Pacific Blue Watermarble with Revlon Stunning

Yay, I'm very happy with this post because I got back to watermarbling! I love this technique when it works right. It is such a stunning look and for me somewhat unpredictable. Even when I've made the design I want on the water and aim for it, I still don't know what it's going to look like until my finger is out of the water. This look was insprired by the first snow of the season! I didn't feel like stamping for the literal snowflake pattern so I just thought I'd go for the overall feel of the snowy winter season.

For this mani, I used Sally Hansen Pacific Blue and Sally Hansen White On. Those X-treme Wear polishes do seem to marble quite nicely. The white did like to spread out a bit more than the blue but I still like the effect. For the glittery snow like effect, I layered one coat of Revlon Stunning over it. It's a mix of smaller glitter with larger holographic hexagons. I think it was a good choice for this mani. 

I wore it plain for about a day before putting the glitter on. I just love how blue this blue is! It kind of changes character in different lighting but no matter what, it stands out. I've had so many nice comments on this mani because people just have to take a second look at this color. 

Borghese Sonata Berry with accents

Okay!! The mani I'm going to show you today is simple but has easily become my favorite of the month. And to make up for the somewhat crappy pictures of the last post, I have included way more pictures than necessary in this one!

The polishes I used in this mani are Borghese Sonata Berry, Revlon Gold Coin and China Glaze Glitter All The Way. 

I adore Glitter All The Way. There are really small and slightly less small glitter pieces and the different colors I was able to pick out are gold, green, purple and red. The picture makes it look like there's blue but I can't see it in real life. 

As I said in my previous post, I did the accent nail by first painting two coats of Revlon Gold Coin and then using craft scissors to cut out two strips of painters tape, being careful to line up the zigzags with each cut. Then I applied them on the nail and painted two coats of Sonata Berry before taking off the tape with the polish still wet. Prior to doing the zigzag accent though, I went around for a day with just a plain gold nail. This is what that looked like...

In real life, I was a huge fan of the zigzag accent but in the pictures I'm loving the plain nail. What do you guys like better?

Borghese Sonata Berry with ZigZag

Hi everyone! Today's post features some quick and dirty phone pictures. It is actually the last iteration of a mani that's been on my nails for a few days now. I've been keeping it going by changing an accent here, layering a polish there. This is the final look before it gets removed altogether.

The base of the polish is an amazing oxblood color called Borghese Sonata Berry. I bought it a while ago at RiteAid on sale and I wish I had grabbed a couple more. In these pictures, it's three coats of Sonata Berry over which I have layered a coat of OPI Thoroughly Modern Millie. It's a really subtle polish that glimmers and has a faint purple/green duochrome to it. It was probably overshadowed by OPI Movin' Out which was part of the same collection, if I have my facts correct. That is an amazing polish that I currently own and need to feature on this blog sometime.

The accent was done by starting with a couple of coats of Revlon Gold Coin. Then I painstakingly cut a couple of thin strips of painters tape with craft scissors, being careful to keep the zigzags going in the same direction. I applied two of those strips on my nails and painted two coats of Sonata Berry over it before removing the strips of tape with tweezers.

I'm trying out some different hand positions cause I get bored easily. What do you think?

I finally got sick of not having good enough light (ie. no sunlight) to show off the shimmer so I had to resort to flash.

CQ Slate Glitzy Camouflage Saran Wrap Mani

Hi all! As I thought I would, I had to modify the mani I posted in my last post with CQ Slate. I decided to again tackle a nail art technique that I had never tried before. This is the saran wrap or plastic film technique.

The polishes I used in this are Revlon Gold Coin and Funky Fingers Mrs. Mint. There are different ways of doing this technique. I opted to scrunch up a piece of plastic cling warp and dab some paint on the folds of the plastic. Then I dabbed the plastic on my nails with a light hand until I achieved the right density with that color. Then I repeated the process with the second color and then I was done! It is the easiest nail art I have attempted yet. I have some ideas on how to repeat it again.  The other way I've seen it being done is to paint the second color on the nail itself and then use the scrunched up plastic to take the wet color off revealing the first color underneath.

I remembered to include a further away picture for this one. Kinda has a blingy camouflage look, doesn't it?

