My favorite red

I did a quick mani change this afternoon while I was home for lunch, because the pink polish from the past two days looked atrocious with the red shirt I wore today. It completely escaped my notice when I was getting dressed in the early bleary gloom, and it bugged me all morning.



This is Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure Wine Not, two coats.  I somewhat ran out of time and didn't do cleanup before applying the top coat, but the brush and formula are so good on this polish that it almost isn't necessary.  There was just a little unevenness along the cuticle line.



I adore this color. It's so rich and gorgeous.  It's red, but not a scream-in-your-face red.  A subtle red, it that makes sense.  I've seen it described as a vampy red, which is hilarious because I would never describe myself as "vampy", though I do seem drawn to the darker colors- dark red, dark purple, dark blue, dark green...

I like it so much I bought two backup bottles.  They were on sale, but still...

Dotty pink

Well, the purple gradient was chipping horribly, so I took it off.  I don't know if it was too thick (the white was pretty globby), or if I had too much oil on my nails (applied jojoba earlier in the day as a deep treatment, but washed my hands and swiped my nails with acetone before polishing), so that was disappointing.  Whatever.  I'll be trying gradients again, that's for sure.  I'm thinking that with opaque polishes like the ones I used, a coat of base color isn't really necessary anyway.

My niece told me that my next mani needed to be pink, so this is what I came up with.



That's two coats of WnW Megalast Through the Grapevine, accented with WnW Wild Shine Flirty Rose Creme.  The Through the Grapevine is a really nice deep pinky-purple, and was almost opaque with one coat.

I wasn't really sure how I was going to do the light pink accents until I was actually doing it.  I knew I wanted to do dots, but the diagonal accent nails just sort of happened!  I like it.

Purple gradient

Whee! Isn't this fun!  Today I did a gradient.  This is the first time I've done a gradient on my own nails.  And it's PURPLE!



This is one coat of Sinful Colors Snow Me White as a base, and two sponged coats of the gradient Snow Me White, Sally Hansen Megalast On a Trip, and Sally Hansen Megalast Disturbia.  I added one coat of China Glaze Fairy Dust and topped it off with Seche Vite.

I love Fairy Dust.  It has such a pretty holo sparkle.



Not quite as smooth of a gradient as I might have gotten, but still really pretty.  I was going to do some stamping or dotting over the gradient, but decided to leave it as is for now, and just enjoy the purple.  Maybe tomorrow....

Reverse wheat gradient

I wanted to see what blue stamped on the silver/copper gradient looked like, so I switched out an accent nail from my wheat gradient manicure.



The metallics still show up more than I thought they would, but the China Glaze First Mate stamps well.

Blue with a wheat gradient stamp

So I didn't do dots after all, I did a stamped gradient.  It was super easy and very effective.



This is two coats of China Glaze First Mate, topped with an image off the Mash-44 plate, stamped with SH Insta Dri Silver Sweep and Revlon Copper Penny, applied to the plate together and scraped to create a gradient.  Seche Vite top coat.



The First Mate was really thick, bordering on goopy, and could be a one coat polish with careful application.  I'll bet it stamps really well. 

The copper isn't super coppery, and kind of blends into the silver at certain angles, plus I think the Seche Vite may have diminished the copperiness some.  Next time I may try applying the Seche Vite after the base color only, and skipping the second top coat after the stamp.



In any case, I'm calling this mani a success.  I like it.

Updated pictures

I went through and switched out all my pictures. Posting them through the Blogger picture interface made them all blurry and low quality, so I'm going to go through Photobucket instead. They look much better now!

Going on Day 3 of the green stamped manicure, and it's holding up ok. There's just a bit of chipping, and I'll probably switch it out tonight. Maybe for something dotty. I got a set of dotting tools from Winstonia last week, and haven't even used them yet!

Greeny goodness

Today's manicure:

Zoya Hunter, two coats. Stamped using the Mash-47 plate, once with Sally Hansen Insta-Dri In the Groove and once with Wet n Wild Fergie Gold Album. Revlon Quick Dry base coat and Seche Vite top coat, as usual.

