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

A Simple Jelly Sandwich

Here is a simple jelly sandwich:

I started off with two coats of China Glaze- Tarty-Y For The Party (Avant Garden Collection Spring 2013). A very nice formula, fairly opaque on the first coat as well.

Then I added one generous coat of Orly- Ultraviolet (Flash Glam Effects Collection). This is part of the chunky glitter collection that Orly put out a few years ago, and I believe some of them are still permanent, not sure about this one though. A lot of the glitters from that line have the sinking glitter problem, but fortunately this particular polish doesn't have that problem. It does slightly, but all you have to do is just hold it upside down before you paint your nails and you get a very glitter dense coat for each nail.

Lastly, I topped it off with OPI- Care To Danse? (NYC Ballet Soft Shades Collection 2012). This a very pale pink shade and is also part of OPI's permanent line as well. It works perfect for layering, I would never wear this alone. You would probably need like 5 coats to get it opaque.

Yes, More Half Moons

I am in a bit of a nail art rut right now, so I am content with doing everything in half moons or french tips! Sorry, but the creative part of my brain has kind of switched off for quite a while, all though I do have 2 pretty awesome things planned. One I just haven't gotten around to doing, and the other one is using polishes that will be released tomorrow, so I don't exactly have what I need to create the look I am going for... Anyways, here are some more half moons:

Sorry for the boo boo on my pinky, one of my mice bit me real good over the weekend...

I started off with 2 coats of Ooh La Lacquer- Summer Daze (Summer Collection 2014). This is one of the more opaque Ooh La Lacquer holos that I have tried, I love it! Formula was awesome. It is super vibrant purple/fuchsia shade, but the color on top kind of took away from the awesomeness of it. You can see a better swatch here, and why not buy it while your there!

The textured polish on my ring finger is OPI- My Current Crush. This came in a limited edition set last year, so I am not sure how readily available this is.

Lastly, the awesome shimmery purple on my other nails is Orly- Hot Tropics. I am in love with this color! I have had it for a while and am just now getting around to wearing it...so sad. Just in time before summer is officially over. The formula is fantastic. I did one thickish coat on top of the holo, but depending how small your nail beds are, you could definitely get away with one coat with this polish! It is a vibrant purple base with tons of gold and silver shimmers in it. I am so happy the shimmer actually shows up on the nails. This picture is fairly color accurate too, it may be just a little darker in person. Pictures can't really do it justice.....

Trelly Polish + Bunny Nail Art

I knew when I wore this polish I wanted to do a bunny as an accent finger. OhMyGoshPolish on instagram conveniently did some bunny nail art the day I was doing my nails, so I used her bunny for referance! Here it is:

I can never decide what colors to wear under Trelly polishes, so I did a periwinkle-purple ombre

The glitter is Trelly's M.I.S.C Polish- I Happen To Love Rabbits (Alice In Wonderland Collection 2014). It mainly consists of periwinkle hex glitters in various sizes, along with matte yellow circles, matte white bars and stars, and white and yellow matte hexes. As always, a lot going on in this polish, but it doesn't look like glitter throw up! And the formula is amazing. A lot of glitter comes on the brush, which she actually changed a long with her bottles. The brush is a thick flat wide one, kind of like OPI's, so that helps a lot with glitter pay off.

Here are the colors I used for the ombre:
Inglot- 669 (Breathable Nail Enamel Line)
China Glaze- What A Pansy (City Flourish Collection Spring 2014)
China Glaze- Lotus Begin (City Flourish Collection Spring 2014)
China Glaze- Light As Air (Up And Away Collection Spring 2009)

I used OPI- My Boyfriend Scales Walls (Spiderman Collection Spring 2012) for the white bunny body. Orly- Cotton Candy for the ears and nose. Anise- Island Lover for the blues of the eyes, and Wet n Wild- Black Creme for the blacks of the eyes.

Simple Swatch: Glam Polish

Here is a simple swatch of a Glam Polish I got a while ago. This brand exploded last year and are still going strong, and luckily they ship to the US! Although I feel like I can't keep up with the collections they release. They release a new collection like every two months!

Glam Polish- Juggling Jupiter

Sorry for the weird parks on my nails. I painted these at night and went to work the next morning before taking pictures. It looks like some animal hair imprinted on my nails!

I used one generous coat over two coats of Orly- Lollipop. It didn't require any fishing and was really easy to work with!

Unfortunately it looks like this isn't available anymore, but you can get their polish on their Website

 

Merry Christmas!

