Showing posts with label Nicole by OPI. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nicole by OPI. Show all posts

September 7, 2016

Blingy mermaid scale nail art

I can't even with these nails!


Almost literally!


This is the first time I decided to use a makeup sponge to apply a glitter polish.  Using a sponge gives you craaaaazy glitter coverage as the sponge absorbs the jelly base, so you end up dabbing on tons of glitter at a time!  It's awesome and probably how I'm always going to apply glitter from now on.


The glitter that I used is Zoya Vega - from the Ulta Pixie Dust line.  Which means it's suuuuuper sparkly with bunches of different sized holo glitters.  Because of how textured Ultra Pixie Dust is, and how densely the sponge allowed me to apply the glitter, I had to use about four coats of top coat.  As much as I love the look of Pixie Dust, I kind of hate the feeling of sandpaper-glitter nails so I prefer to smooth it out!


You've seen my background color, Nicole by OPI Candid Cameron, a zillion years ago in my Fifty Shades of Blue post.  It's one of my favorite pre-polish obsession polishes!

What do you think of this look?  Are you secretly a mermaid?  Let me know in the comments!

February 3, 2016

Winter Break Nail Art

I was super busy over the holidays!  Derek's parents came to visit us in mid-December, and we went to the Poconos for a week.  They were with us for the week between Christmas and New Year's Eve, as were Derek's brother and his girlfriend.  Six of us in one apartment sure was crowded, especially for a whole week!  Derek's parents stayed with us until halfway through the first week of January.  And then two days later, Derek and I headed out for Jamaica for his former roommate's wedding!  It. was. incredible.  We stayed at the Half Moon Resort in Montego Bay, and it was absolutely paradise.  A week after we got back, my best friend since 8th grade came to visit us for a few days!  So, basically, I was in vacation mode from mid-December to mid-January.  It was a lot of fun but honestly kind of exhausting - I'm really happy to be back on my regular schedule.

Despite all of the awesome things I did throughout the month, I still had time to do my nails several times, plus Maddie's and Allison's.  Rather than spread everything out over the course of several posts, I figured I would just dump the month's nail art into one post.  Get ready, there are a LOT of pictures ahead!

First up is my first Christmas-themed manicure, which I did in the first week of December (I think. it's been a while.)  I used Zoya's Naked system to clean up the color of my nails and brighten my white tips, then painted on stripes using Spoiled by Wet n'Wild Show Me the Money, OPI Wocka Wocka, and OPI My Voice is a Little Norse.


This look was inspired by Juli of Juli's Nails and Co.  Her original post can be found here.  I loved her design so much that I had to recreate it using Christmas colors!

Right before we left for the Poconos, I once again recreated my favorite winter wonderland scene.  Only this time, I used a different color for the background: Julep Margaret.  The white is Salon Perfect Sugar Cube, and the glitter flakes are once again Nicole by OPI Heavenly Angel.  I also threw a coat of Nicole by OPI Confetti Fun on my middle finger, because more glitter = more fun!


Since we were in the Poconos for a whole week, I of course wanted to redo my nails.  We were planning on going to see the new Star Wars movie while we were there, so I did a sort of abstract representation of the Force: Dark Side/Light Side.  For this look, I used Gothic Gala Lacquers The Search For Spock, Sally Hansen CSM Hi Ho Silver, and China Glaze Fairy Dust.


I kept the Force look on for as long as possible, but sadly we didn't end up going to see the movie.  On Christmas Eve, I did both my nails and Maddie's for Christmas!


My middle finger nail was inspired by one of the Christmas ornaments that I made!  I used Sugar Cube as a background and topped it with Twisted Colors Elf Vomit and some Fairy Dust.  I also used Gothic Gala Make It So and It's Green, Sir. 


The overall idea for this look was vaguely inspired by an old mani made by 3girlsnails on Instagram.  I actually can't find a link to the original post because I can't find 3girlsnails anymore!  I've had a screenshot of her mani on my phone since last May, and this user must have changed her IG handle or something.  If anybody knows what she calls herself now (or if she has disappeared from the nail art community), please let me know! 


Maddie wanted a very similar look for Christmas, although she didn't want the glitter accent.  I used the same colors on her as I did for my own Christmas nails - after all, I only had a small assortment of polishes with me on vacation!  One difference I made for Maddie was that I used a thin layer of CDB Lacquer Spirited underneath the red and green to make the holographic features of the colors pop a little better.

Maddie and James have a pretty big group of friends who live quite close to us near DC, so we all went to party with them on New Year's Eve!  I wanted to have another chance to wear my gorgeous flapper dress that I won from Unique Vintage, so I asked Maddie to glam it up with me.  Only this time, I did my makeup and nails in a more modern fashion! 


