Layering With Pomegranate Polishes

Today's look features another spin on Curator, the black polish with gold and silver glitter from Pomegranate Nail Lacquer's latest collection. I was able to choose two polishes from Pomegranate to try out, and I chose Cardigan for my second color. I had a plan, and I couldn't wait to try it out.

I chose Cardigan for a couple of reasons: I love the color, and it's a jelly polish. While I'm the type of person who hates visible nail line, I'm also the type of person who absolutely loves layering polishes. I had a sneaking suspicion that I could layer Cardigan over Curator to create something spectacular.

Because Curator is a neutral polish, I imagined that the sheer teal of Cardigan would tint everything so that the black would become a deep velvety greenish with sparkling spots of brighter green and teal where the glitter showed through. For some reason, this brought to mind images of lost jungle tribes, lush greenery and golden treasures covered in moss. (What can I say? I really loved Indiana Jones as a kid!)

In reality, I had a bit of trouble keeping the teal layer even, and there's enough pigment in Cardigan to build up brighter streaks over the black. This didn't bother me, though, because it somehow didn't detract from the overall look. The gold glitter shined through with an almost lime green sheen, and the silver showed more of Cardigan's blue tones. All in all, I called it a win.

Surprisingly enough, I wore this polish for 3 or 4 days. That's odd for me, since I get bored so easily and I have enough polish to change my nail lacquer every day without repeating for... oh, let's just say a long time. I don't want to count how many bottles of nail polish I have now. It's starting to frighten me!

Here, have some more photos of this delicious sandwich.

Pomegranate Nail Lacquer is available for sale on the Pomegranate web site for $9 a bottle. However, if you like Curator, now is the time to buy it, because Pomegranate is selling the cutest Halloween treat bag! In it you'll find one bottle of Persimmon, one bottle of Curator, sweet treats and seasonal decorations, and it only costs you $15! This is the perfect treat for your friends who love nail polish. It's worth picking up two- one for you and one for a friend!

What do you think of this combination? Would you wear it, or are you just shaking your head at me, wondering why I do this weird stuff? Leave me a comment and let me know!

Polishes were provided by Pomegranate Nail Lacquer for consideration.

See my disclosure statement for more information.

A fun floral look

While using the camera flash, the colors
are washed out but you can see the depth
of the blue background.

Whew, I just woke up from sleeping almost 24 hours! I'm not exaggerating, either. My husband was in the hospital over the weekend, thankfully for a false alarm. But I spent 3 days "not sleeping" on the awful pull-out loveseat, being worried sick and waking up every time something beeped. In short, I didn't really sleep for 3 days.

I'm super-thankful, though, because my husband is ok! All the tests showed that his heart is strong and healthy, so now we get to follow up with the primary care physician and go from there. We can do that. I just want to keep him around. 20 years together is a good start, but he can't go anywhere yet. :D

The good news is that while we were waiting (and waiting and waiting!), we came up with a TON of great blog ideas! Since it's going to take me a while to get them started though, you get to see this older nail doodle I did and then forgot to post. Oops!

This is actually a very simple look to create. Let me list the polishes I used before I get started, just to make it easier.

1. Nutra Nail Gel Perfect in Two-Step
2. Jessica Strawberry Shake It from the Gelato Mio! collection
3. Jessica Tangerine Dreamz from the Gelato Mio! collection
4. Jessica Lime Cooler from the Gelato Mio! collection
5. Zoya Evvie from the Designer collection
6. Orange loose glitter

Natural light shows the actual colors of
the polishes I used.

I know, it looks like a lot. It's easier than it seems, though, I promise! I started with Two-Step (1) to create a gorgeous background with a lot of depth. I then put down a drop of both Lime Cooler (4) and Evvie (5) next to each other, then
dipped my brush into both. This let me slightly mix the two, but still get striations of both colors through the leaves and stems. I think this gives an interesting look to them.

For the flowers, I put down a large drop of Strawberry Shake It (2) on my palette, then used my large dotting tool to make 5 dots in a circle around the top of each stem. I went back with a bamboo skewer and drew from the center of each dot to the center of the circle the dots made. This gave me a five-petaled flower at the top of each stem!

To complete my flower, I put down a dot of Tangerine Dreamz (3) in each flower center. After that dried, I realized I wanted a bit more sparkle there, so I put a dot of clear polish on each flower center, then put a bit of loose orange glitter on top of the clear polish. Unfortunately, it went everywhere, and I didn't notice that until after I'd put a coat of Seche Vite over everything. That's why there are bits of glitter on the petals and the stems.

