorial this year. I will likely do a “honor nails you love” a day early. Sorry!

Green Glaciers

This was a multi-step process. I wanted to make glaciers because I was traveling to Iceland. So, I decided to start with a greyed shimmery base…but used Memory Palace which is really a teal. I put away my grey gradient, and grabbed a teal gradient instead to make the glaciers. The end result was rather cool…but very teal-green. I asked my husband what I should add and he goes “northern lights”. Now, the northern lights are usually teal/green, and obviously that wouldn’t work, so I coarse-sponged on a tiny purple/red/yellow gradient. That looked surprisingly cool (thanks husband!) but it needed more oomph…so I added some rainbow flakies using Festival. Voila!

I did end up using one of the new items from the Born Pretty Store to make the mountains (the darkest green thin line). I wasn’t sure these would stamp because the lines are so darn thin, but it worked just fine! The plate has a whole bunch of awesome mountain/waterfall/water full nail images that I used in a different mani that you’ll see soon.

Colors:
~ Pastel teal holo: Cadillacquer – Memory Palace
~ Dark teal: A England – Saint George
~ Teal: Zoya – Cecilia
~ Light teal: Zoya – Wednesday
~ Lightest teal: Glitter Gal – No Worries
~ Purple: Zoya – Margo
~ Red: Zoya – Sooki
~ Orange: KBShimmer – Orange You Glad I Didn’t Say Banana
~ Yellow: WOW – #301
~ Flakies: piCture pOlish – Festival
~ Stamp: Born Pretty – Chinese Style – L003

So thats today, Green Day in the 31 Day Challenge! And also glaciers to honor my trip to Iceland (which btw is beautiful). Hope you enjoyed!

Pumpkins and Webs

Happy almost-halloween! This year my husband and I ended up at two different pumpkin carving events, so now we have four pumpkins. Which is double our previous yearly count of pumpkins. I carved a set: a dragon and a castle. My husband carved a pokemon (because of course he did)…and a pumpkin. Into his pumpkin. He is an absolute dork!

Anyway, I have a bunch of fall manis lined up, but I only did one halloween manicure this year! I kinda forgot that October meant Halloween. Oops. I’ll do better next year! This year’s halloween mani is decided to stamping jack-o-lanterns. I received another plate to review from the Born Pretty Store (which was thankfully well-etched) and went to town! Unfortunately, the dark orange I used for the pumpkins is more a jelly than a cream, but I still got away with single-pass stamping on some nails (thumb and ring finger). That said, I am not surprised I had to double stamp, I need to stop using glitter polish bases! But when trying to pick a base color my head just went ‘GOOOOLD’ so here we are!

Colors:
~ Gold: ILNP – Fame
~ Dark orange: Essie – Playing Koi
~ Yellow: WOW – #301
~ Bright orange: Nubar – Hot Orange
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamp: BP – Halloween – L004

Hope you enjoyed! And I hope everyone gets lots of candy and tasty treats. If you want to pick up this pumpkin and web-decked plate, head over to the Born Pretty Store where you can find it on sale for $2.99.

Phoenix

I have done phoenix nails before, but possibly never this insanely bright! I got lucky that one of my stamping plates already had all these images, or I would have been painting flames for years :-p

The design itself was inspired by @nails4cocktails, although I didn’t have holo polish in the right colors, so I just added some shimmer on top. I really need to get Fairy Dust by China Glaze, I keep winging it with my glitter toppers!

Colors:
~ Yellow: WOW – #301
~ Orange: Zoya – Thandie
~ Red: Pure Ice – Siren
~ Shimmer: Sally Hansen – Diamond
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamp: Exoticism BPX – L012

Hope you enjoyed! I do love flames 😀 even if I often can’t wear them on my nails because they are too disruptive at work. Maybe next year I can have more fun with my nails NOT on weekends!

Holland

The final day of the 31 Day Challenge of 2018 is here! I only participated in about half (a little under half if we’re being honest) of the total and I am still exhausted. Major kudos to all of you who were following along, and to my past self who somehow managed to post daily!

Anyway, today is “honor nails you love” and I have a bit of a different thing happening. Probably 25-30% of all my nail art is based either loosely or exactly on designs I have seen other people do. This time around, I decided to do a design off of the website for a product! Although it is also the nail art used by that product.

What I am trying to say is that today’s post was inspired by, of all things, the stamping plate website itself! I cannot find the original artist (and trust me, I’ve been looking) but I literally bought this plate because this image showed up in my email and I needed to replicate it! So voila. I think I’ve done a pretty good job honestly!

Colors:
~ Blue: Zoya – Yummy
~ Blue shimmer: Sinful Colors – Cinderella
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ White: LA Girl – White On
~ Light grey: Zoya – Dove
~ Dark grey: WOW – #333
~ Light green: Zoya – Tilda
~ Dark green: Sinful Colors – Exotic Green
~ Stamp: BM – XL204

And that’s all for the 31 Day Challenge! Hopefully I will still be around and posting next year, but as residency gets harder we shall see! I am still painting my nails and enjoying it, so I am hopefully. As it turns out, yesterday was my 6 year blogaversary, so I have been blogging for longer than I thought! Go me?

