Rosette manicure: May NCC #4

Hello sweeties! Today I’m sharing with you my last floral manicure for May’s Nail Challenge Collaborative theme.

Roses and stripes and dots and neon… oh myyyyy

Yeah, there’s a whole lot going on here! I got a little lazy and didn’t want to do the striped floral design on all my nails, so I just dotted up the rest of my nails.

Rose manicure

I think it’s a bit too busy for my taste. And is it just me or does it remind anyone else of Easter eggs? Not really the look I was going for, but I really do love how the floral nails came out!

Rose manicure

Oh and excuse all the pink on my ring finger’s cuticle. I got a bit messy with painting the flowers on, and that neon pink was a beyotch to remove!

Polishes used/ how I did this:

• Index finger:
  • Base color: KBShimmer Rum Me the Right Way… This yellow is crazy awesome! Yellows don’t tend to flatter my skin tone, but this banana bright yellow that borders on neon looks good on me! The formula is pretty good – it’s not KBShimmer’s usual amazing creme formula, but it’s better than most pastels or neons. It took 3 coats to get a smooth opaque nail.
  • Dots: KBShimmer Sarong Place, Sarong Time… Another gorgeous polish from KBShimmer’s Summer 2015 collection. I love this fuchsia! It worked perfectly for dotting and the flowers, and I can’t wait to wear it as a full mani!
• Middle & ring finger:
  • Base color: KBShimmer Rum Me the Right Way
  • I put striping tape down, then painted ellagee Snoozing in the Hammock over… I LOVE this  polish! Snoozing in the Hammock is a gorgeous light periwinkle, and it’s beautiful.
  • Roses:
    • Pink roses: Virago Varnish Tsunami Mommy with accents of Virago Varnish Bikini Boardwalk… These neons are both from the most recent collection by VV. I saw reviews on this collection on YouTube and promptly bought all of the polishes! Neons continue to be a weakness of mine. Tsunami Mommy is a beautiful hot pink, almost magenta leaning. And Bikini Boardwalk is a gorgeous neon baby pink.
    • Purple roses: KBShimmer Sarong Place, Sarong Time with accents of Polish my Life Muscat Martini… Muscat Martini is my favorite pastel almost white purple. LOVE it!
  • Leaves: Zoya Hunter… A beautiful hunter green creme.
• Pinky:
  • Base color: KBShimmer Rum Me the Right Way
  • Dots: Virago Varnish Tsunami Mommy

Check out more floral manis from the talented ladies of the NCC:

And now for your daily David Tennant:

Cloud manicure: April NCC #4

Hello sweeties! It’s almost the April, and I have one last look from the Nail Challenge Collaborative’s 3rd anniversary theme of recreating one another’s manis. I had so many I wanted to try out, so it was really difficult narrowing it down to 4 looks! This last manicure is a recreation of a cloud mani done by Katee from A Girl and Her Polish (see her blog post here).

I’ve never done a cloud manicure, but I’ve seen them around for awhile and always wanted to try!

My cloud mani inspired by A Girl and Her Polish

It wasn’t as hard as I thought it’d be! And I really like the color combination that Katee did, so I wanted to stay as close to that as possible.

Cloud manicure

Coral and green cloud manicure

Polishes used/ how I did this:

• Base color: Polish My Life Stripped… One of my top 3 favorite white polishes. It’s even and opaque coverage in 2 coats!
• I then let polish ball up on the end of the brush and dabbed it on the nail, creating the rounded edge and then swiping it to the tip of my nail. I did this with the following polishes:
  • Polish My Life Coral Fedora… This is a gorgeous light coral creme with a perfect formula!
  • I Love Nail Polish Admire Me… ILNP’s holos are amazing, and this one is no different! Unfortunately this one is no longer available, but ILNP has a few other teal holos that are gorgeous too 🙂

What do you think? Have you done cloud manis before?

Check out the other recreation manis by the NCC ladies:

And here’s your daily David Tennant!

No YOU look beautiful David 😉

Needle drag manicure: April NCC #3

Hello sweeties! Time for another manicure recreation! Today, I’ve chosen a gorgeous mani done by Lisa of The Polish Playground. She did this color blend mani (see her blog post here), which was before I joined the group. But I went back through old pics and found her version of a needle drag manicure!

