OPI Venice Collection and Italian Tribal

If you follow me on Instagram, last night you got a super blurry, tantalizingly taunting sneak peek of today's post. I'm really excited to share the real deal with you now! I've got the full set of swatches for the new Fall/Winter 2015 OPI collection, Venice. 

After looking at the colors from Venice, I realized some of them matched closely to a "nailspiration" picture I had pinned recently (here).  Though it's not exactly Venetian, I loved the print, so I painstakingly duplicated it on my nails.

It took me longer than I'd care to admit.

Click to Enlarge

There's some seriously teeny tiny brushwork that went into this, but it was all inspired by the gorgeous Venice collection. (WARNING: Cheesy OPI names ahead!)

The collection has 12 colors, plus 3 awesome limited edition colors! I was surprised by that...I'd never heard of that before. So here's a look at those 3 first.

OPI - Baroque...But Still Shopping!

Baroque...But Still Shopping! (2 coats) is a brassy gold chrome with a little grit and texture in it, plus hex and square gold glitter. I'm not the biggest fan of polishes like this that embed glitter in a base that essentially envelopes the glitter. To me, it looks like someone got little pieces of dust stuck in their polish while they applied it.

OPI - Venice the Party?

Venice the Party? (2 coats) is a bright teal chrome. It's a little more teal than my swatch shows. You can see that it's still a little bit sheer after 2 coats, but that didn't bother me enough to use a third. It looks nice with 2.

OPI - St. Mark's the Spot

The last limited edition color is St. Mark's the Spot (2 coats), which is an effortless dark blue chrome. It's one of those royal, regal colors you can really sink your teeth into.

As I mentioned, those are just the limited edition colors, so if you're loving any of these colors, act quickly, because when OPI says "limited edition", they mean it! Snag 'em while they're hot! After the jump, you'll see the rest of the 12-piece Fall/Winter collection.

Zoya Focus Collection and Hocus Focus Nail Art

Are you ready for some sickeningly sweet cremes? Sadly, they're not particularly good tasting. Trust me, I tried. They're the other half to Zoya's newest collection pair, Focus and Flair. As I mentioned in my review of the Flair collection, my heart was really more drawn to Focus, so let's check that out today.

I'd seen a fantastic dark to light gradient on Pinterest in the past (this one here) and wanted to duplicate that at some point, but I really loved the idea of two colors from this collection, Hannah and Lidia, together. So I sponged on a gradient with the two and embellished it with some skull charms from my collection. I believe the charms were from Born Pretty Store and Winstonia, but they don't appear to have these particular charms anymore.

I call this nail art "Hocus Focus".

Click to enlarge!

See how well the two shades blend with each other, even with my not-so-on-point gradient? I guess I just need to do more gradients! I didn't adhere the skulls with anything other than top coat, because I knew I would be taking this off for more swatching.

Now let's look at Hannah, Lidia, and the rest of the girls from Focus up close!

Zoya - Charli

First is Charli (2 coats). I think Charli is much prettier to me than the Flair counterparts Aggie and Tris. It's a unique army green putty creme with excellent coverage. In fact, all of the Focus collection has fantastic coverage, but I was surprised by this one in particular.

Zoya - Hannah

Hannah (2 coats) was a surprise as well! Sometimes, when reds are so bright, they lose opacity and appear sheer, even after two even coats. But Hannah applied beautifully, and is now a favorite maraschino cherry red of mine.

Zoya - Sia

Ok...this color is regal as hell! Sia (2 coats) makes me want to swing from the chandeliers it's so stunning! (See what I did there?) It's the most royal blue I've ever swatched. It literally looks like the picture of the swatch in person. Damn!

Zoya Flair Collection...with Fossils!

Y'all. I'm so excited about the upcoming posts I have for you, starting with tonight's!

Recently Zoya started putting out images of their Focus and Flair collections, and the nail world collectively "died." Me being more of a creme girl, I'm uber-excited for Focus (which you'll see shortly), but Flair incited some pretty creative ideas in my head. I thought the multi-chrome color, Aggie, seemed like a good fossil color, so I tried my hand at the stone technique made popular by cutepolish.

I'd tried this technique earlier with terrible results. But now that I have real hairspray, I got some pretty sweet marbling.

Did that whet your appetite for more Flair? Then read on!

