Day 1: Lust

Hello lovelies!! I've decided to do my first nail art challenge!! Yesterday I found one put together by One Nail To Rule Them All and Nail Wish based on the seven deadly sins, and I knew I had to do it. So here's day one, Lust!

I started off with Sephora by OPI Just a Little Dangerous, a gorgeous rich purple. (I'll be posting swatches of it later, definitely a deep purple I'd recommend!) Next, I sponged on a gradient of Sephora by OPI Sample Sale, a vivid shimmery red. This set the mood for me as rich and lusty and exciting, and I'm thrilled to bits with how the gradient turned out.

I then pulled out my stamping plates for some fishnets made from BM 310 using Sephora by OPI Keep Me On My Mistletoes, which comes out as a nice pale gold when it's painted on alone, but apparently stamps looking like silver. No matter, I love the way it turned out! I used the same polish with the roses from BM 323 for my ring finger, and topped it all off with a super thick coat of Seche Vite.

I'm really excited to explore the challenge of trying to figure out what to do every day, so keep watch for that!

More pics under the cut, along with the rules for the challenge! (There are a lot of pics because I'm so happy with how this turned out, lol)

Spring Polka

Hello lovelies! I went to an event with some friends yesterday, and after one of them was shocked to find that I hadn't redone my nails in around three days, I jumped right on that and popped out a new design! I gathered up a rainbow of springy pastels, along with my brand new (and super cheap) dotting tools that I ordered on Amazon, and set to work! The dotting tools are super cute, although they took a while to get here (around 3 weeks, as they're from China), but with how adorable the set is, and for how cheap they were, the wait was well worth it!

For this mani, I used Butter London Trout Pout, China Glaze Peachy Keen, CG Lemon Fizz, CG Re-Fresh Mint, and CG For Audrey for the base colors, with CG White On White for the dots. The dotting tool was super duper easy to use, much better than the toothpicks and other makeshift tools I've been using!

More pics under the cut! <3

Rainbow Holo Stamped Flowers

Hey lovelies! Today I went out and took a bunch of pictures in the sun so I could try to catch some of the fabulous colors in Color Club's Halo Hues polishes, and even though I was able to get some pretty good shots, they still just don't capture how great this polish's holo is. Literally. Mindblowing.

The application for CC Over The Moon was fantastic, with two coats covering flawlessly. They also dried fairly fast, which was a plus. I then stamped with CC Beyond, which stamped excellently but I found that the polish itself was a little goopy. Kind of disappointed with the formula on that one, but maybe I just got a bad bottle? I hope so. I'd still recommend the polish to anyone looking for a stunning black holo. On my ring finger I stamped with OPI Yoga-ta Get This Blue, which came out way more transparent and blue than I was expecting (I was hoping for more of an opaque black with blue glitter), but I still like how it looks! It just doesn't fit in as an accent as well as I'd hoped.

More under the cut~

(Preview) Rainbow Holo Stamped Flowers

Hello lovelies! This is just a preview of the post I'll make tomorrow where I show my new mani off now that it's all nice and fresh. Recently I purchased a 6 pack of the new Color Club Halo Hues, which I've been dying to try out, but I've been working through my list of manis to do that I haven't had time. So tonight I finally decided to go for it! I went with a base of Color Club Over The Moon, which covered my nails nicely in two coats. Then I tried to stamp flowers with BM-320 using CC Kismet, but it didn't show up at all, so I went with CC Beyond. As an accent on my ring finger, I used OPI Yoga-ta Get This Blue, which I had hoped would show up as more of a black, but I still think it looks ok.

Let me know what you think!! I'll make a sunlight post tomorrow. :)

PUNK as heck yo

Hello friends! I've been wanting to do nails inspired by one of my pals for a while, so here they are! I just kind of took a bunch of things that remind me of them, and combined them to make these fabu nails. For the pale yellow I used China Glaze Lemon Fizz, the darker yellow on the tips is China Glaze Happy Go Lucky, and the dark blue is a Sally Hansen blue nail pen.

I have a punk lifestyle!

Also on the thumb, it's two angel wings and a halo, but if you look at it upside down, it looks like a sloth face. Just what I've always wanted on my thumb!

Outta This World!!

Hello lovelies! I've been wanting to do a space mani for oh-so-long, and I decided that now that I have my super cool space shoes, now's the time!! That, and I got a box of Color Club's new Halo Hues, a set of 6 super rad linear holo polishes. When I opened the box, I knew they'd look super fab in a space mani!

I used the tutorial here to learn the basic concepts, and then added my own colors to it!! I kept dabbing and splotching on whatever I thought might look cool, and here's the result:

Right Hand

Left Hand

I'm kind of frustrated that, as has been happening a lot lately, the right hand came out looking TONS better than the left. I'm a righty!! What's going on! Then again, I guess it's because: 1. I did the left first, so that's where all the learning process happened, 2. I used Color Club Beyond as a base on the left, which is more of a charcoal gray with holo than the Wet n Wild Black that I used as a base on the right hand. Plain black is definitely a better base color.

More info under the cut!

Matte about... Matte!

Hello dolls! Quickie bonus post because I just received Essie Matte About You in the mail, so of course I had to matte-ify my current mani. Holy smokes I love it so much better now! Leopard spots look way more natural matte, almost like they came from a kit or something :) I feel so pro!

Neutral Neon Leopard

Hello lovelies! Today I decided to do something I've been wanting to try for weeks... leopard nails! I've been holding off because they look pretty time consuming, but I had some time yesterday and today that I could devote to them. Another thing that spurred me into creating this pattern was the arrival of a few new polishes: China Glaze Sugar High, OPI (Nicki Minaj) Did It On Em, and Julep Debra. I knew that they'd all look fab when combined, and I was right! I studied some tutorials to learn how to make the perfect leopart effect, and then set to work.

After painting on a nice base coat of Duri Rejuvacote, I painted on a base of Debra on my index, middle, and pinky fingers, and The New Black Glimmer Twin on my thumb and ring fingers. I was a little disappointed with Debra, the application was super goopy and thick, so I actually only used one coat of this as a base. Then again, I did get it for only the price of shipping from Julep by signing up to be a Maven and using the code FREEBOX, so for a basically free polish, it was awesome. Glimmer Twin was a bit streaky, and took two coats to look nice, but I think it dried really nicely.

Next, I used the applicator brushes from Sugar High and Did It On Em to make a bunch of randomly-shaped dots on all my nails. Since the polish was a bit thick on some of these dots, I waited a while for them to dry, and then used a toothpick dipped in black paint to outline the dots randomly using Wet-n-Wild Black. I broke off the end of the toothpick so that it wasn't too pointed, and that worked pretty nicely to use as a tool.

Overall, I'd say this took me about three hours, but a lot of that was just waiting for the polish to dry, so I definitely did other things while I waited. I really like the way this came out, so you'll definitely be spotting more leopard print from me in the future! :)

Space Shoes

Ok so I know this is mostly a nail blog, but I can't help posting fashion things every once in a while. I just ordered the most excellent galaxy shoes!! I've been wanting a pair of space shoes for a long time now, but either the price was too high, or I didn't like the way the space effect was done. When I saw this pair on Etsy, I instantly fell in love. Not only did it match my price range, but the space effect is PERFECT!!! I ordered them on March 30 and they arrived today (April 10), which was WAY faster than I expected. I'm completely delighted!!!

In the spirit of how I show my excitement about things, here are some pics that try to capture how incredibly awesome these shoes are.

More pics under the cut!

Mermaid French Tape Mani

I've been in love with Revlon Minted for a while now, but it's sometimes just not quite blue enough for me. When I was checking out my stash, I realized that I had literally ZERO creme blues. So of course I went and immediately ordered the beautiful China Glaze For Audrey, a gorgeous exact match to Tiffany's shade of blue. When I got it, I just kind of admired it for a little while before trying to figure out what I was going to actually do with it.


Another polish that I've been ogling over for a few months now is OPI Mermaid To Order, which came in my big Sephora by OPI pack of minis. (What a great Christmas present that was!!) It's such a unique shade of blue though that I've had trouble trying to decide what I wanted to pair it with, but after holding For Audrey up to pretty much everything in my collection to find the best match, I realized that these two beauties looked like they were made for each other.

For Audrey went on perfectly smoothly and completely covering in one coat, but the idea of only having one coat of a main color on my nails is preposterous to me, so I threw a second coat on. I decided to try a tape mani for this design, and thought the colors I picked would look fab with a triangle French design, so I taped off my thumb after giving For Audrey about an hour and a half to dry (plus my UV nail dryer!!), and... realized that the tape was waaaay too tedious. The designs were coming out off center and crooked no matter how hard I tried, so I decided that I have a steady enough hand and just freehanded the rest of my nails. I think they came out great!

The colors blended together a little too much for my taste once I got them on my nails, so since I wanted them to stand out, I outlined the border using my Sally Hansen Nail Art Pen in White. The white one is my favorite because it's super opaque and easy to use; I was even able to do my right hand and make it look nearly as perfect as my left!! (I didn't take pictures of it, but trust me on that one.)
Overall, I'm super satisfied with this mani. Not only are the colors gorgeous together, but the quality and formula of each polish was flawless. I'm pretty sure this is my favorite mani I've done in a while!!

Let me know what you think :)

More pics under the cut!

First Water Marble!

So after watching about a billion youtube tutorials and looking it up online a whole bunch, I decided to try water marbling!! I think for my first time it came out pretty decently, although I learned a lot of things that will help me next time. The first is that all my blue colors seem to be weirdly transparent? All the places you see white on my nails, I actually used Secret Peri-Wink-Le by China Glaze, but once it hit the water, it went completely clear. I also tried using Minted by Revlon on one nail, but it was clear too. Oh well!! Had to get something wrong on my first try. The other colors I used were White on White by China Glaze, Trout Pout by Butter, and Peachy Keen by China Glaze. I topped it off with Gelish and now it looks fab!!

For the other hand I decided to do a simple tape-design mani, and since I had already painted my nails white, I used the same colors that I used for the marbling, with some periwinkle dots to make it more fun. This is my first time doing a tape mani, and I'm really excited about it!! My only advice is: make sure you wait until your nail is COMPLETELY DRY before putting tape on it because otherwise you'll completely rip off like half the polish when you try to pull it off (this happened on my thumb, which is why it's a diff color).

Update: even though I love the way the water marble turned out, I'm disappointed because the polish is cracking on pretty much all of my nails. I think that's less the fault of the polish and more the top coat, though. I'm currently out of Seche Vite, so I had to fall back on Gelish and Sally Hansen Insta-Dry, which I think made it a bit more brittle.

Graynbow (gray + rainbow?? yeah)

So originally this was going to be a luau mani. I picked the colors so that they'd be super island-y and tropical, and I was really excited planning out all the designs and patterns for each nail. I had some gradients done, I was gonna stamp flowers over the gradients, I even tried doing a water marble on my thumb!! (And it almost worked!) But then, suddenly, everything went to hell. I smudged the water marble, I smudged my stamping, I smeared topcoat everywhere, so I decided to take all the polish off that hand and start over.

However, I left the base of white and sand on my right hand, and finished up the mani by just doing colored tips and some stripes, as you can see below. I decided, then, to be the left hand the opposite!! So you can see that below. I'm really dissatisfied with this mani and I'm going to take it off as soon as I can, but I didn't have time to redo my nails tonight so I left them on.

Also I'm finally throwing this bottle of yellow polish away because even though it's completely GORGEOUS on the nail, it's so old that it takes around 8 years to dry, and messes up pretty much every mani that I use it in. :(

Golden Peach

So my original idea was that I was going to use my brand new bottle of China Glaze Peachy Keen along with my Sephora by OPI Keep Me On My Mistletoes in order to create a fun outlined nail design. Then, since I’m so excited about my Bundle Monster plates, I threw on this design from plate BM-315. After I got my left hand done though, I decided it looked waaaaay too busy, so I just did the tips on my right hand. I like the simpler design much better!!

I used one coat of Gelish and then one coat of Seche Vite to seal it all in, and it’s actually still not dry. (Even though I used my UV nail drying lamp!!) They’re dry to the touch, but with two coats of (very slow drying) Peachy Keen, and two coats of KMOMM, the tips are still very wet inside. Still, I definitely love this color combination, and I’m really excited that I ordered Peachy Keen :)

Neon Lights

I’ve been super excited for weeks to try out the Lush Laquer polish that I got from Etsy in Neon Lights!!! I got it a few days ago but I’ve been saving it for after Easter so I could keep my bunny polish on. The application was a bit clumpy, but when you have a polish packed with this much glitter, it’s hard to avoid that. The glitter bits were pretty easy to move around and place with the applicator brush in the polish, and I didn't have too hard of a time with it at all. It's actually my first big flake glitter, and I think it was the most perfect, easy way to start with this style! I gotta say, I'm kind of hooked now. :) Two coats covered my nails pretty thoroughly, followed up by two coats of Seche Vite.

Another thing that I found with this polish is that.... IT GLOWS UNDER BLACKLIGHT!! When I saw the neon colors, I knew I needed to try it out, and I definitely was excited when I saw the glitter lit up. This would definitely be a fun polish to wear to a blacklight party!

Also I squared off my nails for this, so that’s new!! I think they look nice like this, although I’m not sure if I’m going to keep them this shape.

Happy Easter!

I did some easter nails!! I ordered a pink jelly glitter nail polish called Deluxe Model Pink from Sneaky Laquer on etsy a few days ago, and within minutes of it arriving I knew I had to incorporate it into my super cute easter nail design :) I know it says on the site that their pictures show only two coats of DMP, but I had to apply 4 before I could get the effect I wanted. Regardless, it’s been holding up beautifully!!

For the green I used Wet n Wild Mint Fusion, the white was White on White by China Glaze, and the solid pink was Trout Pout by Butter London!! I’m really happy with these nails, they look so great!!

My only complaint is that the two coats of Seche Vite topcoat I used caused a bit of shrinkage at the tips of all my nails, but the glitter was thirsty enough that it definitely needed it. I might go back to Gelish, because I don’t get shrinkage when I use that.

Electric candy

I wanted something cheerful and happy for this week, so I used some nice bright colors!! The pink is Butter London Trout Pout, the yellow is a super duper old bottle of Sally Hansen HD Lite (I’ll probably be throwing this away soon bc it didn’t dry well at all, but I’ll miss that bright electric yellow!!), and the white is of course China Glaze White on White, my favorite opaque creme white I’ve ever used. The candy print is from the Bundle Monster pack for 2012, and it’s on plate BM-306. I wanted to just do single white candies on all the pink nails, but the plate with that particular imprint just didn’t pick up well. I think I’m going to send this pack of plates back and ask for a replacement; I love them a lot but a ton of them are duds. :(

I used a topcoat of Gelish and then Sally Hansen Insta-Dry to make sure it was all sealed away, and I’m really happy with the result!

Minty Gold

I just got way inspired looking at a bunch of nail art blogs!!! For this I used China Glaze White On White, Revlon Minted, and Butter London West End Wonderland. I used two coats of Gelish as a top coat, and it smoothed out the grit of the glitter really well. I’m really excited about this color combination, so hopefully it lasts for a few days without chipping too bad!!

This pic is more of a bonus, because I thought that the white and gold looked so good together plain, but then I finished it up and made em all decorated. I’m also super excited because the right hand came out just as good as the left. :)

Shine of the Times

I absolutely fell in love with Shine of the Times by Essie!! I used it on top of two coats of Wet n Wild Black, and topped it off with a coat of Sally Hansen Insta-Dry topcoat. I’m glad that I was able to capture the multi-hued beauty of this polish on camera, since it's one of my favorite flakies!!