I went for a glitzy gray-to-blue metallic gradient on my nails.  The blue is actually a thermal nail polish, but I think because of the gradient you couldn't really tell.  Either that, or because it's winter my nails were just constantly super cold ;)  I sponged CDB Lacquer Angelic Demon and He Sees All on top of Zoya Ryan.  The two CDB Lacquers are from the Apocalypse Averted collection, which I own in its entirety and will eventually get around to swatching!  And because I was feeling glitzy, I put two little star studs on my pointer and ring finger nails.

The main reason we didn't get around to seeing The Force Awakens is because Maddie had never seen the original movies, and she wanted to see them first.  We did manage to watch the three films over the course of the two weeks that we spent together, but unfortunately we didn't see Episode VI until their last day with us.  So after they left, Derek and I FINALLY got to go see the new one together!  (I solemnly swear to see the next two episodes on opening weekend.  Waiting three weeks to see this one was agony for me!) 


I of course wore my Han Solo dress from Hot Topic.  And I figured that if Han Solo was a girl (Hanna Solo?), she would totally paint her nails to match her favorite outfit.  So I did just that!


I used Zoya Demetria and Ling, and Salon Perfect Oil Slick and Sugar Cube.


I was quite proud of the vests I painted on my thumbs. :3


Naturally, I did paint my nails to match my dress that I wore for the wedding in Jamaica, but I didn't take any pictures of the look.  It was a very simple mani - Zoya Zuza with an accent nail of China Glaze I Brake For Colour.  Since I've swatched both of those polishes on the blog already, I didn't really feel like taking photos of it for the blog.

Allison's nails were something new for me!  Her nails are usually very short, but she got some acrylic tips put on right before she came to visit us.  I've never painted acrylics before, nor such pointy stilettos!  There were a lot of exciting things I would have liked to do, but Allison prefers a more simple look, so we went with a black and silver French manicure using Oil Slick and Hi Ho Silver.


 I like interlacing fingers with someone when I do our nails together:


Ugh, please ignore the giant ugly cut on my knuckle.  There will be more details on my pink nails next week!

What do you think of all of this nail art?  Which look is your favorite?  What kinds of holiday designs did you wear during the holidays?

December 2, 2015

Christmas Crafting: Nail Polish Ornaments

Got any nail polishes that you love the look of but never wear and don't want to get rid of?  Do you own any Mentality nail polish that you don't feel safe wearing?  Or are you like me, and have a ton of polish and want to actually use some of it up?  Then I've got a craft that I think you'll enjoy!

 

I got this idea from Elizabeth of My World Sparkles Lacquers.  At first I was a little weary to dump out significant amounts of polish at a time, but then I was like "oh please, look at how many bottles of nail polish you have! Do iiiit."  So I bought a 12-pack of small glass ornaments from JoAnn Fabrics (I assume you can find these at most craft stores and pretty much anywhere with a good selection of ornaments) and decked them out!

Elizabeth used much bigger ornaments, so she set hers up on top of open mason jars while they dried.  Since the ornaments that I bought are so small (probably about 1.5" in diameter), I propped mine up on top of opened lotion bottles and their caps.


The process was simple, though a bit lengthy:
1. Pour polish into bulb
2. Swirl polish around, coating entire interior
3. Pour out immediate excess (back into polish bottle - no need to waste yet!)
4. Set ornament tilted downwards, so that no polish will drip out, and allow excess to gather
5. Pour out excess polish (at this point, it's probably thickened enough that you won't want to put it back into the bottle.  I laid out paper towels and newspaper.)
6. Set ornament upright
7. Repeat steps 4-5 if necessary
8. Set ornament upside down and allow to drip out. (Keep an eye on it, though - I let too much polish drip out of one of them and it ended up less opaque than I wanted it!)  Elizabeth put paper towels into her mason jars for this step, but I didn't really want to clean out all of my lotion bottles.  What I ended up doing was only dripping out one ornament at a time into an empty water bottle.
9. Add a second coat if necessary, and repeat steps 1-8 (but don't pour the excess back into the bottle in step 3 if you're using a different color!)

When layering different polishes in these, be sure to do it in the opposite order of painting your nails!  Apply glitters/toppers first, then the base color.

Since I was doing so many of these, I usually started the next ornament after step 3 of the previous one.  It was so much fun!  My dining room was filled with lots of odd scents between the opened lotion bottles and all of the nail polish!  Not exactly the smell I'm used to when decorating for Christmas. :)

Here's a video tutorial of my process:

 

I'm so excited to hang these on our tree this year!  Since we don't have a tree yet (it's in the mail!), I used a bobby pin and my regular light box to take photos of my lovely new ornaments.  Pretty crafty, eh?

