Easter Calla Lily

Easter is almost here & in the spirit of holy week I wanted to do something with the Calla Lily. Not wanting to automatically grab the usual pale spring colors that I gravitate toward at this time of year, I instead picked my new Butter London polish I just received called 'The Black Knight' & it's gorgeous! It's a black base with pink, blue & silver glitter, so it's very pretty & contrasted nicely with the hand painted calla lilies.

Where in the World Challenge: France

#14 France: Ooo lala, I've been waiting for this, there are so many beautiful & romantic things about France that make you close your eyes, tilt your head & sigh. Paris was the last stop my husband & I had on our 2 week honeymoon in 2007 & it was just as lovely as I thought it would be. The food, the wine, the architecture all contributed in creating a sort of romantic nostalgia I'll never forget.

I used one coat of Zoya Pandora, then did the newspaper effect on all my nails. I created the details of the Eiffel Tower & script "Je t'aime" on my thumb & ring finger using acrylic paint. I used an aging film on all the photo's to give it that nostalgic look.

Here I am in 2007 in the "City of Love"

St. Patrick 2013

Just a short blog, with a St. Patty's day nail design. I got the idea of the lines from string/line art I used to do as a kid where you take a board & hammer nails into it & you pair up the nails by tying string creating a shape, or you draw dots on paper & pare them up using a ruler. They have earrings made like this now & I always think they look so pretty.

Anyways, I used Nubar Reclaim as my base on all but the ring fingers, for them I used OPI my Boyfriend scales walls. I then made some alternating green & orange lines (to reflect the Irish flag) & a very simple 4 leaf clover.

Hope y'all had fun over the weekend, I leave you now with an Irish Prayer:

May God grant you always

A sunbeam to warm you, 

A moonbeam to charm you.

A sheltering angel

So nothing can harm you...

Laughter to cheer you, 

Faithful friends near you, 

And whenever you pray,

Heaven to hear you.

Polish Days March: Vintage

This is my first entry for Polly Polish's Polish Days & I was really excited to do something vintage. Vintage is a theme I love & have done several posts here, here & here to show a few. I love romanticizing about days gone by & vintage patterns are all so lovely, it's hard to settle on any one design. I decided for this post to go kinda Retro, a little more current vintage, circa 60's maybe? I found this cute picture of some retro dandelions & thought it was perfect (also, easy, as I was strapped for time & already posting this quite late).

Inspiration found here

Anyhow, I used some alternating pastel green (NEELY) & blue (BLU) from the new Zoya spring collection. I put a layer of my new clear holographic top coat called Starlight on top for some shine :-) I then used an ultra fine sharpie for the lines & acrylic paint for the dots. I think it turned out kinda whimsical!

full sun, with soft focus

full sun with soft focus

I added a 60's Polaroid film to this one for effect.  

Starlight=HOLOTOPIA

Oh my goodness I have found something so amazing that I have practically double my nail polish stock with just one purchase. I found a sheer holographic nail polish top coat that can be worn over any color, essentially making any polish a holographic polish. It's called Starlight & is made by Issa & sold on her Etsy shop Starlight and Sparkles, but I have affectionately dubbed it "HOLOTOPIA"!!!

It's got the most holographic effect that I have ever encountered, and after a disappointing purchase of the most highly recommended Gosh Holographic where I had all but given up on continuing to grow my holo collection, it has been a welcome surprise.

Bellow I have a few different swatches of the polish over a couple different colors to show it's incredible effect & diversity:

Over Nubar Greener

Over Nubar Greener

Over Orly Coquette Cutie

Over Orly Coquette Cutie

Over Orly Nite Owl

Over Zoya PixieDust NYX (ring finger)

Over Orly Nite Owl & Zoya PixieDust NYX

Where in the World Challenge: Netherlands

#13. Netherlands: I am actually part Dutch, on my Dad's side, his last name is van Blarcom. Although I have yet to make it to Holland & explore my roots, I knew what I wanted to do on my nails for this challenge. No, it's nothing original, pretty much every one of the ladies did it, TULIPS!

I used a polish from the Betsey Johnson Sephora by OPI, called Son of a Gun, for my base. It's a sorta gray metal with green undertones, in the pictures it came out looking quite green actually, but it's very subtle in person. As usual, acrylic paints were used for the detail, and I also had fun with photoshop filters for some added romance:

Where in the World Challenge: South Africa

#12. South Africa: I was nervous about this one cause I knew I wanted to do something tribal & I've seen many tribal designs out there in the Nail Art world & they all look so pretty, but it's really out of my comfort zone. But I do love a challenge & so I set about looking for inspiration.

Inspiration (found on Google, I do not own this picture)

I used several colors for my base & acrylic paints for the detail:

Played with Picasa photoshop a little here:)