05/20/13 - Lime Toes

A while ago I painted my toes. I kept it pretty simple.

It's just a gradient from Love&Beauty - Neon Yellow to Love&Beauty - Neon Green, topped with Sation - Tall, Dark, and Has Some.

Tall, Dark, and Has Some is a fun glitter. It's got varying sizes of black glitter and blue shards and small hexagons. Paring it with the neons makes for a fun combination.

That's it. But I like it. :)

05/25/13 - April Showers Bring May Flowers

I know May is almost over, but my friend Brittany suggested this, and as the weather is still being weird and raining, I thought I'd give it a shot. :)

I tried to show the transition. Rainy, stormy weather, to rainy, to cloudy, to flowers!
There were a lot of polishes used in this, and if you're curious about any of them I could let you know. But I will tell you the base colours are China Glaze - Concrete Catwalk, Sally Hansen - Wet Cement, and Lime Crime - Once in a Blue Mousse.

I think this is fun, matches the theme pretty well, and certainly represents the weather we're having right now.

Thanks for the idea!

Swatch: Color Club - Wild At Heart

I've been meaning to write this post for the last week, but for whatever reason kept getting distracted! Maybe it had something to do with having a bunch of tests last week. Oh well!
So this is a swatch post for Color Club - Wild at Heart. This is only one coat (!). I do my nails at night, so no sunshine pictures, but it really is gorgeous in the sun, and you can even see how pretty it is inside.

Bam! Look at that! Gorgeous!

I swear when I was debating buying this, most reviews said it was a scattered holo. While it's not as linear as some holos, it seems more linear than scattered to me.

The formula was awesome, too. Like I said, one coat, and it looks beautiful and smooth!

I've only used this in my Checkered nails, but seeing how beautiful it is, I'll have to use it again.

This might be one of my favourite polishes now. :)

Checkered Nail Art Tutorial

If you were wondering how I did the checkered nail art in my last post, wonder no longer. I did a tutorial for this one too. :)

[Click here!]

05/18/13 - Purple Checkers

Hello!
So yesterday I sat down to do a design I've been wanting to try for a while. A checkered design, using tape to ensure straight edges. I have now accomplished this. :)

 

It was really hard to photograph this! This is Color Club - Wild at Heart and Essence - Prom Berry. Both are beautiful colours, that create a subtle but striking contrast for the checkers.

Wild At Heart has this great holo that wouldn't cooperate with the camera, especially because while it was super sunny last week, it's been rainy and cloudy this week. And Prom Berry keeps photographing really dark, almost black. I mean, it is dark, but you can tell it's purple in real life.

Regardless of the photo troubles, in real life it's quite lovely and I'm enjoying this design quite a bit. :)

ETA: The sun finally poked out today! The photo still doesn't quite capture it, but Wild At Heart is absolutely mesmerizing in the sun. :)

Swatch: Brash - Gone Bananas

So this is Brash - Gone Bananas. I think I picked this up at Payless Shoes of all places, but it does pretty well as a yellow creme. I was worried about it, but this is only two coats. If I was wearing it on its own I might have gone for three, but for the nail art I was doing, two coats was great.

It's somewhere between yellow and goldenrod.

I've used this before in my Peek-a-Boo Monkey nails, my Rainbow Weave nails, my Rainbow Dotticure nails, my Turkey Day nails, my Let it Rain nails, my Hawaiian toe nails, and most recently, my Sunshine nails. You know, basically any time I needed a yellow polish.

It doesn't always work well for nail art. A little too sheer or something. But it did surprisingly well as a base colour.

So there you have it: Brash - Gone Bananas.

Tutorial: Sunshine Nails

So since I got my new camera, I've been trying my hand at various video tutorials. My first one was a hair tutorial, and now I've tried to make a nail art tutorial.
It's a lot harder than I thought it would be! But I did give it a try, so you can check it out. :)

[Click here!]

