Happy Paddy's Day! Pot o' Gold in Shamrocks

Hi everyone! Happy St. Patrick's Day! Nobody seems to celebrate here, which is a shame. Oh well. I had enough drinks to make up for the less festive folks around me ;)

I painted a field of shamrocks swaying in a gentle breeze, basking in the sunlight after a rainstorm, and for the accent--the resulting rainbow + treasure at the end of it...

The sky-blue background is Revlon Colorstay #170 Coastal Surf. The rainbow is some assorted polishes I can't be bothered naming off, but I've used them all before--they're Revlon, CoverGirl, and Sally Hansen basic cremes :) The pot and the shamrocks were done with acrylic paint an a small brush. Lastly, the gold in the pot! It's mostly the glitter polish you see in the photo--Milani Jewel FX Gold--but I added a few slightly larger gold pieces from Born Pretty Store:

An actual pot of gold. I couldn't not use it!

If you look carefully, you can see a few pieces that fell out around the pot and are hiding in the grass :)

I sealed in all the glitters and paints with two coats of KBShimmer Clearly On Top.

In shade. I love how the gold stands out! You can see the bits in the grass better here, too.

And one more, to show how shiny the glitters are! *insert anime-esque shine sound effect* sshhhhiiinnng!

Thus concludes my St. Patrick's manis for this year! I'm debating on what to do next... it's technically autumn here now, but it still feels like summer, and I have a really cute idea for a spring design. I think I'm having a... season crisis? Tune in next time to check out which one I pick--or better yet, vote in the comments; if I get a few responses I'll pick based on what you want to see! xoxo

Green Glitter Gradient

(Try saying that five times fast!)

greenglittergradient gleengrittergradient gleamfritterwhatisgoingonhere

Hehe, welcome to the penultimate St. Paddy's 2014 post! I have so many beautiful green polishes, so today I used three of my favourites to do a shiny, foily, blingy, glittery, yet simple look!

outdoors in shade

The base is two coats of Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear #40 Emerald City. Atop that, a coat of the best green polish of all time, Zoya Ivanka. *_* foily glassflecky glowy BEAUTY!

The tips are sponged with a couple of coats of Orly Mermaid Tale, another top pick. Brilliant emerald small glitters with big green holo hexes? Awwwww yiss.

Two generous coats of Seche Vite smoothed out the glitters for a glassy finish.

Outdoors in sun. Ivanka looks bluer here than IRL.

Indoors with flash. Now it's Mermaid Tale's turn to look blue. Being holo, it flashes with lots of colours, but the primary hue is emerald green.

This is one of those manis with which it's dangerous to drive. Way too easy for it to glimmer and catch your eye and then you start staring at it... oops!

blurry pic in the sun, to show off the way it glitters

And one more, maybe my favourite pic of the lot :D

Hope you liked this one (and sorry I'm late getting it up)! Thanks for stopping by today. Enjoy the rest of your weekend and I'll see you soon! xoxo

Green & Yellow Shimmery Water Marble

Good day, lovely people! Today I have another green St. Paddy's-themed design for you. It had been ages since I did a water marble, and I decided now was the time to change that!

I wanted to do a marble with finer detail, thinner lines, so I used more drops of polish and more swirling it about with the toothpick. Over a white base I marbled Zoya Midori (light shimmery warm-sagey green), Zoya Darcy (the yellow), and the tealy-green you see in the photo--BYS Thank You Ma'am. It leans more warm and green than it appears here, and has an almost golden shimmer. Really nice polish!

Cleanup is so tough with marbles. I'd added cuticle cream and they still looked like this--yuck! But I included this pic anyway because I think the detail shows up best :)

I decided to not worry about the bubbles, of which as you can see I had quite a few. I think they kind of look like dots or shiny bits or the way stars might be made in a galaxy mani. Once it all dried, I added two thin coats of Essie As Gold As It Gets. I think the pretty mix of gold shimmer and small golden flakies really warmed up the look as well as adding the shine! Seche Vite tops it all off.

Indoors with flash--the greens blend together more in here. You can also see more of the true nature of Thank You Ma'am here.

The fine details in this marble mean that from a distance, the nails just look basically light green, with some weird streaky bits here and there. But I really like how they look once you peer closer!

One more, outdoors in shade. I like how a different colour seems to stand out in each lighting situation. Here, Darcy comes out to play! The golden flakes are also more apparent here.

