Gold Glitter Gradient

Something quick and easy to do and it looks really nice.  So sparkly in real life. 

I applied one coat Color Club Gingerbread on just the tips and then let it dry.  Gingerbread is pretty dense with the glitter so it nicely covers the white part of nail tips preventing VNL.  Then starting from mid-nail I applied one coat of H&M Gold.  There's quite a bit of glitter in Gold, but not as dense as Gingerbread and the glitter is smaller than Gingerbread.  Lastly I did one coat over the entire nail of  Ardene Disco Ball.  Light gold-ish glitter with larger sliver holographic glitter.

Super love this, but I love glittery gradients.

Diagonal Stripes and Flowers

Just a quick post before heading out.  I did two or possibly three, don't quite remember, coats of Color Club Take Me To Your Chateau.  I used Konad special polish in white and SHANY plate SH23 for the stripes.  These stripes are much thinner than the one available on the first set of BundleMonster plates.  The length of the SHANY stripes image is also longer than the BundleMonster one, but the width  is approximately the same.  The flowers are puffy nail stickers that I forgot I even had.  Found them while cleaning some junk off my desk.

Polish Gifts #2 + Layered Reds

Here are the other polishes I received during the holidays.  The American Apparel polishes were Christmas gifts from my friend Judy.  The Color Club polishes which I believe to be from a Pardon My French set were gifted to me via my friend Dawn from her brother's girlfriend.   It's all the colours minus Si Vous Please. 

And that's it for polish gifts this year.

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I used two colours from the Quo by Orly mini set,  Garnet (left) and Red Hot (right).  Pictured top right is both colours swatched on their own with two coats each.  Red Hot is pretty pigmented and one coat would have sufficed.  As for Garnet, it's pretty sheer, on the nail by itself you'd probably need three coats for opacity.  For the mani I did one coat of Red Hot and one coat of Garnet.  Then I used some water decals that look like they could have been hand painted.

Polish Gifts #1 + Grey Glitter Snowflakes

Long time no write.  Not because I was super busy or anything just that I haven't been photographing my nails much.  I didn't really paint my nails much during the holidays. When I did do my nails they usually didn't last all that long.

Hope everyone had a happy holiday and a good start to the new year.  To start off this post I have a pic of a set of mini polishes of Quo by Orly polishes that my friend Amy got me for Christmas. (Hi Amy, that was your shout out, though you had to wait a while for it, thanks for the polishes.)

Quo by Orly polishes are available at Shoppers Drug Mart stores and I had never tried them before so this set was a great introduction to them.  No pictures of any of them yet, but I will get on it.  Ah I just realized that the bottom of the pic is missing the names for the bottom row.  D'oh.  I'll list out all polishes.

From left to right, top row:
Very Vixen, Mystic Night, Garnet, Precious, Sapphire Sparkle, Cold Stone, Rock Show, Rock Star and Night Sky.

Bottom row:
Turquoise Moonlight, Celestial Star, First Class, Filthy Rich, Red Hot, Wine and Dine, Old Hollywood, Love Game and True Love.

Most of the polishes are glittery or shimmery and seems like they may work best as layering polishes.  However 3 thin coats will get you full coverage with minimal or no bald spots.  The tiny brush is not to my liking, but that's OK.

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Next up nails.  I did this some time last week.

Base colour was two coats of American Apparel Echo Park.  I forgot to include Konad special polish in white in the photo, but that's OK.  Used Konad white to stamp with and plates SH17 for the snowflake on the index finger, RA 119 for the thumb and ring finger and HB23 for the smaller not so well stamped snowflakes on the middle and pinky fingers.  I also did some glitter snowflakes with Color Club Sugarplum, but they didn't turn out as nice as I thought they would.  They kind of just looked like blobs of glitter on the nail.  Topped everything with CoverGirl Boundless Color in Disco Dazzle.

That's it for today. 

Green on Green + Nude Stars

I've got a couple of manis to show today and first up is this sort of festive green on green one.  Two coats or maybe three of Barry M Spring Green with Color Club Perfectly Mol-Ten as the stamping colour.  I used SHANY plate SH20 for the pattern.  This pattern is wide enough for my thumb, but it's kind of on the short side.  Perfect coverage for shorter nails, longer nails would need to be double stamped.

Next up a nude colour with some sparkly stars.

