Pastel leopard print

Spring is officially here! Can't quite break out the shorts yet with all the SNOW on the ground, but at least I can start rocking some pretty pastel colours. I'm recently seeing a lot of mint paired together with light purple, and I think the combo is gorgeous, so today's featured colours are American Apparel Office (mint) and L'Esprit (purple) in the form of leopard print!

Look how pretty! I saw these items in stores, and I fell in love. Not really my style to wear these, but I can gaze from afar. The socks are from Club Monaco (which inspired the nails), and the bracelet is from Banana Republic.

I started with two coats of Office, then used the brush from China Glaze "Kalahari Kiss" to make some random splodges. Then I used a bobby pin and L'Esprit to make some more random splodges around the Kalahari Kiss ones. For a finishing touch, I dotted China Glaze "I'm Not Lion" on random spots.

The colours freaked out my camera pretty badly, and I actually had to end up using my iPhone to take these pictures as opposed to my usual digital camera - which is five years old, and its age is showing. Hoping to get a new one in the near future!

I like this picture in natural light the best (even though the colours look very blue). There's actually still daylight after I get off work now! Just waiting for the weather to warm up. Happy weekend, friends!

Gettin' my glow on

Who says glow-in-the-dark polish is just for Halloween? I had fun this week trying it out with American Apparel's glow-in-the-dark colour, Moon. This goes on sheer and glows the traditional fluorescent green. I used two coats over two coats of OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls. I haven't tried layering with other colours, but I'm fairly certain the base needs to be light for the glow to show. I originally had one coat of Moon, but I found two gave it extra glowing power.

I had some fun and painted little skulls on each nail. Looking back, they kinda look like some kind of skull jellyfish. Moon gives a semi-matte finish, and I really liked how it looked. After I painted on the skulls, I put a coat of Gosh matte topcoat over to mattify everything.

On my other hand, I had a different type of glow going on. One of the NEON variety! This is two coats of American Apparel's Neon Red.

My camera had a hard time getting the colour right. The second picture is more colour accurate, though it makes my hands look really red. I really loved the colour. Bright, but not eye-searingly so, and a very pretty shade. The consistency is a jelly/creme hybrid, and also dries to a semi-matte finish.

I've been doing really simple stuff lately as I'm going through exams. Please stick with me, I hope to get back into the groove of things soon! See ya!

Who needs silver and gold

When you have turquoise and gold! If there were any colours that were made for each other, it would be these two. What? Complimentary colours, you say? Nope, turquoise and gold trumps all.

This was my first attempt with striping tape, and honestly, I don't know if I'd use it again. This tape was so thin and fiddly, it took me forever to position and stick it down. Having said that, I don't think there's any other way to get such thin, clean lines. I was channeling a necklace that I recently bought from Forever 21.

Polishes:

Left to right: Joe Fresh "Sun Kissed", Essie "As Gold As It Gets", Essie "Turquoise and Caicos", American Apparel "Pacific Beach"

I did two coats of Sun Kissed, then one coat of As Gold As It Gets for a bit of extra sparkle (though it doesn't show up well). I worked one nail at a time, placing the tape down, one coat of Turquoise and Caicos, then two generous coats of Pacific Beach, and finally removing the tape while the polish was still wet for cleaner lines.    

 

Turquoise and gold bonus! You can tell this is an old picture because I didn't have proper lighting back then and I took all my pictures sitting at my desk. Now I take pictures in the bathroom. Progress.

This is three coats of Turquoise and Caicos, followed by one coat of Deborah Lippmann "Boom Boom Pow", then another coat of Boom Boom Pow, focusing on the tips. It reminded me of gold jewelery in a Tiffany box!

What do you think of these? Have you had any experience with striping tape? What is YOUR favourite colour combination? Thanks for reading! Until next time, friends!

Fall is when the leaves change colour

I've recently noticed that the leaves are getting really gorgeous. I have no idea when the peak time is/was/when it will be, but I'm definitely seeing more intense reds and oranges now. I tried to capture this colour shift that the leaves undergo during this time of year - definitely one of the best things about fall! I actually tried several different background colours for this design, but gray won out in the end. 

The gray came out a little thick and the colour changes are subtle, but all in all, I think this looks quite pretty! A lot more work went into this  than meets the eye. I first sponged on a gradient for the colour shift using my regular sponge method (I've lined up the colours in the same order that I used them, in the picture below). Then I used the polish brush from my Factory Grey to outline the leaf shapes and fill in the negative space. This made it a bit difficult to make many leaves on each nail - if I were to do this again, I'd probably try with a smaller brush. If you think there's an easier and better way I could have pulled this off, let me know! Maybe if I had a really small leaf-shaped hole punch, I could have used tape?

