This Hollywood-themed manicure was the product of weekend boredom. Using China Glaze Concrete Catwalk, Seche Porcelain, and Wet n Wild Believe Me, It's Real, along with assorted striping polishes. a somewhat kitschy manicure emerges. I didn't really think this one through before I did it, so really it's more of a rough draft, as you could probably tell by the half-assed skyline. The hills should have had a "Hollywood" sign, but I didn't really think of that till I waws done and had hit saturation point in "I don't give a crap, it's a lazy Sunday." The yellow Art Deco striper I used for the spotlights really ended up working better than I'd thought. I'd originally thought maybe I'd need to lay down a coat of white under those lights, but the striper directly over black made it look like actual light instead of acid yellow laser beams. Yay for happy accidents born of laziness! The film is all black striper on a white background, the pinky all black on top of some kickass nearly opaque blue glitter with an nth of purple. love this Wet n Wild polish, must go back for more!
One of the two glitter shades from OPI's new 6-piece specialty Nicki Minaj collection, Metallic 4 Life is a sheer black jelly with both small round and large hexagonal silver glitter. It's somewhat sheer, so I'd recommend layering it over a plain black polish so that you can apply and maneuver the glitter around to get the right look without leaving bald spots in your base. These photos are three coats on top of a clear basecoat and you can see that some of my little bald spots didn't stand up to the flash of my camera.
Below, I've also compared M4L to China Glaze Tinsel Town, which from M4L's promo photos I assumed to be similar. That's the not the case, though; happily it's different but just as awesome. Black polishes with shiny glitter, yeah they're awesome.
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I've seen a few manicures over the last few weeks with this technique of outlining the nail, and I haven't found a name for it, so I'm gonna go ahead and call it "Vignette" for the sake of titling purposes and convenience. At first I wasn't very fond of the look, but it's really grown on me, so I decided to give it a try myself. This manicure was inspired by this manicure by MadelinePooleNails. I added a little color and some mixed metal action to make it more quirky. For this manicure I used China Glaze Electric Beat and Contrete Catwalk, and OPI Glitzerland, along with black, white and silver striping polish. The technique is pretty simple but definitely makes a statement, in my opinion. Despite the business of the look, the longer I wore it the more elegant it felt to me, which surprised me given the helter skelter nature of the manicure.
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OPI Nicki Minaj - Did It On 'Em - $8.50
OPI's newest Limited Edition celebrity-inspired collection, features 6 new shades including cremes, glitters and a berry shatter polish. Did It On 'Em is one of three cremes in the collection and it's awesome. I've been dying for a polish I could call "acid green" and this is the closest I've seen. I've swatched the other three contenders for the perfect acid green/citron polish below, but as for DIOE, it's a great creamy citron that's neither too yellow nor green, and very bright and vibrant without being neon. It applies near perfectly in two coats, too!
Click for a comparison to OPI Who The Shrek Are You?, China Glaze Electric Pineapple, and SinfulColors Innocent!
One of five new flaky beauties from Finger Paints' new collection for Winter, Twisted is a bottle of awesome. There are flakies of every color in this clear base, making it the Queen of Flakies in this girl's humble opinion. There are a number of great flake-filled polishes out there, with more to come, I'm sure, but until now to get such a rainbow-tastic look, you'd have to layer several different polishes to get this much fabulous on a nail. I applied two coats of Twisted over a plain black creme in these photos. I also took a few photos of this look mattified with Essie Matte About You which I've included in this post. It looks insanely beautiful either way, and whethere you're in the sun or in indirect light, these are traffic accident worthy nails. Each of the five polishes retail at $4.99 at Sally Beauty Supply and are on the shelves at some locations now. I've got a couple more to show you later in the week. They are AWESOME.
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The China Glaze Electro Pop collection is popping up here and there, and I found that my local CosmoProf has them due to hit the shelves on January 1, when their B2G1F promo starts, but I was able to snag four of them today. These are the ones I was looking forward to most! I've got both swatches and comparisons for you in this post. All four shades reminded me of other shades that are high up on my list of favorites, so I was anxious to see how they compared.
To see the swatches and comparisons, read on!
I recently picked up Sally Hansen Diamond Strength in Glass Slipper and wanted to do a snowy blue winter scene and decided on snowmen, snowflakes and candycanes! I used Sally Hansen Pacific Blue for the background, then I used Sally Hansen Diamond Strength in Something Blue to do the dusting of snow at the bottom of the scene. I faded Glass Slipper down the nail to look like falling snow, and then with assorted brushes and tools used a white polish to make the snowman body, candy cane and snowflakes. I used some Migi Nail Art Pens to do the details on the snowmen and candy canes. I've had this on for a few days since I took this photo and it's starting to chip a bit, so I think I'll take this opportunity to do a red and green design for Christmas Day!
I hope everyone is having a great holiday season!!! Thanks for looking :D
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The China Glaze Eye Candy collection for Winter '11 is a group of gorgeous and interesting "3D" glitters. The 3D refers to how the glitters vary in size and type making the surface of the polish look like it's several layers of glitter, one on top of the next. Some use varying sizes of similarly colored glitter and others use glitter of different finishes, effects and colors to accomplish the complex look of these polishes. Each polish individually can look very different depending on the light source and strength you view the polish in, so really they're very interesting to wear.
Click to read on and see the swatches!
We are leaving for a short, but much-needed vacation down to Clearwater, Florida, and though it's the end of November I decided to do a tropical sort of design. A stylized sunset with Orly Snowcone, Color Club Puccilicious, CND Sweet (bottle pictured) and Color Club Explosive, and then I used a black striping polish to make the palm trees and sailboats.
I hope to post a bit while I'm down there, but until then, thanks for reading!
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It's been forever and a day since I last posted, but in the interim I've graduated from my nail technology course and taken my State Board exams. Glad that's all over! Anyway, I've not been doing as much crazy art lately due to time restrictions, unfortunately, but I did do something with two of the new China Glaze Holiday 2011 polishes I picked up recently.
Tinsel Town is already becoming one of my favorite polishes of all time. It's a gorgeous granite grey with multi-sized silver glitter that makes the finish look so interesting; almost textured, sort of like fresh blacktop. I decided it reminded me of granite all around so I went for that sort of look by first polishing all the nails with a couple thin coats of Icicle, a standard-yet-solid choice for a silver micro-foil polish. Then I painted random curvy sections of each nail with Tinsel Town. I delineated the sections with a black striping polish from Sally Beauty, and finished off with Seche Vite to seal it and make it shine. Not complex, but it was very pretty to look at. Hope you like it!
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