Marina and the Diamonds Nails

Hey there! So a couple of days ago I got really bored and wanted to paint my nails, but I had no idea what to do, and I didn't feel like having anything too flashy or too plain, so it was a difficult choice. I was listening to Marina and the Diamonds' album Electra Heart and then I was struck with inspiration! Marina and the Diamonds nails. But not based on any of the nail art she wears (because she is known to wear some pretty unique designs in her music videos), it was just based on the colors I saw in some of her music videos and I just took creative license, basically. But it still looks Marina Diamandis inspired!

On my thumb, middle, and pinky fingers are two coats of Love & Beauty Baby Blue (one of the recurring colors in her videos as well as a color on the album cover). Then off to the right side, I painted a small black heart with acrylic paint like she wears as her character Electra Heart (the character she named the album after) on her face:

Then on my index finger, I painted a coat of Sally Hansen XTreme Wear Celeb City, one coat of Essie Set in Stone, and one coat of Pure Ice Dazzle Me. That's a lot of sparkle! But I needed the coverage of the Essie polish, and the holographic silver glitters of the Pure Ice polish. So it was necessary.

Then on my ring finger, I picked colors based on the lipstick she wore in her music video for Fear and Loathing:

I did two coats of China Glaze Life is Rosy and I sponged on the tip and up the center with China Glaze Thataway. 

And that's it! I don't know if it necessarily matches the blue and the silver, but it does add a touch of warmth to the look. So I hope you like it! And if you don't know who Marina and the Diamonds is, go look her up! She's absolutely fantastic. Thanks for reading, have a great day, and happy painting! :)

Blue Galaxy Nails

Hey there! :) So, for this post I have some galaxy nails for you! Yes, they've been done a million times before. I know. There's nothing new about galaxy nails. But I, for one, think they are still beautiful and never get old! So I went ahead and did some. THEY ARE GORGEOUS.

(outdoors - direct sunlight)

(outdoors - shade)

So pretty!! I usually don't do blue-toned galaxy nails, they're usually pink and yellow. So this was new to me! And they are pretty labor-intensive for galaxy nails. So I'm just going to list the steps and colors I used for you:

1. My base color was the blue polish end of the Revlon Moon Candy nail art double-ended thing in the combination Galactic. It's really opaque, plus I'm going to add a ton of extra colors and glitter, so I did one very thin coat. You can substitute a black polish, because this one pretty much looks black.
2. I sponged some white (Sinful Colors Snow Me White) using a small piece of makeup sponge in a random pattern on each nail to create the "nebula."
3. Then I took a shimmery dark blue (a nameless BonBon polish) and sponged around the edges of the white to blend it into the blue/black base color.
4. I then used China Glaze Ahoy! and lightly sponged it in a few places. I just wanted a hint of the rosy pink, but nothing too overpowering. 
5. Then comes the fun part. GLITTER!! I used three different glitter polishes for this. Can you spot them all? First I used one of my all time favorite polishes - a nameless BonBon polish. Yep. One of those teeny tiny bottles of polish from Walmart. It's one of the few that are still left in stores, as far as I know. I picked up three new bottles just in case they stop making them! It's a shimmery clear base with multi-colored iridescent glitters of all sizes in it. So lovely. Then I dabbed on some Pure Ice Look My Way on the shimmery blue I sponged on earlier. Look My Way is a jam-packed glitter polish with purple and blue glitters in it. It actually didn't show up too much, but it did give a nice spotted effect over the white. Then I topped it off with a few dabs of Sonnetarium's Snowfall for the white stars. Combined, it gave a beautiful effect! I LOVED these nails so much. Of course, if you want to recreate these, polishes and dotting tools can be used to substitute the glitter.

I hope you like this as much as I do! Let me know if you want to try them or if you have any questions! Thanks for reading, have a good day, and happy painting! :)

Pure Ice Twisted Swatch

Hello again! Yep, you guessed it. Still trying to catch up on my blog posts! I didn't realize how often I paint my nails until I got behind on these posts, and now I have to go back and remember what order I painted them in, yadda yadda yadda. My most recent problem is some missing photos, because I know I took pictures of one of my manicures, but now they're gone! I'll have to do some searching for those. Anyway, hopefully I will be caught up on my posts by tonight, because I really want to share what I just painted on my nails with you, and I can't do that until I'm caught up, haha. So here's a swatch that I did a few weeks ago - Pure Ice Twisted.

(indoors, under a lamp)

(indoors)

Isn't it beautiful? My camera doesn't actually pick it up, but Twisted is more blue in reality (it's a duochrome blue and green glass fleck polish - it even has a small hint of purple in the bottle, but you can't see it on the nails). And it shines normally like in the first picture most of the time. It's awesome. Before I put it on, I didn't want a crazy shiny polish - it was one of those days when I wanted something really toned down. But then I realized I don't have very many toned down polishes! So I slapped on some matte top coat:

(indoors, under a lamp)

(natural lighting - sorry about the tip wear/ugly cutitcles, I took this photo a day or two after I painted them)

They looked fantastic with the matte top coat (I use Essie Matte About You)! I got a lot of compliments on them. And this is one of those polishes that has glass-like flecks in it, and when you put the matte top coat on you can see them in their full glory. I could stare at these nails for hours. And of course they felt fantastic - so smooth and soft with the matte top coat. I loved them! Still not toned down like I wanted, but it all worked out in the end! I picked up Twisted at Wal-mart, it's one of Pure Ice's new polishes they released recently. It's inexpensive and beautiful - my kind of polish! 

Thanks for reading, have a good day, and happy painting! :)