I had guests!

Wow, time flies when you're on vacation! Two of my nieces & my nephew came to stay last weekend, and the girls and I played with polish, naturally! Here are Charlene's nails:

She painted all her nails with Wet n Wild Rain Check, which was pretty sheer, it took several coats for her to get it opaque, but it's quite a pretty color. Then I got out the dotting tools and a ton of polishes, and flowers were born! I didn't get pics of her toesies, but she had fun doodling on them with one of my purple nail art pens.

And here are Ciara's colorful paws:

The orange hand is Zoya Tanzy over Orly Old School Orange, decorated with assorted nail art pens & stripers. The purple hand is 2 coats of Milani Purple Gleam, also striped to within an inch of its life.

After we finished up their nails, Charlene did mine!

The grey with blue flash on my left hand is Zoya Akyra, and the right hand is Sally Hansen Teal Steel. They're both fairly sheer - the nail line was less apparent in real life, but the flash on the camera really brought it out. Of course, it also brings out how shiny and glowy these polishes are. I'll probably layer them when I wear them again.

Charlene took to dotting like a duck to water, I'm really loving the double-petal flowers she did on my thumbs! Here's a couple more pics:

Ellipsis

This was fairly simple, as nail art goes. A pretty, sparkly polish and dots. Since Jesse's Girl - Confetti is so sheer, I used a coat of Color Club's Pucci-licious as a base. The dots are Petites - Daze, and Orly - Space Cadet. Daze stood out a bit more in person than these pics capture...

 There was a fair amount of color-shifting going on, though I think my eyes were seeing more of it than my camera could register.

This one's blurry, but caught more of the colors:

I tried color-correcting some of the pictures, since my camera likes to add blue to purples, but it made my hands look just too weird - here's a corrected one with just the polishes.

(and yes, that's my lilac sweater being used as a background!)

Really cool nailart!!

I found this on Neatorama - animated nail art!

Tickled ...pink?

I don't often wear pink, it's rare for me to find a pink I like that looks good on me. So I was pleasantly surprised by this one. I got it out of Wet 'n Wild's summer nail pail. It's got one of those silly TV show names - How I Met Your Magenta - but I'll forgive the silly name for the pretty color. 3 coats, gold shimmer that shows in the bottle but not much on the nail. The accent nails are Caitlin, stamping is China Glaze Sci-Fi and Emotion, using Bundle Monster plate 206.

 

I really like Bundle Monster's new set, but even though the full nail designs are bigger, I still have to double-stamp my thumbs. This design was a bit hard to line up, but I'll get better at it.

Here's one at an oblique angle, to show how it changes as it's shifted around. This one was definitely fun to look at, though not as distracting as a good duochrome! ^_^

Danni

I like my Zoyas... they always surprise me by being just a bit more than I expect from looking at the bottle. It's nice to put on a polish, and instead of trying to achieve 'bottle color' you find you have something even nicer! So yay, Zoya!

My camera seems to like to add blue to things, Danni is a bit pinker than this, but trying to color-correct for minor color shifts seems silly when everyone looking at these has different monitor settings anyway! For the stamping, I used Bundle Monster # 224 with China Glaze Sci Fi, and the centers of the flowers are Zoya Robin & Kotori, a nameless iridescent green Funky Fingers, and OPI Take the Stage. I was quite happy with this manicure!

Independence Day!

Hey, 2 posts in the same day! Well, there was sunshine, and I thought posting this the week after I wore it might be a bit silly, so I hustled & took pics, and am posting quick before going out!

So here's my first 4th of July manicure, also my first successful tape mani! I used Nfu Oh 61 (squee!), NYC Madison Ave (very sheer, 4 coats & still VNL, but a pretty red), China Glaze Frostbite, and OPI DS Fantasy. Stamping was with Nfu Oh 61 & Bundle Monster plates 05, 14, & 21. My camera freaked out a bit at all of the holo, I could only get indirect shots - all of the direct ones caused flare lines or everything washed out and it wouldn't focus. Here's a kind of blurry one that shows the holo a bit better:

And one more, with props!

 

Happy 4th!

Neon skittles & crackle!

  

This was my first time with a crackle polish, it was pretty hard to control, but I think it turned out ok, and it was really fun to look at! There's a ton of polish on my nails - between putting on a layer of white to help the neon pop to the extra layer of top coat so the crackle polish wouldn't get hung up on the semi-matte finish of the neons I used, there's between 6 & 9 coats of polish on each nail (did I mention the part where neons are really thin?) But I think it was worth it, and it all dried very quickly. Yay quick-dry topcoat!

I can't decide if I like the blue crackle best over red/pink/orange colors, or yellow & green. I think it depends on how it's lit at any given moment. I really liked the contrast in this finger (sorry about the blurry, my lil camera can only zoom so much) and the blue/aqua shift in the crackle polish shows up really well:

Here's the big giant list of polish:

Pure Ice Crackle – Strike a Pose

Sally Hansen Crackle – Vintage Violet (pinkies)

thumbs – Pure Ice Flirt Alert (hot pink, not really neon)

index – Orly Melon Magic

middle – Sinful Neon Melon

ring – Color Club What a Shock!

pinkie – Zoya Phoebe, Color Club Pure Energy  (these 2 are practically the same color, Phoebe is matte and a 1-2 coater, Pure Energy is a semi-gloss 3 coater. I forget which pinky had which, I was comparing & lost track.)

Cloisonne, anyone?

This is one I really had fun with - China Glaze Let's Groove (usual lovely formula) stamped with CND Copper Chrome and accented with Color Club Feel the Beat and a bluey green franken I made attempting to dupe a replacement for my bottle of Fiat, an ancient, beloved tealy polish from the 90's (this color is pretty, but not a successful dupe...) I also used Let's Groove to stamp the accent nails, and instead of filling the petals with Feel the Beat, I used Sinful Let Me Go, which is a terribly sheer pink/green duochrome. Lovely for nail art and layering, though!

I've been having a great deal of fun with accent nails, probably because I'll take any excuse to add yet another color to a manicure...

Virtual Violet

This is a really pretty purple polish, a bit pinker than shown... (Cue standard 'my camera hates purple' plaint...) A pink leaning purple with aqua shimmer. I hate VNL, and it looked on the sheer side, so I layered it over Diamond's Pelican Peak Purple, which is a nice pastel purple creme. I was sick when I did the stamping, so I don't actually remember which China Glaze dark purple I used for this, but it was probably First Class Ticket. I had thought about dotting some green or turquoise into the 'eyes' of the pattern, but got sicker and forgot. Spring colds are no fun!

My grocery store is evil...

So, went to the store today to pick up some stuff and stopped to look at the OPI rack, cos, you know, nail polish and all. Not that I often buy OPI, they're a bit out of my price comfort zone, so unless it's really something awesome I usually pass or wait for a dupe. Anyway, now they're selling China Glaze too... Fortunately for my wallet, nothing I've been totally wanting, but now I know it's there.