Deep Sea Flakies

Happy Saturday! I'm writing this on Thursday, but by the time this is posted, hopefully we'll all be having a great weekend. I did this manicure about a month ago and am just now getting around to posting it. At the time, I was going through one of those phases where you wear the same sort of polish for about five manicures, and at the time, I was in a dark polish phase. One of the manicures I wore during that phase was Essence Just Rock It layered with one coat each of FingerPaints Flecked and FingerPaints Motley. This was one of the first manicures I did with Flecked and Motley, and I have to say, I think it turned out quite well.

 indoors, artificial light

Fall Chevrons

I couldn't really come up with a better name for this nail art, so fall chevrons it is. After all, I think the color combination looks like something one would wear in fall, and it's also been raining all day today. I used the tape method for this; all you need is some blue painter's tape (masking tape works as well, but I find it's more likely to peel off your polish) and whatever nail polish you'd like to use. I think it's pretty easy to figure out, but if you'd like a tutorial, leave a comment and I'll see what I can do - I'm pretty sure I'll be doing another variation of this sometime soon.

natural light, cloudy

As is always the case, this looks neater in real life than in my picture. As those of you who have nail blogs know, macro always likes to highlight the flaws in manicures - in this case, it's the bumpiness where I had to reapply bits because the top coat caused the dark blue to streak, as well as the little bit of tipwear I already had. The polishes I used were Maybelline Natural Beauty (isn't it a gorgeous latte? I need to do a review of it by itself), Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Blue-Away (stupid name, but also a lovely color), and Essence Just Rock It (a stupid name only because of the exclamation point that I am pointedly not including). I originally intended to use Barielle Coco Bar instead of Just Rock It, but then I decided to use for colors, then changed my mind and ended up with this. I like the way it turned out anyway, which I suppose is all that matters. I hope you're all having a wonderful week, and are much less damp than I!

Cat Eye

Last Friday, I decided to add a little something to Essence Choose Me to see if I would like it better that way...and I did! I added one coat of China Glaze Fairy Dust and used Nailene Tips & Toes French mani guides (the straight ones, for toes) to create this effect. I'm sorry about the messiness; I clearly didn't have time to do much cleanup.

indoors, artificial light

After I painted my nails, I realized that the design kind of reminded me of one of my favorite rings, so I thought I'd include a picture of the ring, too. I did like Choose Me a lot better this way, and I'm definitely thinking of doing similar manicures with other colors. I don't know when my next post will be, as I'm still having computer problems, but I'm sure I'll post at least once more within the week. Until then, I hope your week's off to a great start!

Essence Choose Me

Essence Choose Me, one of many dupes for Zoya Charla, is a sparkling, shimmery blue with a gold flash (of course, the gold flash doesn't show up at all in my pictures... :/). I've had it in my collection for a couple of months now, but there always seemed to be something I wanted to try first. I finally got around to putting it on, though, and then I wasn't sure that I liked it. I know, I know...crazy, right?  Anyway, here are the pictures. I used three coats. Also, I did take three pictures of this, but Blogger turned the second two sideways and stretched them so it looked like each of my fingers was about three inches wide. Lovely.

 indoors, artificial light



By the way, I used the hair in a Garnier ad for my background because I thought it went well with the color of the polish. Hehe. Anyway, I've come to the conclusion that I do like this polish, but not as much as I thought or hoped I would. I don't think it really goes with my skin tone in real life, though it does in the picture...I feel like the yellowy-gold flash makes me look jaundiced. I'm not going to take Choose Me off just yet, though. I might add a coat of Icing Glamourous, and I might do something else I have in mind. We'll see. Happy Friday!