Jungle wallpaper manicure: January NCC #2

When I was trying to brainstorm manicures based on wallpaper, the first thing that came to mind was the guest bathroom in a relative’s home in Staten Island. Whenever I’d visit as I was growing up, I was impressed with the 80s/90s-era chic jungle wallpaper in that little bathroom – slightly tacky, but a fun and playful choice for a bathroom lol. And what better place to recreate that than on my nails?!

My Jungle-Chic Wallpaper Manicure

I actually think my manicure looks very similar to the wallpaper I remember! It was a dark green background with different shades of green leaves and flowers all over. So my manicure was designed to represent that.

Another pic of my manicure

I double stamped different tropical images, which ended up being my first successful double stamped mani! I previously did one (see it here) that was double stamped with plaid images, and it just looked too busy. But I really like this version – I think stamping in different shades of the same color really makes it blend better!

It is a little difficult to see the bottom stamped image because it’s a bit darker, but it does peek through the tips of the nails a bit.

Anyways, I really like how this came out! It certainly looks better on my nails than it did as a wallpaper! Oh and can I say that I’m still loving the crap out of using liquid latex as a cleaning product?! It makes the end clean-up SO much easier after stamping!!

Here’s what I used:

• Base color: Zoya Hunter
• Stamping plates: MoYou London Tropical collection 03 and 04
• Bottom stamping polish: Barry M Kiwi
• Top stamping polish: Rica Summer Mint…

Check out what the other NCC ladies are doing for wallpaper-themed nails:

Purple flakie gradient manicure with stamped accent

Hi sweeties! Happy Friday! It’s colder than a witches teat here in PA, and I’m just counting down the days until it warms up again. I hope y’all are keeping warm! For today’s manicure, I really wanted something vivid. I didn’t like the base color I chose but didn’t want to start from the beginning, so I ended up layering and dabbing and stamping until I liked it!

Purple flakie gradient + stamping

So that Julep bottle I’m holding is the polish I used as my base color, Ariana. I originally was going to just wear that alone, but I didn’t like it so much. It’s a berry-leaning eggplant purple with a lot of silvery shimmer, and the formula was pretty crappy – gloopy but weirdly thin, and it took forever to dry. Anyways, I decided that instead of starting over with another mani altogether, I’d just throw a bunch of other stuff on it until I liked the result! 🙂

A better picture of this manicure

So I layered Orly’s Purple Poodle over that Julep, and I just love the result! Purple Poodle is this raspberry jelly polish with some purple and blue microglitter, and it really warmed up the Julep polish but still let a bit of shimmer shine through. I know I slapped some other stuff on top of that combo, but you can see it at the base of my nails and behind the stamp.

And can we just talk about those flakies?! I am officially deeply in love with multichrome flakies! I Love Nail Polish did such a great job with this line – I was lucky enough to win 6 in a giveaway, and I bought a few extra as well since I love them so! I chose one that leaned strongly purple/blue (Luna), and it matched perfectly to the base color!

Just look at those flakies!!

As you can see in that closeup, Luna leans mostly raspberry purple, but shifts to teal, blue, pink, gold, and a smidge of green! In certain lighting, the flakies blend into the rest of the polish but will come alive if you move your hands. I love it!

An odd angle to show off more flakie goodness!

I love this above picture just for the bottle shot! I wanted to show you different angles so you could see more of the flakie shift.

Products used:

• Base color: Julep Ariana… as described above – a yucky no-good polish, but a surprisingly good base for this!
• Jelly topper: Orly Purple Poodle… warm raspberry jelly with purple and blue microglitters.
• Stamping plate: MoYou London Suki 04
• Stamping polish: Essie Nothing Else Metals… a light silvery lavender chrome that is perfect for stamping!
• Flakie: ILNP Luna… described and shown in detail above. I just dabbed this over the top half of my nail a few times. It’s amazingly opaque in 2-3 coats on its own, so you see it real well in this mani.

So what do you think? Do you ever do this type of thing for a mani – just layer/ dabble/ stamp and add things until you love it or just have to start over? Are you staying warm this frigid part of winter? Have a great weekend!!

Neutral and green skittlette manicure

Happy December everyone! I love this time of year – not for the snowy weather, but I just adore picking out presents for people. And it definitely doesn’t suck to receive presents either 😉 ! Today I have a mani with a little bit o’ everything for you. There’s holo, metallic, neutrals, a gradient, dotting, and stamping!

My sampler manicure

I really love this one! It’s a bit of a sampler of everything, but I think it goes well together. Here’s another pic:

And that holo!

I LOVE love love that green holo! It’s much more of an evergreen in real life, but my camera really wanted to make it look turquoise. Blue-Eyed Girl Lacquer just restocked this polish (it’s called Mickey Smith, Defending the Earth – part of the Gents of Doctor Who collection) yesterday, and this will be the last restock for awhile!! So if you like it, go pick it up ASAP! Oh, and there’s a 25% off Cyber Monday sale today (check out the BEGL Facebook page for more details) – all the more reason to go now!

