Stars 'n Stripes 2011

I know I said I'd do video...but I what can I say? I was catching up on The Bachelorette while I did these (it's my husband's fault I got hooked - he went out with the guys one Sat. night, and it was on, and I just kept watching...yeah. Annoying, I know. But I digress...).

Anyways...I used my favorite Seche Vite base/top coat, along with Sparkly Nails red striper, Avon's "Splendid Blue" and Pure Ice "Platinum". I really waffled with whether to use the stars or not, because if those little points don't get pushed into the polish pretty well and coated heavily with topcoat, they can be uncomfortable to work around. Dangerous even. In the end, it just didn't look right without them, as you can see.

I started with two coats of Pure Ice "Platinum", which isn't the right color white, it's too pearly. Pretty, but cheap polish - I'm tossing all of this stuff out, I think, as it bubbled on me too.

I topped that with diagonal stripes with a red striper brush courtesy of Sparkly Nails. They sent this to me quite a while ago, but the polish was still nice and thin, and applied very easily. I was actually very impressed by the quality after so much time has passed. Great red color too.

Then I applied Avon "Splendid Blue" diagonally across the stripes, covering about half the nail. I'll get a video of this technique eventually, but I start with a single line across the center of the nail, and work out to the edge from that. Two coats, to cover all the polish underneath.

I liked the way this looks, but I'm sure you can see why it needed stars or something...the blue is just too overwhelming otherwise. So a thick coat of top coat, then press the little stars in firmly, then two more good coats of top coat to seal.

I cleaned up with an orange stick in the shower (the Pure Ice was hard to get off too), and clipped any errant star corners with a fingernail clipper to ensure the safety of myself and those I might brush against. And voila! A very patriotic manicure, I'd say.

I had a little tip pull - also the Pure Ice, I think, and my neglecting to wrap the polish around the edge.

Hope you had a fabulous holiday - until next week, Happy Polishing!

Green Squares

Apologies for the lack of posting last week - I got behind and simply forgot to post this. It's all good though since this week's manicure didn't exactly work out, so I'm glad I have this to share with you. :-)

There are a lot of photos this week...bear with me! For this manicure, I used some of the new stencils from Nail Art Delights (linked to the right). As a point of disclaimer, I bought these (and several other sets) to try...and I'll be buying more. I love them! Settle in - I'll show you how they work. Before I started polishing, I cut the stencil stickers in half - I wanted to use the squares/diamonds three at a time rather than six.

I started with a base of Avon's new green, "Jade". Two coats, and it dries very quickly. Nice that Avon is finally putting out new nail colors!

 

Then I put two coats of another new Avon color, "Olive Green" diagonally across each nail.

I defined the line between the colors with my black Sally Hansen nail art pen, which I'm completely in love with.

Then it was time to start stenciling! These stencils have adhesive on the back. Avon polish dries quickly, but as per the stencil directions, I stuck them to the pads of my fingers several times to take the adhesive down a bit. Then I positioned it on the Jade side of my thumb.

I brushed on Olive Green to fill the stencil:

And then I pulled the stencil off carefully right away. If you leave the stencil on, the polish will seal it to your nail - don't do that!

Then I did the Olive side with Jade squares:

And voila! Neat little squares in a straight line, no rhinestones or embellishments needed.

I sealed them with two coats of Seche Vite, and cleaned them up the next morning. This is after a few days of wear.

As you can see, I didn't get the polish as smooth as I'd have liked, but I still think it turned out pretty well, overall. I can't wait to try more of these stencils - so much easier than stamping for me!

Stop by Friday for Notable Nail Art around the blogosphere! Until then, Happy Polishing...

Cosmic Dot Meltdown

For this week's manicure, I finally decided to dig into my Urban Decay polishes (released last fall). I decided on "Meltdown", with a top coat of CND's new "Effects" polish in Raspberry Sparkles. This was incredibly difficult to photograph with the micro-glitter and foil effect. Hopefully you can get the gist of it.

I made it thorough most of the week without polish, and my nails made it through with only one bad break point. As you can see below, my middle finger ended up with a pretty bad break across it below the smile line. Needless to say, I had to put some clear top coat over it to protect it over the weekend. Not that it helped - the Lippmann "Addicted to Speed" top coat peeled off the next day. Huh. You might notice my thumbnail grew back out to the edge of my finger, which is nice, and the staining is mostly gone.