I know I am posting this on Christmas Eve, but I will be rocking these nails for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. With all the stuff I am doing with mine and my boyfriend's family, I will have no time to do my nails! I went pretty festive this year:

Christmas Trees and Candy Canes

I thought I had a pretty good idea with the Christmas Tree on my two middle fingers, but it really didn't turn out the way I wanted :( I started off with two coats of China Glaze- Running In Circles (Cirque Du Soleil Collection Winter 2013). Seriously the most amazing glass fleck green polish ever! Then I topped it off with a coat of Lush Lacquer- Tree-Mendous, now the brand is Polish Me Silly due to legal issues... I will probably always call them Lush Lacquer since they were my first love of an indie brand, and they even featured some of my pictures on their etsy, but they have discontinued A LOT of their polishes since then. Fortunately they have re promoted this one this year, and you can get it on their Etsy. You can see my opinion on this polish on my blog post from last year.

For the string of lights, I first made the black line using my Orly Instant Artist Striper- Jet Black. Then using a variety of colors, I just used a small nail art brush to make weirdly shaped light bulbs. Here is a list of the colors I used:
China Glaze- Adventure Red-Y (On Safari Collection Fall 2012)
OPI- On the Same Paige (Brights Collection 2009)
China Glaze- Flyin' High (Up and Away Collection Spring 2010)
China Glaze- Happy Go Lucky
China Glaze- Man Hunt (On Safari Collection Fall 2012)

The red I used on my index and pinky is Butter London- Chancer. Again, I love this red actually. Luckily I got this for free at ULTA :P. I used two coats. The gold for the gradient on my index is OPI- Golden Eye (James Bond Collection Winter 2012). Another amazing glass fleck polish, it really looks like liquid gold. Lastly, the stripes for the candy cane was accomplished by using my Orly Instant Artist Striper- Crisp White

Here is a picture of all 5 of my fingers:

Hope you have a happy and safe Holiday!

Glitter Gradient + Dotted Christmas Tree

I can't believe I am saying this, but I love this red! I have never been a fan of the color red, therefore don't really own many red polishes. I got this in a swap, and I am in love, although this time of year will probably be the only time I wear it.

A little bit of a fail on the Christmas tree....

The red I used is Essie- Leading Lady (Winter Collection 2012). I used two coats. It is for the most part a dark red jelly base with a bunch of red glitter in it, so pretty! My bottle was a little on the thick side, but some nail polish thinner can help that.

I used two colors for the gradient. I started off with China Glaze- Twinkle Lights (Let it Snow Collection Winter 2011). It has gold, silver, red, and green micro glitters in a clear base, very Christmas appropriate! The very tips has a thicker coat of Orly- Halo (Naughty or Nice Collection Winter 2012). This polish is just a mix of very tiny champagne micro glitters and medium silver hexagonal glitters. I believe this polish is now part of their permanent line.

Lastly, the dotted Christmas tree was made with two China Glaze polishes. The gold being China Glaze- Midnight Kiss, and the sliver being China Glaze- Cheers to You. Both are from the Tis The Season to be Naughty or Nice Collection from 2010.

Hope you enjoyed! Only a few more Holiday themed nails left!

Flaky-gasm

I really love the textured trend, but I still don't understand why the flaky trend didn't stick around for very long! Here is one of my prized possessions in polish, mainly because these were really hard to find, but I got lucky and the girl at Sally's let me get some before they released! Probably the only time I have gotten good customer service at that place. Here it is:

These are all taken in the shade since the sunlight pretty much washes the flakies out.

I started out with two coats of Orly- Fowl Play (Birds of a Feather Collection Fall 2011). It is a really dark purple base, with a lot of tiny flakies in it, and primarily red to blue flakies. It is so amazing! It was limited edition, but made permanent! I don't know if it is still permanent since they changed their packaging. It is a must have.

Then I topped it off with Finger Paints- Twisted (Special Effects Collection Spring 2011). This was the one that had all colors of the rainbow in it! It is seriously perfection in a bottle.

Here are some more pictures:

If you have flaky polishes, don't forget to add a matte top coat! It always looks amazing, pretty much the only way I ever wear matte top coats. Although I didn't wear one on these...Enjoy!

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!

Rainbow Stripes

I am still trying to master stripes! They are so freakin hard. Maybe I should just try tape... Here is what I came up with:

As I have mentioned before, I will never get tired of rainbow nails!

I just used the brush from the bottle, and simply painted half of each nail.

