Holo in a Dotted Frame

Hello, Fireflies!

For the third installment of the 3rd Anniversary copycat challenge, I chose a simple, but fun purple dotted frame mani from A Girl And Her Polish!

Blue and Purple Quatrefoil Wallpaper

Hello, Fireflies!

I'm working on my third 'wallpaper' pattern for the NCC challenge this month.  I've seen a few nail artists do different versions of this Quatrefoil pattern, and I thought it would make a neat pattern to try as wallpaper.

I started with Azature Blue, an unbelievably sparkly, gorgeous medium bright blue. 

Spring Renewal Nail Art Challenge - Good Egg!

Is it really spring?  I know some folks got snow this week! It's so weird - usually we have the A/C on 24/7 by this time here in Florida, but I'm loving that today is breezy, and I have the house open.  I'm feeling totally renewed, and excited for this, ahem, Spring Renewal Challenge!

First, let's pretend that I have a pix of my white nails, painted perfectly (we're imagining, so why not!) with Revlon Spirit.

I picked up some Washi tape that had chevrons printed on it, so I used them as a template and cut out chevrons for my nails.  Soon after, I got a small set of Nail Vinyls of chevrons, but it was too late for this mani.  Something you could get, though, if you want easy chevrons!

I tried to alternate between the yellow (Julep Nadia), pink (Julep Ellie) and blue (Joe Fresh Wave) but apparently, I can't do random patterns.  Also, Ellie fooled me with her pinkness in the bottle, but not so much on the nail.  April Fools!... a little late?

I took a dotting tool and some black to make some - and pardon me for getting a little technical here - dots.  In a chevron pattern.  Try to wrap your minds around that without hurting yourselves.

I think Orly Etoile may be the most subtle glitter I own.  Just a pinch of light purple sparkle.

Bottle shot:  Revlon Spirit, Joe Fresh Wave, Julep Nadia and Ellie, Wet 'n Wild Black Creme, and Orly Etoile.

This is probably as close to Easter Eggs as I'll get this year, except for candy ones.  My fave are the malted milk Robins' Eggs, but I have to have at least one Cadbury egg, and one Reese's Peanut Butter Egg, too.  What's your favorite egg?

An InLinkz Link-up

Two posts today!  Click HERE if you want to see my Hot. Pink. Cabana Boy.

Beauty Bloggers of Central Florida Light It Up Blue!

Hello, Fireflies!

Many of us know someone who has been diagnosed with a form of Autism.  There are still a lot of questions about what causes it, and how to stop it.  Doing a blue manicure isn't going to cure Autism, but anything that brings attention to the cause is a positive step!

I started off with Zoya Indigo, a dark blue with a touch of sparkle.

I wanted to do some stamped accents, so I chose this puzzle piece stamp from Dashica Big SDP-L plate.  I mixed Zoya Rocky with a little bit of Milani White On The Spot in order for it to pop over the dark blue of Indigo.  This technique has totally changed my stamping game!

The other nail art was inspired by _nail_bliss_ on Instagram. I used striping tape to partition off my nails into quarters, and then painted each quadrant with a different Zoya blue - Blu, Rocky, Phoebe, and Edie.

I dotted across each of the lines first with Zoya Indigo, and then, when that dried, with a smaller dot in the color corresponding to the quadrant I was in.  That gives you the 'puzzle piece' effect without having to map it out in advance.  Clever, huh?

Topcoat is essential for making the stamping pop, and for making all the puzzle pieces come together in one layer.

You never know where inspiration is going to come from!

Bottle shot:  All Zoyas - Blue, Rocky, Phoebe, Edie, and Indigo.

Has your life been touched by Autism?  Let's Light It Up Blue for a cure!  Click HERE to find out more about Autism Speaks Light It Up Blue.

An InLinkz Link-up

I had two posts today!  If you missed it, my Golden Oldie Thursday 'coral' challenge went live earlier.  Click HERE to see it.

Karmic Flowers

Hello, Fireflies!

I'm old. I'm jaded.  I have TONS of Indie polishes now, and if I'm going to be seduced into buying another, it had better be on sale.

Unless it's the Fall-ographic collection from Amy's Nail Boutique.  Yes, it's holo and duochrome, and I'm a sucker.  This is Karma Chameleon.

Look at that lovely shift and glow. 

I wanted to do some nail art that I could pull off on my non-dominant hand, and I was inspired by this abstract flower look from My Nail Polish Online.  I love how the blues in her mani worked together, and I wanted to do something similar with pink and orange.

After drawing the stems of the flower with a black striper, I used a dotting tool and Too Cute-icle Gorgeous to make the petals.

It's an *abstract* look, see?  It's supposed to look that way on my right hand.

I wanted to see what it would look like with a stronger pink, so I dotted Priti NYC Jersey Beauty Dahlia over the orange.  I like it!

Amy's Nail Boutique has some spectacular, affordable holos that I really like a lot.  I love using holos as a background for nail art, plus they dry fast for a quick mani when you have to run out the door. This is a quick, fun nail art that is hard to mess up!

I Love Nail Polish Sunset Crosshatch

I have such a huge shopping problem when it comes to holos.  Even though it says *subtle* right there, I still get suckered in by a bright picture, or an enthusiastic blogger. 

Not that this isn't a beautiful color.  I Love Nail Polish in Grande Sunset.  Beautiful coral-leaning pink.  The color alone is worth it to have in my collection.

I just want a little more holo.  Is that so wrong?  I know it's difficult with the lighter colors to balance the color with the holo.  But, in many ways, I am the toddler, throwing a tantrum on the floor with her toys, screaming, 'but, but, but, MOAR HOLO!'

You can always tell when I make up a design instead of looking at others' art for inspiration.  This is a hot mess.  But, it's *my* hot mess, so you get to see it anyway.

The dark blue is Orly In the Navy, a gorgeous navy polish.  I love Orly formulas.  They are always perfection.

The light blue is Revlon Intrigue from the Brilliant Strength collection.  I'm 'intrigued' by this line of Revlon, and I want to get more!  So pretty, and I love how the shimmer highlights the design.

Bottle shot:  I Love Nail Polish Grande Sunset, Orly In The Navy, and Revlon Intrigue.

Are you loud and proud with your nail fails?  Are you good at coming up with designs, or do you look to others for inspiration, as I do?

Retro Techno Geek

This dotticure is inspired by one from Kayla Shevonne.  I loved the pattern and wanted to see how it would look with 4 different colors.

This is two coats of Milani Pink and Proper.  It's a saturated pink that leans a little towards rose and has a shimmer to it.  This is two coats with no topcoat.

All of the Milani polishes I've tried are very consistent.  Thick, but not goopy, almost 1-coat coverage, and shiny, shiny.  I much prefer this kind of polish texture to the thin, streakyness that I usually get from Essie - at twice the price.

I won a LA Girls dotting set in a raffle at our Beauty Bloggers meeting, and I used the dotting tool with all the polishes for this mani.  First up was Milani A Rose Milady.  I used the largest side and spread out the polish a little farther than the initial dot.  I started using the dotting tool for the lines, but switched to a thin brush.

Then I used the LA Girls Polka Dot Blue inside the pink circles, and added other circles on the sides,

I connected blue lines to the dots and then dotted the Milani A Rose Milady inside the blue.

Right hand:

 I thought maybe the Polka Dots purple polish would look good on top of the other dots.

I love dotticures, and this is a fresh take on it.  The LA Girls set is a great way to get started.  The dotting tool is equivalent to any other dotting tools I've tried - easy to use and clean, and double-sided for different sized dots.  The instructions say to load the tool straight from the brush, but I'm not that coordinated, so I used a small plastic palette.  I suppose it might waste some polish, but it seemed easier than trying to hold the brush and loading the tool.  It doesn't take much to get proficient at dots, so it's a gateway mani to nail art.

The Milani and LA Girl polishes were provided to me for review.  Nonetheless, the opinions presented are my own, and as unbiased as possible.

http://www.milanicosmetics.com/ 
http://www.lagirlusa.com/

Another take on cherry blossoms

This was inspired by another lost Pinterest nail that featured orange and taupe/grey flowers on branches.  I went with a peachy mani and did the flowers on 2 accent nails.  The nails are a combination of a Jazz polish and Revlon Peachy Keen, which is also the base for the accent nail. The orangey flowers are China Glaze Brownstone mixed with a tangerine color, and the taupe flowers are Zoya Petra mixed with an opalescent Jazz polish.

I used a striping brush, and a dotting tool to make this pattern.

Right hand:

It totally matched the shirt I wore that night for our Girls' Night Out.  Yep, that's the Atlantic ocean behind me.  Sometimes, it's nice living in Central Florida.

Owlets

I saw these cute nail owls from Nail Polish Wars, and decided to try my own version.

First, a coat of nude sheer all over the nail, and when that dried, I applied the reinforcement stickers for the half-moon mani and painted different colors on each nail.  The right hand got the same colors.

I have really small nail beds, and my nails are not very long, so I wasn't sure how I was going to fit all that detail on my nails.  I decided to dot the eyes in first, so I could space out where the belly would go.  A lighter, complimentary color was used for the belly.

I used the dotting tool to make smaller black dots for the owls' eyes, and used the owl's body color to make the belly dots. I also used the dotting tool to extend the ears of some of the owls.

 Beaks added, cleaned and topcoated!  Aren't they cute?

 Right hand:

Matching owl mug from a friend.  Perfect match! :)

These days, I rarely wear a mani more than a day - this one I kept for 3 days, I think.  I loved it that much.  Hubby said this was his fave mani so far.  High praise, indeed!

Bright Pinky dotticure

I am a shameless nail copycat.  I look at other designs and colors for inspiration all the time.  This time, I got my inspiration from the bag of goodies from our May meetup of the Central Florida Beauty Bloggers.

The base polish is from Milani, a bright Barbie pink called U Pinky Swear.  I did have a little trouble with the application on my left hand, but none on my right.  So what you're seeing here may be the result of not waiting until my base coat was completely dry.  Everything smoothed out later, with topcoat.  This is two coats, no topcoat, yet.

For the dots, I wanted something equally bright that could compete with the Milani.  Barielle End of the Rainbow is an iridescent peacock blue/green, and Chick All A Twitter is a baby blue.  These worked really well for dotting.  The Barielle was opaque enough to work as both an outline and the interior, as was the Chick polish.  As you can see, I alternated the colors.

I think the Chick polish may be the best polish I've ever used for dotting.  It had the BEST texture.  It spread perfectly and effortlessly, didn't dry out on my palette until I was done, and was perfectly opaque, even though it is a light, pastel color.  I can't wait to use it again.

 Right hand, sealed with Seche Vite topcoat:

Barielle is hosting a BFF Sweepstakes on their  Facebook page. The contest starts May 21,2012 and ends June 30,2012.  The prize includes Barielle’s Nail Strengthener Cream, Barielle Base Coat, Top Coat and 3 colors of your choice-a retail value of up to $74.50.

The Milani, Chick and Barielle polishes were provided to me for review (though I had already purchased my own bottle of Barielle End of the Rainbow.)  Nonetheless, the opinions presented are my own, and as unbiased as possible.

http://www.barielle.com/
http://www.chicknailpolish.com/ (coupon code: CHICK20 for 20% off)
http://www.milanicosmetics.com/