Christmas 2015 - Ugly Sweater Nails

I hope everyone had a great Christmas.  I can't believe it's over already.  I only did one Christmas themed look this year.  And actually, I ended up doing it twice.  The week of Christmas got a little hectic.  I needed to redo my nails, I had already been wearing the design for a week, so they were starting to look a little beat up.  But I just didn't have the time, or energy, to play around with a new look.  I still had all the same supplies out, and since I liked how they came out so much the first time, I just decided to redo the same design.  

The base was sort of a recycled look for me.  I had used this same tape mani combo several years ago during the holidays, but for a snowflake look instead.  I started with 2 coats of China Glaze Poinsettia, then one coat of China Glaze Ring In The Red.  I top coated with Seche Vite and made sure it was completely dry before taping off my nails on the diagonal with just regular scotch tape.  Then I applied a thicker coat of China Glaze Glittering Garland, top coated and let dry before stamping.  The sweater stamp is from MoYou London Festive Collection 06, and I stamped the design with white Konad Special Polish.

I also gave my nails a little trim this month because of a few broken corners.  I wasn't thrilled with the idea of making my nails shorter, but in hindsight, it really worked out to be good timing; I don't think this stamp would have fit as well on my nails at the length they were before I filed them back.  

I was really happy with how this look turned out.  I only had to redo a couple nails each time I wore this, because I thought I stamped the design a little crooked a time or two.  I always top coat my polish before I stamp, that way I have a little barrier of protection over my base polish in case I need to re-stamp a nail.  I can carefully wipe off the stamping polish with polish remover and a q-tip, without completely messing up the polish below.  And I was happy to pull out Ring In The Red from my melmer for the first time in a while.  That is still probably one of my favorite China Glaze glitters.

Shangri-La Abstract Stamping

For the past month or so, I've been in a nail art slump.  I just haven't felt motivated to do anything other than switch out the polish on my nails.  Seeing this look though, that I wore pre-slump, is reminding me why I got into nail art in the first place, and also that a manicure doesn't have to be super complicated to have it turn out to be one of your favorites.

This mani was actually from back in July, I just never got around to using it in a post until now.  It had been a little while since I'd done any matte nails, and I was loving a look that Oooh, Shinies! had posted at the time.  It made me think about the China Glaze Romantique collection, which I had purchased online ages ago solely to use the polishes for stamping.  I also had just recently ordered the Shangri-La Master Set from Bundle Monster and was itching to try out one of the new plates in the collection.

For my base, I started with a polish probably almost as old as the Romantique Collection, OPI Steady As She Rose.  Then I stamped part of the design from plate BM-S105 with China Glaze Joy.  I finished the look off with one coat of OPI's matte top coat.

I need to remember to pull out some shades from the China Glaze Romantique collection more often.  They are great for stamping, and they look amazing matte as well.

Zoya Loredana and Silver Swirls

My nails have been kind of a mess so far in 2015.  I'm not sure if it was the seesaw weather affecting them...one day it's snowing, the next day it's 60...or what the issues were, but I feel like I've had more breaks and cracks so far this year than ever before.  They seem to finally be making a comeback though.  I'm hoping that with the weather starting to level off, and a little extra TLC, they'll be back to normal shortly.  Luckily, I came across a handful of looks from late last year that I had stored away on my desktop, but for some reason just never got around to posting.  This first manicure started off with 2 coats of Zoya Loredana.  On top of that, I stamped a design from Pueen plate PUEEN13 using China Glaze I'd Melt For You.

I didn't really buy many Christmas themed polishes this past winter, but I wanted to get my hands on I'd Melt For You, from the China Glaze Twinkle Collection 2014, specifically to use it for stamping.  Swatches I'd seen of it online reminded me a bit of China Glaze Millennium.  And Millennium, as well as most of China Glaze's chrome-like polishes, always stamps really well.

I'd Melt For You did not disappoint either.  I'm not sure, if worn as a full coverage mani, that I'd Melt For You would have the same mirror like look as Millennium does, but it worked great for stamping.  I need to do a side by side comparison of I'd Melt For You and Millennium to see if I like one more than the other.  Zoya Loredana is a matte finish polish, but I did top this look off with one coat of top coat to protect the stamping.  I think Loredana looks just as great top coated as it does when left as a matte finish.

Zoya India and Pueen Stamping

Winter has not been kind to my nails.  I think I've had more cracks and breaks in the past few months than I've had all year long.  One of the looks I've worn recently though, in between battling the effects of the cold, was this design from Pueen plate PUEEN26, stamped with China Glaze Passion over 2 coats of Zoya India.

Zoya India has a great formula and is a great vampy shade for this time of the year.  I liked it a lot on its own, but stamping over it with Passion really complemented the shimmer in this polish.

