Star Ferried Laciness

I fell in love with this color when I saw it in the bottle. It might've been the sparkle that caught my eye. This is the first time I've worn the color and I LOOOOVE it even more! I decided to get crazy with my konad plates. Google returned some pretty awesome results for konad related image searches and I was inspired how creative some 'nad ladies have been.



polish: OPI Meet Me On The Star Ferry (Hong Kong Collection)
konad plate: m69 (for the fishnet & the lace)
konad polish: Konad Special Gold (+ some extra gold powder from Bare Escentuals) Konad Special Dark Purple

And as usual, Seche Vite makes everything smooth and lovely.

caught in a net

I'm not huge on darker colors, but I'm getting used to it. Especially browns. I often feel like my skin looks weird. But I got tons of compliments on the color.



color: China Glaze Ingrid (Vintage 2010 collection)
konad plates: m69 + m71
konaded color: China Glaze Cords (Retro Diva collection) for the net pattern on m69 + Konad Special Polish Psyche Pink for the bow on m71

ruffle-y and orange-y

I like this one a lot. I don't use the color so often, but it's a nice orange.


color: OPI Don't Be Koi With Me
other: white ruffle/ribbon nail seal purchased off of rakuten.co.jp

boldest to date

My camera couldn't capture this polish's true color. It's actually much more rich and saturated than the pictures show. I did like this one a lot but it was so bright it was distracting at work. :P so I only had it on for 1 day.

The true polish color is right around this color but imagine much richer and slightly shimmery

polish: China Glaze Turned up Turquoise (INK collection)
konad plate: m81
konad polish: black
other: Art Club nail art sprinkles in black stars

playa del carmen 2009

Just as a reference to my playa del carmen 2010 post. This is last year's vacation nails.





Color: OPI's Banana Bandana
Striper: Gold Glitter from Kiss
acrylic paint for flowers

playa del carmen 2010

Couldn't think of what to paint for my vacation coming up this weekend. gonna be with family and it'll be craziness! 17 of us in 3 villas at the Royal Haciendas! woohooo!
Wanted something that would be easy to manage (ex. no gems to fall off). This polish design started with metallic lime green and the same pastel yellow... but then it looked too Carnival-ish. So I went with the pink as it was a generally softer color. I actually chose to wear yellow nails for my last trip to Playa del Carmen with my family too. lol.

Man... I need a tan. :P



Base Color: a nude color from Orly... not sure what it's called. Might be "Sheer Nude"

Tip Color: OPI's Italian Love Affair, OPI's Banana Bandana
Striper: Gold glitter from Art Club (b/c the glitter was finer than Kiss's version of the gold glitter striper.

Monta Vista

My sisters went to a highschool where the school colors were purple and gold.



Color: OPI Louvre Me, Louvre Me Not

Konad Plate: M2 for the flower
Konad Color: Gold (with some extra gold eyeshadow from Bare Essentials added to intensify the gold color - idea from nevertoomuchglitter)

hot polka dot

color: OPI DC Cherry Blossom

Konad plate: M59 for the bow
Konad paint: black

pink holo

color: China Glaze Rated Holographic
Gems: pearl and crystal rhinestones

moody roses

I remember that when Nino was here back in December, he glanced at my nail magazine while I was going through it and he mentioned that he liked the dark nail style (black with red roses and gold chains motif). But he said he knew it probably wasn't something I'd normally wear. I guess I got my cue from that.. and b/c I was on a flower binge apparently with the last few sets I did, I chose to paint roses. but I went DARK. Black to be exact. I rarely paint my entire nail black (except for halloween 2009). But I went for it. And at first I thought "OH GEEz.. WAAAY TOO BLACK" but then as soon as I started painted the purple roses... I fell in love. lol. That doesn't mean I'll be doing black regularly. Like Nino said.. It's not really my style. But I'd told Joni that I wanted to do purple roses on black polish so I got stuck on the idea. And I titled this entry "moody roses" because I kept having this feeling that the black polish made me feel moody... but I got a lot of compliments on it. In any case, I only kept this set on for 4 days. lol.

