Monster Blood 3.0

Ok, I've officially got a Problem. I just can't resist drip art in October. Halloween has the best nail art color combinations: rich blue purples, the full range of pumpkin oranges, shimmery blacks, sparkly golds, sassy greens, warm crimson...how do you choose? Drip manis let you play with lots of colors really easily, and something about them just says Halloween to me.

So I did two more this year to add to my collection of Halloweenie drips from last year and the year before. This year I started with a skittlet-I guess I got excited.

You'll recognize the green and red combo from my first Monster Blood design. It's Sinful Colors Happy Ending with NYC Crystal Couture in Ruby Queen. Happy Ending has a great gold shimmer, and I completely objectively think you need it in your collection. This time I added a new shade to the party: Broadway Nails Gel Strong in Black. This color will not satisfy the craving if you're looking for a solid black creme, but is still very much worth picking up. It's got a red shimmer that makes it special, and the application is very good in two coats.



Once I saw the full mani, I decided I liked the red and black best. Next thing I knew, it had transmogrified onto all of my nails. Spooky!

For the red, I started with one coat of Julep Catherine, a red-red jelly, to get Ruby Queen to "take" in fewer coats (you can get similar coverage in 3/4 coats of Ruby Queen alone). Then I doused it all in Out the Door topcoat for big time shine. While it's hard to see the red shimmer in Black in photos, you can spot it in the bottle shot pretty clearly.

I can't promise this will be my last drip of the season. What colors would you want to monster-mash up? What colors do you use for drip manis outside of the Halloween season?

$5 Mani: Jelly Sandwich

I love indie polish...because who doesn't anymore? It's the best. But there's still a special place in my heart for drugstore polish. The sad reality is that I can't afford to buy all the indies and high end stuff. Luckily for us, there are some really good polishes readily available in most areas for decent prices. For those of us who can't go on an indie shopping spree every time we decide to get a new polish (insert brief fantasy of being able to waltz into K-Mart and pick up baskets full of A England and ILNP), I bring you $5 Mani! In these posts (hopefully there will be lots of them), I will feature full nail art looks with two or more polishes that I purchased for $5 or less, and most will be easy to find at mass retailers.

For my first $5 mani, I went back to the jelly sandwich, a trend that I never got to when it was cool-typical. Jelly sandwiching is when you take a jelly polish and layer it both over and under a glitter. I hadn't tried it because I have a preference for opaque looks, but the sheer squishiness of jellies is winning me over. I brought out NYC Color NY Princess as my base and layered with Sinful Colors Love Sprinkles, an LE matte white heart and hex glitter. NY Princess has its own glitters, which made it fun for this look. Oddly, I mentioned back in August when I reviewed the NYC Fashion Queen collection that I may try it in a jelly sandwich sometime, so it's fitting that I used it for my first one. Incidentally, NY Princess was much more cooperative this time around. The base on Love Sprinkles is a little thick, it had to be sweet talked into participating in this look. Both polishes retail at $1.99, so even without any discounts or sales, the total cost of this look is $3.98.

Jelly sandwich technique will take some practice, but I like this mani. The different types of layers make a monochromatic look that's really interesting-and it's so squishy! I have tons of glitters that may be fun in this technique next time I need something that both squishes and sparkles. Do you still wear the occasional jelly sandwich, or are you on to the next look?

Weekend Nails: Inspired by Meghan Trainor

Unless you've been completely off the grid for the past year or so, you've probably heard Meghan Trainor's All About That Bass, and if you've really been paying attention (or are one of the over 100 million people who have watched it on Youtube), you've seen her Lips Are Movin' video, too. After hearing these two songs, followed up by the absolutely adorable Dear Future Husband, on a car ride with a friend today, I'm officially a fan.  I had so much fun listening to her songs today that I had to bring back Weekend Nails with some Meghan Trainor inspired nail art!

Meghan's videos have a fairly consistent color palette so far: pastels with pops of brights (usually red). For this nail look, the main mani was inspired by this screenshot from the All About That Bass video, with Meghan laying in a pile of wispy pastel pink, purple, yellow, and blue cloth. I started with one coat of a white base, then used a cotton bud dipped in acetone to sponge on the color. I used Sally Hansen CSM in Tulle Kit (sheer blue glitter), Insta-Dri Lively Lilac (purple), NYC Robin's Egg Blue (pale blue/green), Nicole by OPI Naturally (bubbly pink), and Julep Lilou (yellow). Usually when I use this technique it comes out too bright, but this time it was actually a little softer than I'd planned. The timing isn't great, but maybe I'm finally learning to match up my pastels! For my accent nail, I took my inspiration from a Lips Are Movin' setpiece, a bright blue striped background with a talking lips cutout in the center. I knew that if I tried to make it too complicated I'd end up frustrated, so I started out planning for just a closed mouth. Then I realized that fleshing out the shape would be just as easy with an open mouth as a closed one, so I went for it. Up close you can see a little peek of the blue stripe underneath, but from a normal distance, it looks smooth. I'm pretty happy with how it came out as compared to what I imagined. For the accent, I used Sally Hansen Cherry Red for the lips, with a no-name Sally Hansen white with Julep Lissa for the stripes-it was a perfect match for the inspiration photo!

As the mother of a daughter, I'm constantly trying to toe the line in pop culture between being hypersensitive and shielding my little girl (and, just as importantly, my teenage son) from messages that women are props rather than people and that her worth is tied to her weight/clothes/relationship status/etc., which is harder than it sounds. No artist can be all things to all people at all times, but Meghan's overall attitude of confidence and self respect is something I can feel comfortable sharing with my kids. I had a lot of fun honoring her unique vibe and playful videos with my nail art look, and I wish all the best for her as she continues to turn heads!

Christmas Nails-Round 2

As I hoped, I have two more winter/holiday nail designs for you today. They didn't come out as well as I wanted, so now, one day before Christmas, I'm still in search of my elusive Christmas day nails. 

First I tried some ruffian stamping, with mixed results. Even though the photos on this design weren't fantastic, I really liked it on my nails. I used Sally Hansen Hard as Nails in Pumping Iron as my base, then created a curved side ruffian with Julep Lacey. I stamped the cute little snowflakes with Pumping Iron as well. This mani gave me a few issues, but I think the overall result wasn't bad and I enjoyed wearing it. On the downside, I had tip wear at breakneck speed, which you can see here. This photo is only a day into wearing this mani. Silvers tend to give me that issue, so I was disappointed even if not surprised. I did try a new topcoat, Sally Hansen Super Shine. It was slightly slower drying than my standby topcoats, but otherwise a good substitute-easy to work with and quite shiny.

Here's my second look, the one I'm wearing now. It falls strictly into the realm of "ok I guess," to the point that I'm marking it as a fail. I'm just not in love with it. The color combination is great, though. This is NYC Crown Gold with Fashion Queen on the tips, then Sally Hansen Insta Dri Wined Up for my tree and ribbon and NYC Queen of the City and Fashion Queen for the bow.

*Sigh*. Not good. But I'm still dreaming up that mani that will make me squeal when I wake up to it on Christmas morning. Wish me luck!

Let the Christmas Nails Begin! Boughs of Holly Nail Art

I have a hard and fast rule that in my house we don't start discussing any holiday more than one month before that holiday actually falls. I am the resident Ruiner of Fun. Don't let that fool you, though-I am a fan of holiday nail art, and Christmas is one of my favorites. Since we are less than a week out from Christmas, last week I kicked off the season's nail art with this holly design inspired by Nails by Josse.

I skipped the matte for glittered tips, and added in bronzed curls underneath for a touch of class. I also went for a slightly more blendy, less sharp design than the original. This red is Sinful Colors GoGo Girl with NYC Ruby Queen on the tips, OPI for Sephora I Only Shop Vintage for the curls, and Revlon Jaded Night for my foliage. You may also notice I've gone a little shorter. Not by choice unfortunately, but hopefully my nails will grow out quickly. In the meantime, I softened up the shape and reduced my length to even it out across my entire hand.

