Morning Iris Thermal

 I love thermal polish! I decided to try some stamping over an amazing thermal, Morning Iris by Promise Polish. The color shift on this was amazing! It goes from a silvery lilac to cornflower blue to deep purple, and shifts super well! I wish the formula was better - had lots of troubles with how thick and pasty it was.

This is two coats of Morning Iris, followed by stamping a floral design from Pueen plate SE02A using B.M.C Angelic White. This was also my first experiment with a stamping polish, and it is awesome! Previous 'regular' white polish always seemed hit-or-miss as to whether or not they would look washed out, so I decided to grab Bundle Monster's stamping polish.

 Colors Used:

Promise Polish Morning Iris

B.M.C. Angelic White

Pueen SE02A

Glitter Everywhere!

 Glitter placement is time consuming, but I love it! It's kind of relaxing when you get in the rhythm of it. And I love the super shiny effect!

 For this, since I knew I was going to do full coverage I didn't want to exhaust my reserves of solvent-resistant glitter. So I grabbed some cheap craft glitter instead! I decided on a purple, teal, and holographic silver trio. I love this color combo!

 I did put a base color of Wet n Wild Black Creme down first, then used a non-fast dry clear coat to give the glitter something to stick to. Laying down the pattern itself was pretty easy! I started with the silver band closest to the base of the nail, then worked out from there in both directions.

 After I finished my left hand, I was running out of time for my right. I did only a partial pattern, and actually like how that worked too! With this, I only did one series of silver-blue-purple, then ran a single line of repeating pattern down the center.

 Because the glitter wasn't solvent resistant, I thought I would try to prevent bleeding by using the same water-based clear gloss varnish I use to prevent foils from wrinkling. It did work, but had the odd side effect of turning the purple glitter into a UV-reactive glitter that glowed bright orange!

So weird! I would love to know what was going on there. It was still normal purple in regular light!

Tiger Foils

 I think foil transfer is a ton of fun! I picked up this really cool foil of printed tiger fur with sparkly holographic white zones. This was a bit of an unplanned experiment of whatever sounded good at the time, but I like it!

 I put a base color of Wet n Wild Black Creme down, since I find it hard to get 100% coverage on foils without some creasing and black hides that really well with this pattern. And really, I didn't have as much trouble as I was expecting!

 For my ring accent nail, I thought I would experiment with foiling an oval metal stud. Trying to foil over just the metal did not work, so I painted over it with more black polish before applying the foil. That still looked a little bare, so I framed it in tiny metal beads. I then decided to go all-out and added some holographic silver diamond glitter and then applied more foil across the tip. Woo!

Colors Used:

Wet n Wild Black Creme

Tiger Nail Foil

Flowers in Spring

I really should turn Random Number Generator Polish into a weekly thing. I use it to choose a polish out of my collection (I have everything listed in a spreadsheet) and then let that inspire a design.

 This time it picked out Milani Gold Leaf, which is a happy bright green with yellow shimmer. This is an older Milani polish (that I nabbed at the dollar store) and it is very very thin. I really didn't want to spend all night layering up the polish to opacity, so I did two coats over China Glaze Grass is Lime Greener. I love the effect! It really makes the light green creme glow.

 I then grabbed Pueen plate 55 and used a great leafy design and OPI Christmas Gone Plaid to add some dark green leaves. I liked the leafy look, but at the last minute I decided to add some flowers. I really need to try one stroke painting some more, it's fun! I used white and black acrylic paint to add some daisy-like flowers. With some yellow acrylic paint I added some tiny yellow dots to the center of each flower.

Colors Used:

Milani Gold Leaf

China Glaze Grass is Lime Greener

OPI Christmas Gone Plaid

Pueen 55

Aztec Serpent

 I really haven't tried tribal nails before! It's a rather fun idea, and of course a great chance to use bright and bold colors. I decided to do something different and also added in an aztec double headed serpent because it looked fun. Whee!

 I began with a base of China Glaze Peachy Keen. I really rather like this color, it's like a less-pink coral. It's not a color I normally wear, but after putting it on I was really impressed! Next, I taped off a pattern on my index, middle, and ring nails. I filled in alternating triangles with Julep Lexie, which is a nice yellow.

 I then added dark teal sections to each finger using OPI Amazon...Amazoff. This is one of my favorite teals of all time. Next, the serpent was painted in a range of teals. From darkest to lightest: Sally Hansen New Wave Blue, Essie Where's My Chauffeur, and China Glaze At Vase Value. The red details were done in L'Oreal Devil Wears Red.

I used a nail art striper polish, Sinful Colors Bad Chick, to add the line details to the tribal pattern. I then had fun with my dotting tools. Dots were added in China Glaze Capacity to See Beyond, more Julep Lexie, more Devil Wears Red, and some more Peachy Keen.

Colors Used:

China Glaze Peachy Keen

Julep Lexie

OPI Amazon...Amazoff

Sally Hansen New Wave Blue

Essie Where's My Chauffeur

China Glaze At Vase Value

L'Oreal Devil Wears Red

Sinful Colors Bad Chick

China Glaze Capacity to See Beyond

Saint Patrick's Day

 I almost posted this one on time, almost! These are of course my St. Patrick's Day nails, which I really had fun with! Can't go wrong with gradients, I love them so much!

 This began with a base of OPI Alpine Snow. Once that was completely dry, I added on some wavy nail tip guides. I liked the swooshy shape they had, and this let me keep a uniform wave to each nail. Next, I painted my tips in a light green, China Glaze Grass is Lime Greener. I'm so glad I snagged this color, it's so bright and spring-y! I then built a bold gradient using that, China Glaze Four Leaf Clover (because I just had to!), and OPI Christmas Gone Plaid. I used a makeup sponge to create the gradient, and then carefully applied that to each nail.

