Cranberry Leaves

This is not a Christmas mani. This is a Thanksgiving mani! I have personal rules about respecting holidays by not OD-ing on them before the prior holiday's even happened yet.

So here we go, inspired by cranberry sauce (om nom nom)!

I started with two coats of BB Paris Scarlet (could have done with three, but didn't realize quite how much VNL I had going on til after taking the pictures, oops!) then stamped some fancy leaf accents with Pure Ice Twinkle and the BM01 plate.

Autumn French

This one I just threw together at work, in lousy lighting, so it's no surprise it turned out a little meh. Thought I'd share anyway though. 

I started with three coats of Covergirl Scalding Emerald (I'm obsessed with the glassfleck glosstini polishes! They're so shiny! Even though they run sheer I love 'em to pieces). 

Then I did a brushstroke down the middle of each nail with Covergirl Violet Flicker. It didn't show up nearly as well as I'd hoped, so for a little more visual interest I added a french tip with Finger Paints Winter Chill.

Subtle Stamping

What can I say, I was feeling girly!

The base color here is Sinful Colors Soul Mate, stamped with RA-116 and Wet & Wild Deadly Dose.

Fall Fantasy

I always get kinda bummed out at the end of nice weather and sunny warm lovely perfection. It takes a while to give it up and accept the winter... 

On that kind of theme I did my nails in fall/wintery colors but added a flower accent. 

First I did a gradient with Sinful Colors Supernova and Hot Wired, then topped that with a coat of Sally Hansen Twinkle Toes-ty. For the accents I freehanded leaves with Revlon Mistletoe, then smacked a flower decal on and finished off with topcoat.

I'd like to take a moment to fangirl about Twinkle Toes-ty since it's pretty much awesome and the second best holiday polish I've seen yet this year (the best is being reserved for my Christmas mani, Sally Hansen Midnight Glitz) -- I guess "best" is relative but... MY favorite, at least! But a chunky gold-and-silver holo glitter bomb that doesn't eat top coat or have even a bit of a tacoing issue and doesn't require much fussing to get a good glitter distribution? Yes please!

Back from the dead with a belated Halloween post

Yes, it's true I've been gone for a while! In my defense... well... I guess I'd better just admit that I did a stupid and dropped my camera in the ocean while on vacation, and then procrastinated replacing it. 

But now I have a new one, so it's time to get this thing going again! 

The first thing I got to take pictures of was my Halloween costume, so let's go with that for a welcome-back-to-blogville post!

Why yes, I did decide to be a massive geek and dress up as the TARDIS for Halloween. More specifically, the TARDIS as the Paradox Machine. I definitely took a little artistic license with that idea!  I wanted a damaged look, so shredded the skirt to let red layers and red skinny jeans show through, put a flicker LED in the hat, and did some 'cracks' with cheap makeup: 

That's a dollar-store lipliner for the cracking bits, plus blue false lashes and blue eyeliner plus gold eyeshadow. I also dusted gold shimmer powder all over my skin.

And of course, it wouldn't be ME if I didn't do some fun nails to go with the costume. Keeping with the damage theme I *had* to use crackle polish... 

Pretty simple execution, two coats of Covergirl Midnight Magic topped with Sally Hansen Distressed Denim (the perfect TARDIS-blue crackle!)

Lazy nail art with Pure Ice

I was feeling both fancy and lazy at once when I did this one. So... glitter, accent nail, and a decal!

I decided to do a twist on my usual accent style and actually use a completely different polish, rather than just slapping a decal on it and calling it good. 

The main polish I used is Pure Ice Irreplaceable, and for the accent I used Pure Ice Private Show. The decal is from a Kiss set I picked up back when I first got into nail art.

June Polish Days: To Boldly Go

It's that time again! And perfect timing for the space/sci-fi theme, since I just got into a new show (new to me, that is)... DOCTOR WHO! 

So, of course I had to do a DW themed mani. Even though I seriously considered taking the opportunity to show some love to my old favorite, Star Trek... I just couldn't resist the Who-ness.

Oddly enough the hardest part and what took the longest was the TARDIS nail. I'm apparently much better at semi-abstract stuff like nebulas and time vortices. Speaking of, I LOVE how the time vortex nails turned out! 

(If you're not familiar with the show, the vortex is blue when traveling into the past and red when traveling into the future.)

The nebula on my pinky doesn't have any direct connection to Who, but I thought it was appropriate considering they go all over space, including lots of nebulas.