Rainy Day Dots

This was pretty much what I had in mind back when I did my silver and purple dots. I wanted to redo it with these colors, and I intended to add more dots, but I love doing these mani's, so that just gives me an excuse to do it again!!












2 coats Orly Mirror Mirror
1 coat Best Top Coat
Dots are done with:
OPI Fly
Orly Frisky
Essie Mint Candy Apple

I actually did not top coat the dots because I loved the kind of raised effect they had. These photos were taken like 2-3 days after I initially did the mani. I'm sure you can tell due to my lack of posting that I've been very busy lately. I hadn't gotten around to photographing them until then. And even now, it's been a while since I actually had these nails.

China Glaze Heli-Yum

This is a polish I love to use with nail art. It's a staple stamping polish for me. The only pain about stamping with it is it's nearly identical to the color of my Konad stamper, so it's pretty difficult to see where you're going to stamp it. So I figured it was about time to wear it on its own!












2 coats China Glaze Heli-Yum
1 coat Poshe

So beautiful! This was from China Glaze's Up & Away collection which was one of my favorite nail polish collections ever released. I'm still trying to collect all of the colors. It'll happen eventually! But Heli-Yum is a beautiful almost red dark pink creme. If you tell yourself it's pink, it looks pink. But at first glance, it may look a little more on the red side.

The formula was perfect. Because reds/pinks are such basic polish colors, I have very high expectations when it comes to formula on these shades. Thankfully, this one did not disappoint. It was beautifully opaque in one coat, but I always prefer to do a second just for added richness and I find it reduces tip wear.

Summer Ocean Tide Gradient

In honor of my new blog look, I decided it was the perfect time to post these nails! (I'll be updating the header to something nicer soon). I apologize for not being around. My life has been CRAZY lately! More on that to come later. First, I'm going to be posting all my backlogged posts, then I'll get into the new stuff.
I love doing summer nails. I usually love spring nails, too, but I'm finding myself skipping spring nails and jumping right into summer. And I'm big on blue polishes in the summer especially because obviously blue=ocean and that's one of the best things about summer!











2 coats OPI Fly 1 coat Poshe Gradient done with makeup sponge starting with China Glaze White On White and covered by OPI Gargantuan Green Grape I loved my method for this the only thing I would have changed would be to not let the green go up so high. Looking at the full hand view, you can see GGG dominates more than I wanted on some nails (ring finger). So what I know GGG is too sheer to just stamp over Fly on its own. So I took my makeup sponge and painted some white on it and just dabbed it from the tip towards my cuticle so it gave somewhat of a gradient effect. I didn't want to to blend well or I would have used a different method to make it a smoother transition. So then I painted GGG onto the sponge and went over the white in the same fashion. The white was covered by GGG and it left it green.

The other thing was I opted to NOT top coat. I actually top coated my hand I didn't photograph and it made the colors blend too much for the look I was going for and it smoothed everything out. I love the texture it has without a top coat. Exactly what I pictured minus going too far down on a few nails.

Here in New England we don't have the best beaches with the most beautiful water, but it's pretty in its own right! I'm throwing this photo in because it's fitting to the post. I took this in early/mid May this year while some of my girlfriends and I were having dinner at a restaurant that is literally on the beach. (This was at Paddy's at Misquamicut Beach if you live in the area or are visiting Rhode Island).