05/12/13 - Sunshine Nails

We've been having so much sunshine lately, I knew I needed to add some to my nails!

 I used hole reinforcers and striping tape do this. :)
The yellow is Brash - Gone Bananas, and the accent nails have Love & Beauty - Yellow as well, not that you can really see it. The blue is Love & Beauty - Light Blue.

I've had this idea bouncing around for a while, so I'm glad it seems to have worked out.

Of course, today, after over a week of solid sunshine, we're having a bit of overcast cloudiness. Oh well. I've got sunshine in my hand anyway!

05/05/13 - I Heart Toes

(I don't really, if you're wondering. I mean, I don't have anything against toes. But. You know.)
So a couple weeks ago, I had a dream in which I had a purple tattoo on each of my big toe nails. Don't ask my how one gets tattoos on nails. In fact, one of them washed off, and I freaked out and spent the rest of the dream trying to get it back. o.o I don't know, weird dream! I think it had something to do with my actual tattoo, but why on my toes, I don't know.

Regardless, I decided to do some nail art inspired by this.

Pretty simple. Just a base of Love & Beauty - Taupe, with hearts of Color Club - Wild at Heart (funny :p).

I'm actually not sure how I feel about it. I've been doing really bright/colourful/sparkly stuff on my toes, and this is super subdued compared to that. But it does look nice.

Here's the actual tattoo with the nails, to compare:

Wild at Heart is pretty, though. I'll definitely have to do more with it later. :)

:)

Swatch: LynBDesigns - Oobleck

Can I just start by saying I love the name? I don't know very many people who don't have positive childhood memories associated with oobleck. :)
But yes, today, I have an oobleck-y polish: LynBDesigns - Oobleck, that I bought from her new Dr. Seuss collection.

These are all two coats of Oobleck. It was a bit hard to get colour accurate pictures. The reality is kind of somewhere in between all of these. The colour, honestly, just looks oobleck-y!

She describes it as "This color is the perfect spring green, and it has just a hint of color shifting sparkle." She also noted on her blog that "to be honest, this was the color that inspired the collection" and that it's near and dear to her heart. <3

Well, I'm a fan! It's a really perfect minty/springy green, with just the right amount of shimmer to seal the deal. :)

I'm sad that it ended up mostly covered in my Minty Criss Cross nails, but I really like it, so I'll definitely be wearing it again. :)
You can pick up your own bottle here!

05/05/13 - Minty Criss Cross Nails

Hello!

I don't actually have a lot to say for this nail art. I started with a gradient from LynBDesigns - Oobleck to OPI - My Boyfriend Scales Walls, then put down striping tape in a cross cross pattern, and did a gradient from Pure Ice - Super Star to Claire's - Mint Green. Then I topped that all with Orly - Twilight.

This looks really easy and simple, which it is. But it was way more time consuming than I expected! Just individually applying each piece of striping tape took a while.
But I like the effect. :)

That's all, folks. :)

Swatch: LynBDesigns - Up on the Poopdeck

As I mentioned in my Squares 'n' Bows nails, I recently bought LynBDesigns - Up on the Poopdeck, from her new Dr. Seuss collection. I thought it looked fun and different, and I was right.
These photos are all of two coats by itself, no top coat.

There is a huge variety of glitters in this polish!

Like small, medium, and large squares and hexagons, of all sorts of different colours. All in a light grey-ish base. She describes it as "a sheer white polish loaded with any and all colors of glitter in several different shapes and sizes." I'm not sure if some of the glitters leaked, causing the base to not actually be white, or if it's just.. not quite white. I don't mind, though. It reminds me of newspaper, bringing a fun story book quality to it.

I thought about placing glitters to get them exactly in places, but I didn't. I'm just happy to report I didn't need to fish for anything. The application was pretty easy.

 

Check that out! Pretty cool.

You can get Up on the Poopdeck here. It's such a fun polish, perfect for Dr. Seuss!