Sparkles!

This polish isn't anything unique, but it is still one of the prettiest things to look at.  I catch myself moving my fingers under the lights at work just to make the glitter sparkle.  This polish has a bit of all my different glitters combine into one ultimate package.

I put two coats of polish over a black base.  The pictures turned out awesome!

I'm still not sick of the way they look and I've been wearing this combo for almost 5 days.

Jellyfish

This design reminded me of jellyfish floating at the top of the ocean.   I'm sure this look could be achieved by directly applying polish to the nail, but I applied the design to a plastic bag and let it dry for 24 hours.  I hate putting a thick layer of polish on my nails.   It inevitably gets bumped and smudged.  Using the plastic allows me to apply the polish as thick as I want and then having the option to set it aside to dry over night.   A dotting tool was used to swirl the color. 

Here are the designs drying on the bag. 

I applied two coats of the same polish I used for the base of the design.  This way the polish strips don't have to line up exactly with my nails.

The look was completed with two coats of Seche Vite to smooth everything out.

Cheeky Plate Fun

I had been admiring the cheeky plates for the last few months before I finally caved and bought some.  The beautiful patterns were irresistible.  They look like gorgeous Indian fabrics.

I went with a franken yellow basecoat and used China glaze's shower together for the stamp.

I moved into a new apartment this past weekend and the process has been ridiculously stressful.  The majority of my stuff is still not unpacked and I've had multiple failed attempts to set up the cable.  The blog posts will probably continue to be sparse until I am settled in.  

Have a great weekend!

Gold Leaf Topcoat

Recently I've been seeing a lot of bloggers posting manis with gold leaf.  The topcoats with gold are so beautiful and I really wanted to get my hands on some.  They seem to be a little pricey, so like many polish enthusiasts I decided to make my own.  I bought the gold leaf on ebay and added it to TKB's glamour base.   I attempted to crumble it with my fingers, but this just created a mess.  There was more gold on my hands than in the polish.  Next, I cut the sheets into small pieces and added them to the bottle.  This worked better.  It wasn't a great method, but it got the job done.  

The base coat is China glaze Trendsetter topped with Julep Sophia.

The gold leaf topcoat was then added over the base.  The green really made the gold pop.

Here is a shot of the bottles.

... and a close up of the gold leaf topcoat.

The gold leaf's color did fade a little.  I'll have to monitor it and see if it stabilizes or continues to fade.

Also, I had no idea Sophia was a glow in the dark polish. I turned out the lights in the bathroom and was surprised to see 10 glowing nails.

Water Marble Strips Take 2

It's been awhile since I've used dry water marble strips for a mani.  Check out my previous post.  I made the water marble sheets yesterday and allowed them to dry overnight.  24 hours of drying time seemed to be the perfect amount.  The nail polish separated from the plastic with ease.  The colors used are Sally Hansen Black out, China glaze shower together, cross iron and trendsetter.  They had a nice contrast next to one another.

I cut the sheets into triangular strips.  I wanted the strips to look like they were made of tiny stripes.   The strips were placed over a base coat of shower together. My only regret is matching the blue on the strips to the background color.  It ends up making the strips look too short for the nails when the blue stripe lines up at the base of the nail.  An example being my middle finger. Otherwise, i really like the color combo and the way it turned out.

Finally!

I've wanted to buy some of the Ozotic multichromes for a long time now.  I finally caved in when news broke that they were being discontinued.  I was able to pick up 502, 505, 506 and 507.  520 has been ordered but isn't in my possession yet.  Below are photos of 505.  Unfortunately the camera did not pick up the green-blue shift well.

  This is one of those colors that leaves me staring at my nails all day.

Here are the beautiful bottle shots.

This angle shows the blue shift in 506 and 505 a little better.

   

Happy Memorial day!

In honor of Memorial day, I went for a patriotic mani.  I love the look of different patterns on each nail with a common color theme.  Normally I couldn't pull this off at work, but fortunately it was a three day weekend.
I'm not feeling very chatty tonight, so I'm going to stick with photos and few words.

Here are my red, white and blue nails.

 Here is my right hand.

I hope everyone had a great day filled with sun, picnics and friends.

Does a tiger say roar?

