31dc2013 Day Eighteen

31dc2013 Day eighteen: Half Moons

       I love the look of half moon manicures, it can be done so many different ways to achieve different looks, but I feel with simple colors it's a fabulous classic look. As I've mentioned in other posts I love combining creme polishes with something sparkly. When It came to half moon day I knew what I wanted to do!

       I started with two coats of Julep "Sienna" Which is a beautiful white gold metallic polish. This polish has great coverage for a metallic, it's also just very pretty. Now this is where patience is a virtue. You MUST let the bottom coat fully dry! I've seen people use binder enforcers for their circles, but for some reason I can never find them in any of the office supply stores around me so I just use band-aid ends. So once your base is dry you can place your sticker, band-aid, tape or whatever you may be using over the bottom of your nail bed making sure the corners of your nails are fully taped off. I noticed if you touch the sticker or band aid a bunch to get rid of some of the stickiness, it makes the removal a little easier and tends not to pull up your base coat.

        I then went over the top of the nail with just one coat of Zoya "Farah", and then removed my band-aid to reveal the pretty gold underneath. Zoya Farah is such a great neutral polish! it has great coverage and I think it suits my skin tone really well. I may have to get another bottle because I use this one so often. It levels itself out so nicely and has great coverage for something so pale. As you can see from the photo's one coat even over gold was enough for full beautiful coverage.

          I went over it all with some topcoat just for some extra shine.

       SO PRETTY! I personally loved this combo and will probably where it again. I think it would make a nice accent nail. I also think this look is neutral enough for the office, but fancy enough for the office party (not that I would know, I work in a record store pretty much by myself). What do you think of this look?


     Steady hands to all!

31dc2013 Day Thirteen

31dc2013 Day thirteen: Animal print

     As mentioned in my previous post i've been a little uninspired lately, so excuse the lack of imagination for my animal print. Just a simple leopard print from me today.  I do love me some leopard print though.  I also love the combo of glitter with a creme polish.

    For the base I used sinful colors "zincing of you" which is a sheer shimmery gold with extremely tiny micro multi colored flecks. I used three coats for full opacity.

    I then took my dotting tool and made brown spots with china glaze  "Mahogany Magic". Once that dried I used my black nail art pen to go around the brown. Topped it all off withe a generous amount of top coat.

     Voila! easy peasy. This is such a fun easy look that can be done with practically any color combo. It's a go to design for me. What about you?


   Steady hands to all!

31dc2013 Day Eight

31dc2013 Day eight: Metallic Nails

   Typically i'm not a huge fan of metallic polishes because they become streaky or they can be rather sheer. Two of the 5 metallic polishes used for this look were quite sheer.

    The photo above is one coat of the each of the four polishes I used for this gradient. On my thumb is sinful colors "hot wired" which is a dark silver/pewter color which is very sheer. On my pointer (top right) is sinful colors "super nova" which is a shimmery light gold which was the sheerest of the bunch. On my middle finger is Julep "dakota"  which is a nice rose gold that has pretty good coverage, and on my ring finger (far left) is one coat of Julep "Rachel". Rachel is a nice rich shimmery copper color that is richly pigmented, but tends to get that streaky look. Now back to the final product.

    I started this look of with a coat of China glaze "attraction" which is a dark grey metallic color from the Magnetix collection. Since it's a magnetic polish it's super saturated and only needed one coat for full opacity. Unfortunately I didn't snap any photo's for the process of this manicure, just the finished product and some swatches... Oop's!

   I painted a gradient of hot wire, super nova, dakota, and Rachel onto a make-up sponge and then sponged each nail with the copper colors closest to the tips. Almost like a rainbow of metallic polishes. I finished the whole thing off with a coat of Sephora O.P.I. "It's real" 18kt gold flake top coat. I LOVE this top coat! It has the prettiest matte gold flakies in a really nice thick (but not gloopy) clear base. Although I would never pay the original $30 price tag for it, I was totally happy to snag it for $6 when it was marked down on the sephora web-site. It adds an almost marble/stone effect to this look, but look great over pretty much any colors especially darker vampy colors. Thanks for reading!

    Steady hands to all!