Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Mosaic Do-Over

Tuesday,  yay! How was your Memorial Day weekend?  I had to work Monday,  but whatevs.  I got a lot of stuff done which was cool.

So, my cue for this week is inspired by the season.  Since it fluctuates so much here in Iowa,  I wanted something that would be between spring and summer.  I then remembered that I wanted to redo the mosaic mani that I got for vacation. I picked a bunch of cm colors off the rack, and went to it.

I started out with a white base and then I took My Boyfriend Scales Walls (light white-grey) and outlined my blocks. After that I went in and colored the blocks in.





That neon green is a total pain in my butt. This is the second time I've used it. The first time, it stained terribly.  This time, it bled into the white. What a jerk.



Light green: OPI Did it On 'Em
Neon green: Sephora X Radioactive
Turquoise: Essie In the Cab - ana
Purple: Color Club Unnamed Purple Neon
Gold: Cult Cosmetics Stay Gold
White: OPI Alpine Snow

I totally love this because it looks like fun and warmer weather without being totally cheeseball.

That's all I've got. Ta ta for now!!

April

Friday, May 23, 2014

Back from Vacation! !!

Hey everyone!

I've finally recouped from vacation and back in action.  I did get a gel manicure,  and I was so disappointed! The polish started to lift the next day.  Since I was hopping on a plane, I couldn't have her fix it. You can kind of see here where the polish didn't stick. I was mega bummed. The pattern was super cute though.  I will definitely re-do this on my own with regular polish soon.



So when I got back, I removed whatever was left still on. (Yes, it was only on for a week, and I had significant chipping as well as two nails that had large chunks that just popped off!) One of the polish groups I belong to, we do a weekly theme for Mani Mondays.  We were doing the alphabet,  but we ran out of letters!  So, then we just started to list other themes and ideas, so this week's theme is Emerald,  which was the color of the year last year. This is what I did:



This is Zoya Ivanka and my new Different Dimension Money polish as the accent nail. These were really pretty together.  Why do I love accent nails so much?? Oye.


Well I've mentioned before that I'm a polish picker. I can't help it!  I think it's from the millions of years that I was a nail biter. So I started picking at this last night, and had to replace it.  My last swap I received some super lovely Different Dimension polishes that were on my wish list,  (which is where Money came from) and this was another one I received. First two are in full on sunlight,  second two are in the shade.




This is Tulips Are Better Than One.  How pretty is this??? I fell in love with this polish when I saw a swatch posted, I cannot recall who it was from, but it was so stunning.  This polish is a super shimmery duo chrome shifter from violet to aqua to indigo. I've caught some dark pink / purple colors here too, but that's on some odd angles and on the far edges. And look! No accent nail. Well, yet. I wanted to swatch this in it's pure form before I do that.  =)


So that's all for today,  hopefully I will get back to posting twice a week now that I'm back and not freaking out about flying.

Have a wonderful holiday weekend,  and see ya soon
April

Monday, May 12, 2014

Pink Roses and Gradient

I fail again,  I know. I am getting ready to take a vacation here starting tomorrow.  I fly out to Georgia to visit my sister on Thursday,  and I'm so incredibly excited.  I haven't had a real vacation in forever,  so this is pretty huge for me.

Did anyone do anything fun this weekend?  We had a group trail ride, called Cinco de Biko... it basically was a bar crawl on bicycles.  It was awesome.


Anyways,  I have an appointment on Tuesday to get gel nails because I don't want to worry about polish and stuff on vaykay. The gal that I've made the appointment with also does nail art, which I of course have to have. Well,  I have to have something super cool for her to see, right?

I recently put on my wish list neon polishes because I strangely didn't have many. So, I've been dying to use them.

I started with a base of My Vampire is Buff from OPI, and then sponged on a gradient of two tones of hot pink. I purchased a holo topcoat, I'm Drinking Stars by Literary Lacquer,  not too long ago, so I put that on to give the gradient a little sparkle.



My roses are completely free handed on, using the two pinks in the gradient.



I love how sweet this looks while still looking totally rad with the neon fade. Plus that holo just pops in the sunlight.




Hope you like this, and I hope my nail tech is impressed, ha.

And I know I post here sporadically,  but I will for sure be MIA until I get back. I will probably do a quick post of what the nail tech did for me (I'm thinking about mosaic) but we'll see...

Thanks for reading,  and miss me while I'm gone!! =)
April

Thursday, May 1, 2014

New Nail Art Challenge

Hey all! I'm keeping this kne short & sweet.  Im going to do a different IG nail art challenge for this month (or at least partially, because I'm going on vacation soon) and this one is put on by Jamlynnails. It's called the Random Nail Art Challenge,  and follows the same sort of timeline that the Californails one did, so its about every 3 or 4 days.

First cue, paisley!  Back when I did the 31 Day Nail Polish Challenge,  I did a paisley design for the pattern cue. At that time, itwas one of cm my more popular designs,  so I was pleased to see this on day 1.

I hopped on the Internet and googled paisley. I found this pic:

Source : Maeve Parker


And I loved it! So springy, and still a paisley look without being so over the top. Here's my attempt.






I was going to do something on the pink nail, but I liked it by itself,  since it had some shimmer in it.

Hope you like this, and I'm looking forward to this new challenge!

Have a great day,
April