Overall, I like this. It's fairly simple to do once you get started, and it's a fun happy design! You could use any background and flower color you like!

As for what's coming up? Stick around, it could get fun in here!

Polishes were provided by the brands for consideration.
I make no money from the links provided. They're just for your convenience.

See my disclosure statement for more information.

Blue Dots Everywhere

Whee, I have more nail art for you! This one is deceptively-simple looking. It's easy to do, though, and I love the end result!

I started out with a base coat of Zoya Song. It's a gorgeous color, deep, rich, and metallic royal blue! Once that was done I was strongly tempted to leave it like this.

But no, I had plans for this. Once Song was dry, I painted the tip half of the nail in a slant using Jessica Sky High. It's a light-to-medium blue creme that looked gorgeous next to Song! To tie the two together, I added a stripe of Zoya FeiFei between the two.

The sparkling effect of FeiFei looked really nice between Song and Sky High, but I felt like the junction needed something else. So, I added a stripe of Jessica Barely Blueberry over FeiFei, so that there was a nice transition between them of light, dark, light, dark. Then I added a coat of Jordana Glitter in Lunar Lights over the lightest blue stripe, because you know I have a thing for glitter. :D


Don't get me wrong, I could have left it just like that. It would have been beautiful, but I wanted more. So, I pulled out my basic black and white nail art polishes (my white was White Canvas from Milani, and the black was a striper from the Dollar Tree) and added contrasting dots- white on the dark blue and black on the light blue.

I feel like the end result is whimsical and silly, but still not too overdone. (It takes a LOT for me to consider something overdone...) I love the big round dots, even if I do wish they'd been more consistent. I need more practice, clearly! But overall I think this could be a really fun look!

You could also do this look in any set of colors you like. I can see this with various purples, or monochrome in shades of grey. You could even do this with contrasting colors! (Note to self, do one of these in blue and orange...)

So what do you think? Cute, or junk? Leave me a comment and let me know!

Polishes were provided by the brands for consideration.

See my disclosure statement for more information.

Nail Art Doodling Summer 2012- Glitter Madness

It's been a while, but I've finally got some new nail art to share with you! I've gotten several new collections recently that seemed like they would play very nicely together. So one day I pulled them all out, grabbed some full coverage nail tips and started playing.

The image to the right gives you a hint of what's coming up. I had so much fun making these, and I've got some designs I'm absolutely in love with! So, first we've got a design I called Glitter Madness!

I started out with Zoya's Diva collection. This set has some absolutely gorgeous metallic jewel tones that I really needed to see together. I chose a very long nail tip for this one so I'd have lots of room to play. From top to bottom I used: Elisa (red), Suri (purple), Song (blue), and Ray (green). I then added dots of a greyed-out blue, but realized I wanted more oomph for the nail

Enter the Jordana Glitter Specialty Nail Polishes. I'm a bit late to the party with these, but holy WOW are these polishes amazing. The day I got the collection I ended up painting all my nails with a different glitter and just watching them sparkle. This collection was basically made for me, and I am so in love with it!

Getting back to the Glitter Madness, I went over each section with a corresponding glitter. I added Red Flash over Elisa, Magenta Magic over Suri, Blue Bash over Song, and Green Glitz over Ray. This took the nail from gorgeous to magically glam. I still wanted some definition between the colors, though.

Thankfully, Jessica Custom Nail Colour had just the color I wanted. I didn't want white, because that seemed like it would be too stark against the deep rich colors I had going. Instead, I went with Barely Blueberry from the Gelato Mio Collection. This color is a very pale, very cool blue, just barely blue but still with enough color to not seem shockingly out of place with the rest of what was happening on the nail.

With the separating dots, I didn't want a precise line of equally-spaced, evenly sized dots. Instead, I wanted a slightly meandering, wobbly line. You know, if a leprechaun with a peg leg got drunk, stepped in paint, then staggered all over my nail!

Wait. That just sounds wrong. Forget I said that. :D

I then added a coat of ProFX Quick Dry Top Coat to protect everything and smooth things out. I have to say, I am in LOVE with this look. I just wish my nails were long enough to wear it! The various glitter polishes have multiple sizes of glitter in them so there's a ton of sparkle, and the deeper toned base colors show through underneath.

It's just a crazy sparkly, intensely colorful look that makes me giggle when I think about it! This satisfies my inner magpie, and makes me want more more more. It's definitely my style of nail art...

