Nostalgia

Nothing to Disclose

Hello lovelies!

I've been largely without inspiration for the past few days. Which is an issue, with Digit-al Dozen week coming up (that was a FAST month)! I did produce a simple floral look, which I posted to Instagram and Facebook. But today I do have something for you!

Yes, more lace moons. But on a multichrome polish called Nostalgia, how could I do otherwise?!

The hair on my nail in this photo and the next drives me bananas. BANANAS.

This look began with three easy coats of Nostalgia, which I did without using black undies. (You don't need them for I Love Nail Polish multichromes, though using them would let you get away with one to two coats of the polish instead of three.) Multichrome polishes can often be underwhelming, taking all kinds of weird hand poses to show a colour shift. NOT THIS ONE. Look at these photos! Swoon!

The design was done using white acrylic paint, which I should have thinned with water but did not, and a combination of a liner brush, a script brush, and a tiny detail brush. It was inspired by this image, which I found on Google. I didn't want to do a more complicated lace pattern, lest I cover up more of the beautiful base polish. Seriously, this one takes my breath away.

Polishes used:

I Love Nail Polish - Nostalgia

Duri - Rejuvacote (base coat)

Glisten & Glow - HK Girl (top coat)

white acrylic paint

liner brush

script brush

tiny detail brush

Today we finally got a break in the frigid cold we were having; yesterday it was down to -39˚C with the wind chill (-38˚F). Are you in the part of North America currently being walloped by the huge winter storm? If so, I hope you're keeping as warm as possible! Protect those fingers and toes and noses and ears!

xo,

J.

SWATCH SATURDAY: Dandy Nails - Chilled Down

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Hello lovelies! Two posts in one day, totally off the hook over here!

Just a simple swatch this time, because I was in the mood for it. Accent nail is inspired by a photo Vanity Projects posted of a Lexi Martone mani that I LOOOOOVE.

Base is three coats of Chilled Down (could have gotten away with two, but taking photos in a lightbox is very demanding in terms of visible nail line). I love this polish. I love polishes that look speckled, and this one reminds me of a bird's egg. A really awesome bird's egg.

Accent nail was done with Shirin, then acrylic paint in blue and white, plus some 1.5mm rhinestones from Born Pretty.

Polishes used:

Dandy Nails - Chilled Down

Mentality Nail Polish - Shirin (I have been ADDICTED to this polish, lately!)

butter LONDON - Nail Foundation (base coat)

Glisten & Glow - HK Girl (top coat)

acrylic paint

liner brush

1.5mm rhinestones from Born Pretty Store

Any seasonally-appropriate designs you'd like to see me do? I don't much celebrate Christmas so it can be hard for me to come up with nail art for the season. If you have any ideas, send them my way!!

xo,

J.

Puzzle Pieces

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Hello lovelies!

Today's post is all about my Follow the Devil ABC Challenge prompt: P for 'puzzle'.

This is a pretty straightforward look. It took waaay longer than it should have, though.

I started with a base of two easy peasy coats of Where the Wild Things Are. It's a beautiful polish, but it's subtle, so you won't get the full gorgeousness of it through my photos. There's a macro down near the bottom that will hopefully help with that. I am always drawn to greyed-out blues / blue-toned greys like this. Add in tiny silver glitters and iridescent glitters and micro-shards and, well, you have a polish with my name written all over it. Plus it applied like a charm, requiring almost zero cleanup.

I then painted on the squares in white acrylic paint. And here's where it took forever: I had to go over them three times to get them to opacity. (And they still aren't COMPLETELY opaque.) Argh! Once done, I used a dotting tool to place the 'interlocking' bits of the puzzle pieces in mostly random order. So long as you have a dot per side of a square, you're good to go.

Finally, here's the macro I promised you. Check out the golden/green shimmer, too!

Polishes used:

Cadillacquer - Where the Wild Things Are

Duri - Rejuvacote (base coat)

Glisten & Glow - HK Girl (top coat; two coats to smooth out the bumps from the dots)

white acrylic paint

one-stroke brush for painting the squares

dotting tool

This cold I've got just won't kick the bucket. I'm a snifflemonster. I'm making tons of soups to try to rectify this, and I'm sleeping like a sloth, but still I sniffle. SNIFFLEZ 4 LYFE.

xo,

J.

Between Two Fir Trees

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Hello lovelies! How are you doing today? It's -40˚ here (which is the same in Celsius AND Fahrenheit -- did you know that?) with the wind chill, so I'm hiding out inside by the fireplace and not moving if I can at all help it. ;)

Today's mani was a bit of a saga. It started chipping almost right away, which has nothing to do with the base polish -- Between Two Fir Trees, a stunning nude-pink base with speckled green and gold metallic and holo hex micro/mini glitter -- and everything to do with the layer of Glitter A-Peel I used. Something about that base and my nails are no longer getting along, it's like trying to stick two magnets of the same polarity together...

Anyway! Between Two Fir Trees went on amazingly well, especially given its pale base; two medium coats was all I needed for opacity. It isn't very rough, but you'll probably want two coats of top coat for better smoothness. I then used the name of the polish kind of literally and used acrylic paints for the fir trees, the snow, and the black cable between the trees. The little lightbulbs are done with nail polish.

I'm actually really digging this one. It wasn't super laborious to do, but it's nonetheless very cute. It helps that I had such awesome inspiration! I ordered four Cadillacquers altogether and this made me very excited to use the other ones...

Polishes used:

Cadillacquer - Between Two Fir Trees

Nina Ultra Pro - Punki Pink, Orange Flame, Solar Flare, Lime Light

Nail Pattern Boldness - Glitter A-Peel (base coat)

la couleur couture - 2013 (top coat)

acrylic paints

detail brush

long striping brush

Are there any seasonal designs you'd like to see me take on? I have one ABC Challenge prompt for this weekend (P for Puzzle), and then next week is Digital Dozen week again (yay!), but I'm totally curious as to what kinds of things you'd like to see throughout December. I'm a bit of a Grinch if I'm being totally honest, and don't much celebrate Christmas, so sometimes these things are not obvious to me...

xo,

J.

Graffiti Gashin

Press Sample

Hello lovelies!

Today's post features a water decal, something new to me! Let's jump right in, I'll explain as I go.

This look is loosely based on a baseball cap I have, which a long-ago ex-coworker of mine painted with 'gashin' in neon pink in a (much better realized) graffiti style. I will never wear that cap, COULD never wear that cap, but I nonetheless love it to bits.

So when David at Moon Sugar Decals, a newer water decal company, contacted me to do a review for them, I hopped on the opportunity to use these spray can decals. I started with two coats of Moody Blues, one of the new piCture pOlish collaboration shades, and then used a cotton bud to daub on white acrylic paint on the pinkie before applying the water decal. Like all water decals, you trim the decal from the page to the size you want it (I cut off the bottom bit so that I could put it on the bottom half of my nail like this), plop it in some warm water, wait about 30 seconds, then fish it out, slide the decal off the backing, and place it on the nail. 

Now, I don't have a ton of experience with water decals, so I'm not sure how most of them are. I found the Moon Sugar decal to have the thickness of a regular sticker, minus the stickiness (obviously). It was therefore a touch rigid, which meant that I had to hold down the edges for a while to make sure they stuck flush to my (rather curved) nail. It took two coats of top coat to smooth it out, but nothing extreme in that regard. The upside to the thickness is that there's no chance of ripping or distorting, which I hear is a thing that can happen with water decals. And removal was pretty easy, but you'll probably want an orange stick to scrape off the plastic film if you're using full-nail decals. 

One of the really neat things about Moon Sugar Decals is that they do custom work! So if you've always wanted, say, your logo, or a particular lace pattern, or miniatures of your favourite (non-copyrighted) artwork, or anything like that -- the sky's the limit!

Here is a macro of Moody Blues to show you that, while extremely subtle, there are in fact tiny pink sparks in the blue glass fleck base:

Polishes used:

piCture pOlish - Moody Blues (the pink bits are way more apparent in the bottle than on the nail)

Nina Ultra Pro - Punki Pink (on top of white, for the lettering)

Duri - Rejuvacote (base coat)

la couleur couture - 2013 (top coat)

white acrylic paint

cotton bud

Moon Sugar Decals in spray can (they do ship worldwide, and shipping in free/cheap!)

tweezers for manipulating the decal

This was a fun mani to do! Even if I learned that I'm crap at graffiti lettering. I actually enjoy how the G and the A came out, though they aren't very graffiti-esque...

