Cracked ice

It's always hard when you have an idea for a manicure, but it doesn't work out at all. I had a stamp I wanted to use, but it just....didn't look good. At all. So I found a different stamp. I'm not sure if I like it. I've had a few people compliment me on them, but I'm not sold. I do like the colour combo though!

The base coat is "Black Pearl" by LA Colors, the design is done with "Queen of Everything" by Sephora by OPI, and the stamps I used were from the BM-208 image plate. They remind me of cracks in ice, or stained glass, or even spiderwebs. Still think they could have been better somehow though.

Beaches and bubbles

Some days, I go to paint my nails and I know exactly what I'm going to to. Other days, I just pick a colour and run with it. This day was a "run with it" kind of day. I started off thinking maybe I'd do some kind of french manicure. Then I thought that maybe I'd do a gradient french manicure, just to mix things up a little bit. I pulled out some white, a light sparkly blue I thought would look good as part of the gradient, a neutral base, and started painting. As I was waiting for my base coat to dry though I looked at the sparkly blue and decided it would look really good with a dark bluey-green I knew I had in my collection, so I swapped that with the white. And once I had the gradient finished, I ended up bringing the white back out and throwing some dots on there, just because.

The colours remind me of the beach or the ocean, and because of that the dots look like bubbles to me. I really like this manicure, it's got a bit of colour to it, a bit of shine, and some fun designs without being over the top. The base coat is "Sheer Me Now" by Sally Hansen, the light blue is "Ocean Mist" and the dark bluey-green is "Sea Siren", both by LA Colors, and the white is by Konad Special Nail Polish.

Heartbeats

I saw this design ages ago on Empress Tang's DeviantArt and knew that it would make a perfect Valentine's manicure. And it did. Unfortunately I am very belated in posting them, but hopefully you won't mind.

The base colour is "Cayenne Pepper" by LA Colors, and the design is done with Konad Special Nail Polish in white. 

Chesire Valentine's Nails

With Valentine's coming up, I wanted to make use of some holographic hearts I got a while back but haven't really found a use for. I've seen a lot of manicures that put a heart over some stripes and I love the look, so pink stripes seemed like an appropriate choice.

The lighter pink is "Moroccan" by LA Colors, the darker pink is "Save The Date" By Sally Hansen Diamond Strength, and the heart is from a set of nail decorations I got at Claire's. As much as I like the look of the heart, it's too big and too flat to sit on my nail right and I had to put 4 layers of top coat on to stop them from sticking out. Caused a few problems. I still like how they look though! They kind of remind me of something though...

Yup. That's the one.

Glitter of my dreams

Blog titles are hard. This one feels like it should be the name for a glitter nail polish.

Back in September, I walked into a store in Las Vegas and saw a dark silver glitter polish by Deborah Lippmann with big, chunky pieces of glitter. It was love at first sight. Unfortunately, at $18 per bottle it was a little outside of my price range, especially because there was a red glitter that I fell in love with too. It broke my heart but I walked away empty handed. Thankfully the universe had other plans!

Last week I walked into Sephora to pick up a few things and figured that I might as well check out the nail polish while I was there. It's also usually outside of my price range, but looking couldn't hurt right? And there it was. "To The Glitter End" by Sephora by OPI. A (slightly) cheaper alternative to the nail polish I fell in love with. Nice, big chunks of dark silver glitter just calling my name. I couldn't walk away this time.

Ever since I first saw the Deborah Lippmann polish way back in Vegas I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted this glitter solid on my nails. It used up 1/4 of the bottle of polish so I probably won't be doing it again, but man oh man it was everything I dreamed of and more.

For this manicure I put on two coats of "Black Pearl" by LA Colors (which, by the way, is a beautiful nail polish and I can't believe I haven't used it sooner) and then sort of stamped the glitter over top using a make up sponge. The solid glitter gave the nails a really cool dented metal look! I decided to try an accent nail as well, so I stamped a mesh pattern from BM-208 on my ring finger using Konad special nail polish in black. Not sure it really worked, but from a distance you couldn't even tell it was there.

I'm so glad I finally got this nail polish, and I'm so glad I finally did this manicure! I don't think I'll do it again, you can see how much of the polish I used up, but it looked amazing and every time I looked at my nails it made me smile.