Bubbles!

Nothing to Disclose

Hello my lovelies!

GUESS WHAT.

You didn't guess. I can tell.

Fiiiiine.

This is my 100th post! I have survived 100 posts! You have survived 100 of my posts! We should drink to this. I'll go get us some wine. I hope you like sauvignon blanc, because I hate champagne.

Kanpai!

Much better. Okay, onto business! I've gotta catch up on my Follow the Devil ABC Challenge prompts, I've been away for a whole three weekends! First up: B, for bubbles.

I cannot lie, I sort of hate these. I mean, the base polish is two beautiful, amazing coats of Teal Another Tail, the polish with which I'm convinced KBShimmer is going to take over the world. Words alone cannot express this polish. If you are in the States, hie thee to the KBShimmer store. If you are in the rest of the world, stalk Harlow & Co for the next restock. You need this in your life.

But then I failed at making nice bubbles (like, I kind of just can't do them??), and stuck some pearls on it for good measure. So now it's gaudy and weird. The little seashell, though, I really like. I got it from The Nail Room, which stocks a small assortment of Japanese nail art supplies right now-- I'm hoping their stock will keep growing, because I will not hide my lusting after some of the creations of Japanese nail artists like @hana4 and @oshimanails (who runs The Nail Room) and @nailsalonavarice. It's so hard to find their dainty supplies, though, and I don't speak Japanese... so yeah... hurrah for The Nail Room!

The pearls are kind of driving me nuts. I'm touching them now and their roundness is getting to me.

Zoom the above picture, you must, just bask in the glass fleck beauty of this polish, just do it!

Polishes used:

KBShimmer - Teal Another Tail

Duri - Rejuvacote (base coat)

la couleur couture - 2013 (top coat)

white acrylic paint

pearls from Born Pretty Store

seashells from The Nail Room

nail glue

Colour blocking for you tomorrow, denim for you on Sunday, and I should be all caught up! Hooray!

~*~*~*~*~* SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT TIIIIME *~*~*~*~*~

I have been invited to join The Digit-al Dozen! You'll notice I've put a page up at the top of my blog; it leads to a listing of all the other talented ladies who form part of this beautiful, charming group. Go check out their work, would ya? And I'll have themed nails for you starting October 14th! :D 

xo,

J.

PS: I'm still a mucus machine, in case you were at all curious.

Triangular Rhinestones from Born Pretty Store + Another Guest Post!

 Press Sample

I have a bit of a special post for you lovelies tonight! And not just because I went oval-ish with my nails aaaaAAAAHHHHHH

Born Pretty Store were kind enough to contact me about reviewing products, and I had to jump on these amazing little triangular rhinestones (#17): 1 Box Shiny Candy Colorful Rhinestones Geometric Shape Acrylic UV Gel Nail Art Decoration! Aren't they precious? At 1.5mm, they are definitely on the tiny side, and you'll need some patience working with them, but this look took me about 20 minutes per hand, so definitely not the same ballgame as glitter placement. (At the link above, #18 are 2mm triangles, which might drive you less nutso to place on the nail.)

Pardon the index finger, not sure when/how that happened. :/

This isn't the first time I've ordered from Born Pretty for my nail art needs-- I've purchased from them twice before. Free worldwide shipping is definitely slow shipping (usually about 3 weeks), but I haven't had a package go AWOL and my orders are always correct, which boggles the mind when you consider how many products they stock. They are a fixture in the nail art community for a reason!

This look was simple: paint 3 coats of My Vampire is Buff, apply a NON-QUICK-DRY topcoat where needed, use a dotting tool dabbed in some topcoat to pick up and place the rhinestones, and seal with quick-dry topcoat when done. It's much more subtle than most of the nail art I do, but I'm kind of digging it! They look like Technicolor four-leaf clovers!

AND GUESS WHAT-- I did another guest post! This time, over at Tips and Topcoat! Lou is incredible, you really need to check out her work. Click here to see the post, and again, give her blog some love!!

Polishes used:

OPI - My Vampire is Buff

Born Pretty Store - 1.5mm triangular rhinestones (#17)

Duri - non-yellowing topcoat

la couleur couture - 2013 (quick-dry topcoat)

dotting tool

I'm going to visit family and friends in Montreal until the 29th, so posting will likely be sporadic. I have shipped myself a box of polish to use while I'm there (oh, don't you even judge, you know what it's like), so I promise to at least have posts of SOME sort for you-- likely straight-up swatches (gasp).

AND DON'T FORGET: if you decide to buy these rhinestones (or anything else) from Born Pretty Store, use my discount code ABCQ10 for 10% off your order!

xo,

J.

Elephant!

Nothing to Disclose

I finally got some time to do more detailed painting. And while I think the trees are kinda meh, I do like how Mr. Elephant turned out. :)

I wanted to do elephants ever since I did the kurta design, with its little embroidered elephants. Elephants are smart and sensitive and huge and awesome. So yeah.

This is all acrylic paint on a base of Gobi-- which is, of course, a desert, not a savannah. But I liked the tan sort of colour with its slight holo and green shimmer (you get some of the green shimmer in these photos, but the holo dies in my light box). It's sort of an enigmatic nail polish, constantly looking like something sort of new. It was an iffy choice for this project, because it's so low-contrast to what I painted, but you live and you learn!

Polishes used:

Duri - Rejuvacote (base coat)

Elevation Polish - Gobi (shop is in maintenance mode until the evening of 31 July)

la couleur couture - 2013 (top coat)

acrylics in every imaginable colour

teeny detail brush

SO, BIG NEWS! You may notice something new in my right sidebar! That is correct, Born Pretty Store has been kind enough to generate a coupon code for my readers!! Next time you're in need of nail art supplies, I strongly recommend you mosey over and take a look at their selection, as it's pretty astonishingly vast. On checkout, just use code ABCQ10 for 10% off your order, no expiry date! This is not an affiliate code or link-- I get no part of the sale-- but if enough people use my specific code, then Born Pretty will give me a gift certificate to giveaway to you lovelies, and I like giving you guys presents! <3

I'm next working on a triplets nail project with two very talented Instagram ladies, so stay tuned for that either tonight or tomorrow!

xo,

J.

Rhinestone Skittlette!

Nothing to Disclose

Tonight I have something blingy for you!

I recently read Marta's wonderful tutorial on skittlette manicures and thought, you know what, I want to give that a try! And then I promptly overdid it.

For this look, I started with a base of My Vampire is Buff, followed with dots in Tempest and a pinkie in Once In a Lullaby (four coats! It's not a very dense glitter, but it IS lovely). I found the rhinestones at Born Pretty and affixed them on a thick coat of Gelous, topped with top coat.

I realize that the pinkie is supposed to be the blingiest and the middle two fingers are supposed to be the intermediates, and I appear to have inverted that order, and it's a whole hunk of hot mess as a result, but I like it anyway. And you know why? RAINBOWS, THAT'S WHY.

Polishes used:

OPI - My Vampire is Buff

Cult Nails - Tempest

Maya Cosmetics - Once In a Lullaby

Born Pretty rhinestones

Gelous

Duri - Rejuvacote (base coat)

la couleur couture - 2013 (top coat)

'Traditional' nail art is sort of boring to me, but I do like skittlettes because they offer a lot to look at and you can use a number of beautiful polishes without cluttering them up too much. I may start introducing this look into my repertoire a bit more, perhaps in lieu of my Swatch Saturdays (Skittlette Saturdays!) -- any thoughts on that?

xo,

J.

Traffic Cone Easter Eggs!

These were not supposed to be Easter eggs. They were just supposed to be a palate-cleanser after all the intense cross-eyes-inducing painting I've been up to over the last few days.

I wanted to try out a horizontal version of a simple but really striking look I'd seen over at Chalkboard Nails: Sarah's Reptilian Dot Nail Art. Instead, I just have the world's brightest, most orange Easter eggs gracing my fingertips.

There is no grass in this winter wasteland I call home; this blanket will have to suffice.

I began with a base of Sarychev, with which I am officially in LLLOOOOOVVVEE. Oh, it's so gorgeous. It's also quite sheer, and I would have stopped at 3 coats if I didn't have nail bruises on my left hand from a drawer mishap last month. I like my jellies squishy, which typically involves them being slightly less than opaque. At 4 coats, which is what I used here, it's opaque but also quite thick.

I then taped off the upper halves of my nails and painted This New Sun on the bottom halves (one good coat was plenty). I'm excited to try this polish on its own sometime. I then whipped out my dotting tools and came to realize that I suck at dotting. They're all different sizes!! The large size dots are Cu Blue, which is another polish that deserves its own post; it looks purplish here but is actually a royal blue jelly with major copper shimmer! The small dots on the bottom are Action, which I doubled-up on for opacity but that still didn't quite go according to plan.

The opalescence of the Mylar shows up best in the shade-- these are actually translucent orange circles, not green!

The upper 'dots' are Mylar rounds from the Born Pretty store, which I stuck on with little dabs of topcoat. Positioning these in a way where they were even remotely in line was the hardest part of this look. The second-hardest part was making sure that I was picking up only 1 round at a time instead of several clinging together.

Sorry about the weird background, this was the best sun-shot by a mile. Look at the lusciousness of Sarychev! Look at the juicy glimmer of This New Sun! Man, I love orange polish.

That Mylar round is winking at you!

Polishes/supplies used:
Elevation Polish - Sarychev
Pahlish - This New Sun
Girly Bits - Cu Blue
Essie - Action
Born Pretty Store - mini Mylar rounds
OPI - Nail Envy Matte (base coat)
INM - Out the Door (top coat)
Poshé (top coat)

I have so many ideas for what to do next, we'll see how many I can get done before I run out of steam! ;)


J.

Retro Spaceships! (Kind Of.)

I have a fun one for you today! Unfortunately, it is irredeemably cloudy out, so my photos aren't their best, but hopefully it's possible to get the gist of it.

I had this idea in my head as a pure exercise in geometry, but my partner saw them upon completion and announced they looked like old school space capsules. Which is, I guess, kind of true! So I added some dots to the background at the last minute, to resemble stars, and called it a day.

I love this thing.

I started with a base of Cape Liz (3 coats to opacity); lovely formula, unfortunate that I couldn't get a photo that shows its beautiful multi-coloured glass fleck finish. I then sponged Marble on the top halves, and learned the hard way that it is IMPOSSIBLE to clean up this particular polish-- it just disintegrates into a million little sparkles that stick to your skin forever (augh).

I then cut out the shapes in tape and stuck those pieces of tape on my nails, followed by two coats of Euphoria and the swift removal of the tape while the polish was still wet. Lastly, I glued on the little studs, made the little white dots with a small dotting tool, and covered the whole thing in Glitter Food and topcoat.

And a super-overexposed photo to show you the holographic goodness of Euphoria. (It also shows up in the sun, but is too subtle for cloudy conditions.)

Polishes used:

Cirque - Cape Liz

Spa Ritual - Marble

Wonder Beauty Products / Superchic Nail Lacquer - Euphoria

Konad - Special Stamping Polish (White)

Born Pretty Store - 1.5mm silver studs (affixed with Orly nail glue)

Nail Pattern Boldness - Glitter Food

OPI - Nail Envy Matte (base coat)

New York Color - Grand Central Station (top coat)

Hoping to do something really awesome for the end of this week, stay tuned!

J.

PS: DUN DUN DUNNNN: