Candy Coated Plaid

Exciting reviews are coming up at Nailed It! I've got polishes, embellishments, new brands, contests, and kits coming down the pipeline, so any chance I can get to squeeze in a 1-hour nail art post to share is clutch in my book. I also bought a new video camera that I'll be using to create some videos with to share tutorials!

A simple plaid look is tonight's. The base is Candy Coated (Sinful Colors) and the stripes were done freehand with a black striping polish from Color Madric. I love straight lines, especially those done with a striping polish. It really couldn't get much easier and simple.

But like I said...the simplicity will be short lived, and the excitement is just beginning!

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).

Fancy Phone Pattern

Remember my iPhone case tribute? It's one of my most popular images, with over 15,000 reblogs on Tumblr. That's pretty unheard of, but I loved that simple manicure.

About six months later, it was time for a new case. I decided to buy this case because I loved the patterns and the colors. Of course, when it arrived, my mind went to which polishes I owned that could be used to recreate the pattern on my nails. I used a few colors:

• Twiggie (Color Club)
• Light Green (Love & Beauty) 
• Something Sweet (China Glaze)
• Bubble Gum (Savina)
• Soul Mate (Sinful Colors)

I really love the way the pattern turned out. And the colors...not so appropriate for fall, but lovely nonetheless. 

Popular Polish Company 'Borrows' Bloggers' Images - Readers Revolt

Updates are live. Continue checking for more.

UPDATE 8:44AM 7/26: Mary and Jeanette have both taken their posts down until the issue is resolved. This is likely a result of the Facebook post made by Revlon.

In the wake of Lynderella and Julep, Sinful Colors comes riding in with a whole new nail controversy to shake up the polished world.

Sinful Colors stole images from bloggers The Swatchaholic and Swatch and Learn without express permission for use in their promotional pamphlets.

I strolled into Walgreens after my workout yesterday to pick up a Gatorade. (I swear that was my only intent.) The draw of the polish aisle was too strong, so I meandered over. I'd read about the 99 cent sale Sinful Colors was having, so I looked at the colors. What caught my eye was a small flyer that read "Nail It" on the front. I couldn't not pick it up, it being so close to this blog's moniker.

The alarm bells started ringing immediately after seeing the first image in the centerfold.

I said to myself "I know those nails!" The shine on the nails, the shape of the nails, and the curve of the fingers are signature The Swatchaholic. But where's her watermark? Where's that curved text that I myself emulate in my own pictures? It's certainly not on the picture, and there's no mention of her in the pamphlet.

I raced home, took some phone pictures and promptly emailed her inquiring about this possible copyright infringement. I calmed down a bit, did my own manicure, and headed to bed.

Waking up the morning revealed that there was indeed a blatant case of copyright infringement. She'd written back and informed me that they had indeed stolen the pictures.

Twitter further fueled the fire lit under all the bloggers butts when Mary at Swatch and Learn alerted us that her image was also lifted without permission. Here's hers:

Now read that text accompanying Mary's picture.

Using a toothpick, gently swirl the colors together to create a fun and unique design.

Or...ya know...buy a stamp to get it perfect, like Mary did. 

So not only has Sinful Colors pilfered images without permission and removed watermarks, they've flat out lied to their readers, claiming that the technique used in Mary's stolen picture can be accomplished with a toothpick. That's clearly a stamp, which they'd known if they'd read Mary's post.

Let's go back to Jeanette's picture. What's up with that bottle Sinful Colors? Did you change your branding since publishing this picture? Oh that's right, it's a COLOR CLUB bottle. In fact, both of the images use no Sinful Colors polishes. Wow. 

The kickback from readers has already been uproarious and angry. Check out Sinful Colors's Facebook page and their community page for just a bit of it. 

So what can you do? Share this info with your friends and reconsider your purchases of Sinful Colors. This is outright theft and copyright infringement.

