NOTD: Blue color blocking

I’m sorry this post is a little rushed but I have SO much to work on right now, I’m working hard on moving my blog over to a REAL website so that I can integrate everything (blog, shop, whatever) into one place.

Today’s NOTD is another entry into a nail art contest. I love nail art contests, they give me the inspiration I’m often lacking! This theme was color blocking and it gave me an excellent opportunity to use my striping tape for the first time. I did the different colors freehand then covered the dividing line with striping tape, it left me with a very neat finished product!

I’m sorry the picture isn’t very good, I just took a quick shot with my camera phone and my new phone doesn’t seem to have as good of a camera as my old one–which is really weird because this one’s an iPhone 4S, the other one was just an iPhone 4! I’m going to try to start taking pictures with my fancy-pants camera more often so you can actually get an accurate idea of what the colors look like 🙂

• Anise Urban Jungle
• Hema 09
• Maybelline Denim Dash
• Essence Blue Addicted
• striping tape

NOTD: Mermaid tail

I’ve seen a few people doing “fish” nails recently, Spektor’s Nails seems to be the most commonly linked to (and for good reason, her nails turned out awesome). Polish All The Nails also did a “mermaid” style manicure using large glitter to form a kind of armor and I simply adore the look! I was feeling amazingly patient tonight and so I decided to try BOTH ideas for the first time!

In my celebratory “I haven’t bought polish for 30 days” haul I bought China Glaze Blue Iguana–a gorgeous shimmery, slightly duochrome-y blue. It’s a little sheer but I like it! Here’s Blue Iguana by itself after 2 coats.

After finishing my base color (this picture really doesn’t do it justice!) I grabbed a few coordinating shades of blue and teal. I even got to use 2 more colors I’d never used before, one from my international swap from the Netherlands and one I picked up at Walgreens weeks ago. After about an hour of dotting I ended up with a pretty neat effect! next time I’ll space the dots out a bit more but for a first try I’m really diggin’ it.

On my pinky I started working on the “nail armor” look…wow, I am glad I decided to start on my smallest nail, that’s for sure! The glitter I used was really small and if you look closely you can see that on the left side (closest to the edge of my hand) of my nail the glitter is close together…as it gets further to the right the glitter gets spaced out further, lol. It was really tough to get them spaced closely enough and placing such small glitter was really killing me. I alternated between blue and green glitter, though you can’t really tell the difference. I love the “disco ball” look it gives and I’ll definitely try it again…but probably either with bigger glitter or spaced out further.

• China Glaze Blue Iguana
• China Glaze Frostbite
• Orly Sweet Peacock
• Hema 09
• Sinful Colors Neptune
• Sally Hansen Blue Streak
• Glitter

NOTD: My fourth glitter explosion combo

Ugh, I hate cleaning. The worst part isn’t even that my hands get sore or I spend so much time doing it. The worst is that even with cleaning gloves my nails still get messed up 😥 I did some major scrubbing today and yesterday’s gorgeous mani was ruined! Thankfully my glitter explosion accent nails were still in good condition (I’m going on 5 days without removing my left ring finger’s polish, this is a new record!) so I snipped the fingers off of some latex gloves, used rubber bands to keep them on my accent fingers, and removed the rest of my polish to start anew. I trimmed my non-accent nails before doing this mani so they’re a bit awkward and uneven…once my glitter explosion comes off I’ll have to even things out.

What I ended up with was better than I had imagined. Caribbean Frost is such a nice teal that matches well with my teal glitter, I’m surprised I didn’t think to use it before! I used more of my nail crystals just for fun ($5 for 1000 silver crystals in different shapes, love it!) and I’m so pleased with it.

Oh, and in case you missed my last three manicures using the glitter explosion accent, here they are! Day 1, Day 2, Day 3

• China Glaze Dorothy Who? (2x as base for accent)
• Prisma silver glitter
• Prisma teal glitter
• Wet n Wild Caribbean Frost
• Nail crystals

 

NOTD: Purple and teal and flakies and glitter, oh my!

So it’s taken me three tries to find a color that matches my glitter explosion accents but it was well worth the wait. My second try, late last night, was nowhere near what I wanted so I ended up taking it off just a few hours after waking up this morning. That shade of baby pink just doesn’t suit my skintone so it was just more of a reason to try again.

