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 Ten

31dc2013 Day ten: GRADIENT NAILS

     I do a LOT of gradients apparently. I just really like the effect and it's fairly easy. I wanted to try something a little different so I decided to use some duo-chrome polishes to perhaps add to the effect.

     The color above is one of  my long time favorites! It's by Revlon and is called Khaki Zing. This polish is pretty old, I believe I wore it to my junior prom (which was many moons ago). It has been discontinued but still seems to be pretty popular in the duo-chrome world. It shifts between purple with a pink flash, dark grey, and green with gold flash. It's a really run color that goes with just about anything. The one down side is that it takes FOREVER to dry, which i'm pretty sure is just due to how old it is. It still applies very nicely though. I started my manicure off with two coats of khaki zing on my thumb, pointer, and middle finger. I kept the nail decal from the rainbow manicure on my ring finger to see how they hold up. Pretty good it started to pull away from my nail a little but nothing a little top coat wouldn't fix.

     Then I sponged my tips with Sally Hansen luster shine in "lava" which is a very pretty duo-chrome that flashed between gold, yellow, orange, and bright pink.  I also did two coats as a base on my pinky finger to mix up the gradient a bit (I sponged khaki zing over lava on my pinkie)

   I finished this gradient off with a coat of Zoya Opal. Which is a opalescent flakie glitter topper that tends to lean on the green side.

    I think this photo captures the shift the best, you can see at the bed of the top nail khaki zing flashes green/gold while lava is orange/yellow and on the bottom nail the base is a purple pink and lava becomes a pinky orange.

     The flakies really popped in natural sunlight! I think this manicure had a pretty majestic look to it. I like the way that these colors worked together very fun, interesting and eye catching (to me anyway).  I must say the removal of lava is kind of a pain. It's like a really fine glitter instead of being a pigmented base. Still a very pretty and wearable color, just remember the removal process and be time consuming.


   Steady hands to all!

 

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!