Zoya - Aggie

Zoya - Aggie

Aggie (3 coats) is a copper, gold and teal multi-chrome foil. I used that for the marble lines in the nail art. It's tough to capture the multi-chromeness of the polish, so here's another angle.

Zoya - Cinnamon

Cinnamon (2 coats) isn't quite cinnamon...more cinnamon stick in its color. The chrome finish is nice though. It might be one of the few colors I prefer as a chrome versus a creme.

Amethyst Art

Yesterday during lunch, I posed a question on Instagram, asking y'all what you'd like to see me create. Several of you asked for geode nail art. There are a lot of interpretations for "geode", but the first thing that came to my mind was amethyst...that good ole reliable rock with the purple in the middle. It looks a little something like this.

So after digging through my entire stash of polish, I pulled out four colors to use for these rocking rocks:

• Kleancolor - Holo Chrome
• Rainbow Honey Nail Lacquer - The Worst Possible Thing
• China Glaze - Are You Jelly?
• Zoya - Peterhof Palace

Surprisingly, this isn't hard to create at all! First, I used Glitter Off (the OPI peel-off base coat) because I knew I'd have way too much glitter on my nails to take off without a peeling base coat. Then, I painted the center part of my nails with Holo Chrome. It was perfect because it was slightly sheer. Then I used Are You Jelly? to get the right color of the amethyst, then layered a little The Worst Possible Thing over the top, giving it a real gem look. Finally, I outlined each nail with Peterhof Palace, being slightly sloppy to keep it "organic".

Thanks for the suggestion girls, it turned out fabulous!

One of my favorite parts of this was the removal. Remember how I used that Glitter Off base coat? Well when I peeled off the layers, I had little leftover amethyst stones! I liked them so much I framed them.

Is this something y'all would like to see as a tutorial? Let me know in the comments!

LVX Summer 2015 Swatches - Cartoonish Nail Art

During my time as lead at the salon, I brought the LVX line of polish in for clients to enjoy on their nails or toes. Each time we get a new collection in, people show interest, but nothing quite like how popular the Summer '15 line from LVX became! We're practically out of each color already. Not surprising though, considering how amazing they are!

I'm really inspired by creative patterns in amazing colors, so when I stumbled across Instagram user Lilly Friedeberg, an illustrator and designer based in Düsseldorf and Berlin, I knew that her work would be perfect for the LVX Summer 2015 collection nail art. Check it - I call it "Düsseldorf Doodles".

Each color (besides the black and the base, which is My Boyfriend Scales Walls from OPI) is from the Summer '15 collection below. How perfectly do they go together?!

LVX - Avenal

Avenal (2 coats) seems more yellow in my nail art, but in actuality, it's a pastel pistachio creme.

LVX - Caicos

Caicos (2 coats) is a hugely popular color, even for clients who are scared to go outside their pink and red comfort zone. Maybe that's because it reminds people of the waters they wish they were dipping their freshly pedicured toes in, along the sands of Turks and Caicos.

Zoya Island Fun and Windows to the Nail Art Soul

Well...it's been nearly two months since my last blog post. I could inundate you with excuses and I'm sorry's (which I do sincerely feel), but let's face it, Nailed It is about nail art, not my life story, so I'll get right into the good stuff of today, and you can go ahead and email me if you're curious about why I've been absent. What I will tell you is that with a new computer, new job title and nail art on my mind, it should be uphill and fantastic from here!

Today I've got swatches of the Zoya Island Fun collection, which isn't new, but is the latest colorful collection from Zoya. Today, Zoya announced another one I can't wait to try (Focus & Flair), but this summer collection is still very on point! Check out the nail art first and foremost, which I copied almost directly from Instagram user, resnicina88 and this manicure she did.

Island Fun is creme heaven. It's like the finishes were all created in the remains of a Twinkie factory...perfectly smooth and nearly as delicious. Three of Island Fun's bodacious bolds were used for my nail art, most obvious of which is Nana.

Zoya - Nana

Nana (1-2 coats)...na na! Nana na na! Hey hey hey! SO GORG! This polish really can be done with almost 1 coat, but for consistency, I did 2 for the swatch. It's a stunning raspberry pink creme.

Zoya - Cecilia

The second color I used is Cecilia (2 coats), a vibrant teal creme everyone's been craving this summer.

Zoya - Serenity

Last of the nail art colors (but not in the collection!) is Serenity (2 coats). Serenity is a really royal violet, inching on indigo.