Borghese Sonata Berry Franken with freehand acrylic flowers

Hi guys!
This is a big weekend for me. I had my Seemantham today, which is a religious function for expectant mothers with their first child. Tomorrow is going to be my baby shower! Of course this weekend needs two manis, one for each function, right? I'll show you what I ended up wearing today and if I manage to find the time to change my mani for tomorrow's shower, I'll show you that in my next post.

Once upon a time when holographic nail polish was still hard to get, I had heard about a pigment called spectraflair that gave the elusive beautiful holographic rainbows finish to any polish it was added to. I got myself a packet of it, back when it was more easily available and this is the first polish I made with it. It's Borghese Sonata Berry with a ton of spectraflair pigment in it. I had no idea how to do it right and I think that was evident with this polish. I didn't get as strong of a rainbow with this as I wanted so it sat in the drawer until now. Now I'm kicking myself for holding off. I actually love the subtlety of the polish. And I'm kicking myself for not taking advantage of the China Glaze Hologlams clearance at Sally's. It never ends.

Inside or cloudy weather, it looks like your standard burgundy. Under the lightbox, it has a lovely sheen to it, because of the spectraflair pigment. In the sunlight, the rainbows come out!!

What I really love about this mani are the flowers. With the recent brushstroke manis, I became a little more comfortable using the nail art brushes and thought I could do little ragged flowers. They are my first attempt at freehand acrylic painting and I think they came out pretty well! It took a lot less time than I thought it would too, probably because I just did one nail.

Here are some pictures of the frankened polish by itself.

For a spectraflair franken, it's not that impressive. I love the color though and I am in love with the flowers!!

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.