Art Deco Chevrons

This is another manicure inspired by Jane at Nailside!  In fact, I even used very similar colors to her original design.  I had never tried chevrons before, and they were actually easier than I expected.  You can use plain tape, but for this one I used the straight tip guides from one of my french manicure sets.

I started with a base of Zoya Bevin, then did the first chevrons in China Glaze Swing Baby.  I used the same guides and taped off again, then added the final triangle in China Glaze Stone Cold.

After that, I applied a coat of Essie Matte About You.  I think they came out gorgeous!  I am excited to try this design with different colors, it's a pretty easy way to get a cool design.

Matte Gold Glitter

This manicure is the result of another case where I wanted something easy, but not just a plain color.  I had picked up L.A. Girl Glitter Addict in Synergy a couple of months ago and hadn't used it yet.  Actually, Sam, my 6 year old, picked it out from the display at Rite Aid one day when I was browsing!

I decided to start with a base of Ulta Alter Ego, which is a really pretty shimmery turquoise with silvery shimmer.  I have a sort of love/hate relationship with glitter polish - I like it, but before I even put it on I'm thinking about how much of a pain it is to remove.  So I end up not wearing it that often.  I really do love a good matte glitter though, so I topped this one off with Essie Matte About You. 

How do you feel about glitter polishes?  Do you prefer chunky or fine glitter?  Saturated?  Shiny?  Matte?

Blue Ombre Nails

I've seen lots of photos of ombre manicures. Maybe this isn't a TRUE ombre since I didn't just use different shades of the same color, but I like how it turned out!

The colors I used for this one were Essie Go Overboard, Revlon Chic, Ulta Bam-blue-zled, China Glaze For Audrey, and a light blue Petites polish I picked up specifically for this.

Go Overboard and Chic are two of my favorite polishes in my collection, so it's always nice to get a chance to wear them!

Pure Ice Oh Baby!

I was recently at Walmart and checked out these Pure Ice polishes.  They're cheap, but there are some fun colors.  I'm always looking for interesting topcoats, so when I spotted Pure Ice Oh Baby! I couldn't resist putting it in my basket. 

The first time I wore it, I wore it over Essie Go Overboard, which on it's own is a gorgeous dark teal cream.

Photo Credit: ommorphia beauty bar

When I added a layer of Oh Baby! on top, it was completely transformed.  I was in love!  It added some awesome depth as well as a holographic effect from turquoise to purple.

More recently, I wanted to experiment with some other colors, and I decided to pair it with Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Grey Area. 

This is a terrible photo, but it turned out kind of cool.  It added tons of blue shimmer on top of the grey.  I didn't get a better picture because I went to bed too soon and it got mushed about, so I took it off really soon after I'd done it.

I'm so glad I added this one to my collection.  It's versatile, and I can't wait to try it over more colors!

Do you have a favorite effect polish?

Happy Hunger Games Day!

As this post publishes at it's schedule time of 12 AM, I'll be sitting in a packed theater watching a midnight show of The Hunger Games.  SO EXCITED!  In honor of the occasion and my acquisition of one of the best polishes I've ever seen, here is another Hunger Games mani using the China Glaze Capitol Colours polishes.

I wanted to use Riveting and Stone Cold.  There are some absolutely fabulous Hunger Games manis out there today - check some of them out on my Pinterest nail board!  I was so impressed and would have loved to do something fancy, but I'm just nowhere near as good at freehanding as many of these ladies.  I decided to do a funky french mani, and then I decided to use my zig zag scissors instead of doing a straight line.

After I'd painted them, I put on a coat of Seche Vite to seal it before mattifying.  Here are a few shots of this one shiny.  I didn't love it, honestly I like Stone Cold how it comes out of the bottle with it's soft matte finish. It's one of my favorite polishes ever, and on Monday I'll have a few swatches of it on it's own.

Next I applied a coat of Essie Matte About You to transform it.

I don't love it as much as I'd hoped I would.  Because the Riveting was applied over the darker polish, it is a tiny bit spotty and darker than when it's on it's own.  When it was shiny it wasn't as visible, but after I applied the matte it didn't look as gorgeous as it does on it's own with a matte topcoat.

I'll be wearing this tonight to the movie, but I'm not sure how long I'll keep it on after that!

Have you ever done nails inspired by a book or movie?  Will you be seeing The Hunger Games this weekend?

Blue Stripe Mani

This is another manicure inspired by Chloe's Nails, her striped mani.  It didn't turn out quite how I'd wanted because it was my first time doing it and my nail didn't get divided into 3 equal parts.  Learning where to place the tape when you're taping off to do each color takes a little practice, so my bottom sections ended up being biggest on most nails.  I still think it turned out okay though.

For this mani, I used Revlon Chic and Essie Go Overboard, which are both cremes and two of my favorite polishes.  The silver is Pure Ice Silver Mercedes.

