Essie Braziliant

Hi! Hope all of you are having a great week! I for one am so glad that it is the weekend now.

I apologize for not posting this week. I had photos for posts but didn't get the chance to write something up. 

Anyways on to the polish! It's Essie Braziliant from this year's summer collection!

I picked up Essie Braziliant at a Rite Aid for $4.00 (on sale 50% off! :) ) earlier this summer. So, it is in one of those retail bottles with the sticker on the front. Before I went away I decided to put on this polish.

All photos are inside with natural light. I apologize for the quality. I wanted to get quick photos before I left. 

Essie Braziliant has great pigmentation. I believe this is two coats but I'm not sure I needed the second one.

Essie Braziliant is a great orange with slightly pink shimmer that flashes in the light. Truly fitting for the summer.

Have you tried Essie Braziliant? It is my favorite orange now (I do only have about three though). 

Hope you stop by again! I will have two more posts this weekend (that were suppose to be this weeks posts). 

Thanks for stopping by! What's your favorite orange?

On To The Next Polish,

Katie

Nail Art Spam Part Two

This is part two of a nail art spam on fake nails. The last post was part one if all went well with scheduling.

I'm not going to say much because I'm tired from the last four posts I just wrote. Enjoy and comment if you would like a tutorial or a full manicure. Or if you would like to know what I used to do any of these please let me know.

#9

#10 I realized this would look good both directions (starting at the base and starting at the tip) so there is an extra picture.

#11 I have no words for this

#12 Triangles all over

#13 Hello Kitty french or at the base. Hello Kitty is so awesome, she deserves three pictures.

#14 This is what I started with and it turned into...

#15 A Zipper Design!

Colors are inaccurate. It was lightened to show the design better.

Hope you enjoyed my spam of nail designs! I would love to know your favorites! Hope the scheduled posts went well!

On To The Next Polish,

Katie

Nail Art Spam Part One

Do you ever get in a nail polish rut? I did recently and spent three, yes three, days without wearing any sort of lacquer. It wasn't that I despised polish. I just could not think of what I wanted to wear.

During this rut, I created many nail art designs on fake nails that I thought I could share with you. I played with geometric shapes and just painted anything I thought of. I wasn't going for quality here so there are some mistakes. 

If any of you would like a tutorial or to see a full manicure with one of these designs feel free to ask in the comment section or shoot me an email. I've numbered them to make it easier.

Well, on to the spamming of nail art designs.

#1 A Plaid design

#2 Triangles in a zig zag sort of thing.

#3 More triangles this time in rows

#4 Now there are squares and triangles

#5 I don't know what to call this

#6 I probably should give up on naming

#7 Triangles diagonally

#8  Triangles with two colored french

Did you enjoy any of these? If not, don't stop by tomorrow for Part 2! 

On To The Next Polish,

Katie

Nail Art From The Vault: Poker Nails

Nail Art From The Vault: New Series

For a series, I thought it might be neat to show you some of my older nail art. I won't bear you of the darn right ugly though (some of my designs were just bad). However, I thought you guys might enjoy some of my previous work. You will notice the very short nails and less quality pictures for sure. But it would be a way to be able to post more (especially when I'm away which is now) and still show something interesting. (EDIT: I haven't continued this series yet but let me know if you enjoy this post and want more like this in the future).

Anyways, on to the polish. This nail art was inspired by playing cards. On each nail was a heart, diamond, spade, or club in red and black like those on cards. I called them my poker nails. :)  I clearly remember using Illamasqua DWS as a base. The symbols were done using those nail art pens from Sally Hansen (red and black).

At the time, this manicure was a big deal to me. I was so proud of myself. I used to used those Sally Hansen nail pens for every manicure. If you want pics of what they look like, just ask. I'd be glad to show you exactly what they look like if you don't know what I'm talking about.

Tips for the nail art pens from Sally Hansen:

Use a base coat and/or nail polish underneath. Otherwise it could very well stain your nails badly.

Make sure to apply a topcoat. A nice thing about the pens are that they are water based. This means that if you were to make a mistake you could simply run your hands underneath a faucet and start over. But it also means without a topcoat your hard work can wash away.

Finally, make sure your base for the design is dry. You sort of have to press down to get the design to show up. With a wet manicure you will get dents.

Close up of three fingers but it's kind of blurry.

Looking back I love this idea still. I'll have to try it again sometime. Illamasqua can be purchased from Sephora or the company's website. Their polishes are $14. Sally Hansen offers the nail art pens in numerous colors with different finishes. The black shown here is more of a creme while the red is a metallic. They are pricey at $8 a pop. This manicure was before I knew the wonders of Ebay nail art pens for cheap.

Hope you enjoyed my blast from the past. Do you like this idea for a series or should I stop now? You're probably thinking I should have kept my short and even nails. Don't worry if you're thinking this I've probably broken a few nails out in the wild right now. By now, I really miss the internet and have a lot of blog posts to read. I'll have issues with technology withdrawal for sure.

On To The Next Polish,

Katie

Green Swirls Nail Art

If you thought I was going to leave that pink alone from the last post, think again. Shortly after applying that pink, I decided to spruce it up with some nail art.

