NOTD: Coooooookkkkkkiiiiieeeeeee!!!

I think this might be the fastest turnaround I've ever done on a post, and that includes 31DC (I usually try to run a day or three early so that I have time to prepare posts). I painted my nails, photographed, and edited everything within a span of three hours for this post! I had originally done this design yesterday, but the photos were pretty terrible because of the overcast weather, and this morning I redid them because I had pretty bad tip wear.

I did these nails as part of a challenge posted in a Facebook nail art group I'm in, where the theme was "Matte + Glossy". I dunno what brought cookies to mind, but I decided to run with it! I made the base of the cookie matte, and then I added drops of glossy top coat over the chocolate chips, which also made them a little bit bumpy, adding even more realism! And then of course, I had to make a simple Cookie Monster accent :D

Polishes used:
Bourjois- In The Navy (blue base)
perfect Chic- Frost (cookie base)
Careline- Hot Chocolate (brown outline)
Superficially Colorful- Mud Slide (chocolate chips)
Ga-de- Whitest White
LeChat- Black Magic
Golden Rose matte top coat

NOTD: Flannel

I'm finally jumping on the flannel bandwagon! Since autumn rolled around we've been seeing lots of flannel and plaid inspired nails, so I thought I'd give them a try! I stamped over these with the musical plate from Vivid Lacquer, and then I added a little more detail with acrylic paint and a striping brush. To give it an extra soft look I topped it off with a matte top coat.

Polishes used:
Loka- unnamed green
Perfect Chic- Must Have (red)
Borjois- In The Navy (blue)
Golden Rose matte top coat

#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

NOTD: Metallic mishmash

This NOTD was created using a mishmash of techniques which I could never properly hope to recreate. Unfortunately I don't remember exactly which polishes I used either, so the whole thing is a mystery! I do know that some of the techniques I used included the Brush Stroke technique by Chalkboard Nails, and the Saran Wrap technique by I don't even know anymore (the first time I saw it was by sprinklenails on Instagram but it has probably been around for longer than that)

NOTD: Matte blue skittlette

I bought a whole bunch of stamping plates from the Born Pretty Store for black Friday, and as soon as I got them I immediately needed to play with them. The plate I used for this mani is BP-L 005. I'm really adoring how this one turned out! I forsee these stamping plates ending up in a lot of future manis.

Polishes used:
WOW Cosmetics 427
Konad white stamping polish
Fedoraharp Powdered Sugar
OPI Matte topcoat

New items in my shop: Sound of music duo!

Hey all! This is a quick announcement to say that I just added two new polishes to my shop, inspired by the Sound of Music!

Here they are:

Raindrops on Roses

Mini size polish here | Full size polish here

Whiskers on Kittens

(Note: This polish has a glossy finish but I included matte swatches because IMO it's cuter that way!

Mini size polish here | Full size polish here

You can also buy them as a pair at a discount, both in Mini and Full size!

Full disclosure: Most of the pictures of my hands are a little bit photoshopped. I only used it to get rid of patches of dry skin or places where my cleanup wasn't great or places where there was residual glitter on my fingers. The polish itself is completely untouched, I wouldn't want a dishonest representation of my product. My fingers, on the other hand, are mine and I am not selling them so I can do with them as I please.

NOTD: New year's mani

I did a pretty simple mani for NYE, since I'm not really a big celebrator of these kinds of things. Still, I really liked the way it looked- plain grey shimmer with some iridescent glitter and star rhinestones with matte topcoat. The topcoat is a little cracked if you look closely, because I applied an extra coat for photos (whoops!)

Polishes used:

Color Club Pretty in Platinum

Golden Rose 3D Glaze 02

31DC2014 Catchup 19-20-21-22

Day 19- Galaxies

It's kind of a pity I ended up posting these on a catchup day, because I think these might be the best galaxy nails I've ever done. Ah well, next time I'll try harder to post on time!

Day 20- Water Marble

You know, the very first nail art I ever did was a water marble. I must have had beginner's luck, because at the time I thought it was really easy! Now I can still manage it, but there are a lot more tears involved.

Day 21- Inspired by a color

I'm fairly predictable when it comes to colors- usually it's either some iteration of teal or purple. But to be a little more specific, this design is inspired by matte purple! (uh... ignore that my previous purple post was also matte shhhhh)

Day 22- Inspired by a song

This was inspired by the song Fireflies by Owl City. I dunno what it is about that song- I am so so so in love with it. It makes the world feel like magic.

31DC2014 Day 6: Purple

Happy weekend! I have wanted to improve my glitter placement skills for a long time- I still have room for improvement, but I actually really like how these came out! Fun fact- most of the glitter here is stuff I will be using in a big upcoming project, stay tuned!

Here's what other people have done for today's challenge:

An InLinkz Link-up

NOTD: Ruffians and Rhinestones

AAAAAAAAAACK it has been over a week since I posted! Fail! I'm not going to try to translate this, for the same reason I haven't been posting- I've been overworked and exhausted, and something had to give. Hopefully I'll be able to pick up a bit more this week.