♥ notes: This was the 3rd time I was able to use the tiny brushes I'd bought from Daiso

♥ duration: 40 mins (2 episodes of Nodame Cantabile)

♥ colors/steps for polish:
▪ Orly Bonder base coat
▪ black polish - Orly Liquid Vinyl (2 coats)
▪ Seche Vite

♥ colors/steps for flowers:
▪ dark purple and white acrylic craft paint was used.
▪ start with dipping the tiny brush (set of 8 for $1.50 from Daiso!) into the purple paint (just a bit) then a tad in the white paint. so the brush should have both colors on it already. then I painted in a pattern like these nail seals.
▪ I did the same paint dip trick for the green leaves. I didn't want the flowers so dark, that they'd be difficult to see.
▪ I was tempted to add silver or glitter on them but after giving a bit of glitter to one of the roses on my pinky, I decided against it. I thought it looked so nice as plain art.

swirled roses v 1.1

Just like version 1.0 but with a bit of extra fun ^_^

♥ duration: 35 mins (2 episodes of Azumanga Daioh)

♥ colors/steps for polish:
▪ Orly Bonder
▪ base color: OPI's Italian Love Affair
▪ 2nd color over base coat: OPI's I'll Take The Cake (to soften the color)
▪ used small dotting tool to make evenly spaced white polka dot pattern

♥ colors/steps for flowers:
▪ reference post from swirled roses 1.0

swirled roses v 1.0

my first attempt at a new style of flowers. I scanned the tutorial out of the magazine but I haven't uploaded that. I'll get to it later. I've seen this done a few times in examples in the nail magazines I picked up but finally, one of the magazines had a simple photo tutorial to show how it's done. So here's my first attempt at it. I actually started out with the plain polish a few days before and then finally decided to add something fun ^_^

♥ duration: 15-20 mins (not including polish time.. while watching Apollo do qualification rounds on TV)

♥ colors/steps for polish:
▪ Orly Bonder
▪ base color: OPI's Italian Love Affair
▪ in addition, on one hand I did a second color coat using Winmax Pink Diamond polish to give it a bit of snowy glitter.

♥ colors/steps for flowers:
▪ 1 drop of white acrylic craft paint using a dotting tool where I want the roses to be.
▪ 2 smaller drop of magenta acrylic paint in the middle of each white drop. (purchased the magenta paint ages ago at Mitsuwa near the makeup section)
▪ Use a thin brush to gently swirl (not mix) the paint together. I went in both directions (CW and CCW) and if necessary, added a tiny amount extra of white or magenta paint depending on how the flower was looking.
▪ I'd recommend doing each nail one at a time so the paint won't dry out when you're trying to swirl the paint.
▪ paint green leaves with any green acrylic craft paint. (I use the green in one of this kiddie sets that's all stuck together. (something like the paint included in these things). I've probably had those sets for years and since I rarely open them, they're still usable.

Fresh Flowers

♥ duration: 30 mins

♥ colors/steps:
▪ Orly Bonder
▪ base color: OPI's Tutti Frutti Tonga
▪ criscrossed lines using Art Club's iridescent glitter striper
▪ accessories: nail seals from Rakuten in JPN (see below)
▪ details: dotting tool using white polish and light pink polish
▪ Seche Vite on top

Tutorial: gradient polish

In this entry, I'll talk about the gradient tips I do.



So I went a little nutty and made an image to illustrate how I do the gradient. J's always saying how well I do them, but it's probably just that I have time on my hands (no pun intended) so I can patiently do the gradient.

It's basically this:
1) Paint horizontally a thin layer of polish about 2mm wide starting at the tip of your nail & let it dry...
2) Paint horizontally a thin layer of polish about 4mm wide starting at the tip of your nail & let it dry...
3) Paint horizontally a thin layer of polish about 6mm wide starting at the tip of your nail & let it dry...
... you get where I'm going with this.
▪ You can do the width as wide or as narrow as you like.
▪ You can also paint vertically (I do that once in a while - most often on the last coat - the widest one).
▪ You can do more than 3 layers... sometimes it takes 4-5 depending on how translucent the polish is.
▪ I recommend making your layers thinner because the gradient will look more like.. well, a gradient.. instead of clumps of polish :P

But that's it. I only suggest doing the last (top) coat of gradient color as the most space covering coat (5-6mm) because it covers the texture of where the under coats end. Makes it a bit smoother. Gosh, did that make any sense at all? ** update 6.15.2012 ** I believe I've found a better way to apply certain polishes as a gradient. It's a tutorial for Ombre Nails that I found on thebeautydepartment.com. I think this would work great for gradients Here's my post on ombre nails

silver and pink gradient

This one was so subtle in color that I was afraid it'd be impossible to see in photos. I think you can see the gradient, but I guess the naked eye view is much better, in my opinion.