My nails decided to stop cooperating and continued to break for the past few weeks.  They weren't photograph-worthy until this weekend.  In the meantime I've been experimenting with all my new glitters from youmix and TKB.  FYI the sample size of TKB shaplies is plenty.  I ended up ordering 1oz of some of the sizes and ended up with way too much glitter.

The manicure below has china glaze seduce me as a base, topped with two coats of my magenta glitter franken.  I stamped a franken over that, put on a coat of seche and called it a day.  Typically I'm not one for animal prints, but I thought I'd give it a go.

Glitter appreciation shot.

 It's so glittery.  The purple magic glitter looks awesome when the light hits it.

Who said "puke green" couldn't be beautiful

Green is by far my favorite color, especially vintage shades.  Everyone who knows me describes "puke green" as "Liz green".  I should probably be insulted by this, but unfortunately it's true.  I'd prefer to think of "Liz green" as a 70's retro shade rather than vomit.  China glaze's trendsetter is pretty much my ideal color.  This floral design from BM plate (224) has been posted many times before, but it's too pretty to not to show pictures of.  China glaze VIII was used for stamping.  I LOVE this color combo.  It achieved the retro look I was going for.

I'm happy with this manicure and especially pleased that I've found a shade of green that matches me in trendsetter ;)

Basic mani

 I hate having naked nails, but I don't always have time to do something complicated. So, these are the times I turn to a basic mani.  This isn't anything exciting, but it still looks pretty and clean.

Base: china glaze seduce me
Top layer: china glaze luxe and lush 

Suspension update

Like many others, I had a moment (or two) of panic when I learned TKB was no longer selling glitter suspension base.  It sounds like it will eventually be brought back, but for now I'd like to have an alternative.  There doesn't seem to be any great solution on the web.  From head to foot has an awesome discussion on her experimentation with alternative suspension base options.  Aerosil sounded like a great solution so I purchased a small amount from ebay.  It turns out that there are many varieties of Aerosil and they don't all work for this purpose.  I purchased Aerosil 200 and it did NOT work in polish.  The powder clumped up in the luster base and wouldn't completely mix in.  Xanthan gum has mixed results, but I figured it was worth a try.  Also, There is this video floating around where xanthan gum is successfully used for glitter suspension. 

This is the xanthan gum I used.  Most blogs have suggested using the clear form, but I'm not sure which this is.

I used a spoon made from a straw and added 3 scoops to the bottle.  Luster base was also added.  This bottle has 2 sizes of glitter.  There is a micro pink glitter and small pink hex glitter.  The xanthan gum did cloud the base a little, but it wasn't anything too dramatic.  I wanted to see how long the glitter would stay suspended without me shaking the bottle. 

  

The photo on the left is after 24 hours.  The photo on the right is after 5.5 days.  

Seems too good to be true, right?  Right.  The suspension was successful, but the xanthan gum did add a slightly rough texture to the polish.  The photos below are without and with top coat.

 No top coat

(notice the rough texture)

One layer of seche vite

(better)

Two layers of seche vite

(not too bad)

In conclusion, xanthan gum suspends glitter surprisingly well.  It did leave a slightly rough texture and wouldn't work well to make polish to sell, but it seems to be a good temporary solution until glamour base returns.  2 coats of seche worked to cover up the roughness and looked fine for every day use.

Here is another suspension with xanthan gum.  This polish contains 3 different sizes of glitter including a micro, small and large hex.  This was left untouched for 4 days.

Silver holo franken love

I'm loving all the glitter options from you mix cosmetics.  I felt it was necessary to make an awesome franken with silver and black glitter. Below is a photo of the glitter used.  All of them are from YMC except luminosity (left) and the black micro which are from TKB.  The remainder of the glitter used included silver holo square, black holo hex, black shredded, black hex, 2 sizes of gunmetal hex, small silver hex and 2 sizes of silver holo hex.

It's so pretty in the sun.

The base is one coat of a silver steel franken followed by 2 coats of the glitter polish.  There was a bit of shrinkage near the tips of the nails following application of seche vite.  For some reason it always looks worse in photos than in person.

*On a side note, I've been experimenting with the use of xanthan gum in glitter suspension. It seems like people have had mixed results with it.  The polish was only made last night, but so far it has remained suspended. *fingers crossed*  I will post photos after the weekend with an update.