Not this kind of drag:

Ahhh I love Rocky Horror! I’ve been to many a midnight showing. Magenta used to be my go-to Halloween costume, and people who weren’t familiar with the movie/ play would think I was just some messed up french maid lol.

I’ve chosen to do a slightly brighter version:

Needle drag manicure: recreation of The Polish Playground mani

I wanted bright, and where have I been going for bright colors recently? To the China Glaze Electric Nights collection of course! (wow I’m being super corny today!) I chose the bright red-orange neon as my base – it’s photographing more orange than it is in person. But it’s SO freaking neon! I love this one!

Neon needle drag manicure

Just wow, right?! So bright!

Needle drag manicure

Polishes used/ how I did this:

• Base color: China Glaze Red-y To Rave… This is another one of the Electric Nights polishes. The formula is perfect (only needed 2 coats for opacity) and this neon red-orange coral is such a great color!
• I then painted thick vertical stripes of the following colors:
  • China Glaze Red-y To Rave
  • Polish My Life 1950s Mint Fridge… I’ve mentioned this gorgeous aqua teal before. It’s perfection 🙂
  • Color Club Baldwin Blues… This is a gorgeous deep teal that I have in a mini bottle (I think I got it in some Birchbox a long time ago).
• Then I took the most narrow dotting tool and dragged it horizontally to blend them all.

What do you think? Have you done this needle drag technique before? What color combos do you like to drag together?

Check out the other NCC recreated manis:

And here’s your daily David Tennant:

Dotted Flowers: April NCC #1

Hello sweeties! I’m so excited for this month’s Nail Challenge Collaborative theme! It’s the 3rd anniversary for the group, and we’ve decided to recreate one another’s designs. I’ve been so impressed by all the talent in the group, so I was really happy that I could pay homage to some other amazing nail artists!

First up, I’m recreating a dotted floral manicure originally done by Zara at May Contain Traces of Polish (check out her post here) for our Dotticure month. When she posted this beautiful design, my mouth fell open! I love how dainty it is, but still so intricate! And I loved that her flowers were filled with dots too.

Here’s my take on it:

My recreation of the dotted floral manicure

I really love this! It was so simple to do, but it looks like it took me hours. Pssst, here’s a secret: it only took me 15 minutes! That’s probably why I had smearing on my pinky, but I was using Seche Vite and floated the top coat so I didn’t think it was going to smear. Oh well! I still like the outcome.

Pink dotted flower manicure

I know my inspiration used a blue holo base and anything holo is my jam, but I was really wanting to use some polish that I haven’t touched in awhile. So I pulled out one of my old favorite Essies. Aruba Blue was one of my first Essies, and I still love it!

Polishes used/ how I did it:

• Index & pinky:
  • Base color: Essie Aruba Blue… This is a beautiful deep royal blue with some added shimmer. I love it so much! But if you flood your cuticles at all, it does stain like a little beyotch!
  • Dots: Rica Whiteout… As always, the best white for nail art EVER!
• Middle & ring fingers:
  • Base color: Essie Aruba Blue
  • I drew on a floral base with Rica Whiteout using a thin nail art brush.
  • Then I dotted on the flower with the following colors:
    • Polish My Life Strawberry Whip & Chill… This is another gorgeous pink creme from PML’s All Things Vintage collection. Perfect formula and perfect polish!
    • Polish My Life Pink Sandals… Another gorgeous baby pink pastel creme. Perfection!
    • OPI Vant to Bite My Neck?… This is a fantastic dark blackened eggplant purple creme. One of my favorite deep purples!
  • Then I outlined the flower with smaller dots of Rica Whiteout.

What do you think? Have you done a similar manicure? I feel like I’ve seen this pattern going around before.

And now for your daily David Tennant:

And check out the other NCC ladies’ manicures:

Holo Blobbicure

Hello sweeties! It’s FRIDAY! And it’s a holiday for some of you – even better! Those of you who have a long weekend, enjoy it! Enjoy your family and friends and perhaps some chocolate?

Yup, my thoughts exactly!

And as always, I digress… NAILS! We all love nail polish! So let’s chat more about that, eh? I’ve been mildly obsessed with the All Things Vintage collection from Polish My Life, so I’ve been using them in a bunch of different manis recently.

