Shades of Grey

Uh. I may have made an error today. AN AMAZING GREYSCALE ERROR.

Last week I ordered a handful of colors from Zoya.  Today while waiting for my car to get its oil changed (bleh @ being a grown-up), I bought a set of Ulta polishes.  I got home, Zoya polishes were in my mailbox, I unloaded everything, and realized...

I'VE GONE COLORBLIND

I think I have overdosed on the grey polishes.  On the awesome side, I overdosed on grey polishes!  And now I have TONS of options for neutral gradients and similar.  Whee!

And of course, I had to try one of these on immediately, and I chose Ulta's Rock-a-Billy, which is a medium grey with a tinge of purple (the polish off-center to the right, front row, in the pic above).

Google says this is the only actual picture of Ulta Rock-a-Billy out there right now. Go figure. Also, Ulta Rock-a-Billy.

It strikes me as very elegant, more 'winter' than 'fall', but I've never been picky about seasons.  I was surprised when I applied it; I only needed one coat to be fully opaque, and it dried very quickly.  Ulta has found themselves a new polish fan if the trend continues with the other polishes in the set.

Blue on Blue

I wish I'd gotten a photo of a nail design I did a few months ago.  Dark brown background, dark red and medium brown flower.  It was subtle, and I just adored it.

Since I couldn't get that one back, I decided to try a totally different design along the same tack: Dark blue background with medium blue swirls.  I wasn't sure how much I liked it at first, but it grew on me.

I didn't realize until this very moment how similar the ring and pinky finger designs are. Whoops.

Creating the design took me way too long!  Turns out, being right-handed and trying to use my left hand to create those delicate swirls is NOT EASY.  The process itself is straightforward - Sinful Colors' Aqua for the base, Heaven's Honolulu Orchid for the design.

There is a little bit of glitter too, since I elected to throw on a layer of Zoya Snowsicle.  Honestly, it was that decision that made me hesitant to like this design; it was almost overpowering, even though the glitter in Snowsicle is tiny.

In any case, I got lots and lots of positive comments for this (including one who was completely amazed that I'd done them myself), so I'm happy!

Pink Marble

I think it's been established that I'm a fan of swirly nail art.  I just adore abstract, and the swirlier it is, the happier I am.  So when I was browsing YouTube yesterday looking for nail design inspiration and found a technique for mixing two colors for a marble swirl effect, I was ON IT.  I've always loved pink and black together, so I didn't even have to spend much time considering what colors to try.

LOL UR NAIL SHAPING

The process for making this design sounds harder than it actually was.  I started out by doing two coats of pink to get a solidly opaque base.  When that was dry, I painted black polish starting at about the 1/3 mark, then used a long, narrow nail brush to paint a smooth line between the transition from black to pink for a more professional look.  Using a tiny brush typically reserved for eyeliner, I put little dabs of pink and black together on the black section of nail, then quickly swirled them together before they dried.  Topcoat.

I was really worried after the first nail was finished, because it looked kind of weird.  But I was resolute - I was going to finish this!  The instant all the nails had the same swirls on them the effect became much stronger, and man, if it doesn't look awesome!

The biggest downside to this design is that the marble section of nail ends up with a thick slab of polish that takes a while to dry and is susceptible to smudging - and, surprisingly, chipping.  I created this design last night, and by morning the polish on one nail had already chipped.  I indignantly slapped a bit of black on there to keep it looking good, but it's been troubling me all day.  I fear that, despite how much I like the look of this design, I'll have to remove it sooner rather than later.  Phooey.