CQ Slate and Finger Paints Art You Wondering Gradient

I don't have a lot of words for you today so I will just get to the post. The hubs and I are going out on a date night later tonight :-) Today's mani features CQ Slate, a brand found in Rite Aid, with Finger Paints Art You Wondering? as a glitter gradient on the tips. To get this look, I dabbed some of the glitter on a corner of a makeup sponge and carefully dabbed it on the tips, starting at the very edge and moving inwards. I did this a couple of times until I had the right amount of density of glitter and a satisfactory gradient. It's subtle but I like it. I might do something more to it tomorrow...

Here is slate by itself. This is at two coats without a top coat.

Diwali mani with Zoya Sarah and China Glaze Passion

Hello readers! Today's post, although it is a Monday, is not going to feature moustaches. I had a feeling it wasn't going to last. Instead, I'm going to show you the manicure I wore this weekend as a tribute to the Hindu festival of Diwali.

This major holiday of India does have different ways of being celebrated depending on which part of India you happen to be in but in most places it is known as the "Festival of Lights". People gather together and have parties, eat sweets, light firecrackers and most households are decorated with the classic Diwali lamp, a small clay or metal teardrop shaped cup filled with oil and wick that is lit in the center. I know I'm being vague about what this holiday is but it does various significance depending of where you are. The stories I am most familiar with are that it is a celebration of the lord Rama returning after a 14 year exile and also the celebration of the defeat of the demon Narakasura by the lord Krishna.

I also spent time with family this weekend celebrating this holiday. To commemorate this event, I created a mani that seemed very Indian to me, especially in the choice of colors and pattern. This is with Zoya Sarah, stamped with China Glaze Passion with a design from Mash plate m64.

Here is Sarah by itself, very sparkly red foil. In this picture, it doesn't have a topcoat which might account for the slightly rough appearing texture.

And here is a picture of an example of those lovely little lamps that get lit by the thousands in the neighborhoods and temples of India at this time of year.

Love and Beauty Gunmetal with CG Make a Spectacle. or what I was wearing to the most fantastic concert!!

Hello folks! It has been a bit longer than usual since my last post but I have a very good reason. Last night, I was at the Pentatonix concert, an amazing acapella group made famous when they won the third season of Sing Off. Being a choir nerd and having been in an acapella group in college and med school myself, this was an amazing experience. The venue was small but packed and the crowd was about as enthusiastic as it got and we all knew every song!! I haven't been part of anything with that much combined energy and talent in a long time. I was grinning from ear to ear for about three hours straight, I'm sure! I'm going to plug them by adding a You Tube video of one my favorite arrangements they have done at the bottom. They have so many it is really hard to pick though.

Anyway, on to the polish. Needless to say, I haven't found as much time to edit and post pictures until today.  During my recent adventures, I was wearing another untried Love and Beauty polish called Gunmetal. I was impressed that this one actually had a somewhat unique name in that at least it wasn't called Grey. I then dabbed the tips with China Glaze Make a Spectacle for a glitter gradient.  I love this glitter!

Here is it by itself. I'm not a huge grey wearer, although I seem to have a few. I'm sure how it really looks on me. I'll wear any color though and I do happen to think it's a pretty grey.

And now for a treat: here is Pentatonix singing their version of We Are Young by Fun. I don't know if it is possible to grin, scream and have my jaw dropped in appreciation all at the same time but I did :-)

Savina Sparkling Water Vines

This is going to be a brief one. I decided I liked the Savina polish I used yesterday enough to keep it on and try something else with it. I took the 'staches off and added some vines from the Bundle Monster plate 225 and Wet n Wild black. I do like this look. The color of the blue is really nice and the holographic sparkle is pretty. Maybe I'm just in a better mood...?

Movember Monday Moustache Mani: Savina Sparkling Water

Hi folks. So, it's been sort of a less than stellar weekend and maybe that's coloring my perception but this post I'm going to show you feels like a less than stellar mani. I think the polish itself is probably not that bad, I'm just annoyed by it right now. I went with the same color theme of light blue and purple for this one but I was struck by a superb lack of creativity. The colors I used are Savina Sparkling Water and Color Club Rev'd Up.

