NOTD: Born Pretty Store nail wraps!

Hahahahahaha, ok, I'm really glad that I decided that I'm not going to try to hold myself to any kind of posting schedule, because whatever that schedule would have been obviously I failed it. Whoops! It's not that I haven't been doing nail art (I even did two more Hanukkah manis), but I've had some IRL drama, particularly a bad computer crash that didn't allow me to even edit posts for a while. So I have a bit of a backlog to work through. I'm always active on Instagram though, so check me out there @fedoraharp if you want more regular updates and shop stuff like cool discounts!

Anyway, I got a tooooooon of really nice wraps from the Born Pretty Store for Black Friday, and I'm gonna start wearing them!

Polishes Used:
Ga-de- Rose Fiction (pinky)
Ga-de- Mint Green (index finger)
Color Club- French tip (white base for decals)

NOTD: Marbly accents

This notd was unabashedly inspired by this mani from @lovelylittlelacquers on Instagram. It's not quite a 1:1 copy, but it's close enough that I should credit her for the inspo. I just fell in love with the color combo and marble pattern and had to try it out for myself!

This almost ended really sadly, because the first day I wore this it was terribly dusty outside, to the point where the lighting was too orange to get good photos. There's only so much you can salvage with color correction! (see my floral mani from 31DC2015 for another tragic example). The second day was still dusty, but it cleared up a bit in the afternoon, which is good because by day 3 I usually have enough tipwear that I don't feel comfortable blogging about it. I'd have made an exception for this mani but I'm glad I didn't have to!

Polishes used:
Perfect Chic Sinful Tops collection: Dark Purple (glitter accents)
Ga-de- Whitest White
Ga-de- Sicilian Orange
Ga-de- Endless Plum

NOTD: Gradient and squiggles

Well, I guess I'm not finishing 31DC this year. The timing was pretty terrible for me this time around, the end fell right smack on the build up to Icon this year, so it was amazing that I even got as far as I did!

Well, now it's time to go back to a semi-regular posting schedule. Here are some random squiggles on nails, inspired by this manicure from Heynicenails on tumblr! (and instagram, but I follow them on tumblr). I decided to do the doodly white shapes over a gradient instead of colorful skittles, but it's still similar enough to credit back to them.

Polishes used:
Ga-de Blue Angel (blue)
Ga-de Pool Party (mint green)
Ga-de Kiwi Delight (green)
White acrylic paint

#31DC2015 Day 26- Inspired by a Pattern

Alternate post title: Leah discovers that it is Very Difficult to do hand poses with a mug

So I've actually kind of known what I wanted to do for this day since last year. About a day after the Pattern challenge last year, I walked into my work kitchen and facepalmed because we have these adorable mugs with hearts on them that would be PERFECT for this kind of thing.

I actually sent pictures of this mani sans mug to the R&D group chat at my work, challenging them to try and figure out where they recognize the pattern from. I don't think any of these guys had ever gotten excited over nail art before, but they have now! (followed by a lot of ppl casually commenting "why don't you do this for a living???")

And in case you're wondering, yes, I did have to steal this mug and bring it home with me in order to make sure I matched the colors well. No one noticed. I did bring it back I promise!

Here is the mug by itself (sitting, rather incriminatingly, in front of one of my nail polish shelves)

And here are the three least awkward attempts at me posting with said mug:

Polishes used:
Color club- French tip (white base)
Golden Rose Color Expert- 43 (light blue)
Ga-de- Blue Blood (navy blue)
Ga-de Candy Apple (red)
Laka- 85 (grey)
Chic- Crazy in Love (green)

An InLinkz Link-up

#31DC2015 Day 19- Galaxies

Galaxy nails are a pretty essential staple in any nail artist's lexicon. They're relatively easy, and the result is really impressive and pretty hard to mess up. I'm really happy about this, because I love that it's a style that's accessible and fun to do. But the downside is, how do you do a fresh take? There are unlimited ways you can mash together different colors and nebula patterns, but after a while they all start to look the same. I thought of maybe doing a pastel galaxy, which I thiiiiiink was fist thought up by The Nailsaurus, but even that's gotten pretty popular. I'll still probably do it at some point (nothing wrong with doing a well loved style), but here I wanted to stand out. I decided to go with red galaxies, since I don't recall seeing any like that around. Of course, the nail art world is HUGE, so someone has probably done this before somewhere, but at least it's fairly unusual!

I took a ridiculous number of photos of this mani, but I also started preparing this post late at night, and I so don't have the energy to crop and watermark and edit a bajillion photos, so I'm just posting the ones I did before I burnt out. I did try a matte topcoat, and I edited one of those photos too, but in the end I think I like it better in the original glossy finish.

