Today is a special day: it's My Picture Polish day!
Showing posts with label orange. Show all posts
Showing posts with label orange. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 19, 2015
Monday, July 6, 2015
Golden Coral Gradient Nails
I don't really have any excuses about how long it's been since I've posted here. I'm not quite sure what happened! I've been distracted with other things for the last month, but I have still been doing nail art when I can; for some reason, sitting down to actually focus and write a blog post is the part of the process that's been eluding me. Can I blame it on the sunshine and my backlog of novels that I've been devouring?
Anyway! On to the nail art. Today I have some simple but very summery gradient nails to share. I ended up with this look recently when an initial nail art plan didn't pan out and I needed to come up with a plan B to cover the mistakes I'd already made. I never would have thought I'd end up liking a peachy-orange & gold design so much, since I usually don't like orange or gold, but I really fell in love with this as I wore it.
Anyway! On to the nail art. Today I have some simple but very summery gradient nails to share. I ended up with this look recently when an initial nail art plan didn't pan out and I needed to come up with a plan B to cover the mistakes I'd already made. I never would have thought I'd end up liking a peachy-orange & gold design so much, since I usually don't like orange or gold, but I really fell in love with this as I wore it.
Tuesday, August 19, 2014
Purple & Orange Sparkly Striped Nail Art
I guess I need to accept that purple & orange is a color combo I'm really growing to love. I never would have guessed this could happen, given my lifelong aversion to orange, but here we are! I paired purple & orange (and teal) for my braided manicure a while ago, and now I'm back on the purple & orange train again. I just can't get enough!
Friday, August 1, 2014
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.
Monday, June 30, 2014
The Lacquer Legion: On Holiday - A Familiar View
It's another Lacquer Legion day! I get so excited for the end of the month now—I just love participating in this group.
The LL mods chose "On Holiday" as this month's theme, and I have to say, this one was equal parts fun and challenging for me. I knew early on what I wanted to do and was excited to try, but I also knew that it would be difficult, so I spent most of the month psyching myself up for it.
The LL mods chose "On Holiday" as this month's theme, and I have to say, this one was equal parts fun and challenging for me. I knew early on what I wanted to do and was excited to try, but I also knew that it would be difficult, so I spent most of the month psyching myself up for it.
Friday, May 23, 2014
A Galaxy Far, Far Away (From What I Intended)...
Yes, I went there with the Star Wars pun. Sorry, not sorry. :)
My galaxy nails never turn out how I expect them to. I don't know if it's something about my technique, or just a weird short circuit in my head somewhere between idea and execution, but I always start with a very specific vision for my galaxy manicures and then... end up with something completely different when I'm all finished. Today's look is no exception!
My galaxy nails never turn out how I expect them to. I don't know if it's something about my technique, or just a weird short circuit in my head somewhere between idea and execution, but I always start with a very specific vision for my galaxy manicures and then... end up with something completely different when I'm all finished. Today's look is no exception!
Monday, May 19, 2014
Journeying Into Orange
I'll admit it: I always thought I hated orange. I know yellow doesn't suit my skin tone at all, and since orange is right there next to yellow on the color spectrum, my assumption has always been that orange is a bad color for me, too. I have no orange clothing or accessories, and only about four bottles of orange (or at least, orange-ish) nail polish that hardly see any use. So needless to say, when I was browsing through Sephora recently and found myself inexplicably drawn to the bright orange shade in Deborah Lippmann's 80's Rewind* collection, I was a teensy bit shocked. "Why am I even buying this polish?!" I asked my husband. "I hate orange!"
*Someone at Deborah Lippmann really needed to consult an editor when creating this collection, because the name should be written as '80s Rewind, not 80's Rewind. Call me, DL!
Monday, January 27, 2014
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!
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!
Sunday, September 15, 2013
31DC2013 Day 2: Orange Nails
I've been so busy lately that I haven't had any time to queue up posts—and, I have to admit, I haven't been super excited about days 2 and 3 of the 31 Day Challenge. Orange is one of my least favorite colors (second only to yellow!), so I had a hard time coming up with something I liked okay that featured orange prominently. I know that's the whole point of the challenge, however, so here we go!
When thinking about orange as an inspiration, I kept thinking about blood oranges, so that's what was in my head when I did this manicure: the vibrant orange of the rinds and the ruby red fruit inside.
The base color here is China Glaze Jamaican Out and the bloody red tips are Zoya Blaze. After the base color dried, I used a nail art brush to roughly outline the wavy edges of the accent color and then filled them in with the brush from the polish bottle. The color palette here still isn't my favorite, but I do like the way this kind of looks like I had a plain orange manicure and then started digging into the juicy insides of a blood orange. Also, Blaze is a really gorgeous, sparkly polish and my camera didn't really do it justice here.
When thinking about orange as an inspiration, I kept thinking about blood oranges, so that's what was in my head when I did this manicure: the vibrant orange of the rinds and the ruby red fruit inside.
The base color here is China Glaze Jamaican Out and the bloody red tips are Zoya Blaze. After the base color dried, I used a nail art brush to roughly outline the wavy edges of the accent color and then filled them in with the brush from the polish bottle. The color palette here still isn't my favorite, but I do like the way this kind of looks like I had a plain orange manicure and then started digging into the juicy insides of a blood orange. Also, Blaze is a really gorgeous, sparkly polish and my camera didn't really do it justice here.