Holo and pastel blobbicure

And this is what I came up with today! It’s holo meets skittlette meets pastel meets blobbicure! I love these colors so much, and I really enjoyed blobbing them all together 🙂

More blobs!

I did have to redo the blobby nails a few times. I think the white base coat dried too quickly, so I’d dab on blobs of polish and they’d just sit there looking like a stupid dotted mess. So I had to work pretty quickly in order to get this look.

And here’s a closeup:

Closeup of the pretty blobby bits 🙂

Polishes used/ how I did this:

• Index & Middle finger:
  • Base polish: Polish My Life Stripped… This is one of my favorite white polishes! It’s creamy and perfectly opaque in 2 coats. For best white polishes, it’s a close 3rd after Rica Whiteout & KBShimmer Eyes White Open!
  • Blobbed colors:
    • Polish My Life 1950s Mint Fridge… This beautiful mint green is perfection! Great formula, gorgeous color, and just divine! 🙂
    • Polish My Life Springtime Blues… As with all PML pastel cremes, this is also perfection. It’s a beautiful mid-tone blue – not too dark, not too light, but still so vivid and colorful!
    • Color Club Harp on It… The perfect silver holo! The halo hues are just plain amazing, and this one is no different!
• Ring finger: I Love Nail Polish Music Box… a gorgeous minty aqua holo. So pretty! It doesn’t match perfectly to PML 1950s Mint Fridge, but it’s pretty close so I’ll give it a pass! 🙂
• Pinky (& thumb): Color Club Harp on It

What do you think? Do you like multicolored blobbicures? Do you have a long weekend ahead? If so, any fun plans?

And now for your daily David Tennet!

Terrified… absolutely terrified 😉

Mint and blush dotted skittlette

Hello my sweeties! It’s only Monday and I am EXHAUSTED! I think they need to make weekends at least 3 days – who’s with me? Shall I start a petition? I just started working out hardcore, which took quite awhile to get motivation back.

So yeah, every fiber of my body aches. But at least I’ve got pretty nails! My personal trainer always compliments me on them – we talk polish as she kills me with lunges and mountain climbers. It makes it a little less painful! Anyways, onto today’s mani!

Mint and blush dotted skittlette

I just love this simple yet gorgeous look! As I’m sure you know, the whole mint/ teal/ aqua/ turquoise range is my all-time favorite. And I realized I haven’t used this particular holo in a really long time, so ta da! Mash them together and have a transitional accent nail with dots!

Mint and blush dotted skittlette

I really think my dotting game has been on point recently! Practice makes perfect and all that.

Polish My Life 1950s Mint Fridge with dots of ILNP Champagne Blush

I was so happy that the holo I used worked so well with the dots! It comes off a bit on the sheer side on the first coat on its own, so I was worried it wouldn’t be pigmented enough for dots. But it totally worked like a charm!

And a closeup of the holo accent:

I Love Nail Polish Champagne Blush

Yummy!

Polishes used:

• Index & middle finger: Polish My Life 1950s Mint Fridge… This beauty is from the new PML All Things Vintage collection, and I adore it! As I’ve mentioned, PML hands down has the best formula for pastel cremes I’ve found. This mint is no exception! I love it so hard!
• Ring finger:
  • Base: Polish My Life 1950s Mint Fridge
  • Dots: I Love Nail Polish Champagne Blush… this holo as mentioned above is a bit sheer on the first coat, but it builds up so nicely and is opaque in 2 coats. It’s a gorgeous pink rose gold linear holo with some golden shimmer that catches the light every now and then.
• Pinky (& thumb): ILNP Champagne Blush

What do you think? What’s your favorite way to mesh 2 different colors with a transitional accent nail? And if you work out, how do you keep your motivation up?

Aaaaand now here’s your daily David Tennant! It’s a classic 🙂

Coral and Fuchsia Skittlette Manicure

Hello my sweeties! Are you excited for spring and warmer weather? I SOOO am! I need some sunshine in my life again soon! So while the PA weather gods won’t give me real sunshine yet, I need some brightness on my nails!