In any case - I was happy to polish these up again last night, and provide some good protection for that break until it grows out enough to cut off. I started with my normal Zoya base coat, followed by two coats of "Meltdown".

I topped that with just one coat of "Raspberry Sparkles", which added sort of a metallic pink foil look to the top. I know the photos didn't turn out well - if any of you have tips for capturing metallics, I'm all ears.

Then I added flat-backed beads...white iridescent and purple with an interesting pattern in them. Some nails have three, others five. I was going to do dice, but decided to go random instead. These numbers are actually symbolic this week - anyone want to guess why?

Two coats of top coat, some clean up, and voila! I think the color of these is almost "cosmic" looking - I feel like my nails are kind of "space age" this week.

I'm not sure what's up next - I have some serious glittery polishes from Zoya to try, some Essie colors from last fall and more of these Urban Decay colors all unopened just waiting for their turn. Any suggestions?

What's on your tips this week?

Simple Gold Squares

This week I wanted something with fall colors, and the combination of gold and burgandy always seems "fallish" to me. I recently bought the new "golden" colors that Avon put out for fall/winter (yes, they finally put out some new polish colors!), all of which have golden mica in them to make them shine. This one is Golden Wine, a lovely dark red wine color that has all that nice shiny gold mica and some tiny red glitter that really makes it pop.

I got these great metal gold squares from Dollar Nail Art awhile back, and immediately thought "argyle!". I wanted something simple and classy this time though, so decided to just hint at the pattern, rather than cover a couple nails with it (that's probably coming eventually).

I started with a base of Golden Wine - two coats were opaque, but I used three just to even it out a bit. Love this color, it's dark, but not so dark it could be mistaken for black.

Then I slathered on a coat of top coat, and stuck the squares down along the smile line. I used three squares on my thumbs, two on my index, middle & ring fingers, and one on my pinky. I think I could have bent them to follow the natural curve of my nail, but should have done it before I got started. So this time, they're just straight.
A couple more coats of top coat to secure them - the squares are very flat, so the profile is very low. Clean up the edges, and I had a simple, classy (I think) manicure for the week.
I took most of these photos with flash, to show the glitter. The small photo up in the corner of the blog is what it looks like with no flash.

I'm looking forward to using more of these glittery Avon colors...next week, I need to get the glitter off my toes and do a pedicure too.

Watermelon Nails featuring Migi Nail Art Pens

Thanks to the folks at Migi Nail Art, who were kind enough to send me a couple of their pens to try and review. As soon as I saw the colors they sent, one thing popped into my head immediately - Watermelons!
The pens look like markers, and when hooked together (two colors connected in the middle), they're about the same size as a marker too. This really is an ingenious design, because it's far more comfortable to hold than most nail art pens that are too short. This design didn't make the palm of my hand cramp up like a lot of them do.
They come apart easily - just twist in and out of the coupler. You can buy refills, so once you buy the pen, you don't have to buy the whole thing again, which I like. They have a regular nail polish brush inside of the screw-cap, which is okay, but honestly, I don't normally use art polish to actually paint my base layers with. The consistency is just too thick for a base color (which is what makes it great for art - thicker is easier to work with when drawing designs). These bottles are also pretty small, so I wouldn't normally want to waste good art polish just as a base color. I'd prefer to see a skinny striper brush in here for more flexibility in art styles.
The slender metal pen tip is perfect - and it's what will get the most use, I think. You pull the top of the cap off (instead of unscrewing the whole thing), and the pen tip is right there. Very easy to use and control, not too long as some other brands are.
So now that we've explored the pens - on with the design! For purposes of trying the Migi pens out, I used the hot pink and green as base colors over Avon base coat for this manicure. They're fairly opaque in one coat, but I used two just to smooth out any rough spots. It really is much thicker polish than I'd normally want to use as a base. You can, but I wouldn't recommend it.
Then I switched to the pen tip, and added green tips to my pink nails to start forming the rind. Honestly, the pen tip isn't very useful for filling in the tip - next time, I'd use it to draw in the smile line, then switch to the brush to fill color over the tips.
I had the idea to make two of my nails look like the outside of a watermelon, so I used the white pen tip to draw in lines like you might see on a watermelon. They're never straight, so I "wiggled" them on purpose. It worked great - these pens are pretty easy to use right away, with less pressure than you might think.
This is what happens when you use too much pressure - the lines are too thick on my ring finger! I wasn't sure I'd be able to fix this problem.
But I used the green pen to go over some of the glaring white and took it back down to a manageable look. Then I used the white to accent the smile lines on my pink nails, and create the white part of the rind.
Next, I used the black pen to create "seeds". Many watermelon depictions only have a few seeds near the rind, but I've never eaten a watermelon that didn't have plenty of them, so I embellished.
Finally time for top coat. I used a glossy Avon topcoat for the pink fingers, and then, since watermelons are not glossy on the outside, I used Essie Matte About You on the green fingers, with great results! I did the green fingers first, and realized that the Migi polish does run under topcoat. I liked that on my green nails, since it toned down the white and made it look more like real watermelons.
For the pink nails, I got a good glob of top coat on the brush, and swiped it quickly over each nail, careful to not let the brush actually touch the nail. After that dries, the polish underneath is set and no more running problems. It takes practice - and as you can see, I'm not perfect at it yet.
Then a little clean up, and voila! Watermelon nails. Photo above is with flash, photos below without a flash. You can really see the difference between the glossy and matte top coats - I love the contrast.
I did this manicure on Sunday night, and I do have a little shrinkage at the tips. The Migi polish is great for artwork, not so great for base coats, and if they'd switch out that regular brush for a striper brush, these pens would be perfect. Even so, I'm still ordering more...the shape and pen tip are just excellent, and much easier to use than most art pens out there. This manicure went very quickly - about 1 1/2 hours start to finish (start being taking the old polish off, filing, buffing, etc). The polish dries very quickly.