I ended up using entirely Ga-de polishes for this manicure, not sure how that happened!

Polishes Used:
Ga-de- Black Ruby (base color)
Ga-de- Whitest White (nebula base)
Ga-de- Shanghai Chic (red accents)
Ga-de- Orange Poppy (lighter orange accents)
Ga-de- Sweet Candy (darker orange accents)
Ga-de- Black Cherry (burgundy accents)
Ga-de- Azure Blue (blue accents)

White acrylic paint (stars)

An InLinkz Link-up

#31DC2015 Day 17- Glitter

Glitter is such a deceptively simple theme, isn't it? Since it's pretty broad, I decided to challenge myself to try something out of my comfort zone. In this case, that's bar glitter.

There's a story behind this polish: A while ago, my best went to America, land of the nail polish brands they don't have around here. Since she's also pretty into nail polish (although nowhere near obsessed like I am), I handed her $20 and said "surprise me". She came back with two really gorgeous glitter toppers, and this. I genuinely didn't know what to do with it, so it's been sitting on my shelf pretty much untried for over a year.

I have to say, having now tried it, I like this polish a lot more than I was expecting to! The color scheme is surprisingly flattering for my skin tone, and the bars don't bother me nearly as much as I was expecting. It's fairly opaque in three coats, but I sponged it on to save on "bulk", and then topped it with a couple of peacock feather decals from the Born Pretty Store. It's a little textured after one topcoat, but two layers of topcoat makes it almost completely smooth.

Now I'm thinking I might revisit some other short-matte-bar glitter polishes that I'd put on my destash shelf. I wonder if I'd like those too?

Polishes used:

Ga-de- Beige Caress (beige base)

Sally Hansen- All Yarned Up (glitter topper)

An InLinkz Link-up

#31DC2015 Day 12- Stripes (+ swatch!)

So yeah... this is definitely a holo streak. We're on day five straight where holo is a main component in my manis. What can I say, I have a type! I regret nothing. I also have a particular attachment to this color combo- I love the teal/fuchsia/orange look, or variations on it.

The base for this polish was ILNP Mega, and this is my first time wearing it, so I decided to snap a few photos of it by itself before I put the stripes on top. I'm going to say something blasphemous, and I'm terribly, terribly sorry! But I'm not that impressed by this polish! It took four coats to reach opacity, and while the holo does look really lovely, it wasn't as strong as I expected. I've always thought of ILNP as the benchmark brand for indies, but Mega was kind of a disappointment for me. It was fine, but it didn't wow me like I was hoping for it to.

That said, the formula is fine, if thin, it dried reasonably quickly and to a completely smooth finish with no patches or streaks. Even though I used four coats, I was able to put the striping tape over it after about fifteen minutes (with the help of some fast dry topcoat but still) and it didn't dent.

Polishes used:
ILNP- Mega (holo base)
Color Club- Mrs. Robinson (fuchsia stripes)
Ga-De- Orange Poppy (orange stripes)
China Glaze- Custom Kicks (teal stripes)
LeChat- Black Magic (black stripes)

An InLinkz Link-up

#31DC2015 Day 9- Rainbow

I'm actually kind of out of ideas on rainbows, honestly. I was gonna do the zig zag thing on all of my nails (holo is also rainbow, so double rainbow power!) but I messed up the other two, so I made it the accent. I really need vinyls, I think. This would have been much better if I'd done it with those instead of trying it with liquid latex! I still don't consider this a nail fail, because the end result is perfectly serviceable, but it's barely rainbow. Next time, I promise!

Polishes used:
LeChat- Black Magic (black cream)
ILNP- My Private Rainbow (holo topcoat over black)
Color Club- Harp On It (silver holo)
Chic- Must Have (red)
Chic- 49 (orange)
Ga-de- Mellow Yellow (yellow)
Laka- 108 (green)
Bourjois- In The Navy (blue)
Chic-Purple Rain (purple)

An InLinkz Link-up

#31DC2015 Day 5- Blue

After how complicated my last mani was, I decided to go for something fairly clean and simple for blue. The dots on the accent nail give off kind of a clownish vibe, but I actually am ok with that.

Polishes used:
Ga-de- Azure blue (light blue)
Orly- Sweet Peacock (blue microglitter)

An InLinkz Link-up

#31DC2015 Day 3- Yellow

So for this mani I basically lined up a bunch of my favorite yellows and dotted them on randomly. I couldn't decide whether to wear this glossy or matte, so I did both. What do you think?