If you have additional updates you'd like to share, leave a comment and I'll edit this post accordingly. If you know who the owner of the following image is, please let me know so we can contact her in case her work was also stolen:

 
Also for your reference are some helpful links:

---

Updates

• Reddit (I'm the author of this post)

The Swatchaholic Links

• The Swatchaholic Blog
• The Swatchaholic Twitter
• Original post with image stolen by Sinful Colors
• Post detailing the theft

Swatch and Learn Links

• Swatch and Learn Blog
• Swatch and Learn Twitter
• Original post with image stolen by Sinful Colors
• Post detailing the theft

 Sinful Colors Links

• Facebook Community page
• Facebook Page
• Website - currently under construction

Revlon Links (purchased Sinful Colors)

• Contact form
• Phone number: 1-800-473-8566
• EDIT: 7/25 Revlon's apology

Walgreens Links

• Contact information 

change.org Links

• A petition to properly credit the bloggers, destroy the pamphlets, and issue an apology

Pull Over Farah

I would absolutely love it if you took a second to vote for my submission to the Bundle Monster nail art contest! Thank you!

Onto the aaaaaaart (said in a deep, low, drawling voice, swirling a glass of wine or brandy, nose straight up in the air).

I wanted to use my dotting tools again. I love those guys.

The colors I used were Farah (Zoya), Cote D'Azur (Icing), and Pull Over (Sinful Colors). Ok, odd coincidence. As I typed that, an ambulance drove by outside somewhere, and the sirens echoed right into the windows. Cosmic voices from the nailiverse have spoken!

If you're around a Claire's, or a Claire's Club, or an Icing store, I recommend stopping in. While the formulas on the polishes are a bit lackluster, the colors actually are quite eye-catching. Plus, they're pretty cheap, and it's fun to relive your little girlhood with the goodies they have there. I went for the sole purpose of picking up Candy Shop, but wound up with four bottles of colors I was really quite excited about. It's worth the trip!

Born Pretty M71 Plate Review

Tonight I'm doing a review for you! Are you excited? You should be, it's good stuff.

Born Pretty has tons of amazing nail products, as most of you have seen and probably partaken in. One of these products is their stamping plates, which is what I'm reviewing today. In particular, I'm taking a look at plate M71.

The plate consists entirely of small images not meant to cover your whole nail. Perhaps the most famous and well-known design on the plate is the Hello Kitty head. You've seen it before though, so I decided to use a different design (more on that later).

The designs on the plate are all quite cute, and they design I tried is cut at just the right depth. Picking up the design was not an issue, and it transferred beautifully (taking user error out of the picture).

The plate is slightly larger than Konad plates, and is obviously a different shape. There is no backing on the plate, but it's never bothered me. Here's what I'm sad about, which probably won't affect anyone else. The larger size doesn't fit into my little round container where I conveniently keep all my plates. :( Sad.

In addition to the plate, they sent me a scraper and stamper.

 

The scraper measures and acts exactly as the Konad scrapers.

They're both metal, both easy to handle, but unfortunately, they both scrape the plates to death. I still recommend cutting up an old gift card and using that to scrape your plates.

The stamper's rubber piece used to pick up the design is the same size as both the original Konad stamper, and the extra large stamper, as you can see here.

The length of the tool itself is much shorter than the other stampers though.

At first I thought I'd hate the size, but it's actually nice to work with. You can kind of cup it in your free hand's fingers, and it maneuvers well. I don't like the texture of the rubber. It doesn't provide as much give when you're pressing it down on the surface of the plate, so if you've got polish you're stamping with that's a bit less thick in consistency, you won't have as easy as a time picking it up. I ran into this problem with the first polish I tried as stamping polish, and eventually wound up switching to the Konad stamper.

Like I mentioned earlier, the design transfers quite well with the right polish. I used Black on Black (Sinful Colors) for my design.

The base is Carey (Zoya) and the yellow dots are Happy Go Lucky (China Glaze).

Overall, I would recommend buying the plates. They go for about $4.00, and even if you only grab one, you won't have to pay for shipping. What's even better? You can use the coupon code given to those readers of my blog: C10X31 for an additional 10% off. 

Oh the good things just keep on coming!

The Born Pretty products shown in this post were sent to me for review by the company.