No toes this week - I wasn't sure I'd have time. As soon as the prizes for the contest come in, I'll post them up!

Happy polishing!

Strawberry Carnival

Moving on from the whole Suncoat debacle...

Have you ever noticed how nail clean-up always looks okay in person, but then when you take a photo, every little thing you missed shows up? Yeah...excuse my clean-up job there - missed some spots in the shower this morning.

I used Avon's Speed Dry formula last night, in the interest of time. I normally stay away from quick-drying nail polish because I tend to have very bad luck with bubbling on them. As you can see though - no bubbles here, and the formula was thick, opaque in one coat. The brush is too narrow, almost more of a nail art brush, but it still applied easily and smoothed itself out as it dried, so no streaks.

No, I know they don't look like strawberries - I named it after the polishes. The bright fuchsia base polish is named "Strawberry", and the light pink on the tips is "Carnival". The silver is a Nubar nail art pen, and unfortunately I forgot there's an art brush inside, or I would have used that for my swirly lines instead. Next time....

This gave me an idea for yin-yang nails...stay tuned next week for that!

So Not Groovy...Suncoat Polish Removal

First, let me just say that I love the Suncoat eco-friendly polish remover. It does a great job, gently, on almost every nail polish I use.

Except Suncoat polish.

Last night (Sundays are my manicure nights), I spent just over 2 hours - 2 hours - trying to remove the Suncoat water-based polish from my fingernails. This was the result when I finally gave up, and "medicated" my frustrated self with brownies and a romance novel:'Twas a work night, or I may well have gone for something stronger in a glass. Those scrapes/nicks you see on the tops of my nails are the result of my scraping the barely softened polish off after the first hour and a half, when it wouldn't come off with cotton balls.

I tried everything. I held soaked cotton balls on my nails for 5 minutes at a time, I actually soaked my nails in the polish remover, and still ended up using the blunt end of a plastic nail file to scrape away most of the polish after it was softened, but still wouldn't come off. As you can see, I still have several tips to get the polish off of tonight, and some buffing to smooth the tops again. Arg!

My three bottles of Suncoat polish are going in the garbage. With any luck, I'll finish the removal job tonight, and finish with a nice new pink french manicure that will come off when I want it to next week. I'm still in a pink mood, for some reason.

Tune in tomorrow for the results...

Dirty Sexy Money Dots

This week, I tried out Misa’s Dirty Sexy Money. Not only was it an insanely difficult color to photograph, but I’m not really sure it works with my skin tone, sadly enough. I have it on my toes this week too – pictures of those later in the week.

