Misty Green-Grey Halloween Nails

Happy (early) Halloween, everyone! Halloween is one of my favorite holidays, so even though I've been super busy with work and vacation and then getting sick at the end of it all, I couldn't let the occasion pass without posting some seasonally appropriate nails here.

Black & Silver Spotty Stamping

I set out recently to find a blue polish that matched a specific shirt I have, and when I saw Butter London Giddy Kipper, I knew immediately that it was the perfect choice.

Born Pretty Store Stamp & Glitter Review and Nail Art

*press samples*

Born Pretty Store is an amazing nail art resource and one of my favorite online shops, so I'm really excited to be able to review some of their products for you today. I couldn't remotely fit everything into one post, so expect to see another Born Pretty review post from me soon!

Now that I have my stamping mojo well in hand, I was especially interested to review some of Born Pretty Store's stamping plates. You can never have too many good sources for plates, right? BPS has also started offering plates with larger, full-nail images, which is very exciting for those of us with longer/wider nails.

And since Born Pretty Store is the place to go for all kinds of nail art supplies, I wanted to highlight that in my review by adding another element to what would otherwise be a typical stamping manicure.

Guest Post at My Life in Turquoise

I'm so excited: my very first guest post is officially live! Please go check out today's post at My Life in Turquoise for my holiday take on turquoise stone nails.

And thank you again, Hetal, for inviting me—I had so much fun with it!

Black and Grey Curly Checkerboard Nail Art

I'm on such a stamping kick lately! I'm still enjoying my Messy Mansion stamper heads so much that I feel like I'm rediscovering all the awesome plates I have. And in the case of this look, I finally got to use a polish I'd coveted forever (surprise, surprise—it's grey!), so I'm especially pleased to share today's post.

Black and Grey Half-Diamond Nail Art

As I mentioned in my Louboutin polish review post, I couldn't resist adding a little nail art to the lovely grey base of Daffodile. I decided to go with some relatively simple diamond half-moons (half-diamonds?), and the end result was probably one of my favorite manicures that I've done so far.

Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright Nail Art

As I've let slip on this blog a few times, I'm actually pretty geeky in my everyday life. I love comic books, board games, video games, and... well, really just a whole lot of geeky things. These loves don't find their way into my nail art too terribly often for a variety of reasons, but today is an exception: this manicure honors something I anticipated for years and have been happily immersed in for the last few weeks.

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.

Boom Goes the Blue

This is yet another one of those manicures that turned out very differently from what I was picturing, but that I ended up liking a lot anyway. That feels like the story of my life on this blog sometimes! Must be the "amateur" part of Amateur Manicure...

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.

Purple Turquoise Stone Nails

I've always been really intimidated by water marbling. I tried it once—sort of—several months ago, but it didn't go well at all and I've generally tried to avoid thinking too much about the technique since then. Because, honestly: a big mess AND nails that look crappy at the end? No thanks!

However, when I saw (and absolutely fell in love with) these turquoise stone nails by Lacquerstyle recently and discovered they were done with a simpler version of water marbling, I decided it was time to bite the bullet and brave using water in a manicure once again.

The Lacquer Legion: Glam

I think "glam" is one of those concepts that means drastically different things to different people. For me, I feel like it generally means something along the lines of "fancy, yet classy," so that's the concept I decided to go with for this month's prompt from The Lacquer Legion.

Red and Black Book Binding Nail Art

I have just about zero time for a post today (I'm running late for work as I write this!), but I still wanted to put up this red & black stamping/tape manicure before the weekend. I'm not really sure how or why I came up with the idea, other than I was just in a red & black mood (as I often am), but my husband said it reminded him of a fancy book binding. I thought that seemed strange at first, but after scrolling through these image search results, I think I see where he's coming from! So now I can't help but think of this as the book binding manicure.

OPI Sheer Tinted Stamping

As soon as I saw the press release for the OPI Sheer Tints line, I knew exactly what I wanted to do with these unique polishes. I've seen people execute all kinds of creative looks with them, but what I really wanted to try was painting them over some white-on-black stamping—i.e., the same technique I used for my Painting the Roses Red Valentine's Day manicure.

