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!

Hello Winter!

It's December! Here in Chicago, that means one big thing: it's cold. Really cold. But hey I love the cold so no biggie. This cold is just ushering in Eggnog And Hot Beverage Season, one of my favorite times of all. In an attempt to capture the warmth of this chilly season, I painted my nails using Sally Hansen Sugar Coat in Red Velvet.  I got this lovely shade from a clearance bin, and boy am I glad I picked it up!! It's a very rich burgundy berry shade, and it's quite festive. The sugar coat texture is really nice, and reminds me of the way that Zoya Pixie Dust polishes look in the way that it sparkles. It covered really well in one coat, but I did two for added depth. Although it was really pretty on its own, I couldn't resist stamping it with some of the winter stamps that I've been chomping at the bit to use for months!!

Purple Holo Flowers

Hello lovelies!! So since I have the six pack of Color Club's Halo Hues, I'm gonna work on swatching them all! I can't really bear to paint my nails only to take the polish off six times in a row though, so I'll just be taking the pics, wearing the polish for a couple days, and repeating until I have all of them swatched. Then I'll make a big ol masterpost. Anyways! I started with CC Eternal Beauty, a super gorgeous purple holo, and then stamped on Orly Close Your Eyes, a really pretty, almost metallic looking, pinky purple, using BM-306.

I'm really happy with the result! Since CYE isn't super mega pigmented, it's almost transparent when looking at my nails in the sun, giving EB a chance to totally show off its holo. In the shade though, it totally gets a chance to shine and it stamped super well, giving me nice perfect flowers.

Outdoor: sun

Outdoor: sun 

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.

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. :)

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 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)

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. :)

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 :)

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!