I hope to fit in at least two more holiday themed designs before Christmas- not a lot of time, so wish me luck! What are your nails wearing this holiday season?

Monster Blood Nails

Vamptober has been so much fun, but for the last look of the month, I decided to do a bright, fun play on the Halloween dripping blood nail art: monster blood! You'll have to excuse my poor photos; I haven't gotten home in the daytime all week, so I had to choose between decent lighting for my pics or posting my Halloween themed post after Halloween.

For this look, I started with 2 coats of Sinful Colors Happy Ending, a glowy bright green. It is so pretty, a lit from within green with a subtle gold shimmer that makes it extra special. Then I did a simple paint drip design with NYC Ruby Queen. The jelly texture was thick enough to cover, but still kept that bloody goo feel. The chunky glitter sparkles and matches the playfulness of the bright monster green.

As a side note, I wore Zoya Jesy with a cute black cat decal for most of the week, but as I was taking it off I realized I never photographed it- fail! For the record, Jesy is a gold tinged orange glitter jelly. I didn't think it was really me when I first got it, but it was great for a Halloween mani. The more I wore it the more I liked it, and I got tons of compliments. Halloween is the best time for nails! What will your nails be costumed in tonight?

Vamptober: Chocolate and Gold Tentacles

This week, I started out thinking this mani wasn't one of my best, but I've become very fond of it. Behold-my first attempt at tentacles!

Right thumb

You'll have to forgive me, between the gloomy weather, heavy topcoating, and the nature of the beast, this mani turned out to be very difficult to photograph. I took pictures from a few different angles to (hopefully) let you get a feel for it and see why I like it so much. You'll recognize this color combo from my NYC Fashion Queen nail art- it's Royal Chic, a rich chocolatey brown, and Fashion Queen, a glam gold glitter. Fashion Queen is so bold and complex that it actually makes this mani a little hard to figure out when you're looking at it...you're blinded by the sparkle.

Fashion Queen is also easily buildable, making it more pliable for the complex swirls of my tentacles. Once they were in place, I carefully added dots of Royal Chic with a toothpick to create tentacles rather than just randomly placed glitter swirls. The key with this look seems to be not to overdo it. With too many tentacles, the design is cluttered and you can't tell what it is. One or two per nail is perfect for a subtly dramatic look (is 'subtly dramatic' a thing?). I also love the technique of injecting a swirl on the edge or a partial design across the top for the appearance of a design that stretches beyond the nail.








These are vamp nails because of the combination of creepy subject matter and elegant color combo. Tentacles are one of those designs that can be ghoulish, playful, or glamorous depending on how you play it, and the finished product here was vamp glam. Royal Chic is a warm color, but the addition of Fashion Queen brings out another side of it. The end result is unique, intense, and, dare I say, vampy.

Vamptober: Matte and Flames

Vamptober continues! I've started to get fond of flame nail art, and as a result, I've been trying all manner of experimentation with them. This round, I used Julep Lacey, a shimmery, rich midnight blue, ad my base. Lacey's pretty on its own, but nothing special. But you throw a matte topcoat on it...

With NYC Matte Topcoat

And Lacey becomes a vamp. The shimmer in this polish mattifies to a satiny finish with tons of depth. I added on silver flames with Sally Hansen Hard as Nails in Pumping Iron with a little Glitter Gal Turbulence for sparkle. I thought about warming up the bottom with a little bit of blue gradient, but I decided that the monotone flames were more sophisticated. Interestingly, this is my dominant hand. I almost always photograph my left hand, but this time, my right hand came out much better.


Since I mentioned flames, here's a look at another flame look I did recently. This one was all about sparkle, using colors from the NYC Fashion Queen collection. The base was Rule The City with Ruby Queen, and my flame accents were Ruby Queen with a little Julep Love, a gold with fuchsia glitter. Since Love and Rule The City both have red toned glitters, they gave a great crackling fire effect.