This is actually an "emergency backup" mani- I wore this a good while ago, but hadn't had the opportunity to post it. Since I don't have anything to post right now, here it is! I've actually got three large-scale posts in progress- all three things I've never really done on this blog before, and while working on them I let my regular ol' nail art slip a bit.

Polishes used:

Chic Metalix- Citrine Gold

Chic Metalix- Peacock

BornPrettyStore Matte topcoat

NOTD: Greyscale Chevrons

Hi all! Not much to say about this mani, so here it is:

Polishes used:

Rimmel- Grey Matter (light grey)

Ga-de- Black Orchid (dark grey)

Chic Metallix- Diamonds (silver)

Chic Metallix- Black Silver (black glitter)

Chic Metallix- Citrine Gold (gold accent)

Born Pretty Store Matte Topcoat

I'm really loving the flexibility and clarity that the camera on my new phone affords me. I can take good quality pictures in basically any lighting!

NOTD: Interview Nails 4 & 5- The grand finale!

Yes, folks, that's right! No more interviews for me! (For the time being anyway). I have officially signed with a new job, which I started a week ago.

The thing is, interview nails 4, while pretty, were nearly impossible to photograph. And interview nails 5, the ones I got the offer with, were tipworn and unimpressive. So I've lumped the two kinda mediocre presentations into one, to save space.

For the first mani, I matched them with a new pair of fingerless gloves that I absolutely adore- a soft grey with subtle sparkly threads woven into it. I really wish I'd been able to get better pictures of this, but my camera would just not cooperate. I tried a ton of different lighting, angles, and poses (with and without the gloves in case that was the fault), and I only came up with a couple of usable pictures:

Polishes used:
GA-DE Black Orchid (dark grey)
Indigo Bananas Pan (green-blue duochrome, but with matte only the green is visible)
Unnamed generic light grey

For my second mani, I was called in for the interview kind of last minute, and I still had the Ciate that I swatched from my 2013 roundup on. I had just done a bunch of polish stuff and didn't really have the energy to do anything elaborate, so I just stamped right over my swatch. I then proceeded to forget to take pictures for five days, hence the tipwear. (Really, what got into me though? I never leave polish on for five days!)

All things considered, it held up quite well! Since this just plain black on top of something I swatched just a few posts ago, I don't think I need to list the polishes for you :)

And thus ends the saga of the Interview Nails, at least for a good long time I hope! I've actually been at this job for an entire week already, so I have a bunch more things to share (like my first day of work nails and a few suprises!) But I'll be saving that for another post. My first week was pretty nuts, even just in terms of getting readjusted to 8 hour work days and waking up at a decent hour for transit. I'm hoping I'll manage to scrape together the energy to do multiple posts this week!

2013 Roundup

Good morning 2014! Nice to meet you, I hope we have fun together!

I figured right around now would be a good time to look back and see if there was anything interesting over the last year or so.

So, let's start with my 10 favorite new polishes in 2013 (in no particular order):

WOW 427- This dries to a satin-y kind of finish, but it looks even more stunning fully matte. I love how unique it is, it's like a blue jeans color. It is also impossible to photograph. I had to play with dozens of combinations of settings and lighting to get it to look right. For some reason my camera kept reading it as a much brighter blue.

Ga-De Gold Sugar- And really, texture polishes in general this year. I'm not a gold person usually, but this one really blew me away.

???- 104- I'll be honest, I don't know what this brand is called. The bottle just says "Mirror effect" on it, and the other finishes from this brand all just have the name of the finish too. But I have a few of them, and they all look pretty awesome.

Autodidact- Not to toot my own horn here (well, technically yes), but I've been playing around with frankens, and I'm really quite happy with how some of them turned out! I would love to try out mixing polish from scrap, maybe this year I'll pull together the funds to actually buy supplies!

GlitterBunny- You Can Do It, Brucey!- Speaking of Indie polish, GlitterBunny! I have never bought indies before, and now I have a bunch from  GB and Indigo Bananas. I use this one constantly, it's an awesome glitter topper.

Born Pretty Store Holos- 12- This year also marks the year I could finally start ordering stuff online. And look at this sucker! Both the color and the holo quality are amazing.

Ciate- Beach Hut- This one scrapes in just under the wire, I bought it on December 29. I know Ciate has shown a really crappy attitude towards bloggers (with the "caviar nails" fiasco and all that), but I couldn't resist this glowy glittery orange.

Orly- Star Spangled- My picture doesn't even come close to doing justice to this incredible polish. It's a beautiful red jelly packed with microglitter, and it has incredible depth and finish. Basically, it's amazingness in a bottle. 

Inglot- 202 and 203- This one is a tie, because I couldn't choose between these two incredible duochrome flakie toppers. I mean, just look at them! (this time I do think the picture did them justice. I'm usually terrible at catching color shift but this one was nice and cooperative)

L'oreal Paris- Mysterious Icon- Last but not least, a brown-gold-taupe-indefinable-SOMETHING that seems to not quite fit into any category. It even has purple undertones, to make things more confusing. I love that I can't quite quantify this.

Since most people get bored once the photos end, the rest goes under a cut!