Nail Art

   Here is a manicure I created using the new Sally Hansen Color Foil polishes.  They were perfect for this technique, which is much simpler to create than you might think!  Yes, this is the art that was originally meant to go over Raven.  But this base color was more fun - it glows in the dark!

Nail Art

   Hello!  This is a big post for me, and I don't just say that because it's image heavy!  This is my first-ever "galaxy nails" attempt!  Which turned out quite nicely... for a first attempt, at least!  I've been inspired by all the beautiful galaxy and nebula manicures, in particular the ones that play around with colors beyond the typical spacey black, blue and green.  Thus my choice of a deep burgundy and pink scheme!

   Read on if you'd like to see a bunch more pictures (including glowing ones!) and hear about what I used.  I was surprised by how easy this ended up being, though I didn't take a picture of what  used, it was a combination of dotting tools, make-up sponges and a thin nail art brush.

Nail Art

   Oh, readers, this post is a fun one for me to share!  You may think that with all the pastel colors around here that I am simply a girly-girl.  Not true!  Beneath my frilly, lacy outer layer you will find a cold, hard nerdy comic book geek.  Hey, sometimes your knight in shining armor is actually a knight in really tight spandex.  Don't complain, fellow princesses, you know a spandex spidey-suit is easier to clean than a full suit of armor.  Yay for wash-and-wear!  ...Moving on!


   See what I did here, channeling the vintage comic book cover style?  I'm pretty proud of it... not nearly as proud as I am of these nails, though!!  I painted them on May 3rd, in preparation of my my 2nd wedding anniversary day-early dinner & movie celebration.  (What a mouthful.)  See, I really am a geek - I totally felt this was a sufficient romantic date for an important occasion.

   So yes, this was nail art for The Amazing Spider-Man 2 movie - wait 'til you see the other hand! - but  promise that I will reveal no spoilers.  I hate spoilers!

Swatch & Nail Art

   My could manicure obsession continues!  This time I switched the color layering up by offsetting the "bumps" of the clouds.  It's a subtle difference but I like it!

  For this manicure I used a base of ILNP Dreaming in Violet, my one Pantone orchid-inspired polish... as of yet!  This is a really nice pinky-purple holographic polish.  It is linear, and stronger than what my photos show, of course.  While Dreaming in Violet's formula is very good (I only needed 2 coats!) there was just one thing I was let down about...

Layering Nail Art / Swatch

Nail Art / Swatch & Review

   These weren't supposed to look like snowy, winter nails, I promise!  If you're having flashbacks to negative temperatures I give you my whole-hearted apology.  After wearing Color Club Over the Moon for a day and enjoying it's sunny-sky hue I thought puffy cloud tips would be pretty cute.  So I free-handed cloud tips using Zoya Purity.

Nail Art / Tutorial

   This is a nail art look that immediately came to mind when I opened my last Influenster VoxBox and saw the bag of cutely colored Hershey's KISSES candy.  So, I've created a pictorial explaining how you can create this look, and I'm sure you'll want to check it out.  This may be one of the only nail art looks that requires you to eat chocolate as the first step!

   It's already March, and that means it is time for another Mini Giveaway!  While searching for inspiration for this month's theme, I was reminded that this Saturday we'll be losing an hour of thanks to Daylight Saving Time.  (Ugh, I don't want to lose an hour!  If you're in an area that doesn't follow DST, be thankful!)  Also, the first day of spring is March 20th.

   And what better way to combine the thoughts of spring and the bitter reality of lost sleep than with quick-and-easy flower nail art stickers?  The winner will get 12 assorted sheets.  Yay!  I'm also including a pack of Fringed Iris tip guides (3 styles in the pack!) and carded samples of Urban Decay Primer Potion and Stardust Eyeshadows!

   This giveaway will run until March 21st at midnight.  Widget for entering is below, so keep reading!  Please click the "Terms and Conditions" link at the bottom of the Rafflecopter widget, that is where you will find the rules!  Thank-you!

Swatch & Review / Nail Art

Arizona, take off your rainbow shades...

