Saturday Nail Art - Jelly Sandwich of Sorts

This week's nail art is a little bit of a hard sell. I had two polishes with holo in them, and two polishes that were a jelly finish. I did a little experimenting (outtakes at the bottom of the post) and realized that Zoya Aurora and LA Colors Atomic actually combined to make a pretty awesome deep plum.

I decided to go with a dry brush mani. I did a base coat of Aurora, then swipes of Atomic and Liquid Sky Lacquer Babi's Bur-Bindi, the polish I was afraid would clash hard with the other two. In fact, it got kind of lost in the Aurora sandwich. I knew the formula was pretty opaque in one coat, so I thought I would see if it stamped...

...and so it does! The red-brown still doesn't stand out super well against the warm purple, but maybe you can tell that these are roses. I am pretty sure this pattern was from a Born Pretty plate, although I am terrible at making a note of what plate I used or remembering what they are called.

Not sure if I would call this mani a success, or just a surprisingly pleasing failure. 

Here's the test run, when I discovered how cool the two colors look together and that Babi's could be used to stamp a lovely little fern. This was a pretty good week overall; come back next week for some stranger things.

Liquid Sky Lacquer Babi's Bur-Bindi

Here's a polish that was one of my first indie purchases. Liquid Sky Lacquer had a sale last summer, when I was still a broke student, so I spent the $8 or whatever that I had in my PayPal account left over from doing transcription jobs at her sale. I bought my first holos: a mini of Pure Luxury, and a mini of a red holo I can't remember the name of. It turned out to be out of stock, so Carolyn, the maker (as you can see on the label below) gave me a partial refund and included a sample of today's polish, Babi's Bur-bindi.

This polish was named after the blogger who runs Colorsutraa. I'm not sure if it was a collaboration shade or what, but it's definitely a unique color. The official description calls it a burgundy, but I think it's more of a mahogany. It's a reddish brown base with a rose metallic gleam in some lights. 

 I've gotten two full manis out of my sample bottle so far, and I'm pretty sure there's enough for a third in there. I feel like I don't hear a lot about Liquid Sky Lacquer, but they've really got some nice brown holos in the shop (this particular one has been discontinued). I think these were actually my first holos, and even though I love them, I haven't bought anything else from this brand. I should probably change that!

I had two holos and two jellies this week! Come back tomorrow to see if I was able to successfully combine them.

Saturday Nail Art - Cherry Blossoms

Today's nail art was done spur of the moment, after I had finished swatching the week's polishes. Word of warning: I was suffering from some noticeable dryness at this point, so a lot of these photos have been retouched. I started out pretty uninspired, and my first attempt was...uh, indefensible.

I have no idea what I was thinking with this

I saw that what I was doing was hideous, stopped myself, and thought it over. I had a beautiful neutral base, a brown creme, and a coral creme with shimmer. Suddenly, it became obvious: cherry blossoms!

In progress

I was so excited by this revelation that I didn't think to get in progress shots like last week. Basically, I just used a detail brush to draw branches using OPI A-Taupe the Space Needle, then a dotting tool to add flowers with KBShimmer A-Blazing, on a base of KBShimmer Acetone it Down. Here's a collage of the finished product, sun shots on the right and shade on the left:

I'm holding the bottle of A-Blazing in all these shots because this nail art really redeemed it in my eyes. When I swatched it, I was horrified at its pinkness. Combined with the other two colors, it read as the orangey-red I had wanted it to be all along. I really like the way this turned out, I didn't expect these colors to go together at all. Join me next week for some blues!

OPI A-Taupe the Space Needle

Here's another polish from an OPI two-pack. I bought this one when I had maybe one brown in my collection and was trying to fill it out a little, used it for nail art once maybe, and then kind of wrote it off. Swatching it, I was surprised by how much I liked it!

Indoors and edited

I've honestly never been that big on OPI. I think the names are cumbersome and annoying, I don't like cremes that much so I was never that into their formula, and I think most of their collections are repetitive, uninspired, and dull. I do get the appeal, and I'll admit, the formula on this polish really did impress me. When people describe a formula as "buttery," with a smooth application, perfect consistency, thick enough to stay put and not run but thin enough to spread easily over the nail...this polish is a sterling example. It is perfectly buttery.

Another thing that really shocked me was how much I liked the color on me. It's a greenish brown that's very wearable on my cool, pink skin. It's got an olive undertone to it. In the bottle, it looks like a much more straightforward brown. My only complaint about this polish is the name, which is incredibly stupid and also annoying to type AND ALSO not the least bit accurate. A-Taupe the Space Needle is from a collection with all travel-themed names, and it seems like once OPI locks themselves into a naming scheme, sticking with that is more important than what the colors actually are. This isn't taupe, like, at all. Taupe is like a grey brown, and this is a slightly green tinted brown. I just googled taupe to see if I was being too hard on OPI, and I learned that the word comes from the French for "mole." The other bottle in this two-pack just so happened to be the even more horribly named Gaining Mole-mentum! That's kind of weird! Join me Friday for another KBShimmer polish and another first for the blog...my first holo!