Just Spotted the Lizard Gradient

OPI Just Spotted the Lizard is one of my many, many, oh so many untrieds.  I put it on not really having a plan, but knowing I wanted to do something with it besides leave it plain.  I decided to try out another gradient, since I could use the practice, and then stamped a simple Bundle Monster design over the whole thing.

 

For the gradient, I sponged on Finger Paints Black Expressionalism, then added some top coat to smooth everything out.  The stamp is from Bundle Monster plate BM-316, using Konad Special Polish in black, then some more top coat.  I wanted something simple, that would fade into the black tips and I didn't want to cover too much of Just Spotted the Lizard with the design.

Short post today, but there's not much else to say.  This was a super simple design to do but it also turned out to be one of my recent favorites.  And Just Spotted the Lizard is pretty kick ass to begin with.  Might have to grab myself a back up of this one if I ever run across it again.

Blue Gradient Snowflakes

Right before Christmas, my friend Kelly from work bought me this little polish set she found at Aeropostale.  She told me, "I don't know if the polish is any good, but I saw the glitter and rhinestones and had to buy it for you."  As soon as I opened it, I knew what kind of design I was going to do to use all 4 pieces in the set.

The set came with two polishes, a dark blue shade and a light blue shade (no names on them), and it also came with two little pots.  One pot was filled with loose glitter and the other contained small rhinestones.

photo courtesy of aeropostale.com

I started with two coats of the light blue polish and then sponged on the dark blue to create a gradient.  The gradient ended up being a bit more subtle than I had expected, but that was due to the light blue polish drying a lot darker than it looked in the bottle.  I still like the way it came out though.  Then using Bundle Monster plate BM-323 and Konad Special Polish in white, I stamped on the snowflakes. To apply the glitter and rhinestones, I worked on one nail at a time.  I applied one coat of clear polish and dipped a fan brush in the glitter and lightly sprinkled the glitter over the clear polish.  I dabbed on a dot of clear polish in the middle of the two largest snowflakes and, using an orange stick, applied two rhinestones.  Then repeated the process on each nail.  The glitter was a little rough, so I applied one coat of Gelous before applying Seche Vite.

I had originally planned to stamp the pattern in the opposite direction but didn't realize until after my entire left hand was done that I had reversed it.  So I decided to turn it around for my right hand.  I honestly couldn't decide which way I liked it better though.

The Aeropostale polish, by the way, was pretty good.  It applied really well and only took a couple coats to be opaque.  This manicure lasted a full week.  I was pleasantly surprised.

New Year's Nails

So, I don't really celebrate New Year's.  I mean, I do, I guess.  But I don't get all jazzed up and go out on the town in a glittery dress and high heels.  That's just not me.  But...there should be a little glitter on New Year's, right?  So it might as well be on my nails.

This is the manicure that I wore on New Year's Eve.  It's not exactly the Times Square Ball but that was sort of my inspiration for this look.  The bulk of the glitter in China Glaze Ray-Diant has a kind of green-gold-silver look to it and reminds me of the metal framing of the Times Square Ball.  It's mixed with a bunch of glitter in all different colors, which reminds me of all the different colors and patterns the ball is able to display once the lights are turned on.  The framing on the actual Times Square Ball is a triangle pattern but a diamond pattern was as close as I could get after sorting through all my different stamping plates.  This pattern is from Bundle Monster plate BM-310.

I started out with two thin coats of Orly Dazzle as a base for two thin coats of Ray-Diant.  The first time I wore Ray-Diant, it chipped like a son-of-a-bitch the very next day.  I was not very pleased.  I decided this time to try laying it over a solid color instead of using as many coats of just the glitter to get it opaque.  I had just done this a little earlier with OPI's Spark De Triomphe, which is about the same consistency as Ray-Diant.  That manicure lasted 4 days, zero chips and I could have worn it longer except I took it off to do these nails instead for New Year's.

The glitter was a bit bumpy so I decided to top coat before stamping to try and get a smoother surface to work on.  I applied one coat of Gelous and then one coat of Seche Vite.  I'm not entirely sure it makes much of a difference but sometimes when I stamp on top of a rough glitter, the bumps in the glitter can show through the stamping.  So better to just add a little top coat now just in case than be mad later that I didn't try it.  The pattern from BM-310 is stamped using Konad Special Polish in black.

After stamping, I finished everything off with one more coat of Gelous and a coat of Seche Vite.  I did the stamping on Monday but I've actually had the glitter on since Sunday and still have no chips.  So I think using less coats of glitter over a similar base color was the way to go.  I'll be sure to try it anytime I wear any of the other glitters from the China Glaze Prismatic collection.  So that was my bling for New Year's.  I hope everyone had a great night Monday ringing in 2013.  Happy New Year!

Christmas Tree Wrapping Paper

Last weekend was the annual Christmas party held by the owners of the company I work for and I wanted to do something new on my nails for the party.  I decided to try out the little abstract Christmas tree design on the newest Bundle Monster set.  It is from plate BM-321.  I was actually planning to use the Christmas tree stamp along with a few other Christmas themed stamps like the gift box and the ornament but I didn't like the way that they were stamping so I decided to just stick with the trees.  I was afraid that the trees would be too plain completely by themselves, so I came across a swirly type design on Bundle Monster plate BM-224 and stamped it a couple times on each nail as a background to the trees.  The final result ended up reminding me of something you might see on Christmas wrapping paper.

For my base color, I used Orly Dazzle.  I stamped the swirl design with Konad Special Polish in white.  Then using Konad green for the tree and Konad red for the tree base, I stamped about four trees randomly on top of the swirls on each nail.