Colors used:
Color Club- Disco's not Dead (base)
Golden Rose Color Expert- 69
Chic- 292
Color Club- Psychedelic Scene
Ga-de- Mellow Yellow
Ga-de- Curry Delight

An InLinkz Link-up

Gradient/Geometric nails and a Youtube video!

It's been a while! I really should stop making excuses, I should just own up to the fact that I'm an infrequent blogger and be done with it. I have no plans of abandoning this blog, but I also recognize that my life is pretty full right now, so while I might sometimes post multiple times per week, I might also sometimes not even post once a week. Maybe in the future I'll have a little more control over my free time, but for now I'm just going to update when I can. I'll try not to go more than two weeks with no posts though!

Also, I'm somewhat more active on Instagram, since it's a more spontaneous sort of medium, so check me out there! (@fedoraharp)

Recently I got a few new plates from MoYou London, and as with all MoYou plates, I absolutely LOVE them. For this manicure I used the Holy Shapes collection plate #1. And since I love the pairing of vibrant gradients with sharp clean geometric lines, I decided to do that kind of mani.

Colors used:
Golden Rose Color Riche 16 (blue)
China Glaze Custom Kicks (teal)
Color Club Disco Dress (purple)
Ga-de Burgundy Velvet (fuchsia)
Konad black stamping polish

You know, I have a HUGE nail polish collection, but I constantly gravitate towards these polishes in gradients. I should really branch out more XD Not that I don't love this color combo, or these polishes (clearly I have the opposite problem), but I feel like I'm probably not using my collection as effectively as I should.

I almost forgot! I recently published a cute (albeit somewhat pointless) little Youtube video, just a few of my recent pouring videos stuck together one after another set to calming music. Still, I like them better with the music. For some reason I find these things really hypnotic, don't you?

NOTD: Grey and yellow

I've been trying to expand my color pallete lately, and although I've done grey nails before, I've never specifically combined grey and yellow before. I'm surprised it took me so long, it turns out they go together beautifully to create a soft delicate look! Add in a dash of springy green and I found a lovely spring manicure. I know it's not spring, but what is time to a nail artist.

Polishes used:
Color Club - Pretty in Platinum (grey base)
OPI - Make Light Of The Situation (shimmer over the grey)
Ga-De - Curry Delight (yellow)
Aliquid Lacquer - Hidden City (green)

NOTD: Goth skittles

Now isn't that a pair of words that you would not expect to see strung together. but that's the only way I can really describe this particular manicure. I was trying for a jet black holo look, but I ended up getting a gunmetal holo instead so I shrugged and added some red accents. Initially the stripes were the same color as the red hex glitter, but when I added topcoat they bled to a pale pink so I painted over them. And thus, I ended up with two different reds and a gunmetal grey, when all I really wanted was a black holo. Sigh. Still, I made lemonade and I think these came out pretty nice, if unexpected!

Polishes used:
Ga-De Black Swan (black base)
Beauty Care almost-black holo
Orly Smoulder

NOTD: Summery freehand geometric doodles

I haven't done a full manicure of just freehand painting (no stamps, tricks, striping tape, or any techniques) in a while, so it was time to do one! And since it's been crazy hot lately, it needed to be in bright, summery colors. I went into these nails with absolutely no plan in mind and I'm actually pretty pleased with how they turned out! I could have done better cleanup, but honestly the end result is so pretty that I didn't even mind my questionable cuticles. I kept this on for nearly a week, which for me is about a thousand years in nail polish time.

I also took pictures of my right hand, which is unusual! Obviously I couldn't draw anything nearly this precise with my non-dominant hand, so instead I used the same set of colors to do a striping tape thing with some spiraly things from eBay.

Polishes used:
Ga-de Purple Paradise
Ga-de Mint Green
Ga-de Peach Sorbet

NOTD: Pastel gradient with flower glitter

This mani is from quite a while back- I have a little bit of a backlog to work through. I may have neglected this blog, but I still did some nail art!

This is a sweet little spring color gradient I made, and for the finishing touch I added some flower glitter on two accent nails:

Polishes used: (I think! This is pretty old so there's a little guesswork involved)
Ga-De 505 Mexican Rose (pink)
Ga-De 435 Peach Sorbet (orange)
Ga-De 502 Curry Delight (yellow) (special thanks to Yael from PaintThemAll for showing this gorgeous yellow to me! I don't often buy yellow so I never would have purchased it otherwsie)
Ga-De 60 Pink Daisy (glitter topper)

NOTD: Red and gold stripes

This is a pretty simple design and a lot of people have done it, but there's something that's just classic and timeless about red and gold with minimalist art-deco style stripes.

Polishes used: 
Ga-de Hypnotic Red
Ga-de Gold Glamour