What to do? That's the question I asked myself. First I thought of a checkerboard design or something along that line. However, as I began to start on my right hand my plans did not go as I hoped.

So, I changed my mind. I painted over the mistakes on my right hand and started fresh. (I know I probably should have removed and redone the entire thing but what can I say I'm sort of lazy) I attempted to draw swirls on my nails. I've wanted to do some design like this for quite some time. I really liked the way it turned out.

For this nail art, I used NYC Hint Of Mint on top of Diamond Cosmetics Cotton Candy. My inspiration for the color choice was indeed candy. :)

Enjoy!

All photos are inside with artificial lighting. Click to enlarge.

To do this I used a brush, purchased at Michaels, and placed random swirls all over my nails.

Close up of left thumb.

Finally, to prove I'm rather lazy on my right I decided to paint bows instead of swirls. I know my hands didn't match. But isn't that sort of cool? No, it's not but it's the excuse I'm using to make myself feel better.

Close up of right thumb.

What do you think? I'm surprised how good the swirls came out. I really do like the color combination too. 

Thanks for stopping by! Have any other suggestions of nail art I could do? Leave them in the comments. 

On To The Next Polish,

Katie

Diamond Cosmetics Cotton Candy

Hello! Today I have a pretty pink polish from Diamond Cosmetics called Cotton Candy.

Cotton Candy is a dusty light pink with subtle shimmer. It applies  great. Pictures are shown with 3 coats.

All photos are inside with artificial lighting. The first picture shows the true color the best.

Diamond Cosmetics has a huge selection of great polishes in their line. Also, the polishes are very inexpensive given their quality. I purchased this pink when they had most polishes at $2.00. Now, they have jacked up to a whopping $2.50. :)

Cotton Candy is a wonderful staple pink. In my opinion, it has a dusty quality to separate it from the majority of light pinks out there. While I'm not a huge fan of pinks, I do enjoy this one. I love the price too. 

Pick up Cotton Candy and others from the line at their website.

As for posts this week, I have scheduled for one to go up on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday. If all goes well with blogger they will be up!

Anyways, do you own any Diamond Cosmetics polishes? Have any favorites to recommend? Hope your weekend is going well!

On To The Next Polish,

Katie

Lightning Bolt French Tape Nail Art

Hi! Recently I attempted a Lightning Bolt French manicure using the amazing tutorial from Nailside. All you need is tape and two nail polishes.

For this manicure, I used my trusty Wet 'n' Wild Black Creme and Zoya Trixie.

The tutorial by Nailside is great. It explains every step in detail. This design was very easy to complete in my opinion. Using tape as opposed to freehand is much quicker and allows for less mistakes.

French tip designs like this are especially useful in freshening up old manicures. For this mani, I had the black already on and tired of it. It even covers up tipwear and slight chipping on your nails.

All photos are inside, no flash, and with artificial lighting.

For my first try on one of these Lightning Bolt manicures I'm very pleased with the result. This is definitely a design I will wear again. Thanks to Nailside for the tutorial and inspiration of this manicure!

I hope to have another post up this weekend and I'm working on getting together scheduled posts for Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday as I'll be away without access to the internet.

Thanks for stopping by! Have you ever tried this or have plans to try it in the future? Hope your week went well!

On To The Next Polish,

Katie

Yankees Baseball Nail Art

Hi! Today I have some Yankees nail art that I did last week for a game I went to. Personally, I am a huge baseball fan and my favorite team happens to be the Yankees. However, I don't want to start some baseball controversy here though. And if you hate baseball or have no idea who the Yankees are, I don't mind but I hope you enjoy the nail art! :)

I apologize for the lack of posting. I'm going to try to have a consistent posting schedule eventually after my schedule calms down. 

Anyways, on to the nail art. I decided to paint the famous Yankees pinstripes (blue and white) on four of my nails leaving the ring finger as an accent nail. On my left hand the accent finger was the Yankees logo. On my right hand I tried to paint a baseball.

I started out with a base of China Glaze Snow (3 coats), featured in my last post. 

China Glaze Bermuda Breakaway was used for the pinstripes. I applied the stripes using a nail art brush bought from Ebay.

I  used a nail art pen for the Yankees logo (N and Y put together). On top of the logo, I applied China Glaze Nova (a hexagonal holographic glitter) with a nail art brush to give it some extra sparkle. 

I also did a very thin french tip on this accent nail with China Glaze Bermuda Breakaway.

All of these photos were taken inside with artificial lighting and no flash.

Closeup of the stripes. Looking back, I wish they were more neat.

This is my right hand which is less neat than my left hand. I wanted to show the different accent nail though. As you can tell, instead of the NY logo I put a baseball print on it.

I used a red nail art pen to create the stitching on the baseball on top of the base. Then to finish it off, I used Wet 'n' Wild Black Creme for a thin french tip.

 Close up of baseball.

I hope you enjoyed my baseball nail art! What's your favorite sport to watch(or team)? Thanks for stopping by!

On To The Next Polish,

Katie