Swatch of the Day Round Up Week Three

China Glaze

It's time for the weekly Swatch of the Day round up! This week I managed to stick to all China Glaze and even mostly stuck to the Capitol Colors collection. Overall though, the swatch of the day isn't about swatching specific colors or collections and I don't want to get too stuck into doing it that way but this one was just too gorgeous to not. Here we go with the colors!


 Monday I showed you another from The Giver collection. This one is Five Rules. It's a grungy grey reminiscent of OPI Skull and Glossbones. I think S&G has a little more of a greenish lean to it but I haven't swatched them side by side yet. Based solely on memory and online swatches from other bloggers I think they're pretty close!


Tuesday I went with this bright pastel magenta from the Electropop collection. This one is Sweet Hook. It's a purple/pink pastel with a bright punch to it. I loved this collection too. It was so vibrant but not super in your face. 


I went back to the Capitol Colors on Wednesday and showed you Dress Me Up. Meant to be a nod to the textile district from The Hunger Games, this one is a nice dusty rose color. It's pretty unique even if it's not spectacularly exciting and it looks great on my skin tone. I had forgotten how much I like this one!


Thursday we kept going with the Capitol Colors and I swatched Hook and Line. This is my absolute least favorite in the collection. I HATE frosty finishes on polish and they can be so finicky and streaky looking. I actually think they aren't THAT bad but the pearly streaks just look unfinished to me. I never liked this one for the district either. I mean sure it looks a little like a gross fish but I'd have loved to see something more blue toned for this district.


Friday I showed you Agro, which is a gorgeous shimmery olive green. This one has a very metallic type finish to it and it's ridiculously sparkly and shimmery. When you matte it you get a very velvety metallic finish. 


And finally on Saturday I swatched another metallic, shimmery Capitol Colors polish; Harvest Moon. I had to laugh a little when I picked this one up because I got Harvest Moon: Light Of Hope for my Switch for Christmas. I don't get a ton of time to play games but I've been squeezing it into my free time recently and it's tons of fun. So that's all I could think about when I swatched this! At any rate its a coppery foil polish and even though I don't typically dig orangey ones this one is another real stunner in person. 

I hope you enjoyed all the swatches this week! Which one was your favorite?

Luck o' the Irish

China Glaze


It's St Patricks Day! I really LOVE green and I always get excited to do manicures for today BUT....I realized when going through my collection this year that I really don't have many green creme polishes. I have plenty of glitters, shimmers and other such goodies, but not anywhere near enough cremes.  In either event I threw a few China Glaze polishes together with one of my favorite glitters of all time, Dollish Polish The Hero of Time. I think it came out rather nice and subtle. One of those mani's I could carry over into tomorrow if I were feeling sort of lazy. ;) I hope everyone has a happy holiday and stays safe!

Girly Glitter

betsey johnson

Today's small nails look comes to you from Fashion Week again! These nails were sported on the runway shows of Betsey Johnson this year. I really love her but I feel like these were a little tame for her show! At any rate I love how sparkly they are! I think these would be really great in varying colors for the upcoming holiday season. One awesome thing about glitter is it's sort of chip proof! When properly applied it really lasts forever and the even better thing about this is that you can do a really great color underneath and then when it's wearing out a bit just pop the glitter on top and leave it another week! This is the last of the small nails art for the month! There will be a four week update tomorrow and then at the end of the month don't miss the conclusion of my results with butter LONDON Horse Power!! Which look was your favorite?

The Neon Lights

China Glaze


Following my not so awesome results with the chevron patterns, I decided to try again with a different approach.  This time I chose a houndstooth pattern for the monotone side and then for a pop I used neon for the stripe. I went for more of a half and half split this time around too. I really like the idea of just the thin line up the side for the pop of color but I also really like neons for summer so I wanted a little MORE of the pop!  I think these are my favorite of the two even though they really turned out very different in the end. I hope you all enjoy them! :)



Colors Used:
Zoya Purity and Raven
China Glaze Hang Ten Toes and I'm With the Lifeguard

Forgiveness is a gift of high value. Yet its cost is nothing.

