Showing posts with label nail art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nail art. Show all posts

Friday, January 25, 2013

Generally Not Reccomended

Usually, I don't wear yellow, even though I love it. I have an olive complexion and it tends to be a very difficult color for me to wear. My one and only yellow polish is generally relegated to nail art, like for flower centers or stars. For some reason, though, yellow and pink is a color combination that makes me extremely happy:

Two coats of Sally Hansen Insta-Dri "Lightening." Accents in Sally Girl pink.


I love my taping manicures, but this one didn't come out as neat as I would like. Still, no time to re-do it. It's off to work for me!

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As a follow up to my last post, I have begun this, for those who are interested. Also, please don't forget about my blog sale. If you see something you like, make me an offer!

Monday, January 21, 2013

Dorothy Who Goes on a Trip?

Just what it says on the tin:


A base of Wet n Wild "On a Trip" with a gradient tip of China Glaze "Dorothy Who?" I love the way the sponging brought out the silver in the glitter. This is definitely a manicure I'll be doing again.

Just a reminder, please don't forget about my blog sale.

Friday, January 4, 2013

Freehand Snowflakes

Real quick, since I'm writing this at 12:30 am when I have to be up in less than 7 hours;



That's "Ivory Skull" (Sally Hansen) applied with a dotting tool over the gradient I showed you on Monday.

Have a good one!






Friday, December 28, 2012

Pinterest Day

There were some awesome holiday manis floating around in the blogosphere this week. Here are a few of my favorites:













Source: nightskynaildesign.deviantart.com via Sophia on Pinterest

I hope you all had a safe and happy holiday, regardless of what you celebrate, or just a nice few days off from work. See you Monday!


Monday, December 24, 2012

A Very Important Issue

Clearly, I need to go shopping. I've discovered I'm missing two very important colors in my polish collection: navy and green. Yes, I have navies and greens, but what I need are non-shimmery versions, and the green needs to be somewhere between true green and forest, whereas all of mine are either spring green or leaning more towards teal. Oh, the problems of polish.

For now, I will just have to suffer through with the shimmery navy blue that I got as a stopgap a few months ago, but is really closer to royal blue, which isn't the same color AT ALL.

Yes, I'm being ridiculous. I know. But the color just isn't right.

Which means, of course, that I simply must make my way to Sally's a some point this week. Oh, woe is me.


At any rate, here is the first of two snow-themed manis I have planned, using the substitute color:

For the designs, I used the dotting tools that my roommate got me for Christmas.
Colors used:
Revlon--I have lost the name of this one, sadly.
Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure "Ivory Skull"
Essie "Set in Stones"
Pop Beauty "Metallica"


I was going for a "gently falling snow" look, but I forgot just how densely packed "Set in Stones" is, and I ended up with a blizzard instead! I still like the way it turned out though--it's fun to look at.

Happy Holidays!

Friday, December 21, 2012

Peppermint Sticks


Just another quickie for the holidays.

Colors used:
Pure Ice "Siren"
Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure "Ivory Skull"
I just cut up pieces of scotch tape for the stripes. :)

Blessed Yule and Happy Solstice! I hope everyone is enjoying the "end of the world."

Monday, December 17, 2012

Santa Claus is Coming to Town

I can't believe I just used that as a post title. They've been playing that song twice an hour at work, and it makes me want to hurt someone now. Still, it's pretty apt for today's manicure:
 

I can't claim the idea for the Santa hats. Another nail blogger did them last week, and I thought I'd saved the image to Pinterest, but evidently I've been lax in my pinning. I only have one holiday manicure up.





I used Pure Ice "Siren," Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure "Ivory Skull," and a nail art pen for the black details. Since I used a Halloween polish on a Christmas manicure, does that make this the Nightmare before Christmas?
 

I'm so excited because all of my photos before now were taken in artificial light. But, with our new place we have so many more windows all over the house, and there's even a nice big yard, so I could use natural sunlight for the first time! Now if only our dryer would stop tripping the breaker, everything would be dandy. :)





















Friday, December 14, 2012

Well, that didn't go as planned.

So you might have noticed I missed a couple of posts there. It wasn't intentional. I even had a couple of manicures in the vault so that I could post them even when it wasn't practical for me to be doing nail art. I failed to save the photos onto my computer, however, and in the move my camera ended up in the wrong box. Then the battery died, and the charger was in another, unknown box. And, well, that seems to be the story of this move. We didn't get a fridge until a week and a half after we started sleeping in the house. I say sleeping, because we are still missing at least three large pieces of furniture that have been in storage. Weather and schedules have conspired against us, so we're still mostly living out of boxes. I did, however, find my yarn, my camera, and my nailpolish--those are the most important things, right?

Speaking of things that didn't go as planned, here's the first manicure I did in the new house. This was a case where my topcoat worked against me, turning my careful designs into blurry lumps. (note to self: don't use SV on patterns with small details)



The lighting is dramatic, yes? Well, that's my story, anyway, and I'm sticking to it. This house actually has much better light than the last place, but I did this late at night (read: missing furniture=limited lamps) and I knew they would get messed up the next day (which they did) so I wanted to get photos taken before they flaked like a ditzy cheerleader at exam time.

This was inspired by the song "My Favorite Things" which for some reason has become a Christmas song. It doesn't say Christmas to me, but there you are. At any rate, I do love the song and used S•X•Y "Dreamy Cocoa" to create brown paper packages, and Sally Hansen Insta-Dri and Pure Ice "Siren" to tie them up with string. On my pinky, I had a smudge, which I covered up with a decorative bow--realizing after the fact that it would be upside down to everyone but me. 

This is why I am not Polish Insomniac. I shouldn't be allowed to do creative things after 10pm. I tend to get a little....too creative.

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I have been as active in the nail blogging community lately. It's not that I'm blogfadding or anything, but life has been happening and after a summer filled with nail art, everyone now seems to be focusing on swatches. And swatching primarily the same things. 

Boring. 

So while I may not post as often as some, I do promise that this blog will be swatch free (unless I find something that I'm SUPER excited about, and simply MUST share) and hopefully a little more interesting because of it. 

See you on Monday.

Monday, November 19, 2012

Plague Dots





Initially, I wasn't even going to show you guys this one, but I figured I should, just in the interest of full disclosure.

I love the look of Brash "Green Machine" and S•X•Y "Dreamy Cocoa" together. This isn't the first time I've used this color combination, but I think in this application, it kind of looks like my nails are diseased.

Better luck next time, I guess.

Monday, November 12, 2012

Nail Polish Canada Nail Art Challenge

I got an email about a new challenge being hosted by Nail Polish Canada this week:

Holiday Nail Art Challenge

At Nail Polish Canada we consider ourselves boring people. I mean look at our name, “Nail Polish Canada”, not an ounce of creativity there.  That’s why we want to support your creativity with our first ever Nail Art Challenge! The challenge is all about the holidays, lasts three weeks (one mani per week), and we're giving away nearly $1000 in prizes.

Challenge Themes

We've hidden the three challenge themes far away so nobody gets a head start. We’ll email and post each challenge theme when the week comes around.
Challenge Weeks
Week 1: Nov 19 to Nov 25
Week 2: Nov 26 to Dec 2
Week 3: Dec 3 to Dec 9

For more information about the contest, prizes, or to sign up, check out their website. They're giving away $200 worth of stuff every week, including Zoya Gilty Pleasures, OPI James Bond Minis, plus others by Butter London, Color Club, and many more, with a grand prize worth over $450. So, if you're one of those artistic types, go check it out.

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Fall Fail

Okay, so I lied. I skipped Monday because some real life stuff happened, so now you get a Wednesday post. You can tell, because I forgot to take a picture of this manicure and wore it for a day or two before I managed to get photos. Note the chipping:

For this manicure, I used Sally Hansen "Vivid" for the base and drew little leaves and swirls on it with Essie "Sequined Sash." I think it came out okay, but not great. I would have preferred to use a stamp, but I don't have any fall stamps.


Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Polish & Skully

I've got another Halloween manicure for you today:

Colors used:
Black--Pure Ice "Touch Me Here"
White--Maybelline Color Show "Porcelain Party"
Details--Claire's nail art pen in black
Topcoat--Seche Vite



Enjoy your Wednesday!

Monday, October 22, 2012

A New Kind of Inspiration

It's been a few months since I did an "Inspiration Shots" post, hasn't it? I started doing those as a way of sharing and remembering awesome nail art that I'd seen while perusing the interwebs, but then I discovered Pinterest and have been saving everything over there. I've got boards for knitting and crochet, home decor, and even food I have no intentions of ever making, since I don't cook (don't ask). And of course, nail art.

Here are a couple of favorites I've found recently:










What are some neat manis you've found lately?


(P.S. You can follow all of my boards here.)

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

I'm melllting....

It's time for the first Halloween manicure of the season:

For this I used Brash "Green Machine," and freehanded the conical hats with a Claire's nail art pen.


I love the way it turned out, and Green Machine is the perfect Oz-y witch color.

Friday, October 12, 2012

Pretty in Pink






Are you getting sick of the PSAs? I promise I'll make this one short, since a picture is worth a thousand words.


 

 

P.S. A handful of those thousand words would read something like this: "My great aunt is an amazing woman who has been battling a very rare and aggresive form of breast cancer called Inflamatory Breast Carcenoma, or IBC, since the late 90's. She has a book about her experiences available here." 



Wednesday, September 19, 2012

The Silver Lining

Here is that manicure I wanted to do last week, before I got distracted by my stamping kit:

Colors used:
Brash "Blue Dream" (light blue)
Wet n Wild "Metallica" (silver)
Pure Ice "Touch Me Here" (black)
Essie "Luxedo" (purple)
Maybelline Color Show "Porcelain Party" (white)

I put on a base of "Blue Dream," then covered it with SV. The other colors are sponged at semi-random on top. If I ever do this one again, I might add a lightning bolt to the thumbs.

Happy hump day--Remember, you can see the silver lining from here!

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

From the Vault





I'm playing around with something new this week that I'm not quite ready to share, so I pulled an older mani out of the vault. I did this one back in July for the Good Guys car show here in Columbus, which is the largest car show in the Midwest (and if I remember correctly, the eastern half of the US).

Colors Used:
Pure Ice "Touch Me Here" (black)
Maybelline Color show "Porcelain Party" (white)
Sally Hansen Insta-Dri "Lightening" (yellow)
Claire's Nail Art Pen (for the black details on the street sign)

I love going to car shows. I'm a total classic car nut, even if I know next to nothing about engines. My dream car? A Chevrolet Impala convertible in a blue/black duochrome with blue leather interior. I'm not picky about the year--I'll take anything from 1958-1967. Here is a '58 a friend of my dad's recently acquired:

Please ignore the awful photo of me. In my defense, it was 106 degrees in the shade that day (I heard the race track was 140ยบ F). If it tells you anything, we arrived at 7:30. By eight a.m., both my sunblock and my makeup had given up the ghost and were puddled at my feet. I spent part of the afternoon wrapped in a towel my dad had enough forethought to stick in the cooler before he left the house (that towel is god. I would have built a shrine to it if I'd had the energy at one point). (P.S. Not a great shot, but that's Dad's truck there behind me.)

This isn't even remotely polish related, but I thought it was funny. Spied in the back of a 50's pickup:
Those are old school roller skates, in case you couldn't tell.