Sparkly Tribal Goodness

Hello, my dears! Tonight I've got another post inspired by something I came across on The Hunt! I am kind of obsessed with this site. I saw this fabulous tribal print sequin skirt and new immediately that it was meant to be on my nails. 

This was an all Zoya nail polish manicure, with 2 of the polishes coming from their latest Pixie Dust collection - he silver is Tomoko and the purple is Arabella. I never would have thought that these would be great nail art polishes, but they are so incredibly forgiving that it was incredibly easy to create sharp lines with them. Surprising, right?? The red is one of my favorites, Maura, and the base is a creamy yellow called Jacqueline. 

I freehanded this design and it was super easy to pull together with my no. 10/0 brush. This brush is great because it is long enough to do striping work with, but just thick enough that you can do detail work with no issues.

I hope to have some swatches of all my new Zoya babies up soon. I've been wearing Tomoko by itself nonstop for the past few days and am truly in love with it. Hope everyone had a great Monday! 

Happy Polishing :)

Polish me to go magical tribal print

If you know your indie polishes, you may have heard of the glow in the dark queen, Polish Me To Go. Unfortunately, everyone knows how awesome her polishes are so there is never enough stock to go around. 

Well, a few weeks back I happened to see a post on Instagram about how there would be a PMTG restock in less than an hour...and I knew it was fate! I HAD to have some of the amazing polishes. So, I stalked the website for a good hour refreshing the page until I finally saw the magical "add to cart" button pop up. So what if I ended up buying the entire Pastel Collection. I'm pretty positive it's the best decision I've ever made. 

Cue me giddily getting home and seeing the box and knowing that there was absolutely no way I couldn't not use every single polish in a mani. I am OBSESSED with these polishes! I don't even know how to handle it. They are all so amazing. 

I ended up creating a tribal look because it's an easier way to incorporate a few different colors. I seriously love how they turned out! 

 I fully intend on posting swatches of each polish and providing a proper review because each polish deserves to be shown off. 

 One of my favorite parts of these polishes is that the different colors truly show up when glowing. I love that you can see the difference between the orange, yellow, blue, pink, purple, and white colors. They truly are fabulous polishes. 

Glow in dim lighting

JUST LOOK AT THAT GLOW. DEAD. It's incredible. 

Glow in full dark

What do you think of these? I'm still in Yosemite and am loving having these on my nails at night around the campfire! 

Happy Polishing!! :)

Southwest Print Pictorial

I was asked by a few people on the website Reddit to show how I created one of my last manicures but I didn't have much time to show the steps in nail polish...so I hand drew something really quick to share with them. And I figured I might as well share with you all here! It's a very crude and somewhat messy pictorial, but I wanted to share it here with you all in case you were wondering and wanted to try it yourself. Let me know what you think! :)

Happy Polishing! :)

Bright Southwest Inspired Print

Happy Friday, Everyone! If you're in the States, what are you all doing for Memorial Day?? Hopefully relaxing and having way too much fun :) I'm up visting my parents for the weekend and get to see my sister as well! Should be a good time :)

While I'm here, I'll be volunteering at an art festival that my Mom helps put together and I really wanted something fun and bright and just out there. I've really loved tribal/aztec/southwestern inspired patterns lately and I decided to go for something similar again since I so loved the last one I did. 

I used 4 different bright colors for this look with a base of My Vampire is Buff because it's just perfect for nail art. I did repeat the same pattern on each nail, but I mixed up the way the colors were laid out and I think that adds some extra interest to these...not that this sort of print doesn't already have a lot going on ;) 

I had a tiny bit of trouble with the light purple color I used because over the green it got completely wasted out and loks like a really light green instead of a light lavender. 

For the colors: 

Green - China Glaze Def Defying

Purple - Julep Renee

Bright Orange - Zoya Arizona

Orange - American Apparel Sunset Blvd. 

 Happy Polishing! :)

Vibrant Aztec Nails

I think one of the best things that can occur while doing any nail art is liking what you're creating the entire way through. Sometimes, I will be indifferent to a look up until I put the top coat and other times I will love it until I put the top coat on. The worst is hating the look the entire way through and instead of changing course, you cross your fingers, hoping that maybe giving it some time and getting used to it will change your mind. But, as I said before, the best kind are the ones you love all the way through. 

And yay! Tonight's mani was just that! I was in love with the color combo immediately and knew I had to create something worthy of them. I got it in my head that I was going to use OPI's My Vampire is Buff as the base, with Julep's Millie and Robin, and Zoya's Maura and Arizona in some type art. I landed on Aztec print because so many of their patterns have bright colors like this. It just felt fitting :) 

I actually ended up trimming down one of my cheap nail art brushes to paint these and I'm really happy with the results my makeshift brush gave. I foresee much more nail art with it! :D

I apologize in advance for how many photos there are! 

I'm slightly obsessed with these colors together... 

What do you think? They're a little out there, but I'm loving the bright colors and I can't stop staring at them so I'm calling it a success!

Happy Polishing :)

Tribal Print

Why is it already Monday again!? Days are going way too fast for my liking and I was so busy in classes and studying this weekend that I hardly had time for anything outside of that for "me" time...and by me time, I mean nail paintin' time ;) Tonight I was exhausted and while I really wanted to do something will my nails, I struggled a great deal with figuring out what to do that wouldn't be too time consuming. Somehow, I landed on Tribal print...yeah, I don't know what I was thinking because tribal print takes me forever and never ends up the way I want. So yes, that is what happened tonight ;) 

I'm not overly happy with how clean my line work is on these. I don't think I've got a knack for tribal print like some people seem to. I get so frustrated and feel like mine are always so minimal in comparision to some other nail artists out there. Maybe one day I'll be fabulous like them! ;)

Anyway, I've only got a few photos of these for you tonight. I did these freehand with my striping brushes and now I'm off to go pass out from exhaustion! 

Happy Polishing :)

Simple Tribal Print & Zoya's Avery

Something super quick and simple tonight...I'm tired! Thankfully it's Friday today! I ended up using Zoya's Avery as my base color and a nude polish like this tends to create mannequin hands...you know, like no finger nails and what not. So I went in with my striping brush and made a simple tribal pattern of sorts. I really like how these look in person. They didn't photograph as well as I'd hoped - so many imperfections! - but I like these nonetheless :)

These are really easy to create. Just take your striping brush and and draw three black lines, evenly spaced. Then go in and add your chevrons with the same black striper. Finally, paint in your different colors...like a coloring book :) If you've gotten things a bit messy, just go back over your line work with the black until you've got a straight and even line. 

 Happy Polishing :)

League of Space Pirates after party for VA Comic Con

This is one of my favorite events. I love L.o.S.P. and they always let me paint and costume everyone however I choose :)

 Adrienne in Leopbird costume with headress of masks and other accessories I put together. Feather face and a few spots too!

 Javon transforming into a robot ;)

 Manna let me do her feathers for the first time. Very exciting :)

Thanks to Jason for letting me paint him ... AGAIN...

Designs for Men too!

I don't get to paint a lot of guys, but one of my favorite male models was nice enough to let me practice multiple designs on him for an event he was attending :) Thanks Jason!

 The upper chest design was inspired by the shape of a squid ;) Awwww, cute huh?

And Jason is only 1/2 Angel so he just got one wing that I finger painted instead of using a brush.

A final simple piece to wrap up the look, swirly vibrations.