10/27/12 - Happy Halloween! Nails

Happy Halloween, everyone!
So I'm kind of excited about this design, for two reasons: 1) It involves two of my new polishes, 2) It involves a technique I came up with. :D
Last year for Halloween, I did a skittles design with a five standard Halloween designs. This year, I also kind of did a skittle design, but with a little more cohesiveness.

 As you can see, this is a background of my new OPI - Lucern-Tainly Look Marvelous. The spider and lettering is a coat of Julie G - Cherry on Top and a coat of Revlon - Firecracker. The thin black is the new striper, Kiss - Black. The thicker areas of black (the head and one of the bats) are Wet 'n' Wild - Ebony Hates Chris. The other bats are JLB - Hot Cocoa and Revlon - Hot for Chocolate. And the white is Pure Ice - Super Star.
Here's a picture with flash:

Here are some close ups:

My favourites are the tree and the spider. My least favourite is the eyes.
Oh yeah, so the technique I came up with - hole punches!  I've seen variations of this that led me to this idea, but I don't think I've seen this exact technique. I'm gonna make y'all my first ever tutorial for it, though! :D
I think I really like how this these nails came out, over all. The technique was easy and fun, and the striping polish was easy and fun, and the new base polish I used is easy and fun. :D
But yeah, Happy Halloween! Be safe tonight!

10/27/12 - Stash Update

Hello everyone!
I'll have quite a few posts this week. :) First up, some new nail polish!

I walk past a couple cosmetic stores to and from campus most days, and I've poked my head in a couple of them. One day after class, I went into one and decided I was probably going to buy some of their OPI. I settled on this set, because it's so cute, and has one of the polishes I've been thinking about buying separately anyway.

Here's what it has in it:

A free pen, Pirouette My Whistle, and Lucerne-Tainly Look Marvelous. I'd never heard of the second one, but the first one I've been wanting. They both look great!

And here's the pen:

It's actually a pretty boring pen. It's got these fancy outside, and a cap that actually screws on. But the pen itself is just a regular ball point. Meh.
But I'm excited about both the polishes.

Also, I've been lending out my polishes to various girls on my floor. Not so sure how I feel about that, but I can't say no. :p But on the plus side.. I lent some polish to a girl yesterday, and she asked if I had a white striping polish. I said no, I don't have any striping polishes. I just use a tiny paintbrush. Well, she really wanted that white striping polish, so she went and bought one. Which also came with a black and silver one, which she gave to me!

I always thought that a regular paintbrush that you can dip in any nail polish is probably better than and makes more sense than an actual striping polish. But I just used it yesterday, and I was actually very impressed. I may have to look into getting more of these!

And an update on my swatch plates..
Here's my two newest:

Which filled the plate! Here are the four I have now:

Half of one of one of the plates is actually all polish that my mother owns, and I don't even have with me, but, whatever. So I need a new plate! Hopefully I won't get any more polish until Thanksgiving, since all the plates are back home.
Anyway! That's the update. Keep watching for more posts!

10/20/12 - Let it Rain Nails

Why are we letting it rain? Because I have ten umbrellas!

This is, of course, inspired by The Daily Nail's Under My Umbrella-ella-ella. I thought it was a fantastic idea, and now that the forecast for the next several weeks is nothing but rain, I decided it was time.

The base is, again, OPI - My Boyfriend Scales Walls. The nail blogging community exploded about this enough that I had to check it out, and sure enough, I keep using it! I thought about using actual white for this, like Daily Nail did, but I realized the pale grey was much more reminiscent of the weather.
For the three regular nails: the red is Julie G - Cherry on Top. The yellow is Brash - Gone Bananas. The green is Love & Beauty - Green. The blue is CQ - Tropics. The brown is Revlon - Hot for Chocolate. The light brown is China Glaze - Kalahari Kiss.
For the accent nails, instead of opting for a black umbrella like the Daily Nail, I decided to go glittery. Because who doesn't get a little bit cheerier, even in the face of bad weather, when they see glitter? So the red/pink is Colormates - Paparazzi. I didn't have a sparkly yellow, so it's the the same yellow with a coat of Sally Hansen - Diamonds over it. The green is Tip Toe - Shamrock. The blue is Essence - Choose Me! The raindrops are Maybelline - Colorama 110. The brown is JLB - Hot Cocoa (kinda funny that both the browns names' make references to hot chocolate xD). The gold is Unnamed Cat Polish. :)

Here's some close ups trying to show the glitter, which I'm a big fan of:

I've been pretty excited to try Paparazzi and Choose Me!, so I'm glad I got a chance. They did not fail expectations. :)

And lastly, here's some close ups of full nails:

I'm pleased that this design even worked on my short pointer nail. I can't quite convince myself to cut all my nails to the same length, so we'll just have to pretend. :p
But yeah, I think these are fun! Thanks Daily Nail for the inspiration!

