#TheBeautyBuffs – Zoya Radiant Orchid

You may have heard that I’m part of a beauty blogger group called the Beauty Buffs.  This week we’re all talking about the Pantone color of the year- Radiant Orchid.

The orchid shade that I’m highlighting is Zoya Perrie.  I’m shocked at how opaque this color is!  The above swatch is one base coat and one coat of Perrie (no topcoat).  I also wanted to do some floral nail art to tie into the orchid theme.  I tried out my first attempt at one-stroke painting.  Nope, you will not be seeing the results!  It was less than stellar.  I need some practice, for sure.  So instead, I grabbed a bunch of Zoya colors and went for an abstract floral orchid design.  I enjoy doing nail art like this.  It’s not too planned out and I just let my creativity do the work.

Perrie – used as my base color and a few dots here and there

Ginessa – sponged onto my tips for some subtle shimmer

Belinda – for the dark purple petals

Pippa – as the yellow accents

I hafta admit- I borrowed Zoya Perrie from my mom! 😉 She has good taste in nail polish.  I’m just realizing that this shade of orchid looks great on me though!  I was never really attracted to these pinky-purpley colors before.  I always preferred purples that leans more towards blue than pink.  But now that my eyes are opened, and considering it’s the color of 2014, I really need to grab some shades like this!

What radiant orchid shades do you have?

Here’s what the other Beauty Buffs are wearing….

An InLinkz Link-up – CLICK ME

Spring Flowers for #NAILLINKUP

This is my design for the SPRING FLOWERS theme of the N.A.I.L. Linkup!  The colors I chose are a bit more intense than the usual spring pastels.  But then again, it doesn’t feel like spring yet in NY!  It was kinda nice out yesterday, but today is like brrrrr.

BASE COLOR ♥ I Love Nail Polish – Grape Alicious

STAMPING NAIL POLISH ♥ AVON Mirror – Blaze

STAMPING PLATE ♥ MoYou London – Pro Collection 04

RHINESTONES ♥ magenta gems from Sally’s Beauty Supply

ACCENT NAIL GLITTER ♥ Sinful Colors – Star Dust

NAILLINKUP Spring Flowers –

OPI Brazilian Floral Nail Art

I recently picked up 4 polishes from the new OPI Brazil Collection.  Swatches coming soon!  But first, I’m super excited to show you some floral nail art that combines all four of my new brazils!

Here’s what I’m wearing:

♥ I Just Can’t Cope-acabana

♥ Live.Love.Carnaval

♥ AmazON…AmazOFF

♥ Don’t Bossa Nova Me Around

To complete the look I also used some rhinestones, OPI Black Onyx for the dots, and a light blue striper polish.

This manicure is pure love to me.  It’s tropical, bright and feel-good! Plus, I’m psyched that I finally got my greedy little hands on the Brazil collection. 😀

See you soon with my Brazil swatches!

Essie Shearling Darling winter rose nails

Hey everyone! Do you remember a few weeks back when I was participating in a holiday nail art contest held by nailpolishcanada.com ? Well, thanks to all of your votes I won week 2 for my holiday underside mani!  Thank you so much to all my readers and also to Nail Polish Canada for the sweet prize pack!  I never won a nail contest before!! Here’s what they mailed me…

2 Enchanted Nail Polish – Hello New York & The Youth
Butter London 2 pc Double Take Ice Duo – Bluecoat Lacquer & Leccy Topcoat
China Glaze 3 pc Dash Of Dazzle Set
Zoya 6 pc Zenith Collection
Essie 6 pc Shearling Darling (Winter 2013) Collection
OPI 10 pc Take Ten Mini Set

I’d like to show you my Essie pics first since that was the collection that I’m really excited about. For today’s manicure I used the following four polishes from the Essie Winter 2013 Shearling Darling collection: Mind Your Mittens, Warm & Toasty Turtleneck, Shearling Darling, and Parka Perfect.

