Day 11: Cat Silhouettes

 The prompt for the day was 'something you own,' so I chose my trio of cool cat silhouette wall decorations. I'll get a photo of the actual inspiration up soon! Since they are just black metal silhouettes, I decided to jazz it up a little with a sparkly gradient! Bonus - it glows in the dark too!

 To save me from having to layer up jellies, I knew I was going to start with a white base. On a whim, I decided to add some shnazzy glow! I used Serum No 5 Pure Glow Getter to provide a lovely white glow. Next, I added some condensed holographic glitter to the tips - Sephora by OPI Meet Me At the Disco, followed by some China Glaze Fairy Dust. I love this sparkly combination!

To create the gradient effect, I used tinting jellies from multiple brands. My pinkie used red Julep Wendy with yellow OPI I'm Never Amberrassed. I then went from yellow to green Sally Hansen Sea Through, then to blue Sally Hansen Ice Tint. My index finger finished the transition from blue to purple Sally Hansen Grape Jelly. I decided to keep the flow of the gradient and did a horizontal gradient from purple to orange on my thumb.

  I then used a small brush and black acrylic paint to add the kitties. Two of my silhouettes are of cat faces leaning in from an angle, so I replicated those on my index and pinkie nails. The third is a straight portrait, which I split between my middle two fingers.

Colors Used:

Serum No 5 Pure Glow Getter

Sephora by OPI Meet Me At the Disco

China Glaze Fairy Dust

Julep Wendy

OPI I'm Never Amberrassed

Sally Hansen Sea Through

Sally Hansen Ice Tint

Sally Hansen Grape Jelly

Speckled Gradient

 Shaking things up with a glitter for once! I have so many glitters, but I so very rarely use them! This was pretty fun, gotta love wearing brighter colors for spring!

 I started with OPI Alpine Snow. It really is my go-to white creme! The glitter is Hard Candy Sugar Rush, which is a black and silver glitter in a milky white base. I had originally thought about building this up to get the full effect of the glitter-in-crelly depth, but time constraints meant I could only do two coats. Still fun!

 Just the white alone seemed a bit bland for me though, so I grabbed Sally Hansen Grape Jelly, which is a tinting jelly. I built up a gradient using multiple coats across my tips, and I really like the effect!

Colors Used:

OPI Alpine Snow

Hard Candy Sugar Rush

Sally Hansen Grape Jelly

Tequila Sunrise

 The prompt for the Weekly Challenge for the Nail Polish Queens this week was 'cocktais'. I am completely in the dark about cocktails; all I know is that they're colorful, alcoholic, and I love playing with the umbrellas. So I turned to a friend and she suggested Tequila Sunrise!

 I began with OPI Samoan Sand as an undercoat, to try to cut down on how much buildup a thin yellow jelly would need. I then started layering on Sinful Colors Yellow Out There, which is a sunny yellow jelly with scattered holographic bar glitter. It's a subtle effect, but it does really shine in sunlight!

Next, I used Sinful Colors Curry Up on my tips. It's a light melon orange jelly filled with red glitter and silver bar glitter. However, it was nowhere near dark enough to make a meaningful gradient. I added the sheer tint OPI Amberrassed across most of the nail, followed by a generous pass of Sally Hansen Vitamin D-Light. Next, I used a bit of a darker red tint with OPI Be Magentale with Me and Sally Hansen Jell-ous? before finally adding a touch of OPI Don't Violet Me Down. The violet was sheer enough that it did a wonderful job deepening the color without turning everything purple.

 And lastly, I remembered that I had cheap little dollar store FIMO fruits, so I added those along with little red gems to represent cherries.

Colors Used:

Sinful Colors Yellow Out There

Sinful Colors Curry Up

OPI Amberrassed

Sally Hansen Vitamin D-Light

OPI Be Magentale with Me

Sally Hansen Jell-ous?

OPI Don't Violet Me Down

Transitions

 I've taken my first steps into the indie polish realm after seeing all of the amazingness that is out there. It probably helps that I'm in love with both linear holo polish and thermal polish, two things that indie brands seem to be doing extraordinarily well.
I recently purchased two thermal polishes from Daily Hues Lacquer, and they are amazing! These are my first thermal jellies, and I am in love with how responsive they are to temperature change compared to cremes. Even in summer, if I touched something cool the tips of my nails would stay purple for a long time! I love the effect of going from bright blue when warm to deep purple when cool.

These are Daily Hues Nelle (solid jelly) and Daily Hues Priya. (Jelly with glitter). I loved the color so much, I couldn't decide between them! Priya has an amazing amount and variety of glitter, and after a proper bottle shake it wasn't difficult to get the glitter out.