Nails are still short so I thought I would change the shape for a more elongated and feminine look.  Three coats of joe Latte as the base.  For the stars I used a flimsy piece of plastic (scotch tape works too) and painted on a layer of Color Club Gingerbread (polish on left).  Waited for that to dry and then painted half of it with Color Club Take the Stage.  After everything was dried I peeled off the dry polish and used a star paper punch to punch out the stars.  Put some top coat on the area that I wanted the star and then placed the star on top.  Finished it off with two coats of top coat.

Here's a slightly better look at the stars.

I think I've done something similar to this before, but I can't remember when.  It's probably somewhere

Santa + Reindeers Stamped

I used images from SHANY plates, the flying reindeer from SH13 and the Santa face from SH03.  I'm not sure if it's suppose to be Santa's face or just a bearded old man's face.  I thought it was going to turn out smaller, but it filled up most of my shorter pinky nail.

Two coats Etude House LUCIDarling 04 Indigo Blue, stamped with Konad white and added a little bit of Color Club Beyond the Mistletoe to add some sparkle.

Sparkly Fame and Fortune + Nail Max X-mas

Here's Color Club Fame and Fortune layered over two coats of a holo franken that I did ages ago.  The franken is sort of sheer so the Color Club really deepens the pink.  The large flecks of glitter plus the small holo glitter looks great in real life, but sort of dull in picture.  My camera can't capture sparkliness.  Had this on my nails for a few days.  When I first saw Fame and Fortune I thought I wouldn't get much use out of it, but I am loving this combo and will probably like it layered over other polishes too.

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Was browsing through the December issue of Nail Max and decided to try out a few of their Christmas designs.  I wasn't ready to take off glitter yet so I did them on nail wheel.

Here are a couple that I did.  Christmas-y, but not CHRISTMAS-Y.  And super easy.  Except for the words.  I think Konad has a nail stamp image for the words 'Merry Christmas', but I'm not sure which plate at the moment.  I don't have it so I can't use it.  I used a silver polish for the words, but I think I might need to pick up some metallic acrylic paint that I saw at the Dollarama.  It would be easier to use when writing out words.  I did a few more so I show them in another post.

It Snowed!

It snowed today!  Light and fluffy snow.  But it didn't stay on the ground and melted all away in the afternoon.  Much better than the rain that we had yesterday.

 

Did this a couple of days ago, seems kind of wintry.  One coat  of Color Club Cold Metal, which was sort of unnecessary since the two coats of Color Club Jingle Jangle covered it up.  Stamped using Konad special polish in white using large plate B with an image that can be found on Konad plate M51.  Jingle Jangle is super sparkly but not noticeable in my pictures.  I really love the blue and purple glitters and I love the name Jingle Jangle too.  It's a bit like nonsense words that you might sing to yourself or something.

I bought Jingle Jangle in Color Club set along with another set from Winners last week.

Beyond the Mistletoe - Sultry Color for a Glittering Holiday and Backstage Pass - Glitter Shades to Rock the Stage.

And here's some others that I bought last week too.

A box of H&M mini polishes, three Gosh polishes - Black Passion, Blue Monday and Gasoline and some polishes from the aerie store - Pink Frost, Champagne Shimmer and Brownie Points.  Bought everything except for the Gosh polishes with a gift card and they were all on sale due to Black Friday sales happening on the Thursday before.  The Gosh polishes were also bought on sale last week but on a separate occasion when I had to stop by Shoppers Drug Mart to pick up something for my mom.

I am pretty sure I am set for a no buy in December, but I can't say I'll absolutely stick to it.  I'm already done my Christmas shopping and whenever I go grocery shopping I always stop by the Winners first.  And always to the polishes first too.  A habit I must break.  Early new year's resolution.

Nail Venus Inspired + AA Metallics Stamped

Saw a design from the current issue of Nail Venus that I really liked and just had to do it.

Here is the pic of the nails from the magazine.  The copy I downloaded was cut off there so I don't know what the thumb nail would have looked like.  And this is what I did:

Super love!  Love the colour combination, love the look and love that it was super easy to do.

Thumb and ring - Two coats of American Apparel Dance, then I used Color Club New Bohemian to do the first chevron freehand.  I didn't have chevron nail guides and didn't cut up tape so I just eyeballed it.  The chevrons didn't have to be perfectly straight either since the gold stripe was going to cover up weird lines.  After New Bohemian I used American Apparel Make Up and lastly American Apparel Gold Flash for the gold lining.

Index - Three coats of American Apparel Dance, still has a bit of VNL, but I can live with it.

