I'm beginning to wonder if minor nail damage is just part of the deal with using nail polish more frequently than once every few months. I have a nice nail oil and cuticle cream that I use, but between polish coats, little bits of nail surface still peel away. It really doesn't help that my nails are STILL stained that awful yellow-green, so I can't just go bare to give my nails a break.
Any thoughts or suggestions?
Friday, July 20, 2012
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Polish Review: Zoya Envy
I'm just going to say straight out, Zoya Envy is a beautiful color. It's like distilled swamp, without the smell and a whole lot more class; a deep, fluid green with just a touch of brown. So dark it's almost black, unless you're in the right light.
I wore this for three or four days, and was disappointed to have to take it off. But when it was gone, I was horrified - it left behind this sickly yellow-green stain that has now lasted well over a week, though multiple applications of new color and cleanings. There is clearly visible definition between the stain and the pink of new nail.
It's completely maddening, because I can't use any transparent polish, or even go natural. It looks terrible. I'm so disappointed in this color, because it's so pretty and I would love to wear it frequently, but the stain means that it's relegated to accents on top of other colors. Either that or I get a steel-strength base coat, and even then, I can't be sure.
:(
Just two coats! Goes with most of my clothes! LOVE!
I wore this for three or four days, and was disappointed to have to take it off. But when it was gone, I was horrified - it left behind this sickly yellow-green stain that has now lasted well over a week, though multiple applications of new color and cleanings. There is clearly visible definition between the stain and the pink of new nail.
It's completely maddening, because I can't use any transparent polish, or even go natural. It looks terrible. I'm so disappointed in this color, because it's so pretty and I would love to wear it frequently, but the stain means that it's relegated to accents on top of other colors. Either that or I get a steel-strength base coat, and even then, I can't be sure.
:(
Sunday, July 8, 2012
Mondrian Abstract
Artwork by Piet Mondrian is oddly divisive; his work is the type that most people refer to when they say they don't get modern art. This kind of stuff:
Bold lines, sharp angles, seemingly random colors and placement. It's aesthetic, to some. Personally, I'd never hang this kind of artwork in my home, simply because it's not my thing. I can appreciate it (kinda?), but overall, meh.
This kind of artwork on nails?
Works a whole lot better!
It was surprisingly easy to do. I painted Zoya Jolie in a wide swath down the right side of the nails, ensuring I didn't cover the left third at all, and that the line between then was relatively straight. When that dried, I painted Zoya Goldie starting at about the third mark away from the cuticle, maintaining the side line. There was room for minor error since the black would be covering it, but not too much room. The dots are there because dots are awesome, obviously. Not that Mondrian ever actually included them.
Layer of top coat, and it's done. Obviously, any two colors would work great instead of the Jolie and Goldie, so long as the second color is opaque enough to cover the first - and maybe not even then. Lines can be rearranged, colors added. This is super versatile.
And probably one of my favorite designs yet.
Maybe it's so utilitarian because it was the Great Depression? Imagination is expensive.
Bold lines, sharp angles, seemingly random colors and placement. It's aesthetic, to some. Personally, I'd never hang this kind of artwork in my home, simply because it's not my thing. I can appreciate it (kinda?), but overall, meh.
This kind of artwork on nails?
Works a whole lot better!
The lines are... mostly straight.
It was surprisingly easy to do. I painted Zoya Jolie in a wide swath down the right side of the nails, ensuring I didn't cover the left third at all, and that the line between then was relatively straight. When that dried, I painted Zoya Goldie starting at about the third mark away from the cuticle, maintaining the side line. There was room for minor error since the black would be covering it, but not too much room. The dots are there because dots are awesome, obviously. Not that Mondrian ever actually included them.
Layer of top coat, and it's done. Obviously, any two colors would work great instead of the Jolie and Goldie, so long as the second color is opaque enough to cover the first - and maybe not even then. Lines can be rearranged, colors added. This is super versatile.
And probably one of my favorite designs yet.
