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!

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!

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!

A Taste of Gold

For the second day of my red-themed week, I'd like the show you the manicure I wore to my big office holiday party this year.

This is piCture pOlish Vampire with Julep Gianna applied on the tips. This manicure was SO simple, but amazingly well received! I had people commenting on it left and right. Someone even told me she was getting married on Christmas Day and wanted to recreate this look for her wedding, which is just about the best compliment ever, I think.

This is two coats of Vampire and I just dabbed/placed the gold with the brush from the bottle. A generous coat of topcoat helped smooth out everything.

I also have to add a note about Vampire here: what an amazing polish! It was incredibly easy to work with and really just went on perfectly. It also wore very well and looked beautiful for days. I really need to get more bottles of piCture pOlish in my collection!

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!

Scarlet & Silver Half Moons

I know I should be continuing with the 31 Day Challenge if I want to have any shot of getting through it before the end of the year, but I ran across this Nailasaurus post the other day and was reminded of how much I love this look, so I just couldn't resist doing my own version of it.

I pretty much followed Sammy's technique exactly: I started with a base of Nail Envy and let that dry, and then applied hole reinforcers to my cuticles one at a time before adding a coat of Julep Aisha and removing them right away. Then I decided to add some topcoat before continuing (butter LONDON Hardware P.D. Quick top coat, in this case), just to make things easier on myself.

Once all that dried a bit, I used a small nail art brush to add the silver lines using Zoya Trixie. My accent lines turned out quite a bit thicker/wider than I'd originally planned, but I'm still happy with them! I kind of like that the silver is very noticeable, actually.

 I'd love to hear what people think—did I do this look justice at all? Do you like silver accents better, or gold?

Thanks for reading!

Nail Art: Galaxy Nails Attempt #1

I've seen a TON of different takes on galaxy nails recently, and the concept seemed easy enough, so on a day when I had a dark base color already pre-applied and ready to go, I decided to give it a shot.