Christmas in July - Last Look - Jewel Tones

Red and green is nice and all, but the colors I really like to see for holiday are the jewel tones. For this one I first laid down a really quick gradient, I mean really quick. Thanks to the pigmentation of the metallics, I just striped the colors across a makeup sponge and that was enough to do one hand

This is obviously a beauty on its own, and could be lovely any time of year. However, I decided to pull out my silver Color Club chrome, a great stamping polish, and lay down some snow flakes.

I decided to add a little star accent as well. This proved to be a really quick manicure thanks to the great metallic coverage.

Polishes used: Gelous base coat, Venique Retail Therapy (purple), Venique Rhinestone Stiletto (pink), the blue and green are unnamed Color Club's from a holiday scented gift set from Sally's in 2012, the silver chrome is also an unnamed Color Club.

Stained Glass Nail Art

I love jelly polishes. Love, love, love them. When I got to playing with my polishes one night I wanted to do something with them that wasn't my standby of either a glitter jelly sandwich or a stamping sandwich and that's where the stained glass idea came in.

It was surprisingly easy.

I do wish I had thought ahead a bit more with my 'random blobs', however it still worked out okay.

A few blobs here and there, let those dry and then take a liner brush and edge them with a pretty metallic, I used my fave Orly Luxe, or any polish of your choosing.

The Zoya jellies are my favorites and mostly what I used here. Paloma, Katherine, and Frida are all in play here. The orange is OPI's Y'all Come Back Ya Hear?

I did a terrible quick video tutorial on my instagram account, which can be found here.

Mint & Gold ::: Anchors & Bows

I love mint, white, and gold together. It is one of my all time favorite color combinations. Of course, that carried over to my nails. 

I decided to do a quick stamped look with Orly Luxe, my all time favorite gold polish, mixed with a mint/white ombre.

My pointer finger is two quick coats of Orly Luxe with no top coat. I used a makeup sponge to do a quick gradient with Milani White and Sally Hansen Mint Sorbet before I stamped them with Orly Luxe and a plate from Born Pretty Store, which can be found here. My pinky is two coats of Milani White and I used a dotting tool to add some dots of Orly Luxe. The stripes surrounding the bow on my ring finger were added by hand with a striping brush.

I originally had not planned on adding the stripes, but I slipped with my stamper my bow was a little off center and adding the stripes helps disguise that. Adding dots or stripes around a crooked stamp is a great trick to hide a flaw without having to completely start over.

Avengers Nail Art ::: The Lacquer Legion's July Themed Mani

If you're not familiar with The Lacquer Legion, then head on over to their Facebook page and check them out. The have an open monthly nail art challenge with a new theme each month, all tied neatly together with one universal hashtag so that it's easy to check out everyone's art.

This months theme was fandom, which is super fun as it is, but I had a hard time narrowing it down. With all of the fun Marvel stuff (my favorite) coming up and SDCC going on this weekend I figured I would go ahead and go with an Avengers themed manicure. 

While I had intended to go far more in depth with this, I just wasn't quite feeling up to it, but I still gave it my best shot.

I didn't want to do the 'usual' designs for many of these, so I tried to mix it up a bit, especially as I have done Avengers nails before.

I regret not slapping a matte top coat on my Coulson nail, as the shine hid much of the detail of the suit. I also regret the darkness of the purple on the Hawkeye nail. Ah, hindsight.

Christmas in July - Feeling Blue

Here's another holiday look, very much like the one featured on Friday, but this one featuring blues and silvers. 

This manicure is also featuring a 3D Born Pretty Store charm, found here (#16), which was applied with a few dots of nail glue.

The 3D charm can go on any nail you choose, they just happen to fit my pointer nail perfectly so that is where I always place them.

Nail polishes used: Gelous base coat, Revlon Urban, OPI I Don't Give A Rotterdam, an unnamed Color Club silver, and INM Out The Door top coat.

A note on my top coat... As you can see the snowflake smeared a bit. This was one of my first times using this top coat for nail art and it smears like crazy. It's lovely for over solid colors and dries quickly, but over designs? It's a mess, so it won't be a repurchase for me.

Christmas in July - Featuring Gold and Rhinestones

Whether it's Halloween, Thanksgiving, or Christmas it is never too early to start thinking about holiday themed nail art in my world. Nail It! Magazine announced that they'd be accepting holiday nail art on their instagram, see here, so I started getting in that mode. 

Here is a very simple look featuring a mix of solid nails with some 3D accents. 

The rhinestones are simply attached and then covered with topcoat.

The large 3D charm is from Born Pretty Store, found here. That particular charm is style #6. I attached the charm with a few dots of nail glue.