Middle - Two coats of Color Club New Bohemian.

Pinky - Two coats of American Apparel Make Up.

I didn't have any gold or silver studs to put on my nails so I finally found a good use for my larger hexagon glitters.  The gold hexagons looked best placed at the base of the nails so I did that for the index, middle and pinky fingers.

I will probably do this again in different colours.  I just love it.

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Bunny Nails wanted so see an example of the American Apparel Metallic polishes stamped so here's a pic of them stamped on Rimmel Lasting Finish Pro Black Satin.

At some angles it seems like the gold and silver polishes kind of look alike.  They all stamp very well, no gaps in thick lines.  Will stamp with them on my own nails soon.

Blue/Grey French + Crawling with Spiders

Something simple in between some Halloween manicures.

This was three coats of joe Cement and then I used some tape and one coat of American Apparel The Valley.  I really love this colour combination and especially love this blue.  I used this same colour as the background of the octopus and boat design.

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This was two coats of WetNWild Sleepwalker, should have done three, but I thought two was sufficient.  Then I used Color Club Antiquated to stamp spiders from BM13.  Didn't really like this, but it's alright.

Haul + Mixed Mani

My local Winners recently had some new Color Club sets in stock so I bought two of them.  First six polishes are from collection A of the Back to Boho sets.  Colours include Nomadic in Nude, Earthy Angel, New Bohemian, Shabby Drab, Rad Nomad and Red-ical Gypsy.  The set also includes a Stuck On You Basecoat.

The second set I bought was the Foiled collection, didn't see the Back to Boho collection B available.  Colours included in this set are Antiquated, Foil Me Once, Hot Like Lava, Perfect Mol-ten, Lumin-icecent and Cold Metal.

Haven't swatched these or really use 'em much except for one plastic wrap experiment.  However, I did use a couple for the following mani.

Flowers, stripes, polka dots.  For the thumb and pinky I did one coat of Perfect Mol-ten, middle and ring fingers were three coats of New Bohemian and the index finger was two coats of Wet N Wild Mad-Styles.  The nail art was done with acrylic paint.  Just something simple and girly.

Leopard Print with Flowers + Experiment

Saw a make up bag at Forever21 with a leopard and rose print and quite liked it so I thought I would try it out on my nails.  Not super in love with it because of the decals I used.  Probably would have been better if I had painted on the roses.

Base colour is Ardene Barely There, used Color Club Soft As Cashmere for the stamping colour and plate m57 for the print.  Was feeling lazy so I used water decals instead of painting.

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Sorry for the dry looking hands picture above. From the Korean blog 달빛샤워의 Coffee Break :: 네이버 블로그 there was a scan from a Korean nail magazine that featured using plastic wrap to I guess smoosh around the polish.  I'm not too sure but that's what it looked like from the pictures.  Here's a link to the blog post with the scans, you'll have to scroll down to see the tutorial.

It looks alright, but it's  kind of bothersome to do.  Basically paint the nail, dab on some dots of colour, place a piece of plastic wrap over the nail and move it around a bit, remove plastic wrap let dry a bit and then put on top coat so it blends the colours a bit.

Here's another version that I did with different colours.

Did the same thing as above but I added some starry glitter top coat and some rhinestones which were a misstep.  Will probably continue to practice this until I am happy with the way it looks or just give up.

Stamped Purple Gradient + Haul

Sponged on Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Lively Lilac and Innisfree PU08, then a layer of Color Club Starry Temptress Top Coat.  Stamped using a Konad Princess Polish in not sure which colour using a full image design from a large plate B.

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Wasn't really intending on buying new polishes while out shopping, but I ended up getting these four on separate shopping outings.

The Tip Toe polish was from Old Navy and I only got it 'cause my friend needed something to put her over 20$ so she could use a coupon to save 10$.  My swatch picture makes it look like it's kinda matte, but it's actually shiny.

On a different shopping trip I stopped by a Loblaws while killing time before heading to dinner and picked up a few joe polishes.  I picked up Seashell 'cause I thought it would be a perfect match to a dress that I was going to wear to a wedding and got Slate and Iris 'cause I liked the colours and it was three polishes for 10$.

Neon Splatter

Another splatter, different from the droplet splatter of large plate A.  Large plate B has a full nail image with splatter lines.  Just used a bunch of neon colours and layered over one another.  Even though the purple was the first colour stamped it still stands out quite prominently.  The other three just weren’t as pigmented I suppose so they didn’t really cover up any of the purple.

