Mosaic French Tip

I saw My Simple Little Pleasures do this a few weeks ago, and of course had to try it. I haven't done anything rainbow in a while, so I did a rainbow version!

Pretty cool, huh?

I just used creme polishes, and as you can see, I have many more greens, blues, and purples than the warmer tones. So I just did the warm tones on one finger, and did the cool tones on the last three.

Here are the colors starting with the main base color, the bottom triangle and going from top to bottom, index to pinky. Hopefully that makes sense

China Glaze- Dance Baby (Electropop Collection Spring 2012)
Lime Crime- Crema de Limon
Zoya- Wendy (Tickled Collection Summer 2014)
OPI- Where Did Suzi's Mango? (Brazil Collection Summer 2014)

Zoya- Neely (Lovely Collection Spring 2013)
Orly- Green Apple
Illamasqua- Smash
OPI- Jade is the New Black

Color Club- Take Me to Your Chateau (Pardon My French Collection Spring 2010)
Zoya- Wednesday (Beach Collection Summer 2012)
Barry M- Guava (Gelly Hi-Shine Line)
Zoya- Ling (Tickled Collection Summer 2014)

Barry M- Prickly Pear (Gelly Hi-Shine Line)
Illamasqua- Jo'mina
China Glaze- What a Pansy (City Flourish Collection Spring 2014)
Anise- Violet Falls in Love

Enchanted Polish French Tips

I joined the Enchanted Polish mailing list towards the beginning of the year, so I have been lucky enough to have gotten all the LE monthly polishes since March! The last ones I got was May, June, and July 2014. June is a dark purple, so I will wear that another time, so I paired May and June together:

 

Seriously amazing polishes....

The orange is Enchanted Polish- May 2014. It is a burnt orange, super strong hollow, and had an amazing formula! Oranges don't agree with my skin tone a lot, but this one surprisingly did! I used two coats here. 

The red is Enchanted Polish- July 2014. The holo in this one isn't as strong, but it is still pretty apparent. It is very saturated. I remember when I swatched it on my nail wheel it was nearly a one coater, and the nails on those wheels are pretty wide and long! 

And of course I used a textured polish for the accent. I used one of my faves, OPI- Jinx (Bond Girls Collection 2013). It is a nice mix between red and orange, so I thought it went very nicely with these!

Mod Lacquer French Tips

This is what I wore on Valentine's Day. Mod Lacquer quickly became one of my top indie brands last year. Jennifer makes some amazing polishes, with amazing quality, and her Spring collection for this year did not fail to impress. Naturally, I got all of them!

Mod Lacquer Spring Confection collection

I could not choose which one to wear first, so I just put all four of the polishes on my fingers! Each finger has 2 semi thick coats of polish. Each one had an amazing formula, glided on the nail like butter. I really have nothing bad to say about any of these polishes, only that it is hard to pick my favorite. I think it is a tie between the green and pink....

The colors are:
Pink Tart
Minty Kiss
Blueberry Bliss
Blackberry Cream

The names make my hungry!

Lastly, I did some colorful french tips using:
Sally Hansen- Fuchsia Power
Essie- Mojito Madness
China Glaze- Sunday Funday
China Glaze- That's Shore Bright

Hope you like these as much as I do. You can get the entire collection on Mod Lacquer's Etsy, all four for the price of three!

Watermelon Nail Art

I am on a no buy right now, but I will give myself a few exceptions every once and a while. This awesome glitter bomb by Trelly's MISC Polish is one of those exceptions:

Trelly's MISC Polish- Watermelon Sorbet

Perfect manicure for summer, especially with this ridiculous heat wave we are having in the bay area right now.

Watermelon Sorbet is PACKED with LARGE green, pink, and white circle glitters. There's also large pink and white hexagonal glitters, white rectangle glitters, medium green squares and hexagons, medium pink hexagons, and small white hexagons, such an awesome mixture! There are more pink glitters out of all the colors, and since they are so big, it made it a little hard to get a good amount on my brush. There was a little fishing required. I have about 1 and half coats shown here. I did one coat and filled in the gaps. I could have done a better job on spreading it out, but I had the fan blasted on me, so it was making the polish dry pretty fast and got really clumpy :(

The coral color I used is China Glaze- Surreal Appeal (Cirque Du Soleil Collection Winter 2012), my 2nd favorite coral shade! Mine got pretty thick, so you may want to check on yours and see if it needs thinning! I used two coats. The green I used is China Glaze- Four Leaf Clover. One of y favorite greens, and it is readily available all the time! I used 2 coats on my middle finger, and one thick coat for the french tip.

I used Orly- Liquid Leather for the watermelon seeds using a dotting tool. I used the yellow one from this set. I started with the larger end to make a dot, and used the super tiny sharper end for the tip, and tried making it look more like a seed by just dragging polish to the tip.

Trelly Polish is currently closed since Cassie is out of town till July 7th, hopefully when it is reopened Watermelon Sorbet is available!

Tri Polish Challenge: April Day 2

Another month of the Tri Polish Challenge! I missed day one again :(. The colors for this month are pink, turquoise, and orange. I had trouble finding a turquoise, so I hope the one I chose qualifies. Here is what I came up with:

This one is my favorite. Look at that shimmer! It almost looks duochrome.

