Color Changing Polish

   My sister-in-law's sister gave me the coolest polish! It's called Del Sol Moss Me Much, and changes colors in the sun.

   It starts out as a light, light, green, almost white, and then changes to a pinky-purple.

 

   It's really neat! I'd never heard of polish that changed in sunlight, only the heat-changing polishes. I think I might have to buy some other colors....


  Short post today, but more coming soon! I've been doing lots of fun things in nail school and I'm excited to get to work on real people soon (and to show you all what I do!).

  I hope you all have a fantastic week!

New Polishes!

   I have a ton of new polishes now, thanks to Wondrously Polished! She was moving last week and had to clean out a lot of her stash, so she was selling it to whoever wanted it. I have a bunch of pretty ones now!

   I have a bunch of swatches for you all too.

   This is two coats of Sephora's Formula X Ur . It's a neat polish. It's very subtly textured, similar to those sand polishes that were really popular last year or so.

   I hate removing glitter polish (I haven't discovered a great method for me yet), so for the glitters that I'm swatching I just put on some fake nails. This is Wet-n-Wild Cost Is No Issue. I don't really need this description, it's all on the picture! I really liked how this one looked over top a teal.

   I've always said I don't like holos, but I was so wrong! I own two now and I love them! This is Liquid Sky Lacquer What Was Your Name Again, around 3 coats, I think. Holos are so shiny and pretty......

   This is two coats of Rescue Beauty Lounge Insouciant. It's a really neat purpley-grey polish, with a slight blue sheen that you can see in the sun. I really like this color!

   Three coats of Girly Bits Well Isn't That Special, another pretty holo! I really like this shade of purple; this is the reason purple is one of my favorite colors.

   This is more or less one coat of Hare Polish's Teen Queen, a pretty blue and pink glitter. I love how it looks over these two colors, Spelling Bee and That's Hula-rious. It reminds me of spring and speckled bird's eggs.


   I don't have a swatch of Model's Own , it's essentially the same as a polish I already own, Studio M On the Field. If you really want to see it, you can stop in my shop and take a peek.

   I've updated all of my solid set listings over my vacation, so once my shop is open again you should be able to find all of these in my shop.

   I've been traveling all over the south this week, so I don't have any new designs. I thought I'd have one to show you all, but I forgot to take a picture. Something about traveling just makes me forget...


   Anyways, I should have more soon! I hope you all have a fantastic week!

Watermelon Seeds

   Two weeks ago I ordered some new polish from Spellbound Nails, a shop on Etsy. She has some really neat polishes, it was hard to choose which to buy first! I ended up getting Watermelon Seeds, a pretty pink polish with small black glitter, and Eat Me, a cream polish with multi-colored glitter that is part of her Alice In Wonderland collection.

  This is three coats of Watermelon seeds. You can get away with two coats, I just wanted to add a little more depth to the overlapping layers of glitter.
   I thought Watermelon Seeds was so cute! I like the color and the small glitter. So many polishes only use large or medium glitter, so it was nice to see a polish that only used small glitter.

   Quite predictably, I created a watermelon mani out of this polish. What with the name and the looks, I couldn't resist! For my design, I combined The Nailasaurus' tutorial with another design I found on Pinterest.

   For the watermelon shell (peel?) accent nail I started with a base of Revlon Parfumerie Balsam Fir. Then I drew on some squiggly lines using L'Oreal New Money. I finished it off by lightly sponging on New Money and then Balsam Fir.
   The other watermelon nails were made by painting on a line of white with a striper and then a thin line of New Money over top the white. I tried painting the green and then the white like in Nailasaurus' tutorial, but I could never get my striper to cooperate and make a thin enough line.

   I hope you all have a fantastic week!

Review: Chameleon Polish!

   I received some really cool polish in the mail last week! Born Pretty sent me a bottle of their new chameleon polish. It's a holo polish that changes color in different lights. I received a blue-purple-orange color, #201, and it's so pretty!
   As always, you can use this coupon code, AIBW10, to get 10% off your order at Born Pretty!

    I've taken lots of photos for this one, so you can see it in many different lights. It essentially looks the same all the time, but different lights can create some slight changes in how it looks and changes color.
   Here it is under a yellowish light:

   You see the orange-gold color very well in the yellow light, and the purple is brighter, almost a little pink.
   Under a more blueish light:

   In the blue light, the blue really pops. You don't see the orange-gold at all, and the purple requires a lot of effort to completely "cover" the nail. It's such a pretty deep shade of blue under the blue light!
   In natural light:

   I think the purple looks prettiest (to me) in the natural light. The orange-gold has turned an interesting shade too, it's a little redder, I think.

   I think this is such a neat and pretty polish. I love how it changes colors. The whole time I was wearing it, I was constantly wiggling my fingers back and forth so I could watch the colors change!
   With this polish, you have to wear one coat of black polish to really help the color pop and look right. In the photos I had on one layer of black and two coats of the chameleon.
    There are lots of pretty colors in the collection; there are a couple that I think I'm going to need to try out soon....

   As usual, I did have to paint some sort of design on; you can't have plain polish! (Unless you're busy, of course!)

   I never quite know what to paint on shiny and holographic polishes... For some reason they kind of freak me out with designs! So for this one I went kind of simple. I glued a black rhinestone on to my middle fingers, and then painted some swirls coming out of it with some black acrylic paint.
   (This last set of pictures were taken in natural light, if you were wondering.)

   I've been working on a new design tonight! I'm trying my hand at a scene. I don't think it's too terrible for a first attempt, but then I am sometimes slightly biased....

   I hope you all have a fantastic week!

Pixie Dust

   I'm finally caught up! Hooray! This week I am trying out some new polish; two of the Zoya Pixie Dust collection, Lux and Vega. They're so pretty!

