Blue Alley Deals

For today I've got a glitter gradient gradating from a magenta glitter up toward a royal blue. I pulled out two somewhat dusty, unused colors from my Helmer to get this manicure. They both live in the same drawer, which is a hodgepodge of Essie, OPI, Wet n' Wild and a few other mismatches that don't have enough family members to buy their own Helmer drawer. Don't feel sorry for this drawer though, it's quite a party in there. The Kleancolor Chunky Holos and the entire Wet n' Wild Color Icon collection live in there. Solids and neutrals beware, this drawer's trouble!

I love the combination of these two royal, jewel toned colors paired together that comes across even more stunning in real life. Back Alley Deals and Saved by the Blue both come from Wet n' Wild. Saved by the Blue is one of those polishes that's always on the shelf, but you'll be lucky to find anymore Back Alley Deals. That collection was a limited time assortment of glitters only available at Walgreen's, and of course, only for a limited time. It's cruel how companies insist on creating the best polishes for only a limited time, and leave their less inspiring shades out year round.

Doodly Phone

I love doodling, and I love bright colors. I've also recently adopted an affinity for my iPhone, and its beautiful casing from Skinit. It's one of those designs that looks hand drawn and easy enough to do, so when inspiration struck, I decided to try my hand, or nail, at it. Two colors and a Sharpie later, I nailed it.

 Electric Pineapple from China Glaze is one of my favorite polish colors, so I was excited it pretty closely matched the case's color. The white blob was just done using Bad Chick from Sinful Colors and dotted using French White Creme from Wet n' Wild. Then, I just sort of freehand traced the outlines of the white with a Sharpie. It's not as thin and precise as I would've hoped, but I don't know if Sharpie makes anything finer than Ultra Fine Point. Is there an Uber Fine Point or Ultra Extreme Fine Point out there?

Silky Stamp

This pattern and color combination reminds me of a tapestry I hung on my dorm room ceiling sophomore year in college. It was a bedspread I got from Urban Outfitters, and it's truly stunning. The damask pattern is silver, and the material is a sheer white. I hung it right below a light, so the light dimmed down and spread out throughout my entire room. Man that was a good room.

For the base of this, I used French White Creme (Wet n' Wild) and stamped with Passion (China Glaze). I realize I used that color last night, but the color was so striking I wanted to use it again. (I have a feeling it'll be one of those bottles I'll need 2 of.) The plate is RA-109, from the increasingly popular Red Angel line. I remember when I first bought the set in November, there was one or two reviews. Now there are 109 reviews, and I'd like to think I'm a part of that. I hadn't seen the set used on any of the blogs I followed, so I took a risk at $12.99 and wound up with one of the best sets out there. Have you bought your set yet?

Guest Post: Embellished Nails

So today was supposed to be my guest post over at Embellished Nails. She went on a cruise for a while, and asked for some guest posters. So ahead of time, we all sent in our posts for her to set up. Mine went through...mostly. Unfortunately, I don't see the images, which, let's face it, is the best part of nail blogs!

So, if you care about the story behind these nails, head over to Emily's blog for my guest post.

Since the images aren't working over there, I'll put them here. In honor of Emily's cruise, these are my sailor nails!

Stitched Together

I'm sure there exists somewhere a Hallmark card about stitching two things together that somehow relates to hearts and Valentine's Day, so use your imagination to connect that to my second Valentine's Day manicure while I dose off to get ready for skiing in the a.m.

This manicure took painfully long to complete, and I blame it on my impatience to let things dry before taping them off. I had to take off and redo my left index finger 4 times before I finally got it right. Darn Pointer!

The lighter pink is Soul Mate (appropriate for this holiday) and the darker is Feeling Great, both from Sinful Colors. The white stitches are French White Creme (Wet n' Wild). The pinks were done with the tape, and the stitches were a tiny striping brush. I'm growing more fond of the brushes I have, but I'm not sure I'll ever use the longest brush. It seems so unwieldy, but maybe I just haven't found its use yet.

Goodnight!

Opulent Orchids

Yesterday I tried my hand at striping tools; not the striping nail polishes with the brush built in, but the brush that you can use on any color you like, and the results were less than awesome. Maybe it was the polish choice, but I'm not ready to talk about it. I'm a little ashamed of it, and not ready to share it with the world.

Instead, I'll share with you a manicure I created using dotting tools, again. They've made me so beyond happy, and I can't stop writing down ideas in my teeny little notebook that would feature them. I highly recommend grabbing a set. It's worth the $10 you'll end up spending.

