Experimenting With Butter London

I was gifted two Butter London polishes for my birthday (my friends know me so well), and they ended up being the nails that I wore home for Thanksgiving. Butter London pretty much blew my mind. 

This is about four coats of Old Blighty and my thumb and ring finger have an additional coat of Brown Sugar. I can't even with this formula; a brand name has never made so much sense. AND CAN WE TALK ABOUT HOW THIS SHIT DIDN'T CHIP, LIKE, AT ALL. 

Nine days later

I put this on the Sunday before I left and I didn't take it off until the next Tuesday. Nine days, give or take. NINE, and the polish was only fading a bit around the tips. The only weird bit was that Brown Sugar started getting a bit patchy on my thumb. But still, that is some pretty fantastic staying power. 

Conclusion: Butter London boggles my mind with its magical nail polish powers. 

My Favorite Color

WHOA I am way behind on posting. It's been about a month, and I'm going to try and stagger my next few posts. This was from way back before Thanksgiving. I had wanted to use my favorite nail polish for my birthday, but I got new polishes, and you know...

But here it is!

That would be my favorite color, OPI Lucerne-tainly Look Marvelous with what may or may not be OPI Ski Teal We Drop over some striping tape on my ring finger. It's a super simple mani, but I really enjoy it because I love looking at Lucerne-tainly Look Marvelous. It's not even the best formula, you can kind of see how it didn't like the tip of my thumb nail, but I don't even care because I think it's just that pretty.

SO PRETTY.

Happy Birthday To Me!

The very best day of the year, November 18, has come and gone. It was my 21st birthday, and I proved to be the weirdo that I am and didn't get drunk. Or even have a drink. Oops.

But it was a Monday night. I'm not about that life. Also, drinking, not really a thing I do. 

I did however, get the best birthday present in the mail--four new ILNP colors! I got one Ultra Chrome, Birefringence, which I keep accidentally calling Bifrost because it reminds me of the magical rainbow bridge from Thor. I also got Purgatory (dark green shimmer), Contraband (dark purple shimmer), and with my three polish pre-order, I got Absolute Zero (bluish gray) for free! Obviously, I had to use all of them immediately.

Waterfalls seemed to be the easiest way to use all the polishes at once. They're over two coats of OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls and topped off with Sally Hansen Dries Instantly. My accent nail is Birefringence, and it's way shinier then it shows up in the picture. 

I'm not super happy with these nails, especially in the pictures, because the colors are too similar and they blend together a bit. 

On another note, my nails are breaking like it's their job. I currently have about 6 nails where the corners have cracked off, so I'm rounding my tips. I hope it turns out better than these waterfalls. 

Lady's Man, Man's Man, Man About Town

One of my guilty pleasures is this movie Down With Love. It's set in the sixties, and Renee Zellweger's character writes a book about letting women have sex like a man, without falling in love, and she denounces Ewan McGregor's character as the worst kind of man. So of course, Ewan McGregor assumes a fake identity to make her fall in love so that he can write an expose about her. While Ewan McGregor is all kinds of sexy, the best part of the movie is their respective best friends' relationship.

So I did some Down With Love nails:

My base color is Nicole by OPI How Fairy Nice of You! I used a nail art brush to paint on the arrows and the broken heart in Essie Off the Shoulder. As per usual, everything's topped with Sally Hansen Dries Instantly. 

My nails are meant to look like the book cover in the movie, but I may have neglected to check what the actual color scheme was before I painted my nails. The nail colors are inversions of the movie colors, but I don't care too much. 

This is another one where I like my right hand better than my left hand. The heart shards don't match up on my left hand, and once again, I was to lazy to redo them. That seems to be a common theme in my life.

Harry Potter, Harry Potter, Ooo Harry Potter

Saturday night, one of my school's organizations hosted a Harry Potter trivia night. Of course, I did my nails for good luck, and it totally worked-- I won! (It could also be due to the fact that I've dedicated a large chunk of my life to reading and watching Harry Potter, but I prefer to think the nails brought me good luck.)

Weirdly enough, I actually prefer my right hand for this mani. I hadn't quite perfected my striping technique on my left hand, and I was way too lazy to redo it. Also, I'm such a Harry Potter nerd that I did the houses in order of how much I like them. I started with my own house (Slytherin 4 Lyfe), followed by Hufflepuff, and so on and so forth. Yes, Gryffindor is my least favorite; sorry, not sorry. 

For all of my nails, I started with the metallic color (or yellow, in Hufflepuff's case), and let them dry completely before placing my striping tape. Then, I did the color one nail at a time, taking the tape off as I went. My thumb has a free handed lightening bolt. 

