Majolica inspired flowers

Oh, hey! Did you guys know I like painting flowers? You didn't?? Huh, I would've thought you'd know by now ;)

I'm going to call tonight's flowers Spanish inspired. There are some really beautiful painted plates, bowls and tiles that have vibrant colors and clean, yet detailed designs. My parent's have quite a few platters and serving bowls in this style and I have always loved them. This is the style I am referring to...and if I am way off on the name of the style, please let me know! :)

Edit to add: I just found out this style is called Majolica!

Regardless of the name, this style of painting inspired tonight's look. The base color is yet again OPI's My Boyfriend Scales Walls, with six other colors creating the flowers (let me know if you're curious about one of the colors). 

What do you think of these? They feel very summery to me and I'm loving them!

Happy Polishing ;)

April Nail Art Challenge - Flowers

Apparently it's already April?! When did that happen?? Ever since I've graduated from College, I feel like time is speeding by. I think it may have something to do with the fact that I no longer have quarters keeping track of my life. 

Anyway, April means a brand new nail art challenge! Aren't you all excited? I know I am. I am really excited for the themes this month as well - galaxy, earth day, and braided are particularly exciting since I have yet to do anything like those yet. 

The first theme is flowers and if you've been following me lately, you'll notice that I've had an ever growing obsession with painting flowers. Needless to say, I was stoked to dig into this challenge :) 

I am really loving the look of a light background and then pops of color with my flowers so, while I've done this is the past, I think these are still unique enough from other designs I've done. I'm really digging the color combo and I honestly can't stop staring at them! :D Isn't it great when that happens? 

I've been trying to be good lately and do both of my hands...I will slowly become ambidextros! It is my goal! For now, my dominant hand is just sort of have sadder version of my left. I'll get there one day ;)

I used Lime Crime's Milky Ways as my base color and the red flowers are Essie's Snap Happy. The leaves are Zoya's Audrina, Wet n' Wild On a Trip, and the yellow is actually a combo of Zoya's Pippa and China Glaze's Kalahari Kiss (I promise there is yellow! My camera just struggled with getting the right colors today :/ ). For the centers of the flowers I used China Glaze's Call of the Wild. I never thought I'd use that brown but lately it's finding its way into a bunch of my manis. 

What do you think of this look? Are you going to try and of the April Nail Art Challenge?? You should!! :D

Happy Polishing :)

Spring/Easter Nail Art!

I've been so busy lately that I haven't had a chance to post OR do my nails! Such a sad day when I'm too tired to do my nails :( with Easter just a few days away, I figured I would get a spring time Eastery theme in before it was too late. I have seen quite a few different Easter manis, a lot of them incredibly adorable! Many of them incorporated bunnies into their art so I decided to go a slightly different direction. While I still have the Easter Eggs, I used chicks as my easter animal instead of bunnies :)

I created these with two of my dotting tools and my trusty striping brush. I used....17 polishes...OH MY. I think that may be a record for me! The base color for this look is Julep's Susie which is a lovely light mint color. It reminds me a bit of China Glaze's Re-fresh Mint. I was a bit disappointed with the application of Susie, but the color is fab. 

The chicks and easter eggs took about 2 hours total to complete and I'm pretty happy with how cute they turned out :) 

All the polishes used, minus the base color Susie.

And my messy palette!  

Are you all doing anything exciting this weekend? Any special manis for the weekend? 

I've also been working with the lovely folks at The Born Pretty Store and I am happy to say I've got a 10% off your entire order code to share with you all! Enter SLR91 at checkout :)


This website has some really great nail art products at really great prices...plus, they have free shipping world wide. They are based out of Hong Kong, so shipping can take a few weeks, but you really can't beat the price and I definitely think their products are of the same quality (if not the same product) that other retailers sell at double the price.

Happy Polishing :)

Hodge Podge Flowers

I am loving all the spring colors I'm seeing around as of late and have especially loved wearing them on my nails. However, I have done some sort of pastel color for the past few manis and I'm a little burnt out on those hues. I decided to mix it up slightly and use some deeper colors for today's look. I'm really excited to show you how it turned out! 

I used OPI's Skull and Glossbones as my base color and I am fairly positive that this will become a regular in my rotation of polishes. I really love how fresh and clean it feels on its own. I ended up using 5 additional colors to complete the flowers. I really love how these colors go together -- one of my favorite combos :) I would tell you the names of said colors but there are a lot of them and the bottles are all the way in the other room...and I'm lazy so it's not going to happen right now ;) Let me know if you're curious about a particular color and I can get you the info on it! 

 Didn't want to leave the thumb out for this one ;) 

So, what do you think? 

Happy Polishing :) 

The Hungry Asian Kiwi Smoothie & Rectangles!

Hiya, everyone! Hope your Friday is going wondrously! I spent my Friday night nail artin' it up. I'd like to say that normally my Fridays are much more exciting than just painting my nails...but who am I kidding?? This is my normal and I love it :D

Yesterday I received my order of The Hungry Asian polishes and oh my goodness! I am in love with all of them! I absolutely LOVE sheer cremes with glitter in them and all the polishes I ordered were just that. The first one I tried was Kiwi Smoothie and I was not disappointed. I absolutely adore this polish and am regretting not buying a full size bottle of it. It's that amazing. Take a look. 

 I am just obsessed. Like I will probably stop random stranger on the street tomorrow just to show them how amazing it is. 

I almost didn't want to add anything to this lovely color, but ended up using OPI's My Boyfriend Scales Walls and China Glaze's I'm Not Lion to create some rectangle nail art. While I don't like how they turned out as much as I hoped I would, I still like these. They've got a little extra sparkle to add to that amazing green. 

What do you think of these? I love me some geometric shapes! ;)

Happy Polishing :)

Four-Leaf Clover Tutorial

I'm really excited to share this with you all! I finally made my first tutorial!! Aren't you excited!? ;)

I ended up doing a quick tutorial of the color blocking clover I did from today, and while I'm incredibly awkward and terrible at explaining what I'm doing, I had a blast creating this video. I can't wait to put together another video to share with you all. Let me know what you think and I would love to hear comments and suggestions for tutorials to come. I'm still figuring out iMovie so bear with me...the video is still a bit sad ;) 

Here's the tutorial! Be nice...

Here is the look I created. 

 Happy Polishing :)

March Nail Art Challenge - Day 3: Gradient

Okay, so I suck at keeping to a schedule. But I think I have a worthy excuse! I have been so busy studying for a big engineering test every weekend all day long on top of working all week. No days off makes for little time for nail art. 

I finally got around do doing the 3rd installment of the March Nail Art Challenge (though, I was supposed to start the 4th one today...oops!). The theme was gradient and I wanted to use two more of my new Julep Polishes to create the look. I ended up pairing Georgia, a pretty peach micro shimmer, with Susie, a muted mint green creme. These were colors I wasn't 100% sure would look nice together in a gradient, but I'm really happy with them! A happy surprise :)

 If you don't know by now, I don't know how to leave simple nails like this alone. I can't resist the urge to add some extra pizzazz to my nails when I can. So, I got out my trusty striping brush and added some random and odd triangle and polygon-ish shapes over these. I really love how these turned out. Pretty subtle, but I love them :)

Be sure to check out some other fabulous bloggers through this weeks GFC Collective! 

Happy Polishing :)