Textured fishtail braid nails

Wow, it's not holo glitter?! Nope, but still kinda sparkly, so s'all good. Today's nail art features three of the new Color Club textured polishes from the Seven Deadly Sins collection. I posted a couple others and some macro brush shots of the entire collection here, and today I have a particularly dark but nonetheless edgy look for you!

 

VIDEO TUTORIAL AT THE END OF THE POST!

Fall-toned asymmetrical colour-blocking with matte textured glitters

Colour-block cause why not! A simple asymmetrical colour-block featuring three new polishes from Colour Club's Made in New York and Seven Deadly Sins Fall 2014 collections. These three colours just go so well together and are fresh and fit for this fall weather we're having over here in Canada. Although with our luck, it will be snowing next week and I'll be reaching for deep blues and iridescent white flakies. Enjoy fall manis while they last!

 

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.

Random pixie dust... I have no idea what I was trying to achieve.

I have no idea what I was going for here, but one thing I did know when I set out to do this mani was that I wanted to use a sheer black jelly I made at home in my nail polish lair/cat den/taking-over-the-world laboratory. Everything else that came after that jelly base was pure luck/chaos/consequence. It kind of looks like Lady Gaga threw up on my nails, which in her eyes would mean sickkkkk.

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.

Work appropriate mani Monday: Nude & blue chevrons

Here's a simple but striking look that I'm going to argue is work appropriate no matter where you work. Bland beige nails is so 2002. Today you can pull off nude nails with a twist at the office and still be taken seriously (I would say this about any nail polish though... so maybe don't listen to me).

I used four Essie polishes (including 2 specialty ones from the Encrusted Treasures collection - see swatches and a review of this collection by Polish Aholic) to create this look. Nail vinyls in the shape of single chevrons were used to guide the application of the three mid-nail arrow-looking shapes.

'Over the top' for Sephora Formula X: Triangles

Ever since I bought three particular shades of green and grey from Sephora's new line of polishes, Formula X, I've been wanting to create a very simple eye-catching geometric mani. I just love the muted neon lime green featured, it's like a lemon-lime colour, maybe more like an amaretto sour made with lime juice colour - a bit murky but so refreshing. That's why the mattifying top coat is key to this mani. It balances out the subtle shimmer that comes through in the textured polish. I loved this mani so much I wore it for 4 days! What, I actually wore the SAME NAIL POLISH for four whole days?! And I got proof (see last photo exhibit: both hands).

Earth spotted in a galaxy

Yesterday's post was my first attempt at galaxy nails, but I originally went into this mani thinking that I would paint an Earth somewhere for Nailpolis' Earth Day nail art challenge. It didn't turn out as I'd envisioned, which is the case for more mani's that I can count :|

But good news is that while I was painting this mani a better idea for Earth Day popped into my head... you'll see that one up in a few!

The Earth was painted with acrylic paints (white, green, blue) and then the continents on the Earth were topped with some green pixie dust for added texture and some Ozotic blue sugar on the water. Can you guess which continent/countries are featured?

Easter nails

Here's my best attempt at Easter nails for Nailpolis' easter nail art challenge which also happens to be my first poor attempt at realism using acrylic paints. Clearly, I'm more of an art-deco/mod/abstract design kind of girl. Realism.... NOT MY THING.

Back in the day I used to paint, but the canvas were larger than 1cm in diameter. I'm so sorry for what I did to your face, Mr. Bunny:

Enter-a-nail-art-contest nails

Hi ladies (and gentlemen, perhaps?)! Today I've got some nail art that is an almost exact replica of one of Amber from Armstrong Nails' works as a part of her 3k followers on Instagram contest. The idea was to replicate one of her manis using the same technique, but from what I understand there was a bit of freedom in terms of switching up the colours.

So, obviously I tried to overcomplicate the mani and went for a black sheer look that I first saw used by @badgirlnails (IG) as my base coat instead of a regular nude like Amber went for. Because I don't own such a magical sheer black jelly polish, I made my own by adding about 8 drops of black polish to a mini bottle of clear topcoat (you'll get the jist of it below in the polishes used section).

I'm probably more likely to win the lottery than this contest, but a girl can dream.

Here's Amber's original design:

Credit: Armstrong Nails

 And here is mine!

Work appropriate mani Monday: Negative space lined with pixie dust

Negative space nails are a relatively new concept in the last couple of years - check out this pintrest feed for a better idea of how widespread they have become! Generally speaking negative space nails just means that some sections of your nail are left unpolished. I was never really excited about this because the idea of my nails being partially naked - nevermind fully naked - scares the shit out of me. As always I am inclined to polish ALL the nails, so negative space has always been an OH GOD NO.

Except for today, and I owe this one to three talented ladies who inspired me to just do it because negative space nails only need to be a little naked, after all. Clearly I'm a naked nail prude.

First up there's Kristin who is the woman behind @kgdnr on Instagram - this is the first time I saw this particular mani and I just about died it was so gorgeous. The contrast between the matte burgundy and Essie's 'Shine of the times' (SOTT) is just perfect. Next up @chorubim replicated Kristin's idea but in a rich royal indigo. When Margaret from @m_a_tom revealed this mani with OPI's gold flecks down the center line, I couldn't stop imagining all the possibilities!

It's highly likely that I'll replicate Kristin's original idea with SOTT, but for now here's a toned down version that's workplace appropriate for those of us who don't want everyone at the office to see the crazy in us that easily.

Work appropriate mani Monday: Neutral ombre with a sprinkle of pixie dust

Last Monday I promised I'd make a weekly thing out of work appropriate manis. Here is me following through on that promise (so far, don't get too excited)!

This mani is a bit of a cheat, as it's the same mani as last week but a little more interesting. Let's call it appropriate for your SECOND week on a new office job, where people have gotten to at least witness the crazy in you if only a little bit.

Layering on top of last week's neutral taupe-hued ombre, here's that same mani with sand-coloured pixie dust (by none other than Zoya) overlayed by sponging over some interlocked striping tape. Finally, all was topped with a mattifying top coat.

The polish colouring in the images does look a bit different than last weeks' because the photos below were taken outdoors (no direct sunlight) as opposed to under my bathroom lighting.

Blue colour-blocking

This mani was originally done in December of 2013, but there have been many other ladies who've mastered the art of the colour-blocking on teeny tiny canvases, including the Nailasaurus, Silver Box of Polish, and more recently (and notably), Nailuminium.

This wasn't an attempt at anything overly intricate, I was more looking for a way to incorporate the texture of one of Essie's new encrusted treasures collection (see the Polish Aholic or Ommorphia Beauty Bar for excellent swatch reviews of the whole collection). However, the textured tips of Essie's new 'Peak so chic' didn't really translate into what I was going for, as it required multiple coats and dabbing of the formula to get a somewhat opaque layer of the rectangular glitters. In fact I couldn't achieve full coverage at all with this polish at least in a restricted small area, and it ended up being really thick in relation to the other single-coat polish colour blocks, resulting in a rather uneven nail surface. Oh well LIVE AND LEARN, right ladies!?

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.