Spaceships and Saturn – from the Instagram archives

I’m still on my surgery rotation, so sorry about the lack of updates! For this week, I’m posting an old manicure I did. It’s Zoya Ibiza and Carrie Ann over Layla Coral Glam holo. I stamped it with a plate from the Cheeky Summer Collection (which is great because of the BIG plates and amazing packaging). I’ll look up the exact plate number soon!

Red Konad French manicure, carpet catastrophe

Today was my day off. When I woke up this morning, I noticed that parts of my carpet were a little bit damp, but only in a couple places. I brushed it off and kept getting ready, but then I realized that it was getting wetter and wetter each time I walked on it because the carpet pads were soaked. I tried to figure out where it was coming from, but my bathroom, washing machine, and water heater were all totally dry and there were no leaks in my ceiling. We called the handyman for my apartment complex, and he was pretty perplexed as to where it was coming from also. He decided to check the neighbor’s to see if it was coming from there. Lo and behold, the toilet had been clogged and overflowing and there was no one home. So my carpet is covered in, more or less, poop water! Haha, well I’m lucky I was home and it was my day off so that I could get someone to come by to look at it.

My Saturday manicure is a French manicure in Essie Scarlett O’Hara over my naked nail, with top coat. I used Konad stamping plate M19 with 2 stamped layers of the Scarlett O’Hara. Thanks for listening to my rant!

Nail polish swatch – Illamasqua Monogamous

I just started my surgery rotation, so I’m going to be going on a bit of a hiatus. I’ll try to post something about every week and we’ll see how that goes. I have a lot of neutral pink polishes because I can get away with them in every setting. This is Illamasqua Monogamous, which is a semi-matte/satin pinky nude. I love Illamasqua blushes, so I had high expectations for this polish.  I really love the color and finish. The thing that I couldn’t get the cuticle line to look good no matter what I did. If I applied normally, it would drag near the cuticle and get streaky. If I tried using a thicker layer, I would flood my cuticle. I used 3 coats + topcoat for these pictures. I generally prefer colors that I can get away with using as few coats as possible, so this was another downside for me. If anyone has any advice for tricks to use this polish, I’d love to know!

Polish days: Something new – day of the dead water decals

Well, it’s kind of far from Dia de Los Muertos, but I found these water decals and I really wanted to try them. I had never used water decals before, so when I heard the next Polish Days event theme was “something new,” I knew what I was going to try out. The water decals are just the skulls, which you can find here on ebay. I painted my nails white first since the decals are clear and black so that the skulls would be white. Next, I just drew around the outline of the skull with as many bright colors I could find. I ended up essentially scribbling a lot, but I like how it came out!

You can find the Polish Days event page here. Be sure to check out the other Polish Days manicures using the link below and host of the event Polly Polish!

Nail polish swatch of Lime Crime – Crema de Limon

This is from Lime Crime’s Desserts d’Antoinette collection, which I bought the whole set of. I like all of the polishes in the collection because the colors are unique and they wear surprisingly well for being pastels. This is 3 coats with topcoat. And look, no streaks!

New Year’s Eve nails – navy and gold Ruffian

This is what I ended up wearing on my nails for New Year’s eve. The navy is Zoya Ibiza and the champagne is Zoya Jules, one coat each.  Jules is great, but I LOVE Ibiza. The color is almost black, but has such a beautiful flash of blue when it hits the light. They both have great coverage and apply smoothly. So the Ruffian is like a reverse half moon/French manicure that is easy to do quickly. The manicure was (at least reportedly) first done for fashion label Ruffian. All you do is first paint your full nails as you would normally with one color, then do the same thing with another color without going all the way down to the cuticle. I ended up making a last minute trip to New Orleans on New Year’s eve so time was of the essence with this manicure. This is also my excuse as to why it isn’t super neat. I took these photos a while after I did my mani, so I’m sorry for all of the wear and tear!

The skirt featured in the first photo, which was what I wore on NYE, is this skirt from Express. It’s a sequin Aztec/tribal print mini skirt. I fell in love with it the first time I saw it. I was lucky enough to get it when it was 40% off, s0 I got it in 2 colors! It was 50 degrees in NOLA, but I paired it with a leather jacket and managed to stay warm. Thanks for reading!