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Monday, June 30, 2014

July 4 watermarble


Hey guys! Here are some patriotic mani's I did for July 4th!

Polishes used: China Glaze With Love (red), First Mate (blue) and Angel Wings (gold)

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Sunday, June 29, 2014

Zoya Pixiedust Gradient for July 4th!

You guys know I love the Zoya Pixiedusts! Here I tried my hand at a gradient...I think it came out ok but I don't love it!

Polishes used:
red-Chyna
Gold-Tomoko
Blue-Liberty


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Monday, June 23, 2014

Zoya Lola and London chevron nails

Hey guys! It's Monday! Yay! not. Anyhoo, Today I dug in to more of my untried...I really need to get a post up about that!  This is Zoya Lola, a neon pink and Zoya London, a charcoal gray textured pixiedust. Oh man, I love those textures and they are so great for tape because they don't bleed! Yes! When I was rummaging through my Zoyas I thought these would look nice together.


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For the single chevrons, I used nail vinyls again. I'm still on the fence about them...I LOVE the lightning bolt ones, but I haven't had much luck with the chevron and single chevron ones. Still practicing with those!


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This is Lola by herself. There's almost a fuchsia/purple duochrome going on there, and MAN is it bright!!


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Friday, June 20, 2014

Design Seeds inspired Beach nails!

Hey guys! I have another super fun Design Seeds inspired manicure for yall! Four of us got together on IG and decided to do nails based on this fun Design Seeds pic of a Mai Tai on a beach.  Yummmmmmmmmmmmmmmm  We started with one basic design and we all did our own version!

Here is what I came up with!

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Here is the picture we used for inspiration and color palate!


design seeds


I used all OPI Polishes for this. From L:
Can't Find My Czechbook
Big Apple Red
I Just Can't CopeAcabana
Lucky Lucky Lavender
Did You Ear About Van Gogh (base)
Gone Gonzo
Blasted Turquoise Glitter (now discontinued Sephora by OPI)


polish line up


I'm pretty happy with how they turned out!


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This is OPI Did You Ear About Van Gogh (long name!) that I used for the base. I've had it for a little bit and haven't gotten around to using it-I just love it and I'm sure it will be in heavy rotation!


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Girly Bits Cosmic Ocean

Hey guys! I have a quick swatch of another of my indie polishes. This is Girly Bits Cosmetic Ocean, its a blue/green holographic topper in a sheer blue jelly base. Most people I've seen wear this use it over a dark base so I wanted to do something different! This is 2 coats of OPI My Pointe Exactly (a sheer gray jelly) and 2 coats of Cosmic Ocean. What do yall think? I'm thinking I should have just done it over light blue like I planned.



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Pipe Dream Polish Electric Soul

Hey guys! I have just a quick swatch for you...this is Pipe Dream Electric Soul, one of my first "Indies" or Independent Nail polish! It's a purple jelly with tiny flecks of blue in it. I just love it!
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Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Zoya Nyx and Cosmo (accidental Cinderella Nails)

Hello! Today I have yet another reason Cinderella is my soul-sister and favorite Princess....when I was scanning through my untried (as far as this blog is concerned) polishes I grabbed these 2, thinking they would go nicely together. As soon as I got done with the first coat on the first hand, I realized, these are totally Cinderella nails! And I'm totally ok with that.

This is Zoya Nyx (the blue) and Cosmo (the gold). Nyx is Zoya's original finer Pixiedust Formula, and Cosmo is the newer, chunkier holographic formula. I'll say it again, I just love textured polish, it lasts forever on me and I feel like my nails are strong like ox when I have it on.

These are both from my Zoya Earth Day shopping adventure :)

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Monday, June 16, 2014

OPI Neon 2014 "Beach Towel Nail Art"

Hey guys! I have some taped nail art today with a couple of the new OPI Neons for 2014 sent to me by a friend! They are so awesome, I might have to get the rest! (can wait for clearance??? UHHHHHHHH!)

The purple is called Push and Pur-pull and the green is You Are So Outta Lime! As I've seen others say, I don't know how "neon" these are, but they are super bright and fun, and I love them!



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On my first finger I used striping tape to create color blocks. I also used striping tape on my ring finger. For the middle finger I used  a lightning bolt shaped nail vinyl (which I love now! sold!) and Just simple dots on my pinky.


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I loved the lightning bolt so much I did it on my thumb too :)


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Thursday, June 12, 2014

Essie mix and match

Hey guys! As promised I'm trying to step out of my box this month. So here is a mix and match mani, which are quite popular but I don't do very often. Hmmm, what do you think?
I used "nail  vinyls" for the 2 chevrons, I think there is a definite learning curve with them, as they didn't turn out as good as my times using tape. I will try them again!

Apologies for the lighting, we haven't had much sun lately and I only take my pics outside so the lighting on these is natural light on a gloomy day.

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Colors used are all Essie: Come Here (coral), Beyond Cozy (glitter) and Mint Candy Apple (light blue...its not "mint" at all to me but whatever!)

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This is  my first time doing flowers/roses that aren't "cartoony" in type. I need more practice!

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This is Mint Candy Apple by itself. I love it as a light blue, but it's not a mint to me!

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Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Star Cutout Splatter Nail Art with Zoya Tickled Collection!

Hey guys! Today I have probably one of the most fun nails I've ever done! I was loving my splatter mani so much I posted yesterday, and I needed a "Star" themed mani for an upcoming Nail It (magazine) issue, I thought I'd do something similar to the butterflies I did here .  I really loved how they came out, and boy did these get a lot of attention every where I went! That's a good sign, right?


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All I did was use my star paper punch to cut out a star from painters tape. Then I placed them over my nail a little off center so that there was a little hanging off so I could have something to grab when I pulled it off. I used Zoya Raven (the same I used for the base) to paint over the free space and then removed the star with tweezers!  Add topcoat then done!


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This is what they looked like before I added topcoat. I was on the fence about adding the topcoat, you can see here the stars are matte because  I wore these for a few days matte before adding the stars.


before topcoat


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Monday, June 9, 2014

Splatter Nail Art with the Zoya Tickled Summer 2014 Collection!

Hey guys! I have something fun today! I've been wanting to try this "splatter" type of nail art for ever, but have really shied away from it because of the obvious mess it makes. I finally decided to just go for it once I had an idea!

I used the entire Zoya Summer Tickled Collection over black (Zoya Raven). I just love how it came out!



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I will say this....I used painter's tape to tape around my nails and it still took me foreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeever to clean up. So I need to figure something else out if I want to do it again.


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I added some matte topcoat and it turned in to chalkboard-looking art! love it also!


matte topcoat
Method: Use some small straws, dip into polish, tap out excess, and blow it on to nail. Easy! Although, I have to figure out the secret to not getting huge blobs on your nail and just the "Spatter". I will try it again!


straws!

Friday, June 6, 2014

Design seeds inspired ocean colorblock nails

Hey guys! I promise not every post is going to be like this but....the newness hasn't worn off yet of these awesome Design Seeds Palates! The next one I chose is an ocean theme....shocker.

My lines this time didn't come out as crisp as they normally do because I was a little rushed...so is things these days. I'm not happy with the way my middle finger came out but I didn't have time to redo it.

I will try not to make this one as wordy as last time!

lighting: cloudy

lighting: shade

This is the palate I chose. ahhhhhhh

from Design-Seeds.com


Polishes used, from left:
 
Essie Naughty Nautical
Essie Turquoise and Caicos
Essie Sand Tropez
Essie Masimillian strasse-her
Fresh Paint Coconut (used as the base)
OPI Don't Pretzel My Buttons
Hard Candy King of Pop ( I threw in the extra glitter because it matched and I felt it really went with them with I saw it sitting on my desk!)

**I swear I don't have a lot of Essies....but I have used a ton of them for these design seeds so far! It's funny the majority of my Essies are in the blue/green family.

polishes used

Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Design Seeds inspired Watermarble Nails (Tropical Bird colors)

Hey guys! So ........... I totally had a different post scheduled for today....and yesterday.... but this weekend I was scrollin along through Instagram and I saw my friend Kristin (@ermagerdpolish) show where she got her color palate inspiration for her latest watermarble (which was amazzzzzing) and it let me to discovering Design-Seeds.com! Apparently it's been around for a while but I've never seen it! It's basically a website that draws from various colorful things and matches up 6 or so colors with it and gives you a palate to work with in designing a room or whatever.....or NAILS!

I made the mistake of clicking the #designseeds tag....and all of the sudden I have 70 billion screen shots of color palates saved on my phone. And the majority of them are tropical/beachy/teal/turquoise heavy....I should really branch out. Or not.

ANYHOO. This is my first mani done with this method! Trust me you will be seeing a lot of this (and not just with watermarble) because I luuuuurrrvvveee it. I've never really used more than 3 or 4 colors at a time before.




Design Seed inspired watermarble

My watermarbling skills are finally starting to show some improvement...although I still had to re do my pinky because I knocked it against the stupid side of the cup. Lesson learned....do not try to dip pinky with ring finger or any other fingers at the same time because it is short and dumb.

This is also my first time using Fresh Paints. This one was super thick and didn't want to spread very well...as opposed to the Essies I used spread a little too thin and the green factor kind of got swallowed up. More on the Polishes I used at the end!


Here is the palate I chose. Gorgeous, right! (ps...this is also a great way to work through many polishes at once...especially untried....especially if you are trying to document all your polishes before you buy any more....)



Color Palate from Design-Seeds.com






I wish the sun was out...but for once I'm not even mad.


lighting: cloudy day

One must always throw some matte topcoat on top of bright colors, no?


with matte topcoat

Finally, here's the polishes I used. Sorry this post was kind of lengthy, I usually try to keep the chit-chat to a minimum, but this is the first in a new method/series/whatever, so I felt some explanation was in order :)

From Left:

Essie Bikini So Teeny
Essie First Timer
Essie Mojito Madness
Zoya Raven
China Glaze Recycle
Fresh Paint Guava

polishes used