Brightly Stripped

Neon colors are the BEST when I don’t have any interviews! This was inspired by a pinterest pin, but I couldn’t find the original nail artist so you’ll just have to trust me that this is a bit more neon and less pastel, but otherwise close :-p

Two brightly colored manis in one week? Yes please! This the focus of this mani is the stripes I figured it fit well for today. It was painted last Fall (which tells you guys how long I’ve been saving some of these manis).

At some point I need to create a folder of ‘colors that work well together that you’d never guess but should absolutely combine’ because without the inspiration for this mani, I would never have thrown coral with neon green and teal! But it works 🙂

Colors:
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Neon pink: WOW – #371
~ Coral: L’Oreal – Orange you Jealous?
~ Neon green: Essie – The More the Merrier
~ Neon teal: Emily de Molly – Glee Ridden
~ Blue: Zoya – Ling
~ Purple: Zoya – Malia
~ Neon purple: Sinful Colors – Dream On

I also just thought I should share, I am for some reason playing “this is halloween” on repeat on my computer and it is making me very happy :-). Hope you enjoyed!

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 😀

Proud

You were promised colors, and here they are! It has been farrrr too long since I did a rainbow manicure. Moreover, I miss them…since I am currently on the interview trail for residency, my nails for the past two weeks have been incredibly boring! I am going to do a few weeks worth of “work-appropriate” nail art posts at some point, that are basically what I am forcing myself to wear during November and December as I fly all over the country.

Anyway, this mani serves many purposes: I painted it for my birthday (ergo rainbows), and to celebrate being done with my hardest medical rotation (ergo not subtle mani). Also, I went to San Francisco (ergo bright colored mani), and attended the Pride parade while I was there (ergo more rainbows)!

What that actually means…yes, I painted this back in June. I just never got around to posting them for whatever reason! So rainbows it is 🙂

Colors:
~ Red: Pure Ice – Siren
~ Orange: Zoya – Thandie
~ Yellow: WOW – #301
~ Green: Zoya – Tilda
~ Blue: Zoya – Yummy
~ Purple: Sephora X – Ignition
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Black: Sinful Colos – Black on Black
~ Stamp: BP – L050

I had to modify the gradient for my pinky nail, because it was just too short for all the colors as I had them arraigned. Hopefully it doesn’t look too bad! Hope you enjoyed 🙂

Flags of Blue and Yellow

Initially, I was going to do the purple and yellow-sun design from Tangled for this, but I figured that I’ve done that already and I want to try and bring attention to the places hit by hurricane Irma. However, most of those flags either would not go well together or would be far too complicated to paint, so I settled on this.

This was designed around the flags for the Bahamas and Saint Lucia, but then I just went and grabbed other yellow-and-blue flags that I thought would work well together. I’m quite pleased with how this came out!

Most of the nails are vertical (so if the flag were sideways it would start at my cuticle), my thumb is horizontal, and I totally messed up the orientation of my middle finger! I like the aesthetics of it, but technically the triangle should start from the left side of my nail, not the nail base. Artistic license? Anyway, the flags are: pinky – Ukraine, ring – Bahamas, middle – Saint Lucia, pointer – Sweden, and thumb – Barbados.

Colors:
~ Yellow: WOW – #301
~ Light blue: Zoya – Rocky
~ Blue: Zoya – Ling
~ Dark blue: Zoya – Sia
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black

Usually this is one of my most dreaded prompts (up there with “supernatural” and “fashion”) but this year I’ve liked all of them! I suppose its fitting, since this is likely my last year participating in the 31 Day Challenge.

The Rainbow Fish

I love painting nails inspired by children’s books…and I’ve been wanting to try The Rainbow Fish for a while! I just haven’t had the time (until now).

The inspiration came from Adventures in Acetone, although I decided to stay true to the book and use only creme polishes for the scales other than the rainbow silver scales. I do wish, in retrospect, that I had used a lighter pink (even though I don’t actually have a good one)!

The story is about the joy that one person can get from sharing. Its quite a nice message! It also was one of my favorite books growing up (not that I wanted to be taught to share with my sisters) but because the shiny fish scales were just so pretty. This mani is a bit darker than I imagine the fish being, but still pretty and suitably colorful! Who wants to play with silver holo? 🙂

Colors:
~ Light blue: Zoya – Yummy
~ Blue: Maybelline – Shocking Seas
~ Dark blue: Zoya – Sia
~ Teal: Salon Perfect – Escape to Neverland
~ Purple: L’oreal – Paparazzi Pleaser
~ Pink: Zoya – Ciara
~ Holo: Color Club – Harp On It
~ Yellow: WOW – #301

These took FOREVER to paint because I had to do one scale at a time, and couldn’t put two wet dots next to each other or they’d run! I still love the end result though 😀 Hope you enjoyed! It looks like I wasn’t the only one to do Rainbow Fish this year!