After my pansies caught so much attention and flattery (I found them featured on a French blog), I decided to keep with the flora theme. The stunning, fractal patterns created by most plant life lends itself quite well to the nail world. This time, my flower of choice was an orchid. These beauties have an interesting story behind them, involving the Greek myth of Orchis. According to Wikipedia:

Orchis, the son of a nymph and a satyr, came upon a festival of Dionysios (Bacchus) in the forest. He drank too much, and attempted to rape a priestess of Dionysios. For his insult, he was torn apart by the Bacchanalians. His father prayed for him to be restored, but the gods instead changed him into a flower.

Ouch. Sorry dude. But thanks for the inspiration!

I have no real, gorgeous orchids to pose with, but I do have a vase with the silhouette of an orchid painted on it.

I used Essie Turquoise & Caicos for the base color, the stems are from Color Madric Green, the white petals are French White Creme (Wet n' Wild), the purple petals are Plum Truffle (CND) and the yellow centers are Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Lightening. I had a lot of fun with this one, and my patience paid off. Even my right hand looks good. To top everything off, I used Matte Magic (China Glaze), based on the idea someone gave me when I posted my pansies. They thought I had made them matte, but that was just a photographic illusion. This time, I intentionally matted them, and it gives them a much softer, delicate feel, just like the plant.

Photo courtesy of http://www.thepowerofintroverts.com/2011/04/06/how-to-parent-sensitive-orchid-children/

Maybe if I work up enough strength, I'll post what I consider to be a failed manicure another day, but for today, that's all folks.

Shredded Gold

You've already seen me try out the black Shredded from Lacquistry when I posted my Shred the Pool manicure. I wanted to use them again, and I was dying to try the gold Shredded over a teal. Then, an idea hit me! I could use them ALL...AT THE SAME TIME! So I did.

Listing off the polishes is a bit confusing to say the least, but here's what I used.

• Index Finger
• Base: Black Creme (Wet n' Wild)
• Glitter: Aqua Shredded (Lacquistry)
• Middle Finger
• Base: French White Creme (Wet n' Wild)
• Glitter: Aqua, Black and Gold Shredded (Lacquistry)
• Ring Finger
• Base: Flyin' High (China Glaze)
• Glitter: Gold Shredded (Lacquistry)
• Pinky Finger
• Base: Passion (China Glaze)
• Glitter: Black Shredded (Lacquistry)

They're all pretty different looks, but when you pair them all together like this, I think it works.

Which finger's your favorite?

Popcorn

I'm so beyond wiped from this long weekend of skiing, about all I can do is sit. My legs are killing me, but luckily I never crashed hard enough on any body parts to warrant sitting impossible. Just walking. It was a blast though. We hit up Keystone (which is becoming our regular spot more and more) and Breckenridge. We never made it to any of the Ullr festivites, but lazing around in the hot tub, drinking beer and eating delicious food wasn't anything to give up for some chili. Besides, home cooked Snickerdoodle cookies and blondies always beat chili (thanks again for those Chloe and Bethany)!

The skiing was awesome. The snow, sadly, has still not hit our mountains enough to call the snow "good", but there wasn't too much ice. Just the end of the day on Saturday and certain spots in the shade on Sunday. We all definitely left happy, but totally exhausted. Amazing weekend.

So, with little energy and zero leg muscle strength, painting my nails seemed ideal. I had about a million ideas swirling in my head, so to finally put one down on paper, or rather, polish, was difficult. I'm pleased with the results.

Here are my popcorn nails!

Done using dotting tools, nail art brushes and patience, I used Wet n' Wild's French White Creme as the base. I striped the red lines on using Sinful Color's Be My Valentine (a nail art brush). Using my largest dot on my dotting tool, I randomly placed some circles of China Glaze's Lemon Fizz, then flipped that tool over to dot smaller Pull Over (Sinful Colors) dots on top of the larger ones. It was relatively easy, especially the popcorn kernels themselves. The only trying part of this manicure is creating straight red lines, and cleaning up the mess left afterward. 

I've been filling new follower requests recently, so I was in a Photoshop mood. The result is my first tutorial, inspired by Lacquerized's tutorial technique. Enjoy!

Color Club Foiled Collection Swatches

Today's a little unusual for me. Today is just swatches of the Color Club Foiled collection, including a comparison of using the included top coat and not using the top coat with these colors.

You've probably seen it around on other blogs and in stores, so I won't drag out any descriptions. This post is for color comparison, and a bit of stamping testing. Enjoy!

Hot Like Lava

Foil Me Once

Antiquated

Lumin-Icent

Perfect Mol-Ten

Cold Metal

This is Hot Like Lava, with and without a top coat. My pinky and middle finger have the included top coat, and the ring finger does not.

As you can see, not too much of a difference. These colors do fine without top coats, but for protection of the manicure, I recommend it.

Finally, here's Foiled stamped.