But my question is this- what do you think of it? Is this something you'd wear? Would you tweak this to fit your own style, or does this design call to your inner diva? Let me know in the comments!

Polishes were provided by the brands for consideration.

See my disclosure statement for more information.

Easter Means Crawfish!

Boiled crawfish and a sliced bulb of garlic, yummy!

Ahhh, Easter. I'm not religious, but most of my husband's family is Catholic, so every year they throw a huge crawfish boil. It's the perfect occasion for catching up with family, eating til you think you're going to explode, and just letting the good times roll.

Oddly enough, I'm really not a big fan of crawfish. I'll eat them in things like crawfish etouffee or crawfish pie, but I'm just not fond of peeling boiled crawfish. So, I end up sitting and eating a hot dog or something while everyone around me slurps and cracks and does all those other icky things. :D

Anyway, on to the fun stuff- nails! I'm kind of frustrated, because while this was an adorable design in my head it just didn't work so well in reality. I did a base coat of China Glaze Dance Baby, followed by two sponged coats of a gradient from Fuchsia Fanatic to Gothic Lolita (both China Glaze as well). Then I stamped on some flowers in Scherer Chameleon's Blue Sky. I topped it off with my Best Nail Treatments topcoat, which I've found works beautifully for stamping.

I think I would have liked this better with a lighter stamp, or a lighter background. The Chameleon polish stamps really nicely, but it just didn't show well enough on this background. The pink-to-purple gradient was nice enough, but... I don't know. Something about this just didn't work for me.

Ah well. It wasn't awful, it just wasn't what I had hoped it would be. I did get compliments on it today, though, so all's well that ends well. And now, picspam.

Mmmm, nothing like small boiled crustceans.

See my disclosure statement for more information.

Finally- a successful water marble!

Holy COW I am so excited! I've been wanting to water marble for ... well, ever since before I started this blog. I've tried and tried, and failed and failed... until NOW!

Granted, this is a crappy photo of a not-so-inspiring water marble, but the exciting part is that it worked for me!! I used (gee, wait for it...) the China Glaze Electropop polishes and they spread like a dream!

So, once I remove the manicure I'm wearing (probably tomorrow or the day after) I'm going to try and do a water marble. Maybe a RAINBOW water marble!! I'm so excited I could just pop.

Also, once I saw how cute this was, I wanted to embellish it a bit. So, I added to it just a bit. You know I can't leave anything alone...

I added some dots and a tiny little heart in the corner because apparently valentine's day affected me more than I realized. Either that, or I'm still love-struck by my husband. :D

Ok, it's 5am and I still haven't slept. I've been working on a surprise that I might get to show you tomorrow... so cross your fingers for me!

EEEE! Water marble EEEEEE!

See my disclosure statement for more information.

A Cinderella Story

Let me tell you, I feel so relieved being able to post a simple, beautiful look after my previous fails. I find it very frustrating when I can't translate what's in my head to what's on  my nails. Thankfully, that wasn't a problem with this look!

Also, I'm still feeling pretty icky, so I didn't do my usual photoshoppery to fix my poor pathetic cuticles. I apologize in advance, but I feel the look is princessy enough to forgive. I hope you agree!

So- this all started with an email I got from KKcenterhk. I almost missed it, because it somehow wound up in my spam folder! Thankfully, I saw it, because they wanted me to try their water decals. I said sure, and after browsing for what seemed like hours, I finally decided on N.NAIL-WDHHC069-Silver- a set of metallic filigree designs.

In all honesty, I wasn't sure what to expect. The water decals I've seen and used prior to this point were very thin, and I couldn't imagine a metallic water decal actually working. But I was optimistic, and eagerly awaited the chance to try them.

Click this one to see the detail on these decals!

Once they came in, I was absolutely floored. They're absolutely gorgeous, shiny metallic silver and so delicate! The only problem I have with them is that they were too darned hard to photograph- I must have taken 20 pictures and this is the best of them!

They are slightly different than other water decals I've worked with, though. Instead of coming loose after seconds, they take a few minutes to really turn loose from the backing paper. I actually used a pair of plastic tweezers to peel them off once they were saturated, but they're very sturdy and held up beautifully.

However, once I had them in hand I couldn't decide what to pair them with! I wanted something simple... no holos or duochrome to take away from the delicacy of the design. I also knew I wanted to put a stone inside the circle of the design. It just seemed made to be accented!