The colors I chose are all from the Zoya Surf Collection for Summer 2012. The pink is Zoya- Rory, blue: Zoya- Zuza, and orange: Zoya- Myrta. They all have flawless almost one coater formulas, and they are jam packed with the awesome gold and silver shimmer that Zoya does best!

I know, the orange looks red, but I took these at 7 this morning, so the sun was barely up in the sky, so I couldn't get direct sunlight.

For the french tips, I used french tip stickers to mark my tips off, and just applied a generous amount of Zuza. When that dried, I took a small dotting tool and did the dots. These are probably some of the hardest dots I have done!

Sorry for my pinky looking all lumpy. I have a patch on it because I have a huge tear that was almost down the middle of my nail. It is growing back slowly but surely!

Check out the other ladies creations!

Nail Art using Floss Gloss!

I am so happy to be show casing these nails! I have been eying this brand for a while, and got these a few weeks ago. I knew I wanted to use them both together, and I hope I made my fellow baydestrain nail polish makers proud!

 

Sunlight

 Shade

NEON GOODNESS!

They even look amazing in the shade!

I don't normally wear neon colors. I have very few, and these are definitely my fav! I think I don't wear them because I have found the formulas to be kind of crappy, but these are pretty awesome!

The green is Floss Gloss- Con Limon, the perfect neon Jennifer Green shade. I have never seen a neon green like this! The orange/coraly shade is Floss Gloss- Bikini Coral. 

The glitter on my ring finger is OPI- Lights Of Emerald City (Oz the Great and Powerful Collection 2013). This glitter is so cool looking, but a beezy to work with. You can get a good amount of glitter on the brush 50% of the time, but it is so hard to get it on your nail evenly! Definitely not my favorite glitter...

Now for a  nice review of Floss Gloss as a whole. First off, I LOVE the bottle. They are fairly small, but the handle is nice and big so it is easy to hold and apply the polish. The gold looks fabulous, too. The formula on Con Limon was awesome. It went on evenly in 2 thin coats, and turned out just as bright as it is in the bottle, without using a white base first! Bikini Coral was nice too, but a tad bit on the thick side. It dried very matte, too, and Con Limon dried to more of a satin finish with more shine. I guess my only negative would be that they are $8.00 for only .18 fluid ounce... But the craftsmanship on the bottle makes up for that! Especially the cute nail label they have!

You can buy Floss Gloss HERE, but I think they have deals fairly often. You can also find the ladies behind the brand on the Nailgasm Documentary that pretty much everyone in the nail polish community knows about!

Monochromatic Skittles

I have totally been neglecting this :(. I haven't had much time to do my nails, school is taking over my life! But these are making me feel better :)

I've been itching to do a skittles manicure for a while, and this is what I came up with!

Sorry for the dry cuticles...

This is my first attempt at leopard print on my nails, and I really like the outcome! They are so easy. Expect to see more from me! I am also still on a french tip kick.

I started out with two coats of Zoya- Blu, a new polish from their Lovely Collection for Spring 2012. This is one of the two polishes I got from that collection. I love it! It is the palest blue I have, and the formula is amazing. It is my first creme polish from Zoya, and they have yet to disappoint me. I got my first Zoya about a year ago, and they are quickly becoming one of my favorite brands!

I added Lush Lacquer- Splitter Splatter on my index finger. It is one of their matte glitters, with blue micro glitters, medium and large white and blue hexagons, medium black and white squares and black and white bar glitters. The perfect amount of glitter mixed all into one!

Onto the leopard print. The medium blue shade is Sally Hansen- Pacific Blue, a cult favorite, and the most vibrant blue, ever. And the dark blue is one of the Blue Cross Christmas snowmen polishes, which have no names. I used the same shades on my tips.

What do you think? I really love them, except it isn't very balanced. I should have switched what I did with my index and middle finger. Other than that, I think it is a perfect monochromatic manicure!

Matte Flakies Using Cult Nails

Oh my gosh guys, I am in love with these. It is so hard to keep up with all the polishes from these indie brands. I saw Aglayanails use this polish, and immediately checked to see if it was in stock, and snatched it up! I feel this is the closest I will get to Unicorn Puke

 

I used one coat of OPI- OPI Ink, and two coats of Cult Nails- Seduction

Remember when flakies were all the rage in the beginning of 2012? Then magnetics took over.

I have never really liked matte nails, but I loooove matte flakies. I feel it makes the flakies pop a little more. I have been wanting to do glossy french tips with flakies, too, and finally did it!  It was pretty easy to achieve this look as well.

After applying the two coats of Seduction, which applied amazingly, I applied a fast drying top coat (Seche). Then I applied french tip stickers to my tips, and simply added Essie- Matte About You top coat! I absolutely love the way it came out, and I really don't want to take it off!

You can find Seduction HERE, and grab it while you can since it is limited edition. I am happy I finally joined the Cult, and plan on purchasing plenty more in the future! Also, expect to see a lot more matte nails with glossy french tips in the future.