Savina is a brand that can be found at Nordstrom Rack.  In the bottle it's a lovely light blue metallic with large holograhic glitter particles. It looks lovely. What fails to make this a truly wonderful polish is that on the nail, the glitter pieces end up forming this gritty, grainy texture that took three coats of top coat to feel somewhat smooth and no amount of top coat could take away the look of grittiness that you can see in the first picture. I'm not really a fan of that look. Thankfully, in certain lights, you can see the holographic shimmer quite well so there is a saving grace.

And now, this is a picture of the bottle of Jade jelly that I used in my last mani seen here. It's pretty sheer and a little milky. I had originally used Sally's clear, added some Love & Beauty Jade and a bit of glitter. The glitter proved to be ridiculously hard to pick up out of the bottle so now I just use it for the jelly-ness.

Love and Beauty Jade with Orly Watch it Glitter

For today's post, I just went with simple layering again. I get enamored with all the different techniques for nail art that sometimes I forget that just simple layering can look so awesome.

The base of this mani is a color I have shown before in the Glitter Gradient Sandwich I showed before, Love & Beauty Jade. This is two coats. I tried to color correct it to show just how warm of a green it is in real life. This is close. Some of my other pictures are not so color corrected so don't be fooled!

To this added Orly Watch it Glitter, it's a copper toned mix of glitters with large and small hexagonal glitters. I thought it went so well with Jade! 

After adding the glitter I coated it with a layer of the jelly I made with Jade.  This is what it looked like before that layer. I think it looks a bit more harsh, right? I like the way it looks in the first picture better. 

Sally Hansen Starry Starry Flight - Light and Dark

There are so many amazing foil-y metallic colors out there that one day I wondered if there was something in black that would be similar. To that end, I wondered what would happen if I layered black jelly over a very sparkly silver. Here's what happened...

Love and Beauty Dark Purple with drag marble accent

Say hello to one of the most beautiful purples I've had the pleasure of painting on my nails. Over time, I've acquired various iterations of this color but this is the first time I've taken one of them out of the untrieds. Sad, really. This is Forever 21 Love and Beauty Dark Purple.  I do wish one of these days they'll hire someone who's sole job is to make sure all their polishes have unique names. They are too pretty to be ignored this way!

Movember Monday Moustache Mani: Moustache and Marble

I love me a good alliteration. I had this post up yesterday but then I was struck by the idea of having it be a Monday mani series so of course I had to take it down. Welcome to the first installation. I still don't know what I'll do for the others but you can find out with me :-)

Last Friday, for the first time in my oh so young practice, I had the humbling experience of telling one of my first patients that he has prostate cancer. He took the news incredibly well and even thanked me for calling him early and letting him know before our next appointment. He had always been such a sweet man that I wished I could have reached through the phone and given him a quick hug. I mention this story not only to share a bit but also to highlight the fact that on the tails of October and Breast Cancer Awareness Month comes Novemeber (or Movemeber), Men's Health Awareness Month, including awareness of prostate and testicular cancer. Here is a funny blurb from the us.movember.com website describing the activities of the month.

        Once registered at www.movember.com, men start Movember 1st clean shaven. For the rest of the month, these selfless and generous men, known as Mo Bros, groom, trim and wax their way into the annals of fine moustachery. Supported by the women in their lives, Mo Sistas, Movember Mo Bros raise funds by seeking out sponsorship for their Mo-growing efforts.Mo Bros effectively become walking, talking billboards for the 30 days of November. Through their actions and words they raise awareness by prompting private and public conversation around the often ignored issue of men’s health.

In residency, I was the only girl in my program and every November, most of the guys in the program would grow (or attempt to grow) some spectacular 'staches. I'm sure their wives were always glad once December rolled around :-)

Movember Moustache and Marble

This post was originally related to the title but obviously not anymore. Stay tuned tomorrow and you'll see why! In the meantime, 

Wet n Wild Private Viewing with Zoya Opal

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So, this past week has required me to take a bit of step back in terms of how much I can do with my nails. I started taking cases to the OR for real this week and wow, did that create a drastic decrease in my free time! Hopefully I'll be able to figure things out and come up with a reasonable plan to keep some posts going on a regular basis.

The mani I'm going to show you today is not one of my favorites. I wasn't even going to post it but I figured others may have different opinions than me. The base is Wet n Wild Megalast Private Viewing. As a side note, the combination of the color and the name always makes me feel a little dirty when I wear it. It just looks like...naked flesh. Maybe it's just my mind in the gutter!