Polishes:

Left to right: Orly "Meet Me Under The Mistletoe", China Glaze "Harvest Moon", "Riveting", "Ruby Pumps", American Apparel "Factory Grey"

Hoped you like these, and have a good one!

I really like cats

I also really like drawing little kitties whenever I get the chance. It's become a common thing while looking through notes and papers, to find a kitty peeking out at me from the corner of a page.

I put my kitty related drawings together and found there is somewhat of a theme going on here. Either I really like gray/black cats, or I'm just lazy to give them any other colour. Actually, why don't we chalk it up to artistic choice.

Me petting a kitty, Kiki and Jiji from Kiki's Delivery Service, birthday cat

Polishes:

Left to right: Sally Hansen "White On", "Dorien Grey", American Apparel "Factory Grey", "7th and Alameda", Sally Hansen "Black Out"

I've always wanted to do a proper ombre manicure, and I recently realized that I had enough grays to finally do one. I guess it was only natural to connect my penchant for gray kitties with a gray ombre.

Where are my fellow cat and kitty lovers? UNITE!

Alice in Wonderland: Down the Rabbit Hole

"Well after this, I should think nothing of falling down stairs."

Let's all follow Alice down the rabbit hole! I chose to show a couple random things that Alice would have seen while falling that long way down. In hindsight, I would have painted some different patterns, like a patterned wallpaper maybe, but I'm pretty happy with how my stone backgrounds turned out.

Polishes:

Left to right: Sally Hansen "White On", "Dorien Grey", American Apparel "Factory Grey", "7th and Alameda", Sally Hansen "Black Out"

Left to right: Essie "Penny Talk", American Apparel "Rose Bowl", "Berry", "Malibu Green", Nubar "Swiss Chocolate"

I made the gradient on my thumb by painting 2-3 coats of my lightest grey, Dorien Grey (the spelling bothers me, but I still bought this for the name), and then sponging on the medium grey, Factory Grey. The stone details were made with 7th and Alameda and Factory Grey for different shades. Everything else is small detail brush work.

I'll leave links to other parts of the series at the end of my posts. I also have them all tagged under "Alice in Wonderland".

Alice in Wonderland Nail Art Series

• Cheshire Cat
• Big or Small
• Unbirthday 

Watercolour Drip Nails

I'd been wanting to do watercolour nails for a long time, but the technique I've tried where you drop acetone onto blobs of polish didn't create the effect that I wanted. While the acetone does make a neat ring effect in the polish, I wanted a bit of a more brushstrokey, splodgey  look. I think I've achieved that with my American Apparel sheer polishes.

The best thing is, these are super easy to do with some good jelly polishes. I'd like to make a proper tutorial for the watercolour and drip effect in the future, so let me know if that's something you'd be interested in!

Polishes:

Left to right: American Apparel "Manhattan Beach", "Summerland Beach", "Pacific Beach", "Redondo Beach", "Moonlight Beach", OPI "Don't Touch My Tutu", Sally Hansen "White Out"

Directions:

1. Start off with a white base. I used two coats of a sheer white, OPI "Don't Touch My Tutu" to keep the transparency, but I don't think a solid white base would make a difference with all the layers we'll be doing.
2. Take a jelly colour, and make random strokes and splodges.
3. Repeat with all of your colours until your entire nail is covered.   
4. Paint over everything with one coat of a sheer white. 

I really liked the resulting look, but I wanted to add some hard edges in there to break things up a bit. Then I remembered I haven't tried drip nails yet either, and this was definitely the perfect opportunity.

I loved it so much, I went for a full-blown drip mani.

Again, please let me know if you'd like to see a full tutorial for this! I'll be back next week with another "Alice in Wonderland" design. Happy Friday, and have a great weekend!

Nail Art: The Cat in the Hat for Makeup Savvy Nail Challenge

My friend over at Lacqueerisa informed me about Makeup Savvy's 15 Day Nail Challenge previously, and while I enjoyed looking at her entries, the timing wasn't right for me to get in on the challenges myself. However, seeing as the theme for the last challenge is "Anything!", I thought, well heck, maybe I can squeeze in one entry before it ends. I know I'm late to the party, but better late than never?

I saw "The Cat in the Hat" on my bookshelf the other day and remembered how much I loved this book. So came forth these themed nails.

My favourite nails

Pages of inspiration

Polishes:

Left to right: American Apparel "Peacock", Sally Hansen "Kook-A-Mango", Sally Hansen "Blue Away", Sally Hansen "White On", Sally Hansen "Black Out"

If there's anything you'd like to know how I did, just ask! In general, I painted the outlines before filling in the colour. Everything was done with nail art brushes.

Possibly more Dr. Seuess themed nails to come? Mmm green eggs and ham. Any other Dr. Seuss stories you think would make a good nail design?