Nude on Black

If I were to rate this manicure on a patience level from one to ten, ten being the highest amount of patience, it'd score a ten...easily. The results speak for themselves though and I'm happy to say I like the gradient results I scored!

Getting a good gradient is hard, and this one isn't nearly as nice as some I've seen. You have to get the edges, blend it well, and get a good effect. If you screw up, it's kind of hard to fix it. You just have to keep blending, little by little. Again, mine isn't perfect, but I'm mostly happy with it.

Another piece of patience crucial to the success of this manicure is the taping. Luckily, I didn't need to cut strips of tape to be the correct width. I ordered some 1/16" striping tape, originally designed for use in model cars or trains. There's 36 feet of the stuff too, so I didn't feel bad about using extra to run the length of my nails. (It's one of the instances I'm glad I have shorter nails though.)

The base (which I teased some Instagram followers with earlier) is Black on Black (Sinful Colors), and the gradient neutral color is Nomadic Nude (Color Club). Both are super cheap polishes, but both are beyond lovely and deserve their own solo debuts. I adore them paired with one another as well though. The colors remind me of Nugget's colors a bit actually.

As vicious as this looks, Nugget's as gentle as cats come.

Summer Flowers

I love today's manicure...and it's all based on a pillow I'm currently resting on. It was done entirely with the MASH brushes I bought not long ago. I got mine here on Amazon and they've proved to be a pretty invaluable set. At first glance, the brushes seem similar, and I thought I was really only going to get use out of a few, but I was wrong. I used two different brushes for this manicure.

The base color is Brisk Blue (Sally Hansen Insta-Dri). This color is one of the first colors I remember buying for myself (besides those adorable Bon-Bon polishes we all used to grab from those plastic tubs when we were kids). It's pretty stunning no? The lighter orange is Papaya Punch (China Glaze) and the darker orange is Meet Me at Sunset (Essie). The black center is Black on Black (Sinful Colors) and its yellow center is Lightening (Sally Hansen Insta-Dri). I also used French White Creme (Wet n' Wild) so that I could get a better finish for Papaya Punch.

Clubbing with Cleopatra

One of my favorite title posts so far! Fun fact.

Dancing at Beta (a Denver nightclub) always require some glittery manicure. I can't help myself. I know no one will see my nails, but a club outfit is never complete unless it has some awesome nails to accompany it.

Yesterday was an odd day for me. I actually wore two different manicures, but smudged one to oblivion and wound up picking the whole thing off. I didn't even take pictures of it, so let's have a short moment of silence for the loss of polish involved. Saddest part? It used Katy, a Zoya color, and my name.

But my spirits rose quickly when I finished this manicure!

Here is Black on Black (Sinful Colors) and Cleopatra (China Glaze). I used the hole reinforcer technique to get the half moon shapes, and it was a piece of cake. I wound up dabbing a bit of Champagne Bubbles (China Glaze) on the tips to hide the black underneath, which you can just pick out if you look closely enough.

Broken Music Notes

I wanted to do something really out there with the Spotty Dottie polishes I bought not long ago from All That Glitters, but like many girls recently, I have fallen prey to the deadly grip The Hunger Games has on us. It's like the black hole of books; the chapters keep sucking you in. I've already given up an all-out-there design for this book. I'm sure sleep isn't far behind.

The good news is, after working on this manicure I'm showing you today, I'm glad I didn't dedicate more time to a more trippy design.

What all the stripes and dots of glitter reminded me of on top of Black on Black (Sinful Colors) and French White Creme (Wet n' Wild) were music notes as they're written on a page, broken into little pieces. It's too bold to be cookies and cream, and the spots are too precise to be dalmatian spots.

I loved the effect these glitters eventually gave, but getting them to this point was a pain. Unfortunately, the ratio of clear polish to glitter was off, so I wound up with thick layers of polish, without much glitter. I think this polish would've benefited from being either sold in a smaller size, or packed with more glitter pieces. As it is now, it's a little frustrating, especially the white.

Crowned in Her Yellow Polka Dot Bikini

Thanks to everyone who wished my BBQ well! It went wonderfully, though most of us walked away with it regretting not wearing more sunscreen. I suppose we'll just call these burns our base tans, though the lines are sort of horrendous. Makes me wish I was wearing a bikini like my nails are today.