Friday, June 8, 2012
Polish Review: Zoya Kamilah
I really, really like Zoya polishes. I'm still new to the world of nail polish, but of the few brands I've tried, Zoya is probably my favorite. It applies smoothly, it looks great, and it lasts.
One of the staples of any polish collection is RED. I'm not talking subtle red, here, but #ff0000 RED. Zoya had a big sale a few months ago, so I bought six polishes primarily to fill out the basic needs of my collection. So, obviously, I needed a RED.
The first individual polish review I'm doing on my blog is precisely this RED, both because it is beautiful and because the name, Zoya Kamilah, is pleasantly close to my own name (Cami).
Just look at this color!
RED. SRSLY RED.
Zoya describes this color as: "Fiery orange-toned red base with cool toned red metallic shimmer. A smoking hot metallic for a flirty nail look."
I'll be honest, I don't see the orange tone at all. This polish is red base with red tone with lots of little red bits in it. I'm a huge fan of metallics, so I love this one even more for it.
Tuesday, June 5, 2012
A Tale of Two Gradients
I love nail gradients.
But I had very little idea of how to do them, so I experimented. Here are the results.
In the first, I simply painted a base color (Zoya Dea), then painted on top of it from the cuticle and tip using Zoya Cheryl and Goldie.
Advantages:
The second design... well, it wasn't very photogenic:
I used four colors: black, Cheryl, Merlot and Zoya Kamilah. For this design, instead of painting directly on the nails, I painted onto a makeup sponge, and then pressed the sponge to the nails. I learned quickly that for decent coverage, I needed to reload the sponge between each use. In the picture, you can see that the pinky nail has very deep, solid color, but the pointer and middle fingernails are thin enough to see the light nail tip. Whoops.
Advantages:
Despite the weird image quality, I actually liked this design better than the first, because it's a true gradient, and unless you're inspecting it closely you can't really see how thin the polish is.
It also looks like actual fire, which is awesome.
But I had very little idea of how to do them, so I experimented. Here are the results.
That middle brown looks a lot like milk chocolate. Yum.
In the first, I simply painted a base color (Zoya Dea), then painted on top of it from the cuticle and tip using Zoya Cheryl and Goldie.
Advantages:
- Thick, vibrant colors.
- The gold had a really cool fire effect.
- No additional tools required.
- No wasted polish.
- Time-consuming.
- Technical.
- To get that really cool fire effect of the gold, I had to start with just enough polish on the brush to get a solid color on the tip, and then have it taper 1/4" in. It was complicated to get right.
- It's not really a gradient, but more of a neapolitan ice cream look.
- Thick paint means a loooooong time to dry, and higher chance of getting air bubbles.
The second design... well, it wasn't very photogenic:
I wore this with a purple-and-white print shirt.
I used four colors: black, Cheryl, Merlot and Zoya Kamilah. For this design, instead of painting directly on the nails, I painted onto a makeup sponge, and then pressed the sponge to the nails. I learned quickly that for decent coverage, I needed to reload the sponge between each use. In the picture, you can see that the pinky nail has very deep, solid color, but the pointer and middle fingernails are thin enough to see the light nail tip. Whoops.
Advantages:
- Quick and easy.
- It's a real gradient.
- Therefore, it looks very cool (despite the inexplicable failure of the camera to make it look that way).
- Easy to forget to reload the sponge, so it's easy to end up with thin paint on a few nails.
- Requires use of a makeup sponge.
- Wasted a lot of paint due to deep soaking into the sponge.
- Messy - required a lot of cleanup.
Despite the weird image quality, I actually liked this design better than the first, because it's a true gradient, and unless you're inspecting it closely you can't really see how thin the polish is.
It also looks like actual fire, which is awesome.
Monday, April 16, 2012
Belated Easter French Nail Design
A nail broke on my left hand. Right at the quick. So now, all my nails are short and slo-o-o-owly growing back out. Good thing French tips make the whole nail look longer, eh? (Compare the length in the photo below to this one. Yes, they're shorter. >.>)
This design... just kind of happened. I wasn't expecting anything Easter-like. I just picked up my purple, painted one nail, decided to do a different color - all nails ended up different colors, and then SILVER TIPS! The pinkie wasn't originally yellow though, it was a teal, but I changed it for better warm/cool balance.