Sinful Colors Twilight Twinkles and Sally Hansen CSM Hi Ho Silver
I actually bought Twilight Twinkles specifically for this craft!  I'd hoped that I would use most of it up, but there's still plenty left.  These small ornaments probably only use about 1/4-1/3 of a full-sized bottle of polish.  If you really want to use up a whole bottle of polish, either get bigger ornaments or do multiple ornaments in the same color!

Twisted Colors Elf Vomit and China Glaze White on White
I was hesitant to use Twisted Colors polishes in these ornaments, because sadly Twisted Colors has closed their shop, possibly forever.  But the three Christmas polishes that I got last year are just so perfect for these that I decided to sacrifice some future manis.

Jior Couture Son of a Nutcracker

Nicole by OPI Heavenly Angel and Zoya Mosheen
I considered adding a white background to this one, but I rather like it clear!  Hopefully I can place it strategically in front of a light bulb on the tree so the light can sparkle through.

Okay, I'm going to need to swatch this one soon.  It's amAzing.  All that density is in only two coats!  I'm sure that on the nail, one coat would be almost completely opaque.

Wet n Wild Rockin' Rubies and Sally Hansen CSM Red My Lips
Youch, my phone really messed this one up.  It's nowhere near this neon red in person - and it's actually quite sparkly!  But cameras hate the color red, as I've learned quite well over the past year.

Twisted Colors All Spruced Up and Spoiled by Wet n Wild Green to be Heard
I mean, how could I NOT use this one for an ornament?!  It's so perfect!

Wet n Wild Back Alley Deals and Sally Hansen CSM Blue My Mind
This is the one that I accidentally let too much polish drip out of.  Oops!  I still like it.

Wet n Wild Diamond in the Rough and Hi Ho Silver
The Wet n Wild polish is actually pretty black, but even two coats of it was super sheer in the ornament.  I chose to use a silver background because I figured black would be a bit too dark for a Christmas ornament!  (As in, literally too dark.  Not that I think black is too depressing or whatever.)

Twisted Colors Star of Wonder and Essie Style Cartel
Unghhh. So pretty!  It's much darker and more sparkly in person, but as always, dark colors + camera = bleh.

 
Jior Couture Means a Little Bit More and 
Creative Cuticles Nail Polish Please Have Snow and Mistletoe
I couldn't decide which of these glitters I'd prefer to use, so I mixed them!  I really like the glitter ornaments that I didn't add a background color to.  They look like snowglobes!


Wet n Wild 24 Carats
The little flakes don't show up so well in this shot, but this polish has some gorgeous red flakies in it!  It's super gorgeous and very Christmasy.

Have you ever done anything like this?  What are your favorite Christmas/holiday decorations?  Let me know in the comments!

December 23, 2014

ALL the Christmas Nail Arts!!!

I spent a lot of time this month NOT painting my nails.  But there were TONS of Christmas-themed nail art designs that I wanted to try out, so I decided to do ALL of them on my nails at once! :D

I used ALL the colors for this, and rather than describe them in order of appearance, I'll just list them all at the bottom of this post (which is going to be pretty photo-heavy).

Here's my left hand:


And my left thumb, because I was too proud of it to only show it at the horrible angle above:

 

I took inspiration from a few different sources for this nail art.  The Christmas tree and Santa coat are from this awesome nail art compliation off of FabArtDIY.com.  The Santa corset was inspired by Instagram user arita888.

On my right hand:


Okay, this did not go as I had planned.  The Santa hat (also inspired by the FabArtDIY list) turned out awesome, but my cable knit sweaters... Not so much.  I got the idea from this image, and found this YouTube tutorial on how to do it with gel polish.  What I actually used was 3D fabric paint on top of one coat of normal polish, then one coat of polish on top of that.  I think the technique was good, but the execution was ah... less than good.  It ended up looking far less delicate and much more messy than I'd been hoping.

And then, since I used my glue basecoat, my pointer finger design ended up falling off very quickly.  So I redid it with a different pattern:


This one turned out messy too, because I'm not so great at stamping.  It was perfect in my head: red, green, and silver snowflakes stamped over white and then matte-d for wrapping paper, and then a very sparkly purple ribbon.  The overall design was inspired by Instagram user anas_manis.

By the way - do you recognize the pattern on my left ring finger?  Like, REALLY recognize it?  I did that same design on my nails last Christmas!  Here's the original, complete with my super-short, pre-Biotin nails:


I loved this design so much that I decided to redo it this year.  It's a simple enough design that there isn't too much obvious skill improvement between the years, but it's always nice to have a visual reminder of how much nicer my nails are now. :)

Aaaand I absolutely adore my tiny little Christmas tree, so I decided to show off my nails in front of it. :D

 

This nail art took me a whomping three and a half hours and 18 nail polishes.  WOW.  But it was tons of fun, and I watched such Christmas classics as The Muppets Christmas Carol and American Horror Story while doing this! ;) 

Sigh.  My right thumb, middle, AND ring finger nail designs all fell off too, so I had to redo them!  I liked the Santa hat so much that I kept that design, but I decided against redoing the sweater designs and instead chose two more Christmasy patterns: a Santa face and a penguin!

 

 The Santa face turned out pretty nicely, though his eyes smeared a little when I put on my top coat.  And sorry about my messy cuticles - I was too excited to take these last two pictures to bother waiting until my cuticles were clean!


This penguin...  Poor little guy.  His right eye was a little bit lopsided, so I tried to even it out by making it a little bigger.  But instead, my hand slipped and now he's a mutant penguin with two and a half eyes.  I can't stop laughing every time I look at him. :) :(

Which design is your favorite?  Is there another Christmas/winter design that you love doing?  Let me know in the comments!  And Merry Christmas Eve :D 

As promised, here's a list of everything that I used for this:
Zoya Trixie
China Glaze Innocence
China Glaze White on White
Sally Hansen CSM Red My Lips
Sally Hansen White striper
Twisted Colors All Spruced Up
Zoya Nyssa
Zoya Ziv
OPI How Great Is Your Dane
OPI An Affair In Red Square
Essie Bikini So Teeny
Nicole by OPI Heavenly Angel
Heather's Hues Santa Baby
Finger Paints Ch-Art-Coal Black
China Glaze Fairy Dust
Spoiled by Wet n Wild Green to be Heard
Julep Bunny
Zoya Haven
Zoya Posh
Nina Ultra Pro Black
Finger Paints Master Muse
Cheeky Beauty Jumbo Plate 10
Scribbles 3D Fabric Paint in White
ULTA Sweet&Shimmer studs

Tossback Tuesday Nail Art

I'm making Tossback Tuesday a thing because I didn't want to wait for Throwback Thursday for this post!

If you've read my bio, you'll know that I got in to nail art in December of 2013.  It actually all started with a snowman.

As I was browsing reddit one day last December, I stumbled upon the nail polish community, which is called Reddit Laqueristas ("the C was sold to pay for polish").  There, I saw all sorts of adorable winter and Christmas themed manicures: penguins, presents, Santas, Christmas trees... and snowmen.  Lots of snowmen.  I decided to try my hand at one little snowman, though I didn't have any orange nail polish for the carrot nose.  And I was so not going to buy an orange polish just for one tiny detail in one manicure!

I also didn't have any nail art tools, except for some trusty orangewood sticks.  So that's what I used for the snowman's smaller features!  The body itself I painted on by wiping off most of the polish from the brush.


He's wibbly, but I was (and still am) very proud of him!  At this point in time, my nails were breaking like crazy from simple tasks like zipping my pants and carrying groceries inside.  So I had to keep them short.  (Though this was still fairly long for my nails, because I played the viola for 11 years and had to keep my nails SUPER short for that.)

Now, one year later, I decided to recreate the snowman in order to show off my progession!


The polishes that I used are all the same - Essie Bikini So Teeny with a coat of Maybelline Blue Marks The Spot on top - but the differences in white balance make them look very different.  And okay, my snowman is still a little bit wibbly, but I don't care!  Last year's snowmani (:D) took me close to two hours, and this year it was only about 45 minutes from basecoat to topcoat.  Now THAT'S an improvement!  

This year, I had an orange polish - ORLY Ablaze - for a carrot nose (and in the past few months, I have bought plenty of polishes with only one design in mind).  I also nixed one polish - Nicole by OPI Heavenly Angel - because I thought that looked a little bit too busy.  (But don't worry, you'll see those flakes used in a winter mani very soon!)

A little bit closer up on the snowman.

I'm very proud of my improvement - in nail art, in the length of my nails, in shaping my nails, and in the size of my nail polish collection.  In one year, I've jumped from owning 15 to 137 bottles of nail polish.  WOW.

Have you ever recreated your own nail art to see how your skills had increased?  How did it go?  Let me know in the comments!

September 12, 2014

Fifty Shades of Blue

Just kidding with the title - it's only eight shades of blue.

You may recall from my post on Zoya's Muse that I own a lot of blue nail polishes - specifically, sparkly blue-green-gold polishes.  If you want to talk about all shades of blue and all different textures, it's 32 blue polishes.  That's just about one third of my entire nail polish collection.

