Spring Color Swatches

I'm trying to make a comeback here, life has been very busy with many changes & getting around to blogging has fallen on the back burner. I haven't even been painting my nails much, it's been odd & a little sad, but when you have big projects on the line such as remodeling a home to sell, moving into a rental, taking real estate agent classes & tying things up to quit your current job, nail painting doesn't seem quite as important.

Anyhow, with spring already here & so many gorgeous spring colors dancing around in my head, I had to take time to paint.

Inspiration

I guess with the home remodel I have paint swatches on my brain & I wanted my nails to look like I was trying to pick the right color to go with, so I swiped some random "test swatches".

31DC2013 Day 8: Metallic

I chose two of my favorite polishes for today's challenge in Metallic, OPI's On her Majesty's Secret Service & Goldeneye. Half on one side, half on the other, with a navy line down the center.

I've found a new photo editor & have been having a bit of fun!

Where in the World Challenge: Colombia

#20 Colombia: There are 2 things that stand out to me about Colombia: for one, they have the legend of El Dorado & secondly they are know for being responsible for more than 60% of the World's Emeralds. Why do I love this? Well, I'm born in the month of May so emerald is my birthstone & El Dorado? well, who doesn't love a legend about a city of gold, what an awesome treasure hunt that would be!

So I thought a combination of gold & emerald would make a beautiful mani, what do you think?

I used OPI's Goldeneye & Nubar Greener to get this very simple but very gorgeous color combo look:

Inspired by Jewelry

Today is a short post as I was inspired by a piece of jewelry. During spring & summer the Aqua/Gold look can be seen in fashion everywhere & so why not on my nails?

Inspiration

I used OPI Goldeneye as my base & hand painted the aqua pattern with acrylic paint.

indoors

outdoor sunlight

Christmas Holly, inspired by Nailside:

I saw this lovely idea from Nailside & had to give it a go. It also gave me an excuse to go pick up OPI's Goldeneye from the James Bond collection that I'd been wanting since it came out :)

I used Goldeneye on all my nails except the ring finger, for that I used OPI Jade is the new Black as my base color & made the little "clouds" with OPI Live and let Die. Acrylic paint was used for the accented holly berries.

This is probably my last Christmas design & I'm very happy with it. I want to wish you all a very MERRY CHRISTMAS and a HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas...

...but if the white runs out, I'll drink the RED! Actually, I would probably drink the red first as I do prefer it. Anyways, this is not a white Christmas manicure, but a red one & I had just found that joke the other day on Twitter so I thought it would be funny (insert giggle here)! In any case, it did inspire this simple red & gold mani so I figured I should post it.

I used my Butter London Pillar Box Red as my base color. I then did a side swipe of this pretty gold I found a long time ago, the brand is Pastel & the color is 400, but I can't find any reference to this online so I added a picture. It kinda has the same effect as the luxeffects do, just a light gold glitter. To enhance a little better added a gold line using acrylic paint.

Outside sunlight

Indoor lighting

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Fall colors to be thankful for!

Just a simple post with a simple combination of fall colors that make me smile, so I put them in a row. Starting with W7 Metallic Saturn, then OPI Every Month is Oktoberfest & finishing off with W7 Metallic Saturn. I took lots of pictures because it was kinda hard to capture the colors just right, so you will see some  indoor lighting, outdoor & direct sunlight. These colors are very rich & make my fingers look expensive, hehe :-)...ENJOY!!!

Indoor

Outside, some sun

Outside indirect sun

Direct sun

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LDTTWC Day 1 - I should have been born in...

Today is the first day of yet another brilliant nail art challenge created by neverlandnailblog & sponsored by Nail Polish Canada. I say this about each nail art challenge she has created, but this one I am truly excited about & its just the best challenge ever.

For Day 1 I chose the Victorian Era. Now there are various times I could have chosen, but I have always thought of the Victorian era as being romantic & elegant. When I think of the Victorian era I think of lace, roses & elaborate elegant patterns. One of my favorite movies is set in Victorian time, Little Women, I did a design inspired by that movie here. Queen Victoria was such an iconic part of British history, the dresses worn by the queen, & other ladies of the time, were simply lovely. She was a mother of 9 children & earned the nickname "the grandmother of Europe" she must have been quite an inspiration & brought many years of peace during her reign. I just love how everything from the Victorian era looks so elegant, romantic & lovely.

Portrait of a young Queen Victoria

There were a few designs rolling around in my head, I had done a pretty vintage design a while back that was inspired by Robin Moses & I noticed a couple other ladies did something similar. This would have fit in perfectly with the era that I chose. I also had wanted to do lace nails using real lace, but my attempts failed, either I have the wrong lace, the wrong glue, or just insufficient patience, either way it wasn't happening this week. So then I found a lovely Victorian wallpaper design that I decided to freehand as best I could.

I used one layer of Revlon Gold Get 'em for my base, then used some Blue & Gold acrylic paints for the design. I put a "soft" focus on my pictures to give it that vintage feel, I wanted to take pictures with this lovely antique, sorta Victorian looking pendant I own cause I thought it complimented the design nicely.

Gold Foil wraps:

I had tried my very first nail wraps a few weeks ago, see here, & I actually really liked them. Naturally I wanted to try some more, so I decided I would search eBay for some cool & cost effective designs that might be hard to find & therefore more unique. I bought a few different ones, one of which was a simple gold foil that I thought was pretty neat looking even though it technically isn't a design, it really looks quite impressive when you put it on. I placed the wraps on clean fingernails, no base or top coat, they look really nice & I'll let you know how well they perform. Now the Sally Hansen wraps that I tried lasted about a week, so being that these only cost a tiny percentage of the price I paid for my Sally's I'm not expecting the same performance, but we'll see what happens.