Day 9: Wrath

Hellooooo everyone! So after taking my swatch pictures of Orly Rage, I stamped it with Orly Bus Stop Crimson. I decided to use it for my wrath challenge because I've always had a super rough time stamping really detailed designs. To my delight, BSC stamped beautifully using BM-315. The lace on my ring finger was done with BM-323, and then I added some of the rhinestones I got from Amazon! I'm really excited about them, I got a pack with a ton of different colors.

Rage Swatch

Hello lovelies! So I went to CVS the other day to pick up more nail polish remover, and I stumbled upon the HUGEST sale for Orly polishes!!! Boy oh boy was I excited! Heres what I picked up:

Included in this find is: Pink Chocolate, Shimmering Mauve, Star Spangled, Luxe, Rage, Liquid Vinyl, Close Your Eyes, Butterflies, Bus Stop Crimson, and Nicole by OPI's Love Your Life. Yeah, that's ten bottles of polish. Even on sale, it was still kind of a fortune, so I was super grateful that my mom bought it all for me. Shoutout to my mom, thank you!!

So since I fell especially in love with Rage, a beautiful champagne metallic, I decided to do swatches of it! The formula was incredible, it was a little slow drying and smeary, but it covered super well in two coats. I did three just to add depth, but it wasn't necessary. There are super light streak lines, but I think they add to the effect in a good way.

It also served as an awesome base for stamping!! I'll make a separate post for that later.

Perfect Peridot dupe!!

Hello lovelies!! So I'm here today with the exciting news that I've found a perfect dupe for that polish that I've been searching for for ages: Chanel Peridot!! Ever since it came out, nail bloggers have been going crazy over it. I remember the moment I fell in love with it myself. (I was putting on makeup and reading a magazine, and saw it in the fashion trends section. I still have that magazine in my bathroom bc I can't bear to get rid of it. (It's the only magazine there.)) I wasn't really willing to pop $25 on a bottle of nail polish, and even more so when the price increased to around $50. I've been looking for a good dupe by Sally Hansen or Essie or OPI, but I couldn't find one. I had almost given up hope when I discovered Iridescent Eye by Jessica, an exactly perfect dupe!! You can buy it here.

Unfortunately when I painted it on, I was doing it late at night and didn't really feel like taking pictures of just the polish on my fingers. So no swatches in this post. But it works great as a base for stamping, and I've heard that it stamps well too! It covered super well in 2 coats, and went on really easy. It had a super nice, smooth, non-gooey formula that I wish every polish I used had. This is definitely in my tippy top favorites of my nail polish collection :)

 I'm bummed that I couldn't better capture how gorgeous this polish is, but I tried to take a bunch of pictures to give some idea, so this is a super pic heavy post :P

Day 8: Sloth

Hello lovelies! So as you might have noticed, I skipped day 7 of the Seven Deadly Sins challenge. That's because I just finished college and I've been spending the past week moving back home and such! So you can have my super lazy (but still cute!) modifacation to my previous mani that I'll be using for this Sloth entry.

All I did to make this different from my last nails was stamp using Winstonia plate 112 with Julep Eloise, which stamped beautifully! This was especially exciting because it was my first time stamping on textured nail polish. I'm really really happy with this mani overall. :)

Textured brights!

Hello lovelies!! Ever since I heard about China Glaze's new textured line, I've been dying to pick up Of Coarse!, Itty, Bitty Gritty, and In The Rough. So far all I have is Of Coarse!, but I tried it out the other day (read: I painted my nails in the airport while I waited for my plane home), and fell in love!! I paired it with OPI Did It On Em (from the Nicki Minaj collection, which I'm in love with), and I'm so excited with the result!! The texture is just how I'd hope it would be, and it's the perfect amount of matte. It's bright in just the right way, and I can't stop touching it.

This pic really shows how fab the texture is, and how cool it looks right next to regular smooth-textured polish. I always always put topcoat on my nails, but for this textured polish, I'm gonna skip it so I can keep the texture the way it is!

I stamped some designs on this polish already, so I'll be posting the stamped version tomorrow!!

ATLA nails!

Hello lovelies!! Two posts in a day because today was a big day in nail painting. I guess. Actually it just kind of happened that way. So anyways! My friend came over and asked me for Avatar: The Last Airbender nails, and as an avid fan of that show, how could I refuse!! I decided to do all of the nations' symbols on her fingers, and then the avatar arrow on her thumb. The base for this was China Glaze Kalahari Kiss, and I just used whatever I could find for the other fingers but I don't want to list them because they're spread out all over my bed.

Day 6: Greed

Hello lovelies! The theme for today was to go all out, so I did!! There's glitter galore on these deep blue mermaid-themed nails, and they look fab! Plus mermaids are known for collecting things, and thats somewhat greedy... right? (Goddamn it Ariel.)

For this mani, I used a base of two coats of OPI Yoga-Ta Get This Blue!, and topped that with Sally Hansen Mermaid's Tale. For my accent nail, I used a coat of I <3 NP's All Gold Everything, which I've been super stoked to use for AGES! (I got it from etsy so it's one of my extra-special babies.) On top of that, I used OPI Fly, and then China Glaze Four Leaf Clover, which I thought gave the nail something of a mermaid-scale look. However, the matte colors looked too plain to me, so I threw another coat of All Gold Everything onto it before topping everything off with two thick coats of SV. If you guys think it looks killer on here, imagine how great it is in person!!