I really enjoyed this combination.  It's a nice look just for the Winter time in general, but I could also see myself wearing this if I wanted something a little more elegant for a fancy holiday party.

OPI Muppets World Tour and the Unintentional Wedding Nails

This is a look I did way back in June, and the pictures have been stowed away on my computer ever since.  There were no plans for any particular design when I started, I just wanted to finally use OPI Muppets World Tour and just kind of winged the rest.  I never intended to make any type of "wedding nails" design, but when I was finished and gave my nails a look over, they definitely gave off that type of vibe to me.

The base of this manicure was 2 coats of OPI My Vampire Is Buff.  I then layered 1 coat of Muppets World Tour over it.  Here's a few shots of how that looked.

Very pretty, kind of beachy/sandy but it just felt like something was missing to me.  That was when I decided to stamp over it.  After a quick flip through my stamping plates, I decided on a design from Bundle Monster plate BM-406.  To stamp, I used China Glaze 2030.

I really loved the way this turned out.  It almost felt a little too elegant for me, ha ha, but I wore it for the entire week.  The blue and pink glitters in Muppets World Tour were the perfect little pops of color against the neutral base and gold stamping.

China Glaze Metro Pollen-tin

Here's another look with my nails still a bit shorter than usual, thanks to a broken index nail.  This mani is about a month old.  Posting a manicure from Mother's Day a few days before Father's Day makes total sense, right?  Ha, well really it wasn't meant to be a Mother's Day look, except that I put this together during Mother's Day weekend and my mom ended up asking me to repeat it on her for Mother's Day itself.

I started out with 3 thin coats of Metro Pollen-tin, another polish I picked up from the China Glaze City Flourish Collection.  The first coat was a little streaky, but it was almost completely even by the second coat.  I ended up applying a third coat just to get it perfectly even.  After that dried, I stamped a floral pattern from Pueen plate PUEEN25 using Konad Special Polish in pastel orange (which isn't really pastel to me, but that's what Konad calls it).  I added an orange rhinestone to the nail on my ring finger as an accent, and topped everything with Seche Vite.

China Glaze Grass Is Lime Greener plus stamping

My nails are starting to gain some length back, but I still have a couple manicures to post from when they were a little bit shorter.  Today's post is just some abstract stamping I had done on top of China Glaze Grass Is Lime Greener, from the Spring 2014 City Flourish Collection.

Grass Is Lime Greener was a bit chalky, but I didn't have a very hard time with it like I had read about in a few reviews.  I was relieved since I had bought it before I start seeing others post about it being really streaky and hard to even out.  I did end up applying 3 coats, but application wasn't troublesome at all.  I just made sure to take my time with each coat.  The stamping was done using Konad Special Polish in green and a design from Pueen plate PUEEN16.

I liked this manicure much more in person than how it comes across in the pics.  And even with having to be a little more careful with the application, I'm really glad I picked up this shade from the City Flourish Collection.

OPI My Vampire Is Buff Hidden Dotticure

If you follow me on Instagram, you may have seen I had a little trim about 3 weeks back due to a crack on my index nail.  But a little while before that, when my nails still had some length to them, I wore this Spring-like (maybe, sorta) design over OPI My Vampire Is Buff.  However you may categorize it, I was happy with the final look.

It started as a dotticure, in my head anyway, but on the nail it wasn't quite what I had originally pictured.  So I decided to stamp over it to try and hide/salvage it.  The final mix of designs and colors really worked well together, and I liked the end result so much more than I thought I was going to.  The dots were made using two China Glaze City Flourish Collection polishes, Grass Is Lime Greener and Metro Pollen-tin.  The swirl design was stamped using Konad Special Polish in pastel violet and an image from Nailz Craze plate NC02.

St. Patrick's Day Skittles

I'm always jealous of skittle manicures.  I love them when I see them, but my brain goes completely blank if I try to create one of my own.  I can never think of designs that will be cohesive and so I usually scrap the whole idea and do something else.  But I was determined to do skittle nails for St. Patrick's Day this year, and I think I actually pulled it off.

I'm really happy with them, I think they turned out pretty damn cute!  I already had a basic idea in my head for what to put on 2 or 3 of my nails, so I started there and came up with the rest as I went along.

I started with 2 coats of China Glaze White On White on every nail.  On my index finger, I stamped an argyle pattern from Konad plate m60, using Konad Special Polish in pastel orange.  For the Irish flag, I used striping tape to mark off the nail into thirds, then used OPI Don't Mess With OPI for the green stripe, and OPI Where Did Suzi's Man-Go? for the orange stripe.

