Here's a quick marble I did with some colors from the OPI Hello Kitty collection. This one is a needle marble which I'm not the greatest at yet! I liked how it came out overall though. ;)
- 12:00 PM
- 0 Comments
It's time for another Digital Dozen challenge! This week we're doing metal! You can definitely take that a lot of different ways but I went fairly straightforward today. I wanted this to sort of emulate flatware but without being super obvious and I'm quite happy with the way they turned out. I'm still figuring out my new camera but I hope that soon I'll have it down and be able to capture the stunning finish of this OPI chrome finish. It's incredibly shiny and reflects light and color in a super cool way. It's definitely a must have polish in my book! I hope you enjoy these simple nails today! Be sure to check out the other girls designs below!!
- 5:00 AM
- 7 Comments
You'll have to excuse my absolutely horrific photography this week! I don't have a lightbox and since moving it's been difficult to find a great light source. Especially with the completely DISMAL weather we've had of late. Hopefully I can find a good balance soon! But for now, apologies, you deserve better! At any rate this week is vintage week with The Digital Dozen and I'm so excited about it because I LOVE vintage. I still have a record player, wear vintage clothing and jewelry and I love old music, films, etc. So this week I had no shortage of inspiration. Today's nails are inspired by those old 50's era appliances with their minty color and chrome accessories! I wanted a sort of 50's pattern as well but I couldn't find anything that I felt truly was what I wanted so I settled on this sort of mod circular look! All in all they came out rather well. I used the new chrome polish from the OPI Gwen Stefani collection and while I LOVE the way it looked (wish I could've captured the finish on this one!) I didn't top coat it and it started sort of rubbing off like lead from a pencil about three days in. Still a cool look though! I hope you enjoy! Don't forget to check out my fellow Dozener's looks for today!
- 6:00 AM
- 14 Comments
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
Well....what can I say about today? I had good intentions. I really wanted this to turn out differently than it ended up turning out. I think half the problem is that I did it basically in the dark and all freehand. Apologies for the lighting as well, it's been SUPER rainy here lately. At any rate. These were inspired by an iPad case I saw on Instagram. I really love chevrons, they're one of my favorite patterns. But they're tricky to do freehand because you need to be sure the spacing is on and they're not less tricky when you have to stop 3/4 of the way across! I think they came out OK but later in the week I got the idea to do them over again in better light. You can see what transpired with that if you tune back in on Friday! I ended up going in a bit of a different direction after I got started! I hope you enjoy these anyway! :)
Colors Used:
Zoya Purity and Raven
OPI Who the Shrek Are You
- 7:00 AM
- 5 Comments
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. :)
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
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
Here is my original design for today's Geek Week challenge with the Digital Dozen! These are a little abstract but I thought they came out pretty nice. They're meant to represent Avatar! I resisted seeing this film for SO long because of all the hype surrounding it. When I finally did see it I was blown away. I loved it! I'm very into environmental things and even though this is touted as a Fern Gully for adults (which by the way, I also love!) I felt it was very well done. It's definitely got a message but it doesn't feel like they're throwing it at you. The movie has a great plot behind the message. Or in front of it maybe! Anyway these nails are meant to represent the Na'vi. They have golden eyes, hence the golden base and then their skin is this really pretty blue but sort of shifty in the light. It also has blue stripes and then there are little luminescent spots on their faces. The nails were so much prettier in person, they really looked like a foil they were so shiny and sparkly! I hope I did them some justice! Don't forget to check out the other ladies designs for today!
Colors Used:
Orly Hayley's Comet
OPI Goldeneye
Models Own Champagne
Funky Fingers Teal Scales
- 10:14 AM
- 4 Comments
...han mathon ne nen.
Han mathon ne chae.
A han noston ned 'wilith.
Today you all get a bonus mani!! I had way too many designs for Geek Week with the Digital Dozen so in an effort to fully round out my geek-ism I decided to keep this one in and just have one extra. :) These are obviously from The Lord of the Rings. I read these books, saw the films and well...rinse and repeat. I even read the entire book catalogue beginning with The Silmarillion, which incidentally, was my favorite since it's mostly about Elves! My geekism of The Lord of the Rings goes so far as that I know all ten different dialects of Elvish (including sub dialects within the major accepted ones) and can write in Quenya and Tengwar. Yeah. That bad. I think the Elves are my favorite part of the movie and it's fitting in a way that I've chosen to do The One Ring for that reason. The writing on the ring is known as Black Speech and it is the only pure example of Black Speech there is. While it was intended as the official speech of Mordor it never actually caught on and the Orcs and men of Mordor used Westron to communicate (although a very mutilated form of it) as did men that came to Mordor later. The Nazgûl, the Olog-hai, and several of Sauron's major lieutenants and officers did learn and use the Black Speec, however. At any rate...putting my heavily useless knowledge to the side! I hope you enjoy these nails! There is one more day of Geek Week left and don't forget to check out what the other ladies came up with!