There isn't anything special to how I created this, either. Just, one color for each nail, freehand silver tip, topcoat. Ta da!
Colors used: China Glaze Grape Juice, Sinful Colors Aqua, Wet 'n' Wild Lavender Pearlescent, Kiss Neon Yellow (sidenote: that stuff REEKS), Wet 'n' Wild Sage in the City, Zoya Trixie.
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
I'm in space!
[Note: This was supposed to be posted ages ago. It did not post when I told it to. So it's being posted now. Sigh.]
This will be the last of the backlog of stuff I did before I started the blog. Which means the last of the poor-quality, non-clean nail photos! Yay!
After the success of my flowers, which I left on for almost a week, I got ambitious. I'd found another video on YouTube that I desperately wanted to try, and even though I didn't have all the colors they called for, I did it anyway.
The colors I used were black, dark blue, white, green, dark neon pink, translucent light pink and glitter. I didn't yet have yellow, which I think sadly means my nails were just that much less cool. I used the green instead, which worked pretty well, and dabbed a bit of the light pink on top since the overall result was very dark.
I'll be honest, I kind of struggled with this design, and I wasn't especially happy with how it turned out. The first struggle was that the nebulae came out incredibly opaque, even though I made a point to try to follow the video's instructions to keep it light and transparent. The second struggle was symmetry. I LOVE asymmetry and employ it a lot in my photography, but drawing asymmetrically is much harder to get used to. As a result, the nebulae on my nails were mostly symmetrical and solid, instead of cloudy and natural-looking.
The third struggle was the stars. I didn't own any toothpicks, or really anything that had such a narrow point at the end, so I had to use my tiny eyeliner brush. The problem with this is that brushes bend when pressure is applied to them. Even using the lightest of dabs, many of the stars ended up much too large and oblong.
I've gotta admit too, the narrator's voice for that video is a bit... spacey? (Yuk, yuk.) Sorry. The voice was kind of irritating, though.
BUT! That doesn't mean that this design wasn't a lot of fun, and didn't still look pretty dang cool when I was done. I may very well give this another try at some point, especially since I now have the tools to do it properly.
This will be the last of the backlog of stuff I did before I started the blog. Which means the last of the poor-quality, non-clean nail photos! Yay!
After the success of my flowers, which I left on for almost a week, I got ambitious. I'd found another video on YouTube that I desperately wanted to try, and even though I didn't have all the colors they called for, I did it anyway.
Space. Trial. Puttin' the system on trial. In space. Space system. On trial. Guilty. Of being in space! Going to space jail!
The colors I used were black, dark blue, white, green, dark neon pink, translucent light pink and glitter. I didn't yet have yellow, which I think sadly means my nails were just that much less cool. I used the green instead, which worked pretty well, and dabbed a bit of the light pink on top since the overall result was very dark.
I'll be honest, I kind of struggled with this design, and I wasn't especially happy with how it turned out. The first struggle was that the nebulae came out incredibly opaque, even though I made a point to try to follow the video's instructions to keep it light and transparent. The second struggle was symmetry. I LOVE asymmetry and employ it a lot in my photography, but drawing asymmetrically is much harder to get used to. As a result, the nebulae on my nails were mostly symmetrical and solid, instead of cloudy and natural-looking.
The third struggle was the stars. I didn't own any toothpicks, or really anything that had such a narrow point at the end, so I had to use my tiny eyeliner brush. The problem with this is that brushes bend when pressure is applied to them. Even using the lightest of dabs, many of the stars ended up much too large and oblong.
I've gotta admit too, the narrator's voice for that video is a bit... spacey? (Yuk, yuk.) Sorry. The voice was kind of irritating, though.
BUT! That doesn't mean that this design wasn't a lot of fun, and didn't still look pretty dang cool when I was done. I may very well give this another try at some point, especially since I now have the tools to do it properly.
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