Jelly Sandwich...mmm...

The other night, I was explaining to my girlfriends what a jelly sandwich was. Glitter polish "sandwiched" between layers of jelly polish. It made me want to have a jelly sandwich for my next manicure. Unfortunately, I only own one jelly (or sorbet, according to OPI) polish. I love it, though. 

The orange is OPI Y'all Come Back Ya Hear and the glitter is OPI Rainbow Connection. I did two layers of jelly, a layer of glitter, two more layers of jelly, and finished with top coat.
 
Aaahh!!! I love it!!! For those of you who don't know, orange is my favorite color. So, although this may not be the most seasonally appropriate color choice, if there is any shade of orange involved, I could care less. :) Also, I love all things glitter and the more colors, the better. So, Rainbow Connection is one of my favorite glitters. It has small, medium, and large hex glitters in almost every color you could think of. There is silver, orange, yellow, blue, purple, green, and red. Lovely. 

This mani will only be on for a few days. Soon, I will start some holiday manis, I think. I'm toying with the idea of a little water marbling. We shall see...

Simple

I shortened my nails today and wanted to do something simple with them. I saw OPI Pepe's Purple Passion and had to try it. It's a beautiful shimmery raisin color.

The shimmer is dense and it dries a bit rough so it isn't as smooth and shiny as I would like. Even with a top coat, it's not smooth. I wanted to have an accent nail but I still wanted simple. I went to my trusty Bundle Monster plates.

I chose this design from BM-210. A coat of Seche Vite over the design and the color is finally smooth and shiny. I'll be adding a coat over the other nails, as well. Pretty pretty pretty. :)

Splatter!

Last night was movie night with the girls. The gorgeous Heather brought over her collection of nail polish to play with. After finding the pictures of my old manis, I decided to do another splatter mani. They are so much fun. Unbelievably messy, though. Still, the end result is totally worth it. Unfortunately, I was distracted when I was doing my nails so I forgot to take pictures during the process.

I started by painting my nails, all but the ring finger, with one of Heather's polishes. Milani Neon in Dude Blue. It's a nice bright shade of blue and the formula was pretty nice. It does linger though, and it stained my skin just a bit. Anyway, on the ring finger nail I used OPI Alpine Snow. The pink is OPI That's Berry Daring. To do the splatters, I just dipped a straw into a small puddle of polish and blew through the other end, splashing to color onto the nails. It's very imperfect and you never know what designs you'll get. Fabulous, right? I wish I had taken pictures before I finished, though. I ended up with nail polish EVERYWHERE! It was all over and between my fingers, on my palm, on my shirt. Everywhere! So worth it, though!

 

Some old stuff.

I was looking through my phone and I came across some photos of a few manicures I've done. Due to being taken on my phone, they aren't all the greatest quality.

This is OPI Metallic 4 Life from the Nicki Minaj collection. This color is great! It's a black base with large and small silver hex glitter. It's a little bit thick but it still looks great.

This OPI It's Totally Fort Worth It. For the design I used my lovely Bundle Monster stamping plates. I got the zigzag design from BM-201. For the heart, I used OPI That's Berry Daring with a little bit of OPI Purple With a Purpose swirled in. Pretty, no?

I got this idea from Pinterest. For the base, I used OPI Here Today...Aragon Tomorrow. Over that, I used OPI Silver Shatter. When I painted it on, I used wavy brush strokes. I wasn't all that impressed with this mani but I do still love the color combination.

This was my first attempt at a "dry marble." I used OPI Purple With a Purpose and Alpine Snow. This is near the top of my list of favorite nail art techniques. I love the way it looks.

My husband and I went to several baseball games this summer with our friends. We are huge fans of the Detroit Tigers. This was a manicure I did for one of the games. I used OPI A Roll in the Hague (orange), Blue My Mind (blue), and Alpine Snow (white). The red was borrowed from a friend and I don't remember what it was called. The tiger stripes came from BM-223. The old English "D" is actually a temporary tattoo. Great, right? You can use any temporary tattoo as nail art. Apply it to your nail just like you do on skin and secure with top coat. I love this manicure.