I saw this amazing swatch video from jessFACE90 on YouTube on the new China Glaze Electric Nights collection, and I got so excited!! Like Jessie Spano on caffeine pills excited:

She’s so… scared! 😉

I had been drooling over the extremely hard to find PipeDream A Night In Vegas neon cremes and after seeing that swatch video, I was really hopeful that the Electric Nights cremes would satisfy my neon craving. I realized I have gaps in my collection when it comes to neons. So I decided I needed to pick up a few of the Electric Nights polishes – specifically the purples, the pink, the red-orange coral, and one of the blues!

So obviously I needed to use the neon I was anticipating the most – the fuchsia purple neon!

My coral and fuchsia skittlette

This is what I came up with – another little mishmash mani! I love how coral and fuchsia go together! Especially when they’re as bright as pretty as these two!

Coral and fuchsia skittlette

I have to say, I adore the color of this China Glaze neon! But I don’t think that they’re a replacement for the PipeDreams – from everything I’ve seen and read about those, they have such a perfect pigmented formula. The formula on this particular polish was a little runny. It does get opaque in 2 coats (without a white base), but the polish tends to slide towards the sides of the nail a little bit. I think a 3rd coat would fix that issue.

And, ahem… do you see the pinky nail?! That topper is divine! It’s one of I Love Nail Polish‘s new holographic multichrome flakies. AND I was able to get some good photos of that little sucker!

Closeup of ILNP Neon Rosebud (H) over China Glaze Violet Vibes

BOOM baby! I got it! I may have wished on a star, stood on my head, and sacrificed a virgin… but I finally got a good picture of the multichrome flakie! It shows off the gorgeous shift from pink/purple to gold and green, AND you can see how much depth the scattered holo gives it! Yay!

Polishes used:

• Base color for all nails: China Glaze Violet Vibes… as described above. Hopefully the formula of the others I bought are a little better. But I’ve most definitely come across worse neon formulas for sure! Oh, and since I hadn’t seen this collection in stores yet, I bought mine on Head2Toe Beauty.
• Index finger (and thumb):
  • Topped with ILNP Neon Rosebud (holo version)… check out the closeup shot above to see just one coat of this beauty! The holo in the flakie topper does give the base polish you use a bit of a silvery tinge. But only a little bit.
• Middle finger:
  • Dots of Polish My Life Coral Fedora… this is a gorgeous pink-leaning coral that’s a very bright pastel. The formula on this is perfection! I have yet to come across a bad Polish My Life pastel. They all have amazing formulas and are so pretty!
• Ring finger:
  • I used a chevron vinyl from NailVinyls.
  • Topped with Polish My Life Coral Fedora

What do you think? Do you have the PipeDream neons? Or do you know of dupes?

And now for your daily David Tennant! This is from the amazing Girl in the Fireplace episode!!

Gone Girl Manicure: November’s NCC #4

Gone Girl: one of the most f***ed up books I’ve read in a loooong time. And it was recently made into a movie that I (finally!) saw yesterday, so of course my last NCC book-themed manicure had to be inspired by it.

Have you read Gone Girl yet? It’s this crazy story of two screwed up people who are married to one another and spend a lot of time screwing one another over. It’s reaaaalllly good! And I was pretty impressed with how the movie turned out too. I definitely recommend it!

Book Cover

And here’s my mani:

Gone Girl Manicure

My index and middle finger were supposed to be the wisps of blonde hair that are on the book cover. They ended up looking more like light tree branches. I think I probably should have used a much thinner nail art brush, but hindsight is 20/20 right? My ring finger and pinky are much more successfully obvious – they are blood splatter! This is inspired by, well, blood. In the beginning of the book, Amy (the wife) is missing and there is blood splatter in their kitchen.

Colors used:

• Index and Middle Finger
  • Base color: Julep Cleopatra… a satin-finish black that does show a little streakiness but is otherwise a nice polish
  • Hair/ tree branches: Julep Alexandra… an ugly eggshell cream neutral polish that looks awful with my skintone, but is great for nail art
• Ring Finger and Pinky
  • Base color: Polish My Life Stripped… as I’ve mentioned before, a great 2 coat white
  • Blood: Sephora Formula X Pyrotechnic… an amazing red creme

So yeah, I’m not thrilled with this mani but it’s alright. The book and movie are much better than  my nails show! What do you think? Would you like tree branches for hair? Do you desire those *extremely* thick tresses? And have you seen/ read Gone Girl? Did you like the story as much as I did?

