My Picture Polish!

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Today is a special day: it's My Picture Polish day!

ILNP Holo Water Marble

My small collection of ILNP holo polishes is truly precious to me. They were my first introduction to holos, and it's still a joy to use them whenever I pull one out. I was feeling particularly holo-riffic on a recent sunny afternoon, so I decided to go FULL HOLO MANIA and spend a couple of hours creating an all-ILNP-holo water marble that would really sparkle in all that sun. (Have I said "holo" in this paragraph enough yet?)

Double Gradient Leopard Print Nail Art

I'm making an effort to force myself away from my comfort zone of stamping, so I'm turning to some tried and true nail art techniques for inspiration. Up this week: the gradient leopard print!

Tri-Holo Lined Gradient Nail Art

Surprise—another stamping manicure! I swear I'm going to push myself to branch out a bit more in the coming weeks, but I just couldn't resist this one.

Bright & Sparkly Stamped Gradient Nails

Gradients and stamping: they're my go-to techniques when I'm short on inspiration. So on those days when I'm feeling doubly uninspired, a stamped gradient must be the way to go, right? Right!

Purple Snowflake Stamping

Snowflakes are a staple of winter/holiday nail art. I think just about everyone loves snowflakes—even me, and I hate snow! When I was thinking about my own contribution to the huge collection of snowflake nail art I've seen online, however, I decided that I wanted to put a new spin on this classic holiday look.

Stitched Gradient Nail Art

Happy November! I can't believe how fast the year is flying by. It's already well into sweater weather where I live, so I decided to embrace the cold temperatures and rock the cozy sweater look on my nails, too.

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.

Stamped Holo Hexagon Nail Art

It's been a while since I've done a full-on stamped manicure. Like, a very long while. I'd like to say that I was just in the mood for other things, but that's only partially true: I also became kind of disillusioned with my plateaued stamping success. I've talked before about making an effort to improve my stamping skills, but I eventually reached a point where even when I tried my best, I just never felt like I could quite get the results I really wanted.

Well, I'm happy to report that there's been a new development: I have some new tools that are finally helping my stamping efforts be successful and, more importantly, fun.

piCture pOlish Blog/Insta Fest 2014

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I'm beyond excited to be sharing today's post: it's piCture pOlish's Blog/Insta Fest day, and I have the great honor of participating this year!

If you haven't heard of the Blog/Insta Fest before, it's a yearly event sponsored by Australian nail polish brand piCture pOlish where selected bloggers share swatches and nail art featuring the company's amazing products. And, this year, we're all featuring Nail Vinyls, too!

This is a long and picture-heavy post, so all the details are behind the cut. Please read on to see my contributions to this year's fest!

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!

Teal the Stars Come Out

This manicure happened because I'm still obsessed with my new Pahlish polishes and I couldn't get this purple & teal color combo out of my brain. Simple as that!

Taboo Dreams... Come True!

Today I'd like to talk about dream polishes.

Everyone has them, right? The polishes (and/or brands) that you admire from afar and fantasize about owning one day, but that remain frustratingly out of reach because they're discontinued, from another country, too expensive, etc. For me, this dream polish has always been anything Chanel—and, more specifically, Chanel Taboo. Everyone raves about Chanel polish and I've coveted Taboo forever, but because that one little bottle costs what I'd normally spend on two or three of another brand, I could never quite justify buying it for myself. 

Thankfully, however, my birthday rolled around recently, and because I have very cool parents who are kind enough to indulge my nail obsession, I received an awesome gift from them: my dream polish! 

Saved by the '80s

After falling in love with one polish from the Deborah Lippmann '80s line, I just had to go back and pick up a couple more of the colors from it. And since these polishes really put me in an '80s state of mind, it only made sense to reach for my MoYou London Back to the '80s stamping plate when the time came to try them out.

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!

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.

Cyberpunky Holo Stamping

I have a confession to make: I think I'm addicted to holo gradients. I don't know what it is... I've been kind of unenthused about holo polishes in general lately—they're pretty, yes, but they're everywhere, so they just don't excite me too much anymore. But take two or more and sponge them together into a gradient? Oh man, I am so on board for that every single time!

Soothing Springtime Waterfall

I was having a rough day recently, so I decided to do some nail art that I knew I'd enjoy creating and that would just make me happy whenever I looked at it.

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!

Springy Stained Glass

The polishes I preordered from the ILNP spring collection arrived recently, and they were all so gorgeous that I just had to do some nail art featuring them all together. They reminded me of beautiful, shiny stained glass all lined up on my table, so that's exactly what I decided to do with them: try my hand at some stained glass nails!

I took my inspiration for this manicure from Will Paint Nails For Food. She's done quite a few beautiful stained glass looks that I've always admired, so I checked out this tutorial to help guide my efforts. I did do things a little differently, however: I had some black acrylic paint on hand, so I used that instead of black polish for the lines. I liked how easy it was to apply and get dark, even coverage, so I will probably reach for the paint again if & when I do this kind of look in the future. I do wish my lines were thinner and less heavy, because I think the stark contrast with the delicate colors I used is probably a bit much, but I'm happy with the results overall. Not too bad for my first try!

As I mentioned, the colors I used are all from the new ILNP spring collection, which I think officially launches today:

• Kings & Queens
• Princeton
• Dreaming in Violet
• MEGA

I also used Kings & Queens and Dreaming in Violet to do a quick gradient on the fingers without the stained glass, but the result was super subtle! You may not even really be able to see it very well in the pictures. But I do think it added some nice depth to the color on those nails and helped them look less plain compared with the stained glass.

Of the four colors I picked up, I think Kings & Queens is my favorite—I'm a sucker for the deep, gorgeous berry color combined with the holo finish.

What do you think of these polishes? Are you planning to pick up anything from ILNP's spring collection?

Thanks for looking!