The silver gradient was made using a nice translucent silver color (Out Of This World) I picked up from Walgreens :) (Sinful Colors polishes are around $2!). I found a gal who swatched it in her blog: laquerlaine - towards the end of the entry. I did read in laquerlaine's entry that Sinful Colors' formula isn't good. Well.. it's $2 so that's to be expected I guess.. But on the other hand, this polish was perfect for what I wanted to do. Granted, I didn't plan on making the polish to appear 100% opaque so it worked out just fine for what I had in mind. Another comment was that it chipped immediately. In total, there were 8 thin coats of polish on my tips by the time I finished.. and I kept the polish on for an entire week or more without chipping or barely even a worn corner. I'm just in the habit of changing my polish/pattern around once a week. This set did really well for me. (Can I get off my soapbox now?)

I hardly ever use bullion b/c to be honest, it's a pain in the arse to handle. It's tiny and you need to be patient enough to push them around to suit your desired shape. But it was cute for this and I figured 1 heart on each hand wasn't going to kill me :P

♥ duration: 40 mins

♥ colors/steps:
▪ Orly Bonder
▪ base color: OPI's Tutti Frutti Tonga + Winmax Diamond Nail Enamel #7 (pink diamond)
▪ tip gradient color: Sinful Colors' Out Of This World (4 thin, gradual coats) + Winmax Nail French #5 (french silver)
▪ Accessories: silver bullion from Vietnam. Don't ask me where I got those.. (about 5 yrs ago, my parents went back to VN and I asked them to just find some fun nail things and that's one of the items they returned with).
▪ Seche Vite on top

more photos:




below is a photo of the polishes I'd bought a few months ago. The pink on the far right is one of the base colors I used. And the silver (2nd from the right) is the last coat I used over the silver gradient.

cherry pink plaid

A variation of Coral Plaid but with OPI's DC Cherry Blossom.

I still like this one a lot and get a lot of compliments on it.

I think my hand is pretty steady, but if you take your time, the lines will look fine. It doesn't have to be perfect.

And despite how busy the pattern seems, I didn't feel like it necessarily clashed with the things I was wearing.

This one lasted decently long. I wore it for a full week before changing it and wasn't that it was chipping either... I just wanted to change it up. ^_^

♥ duration: 40 mins

♥ colors/steps:
▪ Orly Bonder
▪ base color: Orly ... forgot what it's called. I'll check it later. Something neutral.
▪ tip color: OPI's DC Cherry Blossom
▪ Art Club's black striper first
▪ Art Club's white striper 2nd
▪ Kiss silver glitter striper vertically placed somewhere in between the spaced white lines
▪ Art Club's irridescent glitter striper under the french manicure tip.
▪ Corner accents: tiny plastic stars, randomly picked sets of 3 swarovski crystals (fuchsia, lt rose, rose, crystal ab, jet, crystal moonlight)
▪ top coat: Seche Vite

Disneyland is cute

See? Cutesy, huh?

I went with my honey to Disneyland a bit after Christmas. Good fun! There is something completely magical about Disneyland during the holidays. *eyes sparkle* ^_^

♥ duration: 30 mins

♥ colors/steps:
▪ Orly Bonder
▪ base color: OPI's Tutti Frutti Tonga
▪ light pink striper by Art Club
▪ randomly placed irridescent glitter stripes (Art Club) in between light pink stripes.
▪ brighter pink/orange striper polish from Art Club used with dotting tool to make hearts.
▪ Orly Liquid Vinyl polish used with dotting tool to make Mickeys
▪ top coat: Seche Vite

and 1 more photo: