Valentine's Day nail art

Today I have for you a few different styles of Valentine's Day nail art I did. Nothing too fancy, but I thought they were all cute!

The first I have can be seen more in my last post, using one of my new Square Hue colors in Shibuya.

That was definitely my favorite mani I've done in a long time. I used a few chevron vinyl guides I got back in Julep's Zig Zag mystery box, from October I believe. I'm almost out of them so I'll have to order some soon from an etsy vendor or something!

The next was relatively simple, but it's a favorite of mine. When I first got into nail art, I couldn't believe how something as simple as scotch tape could lead to such cool artwork. My absolute favorite is doing angled stripes, it just always looks so cute to me. For this I used Julep Nicolette as the white, used a layer of Seche Vite, taped off and used China Glaze Dance Baby, repeat, and used China Glaze Red Pearl for the top. It gets a bit thick due to all the top coat, but I love it otherwise.

Here's smaller versions of the other steps, just to see what it looks like:

 I also did some simple half moons with Julep Nicolette and Zoya Aurora when my planned artwork didn't look too great. I love the holo glitter in Aurora, but didn't love this combo too much.

And lastly my actual Valentine's Day nails had no special artwork. My Julep Cupid's Mystery Box arrived the day before so I used the new exclusive to the pedi box color, Aphrodite, which was pretty on it's own. I'll go through an unboxing of my millions of new colors that arrived that day in my next post, though!

 

Hope you enjoyed!

-T

Holo spam

Had some pretty awesome nail mail the past couple weeks, including a couple Color Club holos. I bought two last year and remembered them being awesome but never thought to buy anymore.

My current mani is using Eternal Beauty, and Angel Kiss as an accent. I love the holo in these, I just wish the colors were deeper. I feel like this would be more suitable around Easter or something.

Two coats CC Eternal Beauty, 4 coats CC Angel Kiss. I was hoping the color would deepen.

I'm a bit disappointed that color-wise, Eternal Beauty is the same as Jade's Fascinio Violeta, so now I may swap that. Jade seems to have more holo, but the application of the Color Club is so much better. I've been craving a darker purple holo so the other day I layered Fascinio Violeta over Julep Sylvia. I really liked the result, but it still didn't quite give me the rich bright purple I've been wanting.

Two coats Julep Sylvia under 1 coat Jade Fascinio Violeta

To keep with the holo theme, a couple months ago I swapped for Layla's Flash Black, which I thought would be a pure black holo. The holo is nice, but at it's darkest it's a charcoal gray. I even layered it over a black creme, which ended up being a giant mess, and still wasn't black.

Two coats China Glaze Black on Black under 2 coats Layla Flash Black

And the last holo on today's post is my only KB Shimmer polish, Rollin' With the Chromies. I was kind of hoping it'd be a dupe for Enchanted Polish's Across the Universe, but this ended up having way more colors than I thought it had. Next time I wear it I think I'll layer under purple and hope more purples will pop through, but the polish is definitely gorgeous by itself.

Three coats KB Shimmer Rollin' With the Chromies. The flash pic is horrible, I'm sorry, but it had so much holo it was unbelievable

I've been wanting to wear some brighter colors to counter the dark weather, so the next batch of swatches will likely be neons!

-T

Duochrome and mermaid nails

Nail polish problems...I've bought at least ten new polishes in the last week, and my last two manis have been polishes bought a month ago that I never used. I'm eagerly awaiting my 6 new Zoyas that I got from their 3 "free" promo(realistically they were $4 a piece with the promo shipping, but I'm fine with that for $9-$10 polishes!) I also just picked up a couple of the Gwen Stefani OPI polishes, though I think I may return the chrome one, Push and Shove. I just do not have the patience it apparently takes to get the polish streak free. I do love the base coat, though...

Anyway! I picked up a cheap duochrome from Claire's a couple months back, mostly because it claimed to be holographic, which it sadly is not. It's also ridiculously sheer, but despite the issues it looks pretty gorgeous on. I layered it over another untried, Julep Morgan. I did not get a pic of just Morgan as it was super thick and ended up kind of runny on the nails prior to adding the Claire's top coat.

This is two coats Julep Morgan under one coat of Claire's Chromeance. It was hard to include the shimmer but I think the pics got the duochrome pretty spot on.

I also took a (crappy) pic of my Ulta mini-haul. I've heard that they're discontinuing selling Zoya, probably because of the $1 a bottle price increase, so I've been seeing ridiculous amounts of hauls with clearance Zoyas. Unfortunately both of my Ulta's only seem to have the winter line on clearance, but they're starting to put a few more out every day so I picked up Dream last week and Payton and Chita on clearance the other day for $4 and $5 a bottle. I also got the two Gwen OPI's I was most wanting, though I don't know that I'll ever use either. I also got the Essence stampy set, because I'd like to try stamping again, and just needed a cheap set to tide me over while I perfect my methods.

I attempted to use Push and Shove, but gave up after two nails. I left the Lay Down the Base base coat on when I did my current mani, and I'm not sure if it's just coincidence but I don't even have tip wear on one nail yet and I did my nails over 24 hours ago now. It's rare for me to go without at least getting one chip or tip wear a few hours after doing my nails, so I'm hesitant to return the polish now because of the base coat.

Instead I opted to use a polish I bought last month at Sally's when I heard it was a dupe of a Deborah Lippmann polish I've been wanting, it's their own Sally Girl in Brainy. Too thin to use on it's own without doing multiple coats, which I hate, so I layered it over China Glaze For Audrey. I always forget how much I love that polish til I use it, perfect in one and a half coats, and so gorgeous.

Here's China Glaze For Audrey on her own. My pic took out some of the blue, but I couldn't believe how perfect and streak free it applied over the Push and Shove base coat.

Here's one thick coat of Sally Girl Brainy over it. Perfect mermaid nails!

I'm supposed to have both my Zoya packages tomorrow, so maybe I'll have a Pixie Dust-a-thon since I still have two others I haven't used yet, and 3 coming tomorrow. Or maybe I'll buy more polish and forget all about that.

Oh yeah, and if you're curious about trying Julep, feel free to use my referral link! http://www.julep.com/rewardsref/index/refer/id/187469/ Use code "freebox" to get your intro box for free, just pay shipping.

-T

Blue polka dots and more Christmas nails

I got my Julep warehouse sale order today(only two polishes, but any nail mail=a good day) so I picked up one of the Maybelline Polka Dots collection while at Target. I literally last night saw the collection layered over various colors and wanted to try the blue layered over a light blue, and Bess was one of my colors coming.

This is Julep Bess on it's own. Usually I find Julep polishes on the thick side, this was just the opposite. This was two fairly thick coats and you can still see through it.

This is a coat and a half(extra dabs) of Maybelline Blue Marks the Spot. Usually I hate glitter toppers because I can't get the glitters spread evenly, but this did a pretty great job on it's own. The pieces aren't actually glitter, but I'm not sure what else to call em. I absolutely love this.

Here's a couple more photos from December manis. The China Glaze glitter I like, the holo not so much. I used a random green holo I got off etsy a couple years ago that used to be way darker, and I really thought Jade's Vermelho Surreal was a true red holo, but it ended up a copper red.

Two coats of Vermelho Surreal, and 5 or 6 of the unnamed, no longer made green.

This is China Glaze Pure Joy over Just Be-Claws(red shimmer.)

-Tara

Christmas Nail Art and Holo Glitter

Here are some swatches of polishes/nail art I did around Christmas. Right before Christmas I got my order from Julep's 12 days of Christmas spin the wheel promo day, which included the holo glitter bomb Joelle. It was SO pretty on that I didn't want to take it off for days. So I ended up just using a chevron sticker and painting an accent nail over it and calling it good!

The green and red are China Glaze Jolly Holly and Red Pearl, the glitter under is Julep Joelle over Zoya Trixie.

Here is the glitter bomb on it's own. This is two coats of Julep Joelle over Zoya Trixie(a silver foil.) It was SO hard to capture how holo the glitter was.

Prior to that I tried Sinful Color's red and green glitter topper over white, but ended up getting so OCD over the glitter being evenly placed that it took a good half hour just to get one hand done. SO I scrapped it, but at least got a photo of the swatch.

This is millions of dabs of Sinful Colors Holiday Rebel over a couple coats of Julep Nicolette.

Prior to that I was feeling lazy(notice a theme?) so just did a standard green and red mani. I love how the green turned out.

All colors used are China Glaze, the red is Red Pearl, the green is Jolly Holly topped with Running in Circles.

-Tara