a tree grows in brooklyn


It's the final day of book week and I've saved my absolute favorite book for the very last. :)  Today's nails are based on a book that I probably should have read much earlier in my life than I ended up doing. I've heard a lot of people say it's on their school reading lists but it was never on any of mine and that saddens me to a great degree.  I picked it up just a few years ago and read it out of curiosity and it's just an absolutely amazing book. It will really change the way you feel about life and about your choices and it was one of those ones that you pick up and you never really put it down. Even when it's not in your hand it's on your mind and I love those kind of novels. You can really live inside the world of the book for a few days or weeks or however long it takes you to devour the story and then inevitably, it has to end and you're left both relieved at reaching the end of the journey and sad to leave it behind. Even though it's my favorite book I've only read it a few times because I try to save it as a treat. :)  It may not be entirely obvious from my design but today was inspired by A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. I wanted to really just go very simple on this one. It's a complex story but a simple theme. I chose to emulate the early 1900's Brooklyn with bricks on most of my fingers.  One of the important themes of the novel was the lack of trees and green in Brooklyn and I wanted that to carry over to the nail design. And of course there's that tree. The Tree of Heaven so it's called in the book which is a metaphor of course for the ability to thrive in difficult times. I did a tree on some sort of concrete colored polish on my accent nail to represent this. It turns out, in the end that the main character, Francie was the tree that grew in Brooklyn so it really makes a great representation I think.  Anyway...enough rambling! I hope you really loved book week because I've LOVED sharing it with you. Please check out the other girls pages to see what they've come up with for the final day. As always you can see the colors used in my mani listed below and today, because I had to use a bit of a technique I've included a little description as well! Enjoy!!


Colors Used:
Zoya Destiny
China Glaze Brownstone and Life Preserver
OPI Solitaire
Models Own Black Nail Art Pen

Technique:
To achieve the texture I started with two coats of Zoya Destiny (any color will work but I wanted to start with something sort of similar to the direction I was going). When fully dry I sponged LIGHTLY over the top with the two different China Glaze polishes to get a nice brick shade. Then use the nail art brush to make the lines. I did not topcoat. :)

The Digital Dozen Does...Bling!

bling



It's time for another Digital Dozen challenge week!! This weeks challenge is Bling! These nails were actually something I did to be festive for a recent trip to the zoo, but they're also very bling! Leopard is still hands down my favorite go-to pattern for nails in a hurry because it's SO easy to do and it always looks great.  Don't forget to check out what the other ladies came up with for today!!

Colors Used:
China Glaze I'm not Lion and Mahogany Magic
LA Nail Art Pen in Black


U is for Unpredictable

abc challenge

I have a super pretty polish to show you for today's ABC Challenge. The letter for today was "U" and I dug out this China Glaze color that I haven't used since I originally got it. It's called Unpredictable and it's from the New Bohemian collection.  The collection was made up of mostly duo chromes and this is no exception.  It's a green to blue shift and it's just gorgeous. I also loved that these have some shimmer to them and an overall metallic effect so they're just really cool from all angles. This is two coats of Unpredictable and it's got a pretty flawless application. Happy to fall in love with this one all over again!


Don't forget to check out what Emma and Kerrie had for the letter "U"!

American Graffiti

China Glaze

Here we go with day three of the Digit-al Dozen art challenge. Today's mani is inspired by graffiti.  I actually quite like graffiti.  I know it's basically vandalism but I think it's really interesting to see the different styles and types.  Street art is usually inspired by a very different muse than classic art.  That said I'm not super great AT graffiti.  My husband used to draw fat graffiti letters which were really cool but I failed at recreating them.  So this is a sort of lame attempt but I liked the results anyway!  I used a suede base to emulate concrete and then used a series of neons and some black and white polish to create the letters.  I used a matte top coat over the whole of it since I felt it looked more graffiti-like!  Don't forget to check on the other girls art work for today's challenge!



Nail art done using: 
OPI: Suzi Ski's in the Pyrenees Suede
Zoya: Purity 
Models Own: Black Nail Art Pen 
China Glaze: Hang Ten-toes, I'm With the Lifeguard, and Sun-kissed

G is for Glitter All The Way

China Glaze


This year's holiday collections really didn't do much for me.  I have plenty of greens and reds and golds.  There were only two China Glaze's that I decided to pick up and one of them was only because my husband insisted.  This is the other. It's called Glitter All The Way.  It's a multi-glitter with bits of green, purple, red and gold.  It does have decent coverage; this is three coats.  It also dried pretty smoothly for such a concentrated polish.  This is two coats of top coat and no Gelous.  I don't really love the multi-glitter effect.  I just think this is too much in one bottle.  But if you're into multi glitters then this one has a great formula and is definitely worth the $$!

Thanks for following! Don't forget to check on what Emma and Kerrie chose for the letter "G".

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