Products used:

• Index finger and thumb: BEGL Mickey Smith, Defending the Earth
• Middle and ring fingers:
  • Base Color: OPI My Vampire is Buff… a perfect cream nude
  • Gradient: OPI My Vampire is Buff, Essie Mink Muffs (a medium brown creme), and Essie Partner in Crime (a perfect almost black dark chocolate creme)
  • Stamping plate: MoYou London Pro XL 14
  • Stamping polish: Essie Good as Gold
• Pinky
  • Base Color: Essie Partner In Crime
  • Dot: BEGL Mickey Smith, Defending the Earth

So what do you think? Do you like to mix and match manis as much as I do? Will you be heading over to BEGL to pick up that awesome green holo or any of the other Doctor Who polishes?

Squish the Rainbow Leadlighting

It’s been a really long time since I’ve tried a leadlighting manicure and I recently picked up the entire Rica jelly polish collection (Squish the Rainbow), so I figured it was high time to venture back into leadlighting! If you haven’t heard of this style, it’s basically like a color-by-numbers technique using jelly polishes over a stamp.

I really just wanted to play around practicing leadlighting with different stamps. The intention was not to create a wearable manicure, but I think it actually looks pretty good!

Rica leadlighting manicure

Not bad right? It’s flowery but geometric, and the colors kind of bring it all together.

Another pic with my thumb in there

What I used for this mani:

• Base color: OPI Alpine Snow
• Stamps: MoYou London Explorer 03… such a perfect plate for this technique! All the images are detailed and have lots of areas to color in.
• Stamping polish: Rica Blackout
• Leadlighting colors: Rica Squishy Blueberry, Squishy Lime, Squishy Lemon, and Squishy Grape… These are all great jelly polishes! They worked so perfectly for leadlighting, and they look so pretty over white. LOVE!
• I applied the leadlighting colors with a tiny dotting tool to help fill in smaller areas.

This kind of manicure makes me feel like I’m a kid with a coloring book! It’s so fun and relaxing, but it does take quite awhile if the stamping images are detailed. The end game makes it totally worth it though – the manicures come out so great!

What do you think? Have you done leadlighting before? What other images do you like to use?

Mad Hatter Manicure: August NCC #4

My last NCC manicure for the Tea Party theme is here! I’ve been excited to show you guys this one. I was stumped for this 4th look after doing my lace, flowers, and Lilly designs. But then inspiration hit! I thought about tea parties and a little movie worked its way from deep in my memory… Alice in Wonderland and her crazy tea party with the Mad Hatter!

So here is my Mad Hatter-inspired manicure:

Very busy, but so was my inspiration! Thinking of the Mad Hatter, colorful bold patterns come to mind, so I picked some fun colors and stamps and went to town!

I actually really love this manicure. I wouldn’t wear it to work or anything, but I think coordinating patterns and bold colors looks great!

I taped off half my nail, then painted or stamped the exposed portion, top coated it with a quick dry polish, then taped off the already completed half while stamping the other. Whew, that was wordy!

I also was able to use my Mundo de Unas stamping polishes for the first time! Sylvia makes some really opaque stamping polishes, but unfortunately she’s no longer shipping internationally (she’s in Mexico).

Stuff I used:

• All nails started with a base of Polish My Life Stripped (amazing white creme)
• Index finger: Zoya Charisma on the top half (bright purple) stamped with MDU Mexican Pink using Cheeky plate, CH10 (designed after the Cheshire Cat!)
  • Bottom half stamped with Konad Black using Gals plate, GA13
• Middle finger: bottom half painted with China Glaze In The Lime Light (a goooorgeous neon lime green with a bit of shimmer)
  • Top half stamped with Zoya Charisma using Gals plate, GA15
• Ring finger: bottom half stamped with KBShimmer Low and Be Bold (an amaaazing jellyish vivid cobalt blue) using Cheeky plate, CH6
  • Top half stamped with Konad Black using Gals plate, GA1
• Pinky: Top half painted with KBShimmer Low and Be Bold
  • Bottom half stamped with MDU Neon Green using Cheeky plate, CH16

So that’s it for the August Nail Challenge Collaborative! How did you like the tea party theme? I really liked it. Which was your favorite look? I loved my neon stripes & flower and this mad hatter mani.

Check out the other manis:

 

PS: Whovians out there – did you see the premiere? Do you like Peter Capaldi as the new Doctor? I am devastated because I can’t see the premiere tonight (I have a great concert to go to) AND I don’t have BBC America. I plan on fixing that ASAP, so hopefully I’ll be able to watch the premiere just a bit late. No spoilers, please 😉

Matte Tropical Flower Mani

Today I have a gorgeous stamped manicure for you. Rica recently put out a bunch of great polishes that work both for stamping and regular use, so I obviously had to partake. And if you know anything about my nail polish obsession, I definitely had to have the mint shade!

I was originally going to do a white base, but then I got inspired after looking at some of the gorgeous floral manis by Wondrously Polished. Lindsey does these beautiful mattified floral designs, often over a dark or neutral base. So I decided to pair the pretty mint stamping polish over a dark navy, and then I threw a matte top coat over the whole thing.

