Tag Archives: accent nails

Manicure Monday: Pink Moons and Glitter Crowns

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Welcome back, reader! I hope your Monday treated you well. I had some Monday mishaps with my manicure today, but overall, I really love how it turned out. For this look, I used a deep pink Maybelline polish with Nails Inc.’s Princes Arcade for my glitter accents. All nails are topped with one coat of Seche Vite top coat.

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So this Maybelline polish is one I’ve had for probably a decade and a half. It’s a formula that’s not sold anymore, the color label has long since been peeled off, and the print on the label was wearing away. These aren’t necessarily signs of a bad polish, just an old one. Here’s the kicker, though: the brush was disintegrating. Strands of the brush — sometimes in whole, long fibers, others broken off into centimeter-long pieces — were coming off and getting stuck on the nail as I was applying the polish. At first I thought I could just pick it off, since I’ve had brushes like this before; they lose one or two hairs, I tweeze them off, and no harm done. This was not that. The more I brushed, the more came off. It was shedding like a cat. By the second coat I had to give up. I got a mini bottle from my workshop, poured the polish into it, and started working with the new brush. It was a vast improvement, but unfortunately some of the strands were left floating in the polish and found their way into my manicure anyway. You can see a couple in there. I probably should have thrown it out, but it seemed like such a waste; it’s really a great polish; I got perfect opacity in two coats, and it dried with a really glossy finish, albeit a bit slowly. I had to save what I could.

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So I do the half-moon thing pretty often, but usually with two polishes, a base coat and then a second color brushed over. I’ve never done it with the natural nail exposed, so I decided to give it a shot. Really, I just wanted to do something other than the usual creme-and-glitter-accents I usually do. I really love this glitter — Princes Arcade from Nails Inc. — because it and the mystery color kind of complete each other. I’m not sure that Princes Arcade is dense enough to be worn on its own, but it looks full and lush over the base color. I also tried it as a gradient along the half-moon — a crown, if you will — just as a glitter accent but also trying something different. I like the look, but I think I got a bit too much on the index finger. The middle finger’s got the right idea though. They just work together so beautifully.

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I got my bottle of Princes Arcade from Sephora. I don’t even know how to tell you to find this Maybelline polish, even if you wanted it. The bow is from Daily Charme.

I bought these products myself.

Swatch Saturday: Blue-Eyed Girl Lacquer’s Get Too Close to the Flame

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Happy Saturday! We’re finally caught up on swatches from last week, so let’s look at some new ones! Today’s swatch is a special-edition glitter topper from Blue-Eyed Girl Lacquer called Get Too Close to the Flame. I’m wearing one coat over Revlon’s Bare Bones, Essie’s Good Morning Hope, and Sally Hansen’s Kelp Yourself, as well as one coat of Seche Vite top coat.

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Get Too Close to the Flame is a clear-based topper with glitters in shades of pink and orange and various sizes (including stars), as well as a fine pink shimmer throughout. Application went well; the glitters spread evenly, though I did employ a bit of dabbing/placing to cover bare spots and spread out the glitters that clumped together. There was no extra cuticle-flooding lacquer, and the base was the right consistency to support the glitter without being too thick or goopy. Drying times were quick, and it dried with a smooth texture and glossy finish. I added top coat for extra smoothness and shine.

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This is a summer polish for sure. The color is bright and bold, even if it’s not that colorful, and the variety of shapes and sizes make it interesting to look at. I love the big dots and tiny stars, the hexes large and small. I love the pink shimmer and its perfect amount of sparkle. I love that it looks fantastic over any polish, soft or bright. This is the first BEGL topper I’ve worn in months, and I forgot how nice they are.

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Get Too Close to the Flame was a limited edition and is no longer for sale. Other Blue-Eyed Girl Lacquer polishes are for sale in the BEGL shop.

I bought this polish myself.

Manicure Monday: Red Luxe

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Welcome to Manicure Monday! I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised to see that I got off my duff, got the dotting tool out, and did some real nail art. I still kind of suck with the dotting tool, but I’m really pleased with my results. For this look, I used Maybelline’s Red Relic as my primary color, Ciaté’s Gold Digga as the secondary color, and caviar beads in Gleam, also from Ciaté. I also used Seche Vite and Hard Candy’s Just Matte top coat.

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Red Relic is a fun little polish. It’s a red jelly with iridescent pink flakies that dries matte. I was a little disappointed when I first tried it out, because I’m not a huge fan of the matte finish. I supposed then that it wasn’t anything top coat couldn’t fix, so I kept it. The finish has grown on me, though. It’s actually the reason I made the whole manicure matte. Gold Digga has a metallic shine, and I needed to even it out with a matte top coat, so the finish you’re seeing is actually the matte coat, not the original Red Relic finish.

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Gold Digga and the Gleam beads came together in a caviar nails set that was in the sale bin at Sephora. Gold Digga is a pretty nice polish; it’s a burnished gold with a rich metallic finish. It also looks fantastic mattified. The matte coat hides the brush strokes and evens out the color. It’s rare that I think a polish looks better without a glossy finish, but this one definitely does. I feel like it helps emphasize the luxe feel Ciaté was going for.

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The two colors together are gorgeous. I got the elegant and opulent look I wanted. I’m just a bit unhappy with all the nail art horrors my camera captured. In the photos you can see just how uneven the crosses are, you can see all the gaps in the caviar, you can see the glue spots where I put the studs down. I know nobody probably noticed them until I mentioned them, but when I look at these photos, they’re all I see. In person, though, this mani is perfect.

Red Relic was a limited edition and has been discontinued by Maybelline, though you can find it if you look around the internet. Gold Digga and the caviar nail kit are available from Ciaté’s website. Hard Candy’s matte coat is from Walmart. My studs are from an outlet store.

I bought all of these products myself.

Manicure Monday: Fun With Neons

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Welcome to another Manicure Monday! Today’s manicure accurately sums up my weekend; it was full of bright colors and summer fun! To celebrate the first day of summer, or the fact that a mani I planned ages ago is actually relevant, I’m wearing Julep’s Abbie over white polish with Blue-Eyed Girl Lacquer‘s Watch the Walls, as well as Seche Vite top coat.

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Abbie is the perfect summer yellow; it’s bright and gorgeous. It’s so bright my hands got a bit of a tan. It’s a chameleon, though; in some lighting it’s flourescent highlighter yellow, but in others it’s closer to lemon. Either way, it’s cheerful and a ton of fun to wear. My only complaint is that it never seemed to reach full opacity, even at three coats, so I put on one coat over two coats of white polish. This way, I got boost in opacity and in color.

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When I picked Abbie out of the Helmer, I knew Watch the Walls would compliment her perfectly. Watch the Walls is the perfect mix of neon pink glitters, along with some other fun colors and shapes and the perfect amount of blue-to-purple shifting shimmers. It’s a glitter topper with color, depth, and fun. It absolutely breaks my heart that it’s been discontinued and is now out of stock.

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I don’t know if I’ve told you guys, but I probably have, because I’ve only been writing on this blog for two years, but summer is my favorite part of the year. I seem to handle it better than most people, too; I love to sit out on the porch — better yet, the pool — with a drink and a book and just spend the entire day out there. I’ll take sweat and sunburn over shivering and itchy sweaters any day.

Neither Abbie nor watch the Walls are currently in stock on their makers’ websites. Julep is available from Sephora and julep.com; Blue-Eyed Girl Lacquer is sold from their BigCartel shop.

I bought these polishes myself.

Manicure Monday: Nail Art Ripper-Offer

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For today’s Manicure Monday, I attempted some actual nail art! A couple of weeks ago, Reddit user chill_out_dont_pout did an adorable mani with geometric shapes and negative space, and I’m totally biting her style. For my copycat mani, I used OPI’s Metallic 4 Life and Essie’s Toggle to the Top for the stripes, Fantasy Makers’s Night Glow as the base, and Seche Vite as my top coat.

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It’s been a really long time since I’ve done anything this intricate and time-consuming. For the past several Manicure Mondays, I’ve just been laying glitter down on accent nails and calling it a day. Inspired by that Reddit post, I decided I would buckle down and do some real nail art. I had the time, and I wanted to use this glow-in-the-dark polish but had no ideas for it, so it was a perfect coincidence. It was so easy to make this pattern my own; I used two glitter jelly polishes I really loved, made one edge longer than the other (by accident) and added rhinestones to the vertices. In all, I probably spent three hours or more on this look.

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Of course, I could have done a better job. My lines aren’t clean or even, and Night Glow was actually a big mess to work with; it was goopy and kind of dried out, so I put some thinner in. It wasn’t enough. I put in more. Even though it felt dry to the touch, I guess the under-layers never fully dried, because even though I waited an hour before I started taping, I still pulled up polish. Thankfully, thanks to a stealthy fourth coat of Night Glow and the power of Seche Vite, you can barely tell!

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Night Glow, as you might have guessed, glows in the dark. However, I am terrible at glow-in-the-dark nail photography, so here are some glow fails.

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Thanks again to /u/chill_out_dont_pout for the nail inspiration!

Manicure Monday: Studded Luxury

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Welcome back, reader! It’s Monday again, and I have another mani. I’m pretty fond of this one; it looks like I put some actual effort into it. I mean, I did; it took me a long time to glue these studs on. I’m wearing two coats of Color Club’s Pucci-licious, two coats of Deborah Lippmann’s Boom Boom Pow, and one coat of Rica‘s Glossy Glam top coat.

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I always end up putting purple and yellow together. I am quite the fan of complementary color combinations, but purple and yellow might be my favorite one. Purple is such a bold and stately color, and adding gold to it just makes it even more luxurious and even more beautiful. I can’t tell you how I pleased I am with myself and my manicure right now.

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Pucci-licious is fantastically creamy, so I knew it could stand up on its own. Boom Boom Pow, however, wasn’t the glitter beast I anticipated, so I put on a second coat and added the studs. I think the studs really make this look; it ties in the gold on the accent nails, which was kind of incongruous to the rest of the mani. The studs add much-needed balance and squares off the look. Get it, because the studs are square.

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I got my Pucci-licious from an outlet store. The Deborah Lippmann is from Sephora. The studs are by The New Black, which I purchased from Ulta.

I bought these polishes myself.

Manicure Monday: Summer in Springtime

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Good evening, reader! After all the festivities of the day, I’m just getting around to posting today’s Manicure Monday offering. I’m wearing three coats of Color Club’s Warhol and one coat of Nails Inc.’s Chelsea Embankment Gardens with one coat of Rica‘s Glossy Glam top coat.

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It’s been a long time since I’ve worn a good neon. Warhol is an incredible polish. I’m a little weirded out by how different it looks in the bottle and on my nail; it’s a little more reddish after putting it on. I mean, not that I care, I think it’s gorgeous. It’s just not what I expected. I can’t stop looking at it, though. It’s so bright and big. I think I want to be this polish.

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Chelsea Embankment Gardens is a mouthful. It’s also a unique little polish. Part of Nails Inc.’s Floral glitter topper collection, it pairs pretty pastels with large and dense glitter. This particular shade — sadly, the only one from the collection I own — is packed with fine baby pink hexes and mini bar glitters, as well as the five-petal daisies in pink, blue, and yellow. The collection was the first time I’d ever seen this glitter shape, so I bought one just to try them out. I really wish I’d bought more. My favorite Nails Inc. polishes are the glitter toppers, because they make the best color combos.

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It was maybe a little unorthodox to mix neon and pastel, but I like the way it turned out. They both stand out away from the other. Each polish gets its due attention. It’s also seasonally appropriate; the flowers say springtime, but the neon says unofficial first day of summer. It’s two extremes put together. It’s also the best of both worlds.

Color Club is sold at colorclub.com; I got mine at an outlet store. Nails Inc. is sold at Sephora and Ulta.

I bought these polishes myself.

Manicure Monday: Brown and Color

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Another week, another Manicure Monday! Today’s mani is interesting — to me — because both of the polishes I used are ones I’ve used before. Since I have well over 1,100 bottles of nail polish, it’s rare for me to go a Monday without using something new. LA Colors’s Twisted Affair and Blue-Eyed Girl Lacquer‘s Prototype PFCS 1.0 have been featured on the blog, but not together. I love how well they pair! I’m wearing two coats of Twisted Affair and one generous coat of PCFS 1.0 on my accent nails, all with one coat of Rica‘s Glossy Glam top coat. Also, to explain the exposed tip on my middle nail, an emergency occurred that required me to don a pair of gloves right after finishing the manicure. Thankfully all the other nails escaped unscathed.

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So yes, the manicure. Twisted Affair is a color I like a lot, even though it’s a bit odd. In the bottle it looks like a cool milk chocolate, but in certain lighting conditions t looks bruised and sickly. I don’t mind that it’s occasionally ugly, but when it does, it needs a little help. This is why I chose PCFS 1.0 as the accent; it’s just so complex and colorful. I love looks that are colorful and neutral simultaneously.

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Twisted Affair applies easily and with good color: I expected it to be streaky and thin until the third coat, but I got full opacity in just two. The drying times were nice as well; I definitely bumped a nail on my desk a couple of minutes after I finished painting it and it didn’t dent or smudge. PFCS 1.0 took a little more work; I had to let the bottle sit upside-down for a while to get all the sunken glitters out, and really went at it to get good coverage. This manicure looks exactly as I imagined it would, but I am a little upset by the one that got messed up.

