Everyone's Irish on St Patrick's Day

St Patrick's is on a Friday this year?!? I'm not sure if I should be excited or scared. I don't usually make plans but this year might have to be an exception.

I had the idea to mix my favorite green and gold polishes for a subtle St Patrick's look.

The golds: Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure- Golden Rule + Victoria's Secret- Runway Angel, Sally Hansen Color Foil- Liquid Gold, Orly- Bling, 24k gold leaf with clear polish, Nina Ultra Pro- Big Spender

The greens: Revlon- Tantalize, Seche- Charming, OPI- Plaid About You, China Glaze- Rare and Radient, Zoya- Ivanka

Do you have any exciting plans this St Patrick's Day?

Pantone Color of the Year 2015: Marsala

Now that Christmas is officially over and done with lets all rush on to the next big thing: New Years! One of my favorite things of the new year is Pantone's choosing of Color of the Year. I've been obsessed with color ever since I was old enough to discover the beautiful world of Rainbow Bright. As a kid my parents always had to wrestle me away from the paint chips at the hardware store.. no, apparently those weren't there for me to take one of each every time we went down that aisle.

This year's color is Marsala- a rich earthy red wine shade. I immediately thought of Haze of Love by Wet n Wild. The color looks very Marsala in the bottle, but on the nail it tends to darken up unless viewing in bright light. Still, an excellent option for the price. If you'd like to read more about this color and how it was chosen check out the Pantone site.

Picture credit: Pantone

I paired my Marsala with gold for a luxurious look. I used OPI's Love.Angel.Music.Baby for the gold nails, topped with loose glitter from Born Pretty placed in triangle shapes on the pinkie and index fingers. On my other accent nails I used 24k Gold from Mentality which is real gold leaf flakes in a clear base. I used a toothpick to fish out and place bigger chunks of gold leaf for more dense coverage.

 So far I've heard really mixed feelings about the color for 2015. I happen to be leaning firmly into the love it camp. How do you feel about this one? 

Lacquer Legion Glam- Featuring Mentality

April's theme for The Lacquer Legion is Glam. I decided to combine this month's challenge with my first real indie polish review because what's more glam than getting to try out brand new polishes? I went for a full on royal-glam look here with purple velvet, matte studs and real 24k gold leaf top coat. 

This is officially my first indie purchase too! I've been eyeing Mentality's store for a while now and finally decided to go for it. Their polishes are very reasonably priced- $6.75 for most regular polishes and a bit more for holos and other specialties plus free shipping within the US. I think what really pushed me over the edge was finding out Mentality is from Modesto. That's about two hours away from where I live and I love the chance to support local businesses.

It was really hard deciding what to buy- so many beautiful polishes. The two that stood out the most to me were Matriarch, a gorgeous velvet looking matte purple (I'm a sucker for anything purple) and the 24k Gold Leaf top coat which was totally worth the splurge at only $15.

Matriarch applied beautifully and dried quickly with an even, smooth finish. I'm always concerned about drying time if I'm not going to be using a top coat. I went to bed soon after painting this and I'm happy to report no sheet marks. These pictures show two coats.

For the 24k Gold nails I painted two coats of LA Colors Black and topped it with two dabbled coats of the gold leaf top coat. I probably could have gone for a third coat on the pointer finger for extra gold leafiness, but I was getting sleepy and skipped it. Overall I'd say the gold leaf is dense enough in the base that it's not too hard to get fairly decent coverage with just two coats. I topped those nails off with a coat of NYC Matte Me Crazy to match the rest of the matte look.

The last thing that really pulls this look together is the matte gold studs. Of course I didn't actually have any so I decided to make my own. I stuck silver studs onto a piece of tape and painted them with OPI, Love.Angel.Music.Baby from the Gwen Stefani collection. Once they were dry I picked them up with tweezers and carefully stuck them onto my 2nd coat of Matriarch while it was still wet. I love that I can make any color studs I want without having to buy anything new. I can't wait to try this out in so many more color combinations.

Caged

Valentine's Day is nearly here and I've saved my favorite for last. This manicure has got a ton of my favorite things: black polish, hand painted details, purple holo and my new favorite, fake gold leaf. I've really been wanting a nice gold leaf polish, but per my usual cheapness I just can't seem to find one I like enough to pay super big bucks for (yeah.. anything over $10 is pretty rich for my blood). I was at CVS the other day and saw this "gold leaf effect" top coat from NYC for only $2. I absolutely love it. I don't think it will fool anyone into believing it's real gold leaf, but it's a gorgeous gold flakie for sure. The search continues for the real thing though. If you have any recommendations for the perfect gold leaf polish let me know. If it's pretty enough I might just have to go for it. 

I started out with two coats of my favorite black from LA Colors on every finger except the ring finger. For that I used one coat of Wet n Wild Megalast, I Need a Refresh-Mint and one coat of 2% milk which is a sheer pink I like to layer over bright colors to tone them down a bit. I put one coat of NYC's Top of the Gold top coat on the black nails. On my accent nails I painted on hearts with a small nail art brush in Zoya's Aurora and used black acrylic paint for the bird cage.

The Sparkle Queen has put together a blog hop for everyone to show off their Valentine's manicures. If you need inspiration for some last minute nails... or if you just can't ever look at too many pretty polishes (me!) scroll on. There are some truly great artists in this group. Enjoy!

An InLinkz Link-up