Mixed Grays

I love occasionally checking out Icing's polish selection. This was a polish that caught my eye last time I was in the store.  Icing Choco Chip is a lovely polish! It's a warm light gray creme-jelly with black hex glitter  and black microglitter mixed in. It applied very easily. It is one that requires a few layers for full opacity, but it only took three thin layers to get this effect. It did take a little longer to dry, but not unreasonably long. I love that the glitter is thin enough that it doesn't create that textured feeling.

 After the base color was dry, I painted on dark gray inverse half-moons, the edged those in white nail art paint. I don't think it turned out all that bad for my first attempt at an inverse half moon, and it has a bit of a sophisticated look!

Swatch! Under certain lighting it almost looks slightly brown, which makes the name 'Choco Chip' fit a little better...

Colors Used:

Icing Choco Chip

Maybelline Impeccable Greys

KISS Nail Art White

Update!
I couldn't resist adding a stamp design and some nail art doodads.

Stamped on a flower design, then added a little nail crystal and silver microbead. Whee!
 

Bronzed Leaves

 It was time to give brown some love, and the brown I selected was Sally Hansen Forbidden Fudge. I love how smoothly this applied! It looks amazing too, but then again I love deep shimmery browns in general. I paired this with Milani Signature Gold on my ring nail. At the very end my thumb nail got a little smudged, but the camera makes it look worse than it really is.

 I used a makeup sponge to apply the gradient effect. After that was dry, I used my Bundle Monster stamping plate BM19 and a leafy design to add a little extra pizazz. I thought about trying a bolder pattern, but I didn't want to cover up all the pretty brown! To make the design stand out more sharply, I used China Glaze Magnetix Gold Fusion for the gold stamping, as that polish shows up really nicely.

Colors Used:

Sally Hansen Nailgrowth Miracle Forbidden Fudge

Milani Signature Gold

China Glaze Magnetix Gold Fusion

Edit: Added some gold nail art studs!

Tiny Tie Dye

 Tie Dye nails! I thought about using a dotting tool and dragging polish around to do the tie dye effect, but I wanted a little more detail than that would allow. Therefore I just freehand painted everything after looking up some tie dye reference images.

For the spirals on my ring and thumb nails and the bursts on my middle nails I dipped a small brush in each polish and then painted as normal. For the index and pinky nails, I applied small dabs of polish to the nail, then used a larger brush dipped in acetone to spread the color about. Similar effect, but different technique!

 Colors Used:

Sinful Colors Nail Art Moonlight (Purple)

Shany Nail Art 18 (Blue)

Sinful Colors Nail Art Simple But Fun (Green)

Shany Nail Art 08 (Yellow)

Diamond Cosmetics Nail Art Tangerine (Orange)

Shany Nail Art 07 (Red)

Memorial Day Madness

 I decided to go overboard on the shiny for Memorial Day! I had the idea for rows of hex glitter to begin with, but figured I'd probably blind everyone if I did full glitter on every nail. I had to take these images under the kitchen fluorescent light to get the red to show up red rather than pink, hah!

Started out with China Glaze White on White and let that dry for a bit. With the glitter nail, I laid out three piles of cheap craft store glitter. After applying some top coat, I started adding on each row, alternating red, blue, and silver.

Because that nail was so busy, I decided to keep the other nails more simple. Just a nice half moon with silver trim. The red polish is possibly my favorite red ever, Sinful Colors Sugar Sugar. The blue is Nicole by OPI Listen to Your Momager, which I love because it has just about the same amount of shimmer as Sugar Sugar and is such a perfect blue. I thought about doing stars and stripes, but I was afraid that too much would just look crazy.

On each thumb nail I placed a red star confetti from a craft store glitter pack, as well as a trail of hex glitter. After adding topcoat, the red color on the star started to bleed off a little.It's not too noticeable, at least! I thought about putting a star on every nail, but decided against it.

Colors Used:

China Glaze White on White

Sinful Colors Sugar Sugar

Nicole by OPI Listen to Your Momager!

KISS nail art Silver

Respectable Red

 It was time to try some red nails once again! I knew I wanted to try something with stamping, and then I decided to try just stamping on one section of the nail. Going from yesterday's cartoonish nails to these more elegant ones is quite the changeup, haha!

 I started out with one coat of Sinful Colors Mesmerize, which is a very dark purple cream. I let that dry for a few hours, then covered the bottom 1/3 of each nail with some scotch tape. I then painted a bright red, Milani NY Apple Red, on top of the dark purple. The red I was using was a tad sheer and I didn't want to put on too many layers, so it ended up leaving the red more subdued and maroon-ish. I think it looks better this way!  If it were brighter the gold would have a harder time standing out.

I then applied a leafy stamp design from Bundle Monster plate BM21 in China Glaze Gold Fusion. I tried using Orly Rock the World, but it didn't stand out enough. However, I still like the sparkle from that, so I dotted on small points of that in between and around the leafy design

After that had a chance to dry, I added gold striping tape to clean up the break between the two colors, and then tossed a nail art pearl on my ring fingers.

I think this has officially gotten me hooked on stamping. I'm going to try not to use it TOO often and still have fun with nail art brushes, but I'll certainly be using it again!

Colors Used:

Sinful Colors Mesmerize

Milani NY Apple Red

China Glaze Gold Fusion

Orly Rock the World

BM21

Textured Tiger

 Today's color is orange! It sounded like a good time to go back to textured polish. I don't know why I find texture so fun! This isn't my most inspired or artistically impressive nail art experiments, but I wanted to see what could still be managed with more than one texture polish beyond color blocking. Thus, my attempt at a gradient! I didn't try doing a sponge-gradient, mostly because this polish dries so fast and I was afraid the texture would get lost in the sponge. So I applied this gradient with the bottle brush and a small painting brush.  I really like how it looks from a distance and the slightly 'fuzzy' appearance it has close up.