I've been seeing a lot of neons lately, but seeing Traci's manicure at Drinkcitra was the tipping point that made me realize I needed more neon in my life. I used Yellow Polka Dot Bikini (China Glaze) and Crown Me Already! (OPI) for this taped manicure. Nothing to fancy, but the color and the glitter, topped off with the striped line of Time Off (Sinful Colors) really makes my nails pop. Another crash-test-worthy set of nails I probably shouldn't drive with, especially with the sun so readily available now.

Also! Big news! I've reached 500 followers for my blog! I'm so excited! I've also seen some great advances in those interested in my other social outlets as well as you can see by these exciting numbers!

• Facebook: 231 Likes for Nailed It's page
• Twitter: 66 followers for my Twitter name, blognailedit
• Pinterest: 383 followers for My Nail Art board alone, plus others for my other boards!
• Tumblr: 3,042 followers for my Tumblr blog (I'm especially proud of this one, as on Tumblr, people tend to follow based on photos alone, so it seems people enjoy looking at what I work so hard to create).

So to everyone that has ever read, liked, repinned or reblogged my nail art compilations, thank you! You guys rock and it's so encouraging to get such awesome feedback from complete strangers!

Doodly Phone

I love doodling, and I love bright colors. I've also recently adopted an affinity for my iPhone, and its beautiful casing from Skinit. It's one of those designs that looks hand drawn and easy enough to do, so when inspiration struck, I decided to try my hand, or nail, at it. Two colors and a Sharpie later, I nailed it.

 Electric Pineapple from China Glaze is one of my favorite polish colors, so I was excited it pretty closely matched the case's color. The white blob was just done using Bad Chick from Sinful Colors and dotted using French White Creme from Wet n' Wild. Then, I just sort of freehand traced the outlines of the white with a Sharpie. It's not as thin and precise as I would've hoped, but I don't know if Sharpie makes anything finer than Ultra Fine Point. Is there an Uber Fine Point or Ultra Extreme Fine Point out there?

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.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

This year's St. Patrick's Day is one of the first I'll be able to celebrate properly since it's on a weekend and I have no other responsibilities looming at the moment. My good friend Bree (who let me do her nails a few months ago when I was first starting out) also wanted to take advantage of this and asked me to do her nails. Of course I said yes! Her ideas were amazing too, and this is the result.

Obviously this took a mother load of polishes to create. I used Starboard (China Glaze) as the gorgeous Kelly green base. We thought about topping it with some Kleancolor chunky holos, but it was too stunning on its own. Her ring finger's base is Glitter in my Stocking (Nicole by OPI). That's also the gold in the pot of gold. The pot (done with Time Off by Sinful Colors) is only on one of her thumbs, and the other thumb is a continuation of the rainbow. The colors used for the rainbow include Be My Valentine (Sinful Colors), Papaya Punch and Happy Go Lucky (China Glaze), Lickety-Split Lime and Brisk Blue (Sally Hansen Insta-Dri), and I'm a Belieber (Nicole by OPI). This was my first try at my new MASH brushes, and I absolutely love the little one that comes in the set. I'm sure it'll wear out fast. I have big plans for that little guy.

Her ring finger was done freehand, using Artsy Crafty (Color Club) and Limelight (Ulta). She was absolutely tickled by the time I finished (even though it took quite some time), and we celebrated at The Sink and a Hookah bar I've never been to. She said she even got a compliment on her nails going into the bathroom.

Outlined Flowers

I was originally inspired for today's manicure by Gully Nails's post, Polka Dot Flowers. After looking at her design again, I know I kind of missed the mark, but I'm still sort of giddy about my own design. Sort of seems kind of Spongebob-esque.

The base color here is Secret Peri-Wink-Le (China Glaze), overlaid with Whimsical (Revlon).  The petals are a combination of Feeling Great (Sinful Colors) and Lightening (Sally Hansen Insta-Dri). Finally, I drew the inner pollen spots with Time Off (Sinful Colors).