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Twisted Affair and other LA Colors polishes are available all over the place; I got mine from Dollar General. Prototype PCFS 1.0 was a one-off and is not available, but other Blue-Eyed Girl Lacquers can be purchased from their shop.

I bought these polishes myself.

Swatch Sunday: Gosh’s Greed

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This installment of Swatch Sunday is a fun one for me, because I finally have a chance to wear a polish I bought on vacation last year. Surely this is what it means to be a hoarder. I’m wearing one coat of Gosh’s Greed over Sally Hansen’s Black Out and OPI’s I just Can’t Cope-acabana, as well as one coat of Rica‘s Glossy Glam top coat. Please note: I took these photos about a day after I did this manicure, so there is some tip wear. Sorry about that.

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Greed is a glitter polish with metallic gold hexes in various sizes, holographic gold glitters, and tons of cloudy gold shimmer. I used it here as a glitter topper, but I think that with multiple coats, one could achieve medium to full coverage. The polish applies very easily; the glitter is always even and well-distributed. The gold shimmer stands out very nicely on darker polishes; you can see how it warms up my black polish. It dries quickly; about five to eight minutes to be dry to the touch. It also dries with a smooth texture; with one coat of Glossy Glam, I feel no glitter ridges or bumps.

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While I was on vacation last May, I had to duck into drugstores every other day or so. I’d forgotten to pack a lot of things like deodorant and dental floss, so lots of emergency drugstore runs occurred early in the trip. As I got further from Florida, however, the stops were more out of curiosity; Florida doesn’t have Rite-Aid stores, and I’ve only been in two my entire life. Same for when I got to New York and I saw Duane Reade stores. I had  heard of Duane Reade, but only because the logo is printed on the back of my Walgreens card. I never thought I’d see one in real life, so when I did see one going through Penn Station, I knew I had to go inside. My powder compact was running low, so I went in to grab another one, but on my way in, I saw the Gosh polish display. I’d seen Gosh polishes on the internet, but again, it was something I never expected to see in person, so I grabbed a couple. I didn’t really get to look at it, since I had to be in and out in like five minutes, but I probably would have bought them all if I’d had the time to really check them out. An unrelated note: I don’t know how I can remember when and where I bought a nail polish one year ago, but I can’t remember where I put my keys.

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I like Greed. It makes me feel fancy and rich, and not just because I went to New York to track it down. All the gold glitters are so luxe and shiny. It’s like my nails are wearing a haute couture gown. Perhaps there’s some truth in the polish’s name.

If you’re in the US, I have no idea where to tell you to get Gosh products, except for the Duane Reade in Penn Station. Sorry.

I bought this polish myself.

Manicure Monday: Red Static

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Manicure Monday!! I’m posting super-late because real-life not-nails stuff is a little more important right now. Updates this week, unfortunately, will be late if they come at all, and I do apologize. For right now though, let’s look at my new nails! I’m wearing Julep’s Rose and Nails Inc.’s Belgravia Place, each at three coats, topped with one coat of Alter Ego‘s She Shines top coat.

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Julep’s Rose is a gorgeous creme whose color I can never quite pin down. Is it red? Is it pink? Is it the sweetest, ripest, juiciest raspberry? I have no idea, but I love the polish. It had good coverage at one coat, which I find unusual for a Julep creme. It also had a beautiful glossy shine, which I think the top coat dulled quite a bit.

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Belgravia Place is a clear glitter topper with red and silver holo bar glitters. I decided after my bar glitter swatch on Sunday that I would wear this one as a full coverage glitter. I did get full coverage, but not without a price; I couldn’t get the tips smooth and free of jagged glitter, no matter what I did. I pulled away the offending bits with tweezers, I trimmed them with cuticle scissors, I filed down and wrapped with top coat whatever was left, and I’m still getting things snagged on them. You can see on my ring finger where some fiber of who-knows-what is still stuck to it. So frustrating.

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I love both of these polishes, but I don’t feel good about this combo. In my office, Rose looks like a very red creme, but in other lighting conditions, it looks more pink, and the combo isn’t as cohesive as I’d have liked. I also expected something else from the glitter, like more red. I definitely thought I would have two very red shades here, and neither of them really lived up to my expectations. I don’t blame the polishes here, but I am a little disappointed, especially with all the work I spent trying to get this glitter to not cut me every time I scratch myself.

You can find Julep’s Rose and Nail Inc.’s Belgravia Place wherever these brands are sold. I happened to get mine from the Julep website and Sephora, respectively.

I bought these polishes myself.