Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Turkey Legs & Pumpkin Pie Nails

Happy Thanksgiving nail friends! One of my favorite parts of the holiday is the food. I love turkey and mashed potatoes and gravy. It's kind of hard to paint gravy so I went with turkey legs and pumpkin pie instead. They look so delicious, I wish it was Thursday already!



My base is two coats of LA Colors, Deluxe. Everything else was hand painted with a small nail art brush. The turkey legs are Spoiled, Pumping Gas. My pumpkin pies were made by mixing the turkey brown and Wet n Wild, Sunny Side Up to make a darker orange appropriate for the pies. The crust is Finger Paints, Don't Make A Scene. All white accents are Wet n Wild, French White Creme and I painted on the lettering with black acrylic paint. They turned out very festive, but I can't wait to show you what I have planned for the day after Thanksgiving. Be sure to check back if you're a fan of meat themed nails.










Sunday, November 24, 2013

Crunchy Leaves Get Saran Wrapped

Here's another update on a previous manicure. I used the saran wrap technique over my crunchy leaves nails to change up the look. I should have taken pictures of my right hand. I picked five different colors to layer over the base to see which ones looked the best. These two were my favorites, but some of the other combinations came out pretty cool too.



The base is two coats of LA Colors, Sunkissed. I used Orly, Rage which is a beautiful rose gold for the two fingers and thumb and Revlon Top Speed, Ocean for the accent nails. I painted a thick coat of the two new colors on one nail at a time then used a small square of balled up saran wrap to dab off areas of the polish to show the color underneath. I really love how it all looks together. Sometimes, for a second or two, I wonder why I need to buy so much new polish when I have gorgeous colors like these hidden away in the depths of my helmer.




Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Crunchy Leaves- My Perfect Fall Polish

Ok, sadly it's not actually named Crunchy Leaves, but it should be! This shade is LA Colors, Sunkissed which I got at my local Dollar Tree for... a dollar. I love how shiny it is. It's got an orange jelly base that's so packed with gold and red shimmer that it's almost completely opaque in one coat, but I've got two on here for extra sparkle. I loved this color enough to wear it by itself for two full days.





Soooo shiny!


Monday, November 18, 2013

Kiss Gradation Polish Kit: Now With 100% More Stamping

I've added some stamping to my last manicure (the Kiss Gradation Polishes kit I got from Influenster) to spice it up a little. You know you might be a nail art addict when a gradient seems so plain your nails almost feel naked. I'm trying very hard to overcome my fear of wearing only one color at a time. I have two posts coming up where I'm only wearing one solitary color... and then of course the corresponding posts where I've covered it all up with fabulous multicolored nail art.


I used Bundle Monster plate BM-203 for the stamp with Victoria's Secret, Game On, which is a nice rich purple creme. I think the polish was opaque enough, but I had a really hard time getting a good stamp off this plate. No matter what angle I tried I kept scraping off too much polish so some of the images aren't as clear as they should have been. I think I'll be in the "practicing" stage of my stamping career forever. At least it's fun even if it doesn't look perfect. :)

Also, see what I mean when I mentioned the tip wear on this polish in my last post? This was done just a day or two later and I already had some serious wear.



Saturday, November 16, 2013

Kiss Gradation Polish Kit Review

I recently received a Kiss Gradation Polishes kit as part of the Influenster Rose VoxBox. This is my second VoxBox this year and I'm feeling crazy lucky. I wonder what the secret formula is because I've heard some people have been waiting a long time and still no box and I'm not usually this lucky so I was pleasantly surprised. There was a lot of cool stuff in the box, but I was most excited about getting to try this nail art kit because polish! Can't ever have enough. The Lindor Truffle was a close second though. 


The kit comes with three polishes and instructions for getting an easy gradient look. I've photographed all the steps so you can see it in action.


Step 1 says to apply two coats of the first polish and let it dry. Easier said than done! The first coat was pretty sheer and also stayed tacky forever. I waited a reasonably long amount of time before applying the second coat and even gave that quite a while to dry and still ended up with smudges and dings all over. I somehow rubbed the polish off all the tips by typing which I do almost every time I paint my nails (can't sit still). Normally this would make me much more unhappy with the polish, but no big deal. There were still two more polishes to go and I figured those would cover the imperfections.


Step 2- apply one coat of the second polish to the tip of the nail only. Easy enough. This did cover up all the smudges I previously made. I didn't even have to worry about getting the lines too straight since it would all get smoothed out by the third color.


Step 3- apply the third polish to the top half of the nail to blend the colors. The third polish is a black jelly full of different sizes of holographic glitter. It really does do a good job of blending the colors together to create a gradient look.

