Born Pretty Store Galactic Multichrome Mani Nail Art + Tutorial!

Hey y'all

Purchased by Me

I know wtf have I been?  I been around dealing with a broken a computer and the freaking horrible expense of replacing it.  I pretty much live and die by my Apple products but boy when they break out of warranty its like the sky falling!  It took forever to raise funds to pay for repairs, but now I'm back and backlogged.  I decided to start with some major bang since I've been away for a bit and wanted to show you what I've been up with in the meantime.  Today I have those multichrome powders that have taken the nail world by storm combined with some Born Pretty Store magic that made me go, "Yes - I want it all!" Like a lot of nail gals I'm totally blown away with how stunning these products are and how easy they are to use. So let's go!

Valentine's Day Nail Art # 3: Minnie & Mickey Fall in Love

"I was born with an enormous need for affection and terrible need to give it."

 ~ Audrey Hepburn

Happy Valentine's Day Lacquer Lovers,

So much love to share and yet so little time to show it! You know the quote above is one of my all time favorites regarding love in the world.  People are so flawed, but at the end of the day what saves them is honesty.  It takes a lot of courage to say I need someone and I need to be needed.  Bravo to my brave ladies and gents out there, and here's to a quintessential couple in love who I like to imagine are never to shy to say they are the half to each others whole.  As Barbie is to Ken so Minnie is to Mickey...Mouse that is ;)

Mani-louge

Base colors: Essie French Affair, Bikini So Teeny, Go Gina, and Bottle Service

Topper: CND Effects Gold Glitter

Stamping Polish: Fab Ur Nails Stamping Polish in Black

Stamping plates: MyOnline Shop Jr 5

So to create this I put almost skittles down on my nais in the Essie polishes listed above and then I went ahead and placed half hearts on my center nails in Sally Hansen InstaDri in Fast Fuschia.  I created the kissing Minnie and Mickey using the decal method and my new Jr plates from MyOnline Shop.  Lastly I added CND Effects over the outer nails and added metal hearts from Lacquer Lust and black studs from Pueen Cosmetics.  To create the final product.

Thoughts? Labor intensive and totally totally worth it.  It's sweet, campy, girly, utterly my kind of thing!  Because I love Disney I knew this was going to end up being so me and fun.  I'm pretty happy with how this turned out.  I hope you liked it and I'll see you next post!

Chameleon Abstract feat Sonoma Nail Art My Three Glitters

Hey polished prisoners,

There's nothing I love more than finding an amazing drug store polish on the cheap except for when it's a HTF lemming.  When I was in Rite Aid some time ago I discovered Chameleon Polish by Scherr - a line of super pretty shifing duochromes that retail for about $3.99.  I picked up one on a whim and now I'm so glad I did! I bought Calypso a purple to gray/blue shifting color.   In a word it's gorgeous!  I wanted to do a simple gradient with Calypso so I sponged it over Essie's Turquoise & Caicos - one of my favorite blue polishes of all time, and added some simple stamping to turn up the flavor.  Here's how it turned out...

Mani-louge

Base coat: Revlon Quick Dry Base Coat

Top Coat: Out The Door (boo)

Base Color: Essie's Turquoise & Caicos

Gradient (dry sponge method):  Chameleon Polish Calypso

Glitter Accent Nails: Sonoma Nail Art My Three Glitters & CND Effects Gold Sparkle

Stamping polish:  Konad Special Polish in Black Pearl

Stamping Plate: SH23

Insert angry face her-  Out the Door smeared my perfect stamp! I'm all out of poshe and I've never felt more desperate!

I chose to add glitter accent nails because honestly I'm always slightly unnerved when all of my nails match.  It's okay every once in a while, but I prefer a little variety within a mani.  SNA's MTG's provided the perfect touch without overwhelming the gradient. 

The gradient before stamping.  I think this is super pretty too!

Honestly there probably isn't a black and while matte polish that I've met that I don't like. However I will say MTG's is toward my top picks when it comes to these types of polishes.  It's funky and unique and I love that the glitters are squares. I added CND's Gold Sparkle just for a touch of sheen without going too overboard.

 

So this is pretty.  Yup - just plain ole pretty.  When I finished this mani I felt like I'd had a return to girly without the bling or gleam. I need to do more mani's like this one.  Do you like it? Am I the only one in the NP sphere still totally obsessed with gradient nail art? I hope not lol! Thanks for reading and see you next post! Toodles...

Essie's Action: Summer Skittles Makes Lacquerista's Happy

Hey lacquer lovers,

Friday was quite the productive shopping spree for me.  All drama aside, I got my virtual hands on some lovely HARE polish pre-orders! I'd been lemming these polishes for so long I was so happy to see the shop open again and can't wait to receive my polishes! So now I'm in the mood to celebrate with a fun and funky mani  Recently The Nailsaurus posted a look that has been plaguing me since I saw it - the Sandy Skittle.  To say it was exquisite would be an understatement.  She took one color and put her spin on it in 5 different ways.  I wanted to do the same but not necessarily in the same way so here's my translation using Essie's Action, a bright orange jelly polish released for their Poppy Razzi Neon Collection.

