Holographic Fish Tail French Tips

I am combining some of my favorite "techniques" into one again. I love me some french tips and holographic polishes, so I used both to do the french tip fish tail technique. I have seen these around for a while, and I am not too sure what the official name of the technique is So, I am just calling it a fishtail french tip since it is pretty much the fishtail technique, but only on the tips! Here they are:

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Two of these polishes are Australian indie brands. These Aussie girls are seriously amazing. I need to go there again for a few weeks and just buy all the Australian polish!

I started off with two coats of Emily de Molly- Peer Pressure. The most awesome bubble gum pink holo ever!! Hayley, the creator makes some of the most amazing polishes, I don't know how she does it. She just released some new shades too that I am just dying to get! I luckily snagged this when Llarowe restocked with their new cart hold feature. Along with this red.

The purple is Color Club- Eternal Beauty (Halo Hues Spring 2013). This used to be my favorite holo since it was one of the first unique holo shades in my collection, and very affordable compared to most. But as long as these indie brands keep making new unique shades, I have a feeling this one will be pushed to the side :(

Lastly, the darker purple shade is Lilypad Lacquer- True Blood. I guess it is more of a blood shade. And SUPER opaque. Just ridiculous. I need to wear it on its own eventually.

Blurry shot to really show how strong the holo is...

For you Aussie ladies, you can get every Emily de Molly polish possible on her Etsy or Big cartel. for everyone else, they are available at Llarowe (always sold out), meimeisignatures, Norwaynails, and Sallymagpies

Lilypad Lacquer actually ships worldwide! You can get them on Etsy, there is seriously every color to choose from. I don't remember how much shipping was, but you can also get them on Llarowe.

And you can get Color Club from head2toebeauty

Spongless Gradient Using (Mostly) Ausralian Brands

I tackled another spongless gradient using only untried polishes! The first one I did can be seen here. I am also trying to use all the lovely polishes Christine from Nails At 2am sent me in our swap. Here it is:

The yellow I used is Ulta3- Honolulu. I used 3 coats. It was a streaky mess! I guess that is why I don't have too many yellows. Then I did 3 different layers of the orange which is Loreal- Mango Mama (Miss Candy Collection 2013). It is a jelly polish from their super limited edition jelly collection from earlier this year. It was really easy to work with for what I used it for.

Lastly, to hide all the imperfections from the jelly gradient, I topped it off with Ulta3- Over The Rainbow. A perfect mix of large, medium, and small rainbow glitters. Glitter pay off was amazing, too. My only complaint about the Ulta3 polishes is the awful smell. They smell like 100x stronger then regular polishes. There must be some bad chemical in them or something.

Enjoy!

Leopard Print Using Australian Polishes

I mentioned a few posts ago that I finally got my nail mail from Christine at Nails At 2am. This time i used three of the more mainstream polishes she sent me. I guess these brands are more like Sally Hansen, China Glaze etc. I am not too sure if they are considered "salon" brands though. These three colors were just begging me to be used together, so I whipped up a leopard print. Here it is:

The purple is seriously one of the best purples I have ever used. It is nearly a one coater! But I used two coats just for insurance. The polish is Australis- Manic Panic. Seriously, uhhhmaysing.

The awesome Jennifer Green on my ring finger is Australis- Acid Rain. Another amazing polish as well. It was almost a one coater, but it was a tad bit streaky. The second coat made it perfect.

Lastly, the blue I used is BYS- Matte Mint Green. I guess it is more of a blue green in person. It worked well with what I used it for. Then I just used Wet n Wild- Black Creme for the final touches of the leopard print.

I topped it off with Seche Vite. I always forget Seche is the perfect top coat for nail art because it pretty much never smears. I used the Butter London top coat on my other hand after letting it dry for a good 15 minutes, and it pretty much ruined it!

Hope you enjoy!

Simple Swatch: Trelly Polish + Water Marble

I have another Trelly Polish for you today. This brand has quickly became one of my favorite indies in such a short period of time. Cassie has great customer service, and she keeps impressing me more and more when she creates new polishes! She has posted previews of her Halloween polishes on her Instagram, and I am dying to get my hands on them! Here is what I have on today:

Not my best swatch... I painted my nails in crappy lighting

I also couldn't come up with creative ideas for the accent finger like I did with Banana Sorbet and Watermelon Sorbet, so I thought another water marble would be fun!

This is Trelly's MISC Polish- Strawberry Rumba. Such a cool mix of glitter, and there are so many different types in there! Everything from orange and teal bar glitters, large coral circle and hexagons, medium coral hexagons, medium teal squares, circles, hexagons, translucent squares,small coral and teal hexagons, and of course the large teal circles! I am sure I didn't name all the different types of glitters in it, but I love that there are so many, yet it doesn't look too much like glitter vomit. Although I did make my pinky look like a bottle of glitter polish threw up on it... I could do with out the large circles, I really like large circles, but they don't sit well on my super curved nails beds. I always find them snagging on something, so they will definitely work better if you have flat nail beds!

The colors I used in the water marble are all from the Essie Naughty Nauticals Collection for Summer 2013. The coral is Essie- Sunday Funday, purple: Essie- The Girls Are Out, and the teal: Essie- Naughty Nautical. All of them have a slight shimmer, but they didn't show up in the marble too much :( I have said this before, but Essie is great for marbling! I have never had a problem with them like I do with my China Glaze!

Lastly, The base color for my other nails is Jessica- Tangerine Dreamz (Gelato Mio Collection Spring 2012). My all time favorite orange! It is the only orange that doesn't make my hands look gross.

Hope you enjoyed these nails today.

Rainbow Holographic Half Moons

I am going to keep this short and sweet. Everyone knows I love rainbow nails and half moons, but today is the first time I combined them! Here it is:

The colors I used from red to purple: Emily de Molly- Seeing Red, Hits- Demeter, Naild' It Unique Polish- Glowber, Color Club- Over The Moon, and Emily de Molly- Devotion.

Then using a dotting tool, I used Color Club- Beyond to make the dots to make the half moon shape. Hope you enjoyed these!

Textured Rainbow Stripes

I haven't really been doing much nail art lately...So I did some pretty awesome free handed stripes to continue to practice getting straight lines. Textured polishes are perfect for that since they aren't runny, and are really opaque. Here's how it came out:

The colors I used starting from red to purple: China Glaze- Bump & Grind, China Glaze- Toe-tally Textured, Milani- Yellow Mark, China Glaze- In The Rough, China Glaze- Of Coarse!, and Dance Legend- Vernazza.

I started off with making the yellow stripe so I was sure I had enough room for all the colors. I used 2 coats for each color. I really like the outcome! I also put two coats of top coat on it making it super shiny. My camera couldn't handle it. Hopefully I will have some nail art coming up!

Half Moons Using Smudged Polish

I featured my first and favorite Smudged Polish HERE, and now I have another to show you. I did a little nail art, which is usually hard to do with indie polishes since they are usually glitter bombs. Sylvie did something you never see, a textured polish! I know there are bazillion indie brands now so it is hard to keep up, but I have NEVER seen an indie brand do textured polishes. Not only did she make an amazing textured polish, but it is like nothing the major brands have been pushing out. Seriously, you need to get you some! Here it is:

Smudged- Gravel

I probably could have used a better base color, but I just got this polish which I have been wanting for a year, and I just wanted to wear it! It seemed like a good idea at the time...

I started off with 2 coats of Zoya- Wednesday (Beach Collection Summer 2012). It is a nice bright blue that actually has a muted dusty quality to it. I really don't have anything like it in my collection, and that's saying a lot! The polish is a little thick and goopy though :(

Then I did what I always do with my half moons, and added a thick coat of Gravel. I feel the base color made it look just a tad bit darker than it really is. It has so many colors in it, too! I can see a light purple, dark purple, and black?  Maybe some white, too. I seriously love this! I need to wear it again with a top coat. I really hope Sylvie comes out with more textured polishes, I hope you are reading this :P

She only mails out to Australia, so if you are an Aussie, go to her Etsy!

Simples Swatch(s)- Gloss n Sparkle

I finally got these two polishes in a nail swap from Nails At 2 am, who has easy access to all the Aussie indie brands! We planned this in like February? And we finally sent them out a few weeks ago! Although I am not sure is she received mine yet...Well, here are the two Gloss n Sparkles I chose:

I chose to wear these together since they have pretty much the same consistency and finish, and the purple and teal glitters in the orange definitely compliment the teal polish!

The teal polish is Gloss n Sparkle- Retrovertigo, and the orange is Gloss n Sparkle- Sweet Charity. Both have the same consistency of W7- Salt n Pepper. It is a creme base that is very saturated in color, you could almost get away with one thick coat if you tired. And in the creme base are medium hexagonal glitters, both polishes have two different colors. Retrovertigo has blue and purple, and Sweet Charity has teal and purple.

For my fellow Americans, you can get these on Llarowe, and both are in stock! For every one else, you can get them on Gloss n Sparkle's Etsy, shoppe-eclecticco, and femmefatalecosmetics

A Subtle Glitter Gradient

Let me just start off by saying this was the hardest manicure to photograph. My camera could not handle the sparkle over load! I probably had a useable photo for every 10th picture I took...Here it is:

Pretty shinies....

I am definitely ready for the new winter collections to come out! I started off with two coats of Essie- Beyond Cozy (Winter 2012 Collection). Then I did a subtle gradient with one of the new ULTA polishes that just came out, ULTA- Boogie Nights. It is mostly a bronzy coppery glitter, but has a light mix of slightly chunkier rainbow glitters in it. It reminded me a lot of the China Glaze Prism polishes. It goes perfectly with the champange color of Beyond Cozy!

The way I got the amazing shine and sparkle was by applying a thick coat of Gelous Base Coat, and then adding another coat of a quick dry ultra shiny top coat! It is like shine steroids for your nails!

And here is a photo of how pretty much all of my photos came out, but it does show the shine and sparkle even more!

Simple Swatch + Water Marble!

I feel like it has been forever since I have done a marble. I had enough free time to get one in today! Along with a polish that I have been eying for a while. I de-stashed a lot of polishes from my collection that I no longer want, so I felt that was enough justification to go ahead and finally buy it! Here it is:

I feel like I say this every time I do a marble, but this is my favorite to date! Straight up Mucking Fusser status

The amazing blue polish is Pipedream Polish- Pink Elephants and Lemonade. Such a fun name, and a fun polish! I think I love it so much because I really have not seen a combo like this, at all. I wouldn't think to mix blue with pink and gold/yellow glitter... I don't think I will ever get tired of indie polish as long as they are around!

I used 2 coats. The first coat seemed a little sheer, but the second covers every bald spot up, and it looks so delicious. It is a dusty blue creme base, with medium and small sized pink and yellow glitters, so pretty!

The colors I used for the marble are OPI- Need Sunglasses? (yellow), OPI- Fly (blue), and Essie- The Girls are Out (pink). All worked perfectly, Essie and OPI are definitely my favorite polishes to marble with!

You can get Pipedream Polish on Etsy for $7.50- $8.50, and it is in stock!

Banana Nail Art + Trelly Polish

TrellyPolish just came out with some new shades. They were of course stunning, so I picked up 2 of them. Here is the first I tried, and I also incorporated so nail art with it to compliment the name:

The bay area fog was lingering this morning....

This is Trelly's MISC Polish- Banana Bubblegum. It is a mixture of all shapes and sizes of pastel yellow, pink, and true yellow glitters. Every shape from circles, hexagons, and squares! It was very easy to work with, but I always have the problem of putting too much glitter on! I think that is why there are a whole bunch of tiny air bubbles....Does anyon know why that happenns?

The green base is two coats of Lime Crime- Pastelchio. The orange is two coats of Lime Crime- Peaches n Cream. And the purple is two coats of China Glaze- That's Shore Bright (Sunsational Collection Summer 2013). My favorite combo is on the purple for sure!

Lastly, the poorly executed "bananas" on my tips were made by using China Glaze- Happy Go Lucky. Once that dried, I used my trusty Orly Instant Artist- Jet Black striper for the lines. I really wanted to do a cute banana blowing a bubble gum bubble, but I knew that would have just came out worse than what I actually did!

This Trelly shade is currently out of stock, but I am sure she will restock it if there is a high demand for it!

Nail Art for the first ever International Nail Art Day!

I got an email from Nailgasm, the first ever nail art documentry, that today is officially International Nail Art Day. I assume pretty much every nail blogger will be contributing, so of course I am going to as well! I originally wanted to do a marble of course, but I thought I should try a new technique. Thenailasaurus has been posting all these different Waterfall looks, so I decided on that. Here is how it turned out:

I think I did alright for my first time...

I started out with one coat of Mod Lacquer- Dreamland, one of my favorite indie brands. I used two thickish coats. It is the prettiest mid tone purple with a scattered holographic finish!

The three colors I used for the waterfall affect were Essie- Butler Please, Anise- Violet Falls In Love, and Color Club- Revvvolution. I ended up doing some stripes with all three colors, then went in with one of each and filled in the spaces. I probably should have used like 5 colors so it wouldn't look as muted. But over all, I like it! And I will definitely try it again.

What did you do for International Nail Art Day?

Spongeless Gradient Nail Art

One of my favorite types of nail art is glitter gradients, but I still haven't mastered sponging normal polishes to a nice gradient. I saw this spongeless gradient using a jelly polish on Chalkboard Nails and knew I had to try it! I even took her advice by topping it with the same glitter:

 

 

It was definitely a success!

I started off with two coats of Color Club- Sunrise Canyon (Fiesta Collection Spring 2013), which is just a standard creme polish. Then doing what Reccca Likes Nails showed in her tutorial, I just used the brush from the bottle of a jelly polish to gradually create the gradient. The jelly I chose was China Glaze- Keepin' It Teal (Sunsational Collection Summer 2013). I added about 4 coats of that total, with the most toward the tips. Lastly, I topped it off with Maybelline Color Show- Clearly Spotted to hide any imperfections.

I must say, it looks uhmayzing! Although it was kind of time consuming compared to doing it all at once using a sponge. I am a little slower doing my nails anyways. It was kind of frustrating to get the technique down, that is what the non photo hand is for! Even after I felt I was done, I didn't like it because it didn't look smooth enough for my taste, but once you add that glitter topper, bam! It all came together!

I will definitely be doing more of these!