40 Great Nail Art Ideas-Teal + Fan Brush

Hi everyone!  I'm starting a new nail art challenge that will last a whole year!  I'm only "officially" committing to every other week, which uses a color plus a pattern/nail art technique, but I might also post on the alternating weeks, which uses themes for prompts (e.g. last week was "hobbies", but I didn't get a mani done).  Anyway...this first week's color is Teal and my pattern is Fan Brush.  I've never done a fan brush mani, so this was a fun new technique to try!

I started with ONE creamy coat of KBShimmer Teal It to My Heart, a perfect fall teal.

 Then I used my fan brush and KBShimmer Sarong Place, Sarong Time, KBShimmer Breaking Blues, and Finger Paints Papier Mache.

I liked the way this turned out for my first try with a fan brush!  I'll definitely be using it again!

Check out everyone else's manis below!

An InLinkz Link-up

Look who's back!

Hey! I'm back!! I'm not going to talk about my absence too much, but just quickly:

I was on my pharmacy school rotations last year which was why I never had time to blog. But now I've graduated, I've got my license and now I'm the pharmacy manager at a large retail chain pharmacy! I'm really going to try to get back into blogging, starting with this post!

Here is Darling Diva "Dream Walker"

Dream Walker is a beautiful blue holo, just what I wanted when it was starting to feel like fall!

I added some black studs to add a little something "extra".

I love this polish and can't believe I waited so long to try it!

I'm going to try to post at least once a week, so I'll see you back here next week!

piCture pOlish "Aurora"

Hey everyone!  I'm just going to gloss over the fact that I've been off for two whole days and haven't posted yet...I've been swatching, so there are posts to come!  Today I have the first polish that I put on after a week of nudes and nearly-nudes; piCture pOlish "Aurora":

"Aurora" lives up to its name!  It's an intense blue to purple to green duochrome with some holo shimmer thrown in for good measure.  This is two coats over a black base.  These first two pictures are in the sun.

And these next two pictures are in the shade.  Yes that's the same polish!

This is definitely one of the most intense duochromes in my collection!  I'll have to get the rest of this collection from piCture pOlish!

Thanks for reading!

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NPC: Blog sale AND Discontinued!

Hey everyone!  Look at me, getting caught up!  Wednesday's NPC prompt called for a polish from a giveaway or blog sale.  I never win giveaways (booooo), but I have been buying quite a bit from blog sales recently, so I grabbed one from someone's Storenvy sale.  After I had this on, I looked to see what today's prompt was.  It's "Discontinued", and I realized this polish works for both!  Here is Ozotic 515:

515 is a bright blue linear holographic.  It's much stronger in real life than in my pictures.  Unfortunately, the whole Ozotic line has been discontinued, so I'm glad I grabbed this in a destash!

There are two Inlinkz below since this belongs to two prompts.  Be sure to checkout everyone else's manis from the past couple days!

An InLinkz Link-up

An InLinkz Link-up

NPC: Texture

Whew!  I'm getting caught up!  Mondays NPC called for texture, so I decided to use some new "Liquid Sugar" polishes I got from Icing.  I ended up with a pretty pastel rainbow!

From cuticle to tip, these are "Dreamsicle",  "Peppermint", "Lollipop", and "Pixie Stick".  I love the sugary names!

Thanks for reading!

An InLinkz Link-up

NPC: Glow In The Dark

Hi everyone!  Sorry for the absence.  My finals are over now!  Now I have a few days off, then clinical rotations start Monday!  I'm excited, but I do kind of wish I had a little more time in between to relax.  Oh, well, I guess I'll never get a break in the "real world"!

Here is my NPC from last Friday, "Glow In The Dark":

I started with a base of Elevation's "El Cap" and covered a couple accent nails with Ozotic 902.

 "El Cap" is a beautiful bluish purple with pinky-purple shimmer.  Unfortunately, the original formula is not available anymore.  There are two versions of "El Cap II", each more blue than the last.  They are great too, of course, but I loooove the original.  Ozotic 902 is a purple shimmer with a bit of blue duochrome effect.  This is part of the "Sugar" collection, and I love them all.  They look great no matter what you put them over.

For the glow in the dark effect I added Contrary Polish "West Bottoms".  This adds just the smallest amount of green with some glass fleck shimmer.

Unfortunately, I couldn't get it to show up in the dark!  I don't know if I needed more coats or what, but here is the best I could do.  You can see the bottle glowing at least!

This next picture is in the dark with flash, which okay, doesn't show off the GITD effect, but I really liked the way it turned out!

Thanks for reading!

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NPC Day 10: Most Expensive

Hi girls!  Okay, I kind of love and hate this prompt.  Love it because otherwise I probably wouldn't have dared to use this precious, but hate it because I don't want to admit how much I paid for it!

Here is Enchanted Polish "Ciao Milano":

Unfortunately it was rainy and overcast when I took these pictures, so the true beauty doesn't really come out.  "Ciao Milano" is a blue-teal-purple duochrome glitter.  This is two coats over a black base.  I have a bracelet from Gosia with this polish on it and I've had people ask if it was a mood bracelet because it kept changing colors!  That's what actually started my lemming for this polish, and like other Enchanteds, it's super hard to get.  It was restocked a couple weeks ago, but I missed out on it and no one knows when the next restock will be, if there even is one!  So I bought this unopened bottle from someone in a Facebook group...for $35! :x   Worth it though!  This color is so much prettier in person!

This next picture is a little blurry, but it shows off the color-changing glitter a little more!

What's your most expensive polish?

Thanks for reading!

An InLinkz Link-up

Had to Have It, Still Haven't Worn It.

Hi everyone!  Okay, so I lied last night.  I didn't get my second post up.  We went out to dinner with my parents and I was so tired when we got home that I went straight to bed!  I'm exhausted today too even though I got plenty of sleep last night.  I'm not sure what's going on, but I hope it's just allergies so that when I go to the allergist on Monday we can get it sorted out!

So yesterday's NPC prompt was "Had to Have It, Still Haven't Worn It".  When I saw that, I immediately thought of the first Zoya Pixie Dust collection from last spring.  This collection came out shortly after I had a bad experience with Zoya's customer service, so even though they were available on the website, I didn't want to order them from there and risk something going wrong with my shipment.  So instead I called Ulta over and over again asking if they had the Pixie Dusts in stock yet! When they finally did, I went by and picked up most of the collection and the girl at the checkout asked if I had been the one calling about them!  Well, after wanting them so badly and having them for over a year, I've only worn one of them.  So here's Zoya "Nyx", which I had to have, but never wore:

"Nyx" is a textured grey-blue base with tons of silver shimmer.  This is two coats.  While there's a little bit of VNL in my pictures, it's not visible in real life.

I love how this sparkles and shines in the sun!

Thanks for reading!

An InLinkz Link-up

It's My Birthday!!!

Hey guys! I wanted to post my birthday Mani, because I decided to wear a special polish today.  Here is Enchanted Polish "Magical Mystery Tour":

This post is quite picture heavy, so I'll explain why this is special after the jump!

NPC Day 7: Drugstore

Hey girls!  Not too much to say tonight; I am tired.  My allergies have started acting up, so I think that might be why.

Anyway, today's NPC prompt is "Drugstore".  I tried three different manis before I did one I liked enough to share.  So here is a new polish from Revlon, "Mayan Riviera":

"Mayan Riviera" is from the brand-new Haute Rocks Pebbled Texture collection.  I hadn't heard of these, but I saw a display at Walgreens and loooved the glitter, so I picked up a few.

"Mayan Riviera" is a milky-white base with green, gold, pink, blue, and silver glitter.  There's a little bit of everything in there!  This is 2-3 coats.  The glitter payoff was pretty great, but a few nails had some bald spots after two coats, so I added a third.

This is meant to be a textured polish, but I added a coat of Nail Pattern Boldness "Glitter Food" to smooth it out, and then sealed it all with Seche Vite.

 Bottle shot to see all the glittery goodness!

