Gladiola manicure: May NCC #2

Hello my sweeties!! Sorry for the break in blogging last week. I had eye corrective surgery on Friday, and it was a much longer recovery than I expected. So I couldn’t stare at a computer screen to write any blog posts! But I can see now, woo hoo!

And here’s your daily David Tennant a little early 🙂

So to make it up to you, I have a gorgeous floral manicure for you today! I decided I wanted to paint gladiolas on my nails. Why gladiolas you ask? Because they remind me of Drop Dead Fred! *Please tell me someone remembers Drop Dead Fred!*

Drop Dead Fred!

So yeah, gladiolas it is!

Gladiola Manicure

I loved doing this manicure – simple but pretty!

Gladiola Manicure

I love purple and blue flowers! I think this came out pretty great if I do say so myself!

Gladiola Manicure

Polishes used/ how I did this:

• Base color: Zoya Carey… This is my favorite light grey creme polish. It has a perfect formula!
• Vines: Zoya Hunter… This is a great dark hunter green creme.
• Leaves on vines: Essie Vested Interest… This is an underutilized polish of mine, but I love it! It’s a great medium sage green with grey tones.
• Flower buds:
  • Zoya Charisma… This is probably one of my most used polishes. I love this deep fuchsia polish!
  • Essie Play Date… A beautiful medium lilac purple.
  • Essie Strut Your Stuff… Such a beautiful bright blue!

So what do you think? What’s your favorite flower to paint?

Check out more floral manicure from the NCC ladies:

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 😉

Plaid Double Stamping Manicure

Here comes a manicure that I really was excited about… until it actually was on my nails. Despite playing around with nail stamping for awhile, I’ve actually never done double stamping. Every time I saw it on others, it was like a double rainbow of nail polish!

So I finally decided to try it out, and I picked some colors that look great together and a plaid image that I figured would look great. Sounds great in theory right? In actuality, it didn’t turn out as nice as I had hoped. I don’t hate it, but it’s certainly no double plaid stamping rainbow like it was in my imagination!

See for yourself:

See? Not awful, but not great… just meh. I think the image I chose was maybe too busy. The other double stamping manicures I’ve seen and loved have had less busy images. I think the white and green kind of overpower my pretty Zoya Charisma. Plus, I accidentally stamped the ring finger off-kilter for the base stamp.

Here’s another quick pic:

 

Manicure:

• Base Color: my beloved Zoya Charisma, the stunning bright purple
• Stamping Plate: Shany Cosmetics SH212
• First stamp: Konad White using plaid image
• 2nd stamp: Sally Hansen Mint Sprint using same plaid image
• Topped off with the always great HK Girl, my favorite top coat for stamping!

I definitely want to try this technique again, but I think for the future I’ll use an image that doesn’t cover as much of the nail.

I also just received my very first semi-squishy stamper and a ton of great stamping polishes from Mundo de Unas, so I’ll be playing around more!

What do you think? Have you done double stamping before? If so, any suggestions to make it look amazing?

Recreating my first stamped manicure: July NCC #2

Stamping was one of my first (and favorite) techniques when it came to nail art. I did a lot of stamping, and my second ever blog post showed 2 manicures where I was still getting the hang of things. For July’s NCC theme of recreating your first few manicures, I decided to stay pretty close to my original stamped manicure.

After doing many stamped manis, I certainly don’t always get it right. But I think I’ve learned many valuable lessons. One of which is finding the right type of polish for stamping. If you want to use the polishes already found in your personal stash, look for ones that are nice and opaque – this will allow the thin layer from the stamp to really show up. Also, quick dry polishes are both great and a curse. They are usually good formula-wise and opaque, but you have to work quickly in order to get the full image on your stamper and then transferring to your nail.

My first blog post showing a stamped manicure had a few issues. I used Zoya Valerie, which is gorgeous but not a great polish for stamping. It’s a bit too sheer to really show up well. I also was a bit slower in stamping, so I ended up with some patches. I tried to fix this by brushing on more polish, but this just resulted in really dark spots.

This time around, I used a different stamping color that was tried and true. But I used the same base color and stamp. Oh and obviously I got nubbinized again. I went canoeing and camping for the July 4th weekend, and it wreaked havoc on my nails. I came home with breaks all over. But I don’t mind nubbins 🙂 

• Base color: Essie Tart Deco
• Stamping color: Zoya Charisma
• Stamp: GALS plate GA19

I think there’s a big improvement! Better stamping polish, a prettier color combination (in my opinion), better cleanup, etc. And geez does lighting make a difference! The recreation pic really shows the true color of Tart Deco.

Check out the other ladies’ recreations:

 

 

Saran wrap manicure

I can’t bring myself to say “saranicure.” I just can’t. I said (wrote, rather) “dotticure” and a host of other nail abbreviations, but for some reason “saranicure” is my limit… and now I’ve gone and said it twice. Damn. But anyways, whatever you wanna call it, I did it. I’ve done these in the past but never posted pictures.

I love any manicure that can utilize multiple colors &/or textures. So using the saran wrap technique is definitely a favorite.

For this, I used:

• ILNP Admire Me, yet another amazing creation from ILNP. It’s a beautiful teal blue holo.
• Zoya Charisma, one of my favorite purples. It looks neon but dries matte and then perks up again with some topcoat.

First attempt at ombre nails

Fall has arrived, and the multitude of darker nail polishes have arrived as well. I’m having a hard time letting my bright summery colors go, so I decided I needed at least one last bright and happy manicure. Pittsburgh has a long winter/ cold season, so I figure I have plenty of time for darker fall colors.

The ombre manicure has always been something I’ve wanted to try, but I’ve been intimidated. I watched a bunch of videos and looked at tutorials, and picked my favorite summery color to work with.

First, I painted my nails with 2 coats of Color Club Blue-ming (an amazing mint green that I love on its own). Then I chose an array of colors that would transition to a vivid purple. In retrospect, I think I used too many colors but it ended up alright anyways.