Much to my delight, it worked fabulously!

Mini Matte Mani

Mini Matte Mani... it almost sounds like a long-lost Latin phrase, doesn't it? Or maybe that's just my many years of Latin classes warping my brain...? It's hard to say. :)

Anyway, I digress! I wasn't sure whether I wanted to post this manicure because I still don't know how I feel about it, but as a friend so kindly reminded me when I whined to her, I did learn a few things from the experience. So, I think that alone makes this worth sharing. Thanks, L!

The idea for this look came from a somewhat random place: I was driving home from work one day and saw a Mini Cooper painted this way. I was really drawn to the color combo and the off-center stripes, and I knew I had just the right colors in my polish stash, so I decided to go ahead and recreate the paint job on my nails that very evening.

Michael Kors Resort 2014 Nails (Part 2)

Nail art inspired by fashion is one of my absolute favorite things—both to see others do, and to do myself. I did a fashion-inspired look once before, when my blog was still living exclusively on tumblr (and I was still learning how to take decent pictures, eep!), but as it turns out, I guess I wasn't quite finished exploring the possibilities of the Michael Kors Resort 2014 collection. I still might not be, to tell the truth!

All the color blocking, clean lines, and excellent use of patterns in this collection really inspire me and make me want to recreate every single look on my nails. I also adore the colors in this particular look: so smart and classic, but fresh and interesting at the same time. I thought about recreating the whole dress on each nail, but I ultimately decided things would look too cramped and cluttered that way—not at all in the spirit of the collection.

Creating this look was pretty straightforward: I started with a base of Zoya Purity on my pointer and middle fingers, and a base of FNUG Cashmere Sweater on the rest of my fingers. Then I used a dotting tool and Cashmere Sweater & Essie Licorice to add the leopard print pattern to the white nails, as demonstrated in this Chalkboard Nails tutorial. Finally, I taped off the remaining nails and added Licorice to the tips. Everything is finished with a couple coats of topcoat.

I wore these nails for several days, but I still wish I could have worn them longer. I guess that just means I really do need to do another manicure inspired by this collection in the future!

What do you think of nails inspired by fashion? Do you have a favorite designer whose looks you like to see recreated?

Thanks for looking!

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!

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!

The Lacquer Legion: Reinvention

Today is the first posting day for a new nail art challenge: The Lacquer Legion! This awesome idea was put together by the very talented ladies at Chalkboard Nails, The Nailasaurus, Work/Play/Polish, and Rebecca Likes Nails, and the idea is that people from around the nail art community all post manicures fitting a particular theme on the same day and tag them so that they can be viewed across a variety of platforms. I thought this sounded like a lot of fun, and a once-a-month challenge is definitely doable for me, so I decided to put together a contribution of my own.

The first theme they chose was reinvention. I spent a lot of time thinking about this and all the different ways it might be interpreted, but I kept coming back to the idea of a phoenix. The whole death/rebirth in fire thing just seems like a quintessential form of reinvention to me! Also, I knew that a fire-themed look was going to require pulling off some fairly involved nail art—involved for a non-artist like me, anyway!—so I feel like taking the plunge and attempting something like this symbolizes reinventing myself as someone who can be a little brave and try something outside my comfort zone occasionally.

In the end, I went with a stamp/freehand hybrid technique to make my fire and phoenix come to life. I started with a base of Sephora by OPI Never Enough Shoes on all my nails, and then stamped an image of flames from the Messy Mansion MM27 plate using white stamping polish from the Born Pretty Store. Then, using a small detail brush, I added color to the flames on top of the white using Julep Nadia, Julep Marjorie, Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure Red My Lips, and Julep Brenda, in that order.

I mentioned that this manicure was outside my comfort zone, but that's probably a bit of an understatement! Between the stamping and freehanding the colors, I felt very, very challenged by all the techniques I used here. Overall, it didn't turn out quite as neatly as I'd have liked, but from a normal viewing distance it looks okay, so I'm focusing on that. And, more importantly, I came up with an idea and found a way to execute it, which definitely makes me proud!

Thanks for looking, and thank you to the wonderful bloggers who came up with this idea. I can't wait to see what you have in store for us next month!