From thumb to pinky, using Konad plate m65:

• Lumin-Icent on Black Creme (Wet n' Wild)
• Hot Like Lava on Heavenly (Savina)
• Cold Metal on Light Mist (Savina)
• Perfect Mol-Ten on Neon Yellow (Savina)
• Antiquated on Get in the Expresso Lane (OPI)

Reddit Secret Santa Haul & Love

Reddit alien!

This year Reddit is aiming to break a Guinness world record for the largest online Secret Santa exchange. I decided to take part in it this year for the first time.

Part of signing up means filling out a character limited profile of what you'd like to see. Of course, I put nail polish and nail art supplies.

My Secret Santa totally pulled through, and sent me a colorful and amazing rainbow of polishes I don't have in my collection yet. He also included a set of emery boards and some really unique clippers.

The clippers are shaped like a foot, with a heart-shaped piercing in the big toe. There's also a small filing pad in the middle, below the clipper handles.

So of course, I had to try them all out! What I ended up with was a pretty ridiculous set of hands, but I like them all, so they'll stay.

My Secret Santa also included a kind note, and his girlfriend made a color legend of each polish.

Thanks Secret Santa, xtremepado! You (and your girlfriend), both rock for sending these awesome colors! You made a girl very happy for Christmas.

Fancy Fat Santa

Remember the Kleancolor swatches I planned on doing? Since I've never done swatches of an entire collection (or many solo swatches for that matter), I wasn't sure how to go about swatching efficiently. So I figured I'd start with a layered black polish for comparison. Since I wasn't too eager to do an entire hand of the same color, I opted for doing each nail a different color.

This is the result:

Yes...each finger is a different Kleancolor layered over black. Um...yeah...I think these are meant to be worn over their corresponding color. Maybe even white would be better, but I'm always iffy about that. Don't get me wrong, each finger looks awesome, they just all look the same.

So Kleancolor swatches have been postponed. Sorry about that.

Instead! Work tomorrow is having the holiday party, complete with a secret Santa/white elephant gift exchange. I bought my gift and wrapped it, then thought that some Santa nails were appropriate to hand it off to some lucky sucker. Hey...it is white elephant after all.

I Googled "santa nails" and, after scrolling through some designs I wasn't too keen on, I stumbled upon this great take on Santa's belt by Wickless & Polished. I liked it because there wasn't as much white as I've seen, and I'm always up (or down) for a manicure that makes my fingers and hands look a little delicate. Odd coincidence too that this is the design I liked, since I recently found out my own mom likes Scentsies! This cosmic world we live in man.

So this is my interpretation, snazzing it up a bit with some glitter. Maybe this is slutty Santa fresh from the Halloween store. Either way, I don't like it as much as the original artist's. Her nails provide a better canvas than my recently filed fingers.

The polishes used include Hey Sailor (China Glaze) as the base, Wet n' Wild's Rockin' Rubies for the glitter, and detailing using Sinful Color's Time Off, Bad Chick, and Flower Girl. My favorite of these polishes is without a doubt Rockin' Rubies. It's got little glitters and big glitters, technical nail jargon aside.

Pirate Scales - A Tale of Woe

Before we begin, check out the new page at the top of my blog, Red Angel Plates, for images of all the Red Angel plates I recently got from Amazon. Links to posts using the designs, as well as a link to purchase them from Amazon are all provided.

Another gorgeous Red Angel plate design for you. This design took a LONG time for me to get done. Let me share my tale of woe with you.

I had been wanting to use my Planks a Lot from the OPI Pirates of the Caribbean collection for a while now. Since I had just purchased As Gold as it Gets from Essie's Luxe Effects collection, I thought I'd slap that on. It looked great!

It looks really similar to a manicure using Sally Hansen's Hidden Treasure or Nubar's 2010, but the flecks aren't as gold and don't change color quite as much. They stay more gold, rather than change to that iridescent, bubble/oil effect. I like it.

Since Red Angel plates have been requested by a few of you, I wanted to use one of them, and wound up deciding on plate 111. I tried the floral pattern on it first, but didn't like the way it looked with the flecks in the background. So wipe. I then tried the pattern I wound up using, but I used Awaken by China Glaze first. Didn't like that either...not enough contrast. So wipe. I chose to use old faithful, Black on Black from Sinful Colors instead.

By this time, my nails had started to dry out, so I tried putting some chapstick around my cuticles to moisten and make cleanup easier. I'd never tried it before, but it seemed like a great idea. For science, I only applied it to one of my hands, so I had a control group to test this new technique. Felt good. My cuticles were thirsty.