Some of these blue-green-gold polishes are so ridiculously similar in the bottle that it's a good thing I don't have them displayed near each other on a shelf.  You'd think I was on a quest to own as many dupes of the same color as possible.  Once you get them on the nail, though, most of them actually look a lot different.  There are two polishes that still look pretty similar, but neither is an actual dupe of the other.

After listing all eight of these colors in my previous post, I decided to paint them all together and then swatch each one, then throw all of them into the same post.  Don't worry, I didn't paint my nails nine times in one day!  I've been building this post for days now, a few colors at a time.  And, since I conveniently have two hands, I've only been painting each color on one hand.

Since this post has so many different colors in it, I'm not going to go into much detail about each one, nor will I share as many pictures of each color as I usually do.

Fifty Eight Shades of Grey Blue


No explanation really necessary here: this is each and every one of my blue-green-gold polishes all conveniently lined up on eight fingers!


And here's a shot of the bottles lined up, all looking ridiculously similar.

OPI "Austin-Tatious Turquoise"


Austin-tatious is one of my very oldest nail polishes; I'm pretty sure I've had this bottle since middle school.  I'm now a year and a half out of college.  It's a blue-purple metallic, but my camera wouldn't capture the purple no matter how I tried.  The purple is actually fairly subtle - it's not quite a duochrome.  Three to four coats - it's very sheer.

Zoya "Charla"

I dropped the bottle and mercifully it didn't break, but it did get smooshed on one corner :(

Charla is a really great metallic shimmer with a lot of green and gold undertones in the blue.  Of course, my camera couldn't pick up on the gold in indoor lighting very well, though you can see it in the top of the bottle.  Two coats yields perfect opacity.  Application is absolutely wonderful.  And cleanup is nice and easy - the color is light enough that it doesn't stain.

Nicole by OPI "Candid Cameron"


Candid Cameron is from the Modern Family collection - it's inspired by the character Cameron Tucker.  It's a blue-green duochrome metallic, and I ADORE it.  Once again, my camera didn't want to capture the duochrome-iness of it, but I think you can kind of see it in the bottle in this picture.  I matte-d the ring finger, but I'm not crazy about it - the matte really detracted from the gorgeous colorshift, really flattening the color.

Sinful Colors "Nail Junkie"


If I didn't get Nail Junkie as a gift almost two years ago, I'd think it was a dupe of Muse.  They're very similar - but definitely different quality.  Nail Junkie's glitters are much bigger than Muse's, and it applies a bit thicker than Muse does.  Actually, it's gotten quite goopy in two years; I used a few drops of nail polish thinner to make it easier to apply.  The glitter is in a clear base, so it's a good one to layer over a creme polish!  My ring finger has a base coat of Sinful Colors "Why Not?" in this photo; the middle finger has a matte top coat.

Zoya "Muse"


I've already done a complete swatch of Muse; you can find that post here. Muse is probably my favorite of these eight polishes.  It's so sparkly and the colorshift is so mesmerizing!

Zoya "Remy"


I've also already done a complete swatch of Remy.  You can find that one here.  While Remy comes out very dark on the nail, in the bottle is has the same gold-ish shimmer that a lot of these polishes have.  I'm not really sure what happens to the gold... maybe it only looks gold because of the way the light bends when it hits the glass bottle?

Nicole by OPI "That's What I Mint"


That's What I Mint is very interesting; I'd say it's the most unique texture I own.  If you're familiar with Zoya's Pixie Dusts, it's sort of like that, but there's definitely something different about it.  This is from the Gumdrops collection, and the tag describes it as a "matte 3D glitter."  The polish base is sort of matte, but the glitters are so sparkly that you can hardly tell.  My ring finger has a matte top coat, which totally flattened it; middle finger has my usual Out The Door, which flattens it a little; pointer and pinky have no topcoat, which I think helps it keep its sparkle.

Julep "Lizanne"


Lizanne is a lot more green than the rest of these polishes, and it showed up even greener on my camera.  It has a really nice, subtle sparkle in it (I wouldn't even call this a shimmer or metallic polish; it's really a creme with some shimmering in it).  Again, my camera hardly captured the shimmer, but you can see it in the bottle beneath the word "Julep."  Julep tends to have insufferably thick, goopy polishes, but Lizanne was actually pretty cooperative.  It's definitely among the thicker polishes in my collection, but it's not insufferable.  I rather like it - it reminds me of the Emerald City, somehow.

What's your favorite of these colors?  Do you think I'm ridiculous for owning all of them?  Let me know in the comments!