June Favorites

3. My studded design on green from when I reviewed some products from KKCenterHk. I ended up loving these teeny studs, and especially the studded heart!

2. My Twinsie Tuesday textured fishtail braid. I love textured polishes, and I love fishtail braid manis, so it was next to impossible for me to not like this one!

1. My lily nails. I amazed myself that I could even paint lilies, and I loved how they all turned out!

Sinful Colors - Sinful Shine - Most Sinful

This beauty was two coats of perfection! Definitely my favorite goodie from my last swap with Meredith!

Busy Girl's Summer Nail Art Challenge - Stripes

The first theme for the challenge is stripes. So, this week, I was inspired by the color scheme of one of Heather's recent manis: primaries!

I didn't really go with all stripes, but it is a strong theme in this design.

Random Oldies

I have a bunch of random old manis to share with you today that I never got around to posting. These are manis that I was just playing around with but never had a lot to say about. These are mostly phone pictures, nothing super fancy. I just figured I'd post them before deleting them. No real reason.

The first picture is of two ruffians. I'd gotten into my box of frankens and just wanted to see what some of them would look like together. All four colors are nameless frankens, the left mani with some China Glaze Matte Magic.

Scleroderma Awareness Sunflower Nails

For Scleroderma Awareness this month, I created a couple of teal and sunflower nails with a few other girls on Instagram.

Twinsie Tuesday - Beach Inspired Nails

This week, the theme for Twinsie Tuesday is beach inspired nails.

I began mine on a base of Color Club Over the Moon with a little silver Harp on It near my cuticles.

I started out with my thumb and tried to do a holographic sunset scene sort of look, but wasn't in love with it,  so I though why not go beneath that beach water for this design?

I remember when I was little, when I learned that fish swam in schools, I once asked my mom if they every graduated, and imagined baby fish together being an "elementary" school, teenage fish being in a "high" school, and so on....

Well, obviously fish can't hold these graduation ceremonies while all us noisy, pesky humans are in their water. They have to wait until the sun goes down.

Therein lies the creation of this mani.

Lily Nails

I've been practicing my lilies!

I have three different lily manis to share with you today!

The first is on a base of China Glaze Fairy Dust. The outer most pink is Julep Madison and the inner petal color is Lauren. I dotted the petals with Niecy and again with a mix of red and black paint; I used Daisy for the center and dotted it with Nikki. The leaves are done in Leah, with veins in Nikki. This was a primarily Julep mani!

China Glaze - Urban Night

For some reason my swatch of this turned out waaaay more purple than most of them that I've seen!

Nude Gradient

This turned out so bad it is inevitable that I redo it. That's it. End of discussion. Inspired by Polish Amor, I wanted to create a nude gradient using Tea Beauty Vanilla Petals at my cuticles, and L.A. Colors Whipped at the tip. It bubbled and dented like crazy, though! Arg!

Essence - Oh My Glitter!

This one looks like it has pink, purple, and blue shimmer in it, but it is hard to tell. I applied two coats but could have used one more; no topcoat.

Swirled Roses on P2 Seductive

After I put on P2 Seductive, I decided I needed to add something to it, and tried out swirly roses for the first time.

P2 Swatch Spam

I recently won three textured polished from Polish Alcoholic and Luchessa. They are from a German brand called P2, and they are gorgeous! 

Illegal

First up is an amazing candy red-based polish with tiny gold, pink, and red glitters.

Twinsie Tuesday - Textured Polish

The other day, the lovely lady from Polished Away and I were discussing how neither of us had ever seen a fishtail braid mani done with textured polishes.

For which reason, we both had to do one! Plus, I knew the textured polish theme was coming up for Twinsie Tuesday, and I wanted to do something fun and unique!

KKCenterHk Review - 2.5mm Round Glequins

The second product I was given from KKCenterHk to review for you was a jar of 2.5mm round, gold glitters, a.k.a. Glequins, product code NNAIL-HSA1.

For my first look with these, I used a two-coat base of China Glaze Passion for Petals, then bordered two nails with the glitters, and put two stripes down the middle of the nail on my other two fingers.

China Glaze - Grape Pop and Grape Juice

I have another old China Glaze swatch I never got around to posting!

Orchid Professional Nail Lacquer - Cinderella's New Heels

This polish surprisingly only really took two coats to reach opacity, as long as you don't mind a little vnl. By the way, if you don't know what vnl is, check out Elizabeth's new nail term glossary full of lingo all us crazy polish people use so frequently!

China Glaze - Turned Up Turquoise

I found an old swatch on my camera that I never got around to posting! Oops!

This is Turned up Turquoise from China Glaze.

Sinful Colors - Sinful Shine - Come Hither

In our last swap, Meredith sent me a couple of the new Sinful Colors'! This one is Come Hither.

KKCenterHk Review - 1.5mm Silver Studs

KKCenterHk contacted me and asked me to pick a couple of products from their site to share with you and review. The first product I picked was item NNAIL-DRN659, a pack of approximately 50 circular, 1.5mm silver studs. These sell for $4.23 USD on their site.

After doing a little research on price vs. quantity for similar items on other sites, these do seem to be a tad on the higher side, but are neither the most expensive, nor at an unreasonable price.

Since these studs are so tiny, though, they are very easy to create a multitude of designs, as well as give a more precise placement. There does seem to be a slight size variation in these, because I placed four in a square on my index finger, and the two on the left seem to be a little bigger than the other two. But there's not too much of a noticeable difference unless I point it out. You can't tell on the heart or bordered nail.

Palm Tree Silhouettes

I loved the water marble I did for my first Twinsie Tuesday yesterday, for the most part, and I figured, what is more beachy than palm trees?!

Twinsie Tuesday - Marching Orders

How excited was I to get an email from Amanda asking me to join the elite and awesome Twinsie Tuesday group?! I'm thrilled to start posting with these wonderful ladies! Thank you guys so much for the invite, I am honored!

So for my first TT post, the theme is Marching Orders. Meaning another twinsie gives you orders on what type of mani to do. My marching orders came from Maribeth, and I was to create movie-inspired nails.

Of course, being the newbie to the group, I knew I'd have to do something awesome to prove myself. In like a lion, out like a lamb, right?

Everything fell into place when my June It Girl Julep Maven box came and the three polishes together screamed "beachy/nautical" to me, because then I thought "hey, I love the movie The Beach", and the rest was history!

Inspired by this movie, I did a water marble with Nan (the coralesque burnt orange), Bess (the lighter blue), and Char (one ridiculously gorgeous navy/slightly royal blue).

Born Pretty Store Giveaway Winner!

We have a winner!

butter LONDON Marrow + Embossed Gold Stickers

These stickers were THE BIGGEST PAIN EVER TO WORK WITH!!! So much so that, yes, that statements needs to be bold, underlined, italicized, and IN ALL CAPS!

Ruby Wing Poppy + China Glaze Techno

In my first Birchbox order, I got this color-changing polish, Poppy, by Ruby Wing.

I like the color in it's indoor, hot pink state the most. Even though it was goopy and applied streaky, with a lumpy finish, it dried very fast and only needed two coats.

The following pictures are of this polish in progression from inside, to full-sun:

Social Media Nails

I used a lot of different products for this one!

The base of my Pinterest nail is NYC Big Apple Red.

For the twitter nail, I mixed China Glaze Aquadelic and Orly Blue Collar to make the base color.

The hardest nail, the Instagram nail is a base of OPI Don't Pretzel My Buttons with China Glaze Mahogany Magic at the top. ChG Want My Bawdy is dotted in the center of the lens, and the bar on the left is a mix of Mahogany Magic and ChG Recycle, with stripes in Revlon Pretty in Papaya (orange), Julep Daisy (yellow), ChG Aquadelic (lighter, aqua blue), and Orly Blue Collar (medium blue).

My Klout nail base color is a mix of Color Club Wham! Pow!, Julep Sasha, and Julep Hayden. The lighter orange reflection on the logo is Julep Hayden.

Facebook: Kleancolor Neon Aqua and L.A. Colors In a Flash gradient.

Everything else is done in black and white acrylic paint.

Elemental Styles Skittles

I swatched these all over black. Wet'n'Wild's Black Creme to be exact. Actually I don't know if that is it's full name or not, so that's not exact... but close enough. You get the point.

These polishes are like duo-chromesque topcoats. I can't think of the appropriate word for them right now...

They are all from Elemental Styles, and they are all one coat with no topcoat:
Pinky - Chlorine Sheen
Ring - Co-bolt of Lightning
Middle - Easy Bro-mine!
Pointer - Iodine-ing Out

Colored Sugar Nails

Let's stick with the texture theme!

Now, I do not recommend using a topcoat with this sort of technique because it melts the sugar and ends up looking awful, but it can be a pretty fun, one-time look!

DIY Textured Polish

I decided to attempt to create my own textured polish!

Shall we see how it turned out?!

Foiled Butterfly Wings

Polishalcoholic painted some beautiful butterfly wings a while ago. I always see them everywhere and have been wanting to try them, so I finally did over my foil nails from yesterday based on her tutorial!

Seven Deadly Sins Series - Pride

It's the final Seven Deadly Sins challenge! The last theme is Pride. This time, we were to recreate our own work!

The first time I did foil nails, they were kind of bleh. It was my first time using them, so they were messy and random.

I decided to go easy for this challenge, and do foil nails again! I absolutely love them this time!

Zoya Rainbow Gradient - Diagonal & Matted

For this gradient, I used all Zoya polishes: Dita (pink), Pippa (yellow), and Breezi (blue), all topped with a coat of China Glaze Matte Magic.

I used a sponge from one of the China Glaze Ombre sets for the gradient, and I don't like how they apply polish. It didn't blend the colors very well, I think because it was too porous, the polish soaked through really easily since they're so thin and got all over the place, and it applied the polish more splotchy than less porous sponges. I'll definitely be sticking to regular makeup sponges!