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!

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.

An odd one

So I got this polish, China Glaze in the Mood Pink Shimmer to Purple Shimmer, from Rachel Marie's blog sale. It looked like an intriguing purple-y gray. But in real life, it is just a very odd color. I'm guessing it's oddness has to do with the fact that it is an old color change polish and its color changing days are long over.

Inside in artificial light it looks like a pinky taupe.:



Inside with flash the pink shimmer really comes out:



I stamped with Ulta Moody Blues and the MASH plate m78. Top coat is Nicole by OPI.

Outside it's a blue gray.





And from afar:



I decided to franken that sucker (results in a later post)!

Cheetara

As a child of the '80s, I was all about Thundercats and Cheetara in particular because she was such a freakin' badass.



I mean c'mon!

So when I was invited to a Thundercats premiere watching party, I thought I should have a manicure that reflected my affinity for the fastest Thundercat of them all (who's also pretty good with a bo staff).

I used Urban Outfitters in yellow, Revlon Orange Flip, and L.A. Colors in gold. Base coat by L'Oreal and top coat by Nicole by OPI. The stamping plate I used was Bundle Monster BM-221.



I must admit, it was a bit of a rush job and it shows. And in retrospect, it probably would have looked better if I'd incorporated black. But oh well!



And from afar:



A Jem t-shirt completed the look. :) After watching the premiere (good, but not as good as the original), we watched the She-Ra/He-man movie. All in all, a very fun '80s cartoon night.

Floral filigree

After the craziness of my last rainbow dots manicure, I was in the mood for something a little more delicate.

I layered two coats of City Color mint green and stamped it with Urban Outfitters silver. The plate I used was Bundle Monster BM-221.



I'm not usually a girly girl, but I love how feminine it is.



And from further away:



After a few days I decided to top it with OPI shatter. Instead of brushing from the bottom up, I brushed in from the outside edges. I think the resulting look was an interesting pewter/brushed metal effect. I liked the matte finish too, so I didn't put a top coat on.

Red and gold nail stamping

My next attempt at stamping involved a little more pizzaz.

I used the following colors: a mystery brand in Rock-On Red as my base color, a mixture of Revlon Top Speed in Reddy and Revlon Cherries in the Snow for stamping, Nicole by OPI top coat, and L.A. Colors Art Deco in a fine gold glitter for detailing.  I picked the gold up at Dollar Tree for a dollar!



The results were like so:



And here's one with flash so you can see the stamping.  I stamped with Bundle Monster plate BM10 (which I got as a single plate on eBay to test out the Bundle Monster plates before I committed to the set).



The gold tips were inspired by Jessie J's nails at the 2011 Glamour Women of the Year Awards, as seen here.

Although the results of the stamping were very subtle and definitely not noticeable from any distance at all, I really liked the fact that it added texture as opposed to color.