I really love this! The color combo is great – the mint pops over the darker navy, and it stamped like a dream. I am obsessed with mint, and this Rica is perfect… I can’t wait to wear it on its own too. I think it also looks really good as a matte mani! And I looove the new MoYou London Tropical images too! So much love!

Products used:

• Base color: Zoya Sailor (a beautiful deep navy polish)
• Stamping plate: MoYou London Tropical 04
• Stamping color: Rica Summer Mint

So yeah, I really like this, and I hope you do too!  I can’t wait to try out the other new Rica polishes. That is all for today – have a great weekend!

Simple Nude Lace Mani – August NCC #2

For my second NCC manicure in August’s theme of Tea Party, I decided to go with a simple lace design. You think of tea parties, and doilies or lace gloves come to mind right?

So here is my lace mani:

I love this! So simple, but it looks so pretty and classy. I could see this being a good mani for a wedding, either for a guest or the bride herself.

And here’s another pic:

Colors used:

• Base: OPI Mimosas for Mr & Mrs, my favorite nude polish! This was actually the very first non-drugstore polish I ever bought (and as a result, definitely needed some thinner!)
• Stamping Plate: MoYou London Pro XL 06
• Stamping color: Rica Whiteout – yes, in addition to being probably the best almost one-coater white creme, it also stamps perfectly!

What’s your favorite nude polish? What was the first “high-end” polish you bought?

And here are some more lovely tea party-inspired manis from the NCC girls:

 

Recreating my first gradient manicure: July NCC #3

One of my favorite first posts was my first attempt at a gradient manicure. I called it an ombre mani, but I was almost a year younger and nail naive at that time. I’m older and wiser and know more in the world of nails at this point 🙂

This time, I switched up the colors and made it super bright and neon for summer:

Mmm I love neon! I could wear it year-round; it just makes me stare at my nails all the time! Plus, when you wear neon polish in the NICU, it GLOWS near phototherapy! Phototherapy is a treatment we do for jaundice where we put blue lights around the baby to make the jaundice go away, and it acts similar to UV lights so the neons GLOW.

I used 3 colors in this gradient: China Glaze Yellow Polka Dot Bikini, Models Own Flip Flop, and Formula X Radioactive (Oh, and I also used Rica Whiteout for my white undies). I then decided I need to spice things up since the last 2 recreations i’ve done were basically identical to the previous manis.

Spice it up – put a bird on it! (Any Portandia fans out there?!) I used one of my favorite MoYou London image plates, Suki 08, and stamped the bird design using Zoya Sailor (a nice navy blue creme).

Another pic:

And here’s a comparison to my old mani:

I really liked my old mani, but I think my gradients have gotten so much smoother and better-blended. And I really like the stamping over it too! What do you think? How else do you spice up a gradient mani?

And check out some other recreations:

 

June NCC #2: Orange is the New Black

The Nail Challenge Collaborative theme for June is Black & White. This coincided well with the release of season 2 of Orange is the New Black, so of course I have to feature my new bright orange polish from Marc Jacobs!

If you haven’t seen the show, you should! It’s amazing. This mani is obviously inspired by title, for one. The main character’s nickname from her first prison wife is Dandelion, so I stamped on a dandelion to pay tribute to Crazy Eyes.

And another pic:

Index finger & thumb:

• Zoya Carey (light grey creme) with
• Formula X Firecracker (matte orange glitter topper) and
• Different Dimension’s Social Suicide (an amazing matte white and black hex glitter… no bar glitter! It took me forever to find a glitter topper with B&W and no bar glitter)

Middle & Ring finger: Marc Jacobs Oh Splat! (gorgeous bright orange creme) with MoYou Pro 06 stamping using Konad white stamping polish

Pinky: MJ Oh Splat! with Zoya Purity splattered over it

Check out the other fantastic black and white manis:

 

I Gave Paul McCartney Elephantitis: Last April NCC

I would like to give a formal apology to The Beatles. I truly am a big fan, and I know this manicure probably makes you think the opposite. But despite how this trainwreck looks, The Beatles are really my favorite boy band (and the original boy band) of all time.

In a massive purchase from MoYou London, I got one of their Time Traveler image plates that had 2 beautiful images from The Beatles’ famous Abbey Road shot. When the Nail Challenge Collaborative included Music as a part of the April challenge, I knew I had to use it! So I decided to try (operative word being “try”) to recreate the Abbey Road image.

… And now you understand the title of this post. Look at that stupid thick leg on Paul McCartney (aka one of the stick figures on my middle finger). I swear, I used my MoYou London Time Traveler plate (the I Love the 70s plate). I tried stamping using both black and white, but I had to paint in the legs freehand and that’s where this poor excuse for a manicure went astray.

Overall, I wanted the feel of the road and then trees on my pinky and index finger. I sponged on green polish for the trees and then sponged on some white polish for some clouds.

OK I’m just sick of even talking about this crappy manicure. I apologize again to my Beatles. I promise I’ll be back soon – I actually have a few manicures coming up and I’m super proud of how they look!

Here are some manicures that are a kajillion times better than this one: