Favourite Polish

I didn't know which direction to go for the prompt "favourite polish" because I don't have a go-to polish. I love them all for different reasons because I have different uses for them with nail art. I went to my pinterest board of previous nail art and decided to redo a mani that I did for my mom before.

I think it was probably my favourite manicure, or at least one of my favourites. The funny thing is that this is only my second time using the background colour and first time using the red. The background is Coach Ella from Fresh Paint. The red is Dangerous by Sephora, which I found in Singapore and don't think they sell it in the US because it's not the Formula X brand.

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Jelly... fish? They even glow!

The theme for the 9th is Jelly. I really want to get a jelly ever since I saw this post, but I don't have one yet. I decided to take the theme of jelly and use my creative license to do jellyfish!

I started out with Sparks will Fly by China Glaze Magnetix.

I looked up images of jellyfish to get a better idea of how they look. Then I remembered that jellyfish glow and I have a glow in the dark nail polish! I first did the tops of the jelly fish with a small brush and then I used a long brush with a few brush hairs to paint the tentacles.

This was the finished product in light, well with a flash in the dark.

This is the finished product with the glowing jelly fish. I was absolutely in love with the glow in the dark jelly fish. I thought that it was cool when I used the glow in the dark just for my nails but it was even cooler as jellyfish nail art!

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Duochrome

So I'm still confused about the difference between a duochrome and a holographic nail polish, but I looked up the nail polish that I wanted to use. It's called Candid Cameron from Nicole by OPI's Modern Family collection. It's my only nail polish that would fit in any category except for my Green on the Runway from the Coca-Cola collection, but I'm a collector of Coca-Cola things so I haven't decided if I'm going to open my mini set or keep them in their pretty box.

Anyway, while looking it up, I discovered that it is a duochrome. Kinda. It's also kind of a shimmer. It looks more duochrome in the bottle, but the colours are green, blue, and a touch of gold. Green and blue look very similar so it does lose some of its duochrome-ness when applied.

I wasn't sure what I wanted to do, but I saw a beetle painted on someone's nails on pinterest the other day and I thought it was beautiful. I adapted the idea for my own use in this mani.

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Dark

The theme for OMD2 for the 5th is Dark. I did these on the same day as bright and I wanted to do something opposite. After I painted the base colour, I realised that it wasn't as dark as I thought it would be, but really more of a metallic colour. And I should have used the opposite colours from my bright. But live and learn. I still decided to do the dots on the bottom part of my nail to bring some opposite into it.

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Bright

It's winter in Canberra and my hands get cold easily, so when I found some cheap gloves in my old stuff, I decided to cut off the fingertips to let me paint my nails and keep warm. Also, look how much better my nails are looking. They used to be so yellow because I wasn't using a good base coat when I started doing my nails. The trick really is to always use a good base coat and then you just need to wait for the yellowness to grow out.

Day 4's theme for OMD2 is Bright. I decided to go with bright green and yellow because you can't get much brighter than that!

The green that I used is from the Wet n Wild Fergie collection and is called Glowstick. Despite my annoyances with Wet n Wild's Wild Shine colours, I do love this one. The only downside is that it is a bit sheer, which is part of the reason that I chose the nail art that I did. I hate visible nail line.

The yellow is from Nails Inc and is called Belsize Park.

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Lavender

Day 3 of the OMD2 is lavender and I had the perfect polish. It's Lavender Soap from Revlon and it smells like lavender.

I chose to use that as the base colour for my nails. I decided to do only an accent nail because I wanted to keep the scent and wasn't sure if the nail art would mask it. When sketching out my designs, I decided to do a swirls in a deeper purple on top.

My colours were Lavender Soap by Revlon Parfumerie and Pretty in Plum from Nicole by OPI's Selena Gomez collection.

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Coral

Day 2 for OMD2 has Coral as the theme. Instead of just the colour, I decided to take an ocean approach. First is the sketch of my idea.

I chose Sparks Will Fly which is part of the Magnetix collection from China Glaze. It's a blue with a bit of a purply tint to it. It reminds me of blueberries.

Next I have three pictures of the finished product to try to show the colours best. The coral appears a lot more vibrant in real life than it shows up in the pictures but the blue also is more shimmery than some of the other pictures.. For the coral I used Guava by Fresh Paint and did them freehand with a small brush.

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Mint

During July, the blogs that I usually follow for a weekly/monthly challenge have a special event. It's called Oh Mon Dieu Part Deux Challenge (or OMD2 for short). Basically there's a new theme every day and at the beginning of next month they will pick one winner from each of the five different regions. (The prizes have to be different because shipping laws differ between countries.)

Since I am getting married on July 19th, I won't be able to do my nails as often as I would like to for this challenge, so I'm going to be creative. They have released all of the nail prompts and they don't need to be done in order, so I am actually going to do a different manicure on my left and right hands. I'm going to give them their own blog post, though.

Today's theme is mint. There are two approaches, one being mint colour and the other being a mint that you might eat. I chose to go with the latter approach. I sketched out some of my plans for the month. I decided that I needed to get a new white polish because my old one kind of spilled in the transit from Michigan to Canberra. I had a rule that I wasn't going to buy more nail polish until I had a job, but I needed to make an exception for this.

I ended up buying a white from Sinful Colours. It's a lot cheaper than the other polishes and I figured I'd give it a second chance. I have an orange from Sinful Colours, but I don't like the consistency and it doesn't show up at all if I try to put it on top of another colour for nail art. I found this white to be just as crap as the other stuff. The consistency is very liquidy and when you put it on your nails it becomes thick is some places and very uneven. This made the drying time suck and it got all sorts of dents.

For the red swirls I also used one of my cheaper and crappier nail polishes. It's from Wet n Wild. It's one that actually sort of melted when I spent the day at Cedar Point.

I did three major red swirls and then a thin line between each of them. I decided to just go with an accent nail instead of all of my nails.

It wasn't until I started putting on the top coat that I realised that this red is so bad. It felt dry to the touch, but it still smeared when I applied the top coat. I now have pink swears and lines. Plus the polish did not clean up well from the rest of my fingers. I really liked my design, but it would have looked a lot better if I had used better nail polishes.

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Peacock

My nails were chipping really badly so I repainted them yesterday. I decided to go with a peacock theme. I've been wanting to do it for a while but it was summer back when I was in America and the colours seem more wintery so I waited. Plus I don't currently have a challenge taking place.

They look better in real life as my camera is not very forgiving towards little mistakes and it seems to highlight any errors. These nails are also part of the rare occurrence where my right hand looks loads better than my left hand! I attribute that to being slightly left handed so it got messed up as it wasn't fully dry when I was trying to do other things.

Butterfly in the sky

Today's theme for the Challenge Your Nail Art group on Facebook was butterflies and gardens. I didn't do the other days because it's harder having just moved, but I've been wanting to do butterfly wings for some time now having seen it on Pinterest.

I was going to do a monarch butterfly, but I don't really like orange and it would clash with most of my clothes. Then the house that I'm staying at has a poster with a bible verse and a butterfly with green wings. I wasn't sure if the black would show up for my nail art but luckily I was already wearing the colour and did a few dots to see. I was happy with the result so I redid my nail and painted the details.

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