Polishes used were: Gelous base coat, Nicole Challenge Red-y, Milani 510 3D, Avon Nailwear Pro Noir Emerald, INM Out The Door Top Coat

Divergent Faction Nails

I actually did these nails about a month ago but I figured with the movie coming out on Friday I would go ahead and get these babies posted. I enjoyed the books and I'm really looking forward to the movie. As you can see, I did one faction per nail. I may do another full mani soon, in which I will add a link to that post in this one.

Pinky: Abnegation

Ring: Amity

Middle: Dauntless

Pointer: Candor

Thumb: Erudite (there is a better look in the next photo)

I do not recall which polishes I used for everything, I meant to take bottle shots and completely forgot. The stamping on the Amity and Erudite fingers are from the Bundle Monster CYO set, Dauntless was freehanded, and the Candor and Abnegation nails were taped.

I can't quite choose which faction is my favorite, but I do think I belong in Amity. Though I do think the Candor nail is my favorite, I have been intending to do a full manicure of that design.

Jelly Polish and Stamping in Layers Featuring OPI and Bundle Monster

I recently acquired a couple of things that made me have a new nail art love, two new jelly polishes and the new Bundle Monster CYO stamping plate set.

I ordered Zoya Paloma during their Halloween promotion, and man, I love it. I need to get their other two jelly shades, the formula was perfect.

For this mani I used a jelly from OPI, which I think they called sorbet polishes, that I found in the dollar area of Target for $4. The shade name is Y'all Come Back Ya Hear, which is from the 2011 Texas collection. The formula was pretty good, not as good as Zoya's, but good.

These are the products I used today.

Gelous is my favorite base coat, always smooth and really bonds well. OPI Y'all Come Back Ya Hear. Milani 301 White (which I found at Dollar Tree and is great for stamping). Lastly, I've been fond of Color Club's topcoat lately.

This is what three coats of OPI Y'all Come Back Ya Hear looks like alone.

These are the plates I used, the honeycomb design BM-422, and the bee from BM-401.

After applying three coats of color and letting them completely dry, I stamped the honeycomb design on all nails. Now, be careful with the final coat of jelly polishes. Zoya's did not smudge my stamping at all, but the OPI did smudge a bit, so use a light hand and just float the brush just in case. 

After that final coat of color I stamped on the bee on a few nails, creating the extra layering effect. I finished it all off with a layer of top coat.

Here is the finished mani:

Also, here is a shot from my instagram (instagram.com/jessicalynne83) of the same technique done with Zoya Paloma:

A quick post on nail art supplies.

Everyone has their little tips and tricks when it comes to nail art and I wanted to share one of mine.

I use a LOT of acetone and I hate having open bottles around thanks to my clumsiness. Enter a cheap glass ashtray.

I snagged this one at Dollar Tree. It not only safely holds acetone but it's also great for holding polish to mix or for dotting and such.

As you can see the notches where cigarettes (yuck) would go make fantastic brush holders.

If you do a lot of stamping, dotting, or brush based art this will probably be the best dollar you will spend.

A couple of Halloween nail art contest entries.

I came across a couple of fun Halloween nail art contests online recently and decided to give them a try. Both looks were done with 100% nail polish, no acrylic paints. Honestly, I loathe paints/sharpies being used in manicures. Look #1: For Ms. Lizard's contest found here.

Look #2: For Short & Sweet in Texas' contest found here.

Both contests are still open and both blogs are lovely, give them a look.

Mish Mash Mani

This is one of those manicures that happens when I buy a few new things and I don't have the patience to wait to try them out and I just squeeze them all into one mani. The new polishes that I picked up today were Take a Trek from the newest holo line from China Glaze, I snatched that up for $2.50 at Sally's Beauty Supply. I also grabbed Hard Candy's Jaw Breaker at Walmart. I love love love the new Hard Candy polishes, especially this little group. Jaw Breaker has black and white hex and round glitter as well as some lime green bar glitter. Sadly the green doesn't show up as much as I had hoped, but I'm thinking my navy base may have something to do with that. It's still great though. I knew going into the China Glaze holo that these were fairly weak, and they are, so with the nearly gone sun and my aversion to artificial light I couldn't grab a picture of the holo flash. I stamped on the skull using a plate from Mash, plate 29 to be exact.

I snapped a photo of everything that I used, and I'll list all colors below.

Base coat: Seche Clear. Colors: Sinful Colors in some navy blue that doesn't have a tag on it (sorry!), China Glaze in Take a Trek, Hard Candy in Jaw Breaker, Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Green With Envy (not pictured, oops), Nail Art polish from Dollar Tree in gold, and my top coat is NYC In a New York Minute. One more look at the Hard Candy glitter:

Until next time, thanks for reading! Note: All items used in this post were purchased by myself.