OPI Black Spotted!

Hi guys! Sorry I haven't been posting as much- like I said before, I just started college so I've been reaaaaally busy! and guess what, I MADE 5TH CHAIR IN THE SYMPHONIC WINDS BAND! AHHHH! The symphonic winds is the top band at Capital University for those who don't know, I REALLY didn't expect to get in it! Especially since I'm only a freshman! So far classes are good, I've had to change my schedule 3 times already! I never really understood why they always said "music is one of the most demanding majors"....until this week. It's only been 3 days and I'm INCREDIBLY busy. 17.5 credit hours. crazy. In the long run it'll be worth it though! :)

Onto the polish- I have just something simple to show you today..but it's something I really really like! I enjoyed the jelly sandwich I posted previously, however for my taste, it was a little..dare I say boring? So I decided to kick it up a notch and added a coat of OPI Black Spotted to it! I absolutely love OPI. I wish I could say I acquired this in a swap with a friend from France, but unfortunately I don't have any acquaintances in France...so I bought it on ebay! $50ish. crazy, right? But soooo worth it. 

I think I actually like Spotted better than Shatter. I love my shatters, don't get me wrong, but this is just so....AWESOME! I almost don't want to use it because I don't want to run out!

Shatter...Experiment?

Hey guys! This is actually one of those "I wonder what this looks like if I do this" kind of experiment posts. I was about to take off the Polka dots I had done with Sally Hansen Lacey Lilac and China Glaze White on White when a thought popped into my head: What would shatter look like over polka dots? So I quickly threw on a coat of OPI Black Shatter over top of the nails from my previous post. I think the second picture really shows the polka dots more...take a look!

Now I'm sure someone somewhere has done this before, but I've never seen a picture of it so I thought I'd give it a go. I personally think that while you can't really see the polka dots all that well after putting the shatter over it, that it's kind of fun. More fun than plain old shatter over a solid color at least. Would I ever go through the trouble to put polka dots on my nails just so I could do this again? No. But if I had polka dots on previously and wanted a change but didn't have time to redo my nails, this is something I might consider doing. What do you guys think?

Yellow, Black, and Silver Stripes

Polishes Used

Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Lightening
Art Deco Black Sparkles
China Glaze Icicle 

Would you believe my brother picked out the colors and design? Inspired by a snake, he suggested I do yellow with silver and black stripes, he meant horizontal stripes but didn't specify that until I was already done with my left hand.

First I painted my nails with Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Lightening, I did three coats. Once that was pretty much dry I freehanded a silver stripe down the middle with China Glaze Icicle, and immediately after I used Art Deco Black Sparkles to do a black stripe down both sides of the silver stripe. Then I finished with a coat of Seche Vite after completing every nail to reduce the chance of the ends shrinking due to dry polish.

This is probably one of the easiest ways to do stripes, especially since your silver stripe doesn't have to be perfect since the black stripes along the sides will help to hide imperfections with your black stripe, perfect for beginners, or for people like myself who are impatient most of the time and want to do something different than plan polish but don't want to take the extra time most nail art designs take.

This actually reminds me of a design I did a couple months back where I used OPI Fly as the base and a white polish down the middle with black polka dots and a black stripe on each side of the white, I wish I photographed it though, it was one of my favorites, despite the staining from OPI Fly.

Orange Mixed Mani (aka Skittle Nail Art)

Last night around 1am I had the urge to add something to my nails, but couldn't decide what, so I attempted my first ever mixed mani! I was feeling\ inspired by this post from The Nailasaurus so decided to give it a go over top of Color Club's Sparkle and Soar that I had put on a couple hours earlier. Not too thrilled with the end result. 

I was trying to get a picture to show my thumb, but taking a good one with my thumb in it was a lot harder than I expected!

Thumb to pinky (Base of Color Club's Sparkle and Soar)
Sally Hansen Diamond Strength Jewel Overcoat in Multi-Faceted

OPI Black Spotted

Gradient with Sally Hansen Black Out

Polka dots with Sally Hansen Black Out and large dotting tool from ebay
Stamped with Sally Hansen Black out and Bundle Monster plate BM-223

And finally, featuring my clarinet: since my love for nail polish is almost as great as my passion for playing clarinet.

I didn't quite think the color combination through though, once I already started I realized it was very Halloween-like, which is why I'm about to remove it and probably swatch one of my new Zoya's. Next time I attempt a mixed mani like this, I'll probably wait until I'm a bit more creative so that it looks better and I'll save the black and orange color combination for closer to Halloween!