Inktober Day 27: Music

Is anyone else missing live music as much as me? COVID has just killed that this year, and I really hope it changes soon. But in the meantime, this is as close as my nails get to music right now.

On a base of Licorice (essie), I painted each letter in Sharktooth (Jessica Cosmetics), then outlined them in neon polishes including Chatty Catty and Skater Dater (Sation), Funky Yellow (Kleancolor), and Neon Heat (ORLY). Then I painted over the neon again with white. It's actually really simple and really effective if I do say so myself. I also added some neon glitter on my thumb with Phoenix (Pretty & Polished) and Frankenstein Spit (jindie nails).

Who else misses live music?

Inktober Day 13: Ash

Welcome to another episode of "Katy Takes the Prompt to a Whole New Level," featuring "ash" as the prompt. There's this little bug, called the ash borer. It's named that because it bores into ash trees. In its wake, it leaves these interesting patterns on the wood, all while slowly killing it. Sad, but beautiful.

I took that little pattern and put it on more interesting colors (Neon Heat from ORLY and Black Hole from INM) for my design today. Pretty cool huh?

Inktober Day 13 - Ash

Inktober Day 6: Husky

Who doesn't love a good gradient? The seamless blending of one color into another really lended itself nicely for day 6 of Inktober: husky.

Husky dogs are probably one of the most recognizable pups out there, with their dark to light transitional fur. So I went pretty literal with today's design, and emulated that soft fur on my nails!

Inktober Day 6 - Husky

I sponged White Porcelain (INM) and Decoded (ORLY) onto my nails. Then, I painted small, thin, vertical lines of Decoded in the white base, and did the same with white lines in the grey base. It may not read exactly like fur, but I think it's a pretty design nonetheless.

Inktober Day 5: Build

"Build" is the prompt for day 5 of Inktober, and while I could have gone a super punny route and given you nails on nails, or super alliterative and given you hammer hands, I decided on a more colorful, more foundational building block.

Here are my Lego nails!

Inktober Day 5 - Build

I was inspired by a Lego set I saw recently at Costco and nearly bought for myself. However, knowing my cat's tendencies to knock small objects over into some oblivion, never to be found again, I decided against that purchase.

The rainbow of colors I needed for this look came from China Glaze (Summer Reign, Sun Upon My Skin, Emerald Bae, and Sun-Set the Mood) and Misa (Gravitron and Power Surge). Then I either mixed in grey (Decoded by ORLY), white (White Porcelain by INM), or black (Black Onyx by OPI) to get the darker and lighter shades for shadowing and highlights.

Halloween Cutouts

A bit ago I was asked to do some Halloween designs. The original source that asked for the pictures didn't pan out, so I had all these unused Halloween nail art ideas sitting around. I just remembered that I had one more, so I'd like to share that with you today, before it's non-Halloween season. (That's on Wednesday folks...put those costumes together!)

This design used two bottles of polish (similar to my NAIL ART COMPETITION THAT YOU SHOULD DEFINITELY ENTER), Decoded from ORLY and Twiggie from Color Club. I also tried some new and interesting techniques.

The chevron pattern and "Boo" were both done freehand. No big news there. However, the scream face and ghost figure were actually something new I've never done. First, I got a makeup sponge and dabbed a small amount of Twiggie onto the sharpest corner of the sponge. Then, I lightly dabbed a rough outline of the shape of the ghost, eyes, and mouth. (It helped to draw the pattern out on paper first to get an idea of the shapes needed.) When Twiggie had dried, I used a small striping brush dipped in Decoded to draw a clean outline of the shapes over the patches of green. Without a topcoat, this looked strange, so you really need to smooth it all out with a nice layer of topcoat. With that last layer of topcoat added, it really pulls together nicely, wouldn't you say?

Inverted Dots

Polish disorganization is a terrible thing. Bottles get shoved in awkward places, and they get lost in the shuffle of glitter and bottle sizing. I'm suffering from this malady right now and it's unbelievably frustrating. My visits to Micheal's aren't paying off, and I keep coming up without Melmers, as much as I'm dying for one. We don't have the space for a Helmer, so a Melmer would do just fine.

One good thing did come from this unorganized mess though. I rediscovered the cuties from Lime Crime, and paired Crema de Limon, the yellow from the collection, with Calypso Breeze (ORLY). Nothin' fancy, just some interesting dots.

Shoving such beautiful bottles into a plastic container beneath the entertainment center is a far cry from the beautiful polish rooms of girls like Cristina and Caitlin. So if anyone sees a Melmer at their local Micheal's, let's talk.

Happy Plants

You've seen a few ColourLover-inspired designs here before. If you're new, or don't recall, ColourLovers is a fantastic site to browse color palettes and patterns. It's my go-to for inspiration.

