04/29/13 - Squares 'n' Bows Nails

I've gotten so many new polishes lately, in addition to the ones I've already had, that instead of having no ideas, I have too many! It was hard to settle on one, but after I saw LOVE4NAILS' recent tutorial, I decided to go for it.
When I bought LynBDesigns - Up on the Poopdeck, I loved the look of it, but was struggling for how to incorporate it in nail art. I loved the variety of glitter in there, especially the square glitter. I wanted something that would show off the beautiful polish, and play up the variety in shapes. So that's why I decided LOVE4NAILS' basic design would work great for this. :)

I used Up on the Poopdeck, my black KISS striper, and Pure Ice - Super Star. And that's it! This was pretty simple and quick to do, considering some of the designs I've done recently.

I had hoped to really get those big squares apparent more. You can see one to the side of my pointer finger. I probably should have moved it to the middle, but I wanted the polish to have as "natural" an application as possible. Oh well, it's still fun.

Look at that great blue hexagon! :D

Also, fun fact: stripers are good at doing stripes! I know, it's not rocket science. But I kept trying to do more intricate nail art with them and just couldn't figure out what they good of them was because nail art sure wasn't working. Well, duh, it was easy-peezy to do stripes with the striper.

Okay, that's about it! Check back in a few days to see swatches of Up on the Poopdeck. :)

04/27/13 - Stash Update

I know I just did a stash update yesterday, but I finally got the last polish I was expecting just a couple hours ago. :)

Can you guess what it is?

If you guessed Serum No 5 - Day Glow, you'd be correct!

I've been wanting this polish for a while because I read that it has the best glow-in-the-dark action.

Pretty cool!
And in the light it's a kind of fun neon pastel yellow. It's also a little less grainy-looking than some glow in the dark polishes.

Here's a quick bottle comparison shot with my other glow in the dark polishes. I can't actually tell if any of them are better than the others, but at some point I'll have to do an on-the-nail test.

Either way, I'm happy to have it. :)

04/25/13 - Stash Update

So you may all know that I'm a sucker for holos. So when I accidentally stumbled upon a picture of Color Club - Wild At Heart, a gorgeous purple holo, I had to have it.

So pretty! :D I don't know what I'll do with it yet, but I like it. It's also my first Color Club polish, so we'll see how that goes. :)

Also, when LynBDesigns announced her upcoming Dr. Seuss collection, I knew I had to have some. Once it was released, I settled on three of them.

Call me dorky, but I literally did a happy dance when I opened the package and saw they were wrapped in purple bubble wrap. Can't get better than that!

Here are the three I got: Up on the Poopdeck, Oobleck, and As Brainy and Footsy as You.

 

There are some bottle shots. If only I could show you the shimmer in Oobleck and As Brainy and Footsy as You!

That's a little better. :)
Finally, just a quick bottle comparison of Up on the Poopdeck and another LynBDesigns polish, Let's Get Mawwied:

They're both milky bases with glitter, so I wasn't sure how similar they'd look in person. As you can tell, "milky bases with glitter" can come in a lot of variety, because these are nothing alike!

I have one more polish on the way to me, and it's not outside of the question that I may buy some more. I'm on a bit of a kick right now. :p

Swatch: LynBDesigns - Don't Torture Me!

Here's my swatch for my third LynBedisgns polish, LynBDesigns - Don't Torture Me! This one's from the Princess Bride collection, "Dweam Wiffim a Dream."

I'd call this a great periwinkle colour, with subtle, translucent flakies. LynBDesigns describes it as "Based on the albino torture master, this polish is a light blurple with white flakies. The effect is stunning and subtle." Agreed!

I love this, because it almost looks like just a regular (but pretty!) periwinkle, but then the flakies give it an element of surprise and beauty.

These pictures are all two coats without top coat. I think top coat lets the flakies shine a little more, but I don't have any pictures of that without butterflies on top.
This polish dried amazingly fast! This almost made the formula tricky, and on the first coat it didn't go on as smoothly as I would have loved. But the second coat evened it out beautifully. I didn't time how fast it dried, but it was touch-my-nails-together dry before I finished taking pictures.

I think this is a great polish and a great colour, and I'm glad I picked it up. You can get it yourself here!

04/19/13 - Indie Butterflies

Hello! It's been one of those weeks where every night I've sat down to redo my nails, only for something else to come up and get in the way! Finally I got to it Thursday night/Friday Morning. Probably should have waited for Friday night, so I could have focussed on school stuff one more night. :p Oh well.

In terms of the actual nail art this week, I was inspired by Kayla Shevonne's Indie Nail Art contest. At first, I thought I'd be limited to my LynBDesigns polishes, because I was connecting Indie with Etsy and those are the only ones I've gotten from Etsy. But then I read that Lime Crime and Glitter Gal are also indies, and inspiration struck.

 

Butterflies! I figured that LynBDesigns - Don't Torture Me would make a fun sky-like colour, for Lime Crime butterflies. So I used Lime Crime - Parfait Day, Peaches <3 Cream, Crema de Limon, Pastelchio, Once in a Blue Mousse, and Lavendairy. Then I added accents to the butterflies with Glitter Gal - Silver 3D Holo. While I tried to leave the indies the star, I also used Wet 'n' Wild - Ebony Hates Chris and Klean Color - Green Grass. (Oh, funny on that last one - I didn't realize the name until now, and I did indeed use it for green grass!)

I also used my new brushes for this, with the star of today being this little guy. I think it's my smallest paint brush yet, and it definitely made getting some of the details a lot easier.

Also, the new camera I mentioned a while ago finally arrived. I've been playing around with it a lot, and am stilling working out the best way to take nail pictures with it. But so far I like it. :) A bit of the problem with these is simply that we got about five minutes of sunshine today, so I didn't really get a chance to show off the holo effect on the butterflies. I managed to get a little of it, though. :)

I hope you like this cute little design. Thanks for stopping by! :)

Swatch: Revlon - Impulsive

I've been having a bit of trouble finding a purple creme. I don't know why, but it seems like nearly all of them have at least some shimmer in there. So when I finally saw Revlon - Impulsive, I decided to pick it up.
I was more impressed with it than I expected to be, as it went on smoothly, shinily, and opaquely in one easy coat.
The only problem I had with it is that the pictures refused to be colour accurate. They keep being too cool, but if I tried to edit them in post-production, they'd be too warm. Sigh. It's really a nice, neutral shade.
First, with flash:

And some in indoor lighting, no flash:

You can really see how the formula was awesome. No top coat on these, by the way.

 Really just a simple purple creme. It was a great background for my I'm a Fan of Purple nails, and I'm sure it'll be great for nail art in the future. :)

04/07/13 - I'm a Fan of Purple

And the posting continues! Woah! :p
Also, everyone laugh at the title, because I'm clearly hilarious. xD

I was struggling a bit with ideas, because all my ideas at the moment involve neons and/or holographics, but the weather is absolutely rubbish for that right now. So I wanted something that would cheer me up with all this rainy, gloomy weather, but would also look good. Then I realized - duh! - follow the suggestions you receive! So I followed Polished Pisces' suggestion of a fan brush mani, since I now have the fan brush. So I looked at a couple of the tutorials and set to work!

She suggested I could rock it rainbow-style, and while I totally agree, I decided to do it in shades of purple, because it's my favourite colour. :)

I hope I don't ruin the fan brush. Before I used it, I was feeling it, and it is really soft. Nail polish and acetone aren't kind to brushes, but it seems like nice quality, and I'll try to be nice to it.
Basically, you achieve this look by applying a colour to the tips of the fan, and then you brush over each nail several times. I started with Revlon - Impulse, then brushed on multiple layers of: Lime Crime - Lavendairy, Covergirl - Lav-Endure, Santee - Purple, and Esssence - Promberry. I finished with China Glaze - Fairy Dust. I didn't need Fairy Dust, of course, but come on - I've got to top of my favourite colour with one of my favourite polishes, right?

 

This is a fun look that totally easy and quick. It kinda reminds of tiger stripes, or sugar spinning, or a tornado. I bet you could make it look like any of those with the right colours!
Thanks for looking. :)

Facebook fan page!

I know I just posted the question yesterday, but I really just needed one person to tell me it seemed like a good idea. And at least two people said it was, so, ta-da! If you have a Facebook, I'd really appreciate your "like." I hope this is an easier way for some of you to follow my nail art. :)
https://www.facebook.com/QuixiisNails

P.S. A whole week of posts from me every day! Unheard of! :p

Facebook fan page?

I've been thinking about making a Facebook fan page for my blog. Not a lot of people have or want a Blogger, so even if they want to follow my blog, they might not be able to. It would be another way of getting out there. I mean, I want people to be able to see my nail art and enjoy it as much as I do. So maybe Facebook is a way to do that?

But I wanted opinions first, just in case it's not worth the extra effort. So, thoughts?

Lasting Power Musings

Woohoo, a post every day this week! That might be a record. :p
 
So, the last couple weeks I've been thinking about how long things last. Unless I really hate something or have timing concerns, I try to make each one of my designs last a week. And by try I don't really mean try, more like, I don't take it off for that long. If I want something to last longer than a week, I might apply an extra coat of top coat or two a couple days later. Usually I'll get a few chips and tip wear, but have no real problems with nail polish lasting that long.

However, I hear lots of people saying that nail polish only lasts a day or four days or something. And I'm wondering if we have different definitions of "lasting," or whether polish just stays better on my for whatever reason.
For my end of the discussion, I have two photo comparisons to offer of recent designs. In each, the first photo is the morning after I applied it, and the second is before I removed it.

This one had really good lasting power. A full week later, and you can hardly tell.

Ten days later. Definitely some chips on a couple of the fingers, but on the others it still looks pretty good.

So I just wanted to contribute that, and hear what anyone else has to say on the matter. :)

03/31/13 - Holler for Holos!

As I've mentioned, I'm a big fan of holographic stuffs. So since the sun may or may not be coming out more often, I decided to decorate my toes with holographic goodness. :)

 

I gave it one coat of Wet 'n' Wild - Blue Wants to Be a Millionaire, a nice scattered blue holo. Then I topped it with two coats of Love & Beauty - Silver, which was kinda like a thicker version of China Glaze - Fairy Dust. the result? Holo goodness.

There was no sun today, but you could still see the holo.

It's good. I like it. I'll enjoy looking down and seeing holographicness on my toes for the next few weeks. :)

ETA:
The sun came out! Not only was I thrilled because of this in general, but my little piggies look even more awesome in the sun! Yay!