31dc2013 Day Five

31dc2013 Day five: Blue Nails

I love blue nails. I remember being in 6th grade and getting my first blue polish, it was so different, funky, and fun. Also a pretty big deal because my mother didnt like me wearing darker colors on my nails. I still remember a pretty horrific story she told me about a roomie she had when she was in the air-force. This may be a tad morbid, but to make a long story short, her roommate was found in the river with dark black blue nails(and it wasnt from polish). So yeah, for me that meant no blue or black polishes. Okay now back to the nails.

I wanted to do something simple for blue since it's such a vivid nail color as is. So I started with two coats of spoiled's "Your Fly's Down" which is a very pigmented slightly shimmery royal blue. Only needed two thin coats for full coverage, it applied very smoothly. All in all it's a very nice bright blue especially for a $1.99. Well I couldn't stop there, that would be a little too simple.

I added a coat of Zoya "Opal" to my pointer, middle and pinky finger. Opal is a beautiful fleck effect top coat in a very lightly green tinted jelly base. The flecks work so well and differently over all sorts of colors. In my mind this over the blue would look like a blue and green globe. Which you can see in the first picture in this post that it certainly has a nice contrast and depth over the blue. I then added Essie "shine of the times" to my thumb and ring finger just for fun.

All that flaky goodness! I like sparkly things but find it hard to wear for very long. I thought adding a matte top coat to the fingers with zoya opal might make the globe effect i was going for stand out more.

It looked pretty dreamy and kind of reminded me of the ocean. Very pretty and deep. I then added matte top coat to the thumb and ring finger.

It made it look like I had crushed sea shells on my nails! It was a nice compliment to the zoya opal without stealing the show so to speak. I will say though the zoya opal is a tad thinner and less dense with flakies then Essie shine of the times. Still a great glitter topper though! Which flakie polish do you prefer?

Steady hands to all!

31dc2013 Day three

31dc2013 Day three: Yellow nails

 

          So I'm back to catch up on the 31 day challenge. Thanks for sticking with me while I try to figure out how to make time for painting my nails, photographing them (poorly at that) and then write about them.  When I did my post about orange nails I mentioned how I didn't have many colors to choose from. Well little did I realize I own even less yellow polish! I was also lacking inspiration for this manicure. At first I wanted to do a yellow marble effect, but I couldn't get the veining right. So I thought about retro counter tops. Weird I know, but hey I couldn't think of anything other then fruit or sunshine when it came to the color yellow and neither of those subject matters are really my thing. Here's an image of what I was kinda going for.

For this manicure I started with two coats of spoiled "Designated Driver" which is a nice yellow creme with the signature wide rounded brushes the spoiled polishes have. Then I did a coat of Maybeline colorshow "Clearly Spotted" which is a combo of black and white matte glitters in a clear base.

Then I topped it off with another coat of "Designated Driver".

Making a yellow black and white jelly sandwich

I love the effect that putting a thin coat of yellow gave this look.  I finished it all off with an extra shiny top coat to give it a nice glossy sheen.  I hope you all like it as much as I do!

Steady hands to all!