None of my glitters really fit with the teal, none were dense enough to get the coverage I got with the teal so I had to improvise. So I decided to skip using a glitter and instead go for something similar but different enough to remain interesting and not be overshadowed by the glitter–a flakie! I used two coats of Wet n Wild Disturbia (which I absolutely love) and one coat of Orly Fowl Play (which I also absolutely love) and it is exactly the look I was hoping for. It even matched the sweater I wore today! I added a couple nail crystals in a teal nearly identical to my glitter, they just came yesterday so I was dying to try them–$5 for 2400 crystals in 12 colors! I’m gonna have so much fun :3

I had to run to my sweetheart’s mom’s house for dinner right after finishing so I didn’t have time to post right away, but their dog (a sweet silver Shih Tzu) was kind enough to help me model my nails.

• Wet n Wild Disturbia
• Orly Fowl Play
• China Glaze Dorothy Who? (2x as base for accent)
• Prisma silver glitter
• Prisma teal glitter
• Nail crystals

Also, just for giggles, I call this picture “The awkward things I do when I only want to change part of my mani…”

I couldn’t risk my lovely glittery nails getting damaged! But I’ve got those little latex finger covers very high on my shopping list…

NOTD: More glitter than is entirely reasonable

This should hopefully be a short post as I’m about ready to flop into bed. It’s been a very long weekend! I spent all day today looking at apartments in a city an hour from where I currently live. Thankfully my sweetheart drove but it was still pretty draining.

I made a very silly decision and decided to paint my nails at about 10PM; by 10:30 I was exhausted and wanted to fall into bed but I was nowhere near done with my nails. Thank goodness for Seche Vite or I’d be waiting like another hour before I could go to sleep D:

I really wanted to try to imitate my teal accent fingers from yesterday’s manicure but with pink glitter this time. Sadly I don’t have a dense enough pink glitter that I’d be able to do that and I’m not terribly happy with the results. Also, this is another “7 layers of glitter” mani so it’s gonna be a major pain to remove but I’ll give it a try for a day or two. And now, my bed calls to me; good night, all!

I didn’t use Tickled Pink as a base for my right pinky, I used two coats of Glass Pink instead. I think I like it more, but still not what I was going for. Anyone know of a dense pink glitter??

• Wet n Wild Tickled Pink
• Sinful Colors Glass Pink
• Prisma pink glitter
• CoverGirl Ruby Dust
• China Glaze Dorothy Who? (2x as base for accent)
• Prisma silver glitter
• Prisma teal glitter

NOTD: A glitter explosion!

Mmm, glitter. So sparkly and lovely but such a pain to remove…But today I decided to do it anyway. I didn’t want to hate myself too much when the time came to remove it so I decided to just do one accent nail on each hand–both ring fingers. Sadly, only one survived, but we’ll get to that in a minute.

I got Sinful Colors Neptune about 2 weeks ago when they had a 2/$3 sale (I picked up Nirvana for my honey) and just never used it. Last night while contemplating how I wanted to redo my nails I decided I had to try Neptune–I loved the name, the color, the shimmery finish, it was an obvious choice. I also wanted to use a metric crapton of glitter because, well, I’m a glutton for punishment.

What I ended up with was about a full millimeter of polish on top of my ring finger nail!! Two coats of Dorothy Who, two coats each alternating between a silver glitter and a teal glitter, two coats normal topcoat, and one coat Seche Vite. *phew*, it took a while to do this mani. I think it was totally worth it though because the sparkle is just to amazing!

Blurry to show all the sparkle!

Showing the thickness of 10 coats of lacquer vs 4 coats--this is not a difference in angle, this is just more lacquer than is entirely reasonable ;-D

And the reason why you let your nail polish dry fully before taking pictures…Note the major smudging on my glitter nail. Even my new love Seche Vite and 10 minutes waiting didn’t survive holding my bulky fancypants camera…

• Sinful Colors Neptune
• China Glaze Dorothy Who? (2x as base for accent)
• Prisma silver glitter
• Prisma teal glitter