 I can't decide whether I like matte finish texture polishes better than glittery texture polishes or not! They both certainly have their merits!

Colors Used:

China Glaze Toe-tally Textured

Sally Hansen Sugar Coat Sweetie

Sally Hansen Sugar Coat Sugar Fix

Sally Hansen Sugar Coat Lick-O-Rich

Sunny Side Up

 A friend of mine requested I do nails based around her adorable puppy dog, so here they are at last! The dog's name is Sunny, so I knew I wanted to work some bright yellow in somehow! I started with Revlon Electric, then had some indecision when it came to what background color to use for the accent. I'm so glad I went with brown, because it works so well with this yellow. The brown I used was Sephora by OPI Dating the Drummer, and it is my new best friend. It's just this perfect brown tone, but with a secret blue and red shimmer!

 For Sunny herself, I used a combination of many light browns/creams. From dark to light: Wet n Wild Private Viewing, Nicole by OPI Kim Konfidential, Maybelline Canary Cool, and China Glaze White on White. I think Sunny turned out rather well! Even Lefty managed something that at least looks vaguely dog-like, heh.

I then used Sally Hansen Fuzzy Coat Peach Fuzz in theory to liven things up, but in reality I used it because I just bought it today and couldn't wait to experiment. I couldn't get the orange component of Peach Fuzz to show up too well on these pictures, but I'll try to take some daylight photos in the morning. Edit: Morning pictures taken, replaced one of the top photos with the new one!

Once that was dry, I added in the brown pawprints to tie everything together.

Colors Used:

Revlon Electric

Sephora by OPI  Dating the Drummer

Wet n Wild Private Viewing

Nicole by OPI Kim Konfidential

Maybelline Canary Cool

China Glaze White on White

Sally Hansen Fuzzy Coat Peach Fuzz

Glittery Green

 So it was time to try doing some green nails, fun fun! This was yet another stream-of-consciousness design where I just started fiddling without having an end goal in mind, but I rather like it! Started out with Sinful Colors Hey, You! (dark green) and Innocent (light green), both of which I ended up loving more than I expected once I put them on. I then put two coats of Sinful Colors Call You Later on my ring nails because I've been itching to use glitter lately but can't seem to kick the creme streak.

 For a final touch, I decided to pull out my stamping plates once again. I used China Glaze Gold Fusion and Con-fused? and the flower design from plate BM10 to add that little extra shnazz. For one last detail, I used dots of the light green and gold to highlight the centers of the flowers.

It's certainly not the most creative nail design, but for an eclectic experiment it ended up looking rather fun, in my opinion. I'm trying out a new thing of actually writing more for these bloggy entries, who knows how long that will last? Still going to list out my polishes at the end, because it's nice to have an easy list. Woo!

Colors Used:

Sinful Colors Hey, You! 

Sinful Colors Innocent

Sinful Colors Call You Later

China Glaze Gold Fusion

China Glaze Con-fused?

Patterns and Paisley

 I'm not even sure what to properly call this. I finally used a stamping plate! I wanted to make something to match a fun paisley-splosion top I love, but I didn't have a stamping plate specifically for paisley and I wasn't about to stay up all night trying to hand paint paisley everywhere. I decided to use a BundleMonster plate, BM20, with a fun little scalloped design. I started with a white base coat, then painted patches of green, blue, and fuchsia. I then proceeded to stamp using black creme polish. Some sections didn't come out the cleanest, but I figured the lack of uniformity wasn't too bad. I then used a toothpick to fill in some sections of the design with contrasting colors, which broke up the 'sectiony' look a bit and brought everything together. I decided to do the tips black on a whim, and I like it!

 This is one of those designs that looks really good from a distance, but there are flaws close up. I think it still works, though!

And of course, fingers + inspiration shirt. Design isn't a match to the shirt's design, but I think the nails still look great with it! Definitely not my normal style, and I had way too much fun getting out of my comfort zone!

Colors Used:

China Glaze White on White

China Glaze Gaga for Green

Icing Purple Haze

Nicole by OPI I Sea You and Raise You

Wet n Wild Black Creme

China Glaze Aquadelic

Tons of Teal

 TEAL. I love me some teal. Decided to just stay monochrome with this one, but try some different finishes. So I have a light teal cream, a mid-teal shimmer, and a green-teal duochrome metallic polish all having a party together on my nails. Woo!

Originally I was just going to do triangular half-moon thingums, but I decided to add a little extra pizazz with a few more strips of striping tape. Fun times!

Colors Used: 

China Glaze Aquadelic

China Glaze Turned Up Turquoise

Sinful Colors Gorgeous

Blue Half-Moons

 So I'm a tad bit fond of the color blue. Just a tad. If I can't think of what I want to do for a nail design, I usually just end up picking up blue polish and letting a design come from there. At least this time I had the excuse that I was following along the spectrum: Yesterday was purple, today is blue!

I intentionally chose both of these to pair together since both have a nice silver shimmer. I'm not entirely certain if I like how the inverse accent nail worked on this one - it does add a little pizazz, but it kind of muddles the half-moon effect. Oh well, I still love it!

Colors Used:

Milani Beach Front

Maybelline Denim Dash

Indigo Glitter

 These nails were prettier than I even expected them to be. I paired a super dark purple/indigo cream with a microglitter dark purple polish and the result was amazing. These pictures were taken after two days of wear, so invariably some of the silver square glitter did fall off. The idea is there, at least! I just had a row of square glitter leading up one side of each nail other than the accent nail. 

Colors Used: 

Sinful Colors Mesmerize

FingerPaints Purple Palette

Cheap craft store silver glitter