#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 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

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: Galaxy nails

You know what? Every now and again you gotta do galaxy nails. I think it's just a rule of being a nail artist. This is still from my backlog, so this is ages ago and I couldn't tell you exactly which polishes I used. The only thing I remember for sure is that instead of my usual black base, I used Golden Rose Color Expert 59, an intense purple that's just a shade away from off-black. It's still distinctly purple in all lights but it has an incredible amount of depth. You can't directly tell in the finished manicure, but I do think it added some indescribable something to the mani.

Yes, I realize that these are four nearly-identical photos. Shoot me, I'm proud of my work :D

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: Thermal gradient

I recently picked up a bunch of polishes from Superficially Colorful, and among them were several thermal polishes. Her thermals are really great, the color shift is always super dramatic and they are great to apply and have fantastic opacity. So what's better than a thermal polish? Three of them, gradient-ified!

Warm

Cold

I also took a video of the transition, which is pretty dramatic:

Sadly, I don't remember the name of the blue polish (I lent it to a friend so I can't check) but the middle polish is Giggly and the red polish is Enthralled. They're all a little bit more vivid when worn on their own (since it's sponged on it's a little more sheer), but I love them this way too!

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.

31DC2014 Day 28- Inspired by a flag

Well I'm a little late, so here it is short and sweet: inspired by the Asexuality pride flag :)

An InLinkz Link-up

31DC2014 Day 27- Inspired by art

I decided to take a slightly more abstract approach to today's challenge. It's odd, because today's theme is possibly the most evocative of all of them, but try as I might I couldn't think of a piece of art that I wanted to work on. Either it was something beyond my ability to do justice to, or it was something that I knew a lot of other people would tap for inspiration.

So instead I decided to draw inspiration from a piece of music- not a song, mind you, a jazz composition. One of my favorites- Take Five by Dave Brubeck. I challenge you to give it a listen and tell me that's not a work of art.

I had already printed the sheet music out on water decal paper a long time ago, so it was simply a matter of finding a flattering and fun way to display it. I tried to give it a fun, lighthearted look. Here is what I came up with!

An InLinkz Link-up

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 catchup- Day 16-17-18

Catchup part one! I'm not going to get  overly wordy today, on to nails!

Day 16- Geometric

Day 17- Glitter

(quick explanation: Hanukkah is a long way off, but I made this glitter for my Hanukkah collection of my indie brand that hasn't launched yet, it's called Topsy Turvy and it's Dreidel themed. I was gonna make a bigger deal of it but I'll discuss this more later!)

Day 18- Half Moons

Next four tomorrow!

An InLinkz Link-up

31DC2014 Day 14- Floral

For me, floral has to be bright and colorful. I actually debated doing this design in rhinestones rather than flat glitters, but I decided to save that for another time. I do have these lovely teardrop shaped rhinestones in pink and red, but doing an entire hand in that? Nah. I'll probably try it out as an accent one of these days though.

For this manicure I started with an off-white background, and sponged some pale blue and green over it randomly to create an abstract daylight look. I placed diamond glitter in flower shapes on top of that.

An InLinkz Link-up

31DC2014 Day 10- Gradient

Gradient day! Since gradients are a staple for me in my nail art repertoire, I wanted to try and find a new twist. I decided to go diagonal, and also instead of sponging with a single makeup sponge I worked with a little eye shadow sponge to achieve this look. What do you think?

An InLinkz Link-up

NOTD: Roses

Gosh, I haven't done an NOTD post in ages! I've done nail art here and there, but it has mostly been simplistic stuff that just went on instagram and wasn't worth making a whole post about. At the end of the month I'll do an instagram roundup for any who missed it, but yeah. Gotta get back to it.

On that note, here are some freehand roses!

These were surprisingly easy to do, actually. I got so many compliments too! I need to do art more often. All I used (besides the sponge for the gradient) was a detail brush. I kind of wish I'd done something different on the non-rose nails, but I don't mind it like this.

Look, even my right hand came out good!

Polishes Used:
Ga-De Blue Blood (dark blue)
Ga-de Majorelle Blue (medium blue)
Ga-de Azure Blue (light blue)
Ga-de Burgundy Velvet (dark pink)
WOW Cosmetics 415 (light  pink)
Dalia 393 (dark green)
Chic Crazy In Love (light green)

Don't forget to enter my giveaway!