I will try this again to get it closer to Becky's design, because I absolutely love it.

Sunflowers in the Sun

My nails are still not the right length and my cuticles are still dry and wounded in some spots. However, I couldn't bear bare nails any longer. Fed up, I posted on Facebook this morning, calling upon my fans for what design to create. The respondent asked for flowers or blossoms of some sort, and since it has been absolutely gorgeous and sunny all day, I decided to do sunflowers. I'm pretty pleased with the results too.

The base for this is Suzi Says Feng Shui (OPI). The petals were done primarily with Design Yellow (Color Madric), but then I added a tiny bit of Me First, a neon yellow from Sinful Colors. The seeds were dotted on using another OPI, Get in the Expresso Lane.

Guest Post: Embellished Nails

So today was supposed to be my guest post over at Embellished Nails. She went on a cruise for a while, and asked for some guest posters. So ahead of time, we all sent in our posts for her to set up. Mine went through...mostly. Unfortunately, I don't see the images, which, let's face it, is the best part of nail blogs!

So, if you care about the story behind these nails, head over to Emily's blog for my guest post.

Since the images aren't working over there, I'll put them here. In honor of Emily's cruise, these are my sailor nails!

Take On Dots

The love affair I'm having with dotting tools is hot and heavy, but they've got some fierce competition now.

Color Club polishes are scooting their way into my easy heart. I used one tonight as the base of my manicure, Rebel Spirit. This deeply dark brown is super pigmented and only takes two coats to reach its pure magic. I was sort of shocked to be honest since most of my Color Clubs came from Ross for a whopping $7.99.

I was truly tickled when it came time to clean up my clumsy right hand. Dark colors are absolutely dreadful to clean up, and usually require a few coats of cleanup before your skin looks clean. This dark brown, stuck on my cuticle area, came right off once I started cleaning up. So if you haven't already picked up some of the darker colors from Color Club, give them a shot.

Like I said already though, I have a serious love affair going with dotting tools, as expressed here.

In addition to Rebel Spirit, I used Unicorn (Sinful Colors), Sugar High (China Glaze), and Pelican Gray (China Glaze).

UPDATE 2/26/12

This manicure got great praise from you guys! I made a tutorial so you can recreate it yourself. The color combinations are endless! 

Valentine's Day Manicure: Day 3

Yesterday was awesome. The mountains we ski at got a few inches (5 the night before we came) of snow, so we went up to Breck to get some runs in. It was a great day, and powder is so much better than slippery, icy slopes. I even hit some jumps.

Then we went out to Denver for the bars.

Needless to say, I'm exhausted today. After thinking about what I wanted to do for my nails literally all day, I finally mustered up the energy to create my third Valentine's Day manicure.

I used the awesome franken polish Leslie gave me here over Something Sweet (China Glaze). I really love the way the glitter is sandwiched between the two colors, making it feel more smooth. It was really stunning on its own, but I couldn't help myself. I added black pinstripes to half of my nail using Time Off (Sinful Colors) and still wasn't totally happy, so I striped in the pink lines using Am-Ore (Color Madric). I added a heart on my index finger as well using the same colors, and finally tipped each nail with a very thin black french manicure. I think it all came together quite nicely.

Now if you'll excuse me I've got a date with the couch and a fluffy pillow.

Stitched Together

I'm sure there exists somewhere a Hallmark card about stitching two things together that somehow relates to hearts and Valentine's Day, so use your imagination to connect that to my second Valentine's Day manicure while I dose off to get ready for skiing in the a.m.

This manicure took painfully long to complete, and I blame it on my impatience to let things dry before taping them off. I had to take off and redo my left index finger 4 times before I finally got it right. Darn Pointer!

The lighter pink is Soul Mate (appropriate for this holiday) and the darker is Feeling Great, both from Sinful Colors. The white stitches are French White Creme (Wet n' Wild). The pinks were done with the tape, and the stitches were a tiny striping brush. I'm growing more fond of the brushes I have, but I'm not sure I'll ever use the longest brush. It seems so unwieldy, but maybe I just haven't found its use yet.

Goodnight!