 

China Glaze Capitol Colours Mani + Bonus Haul

I have been coveting just about every polish in the China Glaze Capitol Colours collection since I found out about them (you can see amazing swatches of all the colors at Vampy Varnish).  I seriously want to own all of them, but the three I've most had my eye on are Riveting, Agro & Stone Cold.  When I was walking at the mall with Danny yesterday I noticed a display in Hot Topic - the colors had arrived!  I didn't buy there because they're $1-2 more than at Sally Beauty Supply, so today I stopped by there to see if they had them in.  They only had a few - but they did have Agro & Riveting!  I also picked up Luxe & Lush.  I may stop back at Hot Topic later this week to see, I think they did have Stone Cold in, and that one is so unique I really want to get my hands on it.

When I got home, I was trying to decide what to do and I was thinking about a mani I'd seen in the last few days with a stripe pattern.  I first saw a design like this a couple of months ago at Nailside, and I'd tried it once before.  My first thought was to do Riveting under black, but then I started looking at my swatches of Riveting & Agro together and decided to do a full on Hunger Games mani!

One of the things I was dying to try with Riveting was a matte topcoat.  Sam at Fashion Polish featured this the other day and it was so gorgeous!  I decided to top this mani off with Essie Matte About You and... wow.  I LOVE it!  I feel like it's muted and a little gritty and beautiful and perfect to go with The Hunger Games.

I also went and had my nails filled today and re-shaped.  They're shorter than they were before, and I went to a different salon on the recommendation of a few friends.  I am so much happier with them - she spent a lot of time on the detail, filing them down after she'd put the acrylic on and making it so that they were not thick and bulky.  She also gave me the square shape I wanted.  From now on, I'll be going to Happy Nails!  It's a little more expensive, but it's worth it for the quality!

I also stopped at Rite Aid today just to browse, and came across a heck of a deal.  This is my haul:

I got all of these for under $7!  They were all 75% off.  I'd looked at the Sally Hansen HD polishes before, but I hadn't wanted to spend the money.  Well, for under $2 each I decided how could I not?  I picked up the other two on a whim because they were super cheap - I think the Wet N Wild one only came out to around 25 cents.  Usually when the polishes are so discounted I have no interest in the colors, so this was a fun find!

Water Marble!

I started seeing water marble posts on Pinterest a few months ago, and from the first time I saw it, I KNEW it was something I wanted to try. This week, I finally got around to trying it for the first time!

It turned out amazing! I had to revise my color choices a bit because some polishes work better than others (if you do a Google search you'll find different people's opinions of which work best). I had just bought Zoya Megan, a sort of purply light grey, so I used that as my base.

It took a few minutes of experimenting to figure out how to drop the polish into the water and how to use the toothpicks to create designs. Once I figure it out though, it only took maybe 30 minutes to do all my nails. Not bad at all! My designs are not as uniform as a lot of the water marbles I see, but I think I like it this way, a bit organic.

As you can see, I also finally got a bottle of Seche Vite - for some reason I hadn't checked at Sally Beauty Supply or Ed Wyse. I went to Ed Wyse for the first time and they have about a billion colors of OPI and Zoya, so I'll definitely be going back there! It is amazing, it dries and sets the polish so quickly!

Here's a crappy cell photo of how the designs turned out my right hand.

If you're interested in water marbling, I would highly recommend the following sources for tips.  I would not have been able to do this without seeing photo tutorials and video of how it's done.

Water Marble Picture Tutorial at Chloe's Nails (LOVE this blog!)
Water Marble Tutorial at Hey, Nice Nails!
Valentine's Day Water Marble by SimpleLittlePleasures on YouTube

The colors I used for this manicure were:
Zoya Megan (base)
China Glaze Swing Baby
Sinful Colors Bare
Essie Sew Psyched
OPI Wooden Shoe Like to Know

Rose Gold Mani

My current manicure is a rosy pink with gold flakes.  I had originally gone for a dark grey with a shimmer coat, but looking at it, I found that I really wanted something a lot lighter.  I actually found myself craving some sort of pastel green, purple, blue or pink cream, but I found I didn't really have any of those.  I picked up a couple at the drug store yesterday, so I'll try one out soon.  

In the meantime, I settled for this pink.  I used Maybelline Wet Shine in Wine Shine, an old polish that I've had forever, and it was ready to be trashed.  I don't even remember the last time it was opened. The brush was losing hairs everywhere, and the polish was thick and goopy.  Luckily it only took one coat to fully cover.  I topped it with one coat of Wet n Wild fastdry in The Gold & The Beautiful.  This glitter polish is really dense, and I didn't know if I liked it when I first put it on.  After topping it with a coat of Essie Matte About You, I was pleased with the results.

The polishes in their bottles:

I LOVE the Matte About You top coat.  I love experimenting with matte polishes, and being able to turn any of my polishes into a matte is so much fun!

Here's a close up shot of the polish - you can see that even though the gold looks like glitter in the bottle, it's actually really flakey.