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: 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

#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 24- Inspired by a Book

Comic books count, right? Comic books totally count. Anyway, I've wanted to do Kamala Khan themed nails since basically always. So here she is! (have you noticed that my descriptions have been getting shorter? Is this what burn out feels like?)

Polishes used:
Chic- Sweetheart (well... close enough) (beige)
Chic- Must Have (red)
Color Club- French tip (white)
Ga-de- Mellow Yellow (yellow)
Borjois- In the Navy (blue)

An InLinkz Link-up

#31DC2015 Day 21- Inspired by a Color

My name is Leah, and I have a confession to make...

...I really like the color pink. Like, a lot. When I started out blogging, I objected to it. I felt like it had been force-fed to me too much as a kid and even as an adult, and I had a knee-jerk reaction to pink as a "stereotypically girly" thing. I felt like, well, if I'm going to indulge in this girly hobby, at least I won't fall into excessively girly color habits, right?

And look, I'm still as much of a grumpy feminist as I ever was. I still oppose the whole idea of branding everything and anything for little girls in eye searing pink, with no other color options available. I'm miffed when "his" and "hers" items are allllways pink and blue. It just annoys me, because there are other beautiful colors out there, and all genders should be allowed to partake of all colors with no shame or pressure. It's just that me, as a nail artist, I've grown to appreciate it personally. And so, as my own kind of apology to the color pink, today's post is dedicated to all of it.

I've kind of had similar epiphanies about orange and yellow, although my objection to those had always been aesthetic rather than oversaturation related. I have learned to give my love to all the different colors of the rainbow

I can't believe I just went on a feminist rant about pink nail art. My apologies. Here, have my nails:

Polishes used:
Perfect Chic- Mist (gold base)
Perfect Chic- Hot Fuchsia (fuchsia shimmer)
Perfect Chic- Lovey Dovey (baby pink [dries matte w/o topcoat])
ILNP- Champagne Blush (pink holo [!!!!!!!!!! i need to swatch this on its own at some point it's amazing])

An InLinkz Link-up

#31DC2015 Day 14- Floral Print

Aaaahhhh I am so proud of this one. I haven't worked with acrylic paints in a while (all my old ones dried up) so I was expecting my first attempt at art in such a long time to be a hot mess. But it actually came out pretty nice! I also got a kit that didn't have purple, so I had to mix the purple to match the gradient base myself, and I think I matched them pretty well.

Polishes Used:
Chic- Show biz (off white in gradient)
Golden Rose Color Expert- 66 (lavender in gradient)

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 6- Violet

Ah well... we all gotta have nail fails sometimes. This idea seemed pretty cool in my head but upon execution... no. Just no. I might try to get this design right one day, revenge and all that, but this is not a good nail art (although I'd like to acknowledge that three years ago I'd consider this a success. Progress!)

Well... when you have to do a whole new nail art every day for a month, you're gonna have some fails. And because of the rapid pace, you gotta post what you have!

Polishes used:
Color Club- Disco Dress (darker purple cream)
Golden Rose Color Expert- 66 (light purple lines)
Chic- Dark Purple (glitter)

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

2014 Roundup

Happy 2015 everyone!

I had a great year this year, nail polish wise. My photography got better, my audience grew, my cleanup got neater, I opened an instagram account, I completed the entire 31DC, I got sent items to review for the very first time, and best of all, I started my own indie brand!!

I decided to compile a list of a few of my favorite polishes of the year (that I have swatched, anyway. I got some amazing polishes that I didn't swatch) and a few of my favorite nail arts. My most viewed post this year was a giveaway post, so I'm not going to use post views as a metric for quality, in this case.

Favorite polishes, in no particular order:

Gade Blue Satin (it's not even so much the nail polish as it is this particular swatch. It's unreal!)

Superficially Colorful Giggly (look at that dramatic thermal shift!)

Aliquid Lacquer Stop and Smell The Orchids, and Gargoyle (I love all of them but I can't sum up 2014 without at least one radiant orchid polish, and Gargoyle is unlike any other indie I'd ever seen

Chic Love & Hate (I know some people are 'over' textures. I'm not through with them yet!)

