Combo: Navy + Snow-flakes

This is a very simple combo that yields a very special effect! 

For the base coat, a dark polish looks the best for this effect. I used this pretty navy color called Up All Night by China Glaze. The flash makes it look a little brighter than it looks in person.

The top coat used is Snow Flakes by Color Club. This is basically an easier to find and cheaper version of Shine of the Times by Essie. It looks exactly the same to me :). I love it! Here's a couple more pics with different lighting.

week 6: inspired by a game

Week 6 of the 52 Week Challenge theme is “Inspired by a Game". I couldn’t think of a good idea for the life of me and then I looked at my desk and saw my Rubik’s cube. Not really sure it is considers a game, but I love playing/sloving it :) My best solve time is 1:26. I had to paint it with nail polish because I used it so many times and the colors were wearing off. Anyways, so that was my inspiration!

Here is my left hand with the first two colors.

Here’s the added blue. I just took my time and did it freehand, but you could also use tape for straighter lines.

Then I used a black nail art polish to do black lines separating the colors.

Here’s the steps to the Rubik’s cube I did on my thumb with the black nail art polish.

Here is the right hand with the orange, white and green polish. Turned out pretty good I think!

These are the colors I used. From left to right they are:

Pull Over by Sinful Colors, Why Not by Sinful Colors, Lacquered Up by Essie, Limelight by Ulta, White On by Sally Hansen, and Orange, It’s Obvious! by Essie.

Combo: Fresh Winter Snow

Ugh I am so embarassed. I had an old copy of the schedule so I thought that week 6 of the 52 week challenge was winter, but it is not! Whoops, it is actually "Inspired by a Game" so I guess I will have to do some new nails tonight! Darn it... the one week that I actually did it early haha oh well. Here's a pretty sparkly pale blue combo!

It's not quite winter weather yet here in the Chicago land area, but hey this combo is still pretty to look at :). I went for a simple combo of polishes to make a fresh winter snow look.

First polish: 2 coats of a pale blue or white polish. I used "I Vant to Be A-lone Star" by OPI

Second polish: 1 coat of a sheer, iridescent polish. I used "Rainbow" by China Glaze

Third polish: 1 or 2 coats of a pearlescent glitter. I used "Make a Spectacle" by China Glaze

Here's one more pic, but the one at the top of this post definitely looks the best on how this turned out.

Combo: Mint + Whimsical

I love love love this combo. It looks like frosting and sprinkles or some sort of dessert. I just want to eat it right off my fingers!

Colors I used are: Re-Fresh Mint by China Glaze (base coat) and Whimsical by Revlon (Deborah Lippman Glitter in the Air dupe!)

I did this combo because I was not too impressed with Whimsical by itself. Here is a picture of Whimsical without the mint base coat… this is 3 coats of Whimsical too!

So here is Re-Fresh Mint by itself. A pale blue opaque/crème polish would also do the trick! This mint is more blue than green anyhow.

So in all it is 2 coats of Re-Fresh Mint and 2 coats of Whimsical. For the Whimsical polish I "dabbed" it on to make sure I got some nice hex glitter pieces on my nail.

Here is a couple more pics… Yummy!!

Combo: Indigo + Techno

So yesterday I was trying out a few different designs and none of them were working out. It got very frustrating. Here’s what I said to that: when all else fails, add glitter! So here is a simple combo of a pretty circle iridescent glitter and a pretty indigo.

The colors I used were,

Base: Want my Bawdy by China Glaze (Bohemian Collection)

 

Glitter: Techno by China Glaze

To apply the glitter polish I just made sure the brush was heavily saturated with the chunky glitter and dabbed at my nail, starting at the cuticle. To make the glitter sort of float up did a few lighter dabs farther up the nail. Pretty simple, and it doesn’t have to be perfect to look good. For some reason the indigo is photographing bright royal blue, but it is actually a little more purple than these pics show.

 

I love this dark indigo with the iridescent glitter, but this Techno glitter would also look great with a mint or light pink polish :)

Technique: Freehand Fishtail

I just saw this technique the other day on Reddit Laqueristas. It looks sort of like a fishtail braid. I've seen people do it much thicker than this, but if you layer the polish swipes you can get the stripes much thinner... like this!

After you've done your top coat on all 10 nails, set up all your striping polishes unscrewed in the order you want to use them. Here is mine all set up. Colors from left to right are: Why Not by Sinful Colors, Orange It's Obvious! by Essie, Houston we have a Purple by OPI, Fly by OPI, and Electric Pineapple by China Glaze.

Here's a step by step pic tutorial of how I did this fishtail look. Basically its just an alternating layered striping technique. You just use the polish brush for the stripes. The last step is in the next pic.

After you finish the striping you cover up the bottom in your base color. I used a nail art brush for better control.

Tips:
- Use a thin polish if you can and make your stripes as thin as you can.  The thinner the stripes the less the layers mix together.
- Use a sheer polish if you want the layer overlaping to show up.
- GO SLOW. this is why I only did two nails each hand. I had to go very slow to paint in a straight line.
- to have more control of your brush, steady your "painting hand" on the surface your painting. i.e. rest the pinky or ring finger of your painting hand on the table your left hand is resting on. This should steady your hand a little bit.

week 2: BLUE

Theme for week 2 of the 52 week challenge is blue. You know... like the color :) Below is what I came up with. Its hard to see how pretty the darker blue is in this pic, sorry! Also this isn't very cleaned up but oh well.

So I just wanted to show off this pretty bright blue color. This was the first time I used it because I thought it was a little dark for summer, but it is actually quite bright. It is "Ride the Waves" by China Glaze.

I wanted to do something simple, but also something I haven’t done before. So I did a simple chevron taped design. I started with just a square piece of tape turned sideways at the tip of my nail.

Then, to form the chevron/arrow shape, I used to pieces of tape abut 1/8 of an inch parallel to the square piece. Below is a pic. Sorry it’s hard to see! I really need to get some colored tape for these taping posts.

Then, the same old drill... paint one nail, remove tape, paint next nail, remove tape, and so on. The dark blue I used for the chevron is "Dive Bar" by Essie.

So there you have it. Some simple taping for a chic design. I love blue polish :)

 

Technique: Missoni Gradient

This Technique was inspired by the Missoni Print. Below is a swatch of Missoni pattern for reference. My rendition almost looks a little easter egg-ish, but oh well!

For my base, I started out with thisa yummy yellow-green color (Fiercely Fiona by OPI).

then I did my first zig-zagged line as close to the top as a could. Almost like a zig-zag french! For all the lined detail I used a Nail Art Polish called "Magical Nail" by max Makeup Cherimoya. You can get like 12 of them for $15 on amazon. This one is Lavender.

Next color I used was Miss Sergeant. This one I tried to draw as close to the first line as I could, bit still leaving some space between.

Next, I used Blood Diamond. This one is much more spread out.

And lastly, to make it look more like a gradient, I filled in the yellow triangles on my nail tips with this blue color, Neon Aqua.

Tada! My try at a Missoni Gradient. I think if I do this again, I will try using tan as the base color and try to make the zig-zag more vertical. Then maybe it would look less easter eggy haha.

Tip: Spring 2012 Colors

I know not everyone loves spending time on nail designs so I thought I’d do a Tip on colors. What better day to post about spring colors than the first day of spring! Above are the spring 2012 colors (according to Pantone) and all their fancy names. In terms of nail polish, I researched different sites and spring collections and I found these to be the most popular nail polish colors this season: Purple, Green, Hot Pink, Orange, Blue, and Nude.

Below I showed my fav nail polishes in these spring colors in three different types: Pastel, Shimmer, and Bold… have a look!

Purple

ESSIE in To Buy or Not to Buy (PASTEL)

NARS in Diamond Life (SHIMMER)

China Glaze in Gothic Lolita (BOLD)

Green

RBG in Dew (PASTEL)

ESSIE in Navigate Her (PASTEL)

China Glaze in Agro (SHIMMER)

Sephora by OPI in Totally Karma (BOLD)

Hot Pink

Nicole by OPI in Great Minds Think Alike (PASTEL)

Essie in Tour de France (SHIMMER)

Sephora by OPI in What Aura Gonna Wear (BOLD)

Orange

Essie in A Crewed Interest (PASTEL)

China Glaze in Riveting (SHIMMER)

Essie in Orange, It’s Obvious! (BOLD)

Blue

China Glaze in Kinetic Candy (PASTEL)

Sephora by OPI in Bright as a Feather (SHIMMER)

China Glaze in Shower Together (BOLD)

Nude

RGB in Vellum (PASTEL)

China Glaze in Fast Track (SHIMMER)
Sephora by OPI in Neutral Beauty (BOLD)

Technique: Match the Dress

 Bday nails!

Last weekend was my birthday weekend, so naturally I had to do something flashy that matched my dress. So here is the dress I wore with a close up on the sparkly aqua detail that I based my nails off of. I tried multiple styles before I decided on this look. Of course it had to be perfect. :)

I started with two coats of this aqua color. It’s “Gorgeous” by Sinful Colors. This is almost the same color as the stripes on my dress, but it needed some sparkle too! So then I did a coat of this sparkle color, “Snowman of my Dreams” by Nicole by OPI. It was perfect because it has a little blue tint to it, which made the color match even more perfect to my dress detail. I wanted the aqua color underneath to show threw still though, so I did the sparkle coat really thin.

And Viola! A perfect match… I got the color pretty close huh? The funny thing is, I went out to dinner with my family and our waitress had almost the same color nail polish. She said she used this OPI color from the Muppets collection (Gone Gonzo). So here’s an easier version of this look!  This polish looks a little more playful, but still pretty glam ;)

Gone Gonzo by OPI

xoxo polish girl (I’ve obviously been watching way too much Gossip Girl lately)