I have a cold, I'm all stuffed up!! It's the worst! Anybody else sharing a similar affliction? I hope you get better soon~

xo,

J.

Winter Skittle

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Hello lovelies!

Tonight I have a skittle for you, which is a phenomenon relatively unheard of, from me.

I was running low on inspiration and so I thought it might be nice to indulge in The Season and do a winter/holiday-theme skittle. It helps that we've received a foot of snow over the past 24 hours and all I really want to do is curl up in bed with hot cocoa and never set foot outside ever again...

I started with a base of two careful coats of All Bidness, a black linear holo with gold flakes (I took some photos in direct light to show the holo, and others in indirect light to show the flakes). So here's the thing-- it was crazy thick. I pre-ordered a few CbL polishes and all of them are thick thick thick. I don't know if this is unique to the pre-order session I took part in, but I needed to let you know. Some polish thinner should fix everything up just fine, though, and in all other respects these polishes are lovely.

I then painted on all the designs with white acrylic paint and a combination of various striping and detail brushes. Yes, I realise that I have an eight-pointed snowflake, a thing that Does Not Exist. It occurred to me after the fact, thank you for not passing too hard a judgment on my poor soul. ;)

Polishes used:

Colors by Llarowe - All Bidness (the holo is stronger than my photos show!!!)

Duri - Rejuvacote (base coat)

la couleur couture - 2013 (top coat)

white acrylic paint

liner brush

detail brush

I am seriously so low on inspiration these days, I have no idea why. I think it's because all of my mental energy is going into finding myself a place to live, come January, AND finding myself a job to afford a place to live. Ay carumba. It's a mess.

xo,

J.

Purple One-Stroke Flowers

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Hello lovelies!

My title today is sort of unimaginative, but I'm running down to the wire on getting this out today (well, MY today), which is when I said I would! Also I'm suspiciously and mysteriously tired. I think I overslept. There are worse things in life.

I still can't one stroke to save my bloody bloomin' life. Truly cannot. But I keep trying! Maybe I should borrow a book from the library or something. I watch YouTube videos with eagle eyes and I still think it's pure unadulterated magic.

The base of this is three coats of Still Waters, followed by one coat of Happy Anniversary. The rest are all acrylic paints, done with a flat and an angled one-stroke brush.

There is a winter storm warning in effect for this weekend, with additional snow dumps of up to 30cm (1ft) and gusting winds and temperatures down to -30˚C (-22˚F) by the middle of next week and why yes I am in fact distracting myself with flowers, how astute of you to notice.

Polishes used:

Liquid Sky Lacquers - Still Waters

OPI - Happy Anniversary

Duri - Rejuvacote (base coat)

la couleur couture - 2013 (top coat)

acrylic paints

flat one-stroke brush

angled one-stroke brush

complete ineptitude

I'm thinking that, nonetheless, my next design will be more wintry. It's hard not to be influenced by my surroundings. How's the weather where you are??

xo,

J.

Polar Bear

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Hello lovelies!

Let me start this post by apologizing for my cuticles. Holy whoa are they awful in these shots. It looks like I went up to the Arctic to paint these nails plein air by watching an actual polar bear. (I did not; it was inspired by this photo.)

In fact, he is something of a poor specimen of a polar bear, isn't he? But he was fun to paint, if a bit frustrating to position on two nails.

Water, ice floes, and bear are all acrylic paint. All painted on a base of two coats of White On so I had something opaque to work with.

POLAR BEAR IS GLARING AT YOU (don't take it personally, he's just kind of a grump):

On my thumb, I layered a whack of blue polishes, including Passport Blue, Jungfrau, 204 (a purplish flakie), and Pitaraq:

Polishes used:

Sally Hansen - White On

American Apparel - Passport Blue

Elevation Polish - Jungfrau, Pitaraq

Inglot - 204

Duri - Rejuvacote (base coat)

la couleur couture - 2013 (top coat)

acrylic paints

tiny detail brush

I have received so many beautiful polishes over the last week, and no idea what to do with them. I'll try to think of something before the weekend, when I have my O for Outrageous prompt for my ABC Challenge and not the foggiest clue what to do about it. Will try to get something tasteful in before I take a leap into the great void of outrageousness!

xo,

J.

Green Lace Moons

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GUYS. I might have a problem. I can't stop doing lace moons.

These are a little messier than I'd like, but they're killer from a distance!

These are done in the style of Tenshi no Hana -- a queen of nail art, as far as I'm concerned, and the one who (above all else) makes me want to learn how to one-stroke. Go follow her blog. Don't worry about it being in French; if nothing else, go to drool over the images.

For this, I began with a base of Earthshine. (Whoa, Google tells me that's a real word! I had no idea!) It's a beautiful and complex polish. It reminds me of a green version of my beloved custom Tryst Lacquer, Aqueous, but also of a darkened sister to Cirque's Hellebore because it's green with silver flake shimmer and faint but noticeable fuchsia microshimmer. That said, Earthshine requires major patience, as it's a four-coater. You might be able to get away with three thick coats, but then I'd worry about it never drying. As it was, with four thin coats and my trusty 2013 top coat, it still took a while to fully harden up.

The design was all done with white acrylic paint and my omniuseful tiny detail brush. Here is a zoom in on Earthshine on my unadorned Cinderella hand, just in case you needed convincing that it's worth the four coats:

Polishes used:

Indigo Bananas - Earthshine

butter LONDON - Nail Foundation (base coat)

la couleur couture - 2013 (top coat)

white acrylic paint

tiny detail brush

I have my Follow the Devil ABC prompt still to do tomorrow (but I don't want to take these off!!! HELP). Then it's Digit-al Dozen week! I still have one mani to do for that one, so I'm thinking of maybe combining the two prompts... am I a terrible nail person if I do that? Maybe, hey?

xo,

J.

Megamendung Mani

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Hello lovelies! Told ya I'd be back today. ;)

After the strenuousness of the last mani, I thought it'd be nice to do something more relaxed. So we have clouds à la Indonesian batik. Rainclouds, specifically -- or, in their native language, the megamendung motif.

These were easy to achieve. Paint on broad bands of watered-down acrylic paint, then line the outsides with a liner brush in full-opacity paint. In an ideal world, this print would be perfect one-stroke practice. But I cannot one-stroke to save my life.

I've included the below photo of my left thumb under direct light so that you can see the holographic shards in Dream, the base polish, sort of in action (it's very cloudy here today, no chance of sunlight):

Polishes used:

Zoya - Dream

butter LONDON - Nail Foundation (base coat)

la couleur couture - 2013 (top coat)

white acrylic paint

flat brush

liner brush

I've actually put in an order for special one-stroke brushes and acrylics from France, which I will talk more of when they arrive in a couple of weeks. It's a technique I really want to master, and the only way to do that is to practice! ;) Until I want to bang my head against things! ;) ;) Yeah!

xo,

J.

Blue Lace Moons

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Hello lovelies! I told you I wouldn't be gone long! ;)

Today I have a look I'm rather proud of.

I missed my Follow the Devil ABC Challenge prompt for this past weekend, which was L for lace. So I decided to revisit a look I'd done a while ago and try my hand at some more lace moons.

I feel like I've come a ways since then, though it's also because I used my tiny detail brush for these instead of a nail art pen nib. I find I have much better control that way.

Base is two easy peasy coats of Erudite Charm. Zoom the below photo to see the black speckles and blue microglitter in action, plus the wee copper/pink shimmer particles (which are quite hidden on the whole; I wish they were more present). This is a wonderful denim blue and I will probably use it in a jeans look in future.

Lace was done entirely in white acrylic paint. I sourced an image of lace trim from the Internet and went to work. :)

Evidently I took lots of photos of this one.

Polishes used:

Arcane Lacquer - Erudite Charm

butter LONDON - Nail Foundation (base coat)

la couleur couture - 2013 (top coat)

white acrylic paint

tiny detail brush

I'm still woefully behind on my Digit-al Dozen manis. I hope to have another look for you on Friday, and the rest of my time will be spent playing catch up. See you soon!

xo,

J.