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!

Sunflowers

This mani is the opposite of my post from Day 2 (the orange flowers) in that here I have a new OPI Washington DC polish which I love AND a floral stamp that works perfectly.

The design was inspired by @hdinails, because I never would have thought of floating sunflowers on my own! That said, the stamp I used is not actually sunflowers, but we can pretend that they are 😀

My new OPI polish here is Stay Off the Lawn, a deep vampy green creme with blue undertones (almost a deep green-leaning turquoise). This is two thin coats, and this polish is great! It self-levels nicely, and goes on smooth. I also love the color, although I do always love jewel-tone polishes. I am really glad I bought this one.

Colors:
~ Dark green: OPI – Stay off the Lawn!
~ Green: Zoya – Shawn
~ Light green: Zoya – Tilda
~ Dark brown: Zoya – Louise
~ Brown: Zoya – Dea
~ Dark yellow: OPI – Never a Dulles Moment
~ Yellow: WOW – #301
~ Stamp: Floral BPX-L018

I made these flowers with stamping decals (rather than direct application like I did two days ago) and honestly I like direct application better! It is more time-consuming because you have to go one nail at a time unless you have multiple clear stampers (I only have one that works) but you don’t end up with any dead space around the stamped design, or tons of bubbles. Hope you enjoyed! This is likely to be one of my favorites from this Challenge, we shall see!

Bumblebee!

It is a huge struggle for me to come up with a mani I like (and want to paint) for day 3 of the 31 Day Challenge, since I hate the color yellow! But even I have to admit that these nails are cute.

The design was inspired by Girlteen-vip (who is now feminamodeon, which was a pain to track down!) but anyway, the link is here.

Although the original artist had partially nude nails, my previous mani (which I haven’t posted yet, of course the 31 Day Challenge makes me go out of order) stained my nails bright pink, so no nudes for me! I figured a pastel blue-to-yellow gradient worked just as well 🙂

Colors:
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Blue: Zoya – Blu
~ Yellow: WOW – #301
~ Shimmer: Sally Hansen – Platinum
~ Bee stamp: BM – 301

I am grateful for the one singular stamp on here though…that little bee is from a bundle monster plate! I can’t really imaging having to freehand tiny iridescent wings. That’s it for today! Cute little bees. Check back tomorrow for Day 4, which is in my opinion truly epic 😀

Lit Up Neon

COLOR. Oh my gosh you guys I AM SO EXCITED. I wore these when I went to San Francisco for my first vacation after hospital time! Also for my birthday :-p

I was trying to recreate a gradient from ilaeti but I think I need more blue! I love how the colors came out though, so I imagine I will be trying again…and this time showing a gradient-only photo, it was so pretty! Don’t get me wrong, I like the stamping, but that gradient.

I wish my nails were longer, the hint of neon green you can see at the tip of my thumb made me happy.

Colors:

~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White

~ Blue: Zoya – Rocky

~ Purple: Sephora X – Ignition

~ Pink: WOW – #371

~ Yellow: Love & Beauty – Yellow

~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black

~ Stamp: B Loves Plates – 03 Mind Blown

That’s all! More colors and fun designs next week. I am so happy I had a least a month to wear whatever I wanted on my nails! Residency is going to be painful if I need to keep my nails ‘tame’. Although I have a sneaking suspicion that I won’t have time for nail art, just color and a stamp if I’m lucky. I don’t know whats going to happen to the blog next year. Yikes…

Flame

I spent a long time trying to figure out how to use this plate, which was sent to me for review from the Born Pretty Store. Fire-colored gradient with black stamping? Gradient stamping? I tried doing yellow and orange and red…but they didn’t pop against black! So I had the brilliant idea of layering them over GOLD. Because that just sounded like fun.

I ended up using a gold glitter rather than a metallic, so the fire looks a little more granular. I think if I were to do this again, I’d try it with a metallic and see what happens! I do like this quite a bit though.

In the end, each nail got stamped 4 times: twice in gold with the two overlaid designs, once with a yellow-orange blotted mix, and finally with a purple-red mix. Surprisingly, this didn’t take that long! Mostly because the plate was so well-etched that transferring the designs was a piece of cake. Even the solid body of the bird on my thumb!

Colors
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Gold: Sally Hansen – Go for Gold
~ Yellow: WOW – #301
~ Orange: ULTA – Sun of a Gun
~ Red: Pure Ice – Siren
~ Purple: Zoya – Margo
~ Dark purple: Zoya – Monica
~ Stamp: BP – X012 (Exoticism)

That’s it for today…awesome fire! I’ve honestly had my eyes on this stamp forever because I love flames but I HATE hand-painting them! And this stamp has SO MANY FLAMES. You can pick it up for yourself at the Born Pretty Store on sale for $1.99. Don’t forget to use my 15% off coded, LY5X31!

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!

Nemo and Dory

I painted these in May of 2016…so I should probably actually post them. I just wanted to wait until I had enough disney-themed manis to post them all in a week! Whoops.

This mani was inspired by Finding Nemo. Yes, these are super-stylized, yes I still think it’s cool!

I got the idea from Klo’s to me, although she used much brighter aqua for her underwater…I wish I had a similar blue but I just don’t! So mine is more of a teal-based blue. Either way, I loved her idea for the surf!

Colors
~ Light teal: Maybelline – Green with Envy
~ Teal: Zoya – Wednesday
~ Light blue: Zoya – Rocky
~ Blue: Zoya – Yummy
~ Dark blue: Zoya – Ling
~ Dory blue: Sinful Colors – Endless Blue
~ Yellow: WOW – #301
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Orange: Zoya – Thandie

That’s all for today! Any other Disney or Pixar movies I should work on painting (I mean, and hopefully posting less than a year after they were initially painted)?

Neon Chevrons

I saw these on pinterest (with a nifty tutorial) months ago, and have been waiting for the perfect time to attempt them myself. Ta-da!

The design (and color choices) are lifted directly from Sassy Shelly. I’ve seen other people attempt similar things with results that I find mediocre…what struck me about these was the color combo and color order, so I tried to emulate that! I then went ahead and added a 3D glittery bit…because.

Of course, I don’t own any of the colors that she used (nor do I own any Cirque polishes, sadly, as they are expensive), so I made do with what I had. The end result was pretty good! Her white stamping polish is much better than mine, and her peachy-ornage is darker (mine is a pastel neon). I also STILL somehow don’t own just a plane holo topper. I need to get on that. So I used a coarser one which doesn’t look quite as good. I also don’t own wavy stencils, only chevron ones, so my nails have sharp points. Otherwise, I think its a pretty decent replica!

Colors
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Green: Essie – The More the Merrier
~ Blue: Zoya – Rocky
~ Purple: L’oreal – Paparazzi Pleaser
~ Pink: WOW – #371
~ Orange: Maybelline – Bleached in Peach
~ Holo: KBShimmer – I Only Have Ice for You

I basically just followed Shelly’s tutorial! It took a while mostly just to let the base colors dry, but was quite simple. This also reminds me that I should make more stamping decals! If I make them thin and use them the same day, they actually bend to my nail shape :-p

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!

Grey Marble

A somewhat simple mani (made by smushing colors on with saran wrap), and then some striping tape! It ended up looking far more elegant than I intended it to 🙂

The base here is a pale grey creme called Dove, by Zoya. I’ve been in the market for a light grey for a while, since my last one ran out….around 2 years ago. Whoops. Dove covered perfectly in two thin coats, and reminded me why I love buying cremes from Zoya! This isn’t a shocking color, but it is pretty. Not that many brands have a grey creme in stock at all times, so I’m glad Zoya does!

The art itself was my (successful?) attempt to make my nails look like marbled granite. I know most people start with a white base (and if I ever do this again, I am likely to as well) when they try to create a white/grey/silver granite look but I wanted to see what it looked like all grey! And I needed to use Dove in a way that would look cool but be subtle enough for work.

I actually took a whole bunch of photos before adding the striping tape, because I wasn’t sure if I would like it. I really did though, so there are no photos here of the silver-less manicure!

Colors
~ White: Wet n’ Wild – French White Creme
~ Light grey: Zoya – Dove
~ Dark grey: WOW – #333
~ Black: Wet n’ Wild – Black Creme
~ Silver: A England – Excalibur

Hope you enjoyed! Stay tuned for another swatch on Wednesday.

Valentines Dotticure

I wasn’t sure if I was going to use this as my day-before-Valentine’s Day mani or not…because there are no hearts! But really, I didn’t paint any hearts this year, so have some pink and red and gold dots 😀

This mani was inspired by @badgirlnails…which really just seems to be a trend for me right now. I think I accidentally browsed her last approximately three years worth of manis and pinned them all to my to-try folder on pinterest. And they are all somewhat simple (like, 1-1.5 hours of work, rather than 3 hours of work) so when I don’t want to stamp I just keep turing to them! I would say whoops, but I honestly like her nail art a bunch so I don’t feel too bad about continually turned to it for inspiration.

Sadly, I haven’t actually edited the mani that includes the swatch of the base color I’ve used here, Cherish by Picture Polish. I’ll see if I can’t get posted next week or something! The nail art that went with it is a bit boring, but it is a pretty polish. So, stay tuned for that!

Colors
~ Nude: Picture Polish – Cherish
~ Hot pink: WOW – #371
~ Bright pink: Revlon – Bubbly
~ Light pink: Wet n’ Wild – Tickled Pink
~ White: Wet n’ Wild – French White Creme
~ Gold: OPI – All Sparkly and Gold

Regardless, happy almost Valentine’s Day! I hope you eat a lot of chocolates and your lives are filled with flowers. Personally, I love going to the grocery store the day AFTER Valentine’s and grabbing all the half-price chocolate :-D. There is one more pink mani coming on Wednesday (just because), and then on to less girly pastures!

I am a little curious myself…this is my first Valentine’s day since I got married. I don’t think my husband and I are doing anything we don’t usually do (small gifts, fancy dinner, and not-flowers), but will it feel different? I highly doubt it :-p. Hope you enjoyed the nail art!