Every Tuesday, an email to members is distributed, which they call Happy Huesday. They feature six or so popular patterns in the emails.

Yesterday, I liked one so much I decided to make it into a manicure.

Here's the manicure:

 And here's the pattern it was based on:

Image source: http://www.colourlovers.com/pattern/2958888/happy_plants

It's pretty obvious which part of the pattern is being shown on the manicure, but if I hadn't told you, would you think they were tiny mustaches?

Here are the colors I used: Ancient Jade (ORLY), Load (Illamasqua), Get in the Expresso Lane (OPI), Pull Over (Sinful Colors), and Front Row Flasher (Sation).

Dysfunctional RV

Last night's manicure showed you one of the Sation Nailstock colors, but it definitely didn't glorify it. I had to give RV There Yet? another try tonight, with some complementary colors and accents to really help it pop.

Isn't it gorgeous? That almost antique jade color works perfectly with the ill pink color of Decades of Dysfunction (ORLY) and the gold striping tape. I love the way the colors and the design makes my fingers look. Elegant but definitely not ordinary.

Have I convinced you to get your Nailstock collection yet? I think I have, but for those who aren't sure, check out the Nailstock supply at the Miss Professional Nail store for all the colors you're missing out on.

I've also added this manicure to a contest hosted by Birchbox. If you have a moment, I'd love your vote! Click here to be taken to the entry on Facebook.

Melting Chevrons

You may remember my Bleeding Blue manicure, with the dripping gradient.

Here's another take on those melting gradients. Why not add chevrons to the scorched pigments?

The base of this chevron is Ancient Jade (ORLY). The darker orange is also ORLY, Old School Orange. Finally, there's Peaches <3 Cream (Lime Crime).

Blog Crush: heartNAT & pshiiit

I have a few schoolgirl crushes on the ladies of the lacquer. My man would not be happy to hear about the dates I've dreamed of with some of these girls. Oh the polish we would share...the designs we would make...

I've combined the forces of inspiration behind from two polish crushes to create this shocking pink manicure (Flip Flop Fantasy from China Glaze, Goldie from Zoya and Sashay My Way from ORLY.)

The design's lifted almost directly from heartNAT's most recent manicure. After I took the pictures and uploaded them, I wasn't getting the same beautiful shine she had, so I decided to apply a filter or two, drawing from the overwhelming popular styles of pshiiit. Her pictures are adored by everyone, and obviously I didn't hit that target in quite the same way with my difference in lighting and background choice, but I liked this softer effect nonetheless.

The bows are just for femininity. I was certain that hot pink and gold wouldn't be nearly enough girly bling flair. Definitely needed bows.

Inspiration comes from everywhere, but it's commonly found among fellow bloggers. Just today, Salla at OMG! Polish 'em! drew inspiration from one of my posts for her own geometric jewel.

Sometimes the butterflies in my stomach when a lady crush's post makes its way into my feed won't be silenced, so I need to lay them down by just showing some love where I click 'Love'.

St. Patrick's Day Digits

You all saw Bree's nails yesterday. Today are the nails I wore out last night. After working so hard on Bree's, I wanted something more simple, and easy to do, and you can never go wrong with a glitter. No matter what anyone tells you in life, you can never go wrong with glitter. Rules to live by.

The base (below the glitter) is Cha Cha Cha (China Glaze). I really am not a huge fan of this color, but I knew it would come in handy for something! Hiding it is Here Comes Trouble (ORLY). Oh man I had a hard time covering that gorgeous green glitter with designs, but I just didn't feel right with only one color. The stripes were done with Bad Chick and Time Off (Sinful Colors) and Gold Digger (Color Madric).

I loved wearing this manicure last night, which turned out to be quite the adventure. From the fight breaking out in the bus line when we got off to the pepper spray that leaked into the bar we first bought drinks at, it was an amazing night.

Birthday, Christmas and New Year Haul

The end of the year is always full of some serious celebration for me. With a birthday right before Christmas, Christmas itself, and all the celebration and hangovers that accompany New Year's Eve, there's a lot to be happy about. In addition, I have gifts and presents to celebrate over that I know you all will also appreciate. Of course, I recieved some lovely non-nail gifts and love from my family and friends that are also reason to celebrate, but since this is a nail blog, I'll just share those with you today.

Get ready...it's picture heavy!

First up, these are the gifts my sister gave me. She understands nail polish more than anyone I personally know, so you can only imagine my joy opening her gifts. She gave me tools:

...dotting tools

...striping brushes

...and a glass nail file.

She gave me the Butter London Dressing Table duo, Black Knight and Tart with a Heart. Unfortunately, the dressing table suffered a fatility during the 17-hour car ride, so it won't be making an appearance in today's shots.