This is my favorite mani out of the old photos I found. OPI It's Totally Fort Worth It as the base. The splatter is OPI That's Berry Daring (pink) and Planks a Lot (purple). This looks amazing. I think this will be the next design I do. I haven't done a splatter in a really long time.

Until the next manicure, nighties!!!

Because I got bored...

As much as I loved my cute little gingerbread man nails, I got bored and decided to change them. I do that. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my nails so I asked a guy at work what color I should paint them. When I named off the available colors, he chose black and silver. Later, I was inspired by another co-worker's purple shirt. Thus, the color scheme for this manicure was born. I knew I wanted a purple base and some sort of design over top in black and silver.

I went with OPI Purple With a Purpose. As usual, my camera sucks at capturing purples. Really, this color is much less blue. It's a nice royal purple color with a tiny hint of pink and blue shimmer. It's my go-to purple.
It took me quite a while to decide what design to do. I knew I wanted to use my dotting tools. After much deliberation, I decided to do some stippling. I started with the silver.

I used Sally Hansen's Insta-Dri in Silver Sweep. Then, over top, more stippling in black.

A few spots of Wet n Wild Black Creme and a layer of top coat and done! I love it! Now, we see how long this lasts before I'm bored again. :P
 

Early Christmas Mani

So, this weekend my friends and I are competing in a gingerbread house contest for work. This is the third year that we are participating. Last year, we came in second place. It's so much fun and I can't wait. The theme this year is Disney so the designs should be fantastic. Anyway, since this is a Christmas event, I had to do a Christmas nail design, of course.

I started with my FAVORITE red polish. OPI Danke-shiny red from their Germany collection. I was distracted by Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera (LOVE) so I unfortunately forgot to photograph my nails with just the red on them. It's just as well, though, because it's hard to capture the beauty of this color. It's just a touch cooler than your classic red. It shimmers so beautifully it almost has a metallic look to it. It is just amazing.

After the red, I chose a Christmas design from my Bundle Monster stamping plates. (I love these things! I still haven't mastered them so they aren't perfect. Be patient with me.) I chose an all over design with a ginerbread man surrounded by holly on plate BM-222. 

I used Sally Hansen's Insta-Dri in Silver Sweep. Adorable, right?? After a whole ten minutes, I decided that they needed glitter.

I chose OPI Save me from the Nicki Minaj collection. This glitter it nuts! I adore it. It's surprisingly dense for a clear based glitter so I actually had trouble applying it thin enough to keep from covering the design too much. It's LOADED with silver micro-glitter and these ultra-prismatic bar glitters. With every movement of your hand, you catch so many colors. Daylight is the best way to view this glitter but the sun decided not to make an appearance today. (Michigan. -_-) I think this combination is just perfect. The red is perfect in contrast with the silver. The gingerbread men are ADORABLE and the prismatic glitter looks like tinsel. Super super super!

 

OPI 2013

I am SO EXCITED! I just saw photos of the newest OPI collections coming out next year. I'm still hooked on the last two collections but these new colors are going to be amazing!

First, is the Mariah Carey collection. I don't know about you, but I love her! She has always been one of my favorite artists. Now, my favorite nail polish brand has collaborated with her to release a gorgeous collection. 

Of course, you can't have a Mariah collection without some super girly colors and a lot of glitter. This collection is also premiering a brand new type of nail polish. It's called "Liquid Sand," which is a matte finish textured polish with sparkle. 

Gorgeous, right? Ugh, I can't wait until NEXT MONTH to see this collection in person!

Next, the spring/summer 2013 collection. Euro Centrale.

Gorgeous shades for spring and summer. A chunky glitter (Polka.com) a few lovely shimmers (A Woman's Prague-ative and OY-Another Polish Joke!) and some pretty jewel tones and pastels. What a lovely collection. I want!

Ooh! 2013 is going to be a great year for my nails. Maybe not for my wallet, though. Ha ha ha!