Iridescent Swirl Nails

Sorry about that title... I'm not really sure what to call these! I went to Ulta yesterday and got the only Essence polish I've ever been interested in: Chic Reloaded. It's a beautiful dark polish that is a greenish-grey at one angle and a plum-like, shimmery purple at another. Kind of reminds me of a scarab beetle. And since my tiger nails chipped so quickly, I was glad to try it out tonight! I started out wearing just the Essence polish by itself, but I figured I could go for some extra oomph. But I didn't want to detract from Chic Reloaded with a crazy design over it, so I decided to go with something simple!

(Sorry for the odd angles, I was trying to get the purple shimmer to show up - these were taken indoors with flash)

I used MASH plate 40 for the swirls and the polish I used for the stamping may surprise you. I have a couple of those Revlon Moon Candy sticks with the double sided polish - looks like this:

I absolutely hate them - the effect would have been nice had the glitter/flaky/whatever polish been executed well. It's clumpy and feels gross on my nails, and yeah. I just don't like them. BUT the one thing they did really well is the creme polish side. I LOVE THEM. They're literally some of the most opaque polishes I've ever used. So for stamping (if I need black polish), I always use the black polish on the end of Revlon's Moon Candy Moon Dust. (I also like the navy blue polish on the end of Galactic.)

I took two sets of pictures because I could not for the life of me get the purple shimmer in this polish to show up (Edit: Funny enough, I took the picture above of the Revlon after I had typed this sentence up and added it in later - the purple showed up the first time. Figures). I tried different angles, different lighting, and different settings on my camera. Nothing was working. But I finally did get some okay pictures of the purple:

The effect is much more dramatic in person. It almost has a Burtonesque feel to it! Kind of. I like it. I wish it came out on camera better though! Like I said in my last post, I hope to beat the day light sometime so I can take pictures outside, because I know those will turn out much better. It seems like I only paint my nails at night nowadays. 

Anyway, until next time, thanks for reading, have a nice day, and happy painting! :)

Neon Tiger Nails

Hello again! I wanted to share my weekend manicure with you (and I say weekend because I painted my nails on Friday and they chipped yesterday - 2 freaking days??), so here they are:

(indoors w/ flash)

If you're wondering if I painted those stripes myself, I definitely didn't. Like I said in my introduction post, I recently got a set of MASH stamping plates, and I've been working my way through those images. So this is just a heads up - probably going to see stamped images for a while. They're just so much more convenient.

For this design, I started off with a base coat (Seche Clear), and then I added two coats of China Glaze Frostbite. Gotta admit, I almost didn't get that polish because I just couldn't see myself wearing it too often, but my sister convinced me, and it is fantastic. Bright, electric blue. I love it. After that, I used MASH plate 41 and stamped the tiger stripe image on all of my nails with Sinful Colors Innocent, which is a really bright greenish yellow (more green than yellow, but you can't really tell from the photo) creme. Not the most perfect polish for stamping, but I loved the combination (both the colors and the different finishes). I topped it off with Seche Vite top coat.

Sorry about my awful clean up job around my cuticles, and also sorry for the picture. My camera isn't that great and it seems like the only usable images I can get are from using the flash, which tends to wash out the colors. Maybe one of these days I'll beat the day light and be able to take some photos outside! Until then, thanks for reading, have a great day, and happy painting! :)

Introduction Post

Hello there! If you're reading this, you've stumbled across my new blog. I guess I'll just introduce myself.

My name is Faith, I'm 20 years old. I created this blog because over the past year I've really gotten into nail art; and, to be frank, I don't really have any close friends or family that's really interested in nail art and nail polish (well, maybe one or two are interested). At least, not like I am. So I just needed a place to talk about my thoughts and maybe stimulate my creativity when it comes to designs. Recently I got some MASH stamping plates, so I've been slowly working my way through the images. But I also like to hand-paint designs as well! It really just depends on what I'm feeling like that day. I plan on sharing as many manicures as I can with you. :)

Some things about myself... I have been an artist all my life, so I may discuss that sometimes. I haven't decided yet if this is going to be a strictly nail art blog or if I'm going to share things about my paintings and drawings too. Basically what has happened is that I've lost my creative muse. I didn't really think I ever had one, but I've hit a massive artist's block. Massive. And it seems as though I just... can't paint any more. Not that I don't have the skill, I just lost my motivation and I have a hard time executing the few ideas I have nowadays. I'm not going to lie, it's pretty depressing. And this is probably why I've picked up nail art. It's like carrying little canvases around with me every where to show people. I love it! :) And I've discovered it's just a lovely way to ease back into painting (considering I went from painting/drawing nearly every day for years to not painting at all). So I guess what I'm trying to get at here is that it makes me happy, and I hope it makes you happy too. That's what's important. It took me a while to figure that out, but yeah. Do what makes you happy!

Anyway! Uh, I also really love tv shows. Just... a huge variety of tv shows. I won't talk much about those here, but I might mention them every once in a while. Maybe I'll even have some tv show nail art? Who knows! It's all just one big journey for me. So I guess we'll see. 

Also, a quick explanation about my blog title: My name is Rebecca Faith (I've only ever gone by Faith, really) and my cousins and I like to warp our names into nicknames. Mine happens to be Becca Face, so that's what I wanted to use. :)

Well, if anyone reads this, thank you! I'm still learning how this platform works... so. Sorry. Also sorry that this is a terribly long post. But thank you, and see you next time!