Finally, I decided on a polish I didn't think I'd like at all- Kinetic Candy by China Glaze. It's a pretty enough polish, it was just too pale, too blue, too  Easter for me. I decided to add a coat of Love My Nails Dazzling over the top, and a tiny blue gem from my Fing'rs Nail and Body Jewels.

I don't know if I've mentioned this lately, but this is probably my favorite set of nail gems. They're tiny and so sparkly, plus there's such a fun variety of shapes! This set was provided by the kind folks at Fing'rs ages ago, and I keep finding new uses for it!

You see the end result here... this blue sparkles like Cinderella's ball gown, and I don't want to hear the clock strike 12! I've had this on for days and don't want to take it off. It's so shimmery and delicate, and I am just in love!

Who knew I could be a pale blue, Easter kind of girl? Certainly not me! I also left the Dazzling off my thumb, just to show the decal a bit more clearly without all those sparkles.  I'll let the photos tell the rest of the story.

Water decals were provided by kkcenterhk.com for consideration.

See my disclosure statement for more information.

Magnetix Polish

Magnetix polish with two magnets.

I am so excited! Last night, my family and I were out running some errands and I decided to stop off at Rite Aid to see if they had any fun new nail goodies. Talk about a score, I found a display of magnetic nail polishes!

They weren't too horribly expensive, either. The Magnetix polishes are $7.99 each, and come with two magnets! I was excited about that, since it seems most magnetic polishes either come with one magnet or make you buy the magnet separately!

The polishes come in a plastic box, and the display was on the bottom shelf. I could easily have missed it if I wasn't specifically keeping an eye out for interesting polishes! Unfortunately, I didn't notice how many colors there were, but I saw quite a few, including gold, silver, green, blue, deep pink, and a sort of putty brown color. They all had the same two magnets, so you can't get more patterns by buying more than one bottle.

Still, the patterns are nice enough. The magnets are somewhat flexible too, which let me sort of bend the magnet around my finger, so tht the magnetic field reached more of my nail instead of sitting right on top.

One strange thing, at least to me: the bottle shape is downright bizarre! While the bottom of the bottle is round, the top is triangular, and slants off to the left! It's sort of like a Nicole by OPI bottle, if you turned it to the side and the top was triangular. I don't know, it's weird!

It doesn't affect the polish inside, though, and it wasn't hard to hold or anything. I just find the shape weird. Maybe it's interesting instead. Whatever.

The big question for me was would it work. I've been dying to get some magnetic polish, but I didn't want to spend $20 on a bottle, I'm just too poor for that. I can deal with $8, even if it is a bit more than I'd like to spend, but I would be heartbroken if it didn't work. Thankfully I wasn't disappointed...

  

So, the final verdict? This stuff is kind of tricky to use, but it's absolutely gorgeous. It can be worn as a normal polish, worn with the magnetic stripes, stamped over a different polish... (yes, it stamps like a dream!)

Take a few minutes to get used to using the magnets, though. If you use too little polish and you won't see stripes, and if you use too much you won't see the stripes. Expect to have to redo a few nails, or do like I did and just live with it, since it's pretty no matter what you do to it! I'll let the rest of the pics speak for themselves...

What are your thoughts about magnetic nail polish? Are you itching to rock the trend, or is it leaving you bored and waiting for the next big thing? Leave me a comment and let me know what you think!

Yay for finding inexpensive magnetic polish!

See my disclosure statement for more information.

Even MOAR dots!

Ahhh, raise your hand if you knew I was going to add to the dots. I didn't even wait 10 minutes before hitting post before getting my polishes out. Yea, I have no self-control.

Still, I think it turned out pretty cute. I showed my husband the before and after pics, and he likes the dots-in-dots best. He thinks there's more energy to them. Personally, I think they're just more fun this way!

Adding the smaller dots was really easy. I pulled out the three colors I'd used in the gradient along with the mid-sized dotting tool and my palette. I added a drop of lavender, put a few dots here and there, then repeated with the pink and the blue. Once I'd done all three colors, I went back and filled in any leftover dots with whatever color I thought would work best.

It was pretty random, and went really quickly. I'm enjoying the look a lot... every time I see my nails, I grin. The only thing that would make this even better would be some glitter, but even I think that would be a bit much. At least... for now. ;)

I have to admit, though... now that I've figured out an easy way to do gradients I may be doing LOTS of them! I have so many ideas bouncing around in my mind!

So what do you think? Is this a design you'd wear? Leave me a comment and tell me how you'd style this, or how you'd change it!

Why yes, I think I AM losing my mind... how kind of you to notice!

See my disclosure statement for more information.