Mani swap: Abstract artwork inspired

When the lovely Isabella of Vaniliamamor asked me to do a mani swap, I saw a couple of her artwork-inspired nail designs and I knew I just had to recreate one of those. Isabella (who goes by 'Bella') is from Romania, so you can imagine my confusion when I visited her blog and didn't understand one word of anything. Luckily images don't need language to communicate beauty and inspiration. Bella chose to create an old colour-block mani of mine:

Here's a solo shot of my re-creation of Bella's mani:

Bestie twin nails: Inspired by a BCBG dress

Hi everyone! I am super excited to share with you my first "bestie twin nails" mani. Not to worry if you have no idea what I'm talking about; when I heard that term my face was like uhmm... what. It basically means two nail artists (hence the 'twin') get together and decide on a mani design to do together, sometimes inspired by an object or pattern of choice.

In this case the super friendly Jamie from Tinseltown Nails asked me to do a "#bestietwinnails" as it's called on Instagram and I was like hell yeah! She sought out this sassy BCBG 'Reese' strapless colour-blocked dress and we both went to town.

Picture credit for two BCBG dress shots

Stepping up my game, ladies

I am interrupting your daily dose of nail art for an IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT:

I have a new camera and it's awesome!

My new baby.

That's right folks, I'm trying to be awesome like those other nail bloggers who have awesome photography skills. I'm still missing the skills part, but I'm hoping the DSL-R camera will suffice for now. If you're curious, I was previously shooting with a Canon PowerShot S110 point and shoot camera, usually on macro mode.

This shiny new Nikon D5300 with a 40mm macro lens was a present from my family for finishing my Master's degree! Woop woop I am officially the coolest Master in Sociology/Criminology ever, clearly, 'cause I now spend all my free time doing something nail related. Putting that academic education to work!

I know what you're thinking... you want to see more of my nail polish stash, don't you. I'm just teasing you. I must tell you that what looks like a row of polish on each shelf is actually mostly doubled-up rows of polish. Yes, that means about half my polish is sitting behind another polish. Le sad. One day I shall build another polish rack to showcase all of them... er, I mean, ask my boyfriend to build me another polish rack.

Proper pics of my polish rack and colourful babies coming soon to a computer screen near you.

Random black swirls over rose-toned gradient

Further to yesterday's simple work appropriate rose-toned gradient post, I've added some random swirly details over top, because who on earth leaves a gradient ALONE?!

This was done freehand with a makeshift detail brush that I wish I could have trimmed down smaller without ruining it (twice now) and black acrylic paint. Some of the craft store brushes I picked up turned out to be garbage and fray really easily, which translates to wider and uneven strokes of paint. Wahh. Seche vite topcoat over errrthing.

Work appropriate mani Monday: Rose-toned subtle holo gradient

Back to the standard nail gradient today, with a three-polish simple and work appropriate gradient featuring all A England polishes which I personally LOVE. The subtle holo in the formula is just perfection, and they blend together so beautifully.

Alligator green chevron scaled gradient

Gradients on a whole other level! I was playing around with my fav Formula X by Sephora polish, 'over the top', a subtly saturated neon lemon-lime creme, and this is what happened. I'll call this a 'scaled gradient' because it involves distinct and adjacent gradients that when right beside each other look like the scales of a fish or other reptilian. This colour scheme in particular kind of reminds me of an alligator. And the dots almost look like creepy alligator eyes. Oh snap!

UPDATED JUNE 2014: VIDEO TUTORIAL AT END OF POST!

Chevron and dotted camo

Here's a random nothing special somewhat-skittlette that I created to try out some earth-toned polishes, two of which I recently acquired during a polish haul at Winners of all places. Great discounts = more polish to buy!

Broken glass flakies

Last month I posted an 'emerald green runway' mani that consisted of mattified green polish, negative space and green flakies galore. There's been so many flakies-over-dark-colour manis floating around mani-land lately, and I just love it. Notably, this includes Kristin from Lacquerstyle's flakies over a deep burgundy,  @chorubim's flakies over a royal blue, and Amy from McPolish's flakies over an emerald green (which coincidentally I had also unknowingly conjured up in my nail art lair). I decided that they should all have a baby and this is what was born:

That's a fine looking baby. 

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.