Polka Dots and Chevron Nails with Zoya "Island Fun"

During the 4th of July weekend, Zoya ran a buy-3-get-3-free + free shipping promo. Add the salon discount and boom, I got 6 new shiny polishes for $13. I had been swooning over the Island Fun and Paradise Sun summer collections since before they were released, so I picked up some of my favorites from each collection. I'll get some swatches up soon, but for today I have a mani using three of the Island Fun colors I bought. 

I used my right angle nail vinyls to make the chevrons on my middle and ring fingers, and then polka dotted the rest of my nails with "Talia", "Serenity", and "Nana" over a white base. 

Gradients and Dots Mani

I'm obsessed with neons right now. I just got my Zoya Earth Day Exchange order in the mail, and half of the polishes I ordered are screaming fluorescent. 

I haven't had a chance to use them yet, so I used another set of my favorite neon shades from Orly. 

I saw this manicure done by @duhmynails on Instagram:

Credit: @duhmynails

It was so adorable and fun I knew I had to recreate it, but since I love gradients a bit more than dots, I switched the design up a bit. 

I used Orly's neons from their "Baked" collection in "Neon Heat", "Ablaze", and "Saturated" for the gradient and dots with Zoya's "Purity" for the base. On the ring finger I used OPI's "Coronation" topped with Zoya's "Electra". 

This upcoming Thursday I'm headed up to NYC with Mike to visit amazing friends, so I'll definitely be putting my new Zoya neons to good use and writing a big blog post on the weekend, so keep your eyes open for that next week! 

I'll also likely dedicate an entire post to swatches of my Earth Day Exchange haul. 

Have a fabulous week! 

Back to Basics: Dotticure

This week, I decided to use a tool I haven't touched much since I started getting into nail art: my dotting tool! 

Dotticures, or manicures featuring polka dots, are a great nail art option for beginners. They are easy, fun, and pretty hard to mess up. Once you get a good feel for dotting tools and the different size dots they can make, you can get pretty inventive with your Dotticure designs. 

These, for those of you that don't know, are dotting tools:

Forgive the fact that mine are dirty. They're double sided to give you size options. They are cheap to pick up on Amazon or eBay, and are a staple in any nail artists kit. 

I picked up three colors to decide between for my pedicure, and decided to use them together for my dotticure instead. 

Colors used: Zoya in "Purity", "Wendy", "Tiana", and "Rooney"

I really love how it reminds me of soda bubbles, like a really colorful ad for a cola company! 

Gradient Dots Mani

A blog post right in under the wire! This week has been busy, and I just found time tonight to do a manicure. 

I got the inspiration for this mani from lemmingspolish on Instagram, but I changed the color scheme and added dots in both colors. I'm also featuring my right hand this week since it turned out much better than my left, which is pretty unusual. 

Inspiration photo @lemmingspolish

And here is my version:

I used "Ultra Violet" and "Day Glow Teal" from the Maybelline Bleached Neons collection. The colors look great together but were pretty difficult to work with for gradients, I found. 

I definitely liked the way this turned out! It's pretty and trippy and fun. I haven't really gotten the full potential out of my dotting tools yet, and I need to explore more designs! 

Special thanks to @lemmingspolish for the inspiration :)

Monday Morning Dotticure

It is the end of August, which means I am once again gearing up to go spend a week out at sea counting the fishes. When I'm on ocean trawl, I don't get to look very pretty. I don't wear makeup, I'm in t-shirts and cut up jeans, covered in fish scales and slime, trying to quell my nausea with Dramomine.

Because of this, I usually spend my days prior to trawl putting extra effort into my nails and makeup, because I know I'll miss it so much (judge if you will, but right around day 3 I start to feel a little like a Neanderthal). 

I did a dotticure (that's a manicure featuring dots) for my mom last week and it inspired me to break out my dotting tools and do one on myself this week. I love how it turned out! Sometimes I get so overwhelmed by nail art techniques, I forget about the original pioneers. Dotticures are easy, versatile, and make a big impact. They are also not as time consuming as watermarbling. 

Left to Right: Zoya in "Purity", "Rooney", "Sooki", "Rocha", and "Darcy"

While my week out at sea will prevent me from doing a new manicure for next week, I'm going to try my best to test out all of my new Ipsy products before I leave so that I can write up a review for you next Monday.