This month's Nail It! magazine had a really cool spread about this color combo; fluorescent pink, cobalt and white, and I was immediately a fan. The pink isn't just any neon pink, it's that light, bright neon Pepto pink that seems pretty hard to find. I used Essie Punchy Pink, which is one of my favorite neons, though between us, it chips like Hell. I used it along with Zoya Purity and Ulta Whatever Floats Your Moat, a cobalt I recently acquired. You could also use something similar like Revlon Royal, OPI Eurso Euro or even a more vibrant shade like Essie Butler Please. Either way, color blocking with these colors just makes it even more eye-catching. I painted the nails white, then added a pink triangle to the moons, then did an angular, exaggerated french with the blue, then one it was pretty dry, I added a white stripe down the center. Pretty simple, but if you're hand-painting maybe a little time consuming. If I did it again, I'd go find those utterly brilliant chevron-shaped french nail guides and use those. Why do these things always occur to me once they're no longer useful? Sigh...
Click to see the inspiration for this manicure...
I recently got a backup bottle of China Glaze Flip Flop Fantasy, one of my favorite summer polishes of all time, and something weird happened. My new bottle is a lot lighter and less warm in tone than my older bottle. I do love the color of the new bottle too, and I thought it looked awesome next to Aquadelic and Electric Pineapple so I did a springy tribal look.
Products used:
- China Glaze Flip Flop Fantasy, Aquadelic and Electric Pineapple
- Sally Hanson Salon Lavender Cloud
- Wet n Wild Black Creme
- Seche Vite topcoat
I've been wanting to do a zebra gradient for a while, and I finally gave it a whirl. I used some polishes from the newest OPI and China Glaze polishes together to make a nice rainbow along with a striping brush. with the flash the deliniation between the colors is really obvious, but in most lights and not so close up it looks like a true gradient, which is cool. Very excited to try this with neons and then over black instead of white.
Products used:
- China Glaze White on White
- China Glaze Purple Panic
- OPI A Roll in the Hague
- OPI Did It On Em
- China Glaze Aquadelic
Click to see more pics...
OK so I am now watermarking my photos because 1) it's incredibly stupid for me not to have been doing so for all this time, and 2) I'm seeing my nails randomly popping up on my tumblr feed without credit to me and they're getting crazy amounts of hits and I feel like I'd like people to know they're my nails. Call me crazy, but... Anyway so I'm sorry about the watermark, I personally think they take away from the quality of the photos, but they're unfortunately very necessary anymore.
Read on for more pics and a sad nail story... :(
I was just looking for another excuse to wear neons, and did this design which incorporates really simple elements like dots and stripes, along with just a touch of Konad stamping. I painted my nails white and then with the different China Glaze and Essie neons I painted strokes on different areas of each nail, then lined the edges of the color with a black striper polish. Within the remaining empty areas, I randomly added stripes going in different directions and dots, and on a couple I used a Konad stamper for the houndstooth. It's not perfect by any means when viewed close up, but I think it looks pretty cool at a normal distance. It wasn't too awfully time consuming and I think it's a great look for the horribly hot weather we've been having!
Click for more photos and to see the products used!
Hey guys, before I talk about this manicure I wanted to put up a little note about the blog sale: with the exception of three packages that I have to send tomorrow, all packages should be out. If you haven't received your package yet and want to contact me for the status of your package, please do so. Between the zillion emails back and forth I've got for this sale and the crazy busy post office and my mind-numbing list of things to do before Christmas, I want to make sure I'm not forgetting anything.
On to the manicure... I hear you through the computer. You are probably bored of bright multi-colored manicures, let alone leopard here on this site, but I did this manicure earlier in the week and it's all I've got to share right now since I've been so busy lately. I used several of my favorite bright colors that I use often to do this multi mani.
Thumb: China Glaze Four Leaf Clover with China Glaze Something Sweet dots, Migi Nail Art Pen
Index: OPI Who THe Shrek Are You? with China GLaze Flyin' High dots, Migi Nail Art Pen
Middle: Sally Hansen Pacific Blue with Nubar Baby Pink dots, Migi Nail Art Pen
Index: China Glaze Four Leaf Clover and Nubar Baby Pink with OPI Shrek and SH Pacific Blue dots, Migi Nail Art Pen
Pinky: Color Club Puccilicious with Essie Shorty Pants dots, Migi Nail Art Pen
Click for more pics...
Tagged with:
nail polish, nails, bright, Leopard, OPI, Neon, essie, nail art, China Glaze, nubar, Color Club
Hey guys, I'm back from the ether. I've been MIA a lot lately because it seems like a lot of stuff is going on. I'm trying to get Christmas shopping under control and decorating, and to top it off I've had a string of seasonal colds that just pile one on the other and I've been dead tired and lazy. Hopefully it's almost over and I can share lots of fun manicures and products with you through the holidays. Today I'm showing you a manicure I did last week, (and that I'm still wearing... I'm so lazy lately) that I really liked. It's inspired by Wah Nails, which is one of my favorite sources for inspiration. It's a play on this pointy-nailed tribal-type manicure, but my nails are obviously squared and I added my favorite leopard. It looks badass on the pointy nails, and on me it's sort of manifested itself as a chevron French manicure.
I used Sally Hansen Lavender Cloud, Wet n Wild Black Magic and Migi Nail Art Pen in Black on all nails, then for the colored stripe I used Color Club Puccilicious for the thumb, Essie Shorty Pants for the index fingers, Sally Hansen Pacific Blue for the middles, China Glaze Pool Party for the ring fingers, and for the pinkies I used Essie Pretty Edgy.
Click for more photos!
Tagged with:
nail polish, nails, Leopard, Neon, essie, 80s, Sally Hansen, nail art, french manicure, China Glaze, Color Club
I really wanted something simple for today's manicure, but something happy, too. I'm currently sick as a dog with pneumonia. I was pretty sick last week, then I started to feel better. Then I went shopping for my wedding gown with my mom (!!! so fun !!!) and I had a bit of a relapse and have been trying to claw my way back out since. I'm stuck at home taking long breaks between short bouts of housework and other stuff. I feel pathetic, haha. So I decided to cover up my naked (except for Perfect Formula Gel Coat) nails (naked? gasp!) with some fun nail art to cheer me up.
Ever since last week's Cupcakes and Zebras manicure, I've been on a candy-colored nail art streak. I loved the nails with two base shades especially in that one so I tried a new color combo and design with today's manicure. I know I've done leopard a lot lately, but it's so fun. I am a child of the 80s and it will never leave me, so I might as well embrace it. For this manicure I used Color Club Pucci-licious, aka my new favorite purple, along with Milani Neon Fresh Teal and one of my favorite hot pinks ever, OPI DC Cherry Blossom. With these polishes along with konad plate m57 and konad special polish in black I did this incredibly simple design. You can also freehand the leopard, but I feel like Konad is easier and more consistent, plus I like getting use out of my Konad set since I've got such an investment in it by this point.
Don't feel you have to have a Konad set to do this, a cheap black nail art pen, or black polish and a toothpick will get the job done just as well. The coolest part of the manicure is that some nails are only purple, or only teal, but some are both. I basically chose the nails randomly but I found afterward that there was a bit of a pattern, so go figure. They still look random to me, and I like it. I just used a dotting tool to add the pink to some of the spots after I added the leopard print. Everything is topped with a coat of my favorite, Seche Vite. As a side note, I used the Perfect Formula Gel Coat in lieu of a base coat and have been using it for a few weeks here, and I'm very impressed, so I'll be reviewing that soon. For now I'll say it makes a great stand-alone treatment as well as base coat.
Click for more photos!!!
Essie Summer Collection Color Cube - amazon.com
The Essie Summer Collection might not have a clever name, but it has big appeal to this girl. Every single color interested me this time around, which is a first for Essie and me. I decided Instead of buying full-size bottles of them all I'd buy the set of minis with four of the shades to see what I thought. You can get the set many places online ranging from $10 -$17 or so, but I personally got mine on eBay for $12 shipped which I thought was a really good deal. The colors included are Haute as Hello, Knockout Pout, Demure Vixen and Pretty Edgy and each bottle is .16 fl oz. I really liked all these shades, though I have to say that Demure Vixen looked horrendous on me.
Click for swatches...
Milani Neon Nail Lacquer in Fresh Teal - about $4 in most drugstores
So, I originally decided to ignore the new Milani Neons and 3Ds because as per other bloggers' photos, while beautiful the polishes looked dupeable or "done" to me. I still feel the same about all of them except for Fresh Teal. I gave the display another cursory look, and mentally tried to match them all up with polishes I already had. When I came to Fresh Teal, I drew a blank. I went through all my similar polishes mentally; "what could be dupable?"... Color Club Wild Child? no, too light. China Glaze Four Leaf Clover? nope, that one's more green. I went through at least six more in my head and came up with nil. So I bought it. I'm really glad because the color and application surprised the heck outta me.
Click for more photos, comparisons, and the rest of the review