10/20/12 - Sparkle Vomit Nails

Okay, maybe "vomit" shouldn't be in the title for nail decorations, but I was kinda going for the look of "glitter threw up all over my toes" for this. xP I basically just layered most of my glitter polishes over eachother.

I took step by step pictures as I layered on glitter.
I started with a base of Essence - Time for Romance. This was one of my Essence freebies, and one that I was excited about. It's kinda of a transparent purple base with small and medium purple glitter.

Then I put on a coat of Nail Treats - Jubilee. This is a clear base with a bunch of tiny hexagonal multicoloured glitters in it. I'm a fan.

Then I put on a coat of Icing - Lemme See Your Peacock. This is a clear base with medium size round glitters in blue, purple, and green.

Then I put on a coat of Essence - Make It Golden. This was another of the freebies that I was excited about. It's a clear base with gold shimmer and medium gold and small gold glitter.

And finally I put a coat of ORLY - Twilight on top. This is a silver shimmer type thing.

And that's it! I'm not sure exactly how I feel about the end result. I think I like it, though. Here's some more pictures, this time in sunlight:

I'm really trying to show you all the layers of glitter. It's pretty fun:

It's pretty rainy/gloomy looking over here, so the glitter won't get a great chance to shine, but hopefully when I take off my socks at the end of the day it'll make me smile. :)

10/07/12 - Neon Toesies

Remember those star finger nails I love and posted a couple days ago? Well, at the same time I redid my toes. This was an idea I actually had in my head for several weeks. However, it was one of those things that didn't execute at all like in my head. They're okay, but not what I had in mind.

I wanted to do neon yellow stars, with the glitter, on the neon pink background, with an orange outline. Then do the other twos in a kind of semi-ombre style.

The yellow is Love & Beauty - Neon Yellow, the pink is L&B - Hot Pink, and the orange is Milani - Awesome Orange. The glitter is Colormates - Glitter Glam.

Now, the one thing I do love about this mani is the glitter. Remember it at all? This is one of the polishes from the $2 three-pack.

It's this pretty multi-coloured, multi-sized hexagonal glitter that had pretty good application. I definitely want to use this again!

Hopefully I'll redo my nails soon. But until then, I'll let my happy neon and glitter pacify me. :p

10/07/12 - Stars in the Night Nails

Hello again! It took me a while to find inspiration, and once I finally did these, it took a while to find time write a post about them. Sorry about that!
But I really love what I have this week, so hopefully that'll make up for something.

YEAH, they glow in the dark!
You may recognize this from Pinterest (which I recently got by the way, Quixii, as usual). Here's my pin on it. Obviously, hers is different and cleaner, but I love mine nonetheless.
Here's the other hand:

To create this, on all but the ring finger I started with a base of OPI - My Boyfriend Scales Walls, which I figured would be a good base for the glow in the dark. I think I was right. Then I put down one coat of really old Wet 'n' Wild Fantasy Makers - Glow in the Dark. Then I put down two or three - I might have lost count - coats of Claire's - Glow in the Dark. Then I used a black Migi Nail Art Pen to create the stars. On the accent nail, I started with Wet 'n' Wild - Ebony Hates Chris. But then carried out the same layering for the stars.
When I first bought the Claire's glow the dark, I wasn't sure how I felt about it having glitter at first. The ancient Wet 'n' Wild doesn't, and I was mostly looking for a replacement. But in this mani, I actually love how the glitter looks. With so many coats the glitter kinda has a multi-layered look, and it's subtle but noticeable enough to add a pleasant sparkle. Here's an attempt to show what I mean:

Anyway, like I said, I love these. They look simple but are really cool, and I love looking at them glowing in the dark. They don't have fantastic glowing power, but enough to make me happy. And I've been getting a bunch of compliments on them. Yay!