Slytherin: Sinful Colors San Francisco over Essie No PLace Like Chrome

Hufflepuff: OPI Baby It's Coal Outside over Sally Hansen Lightening

Ravenclaw: OPI Into the Night over Essie Penny Talk

Gryffindor: Sally Hansen Red Carpet over Revlon Golden

Thumb: Revlon Celestial Fix over Revlon Spirit with Claire's Nail Art Pen 

Everything topped with Sally Hansen Dries Instantly

I seriously LOVED having this on my nails, but there were a few things that bothered me. First, my "bronze" for Ravenclaw came out a bit pinker than I would have liked. Second, the green I used was pretty terrible quality (it was the only option that fit, color wise) so the top coat made it streak which gave the silver a bit of a yellowish tint. Gross. Lastly, while I adore the stars and moons on my thumb, there were also little bits of glitter that mostly just looked like bubbles over the white. 

Here's my right hand with the iffy striping technique:

Overall, I love love loved these nails. Anything Harry Potter themed is an A+ in my book. 

Halloween Part 3

It's way late, but I'm finally posting my final set of Halloween nails, and they're my least favorite of the bunch.

These nails took forever, they were super messy, and I couldn't take a picture without massive amounts of glare. They looked and felt pretty cool in person though. 

I tried to take my favorite aspect from my last mani and hoped that doing it on all my nails would make me love it that much more. No dice. I used the sugar-spun technique with Sephora by OPI Caliente Coral and Sinful Colors Black on Black, finished with Sally Hansen Dries Instantly. I tried to have an accent nail, but it turns out that it's almost impossible to tell if a nail is black with orange stripes or orange with black stripes. I should have stuck with black stripes because my orange was way too thin for this technique, which explains why my ring finger looks so much messier than my other fingers. 

Unless I figure out a way for these to work better for me (maybe using quick-dry polish?), I probably won't be trying sugar-spun nails in the near future. 

Halloween Part 2

One set of Halloween nails wasn't enough. I had a Halloween party to go to last weekend, and since I kind of threw my costume together, I decided that I needed to put a lot of effort into my nails.

I've been waiting to use this one Halloween glitter polish for AGES. It was in my Introductory Grab Bag from Llarowe, but of course I got it last January. I've been waiting for so long to break it out, and I'm so happy that I didn't forget about it.

Are you ready for all this Halloween goodness?

BAM. Does it get anymore Halloween-y? My Halloween glitter is Naild' It Candy Corn. I liked the polish a lot, but I thought the copper glitter overpowered a lot of the classic Halloween colors. It had orange, yellow, black, and white mini-hexes with a few black and white bars. I didn't even know about the big white hexes until one showed up on my brush. I tried to dig for another big hex glitter, but I never found one. Even though the copper glitter was the main focus, everything is forgiven because it's SO SHINY! The shine doesn't come out great in my pictures, but trust me, I could look at my glitter nails at different angles for a solid five minutes. 

All of the orange polish is OPI A Roll in the Hague and the black polish is Essie Licorice. I free-handed the spider web and the half moon with a nail art brush, and then I tried the sugar-spun technique on my pinkie. I really loved this effect, but I think it could have come out a lot better if I had a bit more patience and waited the full 10 minutes before trying to put the black on my nail. 

Last but not least, I valiantly tried to stamp again. Needless to say, it didn't work out. I had this cute little Winstonia stamp that said Boo! but after a few terrible attempts, I replaced it with the half moon and a little black rhinestone that I attatched with nail glue. I topped everything off with a coat of Sally Hansen Dries Instantly (two coats on the glitter), and I was ready to party. 

Halloween Part 1

It's that time of year again, and I decided to celebrate one of my favorite holidays with a little blood splatter.

Splatter nails are a ton of fun and super easy to do. I started with two coats of Revlon Elegant. On a piece of tin foil, I dabbed out a bit of Revlon Vintage. I grabbed my handy-dandy straw and made sure I got a nice goop of nail polish on the end (that's a technical term). Just blow the polish onto your nail, and redo the process until you're done! I finished this off with China Glaze Matte Magic when the shiny just wasn't working for me. 

Cleanup, however, is not quite so easy. The polish likes to blow everywhere and every shade of red loves to stain my nails. I was silly, and I forgot to put tape or Vaseline or glue around my nails to help with the mess. Instead, I was left to clean up all the stray polish with cotton balls and Q-tips.

Cleanup took a while, but I think it was worth it. I got a TON of compliments on these nails (especially from my friends who watch Dexter), and I think they were perfect for Halloween without being too in-your-face. 

My Q.U.E.E.N.

Can we talk about Janelle Monae real quick? Because damn. She's pretty much my idol. I can't even explain how great I think she is.

Her new album is pretty fantastic, and I got to go her concert two weeks ago, so of course I did some Janelle Monae inspired nails. Any fan would probably think black and white, maybe tuxedo nails, but I decided to base my nails off of her hands in the video for Dance Apocalyptic.

I seriously can't listen to that song without dancing.

Yellow nails + gold rings = DOTTING GALORE.

I don't know why I don't use my dotting tools more because they're SO MUCH FUN. I used a base of Sally Hansen Lightening and dotted on various sizes of Revlon Golden. I put various colored dots on top of three gold dots to create the "rings." I had meant to go over it with Sephora by OPI's Only Gold For Me Top Coat, but the glitter payoff was awful. Seriously, I got practically zero glitter on my nails, so I ended up pouring some out and placing the little gold hex glitters on top of the smaller gold polish dots. I really like how it turned out. 

