B&W Nail Art Challenge Day 3: Freehand Free for All!

When I hear "Free for all", and it's relating to nails, I hear "GLITTER". I also hear, "I have very shaky hands", so I decided to try my hand at a two-color galaxy manicure, as I figured that'd be more forgiving.  Thus, I give you a glitterbomb of black and white proportions :

Check out today's B&W Nail Art Challenge looks!

An InLinkz Link-up

Happy 4th of July!

My favorite holiday; I'd been cooking up this mani for about a week, and I think it came off very nicely:

Textured fireworks!  I'm loving the textured trend, and JulieG's Hot Cinnamon, OPI's Solitaire and Zoya's Liberty are absolutely perfect.  I do wish the photo captured the deep aqua sparkle in Liberty, and the gold flecks in Hot Cinnamon, they're both so brilliant in person!

Happy 4th of July everyone!

10 Day Nail Art Challenge Day 7: Holiday Marble

Today's holiday marble was supposed to be a water marble, but I'm sick and don't have the patience for a water marble, so I did a drag marble instead!  I made little sugarplums on my nails, and even created a little video tutorial to go along with it.

I'm going to have to figure out why the recording is choppy, but it's a start!

10 Day Holiday Nail Art Challenge Day 2: Snow/Snowflakes

Snow at dusk, is there anything better?

Julep's Viola made the perfect base for HITS Mari Moon Artsy, to create a dusky, multicolored sky look.

OPI Pirouette my Whistle, the real inspiration for this manicure, gave the perfect glittery depth to my snowscape, and OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls and Julep Emma for snow on the ground and the moon in the sky finished off this glittery winter wonderland.

Check out the other Day 2 entries!

Artsy Wednesday: Halloween

Ooh, ooh, witchy woman, see how high she flies. Ooh, ooh, witchy woman, she got the moon in her eye.

I'm so proud of these!  These are my real nails, by the way; I filed them to points!  I was going to cut them down anyway, so it seemed like the perfect opportunity to do something a little crazy.

I won 365 Days of Color's Boouk!  in a giveaway, and it's a fantastic addition to my witchy manicure!  The creamy base softened the lines of my gradient without obscuring the colors.  It's like a veil for your nails, so to speak.  The very charming neutral glitter also added a pretty wartiness (if such a thing can exist) that I just love!  I think neutral glitter colors are underrated; purple is fun, but copper and pale bronze are just so classy (says the woman with pointy witch fingers).

I don't know that it would have occurred to me to layer Boouk! over a darker color if I hadn't done a witchy manicure, but boy am I glad I did.  I've been having an "every other week" success rate with how much I like my Artsy Wednesday offerings, but this one has definitely broken my 50/50 streak, as I like it a lot!

I'm really honored to be able to participate in Artsy Wednesday, and you should all DEFINITELY check out these other, very talented Artsy Wednesday participants.  

Pretty Purple Polish

Lab Muffin
Maria's Nail Art
Polished Genius
Valiantly Varnished
Unnaked Nails
Nail & Polish
Beauty Gnome
Lacquered Lunatic

Artsy Wednesday: Saran Wrap nails!

Crinkling up saran wrap and smashing it onto your polish sounds like fun, doesn't it?  I figured this would be an excellent opportunity to see if I could salvage a chipped manicure with this method.  I don't like crackles, another way to hide chips (even though I think they look like chipped polish anyway), so this was a method I was excited to try!

First, my old manicure.  Not bad for almost a week of wear, but still pretty raggedy:

Next, with a layer of polish painted on and then saran wrap smashed into the wet polish (done one nail at a time, to prevent issues with dry polish getting gummed up):

LOVE IT.  The peeks of blue through the copper?  Perfection!  I'm going to have to try different color combos, I love this style!

I'm really honored to be able to participate in Artsy Wednesday, and you should all DEFINITELY check out these other, very talented Artsy Wednesday participants.  

Pretty Purple Polish

Lab Muffin
Maria's Nail Art
Polished Genius
Valiantly Varnished
Unnaked Nails
Nail & Polish
Beauty Gnome
Lacquered Lunatic

Artsy Wednesday: Inspired by the season

"Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns."-George Eliot

I love fall.  The colors, the smells, the cool air, my birthday, fun holidays, good food, cozy clothes, migrating birds.  Fall makes me feel calm, like the world is how it's supposed to be.

To celebrate, I now have a super super cute apple manicure!

It's like back-to-school, pies, changing leaves and a harvest wrapped into one.  Also, since a large portion of the Eastern U.S.'s apple crop was wiped out this year from an April frost, it's something of a memorial (no worries though, trees that are well rested should produce even better than usual next year!).

I don't think I've been happier with a manicure in a long time; every time I look at my nails I get a little surge of delight!   

Hooray for fall!

I'm really honored to be able to participate in Artsy Wednesday, and you should all DEFINITELY check out these other, very talented Artsy Wednesday participants.  

 Pretty Purple Polish

Lab Muffin
Maria's Nail Art
Polished Genius
Valiantly Varnished
Unnaked Nails
Nail & Polish
Beauty Gnome
Kaka Beauty Blog

Skittles Kick

I've been on a real "skittles nails" kick lately, using a bunch of different colors for each manicure.  I think I just enjoy looking at all the different colors/finishes of the polish, plus a skittles manicure means I don't have to pick just one polish!

My right hand features a bunch of different golds.  From thumb to pinky: 

• LA Colors Antique Gold: a butter London Wallis dupe!  This is one of those ugly/beautiful green golds that are just neat to look at, even if they are really weird.
• Julep Sienna: possibly the best gold polish ever.  Opaque in one coat, good wear, and a really neat white gold look to it.
• Wet n' Wild The Gold and The Beautiful: a greenish leaning gold glitter, it doesn't have as much visible nail line in real life.  2 coats.
• OPI Rising Star: from the Burlesque collection, which may be OPI's prettiest collection ever.  I only have a mini, and I wish I could get my hands on the full-size set, but scouring eBay for it doesn't seem worth the time when I have all this other polish to use.
• Zoya Tiffany: this is such an unusual orangey pinkey goldey glassfleck polish.  It looks a lot like Zoya's Rica, but leans way more pink and gold, while Rica leans more orange.  2 coats got me to opacity, which is really nice for a polish with a moderately sheer formula.

 Silver on the left, to go with the gold on the right! On my left, from thumb to pinky, I've got:

• Zoya Trixie: great formula, 2 coats
• Nicole by OPI Make a Comet-Ment: A scattered silver holo, slightly thin but no visible nail line after 2 coats
• Zoya Harley: A tricky formula, I had to use 3 coats to make sure this wasn't patchy, and I'm not sure the final result is flawless, but the color is just beautiful.
• Essie Power Clutch: I just got this in a 6 polish set from Ross (for less than $18!!), and thought it'd be the worst color on me, but I think it actually looks fantastic.  I did 3 thin coats to make sure there were no bald spots, but it dried like a dream and was a great consistency.
• Color Club Magic Attraction: Another Ross find, this one has holo silver glitter and small pinkish glitter in it; I don't have a lot of silver polish, so this was what I went with in a pinch, but it has great coverage after 2 coats.  It is still a little gritty to the touch after a coat of Out the Door though, but that doesn't bother me much.

So much more fun to look at than just one color!

Happy 4th of July!! (And farewell to 1/3 of my right thumbnail!)

I love the 4th of July.  I hope you all have a wonderful day of grilling, relaxing, parades, fireworks and fun!  I'm celebrating with a pretty simple 4th manicure:

I finally busted out the FingerPaints magnetic polish, and used the China Glaze star magnet to make little stars/fireworks on my nails!  I don't have striping tape, and for some reason couldn't find any actual tape, so I used OPI's Pirouette My Whistle over Nailtiques Moscow for my thumbs.

Why did I photograph my left hand for this?  Because I broke my right thumb nail on a gate at work.  Not just broke, practically obliterated it.  Here's the damage:

You can actually see how far down the nail a layer broke off; I'm super, super lucky it wasn't worse though, as I didn't even bleed.  Here's my thumb compared to my whole nails, to show how I like to keep my nails (when they aren't polished!).  

Fingers crossed that it grows back soon.  Field work is rough!

Nail of the Day: OPI DS Extravagance

I love this polish.

DS Extravagance is fairly pretty indoors, a dark purplish garnet color with a little bit of shimmer.  I was actually a little disappointed with it at first, since I put it on in the evening and could only see it by lamplight, where it was a rich, deep color, but totally not summery.

But this morning, when I saw it in the sun? Holy moly!  Just stunning!  Scattered holographic shimmer! Raspberry color!  I'm in love!

Not only that, but this is a single, solitary coat.  It took me 5 minutes to paint my nails, and they were dry in no time with my Out the Door topcoat.  Can't beat that!

I'm hoping to put a gradient over this later, so I'll make sure to post pictures once it's done.

Ruffle manicure!

I found a tutorial at Chalkboard Nails on how to create a ruffle manicure, and it looked so appealing that I couldn't wait to try it out.  I used a sewing pin with a large plastic head to make the dots, and while I wish I had put one more row near my cuticle, I'm pretty pleased with the result!

First Post: Nail Mail!!

What better way to kick off a blog than to show off some recent nail mail!  These polishes are from some awesome swappers.  I love swapping nail polish; it's a great way to get a hold of unusual polishes you can't find yourself.

Sally Hansen Insta-Dri in Spring Green:

This is a very Kermit-ey green creme.  It will be an awesome background for glitter and stamping.  I was able to get rid of a duplicate polish I had in order to get my hands on this one; it's always nice to be able to expand my polish collection!

I love the Sally Hansen Insta-Dri line of polish; it dries quickly, and every one that I've tried has been a one-coat polish.  Some people are on the fence about the fat brush trend that brands like Sally Hansen, Wet n' Wild and OPI are embracing, and some people flat-out hate them, but I love them (if they're well made). It makes applying polish quick, with far fewer passes per nail.  However, if the brush isn't well cut and has funky, mop-like bristles, it can be nightmarish (I'm looking at you, Wet n' Wild).

Sally Hansen Gem Crush in Lady Luck:

A clear base with small fuscia glitter and larger silver holo glitter.  This is a packed glitter polish; it was nearly opaque with 2 coats on my wheel, and for a glitter polish that's pretty crazy. 

 This will be great for glitter gradients.  It also dries with an almost matte finish, which is pretty interesting to look at, but the shiny punch of the glitter is brought back to front-and-center with a topcoat.

China Glaze Virtual Violet:

This is a super grapey, scattered holo polish. It really comes to life in the sun, but it's a pretty interesting shimmer indoors as well.

I tend to prefer scattered holos to linear holos, for two reasons; first off, they're waaaaaaay less expensive.  Second, the highly linear holos remind me of Lisa Frank folders.  They're stunningly beautiful, but I worry about being able to wear them to a lot of occasions.  I may be overthinking it, but since scattered and weaker linear holo polishes are way more accessible, I'm not too worried about my preference!

OPI Y'all Come Back Now, Hear?:

OPI has the goofiest polish names.  This polish is a bright orange jelly; I've recently discovered that I really like orange polishes, so it's been fun to find ones that I can pull off.

This is a dupe for Zoya's Coraline, which is awesome because out of the Birchbox trio they recently released, Coraline was the only one I was particularly interested in, but it isn't for sale on its own.

Essie Luxeffects in Shine of the Times:

The flakie polish trend is pretty interesting, as they're just SO very different from the typical glitter.  This flakie polish is probably the densest available, with a beautiful orange/green duochrome.  I'm excited to layer this one and see how well it plays with other colors.

Zoya Anne:

Along with orange nail polish, I've recently discovered I enjoy nude polishes a lot.  Anne is a somewhat sheer warm-toned nude with a slight shimmer. I have very cool-toned skin, so I can't pull all nude shades off, but the warmer ones work with me.  I'm so excited to wear this one, maybe with Shine of the Times over it!