Jubilee Nails

In honor of Queen Elizabeth's Diamond Jubilee:






Red: Maybelline Cherry Rain
Blue: Ulta Moody Blues
White: Santee white
Sally Hansen mini silver glitter

Cheers!

Marble melange

I first ended up on this crazy nail art journey after stumbling across a water marbling video on Youtube.  My first attempt at a water marble was just ok.  My second attempt was much better.







I wish I could say I remember for certain the nail polish colors I used.  But I don't!  My guesses are: Color Club Electro Candy pink and Color Club Electro Candy blue and Ulta Moody Blues.  The base color was Santee white.

Water marbles are tricky and require a lot of patience, but they're worth it.  Yay water marbles!

Luau

Though it's chilly on this February night, back in September when I was sporting this manicure, the weather was much better suited to daiquiris than hot cocoa.

The first stage of this manicure was a great dollar store nail polish, L.A. Colors dark teal.  On top of it, I stamped Santee white with Bundle Monster plate BM19.



Then I painted in the negative space with a blue nail art pen from Big Lots.  And then I topped it with a couple of coats of Revlon clear top coat.



And from afar:



Mahalo!

Discreet designs

Pretty often the nail art plan I have in my head doesn't quite turn out as I envisioned once it gets on my nails.  But I usually enjoy the results anyway, especially when they are subtle and give a texture effect.  Here are a couple from a while back.

For this one, I used Color Club Electro Candy neon purple with blue shimmer as the base nail polish color.  On top of that, I stamped Color Club Electro Candy neon blue with green shimmer with Bundle Monster plate BM-203.  I topped it off with Revlon clear top coat.   The result was definitely not noticeable from very far away, but looked pretty neat up close.

On this one, I used L.A. Colors gunmetal gray (BCC 558?) as the base nail polish color, stamped Nabi Neon Purple with Bundle Monster plate BM-214, and stamped Nabi Purple Glitter over that with plate BM-201.  On top is Revlon clear top coat.  I liked how the colors mixed into a metallic gray purple from far away.  I took these pics a few days into the manicure, so my nails are showing some edge wear.    

Chain nail

This was a quick and fun one. I started with L.A. Colors metallic blue as the base nail polish color. I stamped an accent nail with Urban Outfitters silver (Bundle Monster plate BM12), and topped the other nails with Sally Girl mini glitter polish, which is made up of silver hexagons and small circles.

Patriotic polish

In honor of Veteran's Day, as well as my husband's new U.S. citizenship, I present American flag nails!



The nail polish I used was Santee white as the base color, L.A. color metallic blue (BCC 566?) for the stars, and Maybelline Cherry Rain for the stripes.

I used the stars tips from Mash plate m44 and the diagonal stripes from Bundle Monster plate BM20.

I did the stars first, let it dry a little bit, then covered the stars with blue painter's tape and added the stripes.

This manicure was actually surprisingly quick and easy.  In retrospect I should have used a darker blue such as Ulta Moody Blues to get a truer American flag blue.  Next time!

Faux Peridot

This delightful greenish gold manicure came into existence by surprise.



It actually started out as the blue/gray/taupe/pink oddity from this post, China Glaze In The Mood Pink Shimmer to Purple Shimmer, shown below on the right.



After adding some Ulta Moody Blues, Revlon Orange Flip, and just a touch of Nabi Purple Glitter, it turned into this crazy franken.



The orange flashes are pretty intense indoors and give this polish almost magenta undertones.



But outside it becomes a slightly more subdued purple. Still an unusual color though.



Then I topped it with a sheer no name key lime green, and that's when the magic happened!  It turned into an awesome greenish, goldish, purple-ish duo-chrome.



It looked completely different in every lighting condition.  Dare I say it is Chanel Peridot-"esque"?



J'adore!





I was actually tempted to leave this manicure unstamped because I loved it so much... but I couldn't do it.  The compulsion to stamp is too strong!!  Here it is topped with Wet & Wild black and stamped with Bundle Monster plate BM-208.





And from afar:



I took my nail stamping plates and some polishes to a friend's place for a girls' night.  This was the result:





So much fun!

Nail Perfect review

So I saw Nail Perfect (As Seen on TV) in the clearance bin at Ross and I thought I'd give it a try. Nail Perfect comes with plastic plates with various nail cut out sizes, a travel handle (bizarre), a polish holder, and nail decals.



The basic idea is that you find the nail cut out size that most closely fits your nail bed size, stick your nail in it so that the skin on either side of your nail bed is covered, rest your hand on the base, and apply your nail polish. This is supposed to result in a "perfect" manicure with no clean up required.



It works just okay. I still ended up with some polish on the skin around the tips of my nails. I don't have pics of the result because I was too impatient and wanted to stamp right away! Considering the result was not "perfect," it wasn't worth the extra trouble. I get a similar result on my own, and I don't have the steadiest of hands.

The little chair holder for your nail polish bottle is an interesting idea, but not really that useful. It would have to be a more extreme angle to be of real use.



The decals were cute, but definitely not worth the price. Not even from the clearance bin.



All in all, a big meh.

Pretty pretty purple

I'm moderately obsessed with the color purple, especially rich dark purples. For this manicure I used Nabi polish in Purple Glitter. It is highly pigmented and nice and sparkly. I added a gradient of some mystery polishes in blue and green on top with Bundle Monster plate BM21.



To stamp the gradient, I dotted the blue and green on the side of the image, and scraped two or three times, overlapping the colors as I scraped. The difference between blue and green was hardly noticeable on top of the purple, but I'm definitely going to make another attempt at gradient stamping with some more opaque polishes.



Here you can kind of see the green on top and blue on bottom:



And from afar:

Brunch nails

I decided my gray/blue/pink/taupe nails weren't quite right for a Saturday morning brunch on a hot summer day. So I decided to revisit my obsession with pretty blue greens.

I've been loving OPI's Mermaid's Tears from the Pirates of the Caribbean collection. I don't actually own it, but I saw it earlier this summer on the toes of an acquaintance and couldn't get it out of my head. I had recently purchased the Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Mint Sorbet, and I figured I could franken a rough approximation.

Sally Hansen Xtreme:



I added a few drops of China Glaze Concrete and Ulta Moody Blues.





Not bad eh?



Then I stamped with Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Mint Sorbet. The plate I used was MASH plate m63.





I enjoy the subtlety.