Pros:
Fast- I'm used to spending 2-3 hours on my manicures and this probably only took half an hour- much faster than a traditional sponged gradient.
Easy- This really was simple to achieve. The instructions are detailed and clear and should make it easy for even nail art newbies to pull this look off.
Less cleanup- these pictures so far are pre-cleanup. Much less messy than sponging.
The step 3 polish- Really gorgeous. It's hard to capture in the pictures but that holo glitter really sparkles. It would catch my eye all day as I was doing things at work and I could see myself wearing this one over other polishes as well.

Cons:
The gradient isn't as smooth as one created by sponging the colors on. You can't tell from farther away, but up close I notice the difference. I might just be too picky though.
This started chipping right away and had large chips by the 2nd and 3rd days. I like any excuse to repaint my nails, but it would be nice if it lasted longer.




What do you guys think? Is the effect gradienty enough? This kit retails at $6.99 which isn't too pricey for three polishes especially since they coordinate so well together. Would you try it?

Thanks again to Influenster for the opportunity to try out a fun new kit. If you want to get in on some of this action yourself check out the Influenster website and sign up.

Monday, November 11, 2013

Foiled: Part Two

The "foiled" from my title ended up being a little too literal. Even after top coat a lot of the foil ended up rubbing off after a couple days. Lesson learned- use more top coat if you want to try a design like this. I didn't have time to completely re-do my nails so I freshened the old look up a bit instead. I actually like the way this looks more than the original foil.



This is the original two coats of Kelly (Thai polish) which held up really well for this being 3 days old. I went back over the parts where the foiled rubbed off with Milani 3D Holographic polish in HD. The holographic polish stands out much more than the foil did against the sparkly purple background.




Saturday, November 9, 2013

Foiled! More Experiments with Nail Foils

It's been a while since my last foil manicure and I thought it was past time to bring them out again. This time I played around by painting on the foil glue in random patterns and sticking the foil to. It looks a bit like liquid metal like you'd get from a soldering iron. The base was so shimmery I think it almost takes away from the foil designs. I like the idea a lot so I'm sure I'll try it again with a plain base to see if it makes more of an impact.


I had to get some pictures of the base by itself. This is one of the Kelly polishes I picked up in Thailand for 50 cents and well worth the money. Aside from the extra horrendous smell the formula is great and I has this on for an entire week with only minimal tip wear. That's pretty impressive. This polish is almost like foil itself- so incredibly shimmery shiny.



I painted on two coats of my base and when it was dry used a small nail art brush to paint the foil glue on in swirly patterns. It disappears as it dries so I had to paint quickly to make sure all the lines were filled in. Once the glue was tacky I pressed the foil down on top to transfer it onto my patters. This foil is Smoky Silver from Dollar Nail Art



Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Red Velvet: The Cake Is A Lie

I recently bought my first textured polish, Sally Hansen Sugar Coat in Red Velvet. It was on clearance at Target so I thought I'd give it a try. I've never been especially drawn to the textured polish trend although some of the new holiday lines do look extra sparkly and tempting. So far I've proven completely incapable of swatching a single color so I've done some nail art as usual. First impressions? Meh. I didn't like the way it felt so rough to the touch after it dried, but it did dry fast and it wasn't hard to work with like I thought it might be. This color also isn't my super favorite so I might be pre-biased against it.


And now for a totally unnecessary rant about red velvet cake:
I hate red velvet cake.. and I mean Haaaaaaate! Why? Red velvet cake is just slightly chocolatey cake masquerading around in two (2)!!?! bottles of red food coloring. Who invented that? According to the internets it was a extract bottling company during the depression who wanted to convince people to use more food coloring. I'm not a fan of excessive dyes in my foods and it just looks so unnatural. Admittedly beautiful, but so wrong.


In case you're not a crazy cake hater like me and think this looks delicious you can find this picture and recipe here.


Back to the nail polish! For my base I used 2 coats of Ulta's Bare Minimum. I used striping tape to get the extra crisp lines on the stripey nails and the cap end of a plastic tipped brush to make the extra large dots.


Saturday, November 2, 2013

Franken: Black Holes and Starry Skies

The other night while I was supposed to be sleeping I was thinking about nail polish again as usual and I realized I've never seen a polish with gold and black glitter. In my half awake state it sounded awesome so I set out to make one. Not too bad for my third franken attempt. Over the black base I think it looks a bit like a very starry sky on a dark night.



I wanted to see how my creation would look over both black and gold, but I assumed for some reason I'd like gold best so I only painted two fingers on my "off" had with black to test it and my entire left hand in gold. I ended up liking the black best so you get to see my elusive right hand today. I really liked the contrast and I think the holo sparkles showed up better over the black. Which way do you like best?



Keep reading to see what this polish is made of + more pictures.