Being jellies, these did take four to five coats to cover my nail line. Extra layers just helped with the depth of the jelly sandwich for Priya, though!

 Just because I wanted some extra thermal fun, I stamped a design from Pueen plate 46 using Dance Legend Termo Trio No.1. Because the stamping transferred such a thin layer, it changed incredibly fast and was hard to capture on camera. However, it went from appearing dark blue, to lavender, to light sky blue as it warmed.

 Keep reading for more photo overload!

Watermelons

 I really like how these turned out! Watermelons have such a fun color scheme. I even managed to wear pink without feeling too girly today.

 I began with the perfect watermelon-y color, ORLY Butterflies. It is an amazing jelly polish, very pigmented while still having that translucent squishy jelly appearance. I added teeny black microbeads and layered a little more jelly over the top to give it a fun 3D seeded look. I took a porous sponge and a teeny amount of NYC Pinstripe White to add a little texture to the appearance of the watermelon.

 On my index and pinkie nail, I used Sinful Colors Curry Up and Revlon Emerald City to paint watermelon rinds. I then added a hint of white to the tip of each pink nail, followed by a line of greens to represent the edge of the rind.

Colors Used:

ORLY Butterflies

 NYC Pinstripe White

 Sinful Colors Curry Up

Revlon Emerald City

ORLY's Macabre Masquerade

 I decided to embark on the herculean task of taking swatch photos of at least the highlights of my polish collection. This is probably more appropriately termed as Sisyphean task, as the stash grows faster than I can swatch!

Just the other day I picked up ORLY Macabre Masquerade at my local T.J. Maxx for $3.99. I love stalking the nail polish section and snagging amazing colors from great brands for almost half price! 

Macabre Masquerade is a full rainbow of metallic small glitter in a blue jelly base. Based on how bright the bottle looked, I was surprised by how thin the polish was! I was also surprised that tons of indigo microglitter was also present. I think this adds to the more metallic sheen after enough layers are applied

 And this polish definitely needs extra layers! I was determined to get the same blue from the bottle using only this polish, so I didn't layer it over anything. I needed four coats to get full coverage and avoid visible nail line. However, much to my relief, the dry time on each layer was fantastic.

 I really love the color and the amazing amount of glittery fun packed onto each nail, I just wish the polish didn't need to be built up so much. I was hoping that the thin jelly would bring the layering depth of a jelly sandwich, but all that is apparent is the top layer.

ORLY Macabre Masquerade is part of the 2013 Secret Society collection.

Day 6: Purple Posies

 I have been wanting to play with this idea ever since I saw that the spring polish 'trend' was for super sheer jellies. I found really cute shaped hole punches that were a good size for nail art, so the little flowers are actually regular white paper from my sketchbook!

 I thought about layering up with jelly alone, but these jellies are just too thin. So I started with two coats of Ulta Devious, a deep plum purple. Next, I used the hole punch on my white sketchbook paper to get six flower shapes. I thought about using thinner printer paper, but I was afraid that the colors would bleed through. After placing one shape, I added two coats of OPI Don't Violet Me Down, one of the new sheer tints. I followed that with another flower, and another coat of the sheer purple. The last flower I left white. I really like the gradient effect, and I think it's more apparent in person than these photos show.

 For my remaining nails, I added SpaRitual Opaline Luminary. I love flakie topcoats, and this one is a very nice purple-gold duochrome. It is a matte flakie, but I did add a topcoat this time. It's gorgeous and shimmery either way!

Colors Used:

Ulta Devious

 OPI Don't Violet Me Down

SpaRitual Opaline Luminary

My First Jelly Sandwich

 I will admit, prior to this I was pretty ambivalent about jellies. I hadn't really tried them on their own before. After all, why take the time to layer up a polish when you can get a solid creme coat in less time? However, I totally see what all the love for jellies is about now.

 Anywho, I was curious to try out a jelly sandwich with some of the new Hard Candy glitters. I couldn't make up my mind, so I just did both. I used three layered coats of glitter, with jelly in between. I left the final layer with the glitter on top for contrast. The green jelly I used was Spoiled Permission to Proceed. It is certainly an intensely bright green!

 The glitters I used in this sandwich were Hard Candy Pop Star on my index and pinkie, and Hard Candy Sweet Tart on my thumb, middle, and ring fingers. I like how layering in the green actually makes these two radically different glitters not look too out of place! I am definitely going to have to play more with jellies in the future.

Colors Used:

Spoiled Permission to Proceed

 Hard Candy Pop Star

 Hard Candy Sweet Tart