The Lacquer Legion: Adoration

Sometimes I struggle with nail art inspiration, but coming up with my look for this month's theme from The Lacquer Legion was actually pretty easy! I just thought about everything I truly adore in the nail art world—polish brand, type, and color, as well as my favorite nail art technique—and combined it all into one manicure.

Gradients will always be my first nail art love. One of The Nailasarus's beautiful gradient manicures was the first nail art I really fell hard for and felt like I just had to try myself, and from that point on, I was hooked. As I've experimented with gradients more during the last year, I've found that I especially love them when they're done with holographic polishes: something about all that sparkle transitioning from one color to the other just really works for me. Add in my favorite colors (purple and black) and my favorite polish brands (piCture pOlish and a england), and you've got a gradient I just can't help but adore!

To get this look, I started with a base of piCture pOlish Hussy and then sponged on a gradient using Hussy and a england Bridal Veil with a makeup wedge. It was actually my husband's idea to do the gradient vertically and alternate the color order on each nail, and I really love the effect. It's almost like the gradient runs in both directions at once, which is pretty genius, I think. Thanks, honey!

I would happily wear gradients on my nails all the time, but I know this blog would get pretty boring if I did! However, I do want to sincerely thank the Lacquer Legion ladies for coming up with a great prompt this month that gave me the perfect excuse to put together all the things I love.

See you next month, Lacquer Legion!

Teal the Stags Come Home

This is one of those manicures where I just had no clue what I was going to do until I started doing it. And even then, it was all pretty much just winging it from one nail to the next!

I started with a base of Julep Misti on all my nails and then sponged the gradient onto my pointer, middle and ring fingers with Misti and Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure Jungle Gem. Then I added Formula X for Sephora Blast Off to my thumb and pinky. I was almost prepared to stop there, but the overall look still seemed incomplete, so I added little black studs from the Born Pretty Store to my pointer and middle fingers and the stag silhouette nail tattoo (from Big Ruby) to my ring finger.

There's not much rhyme or reason here, but I like how it all came together! I think these teal shades pair really well with the black.

What do you think—too random, or just right? I'd love to hear from you in the comments!

Thanks for looking!

Stars and Stripes for Sochi

I try not to post two days in a row—I only have time for a few posts per week and I like to spread them out a bit more—but this week is special! So I'm making an exception.

Anyone who's followed me for a while might know that I'm a big hockey fan. I generally follow NHL hockey, but right now there's Olympic hockey happening, too. The US women's team is playing Canada for the gold medal today (as I'm writing this, in fact), and the men's team plays Canada tomorrow morning for a chance to go to the final. So, needless to say, it's a big day for USA hockey, and I couldn't let the opportunity to do some USA hockey–themed nail art pass me by!

When I first started kicking around the idea of doing some USA hockey nail art, I knew from the beginning that more than just doing a red, white, and blue design, I really wanted to capture the three main elements of the jerseys Team USA is wearing in Sochi this year: the crest on the front, the thick red and white armbands, and the shiny stars across the shoulders.

Team USA hockey jersey

Conveniently, all these elements lend themselves really well to nail art!

I'm going to write out all the steps I used in a numbered list to help keep things organized. It may still be somewhat long-winded, though, so if you're not interested in the process, just hit the jump (link below the sharing buttons)/scroll down for more pictures!

Sweet, Sprinkled Skittle

I don't often find myself gravitating toward super girly pinks and pastels, but as soon as I saw piCture pOlish Frosting online, I knew I had to have it. It just looked so sweet and delicious! However, because this color palette isn't my usual thing, I struggled a bit with how to incorporate the polish into a manicure once it arrived. After pulling out lots of polishes and playing with them for a bit, I finally settled on a good ol' skittle mani to highlight the beautiful, creamy base and colorful glitters in Frosting.

My pointer and middle fingers are two coats of Frosting (and a few coats of topcoat to make everything super smooth). It went on really well and I got exactly one heart glitter per hand, which is what I wanted. My ring finger is a gradient of Julep Nellie and China Glaze Spontaneous (applied with a makeup sponge), and my thumb and pinky are Spontaneous stamped with Zoya Marley and plate 03 from the MoYou Fairytale Collection.

Please excuse the slightly botched stamping job on the corner of my thumbnail—the section of the plate I was using wasn't quite big enough, so I patched it as best I could. (My patching skills still need work, ahem. Adding that to the list of stamping stuff I need to improve!)

As is usually the case whenever I do a skittle mani, I have a favorite nail from the group: this time it's the gradient. I just love how perfectly the two colors transition from one to the other!

Here's a closeup of Frosting, just for fun—don't you wish you had a cupcake or cookie that looked like that on top? I know I do!

I'd love to hear what you think of this look—please hit me up in the comments!

Thanks for looking!

Painting the Roses Red

I had a bit of a hard time coming up with (another) Valentine's Day manicure idea that I was really excited about this year. I actually love Valentine's Day—any excuse to pick out a gift for the Mr. and eat chocolate, after all!—but the traditional pink/hearts/sparkles just weren't inspiring me. Eventually I hit upon the idea of focusing on my favorite Valentine's Day flower, roses, and I stumbled upon this look while messing around with my stamping plates and a bunch of different color combinations.