ILNP Abundance (Honestly I'd have included every single ILNP multichrome if I had to pick a single fave it would be this one)

Favorite nail art, in no particular order:

Turquoise nails (I was still figuring out my watermark at the time)

The one and only time so far that I really nailed (no pun intended) the spun sugar look

Three-color skitlette

31DC purple day- square glitter placement

31DC rainbow day- acrylic bubbles (not sure I'd have included this one but it got by far the most instagram likes so I guess people liked it!)

31DC inspired by art

Pink and black skittlete that I put together to showcase bats I got from BPS- bonus, bats!

And last but not least, the Cinderella gradient!

I'm not putting any of my own polishes on the list since so far there are so few. But hopefully I'll be launching another collection very soon! I have finished making it already, I just have to clean them up and prepare a launch!

See you in 2015!

NOTD: Pastel texture gradient

This NOTD netted a lot of compliments from my coworkers. I think there's something about gradients, especially sparkly gradients, that just really grabs people's attention- one colleague referred to this mani as 'Cinderella nails'.

I started with a base of Chic Show Biz (410) which is actually a fantastic off-white color, I've been using it as a base for almost every gradient I've done recently. It's nearly a one coater, but it's softer than a stark white so if a little peeks through it's not so obvious. It's also got a subtle shimmer. I strongly recommend buying it as a nail art/gradient base, it's a staple for me.

The other polishes I used were:
Chic sugar finish collection 04 (pink)
Chic Sinful Tops 709 Love & Hate (purple)
Chic Sinful Tops 711 Naughty Blue (pale blue)
Ga-de 55 Blue Sugar
Konad blue stamping polish

Initially I wasn't planning to use the Ga-de blue, but the lighter blue I used turned out to be too sheer to be effective in sponging, so I added a little extra at the end.

Swatched: Chic Sinful Tops

I missed day seven, wah! I guess an entire week was a bit much to expect with no prep. No worries, I'm gonna try to keep things at a 2x-3x times per week rate for the forseeable future. That said, on with the post!

Chic has really been stepping up their game! They just released a collection of twelve polishes called Sinful Tops, and they're quite a mix. The're really three mini-collections of four put together, but Chic has been doing things in twelves lately, so I get wanting to keep up the pattern. I have all twelve, and I will be splitting the collection into three sets, according to type.

Click through the readmore to see detailed reviews for each one!

NOTD: Tiny astronaut

In my recent MoYou haul, I got a couple of their sci-fi plates, and one of the is simply too cute for words. I also got some star shaped rhinestones, so I figured a teeny astronaut and teeny stars would be perfect together!

Aren't they cute??? For the base color I used Chic's True Blue, from their summer 2014 collection. It's an impressively opaque pale periwinkle- I used two coats, but I might have gotten away with one! That's pretty rare for something so pale.

NOTD: Something Old, Something New

I'm participating in an Israeli beauty blogger's challenge, where we get abstract concepts and we have to make a post that relates to it. The first time it was a painting (which I missed), the second time was on the theme "Collections", and this round is "Time"

I could have done a TARDIS. I seriously considered it, even. But honestly I've done TARDIS nails a number of times before so I decided that this time I'd try something a little different:

I still have the very, very first polish I ever got- fourteen years ago. And it's still as good as new! I was twelve years old, and I'd been begging my mother to let me wear nail polish for a while- she said she'd think about it. Then one day I came home from school and she came over to me and said "I have a kiss for you" and pressed a nail polish gently to my cheek, and then she said "I have another kiss for you" and pressed another bottle to my other cheek. They were both by the brand Kiss Cosmetics, which I believe no longer has a core polish line (although they sell gels and nail art polish).

I have the oddest deja vu about this post- have I told this story before? I've checked through my recent posts and don't see anything about it, but let me know if I've mentioned this before.

Anyway, one of the polishes got lost a long time ago, but the other- a sheer pearly pink topper called Cotton Candy- that I still have. (shown here over Chic My Secret, which is a pale rosy peach)

As to the "new"- since I was using my very oldest polish in this NOTD, I decided to also make something completely brand new. I printed out water decals of sheet music for an old favorite song of mine, and when they were less than an hour old I applied them on top.

I wish I'd taken sunlight pictures of this, but the sun refused to cooperate with my work schedule.

To see the rest of the bloggers participating in this challenge, check out the widget!

An InLinkz Link-up