Week 2: Winter Nature (or: Have a Holly Jolly Christmas)

Howdy hey buddyo! I've been really excited to do these nails since the moment I ordered A Fresh Evergreen and Very Ornamental, both by I <3 NP, one of the most lovely of all pseudo-mainstream indie nail polish brands. (I also ordered Nostalgia and Princess Diaries in the same shipment. It was a really exciting package to receive, to say the least, and you'll be seeing those other shades pretty soon I'm sure.) Both of these colors are from the special seasonal collection, as indicated by their names, and so I knew that I had to incorporate them into this winter nail challenge.

Winter foliage? Plants? Red and green??? HOLLY. I love holly. It's so bright, it has weird effects on birds, and it's very festive.

Info and more pictures under the cut:

Pastel Space

So if you know me, you know I love space. Like, a lot. My background on both my personal and work computer is not just one picture of space, but like 10 different ones that just rotate every half hour. I usually have glow in the dark stars on my ceiling. I really really love space. So naturally, when I'm on vacation and I have a very limited number of colors but I still want to do something fun, my go-to design is space. Pastel space!!

I started off with two coats of OPI Can't Find My Czech-book, which is a super super gorgeous blue and I can't believe how long it took me to convince myself to get it. Next I skipped my usual next step of sponging on white and went straight to the colors. The pink I used was OPI Tutti Frutti Tonga, which is a really gorgeous iridescent pale pink. I'm excited to use it alone at some point because it's gonna look great. The yellow was China Glaze Happy Go Lucky, which is basically my go-to for a nice bright yellow color. The glitter was OPI When Monkeys Fly, which is part of the Oz the Great and Powerful collection. (Coincidentally, I just saw that movie, and I thought it was great except for the part where I couldn't take James Franco seriously. He has such an insincere smile and it was just really throwing me off the whole time.) Ahem, anyways. the white star designs I did with a Sally Hansen nail art pen in white. I love these pens and will never ever be able to sing my praises for them enough, even though I'm super bitter towards Sally Hansen due to the fact that they totally ignored my suggestion to bring back the Sally Hansen Magical line, aka the best holo line ever to exist ever.

I think I've rambled enough for one day, look at my nails:

Geometric Pastels

Hello lovelies!! Ok so I'm particularly proud of this design, because my goal was to test my skills. (What skills, you may ask? I weep a little.) I wanted to make this mani LOOK like a taped mani. BUT!! The catch was that I wasn't going to use tape!! I wanted to see how clean and neat I could make my lines just freehanding them. And dang I think I did a pretty rockin job. :3

Colors used were: China Glaze Refresh Mint, China Glaze Always A Lady, China Glaze White On White, and OPI Oy-Another Polish Joke.

Love me.

Easy Waves

Hello lovelies!! Wow I've been gone for a while, sorry about that! I haven't given up on nail blogging of course, I just graduated college and so I've been dealing with the craziness of moving back home for the summer. Also I got a dog, so he's been taking up most of my attention. Seriously, how can you not love this face??????!?!?

Ahem. So anyways I've been training him and neglecting my nails a bit. But! That doesn't mean I haven't been doing them at all!! Last week I did these lovely wave-style nails, and they were super fun and easy!! I'd suggest them to anyone who doesn't really have time to do something fancy but still wants some ass-kickin nails. 

Colors used were OPI Yoga-ta Get This Blue, OPI Can't Find My Czech-book, and OPI Fly.

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!!

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 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 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)