For the nail on my ring finger, I used Konad Special Polish in green to stamp the larger shamrock from Winstonia plate W105.  Then I used the two tiny shamrocks from the shamrock design on Bundle Monster plate BM03 and randomly stamped them around the rest of the nail.  And on my pinky nail, I used dotting tools to randomly dot Don't Mess With OPI and Where Did Suzi's Man-Go? around the nail in 3 different sizes.

Finally, on my thumb, I double stamped the plaid pattern from Konad plate m60, first using the Konad green Special Polish and then the Konad pastel orange.  The plaid is a little wonky but the Konad full nail patterns are a little small for my thumbnail, so it was a bit hard to stamp it smoothly while trying to make sure I had it lined up on my nail just right.  In retrospect, I probably should have put the plaid on another nail, like my pinky, and dotted my thumb instead.  But by the time I decided on doing the plaid design, all my other nails were already finished.

In real life though, looking at it from a distance, the plaid looks much better.  And I'm not expecting anyone to be grabbing my hand to get in nice and close like how it's zoomed in tight in the above picture, so I'm satisfied with it.  And I absolutely love the overall look of all 5 designs together.  If I had to choose though, I think the dots would be my favorite.

Valentine 2014

Look at me, all posting a holiday mani on the actual holiday instead of a week later (or two weeks in the case of this past Christmas!).  Not that this post went off without a hitch.  I was originally planning to have this up Wednesday and then do another Valentine design Thursday, since I had the day off from work.  But then word came of the impending snowpocalypse and schedules got switched, I ended up going in to work only to come back home when we shut down at noon because it was so bad out, and by then I...well, I just pretty much said screw it, ha!  So without further ado, here is what turned out to be my lone Valentine manicure this year.

For this design, I started with 3 thin coats of China Glaze White on White.  The design is from Winstonia plate W102.  The polishes used are all Konad Special polishes: red, pink, pastel pink and dark red.  I dabbed the 4 colors onto random spots of the design so that they would blend slightly during scraping.

At first, I felt like they needed something more, but the longer I wore them, the more I enjoyed them just the way they were.

Even though I'm not really one to celebrate Valentine's Day, I do seem to like doing Valentine themed designs. Maybe it's just because they are so many darn heart patterns in each stamping set I own.  I also find that I really enjoy the outcome when I use white as a background for nail art, and this design is no exception to that.  So this was definitely a win-win in my book.

Christmas Nails 2013 - Better late than never!

I realize I never did put together a post about the designs I made this past Christmas.  So this may be a little backwards since I just recently posted my New Year's design, but today is Russian Christmas after all, so I guess it's as good a day as any to finally put these up!  So, to those who are celebrating, Christos Razdajetsja!  Slavite Jeho!

Ever since I picked up the 2013 holiday collection of the JulieG Gum Drops polishes, I've been wanting to use Mistletoe to finally try out Nailside's abstract Christmas tree design.

First I painted my nails with a polish combo I've managed to use in some way for at least one holiday manicure each year since they first were released in 2011: 2 coats of China Glaze Poinsettia topped with one coat of China Glaze Ring In The Red.  I also added a layer of topcoat to my ring finger before starting on the tree itself.  For my tree, I started off a little different by first taping off a tree shape on my nail, then filling it in with one thick coat of Orly Dazzle and quickly removing the scotch tape.  Once that was dry, I taped off the same tree shape and then crisscrossed striping tape over the tree and painted on one coat of Mistletoe.  When I pulled off the tape, it gave the impression of having silver garland draped on my little tree.  I finished off the tree with a piece of diamond shaped holographic glitter I fished out of Cirque XX.  I had originally wanted to use a star glitter but the only stars I had available were too large.

I finished off the rest of my nails by stamping on an ornament pattern from Bundle Monster plate BM-H03 using China Glaze Millennium, then top coated the stamped nails.

For Christmas Eve and Christmas day, I kept it pretty simple by just stamping some holly leaves on all my nails.  Considering I started with a base of Amazeballz by Lacquistry, it really didn't need much else to be sparkle worthy for Christmas.

I had finally snagged myself a bottle of Amazeballz in an early morning restock earlier in the month and it arrived just in time to to use for Christmas.  I used 3 coats to get full coverage, but it was already almost completely opaque by the 2nd coat.  Once I had it on, I knew I couldn't bring myself to cover it up, so a simple holly leaf design stamped on each nail near my cuticle was enough to make me happy.  The holly leaf design was from Bundle Monster plate BM14, from the original 2010 set, stamped with Konad Special Polishes in red and green.

Besides being a belated Christmas post, this was also a little flashback to my nails prior to my recent New Year's chop, ha ha.  You'll probably be seeing some more flashbacks to longer nails coming up, as I have a few generic/non-seasonal designs from the past month or two that I never got around to posting yet.  Thanks for stopping by and Merry Christmas!  ;-)