I'm so excited to see a drugstore brand branching out a bit more into fun glitters and textures!

Thanks for reading!

An InLinkz Link-up

NPC Day 4: Frost

Hi girls! Today's NPC called for "Frost". I knew I probably had a couple frosts, but I actually had to open my polish spreadsheet and ctrl+F to find them. The first one I found was totally dried out, boohoo. But I did find two other frosts in my Julep collection. Here is "Piper":

"Piper" is a sort of minty-sort of Robin's-egg blue frost.  The formula was really good as far as frosts go.  It didn't show brushstrokes, but did show every imperfection on the nail, as you can see on my index and middle fingers!  These next two pics show off the frostiness more.

I'm sort of conflicted about this one!  I like the color and I think it works with my skin tone, but the frostiness turns me off a bit.

I went to the Botanical garden for a health fair the day I did this mani, so I decided to add some flowers with my other frost, Julep "Sandra", and used Julep "Lexie" for the centers:

"Sandra" is a pink frost, although you can't tell in these pictures.  I can definitely see myself wearing this on my toes this summer!

What do you girls think of frost polishes?

Here is a bonus daffodil picture from the garden!

Thanks for reading!

An InLinkz Link-up

NPC Day 3: Random

Hi everyone!

Today's NPC prompt called for a random untried, so I grabbed blindly and came up with Sinful Colors "Faceted", which is a glitter top coat.  So I grabbed randomly again for something to put it over and came up with Julep "Lacey"

"Lacey" is a gorgeous midnight blue shimmer and "Faceted" has bar glitter and small hex glitter that's sort of a gold to teal duochrome color.

I'm so glad I tried "Lacey"!  My clinical rotations start next month (eep!) and I'm definitely going to have to tone down my nails when I'm on site.  "Lacey" is a perfectly professional color that still has something special to it.  I'm sure I'll be using it a lot more!

I was just going to use "Faceted" on my accent nail, but I liked it so much I decided to put it on all my fingers!

 This picture really shows off the duochrome flash of "Faceted":

Thanks for reading!

An InLinkz Link-up

NPC Day 2: Pastel

Hi girls!  Happy Wednesday!  I hope you've been having a good week!

Today's NPC called for "Pastel".  I have plenty of untried pastels, but I knew exactly which one I wanted to use today!

Check out what polishes I used after the jump!

NPC Challenge Day 1: Glitter

Hi everyone!  I'm in a Facbook called The Glittah Pirates, and today is the first day of our Never-ending Pile Challenge!

The point of the Challenge is to try some of your untried polishes that have been sitting around since the beginning of time!  Today's theme is "Glitter".  Well that's easy enough.  I just reached into my big box of untrieds and the first one I grabbed was a glitter.  Here is piCture pOlish "Mardi Gras"

"Mardi Gras" is a mix of teal, magenta, and silver glitters in a clear base.  Here I've layered one coat over Julep "Charlotte".  I could have done another coat to get more glitter coverage, but I kind of liked how it looked at one coat :)

I'm loving this glitter, but I think it would have *popped* more over a different base.  Oh well, now I know that for next time!

Thanks for reading, and I'll see you Wednesday for "Pastel"!

Checkout the other girls in this challenge below!

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Superficially Colorful "Turbulence"

Hi ladies!  No tricks today, just a beautiful polish from a new-comer to the indie market.  Jin Jit of SuperficiallyColorful.com has been blogging for awhile, but she just recently released her first two nail polish collections, Remnants of Winter and Mood Swings.  "Turbulence" is part of the Remnants of Winter collection.

"Turbulence" is a reddish maroon with a strong purple and blue duochrome flash and some scattered holographic shimmer.  I was surprised by how much I liked this one!  The duochrome gives it so much depth!

I took photos at multiple angles so you could see the different colors that come out!

The formula on this was great.  It was a little thick, but I had no problems with application.  I borrowed this one from Gosia to try, and I'm definitely going to have to get some of these for myself!

Jin's new polishes can be found at SuperficiallyColorful.com!

Thanks for reading!