Blue & Gray

A friend of mine at work today had gray nail polish, and it inspired me to do mine in Pure Ice "Kiss Me Here." Then I wanted to stamp with a design I hadn't used before, and this criss-cross flower one from Pueen plate #23 caught my eye. Love this bright blue Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in "Blue Me Away!" for stamping :o)

Purple Cherry Blossoms

This was kind of a spur-of-the-moment choice that turned out really well! Base is Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear "Lacey Lilac," stamped with Wet n Wild Megalast in "Disturbia." I used a couple of the little cherry blossom flowers on Pueen plate #59.

Stained Glass Flowers

Very excited to share this one! After seeing the Powder Perfect Stained Glass polishes on another blog, I ordered myself a set of red, yellow, and blue (for mixing and making other colors). They're translucent, so designed to be painted over your stamped lines to color in the open spaces. People have done beautiful things with these. They seem to generally use them on white, though.

Mine is a base of Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure in "Get Juiced," stamped just on two fingers with a rose from Pueen plate #80 using Wet n Wild "Black Creme." Then I used Powder Perfect "Medieval" and "Cerulean" to make some purple shades...

My thoughts: I should definitely have done this on white or a very pale color, as the result was kind of muddy. However, the colors seemed to work well. They do dry quickly, so just put a little down for blending. I used a small nail art brush to apply. Also, I am extremely strongly right-handed ;o)

Melon Flowers

I had this look in my mind last night, so today I made it happen! I think this would look good with gold stamping, too, but I don't have gold nail polish at the moment, so went with my favorite silver...

Base is Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure in "Get Juiced," stamped with Insta-Dri "Silver Sweep" using the roses from Pueen plate #80. Love this base color, it's a nice coral/watermelon shade I got for the summer (it's been on my toes for the last couple weeks, too).

Blue on Blue Flowers

I love how these turned out! I haven't used this one much since I got it, so I started with a base of Maybelline Color Show in "Turquoise Paradise." Then I stamped on a variety of flowers from Pueen plate #72 using Sally Hansen Insta-Dri in "Navy Fleet." Love the variety of shapes and flowers, all from one plate!

Minty Roses

Well, I had one thing in my mind (involving a gradient and a more geometric stamped design), but it just wasn't happening. So I went with plan B, which involves a base of Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear "Mint Sorbet" stamped with "Jazzy Jade" (reversed on my ring fingers). I used multiple sections of the rose designs on Pueen plate #80. It might not have been my original plan, but I like the way it turned out!

Jamspiration

A few of my friends are now selling Jamberry wraps, but as I've discovered, they just don't work for me. However, the catalog is great inspiration for me in creating my own nail art! Inspired by the style Glam, I decided on a base of Finger Paints "Putty in My Hands," stamped with Pure Ice "Fairy Godmother" and Sally Hansen Insta-Dri "Mauve It." I had a couple design options, but ended up using the sketchy flowers on Pueen plate #77 - I loved this plate as soon as I saw it, but hadn't used it yet!

Snowflowers

I picked something a little more elaborate than planned for my triumphant return to nail art ;o) Tomorrow is my holiday party at work, so I chose this flower design from my new Pueen plate #75, which reminded me of snow flakes. The base is Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in "Blue Me Away," and the design is stamped in Wet n Wild "French White." On my ring fingers is Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in "Breezy Blue," topped with "Sea-ly String" glitter.

How long did it take me to figure out the "Sea-ly String" pun? Way too long.

Flakey

I can't decide if these look more like snowflakes or flowers. I guess they should be flowers, since it's still August... This is Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure in "Jaded" (which requires three coats to look reasonable), stamped with Xtreme Wear in "Jazzy Jade," using that poinsettia-looking design from Pueen plate #49.

Green Lotus

Besides some of these stamps being crooked, I'm pretty happy with this one! I used two of my favorite colors at the moment, Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in "Jazzy Jade" and "Mint Sorbet." This is a flower type design from Pueen plate #51 - this is probably the first time I used the "stamping buffet" plates to do the exact same design on each nail.

Flutter by...

