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?)

piCture pOlish Fool's Gold Swatches and Review

*press samples*

I don't do straight-up swatch posts too often, so when I do, you know they're going to be pretty special! Today's swatches feature a polish collaboratively designed by one of my favorite brands and one of my favorite nail bloggers—that's about as special as it gets, in my book.

Teal Butterfly Wing Nail Art

I see butterfly wing nail art everywhere and always admire it, so one day recently when I was in the mood to spend a good chunk of time on a design, I finally gave it a try. This is by no means breaking new ground here, but I did at least attempt to go with a color palette I personally hadn't seen before!

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!

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.

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!

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!

Adventures in Stamping Post #1: New Year, New Strategies

One of my major nail art goals for the new year is to get better at stamping. I adore how a well done stamping job looks, and I've accumulated some amazing image plates since I started getting into nail art, but the truth is, I'm pretty terrible at the actual stamping. I don't know what it is—my long, curvy nail beds, or a technique issue, or (most likely) a little bit of both—but I can't tell you how many times I've psyched myself up to do a stamping manicure, only to have it end in a frustrated tirade and nails that have to be completely redone. It makes me a little nuts!

I'm determined to beat this, however, so I've come up with some steps/guidelines for myself to get more practice with stamping and find what works best for me. And since I know other people also struggle with stamping sometimes, I thought I'd share my process here and go into some more detail than usual about what is/isn't working for me. I hope that in a few months, I'll be writing a post about my improved stamping skills!

Anyway, here are the strategies I'll be using to practice my skills while trying to preserve my sanity:

1. Use polishes that I know are stamping-friendly.
2. Only stamp a few nails at one time.
3. Try new stamps/tools.
4. Study and experiment with new stamping techniques.
5. Don't give up!

These all probably seem like common sense on some level, but it always helps me to have a game plan written down! I know it definitely helped me when planning the purple & teal manicure I'm sharing here today.

For this look, I focused on strategies 1 and 2. First, I chose a stamping polish that I knew would work well: a-england Lady of the Lake. Holos and metallic polishes just seem to work best for me—even better than the actual Konad stamping polishes I have, for whatever reason—so I went right for the holos when I started this manicure. (I think the holographic particles just sit well in the grooves of the stamping plate, and they seem less prone to smearing or squashing when you're doing the actual stamping? I'm not sure why—if anyone knows the scientific reason, I'd love to hear it!)

After choosing my stamping polish and getting the base color & stamping plate ready to go (Serum No. 5 A Cup of Teal and Vivid Lacquer's VL022 plate, respectively), I gave myself permission to only stamp two nails on each hand. Even further, I made a deal with myself and decided if I could at least get two nails stamped on the hand I'd be photographing, I could live with that! This seemed to take some of the pressure off (because at most, I'd just be redoing two nails if things went haywire), and all the stamps on both hands turned out really well the first time. I was so excited that I immediately tracked down my husband and made him admire my work!

Once the stamping and victory dancing were both out of the way, I applied two coats of Lady of the Lake on my remaining three nails. I also added one coat of ILNP A Nice Chianti to my pinky and thumb to warm the whole look up a bit and add some depth.

Overall, I'm really pleased with how this looked turned out and how well my stamping strategies served me. Expect to see more stamping manicures here in the near future! If you have any additional tips or tricks I should be considering, I'd love to hear them. Thanks for looking!

Teal & Turtle

I feel like I need to preface this post with a note about the colors in the photographs here: I'm really not happy with them! My camera seemed to hate this mani, no matter what I did to try to correct things. So, my apologies!

I ordered some Hex Nail Charms a while back but hadn't used them yet, so when I sat down recently to finally remedy that situation, I wanted to do something easy that also matched well with one of the charms. The turtle charm, in particular, was calling to me, so I decided to do a blue and teal saran wrap mani that reminded me of beautiful, clear waters where turtles might be found.

I started with a base of Zoya Zuza (love that name!) and let that dry, and then one nail at a time, I added a coat of Zoya Tart and dabbed the surface of each nail with a wadded up ball of saran wrap. Pretty easy! After adding some top coat and letting everything dry, I added the turtle charm with some nail glue. It stayed put perfectly until I was ready to remove it a few days later!

31DC2013 Day 3: Yellow Nails

I mentioned it last time, and I'll say it again now in the interest of full disclosure: I really don't like yellow. I think other people can look amazing wearing it, and I've seen it used brilliantly in professional decor, but I usually go to great lengths to avoid having it in my own wardrobe or decorations. I just think it looks terrible with my skin! But just for the 31 Day Challenge, I made a point of going out to find a yellow polish I could stand to have on my nails for any length of time. In the end, the winner was butter LONDON Jasper, and the manicure I came up with was... well, interesting:

My husband said it reminded him of a cartoon turtle or dinosaur, and honestly, I think that's a pretty fair assessment. After I got the base of Jasper applied and dried (and it covered beautifully, as you can see, especially for a light colored polish), I added butter LONDON Slapper to the tips using striping tape and to the cuticle line using a dotting tool. The overall effect is definitely not a subtle one! If I had it to do over I'd probably leave off the dots, or maybe do something different at the cuticle, but... oh well. What're you gonna do. :) I'm glad to have Jasper in my collection now, though, for those rare occasions when I need a nice, soft yellow. I may even use it again in another 31DC manicure this year—I have a few ideas already!

Another note about this manicure: since I knew I wouldn't be wearing it for very long, I topped it with Seche Vite to get it dry as fast as possible. And while it did dry super quick, I ended up having the same problem I always do with Seche Vite: within a few hours of these pictures being taken, my polish started severely shrinking up away from the edges! I'm so envious of people who don't have this problem with the Seche Vite top coat because if it weren't for that issue, I would use it all the time.

Nail Art: Blue-Teal Gradient

Gradients are one of my very favorite nail art looks: when done well, they're so impressive! I'm still trying to perfect my own technique (fully blending the colors is my biggest challenge), but I'm reasonably happy with how my first three-color gradient turned out.