City Scape Nails

It’s so funny to me how simply changing the colors of a design can turn it in to a completely different manicure.

The other times I’ve done this design, here and here, they reminded me of Broadway lights and felt very retro. This time, all I see are skyscrapers.  Color changes everything.

For my base polish, I used Jordana Chiffon.  My black is China Glaze Liquid Leather and the polka dots are Julep Heather.

This is such an easy design to do.  Is this one you would wear?

Gradient Stripes

I think this is another unintentional animal print.  The other day I did an peacock without meaning to and, again because of my color choices, this looks a bit tiger stripe-ish.

I’m sure if I’d done blue or green it would just look like stripes.  I used Julep Brigitte as my base.

For my stripes I started with China Glaze Peachy Keen, next came Sinful Colors Hazard and Timbleberry.  The darkest of my colors was Wet ‘n Wild Everybody Loves Redmond.  I’m curious to see what this looks like in other colors because all I see when I look at it now is wannabe tiger stripes.

Halfmoon Polka Dots

I haven’t done a half moon in a while.  They’re kind of a pain.

Reinforcement stickers are a little too thick to give you a nice crisp line.  That frustrates me.  I tried to clean up the line a little with polish remover, then with white polish and a small detail brush.  Neither worked as well as I would have liked.  Oh well.  The star of this mani is the polka dots anyway.

I see my half moon as a little peek of the largest polka dot in this design with all the rest of the dots coming off of it getting smaller and smaller.  At least that’s what I envisioned when I set out to do this design.  My white is Sally Hansen White On and the blue is Cult Nails Time Traveler.  I topped everything off with HK Girl top coat.

Peacock-ish

I didn’t intentionally set out to do a peacock-ish mani, but that’s how it turned out.  Likely because of my color choices.

I got a new itty bitty brush when I was at a local craft store last week and really wanted to play with it.  Oooh… I just had a thought that this would look cool in yellow and green, then it would be a lemon lime mani. 🙂  I’ll file that away for another time.

This is done entirely with Julep colors.  I started with a base of Julep Annette, a soft grey creme.  My lines are Julep Viola, a raisin colored purple creme and from the 2012 Trina Turk line, Annie (blue) and Popova (green).

At first I was a little bugged by the streakiness of  my brush strokes, but I’ve decided that I like them.  It add some texture and dimension to the look.  It adds character.  What do you think?  Do you see the peacock resemblance?

Wedding Day Polka Dots

As I said in my last post, my sister got married on Saturday.  It rained most of the day and we were all very nervous that the outdoor wedding and reception that had been planned would be ruined.  Thankfully, the skies cleared a little more than an hour before the ceremony.  The sun came out and everything dried up.  It was a very sweet ceremony.  My sister looked unbelievably gorgeous and my new brother-in-law was very handsome in his tux.  A new storm rolled in after a couple hours and we had to scramble inside for the remainder of the celebration, but it didn’t ruin the evening.  Definitely a night to remember.

Being that I was making the wedding cake, I didn’t have a lot of time to do my own nails.  I wanted to keep them simple anyway. 

Her colors were coral and aqua.  I polished my nails with Wet ‘n Wild I Need a Refresh-Mint then dotted on some Julep Alyson and Revlon Peachy.  They were the perfect compliment to my coral bridesmaid’s dress and the turquoise jewelery I wore.

I topped it off with Hong Kong Girl Top Coat.

I’ll post a picture of the wedding cake on Top Coat It’s Facebook page if you’d like a peek at it.