Another Gradient

Man, I know.  I do a lot of gradients.  It's because I'm lazy, and they look good, and there's an absolutely endless amount of color combinations that you can use.  They're wonderful.  Hugs and rainbow sherbet to  the person who invented sponge gradient manis. 

For this one, I chose the boldest colors I could find at the time.  It ended up being royal blue, purple, and neon pink.  I think they look really great together- kind of cohesive- and are super bold, which is what I wanted at the time.  Awesome for summer.

Boom.  Brights.

Products Used:
Revlon Royal
China Glaze Gothic Lolita
Venique I'm a Sucker for Wedges
Zoya (as base coat) Purity

Watercolor/Tie-Dye (Picture Heavy)

Something a little different!  I asked the fiance what colors I should use, so credit goes to him.  I think they came off super awesome- pastel colors are more like a watercolor, and though this is the exact same effect I feel like these brights make it more like tie-dye!  Either way, I'm super obsessed with the way they look, and although I did a pretty crappy job with cleanup, I think this is one of my new favorites (along with gradients). What do you think??

Products Used:

Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear White On (base)

Zoya America

China Glaze Dance Baby

Revlon Royal

Quick Neutral/Neon Polka Dot Mani

I figured I probably shouldn't do ANOTHER gradient even if I love them to death, so I went another direction.  I was gifted a nail dotting tool by one of my friends so I figured I'd give that a shot.  I've been using toothpicks for the past, I dunno, 26 years when I need to make dots on my nails, so I thought the dotting tool would just make it that much easier.  Lo and behold, I kinda suck at nail dotting tools.  I am sooo not used to it- but I think this is just going to be one of those practice makes perfect deals.

Products Used:
Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Wet Cement
China Glaze Sunshine Pop
China Glaze Fuchsia Fanatic

Tropical Brights Gradient

Every now and then I get into a super rut with my nails.  Usually when I'm super stressed out about something.  This one started with our move, and hasn't ended yet.  With moving in, unpacking, applying for jobs, having job interviews... My nails have really taken a beating.  As have my poor cuticles.  In these times of crisis, there's really only one way to get myself back on top of my game- I have to spend a long time doing something cool with my nails (here is just one example).  Normally I try to do something freehand, or water marble.  It's time consuming and (usually) looks pretty awesome, and knowing that I spent a lot of time and effort on a certain design is the ONLY thing that can override my need to nibble when I'm stressed.  So this morning I spent two hours (yup) doing my nails with a pretty sweet, tropical bright gradient mani.  It took so long because I used a white base coat first, and then redid my entire left hand because I didn't like the way it turned out.  Plus, cleanup was just awful.  But anyway, enough with the words and the sad stories- onto the pics!

I really needed these brights today- you can see the 

rain droplets in the picture!

Products Used:

Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in White Out (basecoat)

Orly Fabulous Flamingo

Zoya America

Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Sun Kissed

Orly Ingenue and Alabaster Verve

I recently posted a swatch of Orly's Alabaster Verve.  I don't have a lot of Orly polish in my collection, so when I was at the store I went ahead and got myself three bottles.  I also purchased Ingenue, when was labelled with a little "new" ring around it but really isn't new- it's from the winter/holiday collection.  It is a pink based loaded up with tiny, shimmery gold glitter.  It is also basically identical to a bunch of other polishes floating around, but I don't own any of those and this was on sale so into my bin it went, and onto my fingers.  I love it layered over Alabaster Verve.  This is two coasts AV and one coat of Ingenue with Seche Vite as a top coat.

I'm really not a fan of gold.  I'm much more of a silver/white gold person as far as personal taste goes.  However, my skin tone disagrees- gold looks pretty great on me (if I do say so myself, heeey!).  I love this color with my skin tone!  

I'm back! And on East Coast time!

Our adventure is over, we are all moved in.  My nails are little nubbins (surprise surprise) after a whole ton of stressful events but I'm trying to get myself back on track.  Once my crafting space is all set up, I'll be able to get some nail polish racks up and going and then we will really be in business.  For now, just a quick swatch of a new (to me) color.

This is Orly's Alabaster Verve.  It's a perfect dusty pink and it has a hint of silvery shimmer.  It's perfect for work without being boring.

My ridges are pretty bad, huh?

Lovely!  

Pastel Glitter- 2 Weeks of China Glaze

Whoops, this post is late!  I had some parent meetings so I decided to go fairly subtle.  I just found these gorgeous Wet n Wild glitters at the store and scooped up a couple so I decided to put one over China Glaze Oxygen!  I had a hard time capturing the gorgeousness of the glitter but I think you get the idea!!

As a side note, my nails feel so nice!  I don't feel that they're growing particularly quickly, but they look nice!  Too bad I ruined my experiment by biting them all off when thinking about graduation.  

Products Used:

China Glaze Oxygen

Wet n Wild Coloricon in Speak When Spoken To

Raspberry Glimmer- 2 Weeks of China Glaze

This one was a quickie.  It's China Glaze Wicked Style with Kleancolor Chunky Holo Fuchsia on top.  Yum!  It was fun and glittery and exactly what I needed for a few glum days in Oregon.

Products Used:

China Glaze Wicked Style

Kleancolor Chunky Holo Fuchsia

Scotch Tape Mani: Blue and Pink? (Red)- 2 Weeks of China Glaze

I really like it when my fiance is involved in my nail polish whatnot.  Usually it goes like this:

Me: What colors should I use?  I have red, pink, purple, blue...

Him: Blue.

Me: Which shade?  I have these four.

Him: That one.

It's very helpful.  It cuts my decision time in half.  This time he chose Electric Beat.  I decided to kick it up a notch and put half of it as Make Some Noise... which I thought would be more pink/orange, but over the blue looks pretty red!  Which is fine with me, it totally matched my outfit.

Pretty snazzy for a 10 minute mani.

Products used:

China Glaze Electric Beat

China Glaze Make Some Noise

Way way way late Valentine's Mani

Well, better late than never I guess.  

Products Used:

China Glaze Sweet Hook

China Glaze Dance Baby

China Glaze Fuchsia Fanatic

Konad Plate m57

Bundle Monster Plate BM14

Spring Flowers!

I'm back after almost a full month.  After a month in the dumps, doing my nails was the last thing I wanted to do. But today is my first day of spring break, and one of the first days of sunshine in forever (seriously- it snowed yesterday- and the day before) so I forced myself to spend some time here.  And I'm quite pleased with the results!

Products Used:

China Glaze Kinetic Candy

China Glaze Sweet Hook

China Glaze Dance baby

China Glaze Wicked Style

China Glaze Gaga for Green

China Glaze Sunshine Pop

Revlon Top Speed in Royal

As you can see, I used this as an opportunity to break out and check out my new China Glazes from the electropop collection... which I got back in January!  Yeesh.