Sunset Flakies

Here’s a simple and striking manicure that’s evocative of the colours in a warm summer sunset, kind of like the ones I am fortunate enough to frequently enjoy from one of my two balconies. Tonight’s sun has very nearly set, but here’s a pretty picture from a couple of weeks ago.  My city enjoys some of North America’s best sunsets; it’s an added bonus that I can just glance out my kitchen window and see this:

For these nails, I layered ILNP’s The Road to Awe, a green-to-gold-to-fuchsia-to-purple chromatic flakie topper, over KB Shimmer’s Soul Deep, a deep, blue-black creme.

I’m Melting!

Well, my nails are.  Or more accurately, they’re wearing an entirely un-wintery combination of two of my favourite polishes, KB Shimmer’s navy blue Soul Deep and Candy Lacquer’s Melting Popsicles.  And while we might be a long ways off from either melt or popsicle season, this perfectly purple glitter topper (with hints of hot pink, neon orange, turquoise and lime green) is too pretty to hide away until the snow is gone. Besides, based on the absolutely bonkers storm that bore down on the east coast of the United States this weekend, that could be a very long time.  As the Canadian who’s usually on the flip side of the crap weather equation, I sympathize, American friends.  Stay warm, and may your nails stay pretty.

Old Glory (31DC2015)

Coming at you hard and fast with the posts in these final two days of the 31 Day Nail Art Challenge as I play catch-up to a schedule that I managed to stick to not once! And these are my second red-white-and-blue nails in as many posts, although this manicure, which is my submission towards the theme of a flag, is probably the most common way you see that colour combo. I love the American flag – strong, bold colours, authoritative stripes, adorable little stars. It’s a good flag.

I was not looking forward to this 28th prompt. Unlike Dr. Sheldon Cooper (and sometimes Amy Farrah Fowler, or perhaps Wil Wheaton) I’m not down for Fun With Flags – they bore me silly. But I love how these nails turned out, and although I have many more lacquered miles to go before sleep, I really don’t want to take them off! Like the American flag itself, I wanted to keep the lines on these nails sharp and crisp, so I used some star-shaped nail vinyls I’ve been hoarding for just such an occasion, and laid out my red and white diagonal lines with striping tape. I also like the darker, more true-to-life colours I used here (baby blue and pink flags are fine, but I wanted to keep things more traditional and maybe slightly less treasonous?), including KB Shimmer’s navy blue Soul Deep and blood red Such a Vlad-Ass.

Rainbow Juice (With Pulp)

That’s the name of this fairy dusted lacquer from Enchanted Polish. Gotta respect the silly name. Rainbow Juice (With Pulp) is another addition to Enchanted’s line of holographic glitter toppers, this time stuffed with shards of rainbow-throwing holo flakies. These kind of polishes always look their best against darker base polishes, so here I paired it up with KB Shimmer’s midnight blue Soul Deep, which highlights all those beautiful, sparkling rainbows and their, um, pulp.

In lower lighting, Rainbow Juice looks a bit like shimmer-flecked stone (I initially thought graphite.) But as always with holographic polishes, this one does its best work in the sun, throwing off all kinds of gorgeous, twinkling colours. Not that you would know it from these pictures, regrettably, that are all nicely in focus and therefore, don’t accurately depict what this polish looks like in real life. Which is something a little more in keeping with this image:

One of those weird facts of nail polish life, friends – it never looks as good in photos as it does in real life. I suppose the reverse argument could be made for online dating. 😉

Soul Deep

This inky beauty is KB Shimmer’s Soul Deep, a midnight blue creme from their recently released Fall collection. I typically tend to go in for KB’s glitters, like the gorgeous, cranberry-hued polish I featured yesterday, but this deep, posh stunner just called out to me (as did its collection mate, Such a Vlad-Ass, but that’s a post for another day!) I use navy blue as a background to nail art all the time, and I’m always on the lookout for a true blackened blue – so many of them lean towards purple or indigo, or have so little noticeable pigment, they just read black. Soul Deep is that rare kind of navy that actually reads as navy.

And the formulation? Absolutely divine. I was SO impressed with this creme. Soul Deep was very nearly a one-coater – if I were a little less particular about depth of colour (as in I like a lot of it) I would have left it at one coat. As is, these photos show two light coats of Soul Deep and, in another radical departure from my usual habits, NO topcoat. I usually put a layer of Seche Vite over darn near everything, but I wanted to show off Soul Deep’s phenomenal shine au naturale. In every single way, this polish has everything you could want from a not-so basic creme – great self-leveling, smooth, glassy shine and rich, true colour. Another awesome pick from KB Shimmer.