The Lacquer Legion Crisp: Striking Striped Nails

After missing the last couple months of The Lacquer Legion, I'm back to join the fun for today's prompt, "crisp." I'm so glad to be getting back into the swing of things with my nail art—I really missed The Lacquer Legion in particular!

Happy as I am to be back at it, however, I'll admit that I had a bit of a hard time with this theme. For the longest time, I could really only think of crisp apples or fall leaves, and I wasn't feeling quite confident enough in my freehanding skills to go that route. In the end, I decided to embrace the idea of crisp, clean lines and just go nuts with some colors that inspired me.

Black and White and Blue All Over Splatter Nail Art

I definitely didn't intend to take such a long break from blogging, but between vacation and being sick afterward (isn't that always how it goes?), I've had almost no time or energy lately to even paint my nails, let alone blog about them. So, my apologies for my absence—but I'm finally back today with some new nails to share!

Mod is the New Black

A handful of weeks ago, I entered a giveaway on Instagram to win one of Shine & Sheen's awesome nail art kits. There were tons of entries, but amazingly, I won! (Thank you, Shine & Sheen and Life is Better Polished, for holding such a great giveaway!) I couldn't believe my luck—but even amid all the excitement of winning, I knew right away which kit I wanted to try when they contacted me: the Mad for Mod kit.

A Walk Around the Color Block

My husband and I were out doing some outlet mall shopping recently, and as we breezed through the Kenneth Cole outlet, this mixed-pattern blouse caught my eye. As you may have already guessed, I always love a good mix of color blocking and patterns—and this combo in particular was so striking to me that started recreating a version of it on my nails almost as soon as we walked in the door at home.

Nailed It! Nail Wraps Review and Giveaway

As the title of this post so slyly hints, I have a couple of exciting things to share today: a product review and a giveaway! (You're shocked and amazed, I know.)

Like a lot of geeky nail art lovers, I was super extremely excited last summer when Espionage Cosmetics launched their "NAILED IT!" Kickstarter for geek-themed nail wraps. I mean, geek-themed nail wraps! That basically has my name written all over it! I supported the project within the first few days, and then gradually kept increasing my pledge as they released more designs and I got more and more excited... and then suddenly, when the funding period ended and all the stretch rewards were tallied, I had a lot of nail wraps coming my way. Like, a lot a lot. Like, way more nail wraps than one human could ever hope to use. I gifted some to friends and family who were interested in sporting geeky nails, but I still had so many left that now I'm sharing some with you, my lovely readers, too.

First, however: my review!

A Little Spotty

I've been incredibly short on time for writing posts lately, but I've still been doing my nails! So, rather than wait until I have more time to write up something longer, I thought I'd go ahead share this quick Cruella de Vil–esque manicure that I did recently. Very little explanation required!

31DC2013 Day 7: Black & White Nails

I didn't mean to completely copy someone else's manicure for day 7 of the challenge, but I accidentally did! I wanted to try some waterfall nails, made famous by Sammy over at The Nailasaurus, and I decided to do them in black and white, over a grey base. Well, after I finished the manicure, I went to have a look at all of Sammy's waterfall looks and realized that she did a monochrome waterfall, too—a couple of months ago. Oops! I guess that makes this an homage to her lovely work.

Even if I'm an accidental copycat, I really like how this turned out and I'm definitely going to be doing more waterfall manis in the future. I started with a base of Nars Galathee and then used the brush side of the Nubar nail art "pens" in basic white and black to create the waterfall. (I also used Zoya Trixie and a striping brush to add some silvery accents to the waterfall.) This could've all been done with regular polish and a striping brush, and I'll probably do it that way next time, but I'd just picked up the Nubar pens and wanted to try them out.

How about you guys—have you tried any waterfall manis yet?

Thanks for reading!

Nail Art: Black & White & Pink All Over

My apologies for putting up two very PINK posts in a row, but this one builds on my swatch from last time, so it just made sense to do it this way. The next post will be very much the opposite of pink, I promise!

The day after I swatched Shocking by Marc Jacobs, I wanted to dress up my nails a bit more for an out-of-town event I was going to, but I had almost zero time to pull together something elaborate. So I grabbed a few coordinating supplies from my stash and came up with this: