Rainbow Branches

I loved this design, I was inspired by Robin Moses for this, her Love Birds design. It's so gorgeous I had to try it myself, although I didn't actually want any love birds in mine.

I did slightly different rainbows on each hand. One slightly warmer and one cooler. It took a lot of attempts to get the lines as thin as possible, so I was glad I layered a thick layer of top coat over the colour so that I could have a couple chances to carefully touch it up without ruining the rest of it.

It took a lot to do this design, rather than naming it all off here is a picture, just leave a comment if anyone has a question about what I used.

Also, was it ever messy to do! Take a look, I got paint everywhere. I think it was worth it though.

What do you think? Also, be sure to check out Robin Moses' designs if you haven't seen them, she has some great ideas and amazing designs. Love em.
Here are links to her youtube and her blog.

Orange Dotted Design

Here is another design for you fine folks. It's entirely different from what I set out to do, I was aiming for delicate swirling leaves and then I glanced over at my crazy orange acrylic paint and was like "eh, why not?" and ended up with this.

I used Color Club Tangerine Scream, Misa Heaven White and Wet 'n Wild Black Creme for the polish portion, the dots. I used Golden Pyrrole Orange #2276-1 Series 8 for the base.

I had originally just done my left hand and I wasn't sure if I would keep it or just put it on the back burner until Halloween rolled around, but then my boyfriend and I went grocery shopping, with me and my only one hand of polish, and our cashier said she loved my nails! So then I had to keep it. I figured I'd use it as an opportunity to experiment with the same design and different colours (Color Club What A Shock! and Electro Candy, and this is what I ended up with.

What do you think? In October I think all orange will be fine, but colour combinations are pretty fun to experiment with too.

Purple Gradient

I really like this one. I've been wanting something partial for a while now, I love being able to see the natural nail incorporated into designs and this purple is just wonderful. It's Gosh Gasoline by the way, with a couple glitter layers over top.

Gasoline is very sheer and layers beautifully. Here is what it looked like with only a couple thin coats to plan out the gradient.

And just because whoa, do I never see this, look! Natural nails!

Wowie! How spiffy is that? Anyways, here are a couple more shots of the finished product, then you get a story.

Alright, so I did these nails just before I went on an overnight camping party at my friend's place. She has horses and fields and apple orchards as far as the eye can see and we enjoyed this beautiful landscape by getting drunk and toasting hotdogs and marshmallows over a fire and then sleeping it off in tents in the field. Side note, my boyfriend and I along with a few others chose to just not sleep rather than attempt to sleep on one of the coldest nights we've had in a while on the uncomfy ground. I think smores taste better when eaten during sunrise. Anyways.. I decided to wait to blog about this until after the party so you could see what roughing it, and doing so slightly inebriated, did to my nails. Of course there was also a ton of grass stains and ash and outdoor-ness on my nails before I got home and finally got near a shower. Pictures first though!

Pardon my TED Talk in the background, I was rushing to take this so I could switch up my polish.

 The tips all rubbed away but didn't peel off and apart from the thumbs nothing else was too terribly wrong, a new top coat and a touch more purple on the tips and I could have re-worn this for a while. That's what I was hoping to see since one of the awesome parts of gradients, in my mind, is that they are super simple to touch up so you can wear them for a long time without any serious overhauls needed.

What did you think? Do you love gradients like this as much as I do?

Pearl on Rose Filigree

Okie, so I've got a design for you today that is pretty and subtle and delicate, if I do say so myself.

This is inspired by most elegant designs I've seen, anything with a bit of filigree to it, if you recognize it I'd love it if you let me know, maybe this is pulled from something deep in my subconscious. I used Gosh Rose as a base and Golden Iridescent Pearl (Fine) from their Fluid Acrylics line to detail. #2456-1 Series 4 if you are interested in it. Also, glitter.

 I had a pretty difficult time photographing this, the acrylic pearl is fairly translucent and with a couple coats of various sparkles over top it turned out very barely there. I took a lot of pictures and subsequently got a lot of pretty neat shots, so here they are.

 If you have an opinion on these shot angles (if you really like one or hate one) let me know and I'll do more like it or never try it again, haha.

What do you think of this design? I did all the swirls by hand so I'm pretty critical of them but overall I think it turned out well.

Thanks for looking!

Rhinestone Flowers

So here I am continuing my fun with my new polish purchases. I'm revisiting the neon and Worth the Risque combo ala flower this time, mostly to give myself an excuse to try rhinestones.

I had fun with this design, although it is a little childish. I don't mind that, I was sick when I did it so it was nice to have some cute neon flowers and jewels to cheer myself up.

This design had a surprising amount of staying power. I had it on for 6 days before a rhinestone came off, although I was sick at home for about 5 days of that. The images above and below are just before I took it off, the orange rhinestone on my pointer finger is the one that came off that morning, you can see the crack in the polish where I bent my nail earlier that day. Replacing the rhinestone was easy as pie, but the crack meant it just couldn't stay, plus I was getting a bit bored with it by then.

 

All in all, fun, cute, kiddy. I think I might of went a bit overboard with the flowers and the rhinestones and the rainbow of colours though. What do you think?

Neon Taping

Hello Internet!
Summer semester exams are right now, and I'm not out of the muck yet but I'm taking a minute to post a design for you and to give myself a bit of a breather.
So, neons are fun but I wanted to try something that wasn't quite so flashy and I wanted to take another swing at taping. Here are the results!

I redid my pointer finger because my boyfriend said that it looked a little funny coming out from the nail bed and he preferred the ones with the colour coming in from the sides, I think I agree.

I really liked the look of this. The Electro Candy neons from Color Club and Worth the Risque are both splendid in their own ways and using them together was great and really complimentary. Also, taping worked very well! YES!
I tried out neon gel powders after I'd had this for a while to get a glow in the dark effect on the colours. I tried very hard to get a photo of it glowing for you but, alas, I didn't succeed. It did glow though and it was neat. Here are my nails with the powder, you can tell it is there and I definitely prefer the look without the powder but I'll keep playing with it and see.

And rhinestones! I put them on just a bit before I took the whole thing off but still, rhinestones!

To finish off this post here is another shot of my nails along with my snake, Abraxas.

Hope you liked!

Haul pt2 and Creeper Nails

Hello! I've got a long and picture heavy post for you today.

So, the BornPretty.com order is here and I get to show it to you, but first, so there is actually some nail art in this post, here is a design I did for a friend of mine. Pics are before cleanup so I'm sorry about that. He said he wanted something minecraft, maybe creepers so I went with that and used my horrid horrid black, which I fix later in this blog but unfortunately after I used it in this design, as much as I could because he used to love black polish.

 This is neon green (What A Shock!) with my Sally Hansen black Nail Art Pen for the creeper face and my horrid old Wet 'N Wild black, covered over with a matte finish.

And now.. haul part two!

I bought thinner, orange sticks, rhinestones, a nail wheel, a stamping plate and glow-in-the-dark gel powder.

It came all the way from Singapore so I wasn't surprised to find the powders had come loose from their package and some powder residue was scattered about but everything was still sealed tight and nothing was damaged. The Thinner was taped tight shut which was nice to see.

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