Nail Art Key
Thumb - Tiger print freehanded with Kiss Nail Art Striper in Black.
Index - Microbeads of multicolors.
Middle - Jelly sandwich comprised of two alternating layers of each polish using Lush Lacquer's Lite Brite and topped with Essie's Matte About You.
Ring - Leopard print french tip freehanded with Orly Liquid Vinyl and Kiss Nail Art Gold Glitter. CND Effects Gold Shimmer is also over the base coat.
Pinkie - Gradient using China Glaze Harvest Moon stamped with cG passion using  BM20 (Series 1)

Can you say jelly? Lol! I haven't been this impressed with a neon orange polish since Color Club's Wham Pow!

Isn't the mattified sandwich here so juicy looking? The more I look at Action the more I realize I need absolutely every color from the Poppy Razz Collection. I'm only missing Bazooka so game on!

Close-up's of Lush Lacquer's Lite Brite

The microbeading on this gave me so much trouble. It's my first time using them in this manner but jeez it was quite a bit of work to get them placed properly.

Ultimately, I'm happy with how things turned out.  It's like a small jungle in here :)

This is definitely funky and not for the faint of heart!  My favorite nail is the matte jelly sandwich closely followed by the glitter leopard.  This was fun albeit time consuming. The final result is so upbeat this would be perfect for a night out. What do you ladies think? If you are interested in Lite Brite and other amazing glitterbombs find you can find Lush Lacquer on Etsy.

Song stuck in my head today: Nighttiming by Coconut Records. All about cheating hearts minus the angst - lol.

Anyhoo, thanks for reading and toodles!

Lush Lacquer & Elemental Styles Jelly Sandwich

Hey polished prisoners,

I don't know about you but these days I'm starving for jelly! Luckily I have just the right indie polish "fixings" to whip up a very lady-like sandwich. Yum, yum, yum! But to make a good sandwich you need some great glitters and I chose two awesome ones.  The first is Elemental Styles Xenon: Warrior Princess (50), a matte glitter polish consisting of magenta, white and dark pink small sized glitter. It has zero element of sparkle and all my love! Xenon gets a 10 for formula and ease of application - it's a winner all around. I also chose to use one of my newest Lush Lacquer polishes.  Chubby Checker is gorgeous pastel pink glitter with loads of ultrafine holographic shimmer and small black and white squares, hexes and round glitter. Chubby gets a 8 for formula because it's a sinker.  It's nothing that ten minutes upside down and a few shakes of the bottle can't fix, but I disliked how quickly the settling reasserted itself.  Nevertheless the sparkle on this bad boy was fierce so 8/10 all around. Finally for the the main ingredient I chose Essie's Sugar Daddy a very light pink super sheer jelly polish.

My recipe: One layer of Essie's Sugar Daddy followed by one layer of  Xenon. Then another coat of Sugar Daddy followed by a layer of Chubby Checker and finally one last layer of Sugar Daddy.  For my ring finger I just put Xenon at the top and added a layer of CND Effects Copper Shimmer.

This is outdoor lighting unfortunately when haven't had much sun so the light was low, but this is true to color.

You can still see a bit of VNL even with so many layers, but I love how the hexes and matte polish peeps through sugar daddy.

 

This is was shot indoors. Unfortunately I had a very hard time getting the lighting right and the pink here is much darker here than it actually is.

What do you think? It's another first for me. I'm getting rid of an awful lot of firsts these days.  Maybe I should change the name of my blog to Cherry Lockdown, but oh my what would the readers think?!?  The truth is as obsessed with jelly polishes as I am these days I expect to be making many more sandwiches in the future.  I'm on a quest to find lots of great jellies and since I have so many glitters they would come in handy.  Do you ladies have any favorite jelly finish polishes? If you're interested in the glitters I used you can find Lush Lacquer and Elemental Styles on Etsy.  Thanks for reading and for now I'll bid you adieu and bon appetite!

Lavender and Gold Floral Konadicure

Hey stamp scamps,

What happens when you have an unending lust for stamping mixed with a desire to layer stamps to maximum effect? Only pretty things darlings!  As I mentioned before I just got in my order of the Shany 2012 stamping plates and boy was I ready to play.  I was going for light fluffy and pretty with a hint of shimmer yumminess.  I used Funky Fingers Sugar Plum Fairy as the base.  This polish is a pale lavendar color with light blue undertones and a golden shimmer.  It's beautiful but like the FF polish before required thinning and two coats to reach opacity.  I stamped first with China Glaze TTYL using SH20 floral pattern.  I then stamped over that with CG Passion using plate SH13.  Finally I added butterflies using Dashica's Shimmer Purple stamping polish using plate CH3.  For the accent nail I did a simple gradient using Sugar Plum Fairy as the base and Orly's Close Your Eyes.  CYE's is a gorgeous deep plum colored polish with paler purple and gold shimmer throughout.  I finally put a simple coat of CND Gold Sparkle over it and abracadabra I had my pretty layered mani!

I used a new method for my gradient nail this time which made the transition between colors look a lot smoother.

I love the contrast of fresh green with lavender sort of like flowers peeking out of greenery

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Love the flashes of gold from cG Passion!

You can really see the holo jump out on this one.

What do you ladies think - very feminine right?  What I like the most is that the Shany plates have so many freaking cute designs! These plates, like the Bundle Monster one's, really give you a big bang for your buck for about $12 you get well over 100 images.  Honestly, I love stamping enough to find this quite a good deal.  If you're interested in the plates check you can find them here on Amazon.com.  They are also eligible for super saver shipping, yay, so you can grab a couple things and get it shipped on the cheap!  Thanks for reading and stay tuned for a massive indie polish haul.  My clicking finger got trigger happy in a major way when I spotted some of these little babies!  Toodles.