31dc2013 Day Fourteen

31dc2013 Day fourteen: Flowers

    I've never been big on floral prints, and I've actually have never done ANY floral nail art.  All I know is that I wanted to use NYC wine bar. Really loving this color lately. I also knew I wanted to do something simple since I had never ventured into the realm of floral nail art.

    I started by painting two coats of sephora OPI "under my trench coat" as my base. Under my trench coat is a slightly shimmery greige or khaki grey.  I then used my dotting tool to make simple dot flowers  using NYC wine bar (or fried egg flowers as I like to call them), Then added a little yellow dot in the middle to finish the flower.

     Overall I liked how the colors went together.  Next time I try this i'll try using a smaller dotting tool just so I can add more flowers to each nail. So that's all for today,

    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!