The colors I used are: Index finger: Sally Hansen- Fuchsia Power, and Jessica- Tangerine Dreamz (Gilato Mio Collection Spring 2012).
Middle finger: Jessica- Banana Peel (Gilato Mio Collection Spring 2012), and Finger Paints- Sexy Sundress.
Ring finger: Essie- First Timer (Resort Collection 2013), and OPI- Fly (Nicki Minaj Spring 2012).
Pinky finger: Color Club- Endless Summer (Fiesta Collection Summer 2013), and Essie- Play Date (Go Overboard Collection 2012).

After the polish dried I just used Orly Instant Artist- Crisp White to do the stripes! I definitely need to work on them more... But either way I love how they turned out.

Bow Nail Art

I don't really do free hand nail art. I am going to try to do more to master the skills. I think the most awesome free hand nail art I have ever done is my South Park Nails. They are still my favorite, but I really want to recreate them again so I can get better photos. Practicing more free hand nail art will also make them turn out even more amazing! Here is what I came up with:

 

Super girly and cute. I have been seeing these bows floating around and couldn't resist trying them out! I must say, I did pretty darn good!

I didn't do all my fingers because I knew it would take too long, and I didn't even know if they would turn out the way I wanted.

The pink glitter is Nails Inc- Topping Lane, and the blue is Nails Inc- Pudding Lane. Both are from their Special Effects "Sprinkles" line. I love these. I didn't get them for a while after they came out, and hadn't even tried them until now! Both were two coats. The first coat you had to work a little to get the glitter to spread out evenly, but the second coat went on just fine since it had the base to work with.

On to the bows. I started off with two coats of the base colors. The pink is Orly- Lollipop, and the awesome periwinkle blue shade is Jessica- Sophia/True Blue. I don't know why there are two names for it... I used a dotting tool to outline the shape of the bow. First starting off with a big dot in the center, and working my way out to make the bow shape. Then I just filled it in! After that dried, I used my trustworthy striper polish, Orly Instant Artist- Jet Black, to outline the bow, and to do the stripes. I love this striper! It is the only striper I have used, and I hope to get all the colors one day. I don't know if Orly still makes them, but luckily my nail supply store carries all the shades, and for just $2.50.

I hope you enjoyed these! And hopefully I will do some more REAL nail art soon!

Tri Polish Challenge: April Day 3

A reminder of the colors I am using this month: Zoya- Zuza, Zoya- Rory, and Zoya- Myrta, all from the Surf Collection from 2012

I am calling these my stained glass window nails!

I pretty much just started with Rory (pink) and made a random shape, and moved on to the next colors. I didn't worry about making the sections super neat since I was going to go in with the striper to make it more "clean" I used Orly Instant Artist striping polish in Jet Black.

Well, I am not good at lines, even with a striper brush, so it didn't make it all that clean! I also don't like how the Y shape of the black stick out a lot. Next time I do color blocking like this, I will do more colors, or more tinier sections of color.

Tri Polish Challenge: Day 3

I am going to keep this short and sweet:

 

!!!

I am going to try to use all three colors (even though you don't have to) for each day. I think it keeps it more interesting.

Here is a shot with all five phalanges!

You can see the three colors I chose for this month HERE.

I forgot to say in my first post that we are allowed to use black and white, and also glitter toppers. So, I took advantage of that rule for today's nails.

The black used on the leopard print is Orly- Liquid Vinyl.

The amazing black and white glitter is Lush Lacquer- Salt n' Peppa. This is the only black and white glitter I own. There are some many out there, and this seems to be the only one that has tiny micro holographic glitters in it! It pretty much has every shape and size of black and white matter glitters in it, too.

Hope you enjoyed :), and be sure to check out everyone else'!

St. Patrick's Day Nails

I am going to keep this short and sweet:

Shade

Sunlight

I of course had to incorporate green and gold, and I had too many ideas for what green to wear. So I figured, why not try a new technique, and use multiple greens?

The gold on my ring finger is China Glaze- Ultamate Holiday, which was an Ulta exclusive 2 years ago for the holidays, hence the name. But they released a gold exactly the same for last christmas. It is one of those glitters that dries to super glittery texture. It eats up a lot of top cot so I added a generous amount of Gelous, and then one coat of CND Air Dry. That is how I got dat shiiiine.