Originally, I was going to Konad this, and then I wimped out. I put these silver dots on my toes, and it looked cool, so I did my fingertips. I used a Nubar nail art pen – super simple, I love those things! I think white would have been better though - the white konad design I'd originally planned would have been excellent. DSM does match my countertop quite well though, don't you think?I used Zoya Anchor base coat, and since my Sephora order didn’t come until last night, I used my Nubar Diamont Top coat (thanks Lucy, for reminding me I had that!) – both worked much, much better than the Seche. Easier clean-up, less brittle, and no bad smell to deal with. A little tip pull, as you can see, but nothing too alarming. We'll see how it lasts through the week.

I have to say, that even though this color doesn’t look like I thought it would against my skin, I absolutely *love* Misa’s polish formula! It’s thicker (but not goopy), so it’s easier to control where it goes…I didn’t make nearly as much of a mess as I normally do. And this polish job is just two coats – and one would have still been perfectly opaque. I’m looking forward to a long and happy relationship with Misa polishes…

Later this week: toes and my new polish haul from Sephora.

Luck o’ the Nails

Happy St. Patty’s Day to you! I’m only a wee little bit Irish, but every little bit counts, right? This week, in honor of the day, I chose China Glaze “Emerald Sparkle”, which I dare say is a popular color at the moment.

Last year after St. Pat’s day, my mom brought over a few things she’d found on sale – some napkins, and these shamrock body stickers. I’ve been saving them all year long, and I must say, it was worth the wait! I’ve gotten several compliments just this morning, and even the guys in the office noticed today (something that never, ever happens). Gotta love nail bling…

I’m still not loving Seche Vite, and Sunday when I was doing these, the top coat literally made my eyes burn (hubby said it hurt his too, and he was sitting three feet away). I’m having that tip pull problem again too, and I’m starting to wonder if it isn’t the Seche. I do tend to avoid quick dry products because I really think that when they dry too quickly, they get brittle and shrink more…and I’m seeing definite evidence of that with the Seche. The base coat isn’t thrilling me either – it’s not smooth, and I have trouble smoothing the polish over it.

I’ll head out and find some OPI base/top coat locally this weekend, or order some Zoya today. That will make me happier.

Luck o’ the Irish to everyone today!

New Polish from Head to Toe Beauty

I’m really digging the new polishes I ordered from Head to Toe Beauty a couple weeks ago. My “mission” was simply to find a bottle of Misa’s “Dirty Sexy Money” after seeing it swatched on the Vampy Varnish site (I needed more top coat too), but you know how it spirals from there…

I was going to order from Transdesign since it was cheaper, but they were out (*gasp*) of "Dirty Sexy Money" by the time I got there. So I found it at H2T, and surfed around the site to see what else I could add (really, does anyone just order a single bottle of polish?). I ended up with a second Misa color, 2 full size Color Club colors, 4 mini Color Clubs (I love mini’s!), and 3 China Glaze colors. Most excellent.

On the left below are the Misa’s – the much coveted “Dirty Sexy Money”, a teal from the "Living on the Fast Lane" collection and Camisole, a pearly white with just a hint of green.
Next on the right are the four Color Club mini’s from the “One & Done” collection – unfortunately, I just realized that they aren’t all the same colors I ordered. I’ll have to email H2T and see what happened. I did order “Planet Punch”, which is on the far right, but not “Recycle This” which is the bright fuchsia in front. I can’t decide which the other two are – the labels are “Inner Beauty” and “I Am Not a Plastic Bottle”, but they aren’t even close to those two colors on the web site (a very light green, and a dark brown). Either the bottles are labeled wrong, or the web site is. No big deal though…same price, and still very nice colors that I’ll certainly wear.
Above are the two full size Color Club polishes I ordered. I’ve never tried Color Club, but I’m hopeful that it will wear well. The black with micro-glitter is “Revvvolution” (Femme Fatale collection), which I also fell in love with on Vampy V’s site, and the pearly baby blue is “Runway Muse” (Catwalk Queen collection), which intrigued me. The blue doesn't show up well here, but hopefully it will be more noticeable on my nails.
Finally, three China Glaze colors that caught my eye – the lovely green “Cherish” and light tan “Passion” from the Romantique collection, and “Secret Peri-wink-le” from the Operation Color collection.

Lots of pretty colors for spring/summer!