Colors Used:
OPI Goldeneye
Barry M Gold Foil
Models Own Black Nail Art Pen
Seche Vite
- 7:00 AM
- 13 Comments
Well I visited my local beauty store today in search of some new pretties for my collection. I came up sadly short handed. The China Glaze Avant Garde collection display was full. No surprise there. It's basically your standard creme Spring colors with some shimmer haphazardly thrown in. Then there were a few of the OPI Euro Centrale collection leftover. I keep eying It's My Prague-ative but I just don't see myself really wearing it. All in all the new collections have been really underwhelming for me. Then I turned a corner and caught the OPI Oz The Great and Powerful collection. Most of the display was wiped out which is lame. I really wanted the glitters but upon finding that they still had the swatch panel I have to say I was really let down again. When Monkey's Fly, the glitter I had my eye on is basically just large hexes and the other two: Lights of Emerald City and Which is Witch, are really pretty overplayed as well. I may still grab Lights of Emerald City when it's back in. Square glitters are hard to find. Anyway as I was getting ready to leave empty handed I spotted this gem. It's called What Wizardry is This and it's a new Liquid Sand polish. It. Is. Stunning. It reminds me of a deeper toned Warm & Fozzie. It has SO many gorgeous sparkles and it's just amazing on my nails. It almost looks like sparkly stone. It's MUCH prettier in my opinion than the previous liquid sands and I love that it doesn't have larger glitter chunks in it which ruin the effect somewhat. This is two coats and it's absolutely flawless. It could be one of my favorite polishes of the year! I feel like this one is really a must have!
Do you have any polishes from the OZ The Great and Powerful collection? Witch (teehee) is your favorite?
- 3:20 PM
- 6 Comments
Today I have a trio of Models Own polishes to show you! These polishes are now available on a website called, Littlewoods. One great thing about the site is that allows you to purchase things out right, or to pay for them over a period of time so if you need to make a large purchase, you can do it without going broke all in one go! Anyway on to the polishes. The one you see above is called Champagne. It's a gold metallic with a bit of a warm pink tone to it. I really loved this one. It reminds me a lot of OPI Designer DeBetter but without the painful removal! This is two coats of Champange.
Then we have Beth's Blue. Beth's Blue is a blue creme polish with a bit of a purple lean. It's almost a periwinkle color but it's more blue than purple. This is also two coats of polish and it dries to a shiny, gorgeous finish. These photo's have no top coat! This color will be amazing come spring when pastels become big news! Finally...
we have Coral Reef. Honestly I expected to hate this one. It's so bright and in the bottle it seemed very orange. It turned out to be my favorite of the bunch! It's just an amazing bright coral and again, look at the shine!! These applied really easily and were all opaque in two coats. The only complaint I have about this brand is the smell. I'm pretty good about using three free brands and 99% of my polishes have a really subtle odor but these are pretty strong. That's standard of the brand though. I have quite a few Model's Own and I can vouch that they're a really great quality for the price!! Which one of the three is your favorite?
You can pick up these and more Models Own polishes (plus loads more!!) at Littlewoods.com.
These polishes were sent to me for my honest review. I have not been compensated for my opinion.
- 9:26 AM
- 3 Comments
Well..this mani was both a fail and kind of a win at the same time. I wanted to try out the splatter technique that everyone is doing but I tried a lot of different ways and it just wasn't giving me the effect that I wanted so I decided to go about it a little differently. First I polished my nails white and top coated. Then I thinned some polish until it was very liquid and dipped a large paint brush into it. After it was nice and loaded I held it over my nails and just lightly tapped the base of the paint brush to cause little splatter drops to fall onto my nails. I layered them and then added a little more white (using the same technique) to create these rosy marbles on my nails. Honestly, I kind of love it even though it wasn't the intended outcome. From a distance some of them look like hearts and roses and the whole thing has a very marbled, luxe feel to it. I considered adding glitter or some kind of sparkly enhancement but decided ultimately to leave it as is.
It's so soft and pretty! :) Don't forget to check out what the other girls of the Digit-al Dozen came up with for today's Love and Heartbreak challenge!
Colors Used:
OPI Sparrow Me the Drama
butterLONDON Knees Up
Zoya Purity
Seche Vite
- 7:00 AM
- 8 Comments
This week the Digit-al Dozen is doing Love and Heartbreak. This is my day one mani which sort of encompasses both! The hearts are for love and the cracks are for the break! :P This actually came out really well even though I was kind of worried about it because it's been awhile since I used my crackle polishes and some of them are tricky to work with! I also had to do some maneuvering to get the heart shapes and I was concerned that it would crack funny or have weird cracks since the way you move the brush contributes to the way the cracks occur. All in all I think it came out nicely though! Here's a close-up of my favorite nail. :)
Do you have any crackle polishes? What kinds of things do you use them for?
Don't forget to check out what the other ladies came up with for today's challenge.
- 7:00 AM
- 13 Comments
So you've seen all the OPI Liquid Sand polishes now and you all know that my favorite is the purple one! Well if you loved Can't Let Go too, then today could be your lucky day. I'm going to give you all a chance to win a bottle for yourself! I'd love to have given away the set but rising shipping costs have limited me and I want to keep this available for my international followers too! Find details about entering below! This is a BRAND NEW full size bottle. The winner we be drawn on the 24th of February and I will contact them via email. You will have 48 hours to claim the prize or I will draw again. International entries are welcome. Thanks for following and good luck!!
a Rafflecopter giveaway
- 7:00 AM
- 11 Comments
This is the final polish in the Mariah Carey for OPI collection which is a liquid sand. I think this one was my favorite, or maybe a close tie with Get Your Number. This one is less complex than the others. It's just a purple jelly base with purple glitter, but I think the lack of complexity actually works with this because of the texture. This one is also sort of the 'safest' of the bunch if you want to try out the textures but not draw a ton of attention to your nails! It's a bit more subtle than it's cousins! I used two coats again, it's a little sheer still in the picture but in person it was very opaque. Here's a close up of Can't Let Go:
Pretty, no? Did you get any of the liquid sand polishes? Which is your favorite?
- 7:00 AM
- 1 Comments
It's time for another OPI Mariah Carey swatch! This one is called Stay The Night. It's another liquid sand polish. This one sort of reminds me of lava. It has a black jelly base and then red glitter throughout. This is two coats and no top coat or base coat. I know they suggest using a base but I didn't use one for any of the liquid sands and had no issues with them. Here's a close up shot of Stay The Night:
I could have probably used one more coat on this one, you can see it's still a little transparent on this close shot. In reality though, it wasn't noticeable at all.
Did you pick up Stay The Night?
- 7:00 AM
- 3 Comments
I have another of the Mariah Carey for OPI shades for you today. This is another of the liquid sand colors and it's called Get Your Number. This one actually reminds me a lot of the Justin Beiber collection that was released by Nicole by OPI some years ago. This color is quite similar to Me+Blue except that it's a bit lighter and of course, it's textured. This is two coats and again it dried quite quickly to this gritty finish. What I like about these is that even though they have a slight rough feel to them, they really don't LOOK super rough. They just have an interesting sort of quality about them that makes you look twice! Here's a close up of this one:
It's really difficult to capture, but this one was super sparkly and had holographic glitter particles throughout it as well. You can see them glinting in the background on the bottles.
Did you purchase Get Your Number?
- 7:00 AM
- 5 Comments
Today I have one of the new OPI Mariah Carey polishes for you. This is one of the liquid sand polishes, which is a new textured polish. I know I'm a little late on swatching these, you can find them all over the internet. I had promised myself I'd get these OR the Zoya Pixies and since the Pixie's were a little cheaper for me I went with those. Then my husband found these for a steal and since I've always loved Mariah....well...here they are anyway! This one is a red jelly with larger glitter pieces and then some stars. A word of advice, the stars sink to the bottom of the bottle so if you want them on your nails, you'll want to sit the bottle upside down for a few minutes before polishing. Shaking seemed to be less effective for me but I went ahead and swatched without the stars. These actually go on very easily and dry pretty quickly. They say to use base coat but no top coat but I skipped both. You can tell when it's dry because it has a really matte textured appearance, even though it's still sparkly. I waited a little longer between coats than I'd normally do with polish because I wanted to make sure it would dry all the way fairly quickly but it still dried much faster than I expected. It wasn't difficult to remove either, like some glitters can be. I had no staining with these, no damage to my nail from removal, and they're not exceptionally rough. It's sort of the same way a fine grit file feels. Here's a close-up of this one for you:
What do you think? Love it or hate it?
- 7:00 AM
- 8 Comments
It's the final day of the Digit-al Dozen challenge! Today is me only recreation of an art piece for this challenge. It's a recreation of a painting by Piet Mondrian. Mondrian was a Dutch painter and a very important person in the De Stijl art movement. The basis of his work, and of the movement, was to use only white, black and primary colors and to use grids to create patterns. The movement went on from around 1917 to 1931. I really love the idea that these artists had only five colors and straight lines to use and yet came up with endless pieces of unique art. It goes to show you that you don't need a lot to create when you have an imagination. :) I hope you all enjoyed the challenge! Please check out the art my fellow dozeners came up with for today's challenge and stay tuned for the next installment in my New Year New Nails series! It will be coming this weekend. :)
Zoya: Purity, Pippa
OPI Red
Color Club Chelsea Girl
Models Own Black Nail Art Pen
Models Own Black Nail Art Pen
- 7:00 AM
- 7 Comments
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
- 7:00 AM
- 6 Comments