I'm actually not sure if that name is the right one for the lime.  It's the same neon green as Lickety-Split Lime, but the bottle is marked with number 220 (which is what the bright pink Flashy Fuchsia is labeled elsewhere), and it's labeled In the Groove, which I can't find anywhere online. So who knows what it really is.  In any case, it's a great opaque bright lime green.

[Update!  It is #220 In the Groove! It's from the Color Vibrations Kaleidescope limited edition collection. Odd that they would have a #220 in this collection and also a #220 in the permanent collection.]

I really like this combo. Hunter is a nice dark green that still looks green, not black, and the lime adds a great pop. The gold stamps a little light, but is dense enough to add just the right amount of contrast and sparkle. 

Snowflakes!

I got my Born Pretty Store QA58 stamping plate last Friday.  What a great plate.  I love the snowflake designs- they're so detailed, and they stamp wonderfully, even with regular polish.  Plus there are eleven snowflakes on it! This is my favorite plate ever.



The details of my weekend manicure:

• Revlon Quick Dry Base Coat
• Sally Hansen Triple Shine Wavy Blue, two coats
• stamped snowflakes using the Born Pretty Store QA58 stamping plate, with Sinful Colors Snow Me White and Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Silver Sweep
  
• China Glaze Fairy Dust, one coat
  
• Seche Vite top coat

The Wavy Blue is gorgeous, and the Fairy Dust adds a perfect amount of holographic sparkle.  The Silver Sweep stamps beautifully.  All three are certain to see a lot of use.

I love this manicure.  Love it.  I was so sad when it started chipping after three days and I had to take it off. Weekend housecleaning is not conducive to keeping nail polish fresh.

Stamped flowers

My first full-on stamped manicure.  Love it!



This is Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure Jungle Gem, stamped with Orly Gumdrop.  The plate was Mash-26.

So fun.

Random...

This will be a picture-laden post.  It's the various polishes that I've used since getting hooked over Thanksgiving weekend, in chronological order.  You can see my polishing skills have improved somewhat, and you can see how my nails have grown!



Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Rock Bottom with blue bar glitter from an unnamed  BonBon mini from Walmart.  First time trying to apply a glitter polish. I didn't use a base coat under the polish, and the purple stained my nails terribly. The yellowish stain is still there, though it's about a third of the way grown out now. Live and learn.



Revlon Colorstay Rain Forest.  Nice dark forest green with sparkles.  I wore this to my office Christmas party.



Pure Ice All Night Long.  Really dark blue, looked a bit duochrome-y in the bottle, but not on the nail.  Very pretty even so.



Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure Wine Not, two coats.  Deep, deep shimmery burgundy.  I absolutely LOVE this color.



Salon Perfect Kiwi Kiss (2 coats) with Sinful Colors Decadent (1 coat) on top.  Nice clear bright green polish, and large and small red glitters in a clear base.  Appropriately, this was my Christmas Day manicure.



Essie Aruba Blue.  Beautiful bright cobalt blue, but a pain to apply.  Very streaky and runny.  Needed 3 coats.



Wet n Wild Megalast Disturbia, two coats.  Love this color, too, though it does look black in many lights.  If you get it in the sun, it's a gorgeous purple.



Orly Gumdrop (2 coats) with Sinful Colors Frenzy (1 coat) on top.  The Frenzy has very small round turquoise and fuchsia glitters in a clear base, and really pops against the robin's-egg blue.



Sinful Colors Gorgeous, two coats. An amazing BRIGHT turquoise/teal/navy duochrome. Pretty and very eye catching, but almost too flashy for work.



This was my first foray into nail art that was worn outside the house.  Simple but I like it, and I got a couple compliments at work. Wet n Wild Disturbia dots over two coats of Wet n Wild On a Trip.

There were a couple other manicures in there, but that's all the ones I have pictures of.  Whew!

First post!

So... nail polish.  Me?  Apparently, yes.  My daughter (age 10) recently got interested in nail polish, and got me hooked too.

I've been having great fun trying out colors, and trying things like stamping and gradients.  Thanks, YouTube!

I wanted to keep a record of what I try, so POOF!  This blog was born.  It's nothing fancy, and mostly to remind myself what I've done, but if anyone else cares to look, then enjoy!