Glitter Cuticles

Today I'm showing you my first glitter gradient stemming from my cuticles.  I've always been admirer of The Nailasaurus and Glitter and Nails and their ability to create beautiful glitter gradients.  Finally trying one on my own.  I think I need to learn what their trick to cuticle clean up it because this was pretty much a nightmare.  So much glitter everywhere!  The end result was very nice however.

On a majority of my nails I have two coats of OPI Can't Find My Czechbook and on my accent nail I have two coats of Zoya Malia.  Can't Find My Czechbook is from OPI's Spring 2013 Euro Centrale Collection and is best described as a light blue teal.  Zoya Malia is an oldie but goodie polish from Zoya's Spring 2009 Twist Collection and is a pretty lilac color.  To tie the two colors together, at the base of my cuticles I sponged Model's Own Southern Lights from their Winter 2012 Collection.

To conquer the cuticle glitter mess I ended up using those pointy ended cotton swabs soaked with acetone instead of my regular eye shadow brush.  The glitter clung to the cotton better than the brush and I was able to remove most of it.

Golden Touch

At the beginning of the month I'd mentioned that I was looking for a good, gold topper suspended in a clear base.  A weekend or so ago, Ninja Polish did quite the restock and their polish, The Midas Touch, became available.  I was out for a walk at the time, but when I got home later the polish was still available and I snapped up a bottle for myself.  One thing I love about Ninja Polish is that they're located in Illinois and packages arrive pretty much one business day after being shipped.  Once The Midas Touch arrived I quickly paired it up with a polish I'd recently gotten in a Valentines Day swap.

This is two coats of Zoya Natty with two coats of Ninja Polish The Midas Touch dabbed on.  Natty is from Zoya's Fall 2012 Designer Collection and is a nice cream steel blue polish.  The Midas Touch is chunky gold top coat.  My favorite part of this manicure?  The texture of The Midas Touch against the cream polish Natty.

Atelopus varius

Atelopus varius

That's the binomial name of the Costa Rican Variable Harlequin Toad and the inspiration for today's manicure.  It's quite the colorful frog, and its easy to see why it is also known as the clown frog.  Sadly, this frog is now critically endangered thanks to temperature fluctuation, changes in precipitation, stream flow patterns, and the transfer of different pathogenic fungus.  Basically, the climate is changing too fast for these little guys to adapt.

I've based my manicure off of the Costa Rican Variable Harlequin Toad shown on the right.  I liked how the bright purple/pink designs stood out against the rest of the frog's body but thought that might be hard to duplicate on the nails.  If I was going to paint over a black base I would need to lay down something like a white so that the brighter color would starkly contrast.

At first I tried a white onto black splatter but the spray pattern was too varied and clumpy to look anything like the frog's.  The next method I tried was stamping a white pattern down and tracing over it.  This method proved to be the most feasible and reproducible in the long run.

One coat of Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Black Out then stamped with Konad plate m70 and Konad Special Polish in White.  Traced over using a small dotting tool and China Glaze Beach Cruise-R.  It was a lot more work than I was hoping for but I believe the results were worth it.

Zoya Aurora

So far I've shown you two of the three colors I picked up during Zoya's recent promotion.  If you missed it, check out Zoya Ziv here, and Zoya Blaze over here.  Today I have the last, and perhaps one of the most talked about, color from the 2012 Zoya Ornate Collection: Zoya Aurora.  Aurora is best described as a plum polish chock full of holographic particles that cat and toss the light about.

Pictured here is two coats of Zoya Aurora.  I love the formula on this polish.  It glides on smoothly, has excellent coverage, and wears gracefully.  If I have to go a long period without changing my polish, I can count on Aurora to survive the test of time.

Circling Hearts

Today I'm showing you my last Valentines Day manicure (check out my other two: Minty Hearts here and A Little Love with a Kiss here).  I'm head over heels in love with how this turned out.  With last year's Pantone color being tangerine, I added several orange pieces of clothes to my wardrobe.  I don't want to be too matchy-matchy so I usually pair my orange pieces up with bright pink ones.  The orange and pink combination seems to work out so well I thought it would be a good combination for my nails as well.

On my nails I'm wearing two coats of Zoya Rory, a shimmery mauve pink, and for my accent nail three coats of Zoya Rica, a sparkling pink/orange coral.  On top of each nail I've stamped Bundle Monster plate BM-317 using Konad Special Polish in White.  What do you think of the combination of pink and orange together?

A Little Love with a Kiss

Good morning!  Today I'm bringing you my second manicure for Valentines Day (check out my first, Minty Hearts, here).  I've always wanted to do this style of manicure: newsprint style with a colorful accent.  One of the new Bundle Monster plates is a romantic lettered plate and I thought it would be perfect for this!  I was right.

For my base I used two coats of Zoya Dove and stamped the text on using Konad Special Polish in Black and Bundle Monster plate BM-311.  On my accent nail I added a pair of lips using Color Club Hot Like Lava and Bundle Monster plate BM02.  Dove is my go-to grey because the formula is superb  the coverage is excellent, and the wear time is fantastic.  As long as my nail bed is undamaged Dove easily lasts five days (or the longest amount of time I've ever been able to go without changing my polish) without chipping or much wear.

Minty Hearts

Good morning!  Today I'd like to kick off a short little series of Valentine's Day manicures.  To start I have a simple heart stamped design in red and mint.  I was inspired for this design by a red cardigan I wore with a mint bubble necklace.

I've used three coats of Essie Turquoise & Caicos for my base then stamped Zoya Sooki on top using Bundle Monster plate BM-317.  This was incredibly cute to wear and I got a lot of compliments on it!

Zoya Blaze

I don't normally do red colors.  As of the last time I updated my polish stash spreadsheet, the red category make up only 4% (11 reds in case you were wondering).  In one of the recent Zoya promotions I picked up Blaze with the intent on branching out into wearing more of the color red.

Pictured here is two coats of Zoya Blaze.  Blaze is a mulberry red sprinkled throughout with holographic glitter.  I was a little disappointed by the holographic particles in Blaze.  Once I added a coat of Seche Vite Blaze appeared to fizzle out.  It still glowed from within but the holographic particles were practically invisible.

Green and Gold

This is a manicure that didn't turn out quite how I was imagining but ended up being pretty good anyway.  I was hoping to come up with a turquoise or mint and gold combination but came up short.

This is two coats of Zoya Bevin with a coat-ish of NYX Girls Gilded Glitter dabbed on.  I did not achieve my desired nail look here because Gilded Glitter is gold glitter suspended in a gold base.  This turned Bevin into a darker green than it actually is.

Here's a side by side for comparison:

It's like a whole different base color once the gold is added.  With Gilded Glitter on top, Bevin is more of a army green than the sage it is normally.  I'm now on the look out for a gold topper in a clear base.  Do you have one that you would recommend?

Super Bowl XLVII Manicure

I had grand, grand plans for my super bowl manicure this year.  Unfortunately, my plans didn't quite work out.  I'm sort of stuck in my graduate research lab all weekend trying to get more data for a grant update but I brought a bunch of polishes along to do my nails with.  One of the polishes turned out to be an absolute nightmare to work with.  I wanted to create water marbles for each team playing today, but I was trying to use Zoya Ziv.  Ziv is a gorgeous warm gold flake glitter polish but absolutely not pleasant to work with because of the larger particle size that is inherent with flakie glitter.  Despite my problems I managed to get something resembling a water marble on all my fingers.

I used two coats of Zoya Snow White for a base polish, then added one coat of Zoya Ziv on top before beginning the marble.

My left, San Francisco 49ers hand:

Here I used China Glaze Salsa and Zoya Ziv.

My right, Baltimore Ravens hand:

Water marbling here used Zoya Mira, Sally Hansen Black Out, Zoya Snow White, and Zoya Ziv.

My hands together are locked in  eternal struggle...until the game concludes and a winner emerges tonight.

Happy Super Bowl XLVII! What are you wearing today?