Bee Polished: james bond

Red, Gold and Green-ish?

It's day two of the Red, Gold and Green challenge with The Digital Dozen. Today I went for kind of a unique look and decided to play with my James Bond colors. I used a magnetic one for the base and then a gorgeous red for the tips. It sort of reminds me of braided bread and berries at the holiday. I also really like the way it changes in the light!

I matte top coated it later but I ended up hating it. It really muted the magnetic pattern, although the tip color is just stunning with a matte finish. It's like red velvet.

Check out what the other girls came up with below! I hope you enjoyed this easy and versatile holiday look!

6:00 AM
9 Comments

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. :)

12:03 AM
8 Comments

Pussy Galore

bond girl

This is a quick swatch post for you. I've been trying to avoid buying ALL the textured polishes because I know it's a fad and they'll be SOOO over next season. But I just can't seem to resist them!! This is from the James Bond Collection and it's called Pussy Galore. One thing I noticed about this one that seems different from the others is that it really looks like a pearly base with a darker pink glitter in it. It's not really obvious from this picture but it just read as less one toned to me than the other OPI colors and I really liked that about it. I got a few of the other James Bond textures and I have to say, I think this one is one of my faves. I'm still waiting to get my hands on Honey Ryder though!

Which is your favorite Bond Girl?

9:13 AM
2 Comments

The Goldeneye of the storm...

007

For the last few months or so I've been really unimpressed with the new collections. The holiday collections are very same-y to me and even the things which are upcoming aren't really catching my eye. I skipped OPI's Germany Collection, only snagged one from the China Glaze Safari Collection and wasn't really interested much in the new OPI Skyfall line for the new James Bond film. Still I decided to make a store run and check it out in person, just 'cause, you never know. I ended up buying four of these. I got this golden fleck one called Goldeneye, the dark green shimmer you see in the picture called Live and Let Die, and two others: You Only Live Twice and The World is Not Enough. I'm going to probably be swatching them all here over the next few days but for now, here's a little teaser. One thing I love about the colors I got is that they make really amazing suedes. Once I matted this green there was no going back. It's just stunning. I really love this gold too because it's shimmery, sparkly, and looks really rich on my nails. I used butter LONDON's matte topcoat on this and it did a very nice job. My go-to matte, Essie, is cheaper so I doubt I'll switch but I do love that the Butter London comes in a bigger bottle and has a longer brush. Did you get any Bond colors?