Thanks to my Julep Maven box, which showed up today loaded with Vamptober essentials, and a great suggestion from the comments (thanks Tiffany!), I'm feeling inspired. Yay October!

I Broke a Nail! 3 Looks for Short Nails

To the outside world, "I broke a nail" ranges from a casual statement of minor annoyance to the laughable cry of a spoiled prima donna. To those of us who love nail art or get our midday pick-me-up from a glance at perfectly polished nails in the season's "it" color, it can feel like an absolute tragedy. When last we spoke, my nails were just about exactly at my target length-long enough for complicated nail art but not too long to get in the way. Then, I had a break. Not as bad as the one I had immediately before starting this blog, but definitely a huge setback, and way too short to continue on with that length on my other nails. They all had to go.

And still to this day I have the same problem I had then: all articles and images for what to do with nubs either says everything looks good on them (not true!) and/or are classifying "short" as several millimeters longer than what I've got. When my nails are chopped off, I don't quite feel like myself. So, in response, here's the blog post I wanted to read and couldn't find every time I've had a break: a recovery plan for when your nails must be chopped.

Step 1: Long nails sometimes get a bit unruly as far as lengths and shapes, so cutting them down is a good opportunity to get them back to a uniform appearance. Since my break left me with a little length, I cut them all to about three millimeters from the fingertip, then filed them down with a glass file to a uniform shape modeled off of actual-short-nailed nail art genius The Nailasaurus. I'd say mine are a touch rounder at the edges than hers, which mirrors my typical squoval leanings. I did leave my thumbnails a bit longer than the others as well, mostly because they look stumpier and tend to grow a little more slowly for me than my other nails.

Step 2 is to baby your nails and cuticles. I've been using Sally Hansen VitaSurge Gel (jury's still out on whether it will help), ridge filling base coat, and tons of cuticle cream and skin serum. Since I'm never really happy with my nails when they're super short, I tend to change polish more often, which is hard on them. The healthier they are, the faster they grow and the better they look getting there, so if you can curb that urge, avoid frequent polish changes.

Step 3 is the hard part. When you're used to doing nail art on longer nails, everything you do on short nails as far as nail art looks wrong. I've discovered, through extensive trial and error, a few simple designs that help ease the transition back to long nails. I used Glisten and Glow HK Girl topcoat with Julep Oxygen Basecoat on all three designs.

Strategy 1: Vertical Stripes
Just like that shirt everyone has that's so ugly, but it makes you look super thin, vertical stripes thin out and lengthen nub nails. Here I used striping tape and straight vinyl decals (a technique I'm still getting the hang of) to block out my lines, then filled with earthy fall colors using a striping brush. As the base color I used OPI for Sephora Frankly I Don't Give A-Dam, a concrete grey, and added stripes of Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure Peach of Cake (bright peachy orange), Insta Dri Jade Jump (pale jade green), and NYC Color Royal Chic (deep brown).




Strategy 2: Gradient French Tips
Last time I had a major break, I used nude and white for a traditional french tip look. This time, I went with something a little more dramatic, inspired by Lorde's dreadful frostbitten nail art. While it's not my speed for an everyday look, the black and nude gradient overall look was visually interesting. I carefully layered Pahlish Raggedy Man Goodnight over my basecoat with a ripped off piece of makeup sponge to keep it as cloudlike as possible, going over the very tips with the polish brush, then sponged a thin layer of the very sheer Glitter Gal Turbulence to holo-fy the bare part of the nail without edging out the french tip effect.



Strategy 3: Glitter Fixes Everything!
Finally, when all else fails, "throw some glitter at it" seems to be an effective solution to almost any nail art conundrum. A glittery chevron tip adds bling and visually drives the tip of the nail forward, creating the illusion of longer nails. Glitter also doesn't have to have a perfect line to look neat. Here I used Julep Cameron over Sally Hansen Nail Growth Miracle in Lovely Lavender. Cameron is a Julep Stardust polish, which is a fabulous opaque matte glitter finish. For some contrast you could topcoat just the base color instead of topcoating both like I did here. I used vinyl decals as a buffer to create clean lines for my pointed tips and full nail chevron accents. .



So that's how I've been coping with the loss of my length. I'm still having some issues getting them back into blogging shape (hence the paucity of posts lately), but with a little love, they're recovering. What tricks do you use to mask a break-or do you embrace your shorties?

NYC Fashion Queen Collection

Normally I'm mostly a pick-up-a-polish-or-three-here-and-there kind of girl, but when I saw the NYC Fashion Queen collection, I got a little crazy...and bought the entire collection. Nine polishes. At about $2 a bottle, this brand is very affordable, and the lure of a brand new collection suckered me in. I have a few NYC polishes, and, with the exception of their matte topcoat, I have been supremely underwhelmed. The gorgeous colors call you, but the formula has been blah, and they're almost always too sheer. I don't know what came over me, but I'm glad it did, because this time, NYC delivered big time! Get ready, there are about to be swatches everywhere.

The NYC Fashion Queen collection is a set of six 'Crystal Couture' glitters in tinted jelly bases and three cremes (for a closer look at them in bottle, check out this post from The Polished Mommy). The cremes were brilliant, but the glitters were a leap of faith, since I don't buy a ton of glitter toppers. First, let's look at the glitters.

Queen's Jewels

All of the glitters in this collection are in a jelly base that builds easily packed with small glitters (the photos for the glitters here all show one, two, and three coats left to right). Most of them could easily be built to opaque  on their own or layered. Queen's Jewels is a grasshopper green with green glitter that will make a great transition between seasons.

Blue Majesty

Blue Majesty is the most sheer, least glitter packed, and least cooperative of the bunch, but still quite pretty. It's a blueberry with blue glitter.

Ruby Queen

Ruby Queen is the most complex of the glitter toppers. It's a deep pink base with pink and red glitters. When worn as a topper, it skews red, but on its own, it's a brighter tone. This is the "summeriest" of the bunch.

NY Princess

NY Princess is also a little more poorly behaved, and the one of the set that I'm least likely to wear in its own. It's a purple base with purple and blue glitters. I would potentially wear this as a one coat sheer or in a jelly sandwich with a topcoat with bigger glitters.

Rule the City

Rule the City is the glitter in this collection that's most "me," and it's also the most unusual polish in this collection. It's a smoky base with red and grey glitters. One coat is too streaky to wear alone, but two or three becomes an opaque gunmetal with red sparkles. I really like this polish.

Fashion Queen

Finally, Fashion Queen, the namesake of the collection and possibly my favorite of all of them. Fashion Queen is a dense gold glitter in a gold tinted base. One coat is subtly shimmery and three coats is almost blingy.

Now the colors that drew me to this collection in the first place: the cremes.

Crown Gold

Crown Gold with Fashion Queen 

Crown Gold is a buttery yellowish gold. It's not overly brassy, and I didn't have much streakiness at all. This is two coats. I have to be in the mood for metallics, but I can definitely see myself wearing this one.

Queen of the City

Queen of the City with NY Princess (left) and Ruby Queen (right)

Queen of the City is a gorgeous, rich burgundy with subtle shimmer. I love how the glitter toppers change the vibe of this one; NY Princess brings out the purple, while Ruby Queen highlights the red. Two coats here.

Royal Chic

Royal Chic with Fashion Queen accents

Royal Chic is a warm walnut brown that screams fall. It's kind of hard to photograph, but I assure you, it's noticeably brown. It plays super well with Fashion Queen, I love these two together. The accents in these photos were both done with no tools-the NYC brush is flexible, but firm enough for simple nail art. This one is a touch thin; here I used three coats.

I'm so glad I got these. They restored my faith in NYC Color and are all polishes I'm sure to wear over and over. The finishes are beautiful (no topcoat on any of these!), and the colors are so versatile. For what it's worth, I think Fashion Queen is a must have, Queen of the City is an instant classic, and Crown Gold is a metallic for people who don't care for metallics. They're all so great that now I can't decide which one to actually wear! What do you think? Will you be picking up any colors from this collection?