   This is three coats of both Vega and Lux. If you don't put on a top coat it has a neat bumpy texture. I'm way to distracted by textures, so I end up rubbing it all the time. And then I catch it on everything. Textures don't work for me, they never last more than two days between my rubbing and getting caught on everything. So I added two layers of top coat to smooth it out.

   The blue is Vega, and the pink Lux. I love how sparkly they are! Vega is definitely my favorite, but I just like a good light blue. Especially in glitter. Blue glitter is just so pretty! Lux is nice too, but it's not quite as pink as I thought. Although looking back at other pictures, I'm not sure why I thought is would be more pink because it is definitely not!

   Sorry for the crappy picture, it got cloudy so my light disappeared! I wanted to show you guys both colors in the bottle and on my nails. I'm going to try and take another one tomorrow, so hopefully the light will be good!

   I hope you all have a fantastic week! Tomorrow is my last day at work until March, so hopefully I'll become a regular blogger again.

Swatch

   No designs this week. I had planned on having some cute strawberries to show you guys, but it didn't work out. I've been swamped with large orders from my Etsy shop, so I'm painting those this week instead of my own nails. (I had one person order 14 sets! Definitely my largest order yet.)
   I can't bear to not have anything on my nails, so I tried out a new color I bought a few weeks ago.

   It's L'Oreal Collection Privee Doutzen's Nude. I think it is my favorite color! It's such a pretty color that's just barely pink. It adds color, but itsn't too loud or obtrusive. I love it!
   In the picture I have on 3 coats, but you only need two. I had to add a third because I smudged a couple nails and didn't feel like redoing them all. Two coats looks basically the same as three.

    Really short post this week. I'll hopefully have some strawberries to show you guys next week!
   Have a wonderful week!

Wishing For Summer....

   Well once again it's been 2 weeks since my last post! I really thought I was getting more consistent there for a while. I have 2 designs and one swatch for you guys!

   As my title hints, I am longing for warm weather! We had a warm spell last week that lasted a few days and it was wonderful! ....And then it was cold again. And we're supposed to get more snow. I don't think this impending snow would be as terrible if it hadn't been for that warm spell that got all of our hopes up. Hopefully it will start getting warm again once we're halfway through March.
   In honor of my warm weather blues, I painted a pretty summery hibiscus-like flower on my fingers so I could look at it and think of warmer times.

   This was originally made using the one-stroke technique. But I misplaced my brush for that and I haven't bought a new one, so I improvised. I painted on the white with white acrylic paint, making the ends kind of jagged. then I painted on some orangey-coral color (Nina Ultra Pro Tangerine). I painted a thinner layer to start with, eventually having 3 layers. It's kind of hard to describe, but I painted the first layer up almost to the end of the white. The second layer was painted about halfway up the first layer of the Nina Ultra Pro, and the third layer was painted at the very bottom. I basically was trying to create a gradient of sorts. Here's a close up:

   As for the rest of the design, I painted the bottom half with Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Sun Kissed and the top half with CoverGirl Outlast Lemon Drop. I didn't bother with gradating since I was painting the flowers over top. I used the white acrylic paint again for the dots and a green acrylic paint for the leaves.
   Now every time I get to hankering for warm weather I can look at my nails and pretend that I really and at the beach with the warm sun and a warm breeze. (And of course this week my dad gets to go to Florida for work... Mom and I are pretty jealous!)
(P.S. This design is available as an accent set on my Etsy!)

   I really am on a warm weather kick, because this next design is summery too! I made up a new set for Etsy yesterday. You've probably seen something like it floating around on Pinterest.

   I had been wanting to paint these for a while, but I just never got around to it, as usual. I really like it! I'm not completely satisfied with the anchor yet, I'll have to play around with it some. I made the stripes and V with a bunch of tape. After painting a white base, I taped off the V, then taped off the stripes and painted the stripes. Then I painted the blue V. Once everything had dried enough I took off all the tape and painted the yellow V in the empty spot.
    I used Finger Paints Paper Mache as the base, with Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Cherry Red making the other stripe. Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure Resurrection is the blue and Sinful Colors Professional is the yellow. I made the anchor with Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Pumping Iron.


  I think I'm in danger of making this post super long. I've still got a couple swatches to show you all!
   Last week I bought 2 of Orly's new galaxy collection - Milky Way and Starburst.

   I'm a little lazy today and didn't want to take a new picture, so I got this one from my Etsy. In case you couldn't tell, the Orly polishes are the two on the left. :D They were on sale so I figured I might as well splurge and get something frivolous!
   I love how they look! The blue one, Milky Way, is definitely my favorite, but I might or might not be partial to blue...
   Here's Milky Way:

   And here's Starburst:

(Sorry for the terrible picture of Starburst! I was going to retake the picture but I took if off before I remembered.)

   I like the overall effect. They were also fairly easy to paint on. I put on 3 coats each just to give it more 'depth'; two would suffice. However, I did have to put on 2-3 coats of my topcoat. I didn't do that with Starburst and the glitter was catching on everything! That's why I didn't get another picture. It lasted about 4 days before I just got aggravated and took off what was left. Which brings me to my major complaint. THE GLITTER NEVER COMES OFF!! I had to literally scrape the glitter off of my nails, it wouldn't come off with my remover. I'm pretty sure my nails hate me after that.
   Overall though, they look nice. The extra topcoat layer(s) help it to last longer, which is great. And they look cool! The removal is the only thing that gets me.
   I have these in the solid sets that I sell on Etsy, so you could get the cuteness without the hassle of removal! You can find them here if you're interested.

   That's it for now guys!  I hope you all have a wonderful weekend! I'm actually off work this weekend for once, so that'll be fun!