Halloween Nails 2010

Happy belated Halloween! ♥

My actual Halloween nails weren't that spooky, but this is what I was wearing a few weeks earlier. Orly Glamrock stamped with silver and black bats on my right hand and silver spiders on black webs on my left! Pretty terrifying, am I right? I put a top coat on it to make it shiny, although Glamrock looks amazing matte as well. It took two coats to be totally opaque. The problem lay in the fauxnading (the konad spider was fine), or maybe the Wet n' Wild black. The spider webs in particular were a real pain to get on my nails.

Maybe because the stamping was such a hassle, the sun decided to cooperate with the pictures:

Way to set the atmosphere! That one sunbeam falling through my window onto the desk sure knew what it was doing! Unfortunately, my camera's pretty much dead, so I had to use a phone for these and didn't realize until later that I only had one good picture of my left hand.

A Week of Orlys! ORLY Iron Butterfly

Interrupting the chain of spring colors is the matte black with silver glitter ORLY Iron Butterfly! I guess butterflies are spring-y, though, so it's still keeping with the theme in that way...

No flash:

I stamped butterflies from Konad plate m78 with China Glaze Millennium. These pictures are actually taken after a day of wear, so the finish is more satin than matte. I didn't think it would change so quickly! Originally this did look very matte. Iron Butterfly went on very smooth and opaque--I think this is only two coats. I might have done three on a couple fingers to even out some patches, but if you have better application than I do that really wouldn't be a problem.

I hadn't tried any ORLYs before this and hadn't used mattes in a while, so this was very fun for me. I was considering ORLY goth as well, but am glad I chose Iron Butterfly. The polishes in that series look very rich for metals to me. They really have depth to them. I think the flash picture especially hints at that. It would be more visible if I had put a shiny topcoat on, but even when it was very matte it was very interesting to look at.

No flash:

Flash:

The reason I did this mani was because a friend of mine wanted a bunch of us to dress up "sexy" when we went out to get sushi to celebrate the end of school/his birthday. Fortunately we had just ordered some polishes and this one arrived in the mail just in time. :)

A Week of Orlys! Orly Cotton Candy

I love this color. If you were patient, you could probably achieve bottle color in two coats, but I used three.

I used OPI My Private Jet (new, non-holo brownish black w/small semi-holo glitter) and Konad plate m28 to stamp the unicorn, and topped it all with a coat of Orly Prisma Gloss in silver. I love that this topcoat is subtle enough that it doesn't interfere with the image, but you can still appreciate the wonderful glitteryness of it.

Cotton Candy is an adorable soft, squishy pink. It's quite warm, nearly peachy in appearance, and it photographs like a neon. I apologize for that, as my pictures are far from color accurate.

Until next time!

A Week of Orlys! Orly Lemonade

Welcome to day five of A Week of Orlys! This is Orly lemonade, with Essie Tart Deco sponged on the tips and konaded with some tropical flowers (plate m57). I didn't know what to do with Orly Lemonade at first. I think it might have been my first yellow nail polish ever, haha.

I was so surprised at how much I liked this. I was just experimenting, as I haven't really done much sponging, but I think it turned out great! I prefer sponging to french tips, and I've been trying to get better at gradient manicures, so I think this was a lovely success.

This was a lot of fun, because it was totally out of my element. I never wear orange or yellow, even in nail polish, so at first I didn't know what to think about this. But I loved it! It was so fun, summery and clean, I felt like I should be sitting on the beach in Hawaii!

Just for fun, I thought an action shot would be neat. I love how well the colors match! This is my favorite of Hawaiian Sun juice.

What do you think? Are there colors you usually avoid but have begun to enjoy?

Until next time!

A Week of Orlys! Orly Lollipop

I was really excited about Orly Lollipop, because I was looking for a lovely delicate purple. Lollipop unfortunately doesn't really work with my skin as well as I would have liked. I have one picture bare, but I think it looked worse in real life.

I remedied the situation by stamping over Lollipop with Borghese Carnevale Grape. Carnevale Grape is a purple cream polish that unfortunately becomes a brownish purple color so dark it is almost black. It was a real disappointment for me. But look at what a beautiful color it stamps! Now it is my go-to purple color for konad.

This is one of the few times I was very resistant to changing my nails. At first I thought it was really busy and almost garish, but since I did it before bed I didn't want to do it again. I was going to change in in the morning, but I left it on since I was short on time, and I'm glad I did! I totally fell in love with this look and was reluctant to take it off!

I got many compliments on this color. It is so striking and playful! I think the soft purple of Lollipop keeps it fresh and clean looking.

Until next time!

A Week of Orlys! Orly Pixy Stix + China Glaze Bad Kitty

I'm afraid I could not get this color accurate to save my life. For some reason, Pixy Stix and Cotton Candy photograph like neons, even though they aren't.

This is two coats of Pixy Stix under two coats of China Glaze Bad Kitty. Bad Kitty (which I would love for the name alone) is a lovely watermelon color in the bottle, but comes out so sheer on the nail that achieving bottle color would be extremely difficult at best. Pixy Stix however is a gorgeous watermelon creme, and the base colors matched wonderfully.

This was fun and feminine without being sickly sweet. The playfulness of the glitter was really delightful. I even had a friend ask to borrow my lacquers so that she would recreate the same combination!

I took a ton of pictures but I just couldn't really get the true color. I know there are many good swatches of this out there, though, taken with cameras much better than mine! This last one is probably the most color accurate. Taken in sun through a window.

Until next time!

A Week of Orlys! Orly Gumdrop

The rest of this week will be showcasing Orly Sweet Collection, their spring collection for this year. Since these colors have already been out for several months I won't be doing swatches of them so much as what I did to give these interesting colors a little more interest. I will show them in the order I wore them.

Orly Gumdrop is a beautiful Tiffany Blue. I've heard it is a near-dupe to China Glaze For Audrey, but I haven't been able to compare them myself.

I stamped pink roses using OPI Suzi Sells Sushi By The Sea Shore and Konad m76 for the design. I topped it all with a coat of Sinful Pearl Harbor for a delicate sparkly effect.

The style of the roses and reminds me a bit of La Belle et La Bête / Beauty and the Beast.

Until next time!

A Week of Orlys! Orly Bon Bon + OPI Significant Other Color

Welcome to a week of Orlys! For the next seven days I'll be showing Orly Bon Bon and the Orly Sweet Collection.

I've been looking for a lovely light purple for a while now, but I haven't yet stumbled upon my perfect one. I've heard that Bon Bon is hard to wear, but I found it to be sheer, milky, and delicate. It definitely wasn't as unflattering on me as Orly Lollipop (which I will show you soon).

It did take longer to dry, as I think Orly polishes tend to, and because it was watery I did have some pooling around my cuticles. Unfortunately I did get some small dents hours after topping it with Seche Vite. I love the soft, squishy look it has, though. A lovely look for early spring, especially.

The other thing I felt was noteworthy was that this polish is ridiculously shiny! You know the shine polish has when it's freshly painted and extremely wet? Bon Bon keeps that same shine. I'd say the shine from it is comparable with that from my Seche Vite or Diamont topcoats, if not more so.

I wanted to do something to spice it up a little, but I couldn't decide what. I finally added two coats of OPI Significant Other Color to it, and it was completely transformed. The OPI is usually very sheer, too sheer for me to wear on its own because of the stains on my nails. However, over Bon Bon it became opaque and quite pretty. I am not usually drawn to this sort of finish, but I love the soft delicate purple so it was a fun experiment.

Until next time!