She gave me some amazing nail art brushes I've never heard of, but definitely want more of. The formula on all of these is great, and only requires one coat. That's practically unheard of with brighter striping shades. All of these are from a company called Color Madric. They're all sort of metallic, not matte as their bottles seem to indicate.

Shown here is Design Yellow, Green, Ocean Blue, and Hologram Glitter.

Hologram Glitter really is holographic, as I tried to capture here.

Shown here are the metallics from the Metal-licious collection of Color Madric brushes. These colors are Am-Ore, Platinum Rush, Lead to Riches, Metal-Licious, Iron I Lovely, and Gold Digger.

These all appear metallic, as their collection's name suggests.

She gave me part of L.A. Girl Glitter Addict collection, including the elusive Uninhibited I've been craving since I saw Rie from Nails and Noms use it.

Shown here are Uninhibited, Jostle, Animate, and Celebrate.

A few days after getting these, we stopped by a random Rite Aid to get Andy some contact solution, and I saw a glittering display of five more colors from the collection!

I added Eutopia, Nostalgic, Purge (a new nail polish name favorite in my book), Synergy, and Provocative to my infant collection.

Now it's a glittering grand collection!

She gave me some polishes we had talked about over the phone. These are randoms I mentioned liking that she had cheap access to out there in So-Cal.

Shown here is Sea Gurl from ORLY, Good Witch? from China Glaze, Cleopatra also from China Glaze, Glass Slipper from Sally Hansen Diamond Strength (one I actually snagged for myself), Lady Luck from Sally Hansen Gem Crush and January from Julep. She didn't like that color on her, so I took it off her hands. To top this load of polishes off is the amazing Load from Illamasqua. Look at it back there. Beautifully raunchy.

Rounding out my sister's amazing gifts is my first bottle...or bottles rather...of Seche Vite.

Look at this monstrosity! It's so much top coat, I don't even know what to do with it! 4 ounces!

So that's it from her...but fear not, my haul has not ended! She did an unbelievable job of making my Christmas gifts a thrill to open. Thanks Sisser, I love you!

I mentioned in Sapphire that Andy's mom's trainer, Robbie really hooked me up with some amazing CND products. Here they are!

She included in my bag of goodies some nail care items including some tasty CND Solar Oil (a cuticle conditioner), Scentsations lotion minis in Sparkling Champagne and Clementine & Mistletoe. They smell awesome! There are also several samples of CND's Spamanicure hand lotions, in Citrus Soothing Creme and Almond Hydrating Lotion. I absolutely love the smell of the almond lotion. Finally, there are a few nail buffers, showing their support for breast cancer research with the words "Nail Community Cares" written on them.

She also included some amazing colors, including Smoochie (#518), Sapphire Sparkle (#561), Plum Truffle Sparkle Effect (#586), and Plum Truffle Colour (#585).  You've seen Sapphire Sparkle already in Sapphire.

Thank you again Robbie, I love everything!

Last but not least! We have the polishes I bought myself.

You've already seen the Urban Outfitters collection I picked up here, but here's a few more shots of those beautiful bottles.

I also snagged the entire Finger Paints Special Effects collection today at Sally's!

 Not much to look at when they're in the bottles, but I'm sure you've seen them used by other ladies. My favorite shots are from Jen at The PolishAholic, from this post showing each on its own, and this post showing them all layered together. Oh many these are going to be fun to play with!

So that's it. Can you feel my excitement through the screen? It's radiating!

Gnar Pow

These bright nails are inspired by fashion. Not high-fashion fashion though, or anything you'd normally wear. This is season-specific fashion appropriate in only some places. No, it's not black tie. It's ski season chic!

Tomorrow morning is the first ski for me for the season. I just got brand new skis, boots, beanie, face mask, socks and jacket. I'm ready to go out, enjoy some snow, or as my friend Mable calls it, "gnar pow", and come home absolutely exhausted from it all. I'm by no means anywhere close to being a good skier, but I enjoyed the first times, and probably about 4-5 times I've gone (all last year from January to May). Now with a season pass and gear in hand, it's time to start getting good and comfortable out there.

My jacket, as shown below, is bright yellow and purple. My new nails, match it perfectly. Too bad they'll be in gloves all day.

Click for more life-like coloring.

The colors I used include:

• Lightening from Sally Hansen Insta-Dri
• Senorita Bonita from China Glaze
• Bubbly Bombshell from ORLY
• Bad Chick from Sinful Colors nail art brush

The thumb in the first picture was actually inspired by this morning's miracle hangover cure, Snooze. If you don't live near a Snooze, I feel sorry for you. Their food is absolutely some of the best breakfast food I've ever eaten, and breakfast is my favorite meal. I mean come on...red velvet pancakes? Breakfast pot pie? De-licious.