Week 1: Winter Challenge

After an incredibly long night of sleep last night, I spent most of today watching tv, biking, and planning what I wanted to do for today's mani. Aka the perfect weekend. So I sat down with a pot of peppermint tea and spent an ungodly amount of time bringing this mani to life.

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:

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!

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!!!

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.