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. 

Silver Holo + Ombré Zig-Zag Nails

Since I have been slacking SO hard on here, I decided that this week I really needed to step up my nail art game. 

I had placed two separate orders from Nail Vinyls about a month ago and still hadn't used ANY of the vinyls I ordered! I busted out an old favorite of mine: skinny chevrons. 

First, I painted on OPI "Coronation" and let it dry. Then, I placed my chevron vinyls and used a makeup sponge to dab on Orly's "On The Edge" and Zoya's "Charisma" and "Ali" to my desired opacity. 

I forgot that doing chevron on EVERY nail eats up a lot of nail vinyls, and definitely looks a little busy. But it turned out so beautifully I was even inspired to match my eyeshadow to it using one of my favorite YouTube tutorials by Jaclyn Hill. 

In natural light 

You can't see the pink as much, but it's there! 

I'm sad that this mani is already chipping, but if it had to happen, it couldn't have come at a better time. Zoya had a buy 3 get 3 free + free shipping promo that I totally took advantage of, and those babies just came in the mail yesterday :) nothing to spark inspiration than new pretties! 

Simple Mani Monday

Hello, readers! 

So I've been slacking a bit. I haven't swatched my Zoya Earth Day Exchange yet, and I've been pretty busy so I haven't had the chance to do any crazy nail art. Luckily, Nail Vinyls make simple manicures look like I put in a lot of effort ;) 

This week I did a lightning bolt manicure using two colors from Orly's Summer 2015 "Adrenaline Rush" collection. 

Orly in "On the Edge" and "Thrill Seeker"

Full disclosure, I actually only kept this mani for blog post photos. After that, I removed the design off my index and pinky fingers and just wore that lime green "Thrill Seeker" color all week. That tennis ball color got me several compliments throughout the week! 

Sometimes I get so wrapped in trying to do interesting designs for the blog that I don't ever get to wear my polishes as-is; just one color on all ten fingers. It's something I may try to work on in the future. 

Next week, be sure to check back because I will be doing an entire post on my favorite SPF beauty products! 

Scarf Inspired Manicure

Hello, everyone!

This past week I was doing ✨SCIENCE✨ on a research vessel. It's exhausting work, but I still managed to find time to do a pretty kickass manicure, if I do say so myself. 

I recently got $20 in rewards (i.e. Free money) from Pier 1, and we got a new scarf in that I fell in love with, so I used my rewards to pick it up. I realized it made great inspiration for a manicure. 

I then built a whole look around this scarf, matching my makeup and nails to it. 

The scarf, $16.95, Pier 1 Imports

Bold lower liner using Urban Decay Electric palette in shades "Chaos", "Fringel, and "Freak"

Scarf inspired colors: Zoya "Ryan", Sally Hansen "Pacific Blue", and Zoya "Bevin"

Entire mani polishes, including Zoya "Cosmo" and OPI "My Vampire is Buff"

I was thrilled to find a bottle of the discontinued "Pacific Blue", it was the perfect color to match the scarf and an essential color in any serious collector's stash, I'm told! 

I had intended for this to be a chevron gradient, but the only chevron vinyls I had left were the fat ones, so it just looks like individual colors with nude in between. I took that opportunity to place an order for more skinny chevron Nail Vinyls ;)

Regardless of the lack of gradient, I really loved the way this turned out and will definitely be doing variations of this mani in the future. 

Spring Stripes Mani

This week, the weather has been beautiful. It has really put me into full-blown spring fever mode! I wanted to do something light and fun for my manicure this week, so I turned to Instagram for inspiration and decided to recreate a manicure I've had in my favorites for months. 

The original, below, is by @thenailttrail on Instagram. 

Photo from @hbbeautybar, nails by @thenailtrail

I loved the look, so I recreated it without the studs. 

The look is super cute and simple to do. I think in the summer it would look really awesome with warmer colors! 

What are you doing to get ready for spring? Comment below! 

Color of the Month: Topaz

November's birthstone is topaz, which is often confused with its other birthstone, citrine. Topaz comes in a huge array of colors, but November's topaz is a yellow-orange shade. 

This month, I didn't want to be so literal with the given color, so I decided to do a glitter gradient of a topaz color over a more neutral color. 

I used Nail Vinyls to make a sort of sun ray design over OPI's "How Great is Your Dane?". I then sponged Julep's "Tatiana" on the tips. 

Please excuse the tip wear on my index finger, it wore down a bit before I had the chance to take photos!

Only one more Color of the Month until the new year! Happy birthday, November babies :)

Color of the Month: Sapphire

September's birthstone is yet another precious gemstone: Sapphire! 

Sapphire is a variety of the gem species corundum, which occurs in a huge array of colors. If you've been to a jewelry store recently, you've no doubt seen pink sapphire, yellow sapphire, etc. Ruby is actually the red variety of sapphire. However, for this color of the month, I decided to stick with sapphire in its traditional blue form. 

I also decided to use silver (Zoya's "Trixie") for this look. I thought it helped the blue pop. And of course, my beloved Nail Vinyls make an appearance. 

For this look, i featured Zoya in "Dream". This rich, holographic beauty is like a sapphire in a bottle!