Check out more book-themed manicures from the NCC ladies:

Cat’s Cradle Manicure: November’s NCC #1

Happy November! It feels like it was just summer, and now it’s dangerously close to Christmas – craziness! This month, the Nail Challenge Collaborative theme is “Manicures Inspired by Books.” For my first look, I’ve chosen as inspiration one of my all-time favorite books by my favorite author, Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut.

If you aren’t familiar with the book or Vonnegut in general, he writes satirical science fiction as a vessel for social and political criticism of the late 1900s. I adore all his books, and Cat’s Cradle is easily in my top three. It’s loosely about a mad scientist’s creation, “ice-nine,” which is capable of freezing the world and ending it all. But it really is so much more than that, so I highly recommend reading it!

But anyways you’re here to see manicures not hear me geek out over my favorite author, so here it is:

My Cat’s Cradle-inspired manicure

My ring finger was inspired by the book cover, and the other nails are modeled after the frozen look of ice-nine.

Here’s what the book cover looks like:

Book cover

How I did this manicure:

• Ring finger:
  • Base color: Polish My Life Pink Sandals… a perfect pastel baby pink creme
  • Taped off the V and used A England Saint George… an amazing almost forest green holo
  • Freehanded the horizontal stripes with Julep Cleopatra… a matte/satin black (PS – it’s difficult using matte polishes in nail art. If it’s not perfect on the first swipe, going over it looks messy!)
• Other nails:
  • Base color: Sephora Formula X White Matter… a decent white polish but far from my favorite. I feel like I need to keep all my white polishes in rotation though, so I used it 🙂
  • Used saran wrap to dab on:
    • Barry M Damson… a goooorgeous cornflower blue creme
    • Barry M Blueberry… a pretty pastel blue creme that’s very similar in color to Essie Bikini So Teeny without the shimmer but with a formula that’s a million times better!
  • A light layer of China Glaze Fairy Dust

So what do you think of this mani? I actually really like the geometric look of my ring finger. Maybe I’ll do that using different colors sometime! Have you read Cat’s Cradle or other Vonnegut books?

Check out more manis inspired by books by the NCC ladies:

Striped Splatter Manicure: October’s NCC #3

For my 3rd striped look of October, I decided to do another previously untried technique – splatter! It’s always seemed like more work than fun and when I tried a long time ago, I couldn’t get the polish to even splatter from the straw. {Insert juvenile joke about blowing harder here 😉 } Since I’m now an older and wiser nail blogger, I figured it was time to try it again!

Splatter and stripes and texture – oh my!

I debated on exactly how to accomplish this end product – throw some decals down and splatter over it or splatter, then stamp stripes. I ended up doing the latter because I thought it would take too much time splattering over the decals, which would make the thinned out polish dry and peel up. But anyways, I’d like to attempt that way as well!

I think this method worked out pretty well nonetheless, and I really like how it came out! I used a very similar color scheme as my last manicure (the dry marble swirl mani) because I think it looks almost like an abstract spring floral design.

Check out my first Pixie Dust!

I also got to break out my very first Pixie Dust from Zoya! I had been resisting that purchase because I have never really gotten into textures. But Zoya had such a great sale recently where you could get 3 free polishes and the Remove+, so I thought I’d finally try it out. I have to say – I love them! They’re not too textured that it’ll catch on everything, but they still show off a really cool visual difference between the other glossy nails. I still don’t think I’d wear them as a full mani, but I do like them as an accent!

I do love this look!

What I used:

• Splatter nails:
  • Base color: Zoya Purity… this is definitely not my favorite white polish, but I wanted to still give it some love. It’s ok, it’s just not the best.
  • Zoya Hunter… a great dark hunter green
  • China Glaze Rose Among Thorns… a very pretty red/pink-leaning fuchsia
  • Polish My Life Greenwich Street… a very nice pastel kelly green
  • Stamping plate: Bundle Monster BM-411
  • Stamping polish: Rica Whiteout – now THIS is my favorite white polish 🙂
• Accent nail: Zoya Chita… a gorgeous hunter green textured polish

So what do you think? Do you like the combination of splatter and stripes? Are you a textured polish fan?

Check out the other striped manicures from the NCC ladies: