Badass black, holo and flakie colour-block triplet nails

Kristin from Lacquerstyle + Tracey of @missbellatracey on Instagram + me = epic edgy bad ass colour-block nails for the final weekly nail art challenge of November! The theme is metallic and the prompt is colour-block, check out what we came up with! Not to mention we used all Joe Fresh nail polishes, a Canadian brand which stocks its polish smack in the middle of a massive grocery store retailer in Canada, Loblaws! If if were not for its massive nail polish selection, I would refuse to go grocery shopping.

 

VIDEO TUTORIAL AT THE END OF THE POST!

Pixie dust to the max

So I got a little carried away and tried to see how much pixie dust I could fit on one nail... turns out, you can paint your ENTIRE NAIL in pixie dust. Obviously. But still.

Textured chevrons

I wanted to showcase the perfect clean lines that using chevron nail vinyls yield with this simple mani (you can find out more info and examples from @teismom, nail vinyl's Instagram account). Trust me, it was difficult to keep gradients out of the picture (I am a gradient fiend) or avoid switching the colours on different nails, opposite colours, dots, glitters... how can I possibly resist?! But I did. Just because these nail vinyls are so special and I really wanted to let the simple chevron design speak for itself.

Sometimes you should just leave things alone

Two days ago I posted a 'returning' white to grey gradient mani which I turned into a chevron returning reciprocal gradient the day after. If that wasn't confusing enough, I decided to add some dots. What happened though, really, was that I thought the chevron mani looked like my kitty Menchie because of the grey and white zig zags, like her fur. But it wouldn't be like Menchie without some pink (the colour of her collar).

So, I confused an already confusing mani and ruined it. I blame the kitty.

Greyscale chevron returning reciprocal gradient

You're probably seeing the title of this post and thinking um what are you trying to say, girl? You have inhaled too much nail polish. So yesterday I posted a grey to white twist on the traditional gradient mani. My (rather convoluted) explanation included how a 5-point gradient whose colour point on one end of the nail returns by the other end (this is different than a traditional gradient, where the mani has a different colour at each end of the gradient).  I explain how I did this to the best of my ability below!

UPDATE (June 12, 2014): Video tutorial below!

Work appropriate mani Monday: Grey and white gradient

Here's a simple twist on the traditional polarized gradient. Usually gradients begin with one colour on one end of the nail and transition to another by the other end. Here I've created a five point gradient using three colours (white, light grey, medium grey), but had one end of the colour scheme (white) hit the nail at both ends, leaving the darkest grey in the middle only. Let's call this a returning gradient since the white seen on one end of the nail returns by the other end.

Inspired by a Coach scarf

I know what you're thinking: It's basically May and I'm getting inspired by a (cashmere) scarf?! For what good reason would I have to wear such winter attire during the spring?! Well, if you haven't heard yet, I live in the North Pole (a.k.a. Canada), and I was actually wearing this scarf today. So sad.

Turquoise stripes inspired by a sweater

I waited a while to do this mani because I knew I would yield the best output if I held off and waited for my new nail vinyls created by @teismom (IG)!

This mani involved two firsts for me: 1) Using nail vinyls (but obviously I'd used striping tape, but they ARE different guys, seriously), and 2) using the saran wrap technique to make the basecoat look a bit heathered like my grey-base sweater.

The nail vinyls I used were the perfect size. Sometimes striping tape can be too skinny for thick-striped designs and you end up using 2 or more or overlapping layers of striping tape to create the desired thickness, but all that goes to shit when the polish bleeds through the tape and you instantly regret even considering layering striping tape. PROBLEM SOLVED ladies: nail vinyls come in assorted thicknesses.

This is the result.

Valentine's waterfall mani

Inspired by none other than the nailasaurus' waterfall design. This one is valentine's day themed by being bright and cheery pink with a sugar-like glistening top coat in case it wasn't girly enough with all the pink variations.

Lighting was indoors under both cold and warm bathroom lighting, but I played with the settings a bit to try and bring out the shine of the sugar coating. It's far more reflective in person. BRING ON THE SHINY.

Textured triangles

Today I've got some nails from some of my first adventures with nail striping tape (about $3.00 on amazon/ebay). For about 3 years I had not yet discovered this magic tape and I used to paint 'straight' lines by hand. After realizing there was an entire online world of nail art freaks like myself I realized there was so much more knowledge I had to absorb.

This mani was probably inspired by a myriad of nail blogging artists, but the first one that popped into my mind as inspiration was a few of the manicurator's designs using striping tape, triangle designs, and textured polishes.

The backdrop polish comes matte, no mattifier was applied, and a clear top coat was applied only to the textured triangles.