Two - Toned Gradient Mani

Hi everyone! Just a quickie post for today, since I should be working on my upcoming midterms. Anyway, I wanted to share this mani I did using some color's from Avon's Brushed Metals collection. Love these colors!



For this gradient mani, the two colors I used were Platinum and Burnished Copper. Besides being super shiny and awesome, both of these colors are also slightly textured. I would say they aren't as textured as the colors from the China Glaze Collection or Julie G Gumdrops, but there is definitely a subtle texture difference when compared to normal smooth polish.



Although I liked the textured look of these polishes, I much preferred them with a nice shiny top coat. It took just two coats of Seche Vite to give this manicure a smooth finish.





Leave me a comment! What's your opinion on textured polishes? What are your favorites?



Avon Brushed Metals - Platinum
Avon Brushed Metals - Burnished Copper

Feels like Fall Mani

Morning everyone! So we are now fully into September and I thought I would pay homage to the lovely fall weather outside!



For this mani, I used the gradient technique. I first painted my nails using Brucci's Jan's Jazzy Ginger (orangey mustard yellow) as a base coat and let that dry completely.

Now in a normal gradient, you would paint neat stripes of color on a sponge and than sponge the colors onto your nail. The result of this technique normally looks like horizontal lines (going across you nail) that fade into each other, with no clear lines separating the colors. However for this manicure, instead of lining up the colors on my makeup sponge in straight lines, I dabbed colors randomly onto the sponge and than sponged the colors onto my nails. As a result, I was able to achieve a combination of colors that resemble the look of Autumn leaves that have fallen to the ground.



http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Autumn_in_Dresden.jpg

And because I was feeling adventurous and wanted to practice my free handing skills, after stamping some "fallen leaves" on my pinky and middle finger, I added the tree they had fallen from! (using a nail striper)



So here's to fall! Be sure to try and catch the Harvest Moon that will be out tonight, the full moon that falls closest to the autumnal equinox (which is this Sunday, the 22nd). Celebrate the upcoming autumn season with something pumpkin flavored, a warm blanket, and as always, let there be nail polish!

“Fall colors are funny. They’re so bright and intense and beautiful. It’s like nature is trying to fill you up with color, to saturate you so you can stockpile it before winter turns everything muted and dreary.”

―Siobhan Vivian , Same Difference





Julep - Catrina (mustard yellow)
Julep - Candace (brown sparkly tree)
Brucci - Jan's Jazzy Ginger (base coat)
L'Oreal - The Muse's Inspiration (metallic orange)
CQ - Golden Green
Sally Hansen - Copper Penny (glitter)
Mash 27 - Leaves

Taxi!!!! A New York City Manicure

Hi all! So today I have what I think is a pretty a fun manicure! So I don't know if I have mentioned this before, but I recently have become a Julep Maven. What this means is that for $20 dollars a month, Julep sends me an email and asks me to choose two polishes and a hand care product or three polishes from their current collection. These items are then mailed to me so every month I get a fun package in the mail! Today, I am showing you the two polishes I received from their Fall collection.



For this mani, I combined Catrina (yellow) and Josephine (grey) in a water marble, using Josephine as my base coat. To add the white accents, I used a dotting tool and Sally Hansen’s, White On.

What do you think?


What’s great about being a maven is that you are not under a contract so you can cancel the services at anytime. Absolutely no stress! Also, if you don’t like the colors Julep has that month, you can skip that month, and wait for next month’s colors. A word of caution though…as I mentioned in a previous post, Julep polishes are quite small, only .27 ounces compared to a normal bottle of polish which is .4 or .5 ounces....so you are getting quite a small amount of polish for $20. However, what I have found is that because I always expect to get two polishes in the mail, I am less inclined to go into a store and binge buy nail polish, so being a maven has saved me a bit of money that way.




Not sure why, but after I did this manicure I kept thinking about taxi cabs. Super random, I know, especially since whenever anyone thinks of taxi cabs they normally think of check board patterns and black and yellow. However, something about the swirling of the water marble and the dots reminded me of the craziness of the city, rushing people, and the yellow and grey blur of rushing cabs



Julep Catrina (yellow)
Julep Josephine (grey)
Sally Hansen - White On

Super Nova Nails - Inspired by The Fifth Element

So everyone once in a while, I paint my nails, wake up the next morning, look at my mani and think, "Wow, I can't believe I actually did that!" So today I have to share with you all a mani I am extremely proud of! I would say up to this point, I think this is one of the best manicures I have ever done. That being said, I present to you.....my super nova nails!

So let's start from the beginning...about two months ago while browsing around on Facebook I saw an article about a company called BBQ films,  hosting a movie event for The Fifth Element. Little did I know this movie has quite a cult following, myself definitely included. Anyway...after doing some research, I found out that  BBQ films is a "cinema social club" that hosts pop up movie events around New York City.

-drum roll please-

And for their screening of The Fifth Element, they had rented a yacht and decorated the ship to look like the Fhloston Paradise, the giant cruise ship from the movie. Along with the screening of the film, tickets to this event included free popcorn, a free futuristic cocktail and for the 1st 100 people who signed up, a free multi-pass with your picture on it! (Leeloo Dallas, multipass! Negative, I am a meat popsicle.)

 Best part of the event...dressing up in futuristic costumes!

So anyway, I knew that for this event I wanted to do something ridiculous with my nails. At first I thought I could paint them orange (the color of the main character's hair), but that seemed too simple. After thinking about some of the details of the movie, it suddenly hit me. The Fifth Element takes place in space, so why not try the one technique I had still yet to attempt...Galaxy Nails! Thanks to Beautylish, for their awesome galaxy nails tutorial.

So I know what everyone is thinking right now...If I looked up a tutorial on galaxy nails, then why is the title of this post, super nova nails? Well if anyone has been following my blog, you know that I always have a back story...

So, to be honest, originally I was going to call this design, galaxy nails. However, after some research, I found that galaxy nails might not be the right description for this mani. So according to our good friend Wikipedia, a galaxy is defined as, "a massive, gravitationally bound system consisting of starts, stellar remnants, an interstellar medium of gas and dust, and dark matter...The word galaxy is derived from the Greek galaxias (γαλαξίας), literally "milky", a reference to the Milky Way. Examples of galaxies range from dwarfs with as few as ten million stars to giants with a hundred trillion  stars,each orbiting their galaxy's own center of mass. "

After looking up a picture of a galaxy, I found that most images were similar to this one...

http://www.eso.org/public/images/eso9845d/

Most galaxies have an over all spiral shape and seem to be centered around a cluster of mass. Further, most of the galaxy images I looked at contained a "milky" white color, almost glowing from all those trillions of stars. Looking at my nails I thought, "Na, that's not really what this looks like"

So here's the rest of my back story. About a day or two after I had done this manicure, I went into work (I work at a college bookstore)  and overheard that one of our customers was looking for a book on supernovas. So I'm not a huge science person or anything, but I thought, wait a second...lets see what that looks like. So I googled supernova and found this...

Back to our good friend Wikipedia...
"A supernova is a stellar explosion that is more energetic than a nova. …Supernovae are extremely  luminous and cause a burst of radiation that often briefly outshines an entire galaxy, before fading from view over several weeks or months. During this short interval a supernova can radiate as much energy as the sun is expected to emit over its entire life span"

All the images of supernova's showed bright explosions of color and light that seemed in no way organized, a little bit closer to my space manicure...

So, how did I do it? Well galaxy, or super nova, or whatever you want to call it...this manicure is actually a lot easier than it seems. What you are going to need is a sponge, several bottles of nail polish, an awesome glitter polish, and a little bit of patience...

First, I painted all of my nails black (two coats) and let that dry completely. Than, using a make-up sponge, I sponged 5 different colors (yes, actually 5) on to my nails. The best way to do this is to sponge one color on at a time, in random spots on your nail. I would say the important elements of of this manicure is making sure you have a good metallic polish (I used a metallic pink), a good soft blue (I used a cornflower blue, which sort of adds to the intergalactic haze lol), and a nice shimmery purple, blue, or blue-green (I used a blue-green shimmer from forever 21. I sponged the blue shimmer as my final layer and did it sparingly. A little goes a long way). However, the most important part of this manicure, is definitely the glitter top coat which goes on last over everything.

After you sponge on all of your blues, greens and pinks, your nail sort of looks like a blur of color. However, after you add a glitter polish, the tiny sparkles seem to really blend the colors together  and really give your manicure a sense of depth and outer space haze. I found that its best to use a glitter polish with two different sizes of sparkle. That way, it appears as though your nails have tiny stars and distant planets floating around on them.

And to add an interesting and useless fact for the day...Supernova remnants (all the pretty gases and colors) are often the trigger that leads to the creation of new stars. Therefore, it seemed appropriate to add some actual stars to my manicure!

So, that's my really long back story behind these nails! Let me know what you think!

 And last but not least, leave me a happy face : ) in the comments section if you remember  Zenon, Girl of the 21st Century and the best song ever from the movie...SUPER NOVA GIRL!
Yayy 90's kids!

Sally Hansen - Pink Satin (shiny metallic pink)
Sally Hansen - Black Out (black base)
Revlon - Hazy (cornflower blue creme, seen on pinky)
Essie - Dive Bar(dark shiny blue)
Love and Beauty - Blue/Green (metallic blue and green glitter, seen on the base of the thumb)
Julep - Paris, It Girl (sparkles)
Konad White (stamping)
Mash 34 - Planet
BM20 -Stars and Arrows

Blue Skies Smilin' at Me...

Hi all! Not going to lie, as you can probably tell from my title, I'm in a pretty good mood (despite the 20 + hours of homework I have waiting for me after this post). Why, you ask? No reason in particular, maybe it's just the little things. For example, I found a $20 bill in the street the other day, I had some friends over for dinner a few nights ago, and just received some new nail polish from Julep (which all you lovies will get to see in a future post!). What's also kind of funny is that despite all my complaining, I find myself actually enjoying the structure that comes with the beginning of the school year.

Anyway, to the nail polish!



I absolutely love love love this color and would probably have named it blue skies. Today I have for you a polish called Bess, from a company called Julep. I love Julep polishes because they are all super unique and I always feel like I can't find polishes to match their colors in stores. Their polishes are also long wearing. My only complaint would be that a normal bottle of polish is about 0.5oz and a bottle of Julep polish is definitely smaller. So even though I love my bottle of Bess, I will probably only be able to use it a few times before the polishes thickens or I run out.



But back to Bess. This color is a GORGEOUS light blue creme reminiscent of a nice clear sky, on a cloudless sunny day. To achieve the depth of color in these photos, I used three coats. I probably could have done with just two coats, but I found the two coats were a tiny bit streaky so I decided to do 3. Then, to jazz it up a little I added Platinum Record from Color Club to my ring finger and thumb. Platinum Record is probably the shiniest sparkle glitter polish I have ever seen. It's composed of small and large silver hexagons in a clear base. When this polish hits the sunlight, it literally looks like sparkling diamonds. Finally, I used a Mash stamping plate to do some partial designs on my pinkie and pointer finger and....voila!



(BTW I had to take some of these photos with flash because I couldn't get the lighting right. I would say that in real life, Bess actually looks like the photos taken in natural light, like the one below)

 
Konad Black 
Julep – Bess
Color Club – Platinum Record
Mash 43 - Flower Pattern

Fancy Feet

Morning! So at the moment, I am writing this post on the New York City 4 train, on my way to class. Ew. Anyway, now that September has arrived and brought with it a small morning chill in the air, I have finally accepted that summer is over : /

That being said, I present to you, my last summer pedicure…

So today's pedicure was not inspired by anything in particular...although at the time I did this, I wanted to do something summery and bright which led me to the gorgeous bright red I have. This color is called Everybody Loves Redmond, a play on words from the hit TV show, Everybody loves Raymond. Any fans out there?

Anyway, I paired this with my favorite gold sparkle, also from Wet and Wild and finally a diamond  pattern stamped from a Bundle Monster Plate (details below).

So, a quick question to any of my readers...and please feel free to respond in the comment section. Unfortunately, for those of us in the New York area, we know that summer is slowly coming to a close (mehhhhh). Now I will admit during fall/winter, when I don't show off my feet as much, I get lazy and don't do my toes super often. I tend to just file my nails and throw on a coat of clear. So this is my question...does anyone do pedicures during winter also? If so, whats your favorite winter pedicure/color?

Wet and Wild - Everybody Loves Redmond
Wet and Wild - The Gold and the Beautiful
BM16 - Diamond Pattern