Prior to this prize pack,  I only owned two bottles of Essie so getting the entire 6 piece winter 2013 Shearling Darling collection was really fun for me!  I wanted to do some nail art that incorporated all 6 colors but that manicure didn’t turn out very blog-worthy.  It was good for me to test out those polishes though- to see which ones are opaque enough for some nail stamping, and also to practice with the Essie brush.  I’m not used to applying Essie so the combination of the runny formula and the skinny brush kinda threw me for a loop.  The first mani came out really messy but I think I got the hang of it by the second manicure.  Slow, thin coats did the trick.  Here are the final blog-worthy nails:

For these nails I used the above-mentioned four polishes along with my MoYou London Pro Plate 04 for a romantic rosebud pattern.  It’s funny, it looks like I used one design for all my nails, but I actually used two different designs: one stamp imprints the roses, and the other stamp imprints color OUTSIDE the roses.  For the maroon nails it may appear like I stamped light colored roses over top of the dark color.  But really, the nail is painted the lighter color, and then I stamped the dark maroon over top.  This worked out well since dark colors stamp much better than light colors, but I still get the effect of light colored roses.  Does that explanation even make sense ? I hope someone out there sees what I mean. LOL

Do you notice how these nails coordinate with my blog-header?  That must be why I like them so much!  I’d also like to add that I’m happy to have 400% more Essies in my stash now!  Thanks nailpolishcanada- this collection is so warm and luscious!

Do you girls own any of this winter collection?

#31DC2013 Flowers Nail Art

Day 14 of Chalkboard Nails’ Challenge is FLOWERS and I’ve got some brown cherry blossom nails for ya!  I’ll be honest with you… I don’t really like how these nails came out.  I don’t like to be negative… but it is what it is.  And I realized that when I don’t like one of my designs I usually only post one pic.  So here it is….

I’m wearing two coats of a cream brown called Nirvana by Sinful Colors.  A few months back you may remember me whining about how I didn’t have any basic brown polishes… well, now I have one!  I think Nirvana should come in handy for nail art this fall and winter. 🙂    For my floral design I painted some branches using Orly Nite Owl.  I wish I used a dark polish for the branches.  (On this old AriZona Green Tea mani I made the branches black and they looked amazing!) The pink flowers are China Glaze Dance Baby and Orly Kiss the Bride.  I used a toothpick to make black dots in the middle of the blossoms, but the dots came out much bigger than expected (oopsy)!  I topped it off with seche vite and there you go!  These aren’t that fantastical, but they were quick to do, so that’s a bonus.  😀

See some of the other flower nails from #31DC2013 right here:

#31DC2013- Violet Nails

Day 6 of Chalkboard’s 31 day nail challenge is VIOLET and I came up with a bold purple petunia design using my new Essence colour & go polishes! The lighter base color (3 coats) is called Essence Oh My Glitter! and it’s such a pretty, pretty purple, I just love it!  It’s one of those purple shades that’s dusty, but also bright at the same time.  (does that make sense ?)

Moving on to the petunia motif…  I started by free-handing the petals with a detail brush and cheap black nail polish.   I almost always use this NYC brand of polish called Black Lace Creme for my black nail art.  This stuff was $0.98!  Also, it’s nice and smooth and it doesn’t get too goopy on my brush.  It’s just a great cheapo polish to have on hand!  Then I filled in the black outlines with Essence Break Through, a deep magenta-tinted purple.  The flowers came out big and bold but luckily they don’t outshine my gorgeous base color!  I like that my eye keeps catching the pink and purple micro-glitter that’s in there.  Here’s a close-up of Oh My Glitter! so you can see ….

Want to see more purple manicures?  Here’s the inlinkz for 31DC2013 violet theme…

My guest post for The Nailinator!

Rachael from The Nailinator asked if I’d like to do a guest post for her blog!  As a fan of her blog, of course I said YES.  So I did some artistic Van Gogh-inspired nails and Rachael published them yesterday.  You should check ’em out!   View the post here.