Purple Leopard

Absolutely LOVE this look. Its so sparkly and girly, it just looks.. expensive ya know? Like you paid a lot for it :3

So it's a base of OPI Panda-monium Pink, a slightly lilac-y pink which looks goooorgeous with the purple. Stamped with BM 221, dotted with GOSH Wild Lilac (or try OPI Planks A Lot) and then dotted with China Glaze Fairy Dust on top of the purple.

First picture is the most color accurate. Sorry for the little drags, I was getting impatient.

I'm back baby!

Pink Christmas Snowflake Nails

 Hi there,

This is a snowflake nail I created by sponging a dark pink, white, and China Glaze Frosty over the nail, then stamping a metallic pink snowflake over the white parts and a white snowflake over the pink parts. I used the HB plate HB23 for the tiny snowflakes, it looks like this:

 You can find these plates at bf-beauty.com. I really like the plates and they stamp pretty well, but be warned that the images are not Konad/BM size, they are significantly smaller. Compared to the BM14 snowflake, they are about a quarter of the size. However I really like this size as my nails are short and small.

I added beads to the left hand but the paint started to melt in the nail polish and bled into the rest of the nail polish! It kind of ruined it so I left them off the right hand but if you had better quality nail beads it looks nice.

Halloween Nail Series Part 2 - Accent Thumbs!

Hello! I did a few halloween manicures that were a bit more toned down with just one halloween nail per hand. I decided to switch it up and do the accent nail on the thumb, also known as the "blackberry manicure", because when you text your two thumbs are showing!

The first is a Frankenstein nail, with a base of OPI's Who The Shrek Are You? with Wet 'n Wild Tangled In My Web on top.

The next is a Pumpkin thumb with OPI's Extra-Va-Va-Ganza on the thumb and Orly's Star of Bombay on the rest of the fingers.

The last one is a witch nail, with Orly's Star of Bombay, China Glaze Lemon Fizz for the moon, and stamped in black with BM13. The rest of the nails are OPI Flit a Bit and Wet n' Wild Tangled in my web.

And there ya go! A few ideas to get you going.

Halloween Nail Series Part 1 - Spiders in Webs with BM13

Hellooooooo!

This is the first of my Halloween-themed nails, and I absolutely love it. It's really pretty and wearable, and I got lots of compliments on it. So here it is, it's China Glaze Snow as a white base, stamped with OPI's Lucerne-tainly Look Marvellous and BM13 spider web, and stamped with Konad black with the BM13 spider, and a red dot on its back. I would also recommend trying this with a glow in the dark coat over the white and a black spider and spider web. That way in the dark both will show up.

Now this one was a nightmare to capture. It was so hard to get the silver to show up on camera and the red to show up at the same time. In real life the spider webs are easy to see, a super glittery sparkly charcoal spider web, and the red on the spiders is easy to see too.

And AAARRGG every time I photograph my nails there's one flippin hair coming off my nails that I never see until it's too late, so I apologize for that annoying hair.

From the flash you can see the red on the spiders better. In real life it looks like above but with the red showing like below.

I also did this look with China Glaze Snow as a white base, China Glaze White Cap over it, Sally Hansen Chrome Blue for the BM13 spider web, and a Konad Black spider with 2 black rhinestones to make the spider 3D. This one was my original idea but it turned out a bit sloppy. I think it would be a good look if I had been a bit more patient.

There ya go! Stay tuned for more in the series!

Girly Pink Bows

Hey guys!


This is a super cute style that I've worn to school a lot and I love it! It's so cute and simple, it doesn't feel too crazy to wear. As a side note, I've decided I like short nails a lot better than long nails. I find nail art looks a lot classier on a short nail, not to mention it's a lot easier for me in school to have short nails. I know most of you prefer long nails but I think shorter is super cute, that's just me!

This is OPI Sparrow Me The Drama stamped with China Glaze Harmony and Konad m71.

Pastel Leopard

Hello all! This design is pretty cute, although I did like it a lot better as a swatch than when it was on my actual nails. I think it would have looked a great deal better with black instead of gold. Anyhow! Left hand is China Glaze For Audrey stamped with China Glaze Passion, dotted with OPI Panda-monium Pink. The right hand is the opposite.

I'm Back Baby!!

Hello all!

I'm excited to be back, can you tell!? Ahahah. I'm done my summer courses, done working, and starting my discipline in engineering. Life is good and I got some time on my hands to do my favorite thing, painting my nails and sharing it with you all!

For this post I'm actually just going to post a whole bunch of random pictures that I took here and there that I didn't love enough to make a whole post about. I wasn't going to post them initially but there's lots of things that I don't like that other people do, so maybe some of you will like some of them, and you can have a bad manicure that can still spark ideas and inspiration in some people, so I thought why not just show them anyway. So today I'm showing all my random duds, in no particular order!


This is China Glaze Flying High with OPI Silver Shatter

Now this is OPI Here Today Aragon Tomorrow, with Sinful Colors San Francisco over the top. I find Aragon way to dark and San Fran too light, but the mix of them is absolutely beautiful.

This is a super cool combination but incredibly bright and loud hah! It is a neon orange, Essie Bright Tights, stamped with black and dotted with Essie Watermelon. I really liked it! But it was a bit too crazy for me.

This is Essence Fivepocket Grey freehand dotted with OPI Stranger Tides and China Glaze Shower Together. I wore it on one hand with the other hand painted just with Stranger Tides.

This is Teenage Dream over China Glaze Pelican Grey.

This is an OPI matte black, I forget the name, stamped with China Glaze Passion.

Hope you enjoyed the picture spam! Expect posts every few days! Much love!

Flower Print with Konad m71

This is a subtle nail with a really pretty, old, discontinued polish from Maybelline. It's called Express Finish Opti-Mist-Ic. It looks like a warm medium gray, but on the nail there are many different colors in it, it's hard to explain. I stamped over it with the flower print from konad m71 with OPI's Teas-y Does It. Teas-y Does It is a great stamping polish! More after the jump.

 

Multicolored flower nails with BM16

Hello all!

I have some pretty summery nails for you! They are a bit complicated to explain. It's best to look at the pictures first!

  
This has a white base of China Glaze Snow. Then I took bundle monster plate BM16, and dropped dots of different nail polishes randomly onto the full nail flower design, scraped it all off and stamped it over the white. The colors I used were China Glaze Tree Hugger (green), Flyin High (blue), Sugar High (pink), GOSH Wild Lilac (purple), and Sally Hansen Insta-Dry yellow. The Tree Hugger is a shimmer, and having a shimmer amongst the cremes gives a nice dimension to it. This will work with any combo of colors and on any full nail plate, so experiment! An autumn colored one with the leaves plate would be awesome for the fall.

Now this technique is not mine, but I can't remember for the life of me where I saw it. If anyone knows, please comment and I will link them. More after the jump!

Bamboo Nails with OPI Steady As She Rose and Konad m66

I'm back!

I'm really sorry for being so out of the loop - the last week I was so busy that I didn't have nail polish on my nails for a week! Unheard of. Which explains the crappy state of my nails since when I'm not wearing nail polish they crack off and splinter very easily. I also cut them off because when you're typing on the computer a lot and writing a lot and typing on the calculator a lot long nails get so annoying, so they're a lot shorter now.

Anyhow, I finally took some time for myself to do my nails and experiment and I have a few great ideas that I'll be trying to post soon. This is my mani now, and it is a nice subtle nail. It's hard in engineering since your profs see your nails a lot (pointing out questions in the textbooks etc) and sometimes it's hard to be taken seriously if you have like neon zebra print nails on or some ridiculous flashy stamping hahah! So I've been doing really subtle looks, sometimes just plain polish, sometimes silver shatter, sometimes nothing at all. But this look is actually pretty and subtle enough that I'd be fine to wear it at school, there's nothing too crazy in it.

It is OPI Steady As She Rose, stamped first with the flower from Konad m57 in white, and stamped over that with OPI Lucerne-tainly Look Marvelous with the bamboo stalks from Konad m66. More after jump.

 

Drop Anchor Nails with OPI Steady As She Rose

This is another nautical/pirate themed manicure with OPI Steady As She Rose from the OPI Stranger Tides collection. It's really subtle and a great mix of girly and tough. I have pictures from several different lighting situations; the natural light ones are the most color accurate, but I included the flash ones since they show more of the detail.

Steady As She Rose is a grey, dirty pale pink. I have 2 careful coats of it, then 2 stamps side by side in random lengths and spaces of the chain from BM12 in gold, China Glaze Passion. On top of that is the anchor from BM08 stamped in a medium/dark grey from Essence, Fivepocket Grey. You can use China Glaze Recycle if you have it. The gold on the pink is really subtle, much more subtle than in the pictures. It's actually a beautiful effect, a shimmering chain. I love the grey anchors against the murky pink! Many more pictures after the jump!

Fish in Nets with OPI Stranger Tides

I have some news - This weekend I bought a camera! It was a birthday present from my father so thanks Dad! Look forward to clearer, more accurate pictures and hopefully more posts since I don't have to wait for my boyfriend's phone :3

On to the nails. OPI's Stranger Tides may be a strange-looking color in the bottle but is a fantastic shade on my skin tone. Since it's kind of murky and pirate-y I wanted to do something not so cutesy, and I came up with a shimmery fishnet with creepy dead fish, very pirate appropriate! I LOVE this combination. I only have Stranger Tides in the little sample size, I might trade in my full size Mermaid's Tears for a full size Stranger Tides if I don't like it as much.

This is 2 coats OPI Stranger Tides stamped first with OPI Lucerne-tainly Look Marvelous and Konad M79, then 2 fish with MAC Blue India and BM04. More pictures after the jump!

Purple Roses manicure with OPI's Skull & Glossbones, Konad m79 and BM14

...otherwise known as THE GREATEST THING I'VE EVER DONE.

If you can replicate this mani DO IT! It is beautiful. I'm coming to realize that the greeny hue in the Stranger Tides collection from OPI makes for the most flattering shades on my skin tone. This grey is stunning on olive skin. I'm going to pick up a full sized bottle of a few of these shades tomorrow if I can find em.

It's funny when you're doing a manicure sometimes and the first few steps you're like yeeahhh, this is not great but once you get the final stamps into place you absolutely love it. When I just had the polka dots on I was not into it but I love it now! It's subtle, flattering, and so so pretty. I haven't been this happy with a manicure in a long time! Skull & Glossbones is really ridiculously hard to capture on this "camera" unfortunately so I didn't get totally accurate pictures. I got the most color accuracy in the first picture, the other pictures are a more clear view of the print though. You have to see this in person to truly admire it I think.

*EDIT: I added some more pictures from my new camera so you could see it a bit better. The color looks more green in some pictures but it is a soft grey in real life.

This is 3 coats of Skull & Glossbones, followed by a white stamp of konad m79, followed by 2 rose stamps from BM14 in GOSH's Wild Lilac. China Glaze's Spontaneous would probably work for stamping too, I tried OPI's Planks A Lot first but it was too light/transparent. More after the jump!