   I grew up listening to the oldies.  So when it comes to a girl named Arizona, the song is all my brain can come up with.  I wonder who is the real inspiration behind Zoya's Arizona?  Anyway, this is a manicure that seemed so much better in my head.

   Greetings, princesses!  I hope your week went better than mine - my daughter is in a crazy, needy phase and has hardly let me do anything.  I'm looking forward to the weekend, and what better way to kick it off than with an International giveaway?  Yayyy!

   What I'd like to do each month is hold a giveaway for Princessly Polished subscribers, and to make it easy to share worldwide I came up with the idea to choose an assortment of nail art products that can be sent safely in a letter!  I'll have a different theme each month, and I'd love to hear your suggestions.  The theme I chose for February is Pantone's color of the year...

   Radiant Orchid!  I figured this is a great place to start, as most of us are really excited about this color.  I'm not really into following trends or wearing a color because it's "in", but this is a gorgeous shade with a wonderful color family.  Bring it on.

Nail Art / Tutorial

   Here is a very quick and easy manicure!  Last spring pond manicures exploded onto the scene, no doubt thanks to the prevalence of jelly polishes and the fact that nail art creators everywhere were loving the effects those sheer washes of color can give.  A true pond manicure involves a dotting tool and a bit of skill as you create small white designs (usually flowers, hearts, dots, etc) between layers of juicy transparent polish.  I set out to create something even easier!

Nail Art / Swatch & Review

   Have you ever had a manicure stuck in your head?  The only known cure is to sit down and paint that manicure!  I've had this one stuck in my head for weeks, and while it isn't quite as great as my brain imagined it to be, I still really enjoyed it!  First off, this is my first time doing an ombre manicure where each nail is painted a different color.  I couldn't find anything that talks about names for the different types of ombre manis - and there are many!  What is up with that?

Nail Art / Mini Tutorial

   I was swatching Zoya Kristen a few days ago when inspiration struck.  Actually, a piece of fuzz struck.  Necessity is the mother of invention, right?  As soon as I was adding topcoat I noticed a very fine piece of red fuzz glossed into my index nail, like so:

Swatch & Review / Nail Art

   This was one of the items provided for review in my Violet VoxBox from Influenster. They would like us to share a "shining moment" we had while wearing the polish.  I didn't actually get to wear this for very long, but I did dress Sparkling Water up with some pearl-chain nail stickers.  As I was finishing my manicure, I had a realization...

   Are nail stickers "cheating" when it comes to nail art?  Should they even count?  Yes.  Just because you make a cake using a box mix instead of from scratch, will someone claim that you didn't bake a cake: you cheated?  No, you just made what you currently had time and ability to do.  We all admire the hand-piped frosting flowers, the mind-blowing 3D fondant creations that make their way to Pinterest collections... but sometimes you have to be content with sprinkles.  In the end it's tasty, you did make cake.
    With nail stickers and decals... they are quick and easy to master, but do take skill to apply in a creative, eye-pleasing way.  So what if I didn't sit down with a tiny brush and make each dot myself.  I still chose where I wanted the design, carefully cut them to the proper length, and carefully applied them with tweezers.  That's all I had time for.  And you know what?  It was pretty, I enjoyed the look - I did nail art.

   Now, let's get to what we're really after: a proper swatch and review of Sally Hansen Sparkling Water!

Nail Art

   Today's post features an ancient relic!  Okay, not really.  But Lush Lacquer recently changed their name to Polish Me Silly, and either way I think Mr. Bubble might be a discontinued color?  I bought it last year.  Mr. Bubble is a mix of matte glitter in a clear base, and I used it to make a really cute glitter gradient sandwiched between layers of L'oréal Bubble Trouble!

Nail Art / Swatch & Review

   Good day, Princesses!  Last month when my Laquerlicous polishes arrived in the mail I was immediately inspired by this one.  It was calling out to me from the bottle and I knew I needed to use it in a melon-y manicure ASAP.  I wanted to make the glitters pop, so I couldn't do just a regular pink/red watermelon design.  I thought of trying a nice cantaloupe color, but there is a funny thing about watermelon...


   It's a fruit, it's a vegetable.  It's not technically a melon.  And when it grows without the red pigment-giving antioxidant lycopene... it comes in the most lovely shades of yellow!

Photo source: whataboutwatermelon.com

   I must admit to feeling quite clever about remembering that yellow watermelons are indeed "a thing".  You see, I've never actually found one in person.  They just aren't common in our area.  I'd love to try a slice, though!  They sound like they taste fantastic...  Anyway, nail polish, yes.


   Laquerlicious Melon Sorbet is such a fantastic glitter topper.  I mean, just look at this macro!  It is full of satin and matte shapes in happy shades of pink and green, along with a dash of black and white.  It's the perfect blend of color variety and glitter sizes, easy to work with, and has perfect topper coverage at one coat.  Each nail ends up looking totally unique (without looking chaotic) and there is no need to do glitter fishing.  Though I did fish out the pastel pink circle for my index nail - I saw it in the bottle and I wanted it!  I could go on, but that would probably be cruel.  Right now this polish is on clearance, and there aren't many bottles left.  I'll just say that if you missed this one, I feel very sorry for you.


Details on the nail art:
   Pastel yellow glitter nails: 3 coats China Glaze Lemon Fizz and 1 coat Laquerlicious Melon Sorbet.  Topped with 1 coat of Gelous and 1 coat of Poshe.  (Only used Poshe for the other nails.)
   Melon slice accent nail: Lemon Fizz base with China Glaze Happy Go Lucky sponged at the cuticle for a riper, sweeter-looking melon, black seeds using a nail art striper (L.A. Colors Black), and Zoya Purity sponged at the tip for a realistic fade into the rind..
   Melon rinds:  Base color is Zoya Hunter with squiggly lines done with a bright green nail art striper (L.A. Colors Mint Green).

   I'm a nail-art novice, so I am really happy with how these turned out!  I actually wore these nails at the end of last month; editing the pictures now and seeing them again made me happy all over again!  It's only summer for another week, so it was a perfect time to get my melon on.  Haha.


   If you'd like to see more about yellow watermelon, check out this article on wiseGEEK and this recipe for, what else?  Yellow watermelon sorbet!  Also, if you've ever had the chance to eat yellow watermelon please leave a comment telling me about your experience!  Until I find it myself I'll have to live vicariously through others.  =)


   This might be my last blog post for a little while.  My previous OB appointment revealed that I can basically go into labor at any time (Yay!  ...I think?), and if I don't by this weekend I'll probably be induced (having issues with low fluids again, thus the constant monitoring).  In fact, as this post is going live I'm heading off to one more appointment, where I guess they could say "we're keeping you now".  But I'm hoping that doesn't happen...  Either way, I don't know that I will have much of a brain for blogging.  Most of my time off this week has been spent cleaning, packing, and napping.  ^-^  Until we see you again, hugs and kicks-es from the baby and I! ♥

   Things are looking up!  My last doctor visit went well and my fluid levels are where they are supposed to be.  So long as this continues I should be able to safely carry this baby to term!  As of today that only makes 3 weeks to go, anyhow...  I'm fine with her waiting until then to come out, haha.  =)

   So, this month... kind of made up for buying so little earlier in the year...  Some things were gifts though, too!  And pretty much everything else in this picture was on sale.

   Usually I would have a bunch of pictures and list off everything that I accumulated, but I'm not doing that this time.  (Combine a busy week & weekend with the exhaustion of pregnancy...)  Instead I'll leave links to what I've already shown on my blog!

   I've already tested more of what you see here... tune in next week for Nyx swatches and more Laquerlicious eye candy!  I think I want to try out the nail decals or foil sheets I found next...

Swatch & Review / Nail Art

   First off, huge shout-out to my husband for replacing the inverter board in my laptop.  Now the backlight in my screen lights up again, so I can edit my pictures!  Yayyy...  The timing of that part dying last week was really bad - August 15th was my 2-year blogaversary, and I was too busy to bother trying to make a post on a different computer, or more aptly, a different screen.  (I don't want to edit colors on a screen I'm not used to.)  Anyway, happy belated blogaversary to me - celebrations shall ensue. =)

   Photographs don't do this manicure justice.  I did a little cloud design and it hardly showed in pictures...  I used Color Club Miss Bliss (pink linear holo) and Color Club Eternal Beauty (purple linear holo).  Miss Bliss is a slightly deeper shade of pink than Color Club Halo-graphic, because I love linear holos and the color pink I'm happy to have both in my collection!    But they are quite similar and you really don't need both...

   Anyhow, I can rave about the formulas on these polishes equally.  They were super-smooth to apply and very pigmented - wearable at 1 coat!  I used 2 coats for better depth of color, however.  Miss Bliss is a true pink color, and Eternal Beauty is true purple, not leaning too blue or red.  And they are so full of rainbows.  Simply awesome.  Check out my picture below from before I added the nail art!

   Two more untrieds have become tried and loveds!  What do you think of them?

Nail Art / Swatch & Review

   Working through more of my untried indie glitters, I created this cute manicure to wear to the baby shower that my best friend held yesterday!  It was such a nice party.  These might not look like very baby-themed nails, but I'm not one for baby motifs.  So I went with nice bright colors, instead.  Also, Lush Lacquer is created by a mother-daughter team, so it totally fits!

   All my nails started out with a base coat of white, which was Zoya Purity.  For my glitter gradient nails I used Lush Lacquer Pebbles.  This is an awesome, colorful matte glitter in a clear base.  It looks way better on the nail than in the bottle, where the colors appear muddled because of the tiny glitter size.  On the nail the yellow, pink, purple and blue really pop!

   The glitter coverage was good, too.  My nails are showing 1 coat at the cuticle/top, 2 coats from the middle down, and 3 at the very tip.  Roughly.  I just dabbed the glitter on carefully to make the gradient effect.  My verdict is that this polish is great!

   For accent nails I tried doing fishtail style chevrons for the first time.  They didn't come out too badly, but 4 colors was way too many for a beginner's attempt!  Definitely going to stick with 2 the next time I practice.  I did a pretty good job matching up the polish colors to the glitter in Pebbles, though.  Here is what I used:

Lush Lacquer Pebbles, China Glaze Happy-Go-Lucky, Zoya Sweet, Pure Ice Fairy Godmother and Sally Hansen Blue Me Away!

   What do you think of these nails?  Do you have any Lush Lacquer colors to recommend?  They can be found in the Lush Lacquer etsy shop!  Thanks for looking.  =)

Nail Art / Swatch & Review

   I was about to swatch Color Club Beyond when I realized that I never shared Harp On It on my blog, and realized they would pair very well.  Here they are swatched together, with a bit of nail art!

   I'm wearing these polishes without any base or top coat, so you can see how they have a smooth finish and nice shine all on their own.  Harp On It is Color Club's silver linear holographic polish from their first Halo Hues collection.  It took 2 coats for opacity, but the formula is very good.  So long as you keep your brush movements gentle and wait a little while in between coats you won't have any issues with dragging.  Beyond, the linear black holo, is fantastic.  I can't say enough good things about this polish!  I only needed 1 coat and it was totally opaque!  The formula is super-smooth and the rainbow effect is very strong.  I definitely recommend this polish if you're hunting for the ever-elusive perfect black holo, and don't want to spend a fortune.

   The lightning bolt accent nail makes me feel like my nails should be super-powered, haha.  My husband liked it and it was really easy to do!  All you need is a bit of tape and a pair of scissors.  First, start with your completely-dry base color.  This is important, otherwise your polish could be pulled off by your tape.

   Cut a zigzag into a piece of tape and place each piece on your nail to create your desired bolt shape.  Make sure the edges are smoothed down so no polish will seep under.  I'm using painter's tape.

   Paint the open area, and quickly but gently peel the tape off before your polish dries.  That's it!  Enjoy your snazzy nail design!