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!

31dc2013 Day Seven

31dc2013 Day seven: Black & White

     For the most part this was a pretty simple manicure. I used Sally Hansen "black out" as the base for my middle and ring finger, and the pure ice platinum magic base coat (that was used on day four for my green nails) on my thumb, pointer, and pinkie. I used a larger dotting tool to add white polka dots to the middle and ring finger, Then added black dots to the pointer and pinkie.

    For my thumb I used a make-up sponge to do a black, grey and white gradient starting the black near my cuticle fading out to white at the tip.

     I then used a black nail pen to add some lines starting from the nail tip then added leafy and floral shapes and some little black dots toward the bed of the nail. I was going for a black and white photo look of some wildflowers at dusk. I really liked this manicure and it was pretty simple. What do you guys think?

  Steady hands to all!

31dc2013 Day six

31dc2013 Day six: Violet nails

       Hello again! Today I have a little bit of a nail art fail and a swatch for you guys. I'm going to start with a description of the purple nails you see above. I like how the pointer, middle, and pinky came out but I think the thumb and ring finger could have been better. First i'll show you the base colors for this look:

    The photo above was taken outdoors in the shade, The one below was taken in direct sunlight.

   As you can see from the photos, the polish on my pointer and middle finger are painted with a polish that changes from a lilac shade to a dusty mauve when exposed to uv light (natural or not). It's made by ruby wing polishes and is called "zen garden" applies a little thin on the first coat but a second coat evens it all out. One thing I noticed about this polish is that after a few days it fades to an almost light grey and no longer changes when exposed to light. On to the other nails, on my thumb and ring finger is a coat of Julep "Charlotte" which is a dusty matte purple that could easily be a one coater. It dries with an almost rubbery finish. On my pinky I used just one coat of NYC "Wine bar" which is a really pretty plum jelly, I really love this color it's juicy and squishy and applies very nicely for a cheaper polish. Now onto the "art"!

     On my pointer and middle finger over the ruby wing "zen garden" I wanted to try something new.
So I grabbed a coffee straw, Julep "charlotte" (which I used as the base on my thumb and ring finger), Julep "kylie" (which is a very pigmented bright purple with shimmer because it is a magnetic polish) and NYC "wine bar". I took turns dipping the straw in the 3 colors and dabbing them on to the nails. I think these colors compliment each other nicely and gives my nails a swirly fun look that was really easy to do! Excuse my lovely hang nail.

     I reversed the look for my pinky starting with NYC "wine bar" as a base and then stamping with Julep "charlotte", "Kylie" and ruby wing "zen garden".   For my thumb and ring finger I went over Julep "charlotte" with two coats of Spoiled "checkin into rehab" which is a lovely dark purple jelly with small flakie glitters. I then made a moon with a sponge and some white polish added some litte stars then tried my best to do a silhouette of a tree.

    Up close it's pretty messy, but from a distance it looks okay. Overall I like how the coffee straw stamping worked out but I'm not such a fan of my thumb or ring finger. Oh well.

    That's not all folks! I have a quick swatch and review for you as well! I recently purchased a bottle of Maybelline Color show "Plush Plum" which is apart of the limited edition fall 2013  vintage leather collection.

      In the bottle it looks like a beautiful rich plum jelly polish with some flakies in it. On the nail I wasn't so pleased. It took three coats to be opaque and was very streaky and lumpy. It was very difficult to apply evenly. I still like the color and it is very much a jelly polish, but it dry's to a matte finish.

    You can see kinda how lumpy it looks when dry. Also the flakies get lost when this polish dries to become matte. Since it was a jelly consistency I was curious what it would look like glossy, so I added some top coat.

I like how juicy it looks when glossy, but i still wasn't pleased with how uneven it laid on the nails, so I put on some fast dry top coat so I could perhaps add some matte top coat to see if evening it out made me like it more. When I applied the fast dry top coat something weird happened.

