Real estate nails: Sold!

So my sister, who you've had the pleasure of seeing her nails done by me in this post, is a real estate agent in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada and I decided I wanted to see if I could make a sale just by posting real estate-themed nails. I'm probably pressing my luck, but whatever. Remember Jen, I get 10% of your cut!

Triple raz holo teal scaled gradient: Mermaids from the future

Another scaled gradient, you ask?! Yep. And I'm not apologizing. Someone on my Instagram actually commented that I do too many of them. You know what I thought?? I don't give a. I just love the clean, crisp yet deep look they give off. There's something about lines without actually having blatant lines in artwork that has always been appealing to me, like Lawrence Harris' work. I'm Canadian, so yeah. Deal with it.

The lovely folks at I Love Nail Polish (ILNP) sent me some holo babies* to play with and I was oh so delighted. Christa aka beauty blogger Chrissy AI reached out to me and told me I didn't even have to trade my liver. I was relieved. Here's my first look so far with my new (and very first!) ILNP's. Turned out like a mermaid from the future if you ask me, featuring my fav colour, teal.

 

VIDEO TUTORIAL AT THE END OF THE POST!

Eos lip balm: Bestie twin nails

This #bestietwinnails idea pretty much happened by accident when Tracey of @missbellatracey on Instagram and I were chatting up our usual crazy. I think it went something like this: Tracey sending me what seemed like countless pics of her new Eos lip balms and me being like I like the colours of those flavours. That's pretty much why I bought mine too, cause the colours were soooo pretty.

And so, this simple thick Eos-colour inspired ruffian mani was born:

Nail time with the sister - Orange gradient

I did my sister's nails! Which is actually quite a challenging feat because she hates that shit. I thought I wouldn't see the day where she asked me to do her nails, but she actually came to me because she was headed to a wedding. I got so excited I didn't know where to start. I had to calm down a little and not get carried away, reminding myself that my usual go-to psycho striped/scaled gradient/colour-blocking pattern of madness look would not be suitable for a wedding.

She would be wearing an orangey-coral toned dress, so I went with this simple gradient with a thin white triangle look.

Curved deep blue scaled gradient with glitter placement

Dive into the ocean! That's how this mani makes me feel. Except I hate salt water and love this mani.

 

VIDEO TUTORIAL AT THE END OF THE POST!

Work appropriate mani Monday: Not so appropriate shrinkage

Further to my last post where I exposed the Seche Vite "shrinkage" phenomenon, I thought I'd use this work appropriate mani Monday post to demonstrate more of this top coat travesty.

I originally did this mani back in May, but never published it, because, well, it's pretty obvious why. Look at those horrendous edges! The tip wear without any actual wear! These shots were taken maybe a couple of hours after I painted them. Seche Vite fail.

Seche Vite bottle image credit

Polling the people: Splatter mani comes out on top

Today on Instagram I decided to take the opportunity to unload some of my old unpublished mani's. I have quite a few... it's kind of stupid actually. I don't know why, I guess I never got around to posting them and then when I thought about it I was like ermmm.... these are fugly now. In other words, the mani's were done either when my nails/nail care was crappy, before I got my new camera, or after I got my new camera but had no idea how to use it.

So I threw together a couple looks, the theme being 'how to wear chrome', and asked my followers to vote for their fav mani out of the 4 looks that I would post by itself:

Source: @simplynailogical (Instagram)

Purple magic simple looping effect

So the 'looping effect' mani is one of the very first designs I did when I first started doing something other than just one colour plus a stripe of another colour down the middle of nails. The earliest looping effect mani I have on record courtesy of photo date stamps is sometime in 2010. This was all way way before I was doing anything fancy, and before I'd discovered that an online world of nail art existed. The first time I spoke of the looping effect on this blog was right around when I launched this blog, so February of 2014.

The base polish and the two striper polishes I used to create this look are all products included in my 10k followers on Instagram celebatory giveaway, which you can enter to win if you have an Instagram account, see giveaway rules etc. here.

 

VIDEO TUTORIAL AT THE END OF THE POST!

Hypnotizing black & neon squares

Further to yesterday's plain corner gradient post, here's the finished product. No, this is not a stamp. No, this is not freehand. No, this is not a pre-cut nail vinyl (I wish, seriously). This is the result of me turning into a crazy person and placing probably over 50 pieces of striping tape one by one while my eyes go crossed.

Neon green and yellow corner gradient

In my Gradient Guide, which I published maybe two weeks ago, I included a thumbnail of a neon green 'corner gradient' but hadn't yet published the actual mani. Here it is! Truth be told I did this mani on May 24th... I know cause that's what my pic file creation date says. I never got around to posting it mostly because the end result (which is part 2, to be revealed in tomorrow's post) is rather confusing and I didn't make a video tutorial. I figured I would do one eventually and then be able to post the mani along with a video, but.... too much work. You won't blame me when you see the final design tomorrow.