So sparkle. Much wow. 

I am also very excited for the mail to come today because my HIMYM box set will be arriving, as well as the last Zoya order I placed before my no-buy. And with new polishes, come new swatches, which mean new blog posts for you!

Wedding Anniversary and Negative Space Nails

As some (most?) of you may know, yesterday was my 1 year wedding anniversary! My husband Mike and I spent the whole day having fun and enjoying each other's company. 

Since the traditional theme for the 1st anniversary is paper, we had to get a bit creative with our gifts. Mike sent me on a scavenger hunt around the house looking for little paper clues that each had a letter on them. After I collected all the letters, they spelled the word "ALBUM". He sat me down and we looked through our wedding album together, and in the back of it there was a print out image of the How I Met Your Mother complete 9 season boxed set DVD collection, which he preordered for me as my gift!

Great minds must think alike, because I had ordered him a HIMYM fan art print of Ted and Tracey at the Farhampton station off Etsy a month earlier. A woman in India illustrated the print herself, and I bought a custom matte and frame to really make it pop. 

Team Yellow Umbrella!

I also bought him tickets to the Phillies game for that day, so we went to the ballpark together to cheer for the only sportsteam we agree on. 

For the record, they lost :(

After the game, we went to our absolute favorite restaurant for dinner: Maggiano's Little Italy. If you've never been there, go, and preferably do it up family style. For $30 per person they just keep bringing out plate after plate of each course until you tell them to move on to the next. And the food is just incredible. 

After dinner we went home and enjoyed champagne in our toasting flutes, and the top layer of our wedding cake, which, thanks to my mom's preservation efforts, was so yummy you'd never know it was a year old. 

#TBT our cake the day of our wedding

Of course, I couldn't go out in my fabulous hot pink Michelle Obama inspired dress without doing my nails up to match. I recently ordered right angle Nail Vinyls and I have to say, they may be my favorite shape yet. They are SO versatile it's incredible. I decided to recreate a mani I saw by sassyshelly129 on Instagram, using pinks instead for my color scheme. 

Inspiration. Check out @sassyshelly129 on Instagram!

Colors used: Orly in "Neon Heat" and Zoya in "Kirtridge"

Ta-da!

I really love negative space manis. They are clean looking but still provide so much interest. I can't wait to experiment more with these right angle vinyls. There's so much I can do with them!

I have lots of goodies coming up for you guys. I just wrote out 8 different blog post ideas that I'll be rolling out starting next week that will take us clear into November. Keep your eyes peeled! 

 

Color of the Month: Peridot

Quick blog post today! The birthstone for August babies is peridot, which is said to "host magical powers and healing properties to protect against nightmares and to bring the wearer power, influence, and a wonderful year", according to American Gem Society. 

I also found it interesting that most of the world's supply of peridot is found right here in our own country, specifically in Arizona. Cool!

To capture that perfect peridot green, I used Zoya in "Tilda" as my base color. Then I created the lightning bolts using Nail Vinyls and Zoya's "Stassi". 

Happy birthday to all you August babies this month!

Pride 2014 Weekend

For those of you who don't know, June is National LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) Pride Month. The point of this movement is to encourage people of differing sexual orientations to be proud of who they are and to embrace their gender identity. With so many states legalizing gay marriage, it is an especially exciting time to be a part of the LGBT movement!

To celebrate Pride month, several cities around the country have huge celebrations. This past weekend, I went to Philadelphia with my husband, and my friends Lindsey and Joey (aka Jnano) to join in the festivities. 

Saturday night, we went to Woody's (which is a gay bar). It wasn't much different from any other night at Woody's, except that maybe there were more people and more streamers. Still, on any weekend, a night at Woody's is a blast. I dressed for the occasion with rainbow eye makeup (including purple eyelashes!)

My dress also had rainbow Hawaiian print and a heart cut out of the back. 

Sunday was the parade which was a LOT of fun! There was a color guard team called "Flaggots" who did a choreographed dance to "Timber". There were drag queens galore, men and women in the tiniest metallic shorts I have ever seen, women wearing only stickers on their nipples, and rainbows EVERYWHERE. 

Hubby even bought me this sweet rainbow boa. 

The overall feeling of love and acceptance was really powerful. Everybody was just there to support one another and have a good time. It was really amazing to see so many floats of churches, republican groups, etc.  promoting LGBT rights. 

Of course, in honor of Pride weekend, I had to do something special with my nails. I recently bought some lightning bolt vinyls from Nail Vinyls, as well as Maybelline's Bleached Neons collection. This is what I came up with:

Maybelline Color Show "Bleached Neons" collection, L to R: "Pink Punch", "Coral Heat", "Bleached in Peach", "Lime Accent", "Day Glow Teal", "Ultra Violet".

I LOVED this mani. It even glows under black light! 

My favorite colors in the collection are "Day Glow Teal", "Ultra Violet", and "Coral Heat". I felt like the blue and purple looked the best together, and I may end up combining them in another mani sometime soon :) The neutral color in the mani is OPI's "My Vampire is Buff". 

Did you do anything fun for Pride? Tell me about it in the comments section!