    The fast dry top coat for some reason gave it a frosty satin like finish. It must of somehow reactivated the matte effect? It wasn't very even though so I still added a coat of matte top coat.

    I liked it much better this way then how it dried and applied on it's own, but takes far too much work and polish to achieve. All in all this polish was just not for me. It was only $3.99 at my local CVS so the price is nice, so if you can get past the lumpiness give it a try because it is a very pretty color, but otherwise I think you would be better off picking up NYC  "wine bar" if all your after is a nice plum shade.  Thanks for reading!

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!

31dc2013 Day Four

31dc2013 Day four: Green Nails

For this manicure I had the opposite problem from the orange and yellow nails. I have WAY too many greens to choose from. From my nail polish collection it's pretty easy to see what my favorite color is! I wanted to do something a little different from what I'm used to nail art wise. I know crackle polish is pretty old hat at this point, but I came across this Pure Ice "Vinyl Remix" duo and since I love and collect vinyl records I had to pick them up.

This polish duo is pretty interesting. It comes with a "magic base coat" which is a highly pigmented white polish that applies pretty easy for a white. Could be a one coater if you do a thicker coat. This dries pretty quickly too which makes it perfect for nail art!

I then did a stripe of the art in motion "dj spinner" which applies black and quickly crackles to reveal green inside the cracks.

Whats interesting about this polish that you can't see in this particular design, is that the crackle will bend, wiggle and swirl with the brush stokes you make using the top crackle polish.

After the middle stripe I used some striping polishes to do a variant of green lines. I then topped it all off with a glossy top coat to get rid of the crackle texture. Even though this is a design i've never done before and probably would not have if not for the 31 day challenge, I'm pretty happy with the overall outcome and plan on doing more stripey looks!

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!
 

31dc2013 Day two

31dc2013 Day two: Orange nails

        I'm back! This is my day two manicure and my second blog post! So orange eh? one of my least favorite colors. As a little bit of back story, I have an older brother who's about 16 months older then me. Understandably we were very close since we grew up so close in age. Well when we were in highschool the whole rave scene was very popular and with that came UFO pants, candy beads, pacifiers, and of course neon orange EVERYTHING! I myself as a self proclaimed punky gypsy however wanted nothing to do with this trend. My brother on the other hand was obsessed! I think at one point he had 5 pairs of those terrible tent like material pants- all in neon ORANGE! bleh! As the good sister that I am, I went out of my way to hide every single pair, but he just kept buying more! Needless to say I still have a strong dislike for this color. As evidenced by my polish collection in which there were only 3 colors in my stash that were in the orange range.

     One of the three (the NYC) is actually way more coral then orange but it suited my needs for this manicure. The other two are Julep the one in the middle is a frosty shimmery thin bright orange, while the one all the way to the right is a very pastel light orange creme. Neither of the julep's were colors I chose on my own nor would I. The frosty orange had a super wonky brush and was so thin you would probably need 4 coats for total opacity and the end result would be a streaky mess. The pastel orange needed 3 coats for full coverage which I find off for a creme.

So first I did a basecoat of Sally Hansen maximum growth (cuz I have weak little nubbins) Then followed that with two coats of the pastel orange creme. Then I added some essie shine of the times. I was originally going to stop there and call it a day, but the pastel orange was just too bright and cutesie or twee for my liking. I then decided to sponge the frosty orange and coral over it which actually made for a beautiful gradient with the slight sparkle of shine of the times peeking through!
But again still very boring and well, orange.  So I decided to give the monarch manicure a try!

Excuse the poor quality photo's still working on that aspect! All in all not bad for my first go though!
Although I'm not a fan of orange, I am loving this look! It was pretty simple too, I did the black with a nail polish pen and used white polish and a bobby pin for the little white dots. My right hand could use a little more finesse when it comes to the details but i'm still pretty proud of butterfly nails! Let me know what you think!

Steady hands to all!