SO...after setting up the test groups, I got to work. On my left hand, I stamped the design on my thumb. Gorgeous. Loved it. So I moved onto my pointer. Not gorgeous. Didn't love it. Only about 1/4 of the design wound up on the nail. So wipe. Tried it again. Worked well. Great. Moved onto my middle finger. Same thing happened to my middle finger that happened to my pointer the first time. Come on! What is going on? I was getting fed up. It had been too long already, and I was just thinking about the cleanup that I still needed to do, so I took a break. I grabbed a handful of chips, and as I was licking the deliciousness off of my fingers, I thought to myself, "This tastes a lot like chapstick."

That's why the stamp wasn't working. So wipe...with soap.

After all the stamping was done, I realized I had rushed it, and the edges of my nails had bald spots. Uuuuuuugh. Cue tape and black polish, Black Creme from Wet n' Wild. Finally, you have the end result, which I'm mostly happy with. I'm upset it took so long to finish (sorry Bree!). I also should've just used a nail art brush for the black stripe, as I'm sure it would've taken less time and less cleanup, but I guess that's just a lesson to be learned.

Another lesson to be learned. DO NOT leave nail polish anywhere that curious kittens can conspire with mischievous pups. Nugget (the kitten), decided exposed polish bottles are great toys, since they roll around in unpredictable directions. Unfortunately, they sometimes roll off of edges, and land on the floor. This brings Riley (the puppy) running, to see if she can steal the toy from the cat. All the while, parents (Andy and I) lie in bed, oblivious to the sounds. They sound so much like the chewing of a bone, but alas, they're not. They're Planks a Lot, in the crushing jaws of a seven month old puppy.

The result?

 A chewed up bottle top...

and a guilty looking dog.

B&W Mini Self-Challenge: Day 3

The last day of my challenge, and I'm pretty happy with this one. A different take on what Bundle Monster was hoping girls would use their number 217 plate for...french manicures. I chose to flip the design on my nail, literally. What should be at the tip, is now at the base, and oh the luxury it provides! Here's White On (Sally Hansen's Hard as Nails Xtreme Wear) over Wet n' Wild's Black Creme. (The brush on my black was awful, so forgive the flaws. I tried to fix some in Photoshop, but your artistic eyes will surely pick up some.)

I'm looking forward to trying the other tip designs as bases. I'm even more looking forward to putting on some of the vibrant, NON-blacks and whites after tonight. I'll drop my haul I got this weekend in tomorrow's post, so hold onto your panties!

B&W Mini Self-Challenge: Day 1

Using the supplies from my previous post, I've put together something I'm excited about. The concept rocks, but I still need to brood on the best taping strategies. You'll see that the cuticles got a little ignored by Black on Black, but by the time I had un-taped and cleaned up enough to notice the oversights, I was pretty drained. So abandoned they'll remain. Poor cuties.

This manicure was actually inspired by Bundle Monster, and its first nail plates I bought. The pattern is from plate BM21, and it's one of the designs that isn't large enough to cover the whole nail of most girls, including me and my nubs. So, I sandwiched the pattern that did stick between two pillars of black. It reminds me of a decadent floor tile somewhere. The kind of place that would have a grand piano and at least one harp player. Maybe even a butler.

So I'll get some more taping practice, and revisit this another time. Not bad for a first attempt though! I just wish my nails were a bit longer, then it would look more delicate.

Oh, the white you're seeing is French White Creme from Wet n' Wild. It took quite a few coats to get it solid without streaking. So unfortunately, I won't be using it for stamping (which is why I originally bought it.) So far, Sally Hansen's Insta-Dri Whirlwind White is best for that.

Glutton for Glitter

Recently, as in within the past month, I've found myself buying a lot of glitter polishes. A lot. So I thought I'd show off my most recent purchases. Don't be alarmed...and consider wearing sunglasses for the massive amounts of glitter you're about to see. There are so many, my poor light tent couldn't hold them all without showing the white sides for light. Luckily, Photoshop helped me clean that up for your viewing pleasure.

The accumulated collection over the past month.

Color Club's Beyond the Mistletoe collection

Wet n' Wild's Ice Baby collection

Various China Glaze glitters

3 of 4 of the Nicole by OPI's Holiday Glitter 2011 collection.

Gold set from Amber and Dustin at mynailgraffiti.blogspot.com

Oddball glitters from (left to right) Revlon, Wet n' Wild, Sinful Colors, Sally Hansen, and Sinful Colors

I warned you.

I love them all! I realize now looking at the photos that not all of these count as glitters, but more metallics, but they still bring joy and sparkle to my life, so they can stay.

Most of these colors were bought online at Head2ToeBeauty.com. The Gold set was purchased from My Nail Graffiti's Amber and Dustin, and the others were bought in stores at Target, Rite Aid or Walgreens. My lovely sister sent me the Nicole by OPIs. I couldn't find them out here in Colorado, but her Southern California Targets were much more well stocked.