As per usual, it's topped off with Sally Hansen Dries Instantly. This turned out to be one of my favorite manicures I've ever done; it had so much pop and it was pretty easy. 

QUITTERS NEVER WIN

It's been a while. And by a while, I mean about five full months since I last posted. I'm still getting the hang of this blogging thing, and hopefully I'll get more consistent. On the plus side, I figured out how to transfer my questionable phone photos (sorry, don't own a decent camera) to my computer without emailing myself. Yay! That should make the blogging process a bit easier.

I've done my nails a few times in the last month, but they're all getting uploaded today. First, I had this cloud theme going. Basically, I had a new light blue polish that I wanted to try out, and I thought, "Why not try to get better at stamping?" I failed on so many accounts.

My intention was to do a hand of clouds with a plain accent nails, but it ended up the other way around. Stamping is hard. Fail #1.

Light blue is one of my favorite colors to have on my nails. I had the perfect one, but it broke in my shoe when I had it packed in a suitcase. I've been shopping around for a replacement blue for ages, and I've picked up a few different shades here and there. I meant to use Sally Hansen Blue-Away for my base, but I GRABBED THE WRONG BLUE. Fail #2. 

I ended up using Salon Perfect Baby Blue as my base and my stamping polish. The white is OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls, and I managed to work in Blue-Away by wiping most of the polish of the brush and doing a very sparse coat on the blue nails. The cloud pattern is Winstonia plate W113. 

After a few tries at stamping, I was finally happy-ish with the results when I ACCIDENTALLY STABBED THE MY MIDDLE FINGER WITH THE CORNER OF MY THUMB NAIL. Fail #3. 

I just could not catch a break with this silly stamping, so I just let it be, covered it with some Sally Hansen Dries Instantly, and pretended like bump in my middle nail didn't bother me. (Spoiler alert: It bothered me.)

Clouds aren't supposed to be even in the sky anyway. That's why they're so lopsided--I wanted to be more realistic. That works, right?

Summer in the City

I'm home for the summer! And by that, I mean I'm home for about 10 more days until I leave for my job as a camp counselor in Minnesota. As we slide into summer, I wanted to highlight the bright colors that come with the season. I'm from New Orleans, so summer is hot and humid, which to me, translates to brights and neons, none of that pastel nonsense.

Much to my dismay, I'm unable to travel with my full collection; most of my polish will be gathering dust in my roommate's basement until we go back to school. Devastated as I am, this is really just an opportunity for me to buy more nail polish.

I used some of my new China Glazes--White on White and Sun Worshiper--as well as OPI A Good Mandarin is Hard to Find. The flowers have touches of Nails Inc. Brompton Place and Essie Mint Candy Apple. The flowers are free handed; my ring finger uses nail tape, and my thumb was done with  Winstonia's plate W111.

Against the wall? Not really working for me. 

With flash? I'm thinking it's a bad idea.

I'm still working on what hand position, location, and lighting are going to work best for me, so hang in there. It can only get better (hopefully).

Street Art

Today, my nails were inspired by street art. More specifically, they were inspired by the Sally Hansen nail art competition, whose theme this month happens to be street art. Like actual graffiti, I wanted my nails to look like they had been painted and re-painted.

I started off with a single coat of Sally Hansen Hi-Res, a pink shimmer. Over that, I made sure that I had almost no polish on my brush before painting a very sparse and spotty white coat. Over the splotchy white, I news-printed, and stuck a few scraps of the actual paper to some of the spots that didn't turn out as well. On five or six of my nails, I partially covered the nail with Revlon Hazy, like graffiti that gets painted over. 

The caution tape is Sally Hansen Lightening; the green arrows are Sally Hansen Mint Spirit; my left thumb is a bit hard to make out, but it's meant to look like a graffiti 'LLY,' the end of Sally. The 'graffiti' letters are done in Blue Me Away! topped with Mermaid's Tale, both Sally Hansen, and both of those colors can be spotted on my pinkie too. Anywhere that there's a shimmer, it's Sally Hansen Diamonds. 

Some of my nails were inspired by well known street art. The two nails on the right were based on this Banksy work, but I could only manage the hand letting go of the string and the balloon itself.

 

               

My right thumb is based on Invader's work. Invader, if you're not familiar, is a French street artist named because he creates mosaics of characters from the arcade game Space Invaders. I couldn't manage squares, but I mimicked the mosaic style with my dotting tool.

The red polish is Essie Russian Roulette; white is Milani White; black is a nail art pen from Claire's.

That's it for my first nail art post! I know the pictures aren't the best quality, nor do they have great lighting, but I'll work on that. Hope you liked it!

Hello World?

Hello!

There's nothing I love more than a good nail blog, so I figured I'd make one of my own. I'm still figuring everything out, but I hope I can create the type of blog that I like to read. Wish me luck!