I really wanted red roses on a black background, but I don't have a stamping plate that has an image of the negative space around a rose, and none of my reds stamped well at all on top of black. As a last resort, I stamped on some roses in white onto my black base and then painted over the whole nail with one of my more sheer reds, and—bingo! It worked! Red roses on a background that still looks black.

I used Essie Licorice for my base, and then stamped on the roses using essence white stamping polish and the Messy Mansion MM07 plate. (By the way, everyone probably already knows this, but Messy Mansion plates are amazing—they're really well etched and every single stamp came out perfectly. I can't recommend them highly enough!) Then I added a thin coat of tenoverten Carmine to each nail and sealed everything with topcoat. And once I realized what I was doing, I couldn't help but hum the "Painting the Roses Red" song from Alice in Wonderland to myself the entire time.

I really love how this turned out—the roses looks so deep and rich because of how the stamping is sandwiched between the two colors. I'll definitely be trying this technique again the next time I want to stamp a color onto black! I wish I'd dragged out my light box to shoot a few of the pictures so that the lamp glare wasn't such an issue (the dark colors and extremely shiny finish from the HK Girl top coat I used make the glare especially obvious), but that's my only minor regret here. Lesson learned for next time!

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone!

Adventures in Stamping Post #3: Robots in Love

I have to start this post by saying that I'm incredibly proud of the manicure I have to show you today. I got brave and stepped way, WAY outside my comfort zone for this one, and I'm so pleased with the result!

These cute little robots are from the MoYou Sci Fi Collection Plate 02, which I used to make my own decals. I did a lot of research and watched tons of YouTube videos before attempting this, but in the end, the methods I used are #1 and #2 (as demonstrated by Lucy's Stash in her amazing video tutorials). And I'll be honest: it wasn't as easy for me as she makes it look! I went through a lot of stamping attempts that didn't turn out quite right, and I had a heck of a time getting the finished decals to adhere smoothly to my nails. (Thankfully, my pictures don't really show most of the little air bubbles I accidentally trapped under the decals!). It ended up taking me an entire evening to make six successful decals (three for each hand), but I think it was more than worth it! I wore this manicure for several days and couldn't stop looking at my nails the entire time.

The polishes I used are as follows:

• Zoya Rue for the base
• essence black stamping polish for the stamped outlines
• Zoya Trixie, Zoya Purity, and a-england Rose Bower for the detail on the decals (all painted in with a small detail brush)
• Julep Joelle for the glitter on the accent nails

As I mentioned, putting this manicure together was a really big challenge for me, especially given my overall struggles with stamping. I made sure to go slow and give myself lots of chances to fail/learn from my mistakes, which I think made all the difference for me. I also just had to accept that there would be a few imperfections in the finished look and let go of my frustration over them! So if you're inclined to try making your own decals, my main recommendations are to set aside plenty of time, and don't be afraid to make adjustments and try new things as you go. For example, I learned after applying the first decal that I needed to put down a base of my slowest-drying topcoat first, to give myself plenty of time to get them stuck in the right place before the topcoat dried!

I'm also counting this as a Valentine's Day manicure, because these robots just look so sweet together and I'm convinced they're in love. :)

Anyway, I'd love to hear what you think about making your own decals—hit me up in the comments! Have you tried this before? What worked/didn't work for you? If you haven't tried it, what would you be interested in hearing about/seeing before you do?

Thanks for looking!

Let's Leopard

I've been doing nail art regularly for about eight months now, but there's one classic look I hadn't tried creating until recently: leopard print!

Now that I've leopard print, I can't believe I didn't do it sooner (and I'll definitely be playing with it more in the future)! I used the technique demonstrated by Sarah at Chalkboard Nails in her video tutorial, and it couldn't have been easier! Because the print doesn't have to look perfect or uniform—and, in fact, looks best when it's not either of those things—her method of using a dotting tool to create the spots works really well.

I used Zoya Odette (a shade from their new Naturel Collection) for the base, and then applied Zoya Marley for the light spots and China Glaze Rendezvous With You for the dark accents.

And just because it's such a lovely color and is my hands-down favorite from the Naturel Collection, here are a couple of swatches of Odette on its own. I think I'll be using this as a base for art quite a bit! It's a perfect transition color between winter and spring, in my opinion.

What about you—do you ever do leopard print nail art? What technique(s) and color combos do you like best?

Thanks for looking!

One More Seahawks Manicure

I'm running out the door to a Super Bowl party, but I couldn't leave without posting my final Seahawks manicure of the season. I told myself I wasn't going to do another one this year, because there's already been so much blue/green/grey on this blog and I don't want to turn off any non-football (or Seattle) fans, but I was just too excited about the game to resist. I hope you'll all indulge me one last time!

It's nothing too exciting, but I think it does capture the iconic Seahawks look. I used my usual OPI I Saw...You Saw...We Saw...Warsaw as the blue base, and then added a stripe of Nars Galathee down the middle, with a coat of Zoya Seraphina on top of it to give it some sparkle. Then I used a striping brush and Sephora by OPI It's Totally Karma to add the green accents. Finally, I added some studs from the Born Pretty Store using nail glue and sealed everything with topcoat.

However the game turns out, we're so proud of our team and we can't wait to cheer them on. GO HAWKS!