 After removing the nail guides, I blocked off the gradient in a gold border using Butter London Marbs. I just realized how few WARM golds I have, so I'm glad I snagged this one at TJ Maxx!

I then used a dotting tool and some white acrylic paint to add clover shapes within the green and across the border. Green clover then was added within the white space and layered over the border as well, using more China Glaze Four Leaf Clover. I really had fun with my green nails!

Colors Used:

OPI Alpine Snow

China Glaze Grass is Lime Greener

China Glaze Four Leaf Clover

OPI Christmas Gone Plaid

Butter London Marbs

Happy Pi Day!

 Gotta celebrate Pi Day with some Pie! Sorry for the late post, but I'm almost caught up at least! These of course were my Pi Day nails for the 14th. I'm not entirely happy with them, but maybe I'll revisit and improve on the concept next year!

 My idea was to have pies with slices taken out at different areas and then have the digits of Pi overlayed on those spots. To begin, I started with ORLY Dare to Bare. I sketched out a rough basketweave pattern for the pie crust, then filled in sectors with Sally Hansen Cinnamon. The spaces between the crust weave were filled with Essie Hip-anema to represent the cherry filling. To make it look nice and juicy, I added some shading with NYC Velvet Rope. Highlights were added with just a tiny dot of white acrylic paint.

 The numbers were painted by hand with white acrylic paint. I used small amounts of more Sally Hansen Cinnamon to give definition to the crust, and then added some Revlon Socialite to add a golden-brown shimmery color.

Colors Used:

ORLY Dare to Bare

Sally Hansen Cinnamon

Essie Hip-anema

NYC Velvet Rope

Revlon Socialite

Blue Lace

 Trying out some stamping designs I haven't used before, since I have quite the unused stamping plate collection! This time around I was inspired by a random fashion image I happened across while looking for inspiration.

 I started with one of my favorite nudes, ORLY Dare to Bare. I really like how this polish looks with my skin tone. I then used a design from Pueen plate 27 and China Glaze One Track Mind to add the fishnet roses. The design is a rectangular one, so I just rotated the stamper and used the corner to put just a portion of the design on my thumb and pinkie nail.

 I wanted to add a bit more sparkle, so I highlighted bits with some Finger Paints In the Monet, which is a beautiful blue packed full of glitter. I adore this color! As a last touch, I used a KISS nail art polish in black to define the edges of the color blocking on my thumb and pinkie.

Colors Used:

ORLY Dare to Bare

 China Glaze One Track Mind

Finger Paints In the Monet

 Pueen 27

Rainbow Wings

 Asked a friend for inspiration and she told me to try rainbow butterflies! This time around I decided to doodle them out and paint them by hand. I tried to make it look like an line of butterflies swirling out from my thumb, and just had fun painting!

 I really wanted these colorful butterflies to stand out, so I did them over a base of OPI Alpine Snow. After getting a general idea of where I wanted the butterflies, I painted in the gradients with a small brush. I didn't do the same style of gradient on each butterfly - some are horizontal gradients and others are radial gradients. They do all use the same colors, though!
Fuchsia: Revlon Raspberry Scone
Purple: Sephora by OPI Who's Spinning Tonight?
Blue: Color Club Chelsea Girl
Green: Essie The More the Merrier
Yellow: Morgan Taylor Doo Wop
Orange: ORLY Cheeky
Red: Essie Hip-anema

 After painting my butterfly gradients, I used a small micron pen to draw in the details on the wings. I then added small white acrylic paint dots to the edges of each wing. As a last touch, I used ORLY Mirror Mirror to add drop shadows to the butterflies.

 Colors Used:

OPI Alpine Snow

Revlon Raspberry Scone

Sephora by OPI Who's Spinning Tonight?

Color Club Chelsea Girl

Essie The More the Merrier

Morgan Taylor Doo Wop

ORLY Cheeky

Essie Hip-anema 

ORLY Mirror Mirror

Butterfly Marble

 I still really love water marbling and have resolved to do it more often! For this I was participating in a challenge to try dried water marbling, where a design is marbled on water and then allowed to dry completely before putting it on the nail. It's fun! It's a lot more controlled than the marbling I'm used to, though I do miss the anticipation and unknown factor of regular marbling.

 I love doing high-contrast marbles, so I decided to go with navy, seafoam green, and yellow. I first painted all of my nails in a base of OPI Alpine Snow to help all of the colors pop. In the marble itself I used Sally Hansen Nightwatch (a great navy blue), ORLY Gumdrop (the seafoam green), and Morgan Taylor Ahead of the Game (yellow). These worked great for marbling and stayed distinct without blending together, plus they spread nicely and I was able to get quite a few repetitions in.

 Once the water marble was dry enough to hold its shape, I transferred it to wax paper and gave it more time to dry. Because it was holding pretty well, I got the idea to try punching out some shapes! I had found cute little mini shape punches at Joann's earlier last year and originally was going to use them as a stencil, but they were perfect for this! I used a little clear polish and transferred the marbling and the butterflies to my nails.

 I really like the idea of dry water marbling or decal water marbling. It's nice to be able to utilize more of the polish in each design, and I'm excited to try new shapes and designs via cutting rather than blocking off with tape on the nail. Woo!

Colors Used:

OPI Alpine Snow

Sally Hansen Nightwatch

ORLY Gumdrop 

Morgan Taylor Ahead of the Game