I really like Orly Dazzle as a base for stamping.  I've used it before and I love the way the stamped designs look over the silver background.

I'll probably do at least one or maybe two more Christmas type manicures before the holiday, but I don't know if I'll have time to actually post them until after Christmas.  So if I don't get a chance before Tuesday, here's wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!!!

Christmas Lights

For my second Winter mani of the season, I leaned a bit more towards a Christmas design instead of just a basic Winter theme.  I've been wanting to try out the Christmas light bulb design on the 2012 Bundle Monster plates since I first bought the set, so I figured now was as good a time as any to give it a shot.

I started out with a couple coats of Orly Au Champagne, then went over that with one coat of Sonnetarium Snowfall.  I picked out 4 colors from my Konad Special Polishes to use for the bulbs: orange, blue, yellow and red.  The bulb design can be found on plate BM-318.  For each bulb, I stamped using one of the 4 colors and some Konad Special Polish in green for the little light socket part of the design.  Then I used the same green Konad polish to freehand some wires connecting all the bulbs.

The only issue I had with this design was that the yellow bulbs were a lot harder to see in real life than they are in the pictures.  You had to get really close to see the detail in the yellow bulbs but the other colors really popped well on the white background.  Snowfall over Au Champagne was gorgeous all by itself.  I didn't take any shots of it without the stamping (D'oh!), but it was so pretty that I think I might have to use this combination again at some point this Winter for another manicure.  And I should have a new post up later this week of the design I have on right now, that I did to wear to my office Christmas Party last night.  It reminds me of Christmas tree wrapping paper.

December Snowflakes on Plaid

When December rolled around, I wanted to do something winter themed but without diving right into all the Christmas designs just yet.  We haven't had any major snowstorms so far this winter but the weekend I painted this design we did have a few small flurries, so I guess I had snowflakes on the brain.  I decided to stamp some snowflakes over a plaid design.  (Yes, more plaid from me.  I love plaid.  Be warned...'cause there's more coming.)  The chilly weather makes me think of wrapping up in a warm flannel blanket.

It turned out even better than I had pictured it in my head.  I didn't want to take this off at the end of the week.  I started with three coats of China Glaze Recycle.  Then I stamped the plaid design from Konad plate m60 with Konad Special Polish in red, then the same plaid design again using Konad Special Polish in black.  The snowflakes are both Bundle Monster designs.  The spiky looking snowflake is from plate BM14 and the more lace-like snowflake is from plate BM-319.  I just alternated their placement on each nail and stamped them with Konad Special Polish in white, then used a dotting tool and the same white polish to add some dots to fill in the empty space.

I loved the end result.  Loved it hard.  This might be my favorite manicure of 2012 actually.  I can see myself repeating this at some point this winter, with a different plaid under the flakes or maybe even with the exact same colors.  I loved the look of the grey plaid so much.

Don't Call It a Comeback.

Although I guess you could call it that, it has been three months since I last posted.  Three months exactly actually, which I didn't realize until just right now.  I last posted on September 9th and it is now December 9th.  That doesn't mean that I stopped painting my nails, it just means that I kind of put off posting about them.  I couldn't tell you what the reasons were 'cause I honestly don't know.  I just didn't have the urge to put together any blog posts for a while, didn't even really bother checking in on all the blogs I usually follow.  I think I started to reevaluate the whole nail obsession in the past few months.  I had sort of gotten away from what I liked the most, which was painting my nails and doing designs, and instead got caught up in everyone talking about all the new colors and collections and trying to buy every new, cool thing I saw.  Which left me with a ton of polishes I haven't even used yet and some credit card bills I wasn't too happy about.  So I want to go back to what got me excited about polish in the first place...nail art and basically using what I already own.  I don't need to have every single new polish that comes out.  Not to say I won't buy one or two if something irresistible comes along, but honestly, it's been almost as long as I last posted since I bought a new bottle of polish.  And that doesn't bother me at all!

As I mentioned, I've still been doing my nails this whole time and I have still been taking pictures, so I'm going to try to do a couple posts over the next week or so just to run through what I've had on my nails the past three months.  They will be mixed in with some of the more recent designs because I have a few Christmas type posts that I want to get up this month.  So some stuff will be a little out of order, but really does anyone care?!

So after I wore Cult Nails Deal With It, I tried out two others from the Coco's Untamed collection, Annalicious and Spontaneous.  First up was Annalicious, which I used as a base for a bandanna inspired stamp design.

Like a lot of my stamp designs, I like to test them out on a nail wheel first and when I tested this, the white didn't quite pop out on the red like it does on a real bandanna.  So I stamped the design, from Konad plate m60, with Konad Special Polish in black first then re-stamped with Special Polish in white.  The black shadow made the white pop out a lot more against the background red.

I absolutely loved this and plan to do it with a lot of other colors as a base.  After Annalicious, I tried out Spontaneous.  I also used it as a base for a stamping design, this time I used Bundle Monster plate BM-306 from the most recent 2012 set.  I stamped with Konad Special Polish in pastel violet.

I loved the final look, although my stamping on this one came out a bit blurry.  I'm definitely a Cult Nails fan though.  Easy application, great colors and great wear time on these polishes.  

I've got about eight more designs that I did over the past three months, not counting the two I've done so far in December that are more winter/holiday themed, so I'll probably try grouping two or three together in posts later in the week, like I did with this one.  And I apologize if anyone read the blog post title and now has "Mama Said Knock You Out" stuck in their head, but you know what they say, ladies love Cool James.