Base colour is Wet N Wild Craze Mad Styles stamped with mini versions of Color Club Power Play, Limelight, Amp’d Up and Lazer Pink.

Colourful Waves

Lots of colours used for this.  Two coats of KleanColor White as the base then I used the lighter colours to make a sort of wave or off centred top of heart on the nails.  Once that was dried I did same thing with the darker colours, but made it off centred to the other side of the nail.  Lastly added a rhinestone where the colour dips.

Colours from thumb
Light Colours - KleanColor Pastel Teal, Etude House PP903, Color Club Vintage Couture, KleanColor Pastel Yellow and Color Club Twiggie.

Dark Colours - Color Club Chelsea Girl, Color Club Pucci-licious, Color Club Poptastic, Color Club Wham! Pow! and American Apparel Malibu Green.

The colours in my pictures are a bit off for the pinks.  They’re actually brighter in real life, I don’t know why they photographed so light.

Yellow Laushine Crackle

The formula for the yellow is much thinner than the pink and blue that I have.  I thought that it would not be opaque when I put on it, but as the cracks started appearing the polish became more opaque.

One coat of Color Club You Got Soul-ar with a thin layer of Laushine 17.  I should have done two coats of the Color Club you can see bald spots in the cracks where the base colour was thinner.

Roses

Have had this on for the past few days, been practicing doing roses.  Unknown red Color Club, Cosline - 702, Kleancolor - Military Green and black acrylic paint.  I bought a nail painting pen kit, which looks just like a fountain pen without an inkwell.  I used that to paint on the black outlines.  It was much easier to use the pen then to use a paint brush, especially when painting on my right hand.

Color Club Scented Neons

Wicked Sweet

This is Wicked Sweet from the Wicked Sweet collection.  I did 4 coats, but I think 3 is okay too.  I just quickly did this before heading out to watch a movie and had some bald spots that needed extra coverage.  My pictures are sooooo inaccurate.  My camera just couldn’t pick up on the tealnees of shimmer and made the polish just blue.  Not great with colour correcting in editing programs so I just leave ‘em as is.  It’s a really great colour and so yum smelling.  This one smells like blueberry candies.  Also reminds of Tval’s Skin Smoothie in Blueberry Vanilla Parfait, but much sweeter.  After I removed the polish the scent lingered for a bit on my nails.

Yum Gum

This is Yum Gum.  Absolutely love this colour, three coats and again photos aren’t quite accurate.  Photos in natural light because the light box pictures were completely washed out that it made the polish look pale.  The colour is much brighter than what my pictures show.  This one smells like Juicy Fruit.  Haven’t chewed sweet gums in a while, but that’s what I’m reminded of when I get a whiff of the polish.

The heart on the ring finger was done using Cosline in 002 White.  I painted a strip of polish on a piece of scotch tape, left it to dry, peeled the polish from the tape, used a heart punch to punch out a heart, placed the heart on my nail and then topped it with top coat.  I could have painted it on free hand, but this way the heart is much more symmetrical.

Cannot wait to try out the other polishes.

Butterfly Wings

Recently Deez Nails did a butterfly mani and featured a little picture tutorial. I'd seen this design done before, but never did it because I hadn't graduated from just doing Konad stamping.

The pictures on the left are with natural light while the pictures on the right were taken in my light box. Light box pictures are slightly yellower. The picture in the top right were just some practice ones. I ended up doing the middle one. Polishes used for the sponging gradient were all from Color Club - an unknown blue, Velvet Rope and Feel The Beat. The black was acrylic paint and the white was Sally Hansen Xtreme-wear - White On.

Blossoms and Mini Haul

Something springy for a pretty crappy day today, but it was quite nice yesterday, though a bit chilly. Base colour is Color Club - Ready to Wear, and the branches were painted on with a no brand/name brown polish, Etude House - GR605 for the greenery and a pink franken for the blossoms.


Went to Zellers the other day and saw that they finally had the Wet n Wild Fast Dry polishes. I had already bought Party of Five Glitters and Gray's Anatomy in January from Walmart so I just picked up one - Hannah Pinktana. Also picked up the NYC IndividualEyes eyeshadow palette for brown eyes. Just something new and inexpensive to try out.

Also took the picture of the above items in a cruddy lightbox I made over the weekend. Got the Idea from here. I made a fairly small one, but I can take pictures of manicures in it, but I still prefer using natural light.