For the rest of the nails, I started with two coats of OPI- My Boyfriend Scales Walls. Then I used a combination of the saran wrap and water color method. I added random blobs of the colors, and used the saran wrap to spread it around. I didn't add a top coat to the white, so every time I patted the saran wrap on my nail, it would take not only the green polish off, but also the white! So, in order to fix that, I added more color, and dipped a brush into acetone and spread the color around that way. The dark green is China Glaze- Four Leaf Clover, I thought that was an appropriate color choice. The medium green is OPI- Green-Wich Villiage, and the lighter green is Orly- Green Apple.

Hope you enjoyed these! I really like how they turned out :)

Valentine's Day Nails

Since everyone is doing it, I figured what not? Although I probably won't be wearing these on Valentine's Day, oh well.

 

I have been kind of burnt out on nail art, so I thought a nice doticure would be fun, easy, and clean. I really like these! They are so girly, but not over powering.

I started out with 2 coats of Orly- Preamp which was from their Electronica collection for Fall 2012. This is my first time wearing this, and I love it! It is a really unique shade, almost a blue toned pink with gorgeous gold shimmer packed in there. The formula was really nice, too. Then I did a simple gradient using OPI- A Sparkle Yule Love. This was an ULTA exclusive shade during the holidays in 2011, but Excuse Moi from the Muppets collection is the exact same shade. It was hard to do the gradient since it isn't in a clear base.

Then I did some dots! I started with the big dots, then the small ones. The colors I used are Orly- Lollipop and Orly- Cotton Candy. Nice simple cremes that really compliment the base color, and they are both readily available at ULTA, Sallys, CVS, etc.

I decided to feature a lot of Orly because I feel like this brand is way underrated. I love Orly so much! I think they were actually the first salon brand I ever got. And when I was going through my Orly stash, I realized all the shades I have form them are incredibly unique to any other polish I have. I will try to use more Orly!

The Crumpet Amateur Nail Art Contest: January

Two posts in a day! I am really taking advantage of winter break before Microbiology takes over my life :(. So, I decided to submit to The Crumpet's nail art contest. It is for bloggers who are just getting started, and you just have to do one of the nail art challenges that she created for the new year!

I decided to go with Day 13: Your cheer yourself up mani. Here it is:

Balloons! I define this as cheer me up because when I got my very first yellow polish wayyy back when, I would always do a rainbow skittles manicure. I haven't done one in a while, so I decided to do a little twist to it.

I recently got my favorites from the Color Club Halo Hues collection, and decided to use the classic silver, Harp On It to represent an abstract version of a rainbow in the sky. Then I used a medium sized dotting tool to make the balloon shapes. The colors on my index finger are China Glaze- Surreal Appeal and Papaya Punch. Middle finger: China Glaze- Happy Go Lucky and Orly- Green Apple. Ring finger: China Glaze- Four Leaf Clover and Aquadelic. Pinky: Finger Paints- Winter Sky and Anise- Violet Falls In Love. Lastly I used the white Orly striper polish for the balloon strings.

I actually really like how these turned out! I only wish I made the balloons bigger because the holo kind of outshines the cute little balloons.

You can see other entries for the contest HERE. Voting starts in a few days so it'd be awesome if you could vote for me :)

OPI + Orly + Dots

I am taking a break from writing my English final, and instead writing something more worth my while! Continuing with the winter theme, I have a pretty popular polish to share today. This is the first time I have worn it, only because I didn't get it when it came out last year, so I picked it up like two months ago. Here it is:

 

Direct Sunlight

 

Shade

The base color is OPI- Designer...de Better! topped off with Orly- Halo. Designer de Better was one of the more popular shades from their Muppets/Christmas collection last year. And Halo is from Orly's Naughty or Nice winter collection this year. The formula on both were  pretty good! The OPI shade was a little runny, but I don't know if that is because it is a  foil or not. I am pretty sure this is the only foil polish in my collection, and now I want more! It was like putting liquid metal onto my nails. It is a very unique shade as well. It is a nice champagne color, but if you look close there are tiny orange/copper shimmers in it too. You can't see it on my nails really, but if you look at the picture in the shade, you can totally see the shimmers in the bottle.

After I applied Halo, which applied amazingly, I decided to get more use out of my dotting tools. I first put some scattered dots of OPI- My Boyfriend Scales Walls, waited for that to dry, then added China Glaze- Glittering Garland. You can tell I am still on a gradient kick too with the way I dispersed the dots. I like how it turned out, although I think it would have been better if I added the Glitter top coat over the dots. It would have looked more uniform. Hope you like these as much as I do!