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.

Tales from the Borderlands Nails: Rhys

I'm afraid you're all going to have to humor me here, because this is probably another one of those manicures that most people are just going to find totally strange. My apologies if that's the case!

One of my big obsessions right now is the video game Tales from the Borderlands. It's a short little narrative adventure game by Telltale Games (they do lots of great stuff if you like stories more than shooting—check them out!) that I played a couple of weeks ago and completely fell in love with. It's gorgeous, funny, and full of complex characters that you can't help but adore.

Right after I played the four (out of five) chapters that have been released so far, it was time for me to head to PAX Prime, a huge video game convention in Seattle. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to honor my current favorite game on my nails, so I decided to recreate the outfit of one of the main characters, Rhys, with nail polish.

Nail Art: A Pluto Perspective

All the excitement about Pluto recently inspired me to try something space-related on my nails. Galaxy designs are fun and I've done a couple of them, but I wanted to do something new this time. After some brainstorming (and perusing lots of NASA's new high-res pictures of Pluto), I decided: what about trying to recreate the surface of a planet on my nails?

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.

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.

Christian Louboutin Daffodile Swatches and Review

At the urging of my nail polish enabler husband (he's the best!), I recently picked up a bottle of the Christian Louboutin nail polish I've been seeing all over the Internet lately. It felt a little reckless to spend THAT MUCH on a single bottle of polish, but after trying it out, I have to say: I really do think it's worth the splurge if you're in the market for a special treat.

Pink & Grey Speckled Stripes

Today's look is pretty simple (and I've got a bit of a family emergency happening this week, unfortunately) so I'll be keeping this post short and sweet. I hope to be back to my usual, long-winded self soon!

Purrfectly Grey

I know, I know... that title is the oldest cat pun in the book—I'm so uncreative today! I hope everyone will forgive me, though: things at work have been really busy for me lately, so I haven't had much time to work on super intricate nail art (OR come up with clever post titles). But I did manage to do this happy little kitty manicure recently that I wanted to share, dumb title notwithstanding!

Muppets Most Wanted Nail Art

Like every true '80s child, I love the Muppets. I grew up watching reruns of The Muppet Show (I'm just a little too young to have seen the original airings, but not by much!), and even now, I always get excited when a new Muppet movie gets released. So when I started seeing trailers for the upcoming "Muppets Most Wanted" movie, I knew I had to do some nail art to celebrate the occasion.

At first glance, I know this may not seem like the most Muppet-y manicure ever, but bear with me! I'm not really enough of an artist yet to hand-paint cute little Muppet faces on my nails, so I decided to match the characters' outfits (and the movie's logo, in Kermit's case) in this image instead:

Wallpaper by stuartreeves.com and characters ©Disney

I really admire other nail artists' abilities to do super detailed, hand-painted nail art for movies and other events, but I know I'm just not quite there yet. So my goal with this design was to capture the fun, colorful look & feel of the movie using techniques that are generally pretty doable for someone without a lot of amazing art skills (like me!). I feel like I succeeded—at least, I hope I did!

Read on for more details and lots more pictures!

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!

12th Man Waterfall

The whole city of Seattle is super excited about the Seahawks' playoff run right now—me included! So I decided to try out a waterfall mani (a technique invented and made famous by The Nailasaurus) in Seahawks colors to match my 12th Man jersey and help celebrate the playoff spirit.

This was my first time trying a waterfall look on top of a dark base color, so I had no idea what to expect or whether it would even work, but it turned out great! I think waterfalls are really perfect for showing off your team colors because they're genuinely fun and easy to do, and they look impressive paired with a matching jersey or other accessories.

I used OPI I Saw...You Saw...We Saw...Warsaw for my base color, and the stripes were created with four different polishes:

• Nars Galathee
• FNUG Bandana
• Sephora by OPI It's Totally Karma
• Zoya Rikki

Galathee, It's Totally Karma, and I Saw...You Saw...We Saw...Warsaw are pretty much my go-to polishes when I want to do something Seahawks-themed. Bandana and Rikki were new additions this time, but I love the extra depth and sparkle that they add to the group.

What do you think—do you like the idea of using team colors in waterfall manis? What team's colors would make the BEST waterfall?

Thanks for looking! GO HAWKS!

Black & Grey Moody Mani

I was in a bit of a mood when I did this manicure—a cranky mood, as you can probably guess from the motif! But in spite of that, I really like how this turned out. I wear black and grey at work almost exclusively, so this matched with my daily attire really well.

The black is Julep Cleopatra, which has a very cool latex finish before you apply the topcoat—I definitely plan on wearing it without at some point. (It's super gorgeous with the topcoat, too, however!) The grey on my ring finger is FNUG Flat Boots, and it's topped with a nail tattoo from the Big Ruby His collection.

If I could go back in time, I would probably put the skull and crossbones on facing the other way: they were right-side-up for me, but upside-down in all the pictures! But other than that, this is a very "me" mani and it actually ended up improving my bad mood. Go figure!

Seattle Seahawks Nail Art

We're big Seattle Seahawks fans in my house, so when they played their big Monday night game recently, I decided to do some crazy Seahawks-themed nail art to celebrate (and to match my jersey!).

As you can see, I couldn't decide exactly what kind of look I really wanted, so I did a little bit of everything. I started with a base of Nars Galathee on my thumb, middle finger, and pinky, and then a base of Sephora by OPI It's Totally Karma on the other two fingers. Then I used striping tape on my middle and ring fingers before adding a coat of OPI I Saw...You Saw...We Saw...Warsaw and peeling the tape off. I applied the blue hex glitters (from the Born Pretty Store) to my pinky using a toothpick and clear nail polish, and a coat of ILNP Matthew Peri finished off my pointer finger. Finally, I applied the Seahawks helmet waterslide decal from Nail Country Decals to my thumb and finished everything off with a couple coats of topcoat.

After wearing this mani for a full week (butter LONDON P.D. Quick Topcoat does not mess around!), I decided that the design on my ring finger—the navy blue with the bright green stripes—is probably my favorite. The two colors together in a pinstripe just look really sharp, I think. What about you—which nail do you like best out of this random assortment?

Anyway, thanks for reading! Go Seahawks!!

31DC2013 Day 8: Metallic Nails

I was really stumped when it came to putting together a metallic nails look—and I'm not even sure why! I have plenty of metallic polishes that I love. As a result, I went through a couple of different manis before I finally settled on one that I liked well enough to wear and post here.

My brain kept circling back around to the idea of diamond plate when I tried to think of "metallic" ideas, so after trying some other things, I decided to just give in and attempt a diamond plate look. I started with a base of Zoya Claudine on all my nails, and then on my thumb and ring finger I used Zoya Trixie and a small nail art brush to freehand a diamond plate pattern. Then I used some nail glue to attach diamond-shaped silver studs from the Born Pretty Store to my other fingers.

Looking at these pictures, I just realized that I've now done two monochrome manicures in a row—sorry about that! I promise I'll include some actual colors next time. :)

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: FNUG Color Blocking Trio

I have a lot of neutral polish colors, but I always seem to get distracted by other, brighter colors and forget to use them! So I decided to use multiple neutrals all at once and really make an effort to feature them in this manicure.

Nail Art: Pink Tips and Studs

I'm often pretty busy with work, chores, etc., so it's not unusual for one nail art look to take me a couple of days to complete. I'll start by applying a base color one day, and then a day or two later, I'll go back and incorporate some fun details when I have another small chunk of time. That's what happened here: I started with the base color from my previous post and then added to it the next day. It's actually a really great way to approach nail art, if you have the patience for it, because you don't need to be nearly as careful about messing up your base color when it's had a day or more to fully set up.

Swatch: Galithée by NARS

For my first real post here, I thought I'd start things off simply with a little swatching action!