I hope you liked this design! See you next time xoxo

More St. Paddy's 20-fo-teen: Mallard Tartan Tips

Hello hellooo! Time for more St. Paddy's goodness:

Wow, these look so much better in person and at normal size >.>

Right! So... my idea was to do a tartan look with the colours of the Irish flag. I kind of succeeded. The base for these tips, in my favourite french-tip/half-moon hybrid (French moon?), is the bottle shown above--piCture pOlish Mallard. Such an awesome dark green with an olive shimmer plus copper and green flakies! The tartan pattern was painted with a thin striper brush and white acrylic paint, Sally Hansen Insta-Dri #460 Snappy Sorbet (the orange), and Stripe-Rite gold glitter.

I love Mallard, but I kind of wish I'd used a lighter, brighter green. Also a more true orange rather than Snappy Sorbet, which leans a bit coral, especially over a dark base. I like this look, but it doesn't scream Irish the way the image in my head did. I attempted to rectify this with a cute little shamrock on the middle fingers, which was done with a dotting tool, detail brush, and Essie Shake Your $$ Maker. It was cute, but I thought it needed more definition around the edges, so I attempted to do a sort of outline with a green Sharpie and managed to mess that up too. Argh! They looked neater before the last step, but I couldn't get it off, so I just gave up and topcoated with Seche Vite.

Smell that? It's the aroma of FAIL

I know the end product doesn't look too bad, really--just nothing like what I had in mind. Still, I'm glad I did this design. I love the tartan look, and definitely need the practice doing straight lines. My hands are fairly steady and vertical lines are usually okay, but horizontal ones are awful! Oh well. Every manicure can't be a favourite, now can it? :)

Come back next time and I'll have something nicer for ya. Thanks for reading! See you soon xoxo

Leopard-chaun Nails

Hiya!

Time for me to start on some cute green designs for St. Patrick's Day! The first is one that I have had in mind for a while--at least the basic idea. I have been ill since I got back from holiday, but I didnt let that stop me from manicure time...

As you can see, it's a gradual shift from leopard to zebra, and I thought doing it all in green would be a great start to the series. Animal print is so cute on nails, isn't it?

The base colour is the bottle I'm holding--Cult Nails Deal With It. Nice limey neon shimmery green with a strong gold flash. This is one of 5 shades in the Untamed (aka Coco's Colors) collection released a couple of summers ago. Coco is the daughter of Cult Nails' creator Maria, and she was only 13 at the time she came up with these awesome polishes! I nearly went with Zoya Midori, but chose this at the last second. Midori is very similar to this, but a bit more subdued, both in hue and courseness of shimmer. I wanted bright and punchy, and Deal With It did not disappoint.

The dark green for the spots and stripes is China Glaze Glittering Garland, and the middle of the spots is China Glaze Paper Chasing. I used a dotting tool and striper brush to achieve this look.

I love how Paper Chasing has the same sort of gold flash as Deal With It. Perfect combo!

In lower light. Glittering Garland still glitters happily :D

As I was lying in bed coughing and mustering up the energy to write this post, I was thinking of how this looked like something a leprechaun would ride. "A leprechaun's pet leopard... oh my gawd, it's a leopardchaun. Is this a thing? I AM ABOUT TO MAKE IT A THING." I jumped up that second, grabbed some black and gold paints, and did an accent on the ring finger:

Black acrylic paint and Revlon #925 Gold Coin, to be exact.

How cute is that?? A "traditional" strap and buckle you might find on a leprechaun's hat.
Sealed in with two coats of KBShimmer Clearly On Top.

I'm still giggling about this. Leopardchaun. Because if there's one thing I love more than a good pun, it's a bad pun.

Do you like this monochromatic animal print look as much as I do? Let me know in the comments! (I recently switched over to Disqus for my comment system, so I hope this makes it easier for people to chime in. I love hearing from you guys!)

Tune in next time for more St. Paddy's nails! xoxo

St. Patrick's Mani #3: Shamrock Marble!

(Alternative title: MORE Holo Shamrocks??)

Hello and Happy St. Paddy's to all! Hope you've had a fun, safe, and lucky day :) As promised, I have a shamrock water marble design for today! It didn't turn out as well as I would have liked--only about three actually looked like shamrocks on my nail... But it was still pretty and was fun to wear for the celebrations last night!

:D

The tutorial I used is this one by Colette of My Simple Little Pleasures. I know I've linked to her before on here, and that's because she is THE queen of water marbling. I've watched every single one of her videos--they're fascinating and she's taught me so much! My shamrocks didn't turn out even remotely close to as nice as hers, but I still had fun creating and wearing this look. I used two colours like she did, except mine weren't cremes. The dark green is China Glaze Glittering Garland, and the light green is Color Club Kismet. I started with a base of Kismet as well, so the whole thing would have a holo look to it. For extra fun I added a coat of my little frankenpolish holo topcoat that I call Rainbowgasm (hint, it's INM Northern Lights + a pinch of SpectraFlair holographic powder) to tie it all together.

In strong direct light. I love how the middle nail came out. The others are kind of blobby and indistinguished.

The left thumbnail came out nicely too, aside from that bubble!

The next two you might want to click to enlarge...

I hadn't cleaned up my cuticles very well at this point, but I liked this shot. The pattern on the middle nail shows up clearly, and you can see both the linear and scattered holo sparkle that's going on with this!

And finally, a sorta-blurry one in the sunlight to show off that beautiful rainbow effect. I just love Kismet (and all the other Halo Hues) so much!

Hope you all enjoyed this one. Have a great start to your week! xoxo

St. Patrick's Mani #2: Holo Shamrocks!

Hiya! Happy Pi Day! (I'm kicking myself for not doing pi nails...)

Instead, today I will be showing you the second of three St. Paddy's manicures I'll have worn by the time the day actually comes around. (I'm doing a really cool shamrock water-marble for the 17th, based on a tutorial I found on YouTube. Stay tuned for that one!) This one features one of the 2013 Color Club Halo Hues, which, as I found out, work GREAT for stamping! Observe:

Wheee :)

Actually, this was one of the hardest-to-capture-on-cam manis I've ever done. The shamrocks, in low light, were a lot crisper and easier to see in real life. I started with an easy coat of China Glaze Stone Cold, that awesome suede-finish stone-grey I've featured here before. That dried quickly, and then I stamped the shamrocks from Bundle Monster plate #BM03 with Color Club Kismet, a lovely light-green linear holographic. I am so impressed with these Halo Hues, you guys, omg. The formula is just unprecedented for holos!

Anyway, at this point everything was still matte, and you could see the stamping pretty well, although the holo wasn't as impressive:

Matte--no flash

Matte with flash. You can see a wee bit of the holo, but not much.

So, I added a coat of Cult Nails Wicked Fast topcoat, and wooooo!

Can't see the shamrocks quite as well, but, shiny! This was the first time I'd worn Stone Cold with topcoat, and I was super impressed.

Indirect-but-still-bright light is where this mani photographs best. It's pretty impressive IRL in the sunlight, but the cam just couldn't show it! So this is the best pic I've got.

Hope you enjoyed this one! I will be away until Sunday night... have a safe and fun St. Patricks if you celebrate it, and a safe and fun weekend if you don't! xoxo

St. Patrick's Mani #1: 50 Shades of Green

Oi there! Time for some fun St. Paddy's nails! St. Patrick's Day is one of my favourite holidays, oddly enough. I just love going all out with the green clothes, and the parties, and the Irish music, and, well... beer. I do like me some beer. And while this manicure may not actually have 50 shades of green in it (more like seven), it's a fun name. :D

Left some tartan/plaid in the background, for added Celtic-ness. Kind of. Not really.

As you can see, several polishes went into this, so let's go down the list:

- Thumb and ring finger: Base is two coats of Zoya Midori, then dots of China Glaze Glittering Garland were added with a dotting tool.

- Index finger: Base of China Glaze Paper Chasing, topped with two thick coats of Orly Mermaid Tale <3

- Middle finger: Three coats of CG Paper Chasing, and then the dark and light green square rhinestones are from a Born Pretty Store assorted wheel. Yes, those are light green, they just sort of look white/silver here.

- Small finger: Three coats of China Glaze He's Running In Circles. It's a light minty green scattered holo polish and is very nice! It looks kind of silver on cam but isn't IRL, and looks greener still in the bottle than on the nail.

All topped off with a coat or two of Seche Vite topcoat.

With my green pen! I have a thing for pens whose ink colour matches the barrel. I also love close-up shots of Mermaid Tale. You can also see more of the scattered holographic effect of He's Running In Circles.

Without flash. Please excuse my cuticles. This dry, cold, windy weather has not been kind to them.

Last, a flash pic where Mermaid Tale just lit up like fireworks! Had to include it :D

Hope you liked this one! I'll have some more lucky green manicures between now and the 17th--and I just received the Color Club 2013 Halo Hues too, so you can bet your sexy bum I'll be displaying those here soon as well! xoxo