Day 5: Greed

Hello lovelies!! After seeing Lovely in Laquer's beautiful jelly sandwich using Essie's Sugar Daddy, I just had to pick it up myself and try it out. Since I don't have Teenage Dream, I instead used Butter Rosie Lee, a super lovely pink glitter. I was actually also going to use a big flake pink glitter from Sally Beauty on top of it, but I couldn't get the bottle open no matter what I tried. I guess it wasn't in the cards for tonight.

While these aren't my most expensive polishes, they're both ones that I've either wanted for a long time or saving for just the perfect occasion. I really love the subtle shimmer that flashes when I move my hand, plus the color really looks nice with my skin. So basically I picked it for Greed because it's super sparkly and awesome looking. :)

My biggest complaint was that Sugar Daddy took forever to dry. As in, it is still not dry as I type this at least four hours after finishing with the mani. Now I could have waited longer between each coat so it didn't get all sealed in and smudgy by my coat of Seche Vite, but I didn't have that kind of time tonight. So instead I just have to be super careful to not make weird waves in the polish by bumping into basically anything. Regardless, I really love Sugar Daddy, and think that the color and opacity are just right for so many situations. I can tell already that this is going to be the star of a lot of future manis. I can't wait to see what it looks like over some stamping!

Liebster Award

Hello lovelies! So I'm super excited to say that I was nominated for the Liebster Award by Dagadelic! It's an award that bloggers nominate each other for to help people connect, and I feel lucky to be in on it. It also helps people get to know each other better by answering some fun questions! So without further ado, here I go!

Upon receiving this award one needs to do the following:

1. Write up 11 random facts about yourself.

2. Answer 11 questions from the person who nominated you.

3. Create 11 new questions for your nominees. 

4. Nominate 11 other bloggers who have under 200 followers.

11 Random Facts:

1. I have never been on a Slip N Slide.
2. I can wiggle my ears.
3. I am an only child.
4. I'll probably put plain yogurt on any food.
5. I'm a total sucker for action movies. Even if I know it's terrible, I'll watch it and enjoy it.
6. I can somersault really quickly and for somewhat long distances.
7. I draw people. A lot.
8. I love watching shows meant for kids. My personal favorites are Danny Phantom, Avatar, American Dragon, and Batman Beyond.
9. If you like Supernatural we should be pals.
10. I can name pretty much any dog breed, and just really love animals in general.
11. I can fall asleep anywhere, anytime.

Neon Houndstooth

Hello lovelies! So my friend got some fantastic neon polish, and she let me borrow it the other day! Appropriately named, Orly Glowstick made my nails pop so much!! I painted two coats of it on top of one coat of China Glaze White on White (the white helps the neon to be much much brighter), and then decided that it would be perfect as a base to stamp on some of OPI Fly (from the super fun Nicki Minaj collection), which ended up turning out more green than blue on top of the neon yellow, but I still think it looks fab. For my accent nails, I used Pure Ice Cheatin, a glitter polish I've had around for ages. The stamping plate I used was BM-322.

In the end, I wish I hadn't stamped on the accent nails and had just done the glitter right on top of the neon, but I'm still pretty satisfied with the result here.

Blacklight pics under the cut!!!

Day 4: Gluttony

Hello lovelies! For the second part of the Gluttony element of the seven deadly sins challenge, I decided to incorporate some summer fun and do watermelon nails!

For the inside of the watermelon, I started off with two coats of Estée Lauder Hot Coral, topped with a coat of OPI Thrills In Beverly Hills Top Coat to make it look wet and kissed by sunshine. For the rind I used Sinful Colors Envy and Wet n Wild Mint Fusion, with China Glaze White On White for the shiny bit and the inner rind, and Wet n Wild Black Creme for the seeds. I did the seeds with a dotting tool, and I'm kind of disappointed with how they turned out. Who knew making seed shapes would be so dang hard??

Day 3: Gluttony

Hello lovelies!! Last night I completed day 2 of the seven deadly sins challenge, Gluttony! The prompt was a gluttony-inspired sugar-spun mani, so I decided to go with a fudge-drizzled minty look. I had never done a sugar-spun mani before, so I was excited to try it out. My biggest surprise was just how much polish it uses!! But I think it was worth it, they came out adorable! I tried a number of ways to get the look right, from super thin streaks to big thick gobby streaks, and I think the thicker ones got across the "chocolate" look better, so I mainly went with those.

I used China Glaze Re-Fresh Mint for the mint, Love & Beauty by Forever 21 Coffee, and Wet n Wild Black. No topcoat because I wanted them to stand out!

 

More pics~

Bam! POW! Batman nails!!

Hello lovelies!! Today my friend Jenni is guest starring on my blog as a lovely hand model for a Batman Mani! (Or should I say Batmani?? No?) For this, I tried to go with the traditional comic-book feel, so I looked up some designs online for Batman nails and comic book nails in general, and went at it! I used China Glaze Happy Go Lucky for the yellow, Revlon Graceful for the gray (it ALWAYS looks beige in the bottle, but I've learned from enough mistakes that it is, in fact, actually gray), China Glaze White on White, and Wet N Wild Black. I really like the limited color palette, because I think it keeps everything very cohesive and consistent.

To get the designs, I used the nail art brushes that just arrived in the mail today (I'm so excited about them, you have no idea), along with my teeniest dotting tool to get the dot effect behind the speech bubbles.

More under the cut!