Simple mani tonight... I used Pure Ice "Fairy Godmother," and then stamped just on my ring fingers with Sally Hansen Insta-Dri "Pronto Purple," using the butterfly/flower design from Pueen plate #39. Pronto Purple is one of my favorite nail colors (and I'm super bummed it doesn't seem to be in stores anymore), but it is kind of a lousy stamping polish :o(

Spring Thistles

I thought I'd try another gradient mani, this time with just two colors. I used Pure Ice in "Fairy Godmother" (purple) and Sally Hansen Insta-Dri in "Love Train" (pink with lavender undertones). The first nail I did turned out like a beautiful sunset. Then the rest of them looked like a bad faux textured wall :o( But it didn't matter so much, since I was covering the whole thing with this thistle-like design from Pueen plate #51 (in Pure Ice "Black Out"), which I've been waiting to use.

The overall effect is kind of crazy (looks like something from the 80s), so we'll see how long this actually lasts...

Silver Hibiscus

I guess I just can't get enough of this Pueen plate #72. My mom gave me a bottle of OPI "Russian Navy," which looks purple in the bottle, but yeah, it's more like navy on. And I'd been wanting to do these flowers in silver (Sally Hansen Insta-Dri "Silver Sweep"). So here we go!

Hibiscus Inspiration

Inspired by Soguesswhat11's latest "fauxtorial," I used a couple of the flowers on Pueen plate #72 to do this design. All the colors are Sally Hansen Insta-Dri: the base is "Petal Pusher," flowers are "Presto Pink," and vines are "Mint Sprint." I like the gold on pink she does in her design, but I have cut all goldtone out of my life at this point, can't backtrack now!

Lacy Underwear?!

After my snowflake Christmas mani, I thought I'd do another white and nude design. This is Pure Ice "Superstar" stamped on OPI for Sephora "Nonfat Soy Half Caff."

Without flash

With flash

I was originally going to use one of the flower-on-lace patterns from Pueen plate #27, but the images kept coming out kind of smudgy looking, so I ended up using the large rose design on plate #22, which came out a little better. However, when I asked my husband what he thought, he said it looked like lacy underwear!

New Year's Lace

My husband and I are going to a black & white party for New Year's Eve, so I was thinking for a while about what to do. I decided to try this, and if the stamping wasn't happening, I would just do glitter on top of black. But this worked out well!

This is Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in "Black Out" stamped with Sally Hansen Insta-Dri in "Silver Sweep" using the flower/lace pattern from Pueen plate #28.

Happy new year!

Swirly Silver Flowers

I haven't had time to do any nail art or stamping recently! For the last couple weeks, I've needed to just get my nails done and go. But I'm back. I actually wasn't planning on stamping when I painted my nails a couple nights ago with OPI for Sephora "Just a Little Dangerous," but tonight I picked up Sally Hansen Insta-Dri in "Silver Sweep" and decided to jazz things up a little.

Originally I intended to do something more straight-lined, but then I noticed this swirly, flowery design on Pueen plate #13 and decided to use it. I like the way it turned out!

More Roses and Lace

After changing my mind about five times tonight, I decided to use the other rose and lace design on Pueen plate #27, stamping in Pure Ice "Black Out" on Revlon "Raisin Rage."

We're going to the renaissance faire this weekend, and I think the design and color scheme is kind of renaissance-y...

Flowers and Branches

I realized I hadn't used this Pure Ice nail polish in "Fairy Godmother" yet, so I did a test to see how opaque it was. Turns out it covers pretty much completely in just one coat! (But I did two anyway, just to be safe.) Then I did this flowery/branchy design from Pueen plate 33 (I just now decided that they were branches) in Pure Ice "Black Out," with dots of Wet n Wild "Rain Check" in the centers of the flowers.

There was a tiny bit of streaking after I put on a top coat, but also my scraper wasn't quite scraping as well as it used to, so there were a couple noticeable streaks transferred right from the plate.

Lace and Roses

I've been seeing a lot of people on Instagram and such using these rose and lace designs, so even though it's not my usual style, I decided to try this design from Pueen plate #27. In Wet n Wild "Black Creme" on Sally Hansen InstaDri "Vigorous Violet," it comes across as more sassy than sweet :o)

The only bad thing was that the delicate design got pretty streaky when I put on the top coat. Sorry again for my raggedy cuticles - and I had to go with my right hand because it was the less streaky of the two, plus I got a really badass blood blister on my left ring finger :o/