SquareHue February 2015 Swatches, Comparisons, and Nail Art

Hi everyone! I know it’s the end of the month, but it’s still February so here today I have my February 2015 SquareHue box to show you all! As the second installment in the decades collection, this month’s box represents the 1910s. While I really loved last month’s box, this one was kind of a let down for me in a few ways. I definitely wasn’t as excited about it as the other boxes I’ve gotten, but I suppose they can’t all be winners. At least the colors made for some pretty great nail art! I used all the polishes to make this gradient French tip with roses design, which is super adorable and feminine. I loved it so much that I did a mini-tutorial at the end!

LLAP

Given yesterday’s very sad news, I thought I’d share a little about the rather odd intersection in my life of Star Trek and painting my nails. I talked about it a little bit before, but I think it deserves another mention.

Purple Textured Half Moon Manicure

Hi everyone! I have a quick two-color nail art design of textured half moons to show you all today while I’m prepping a large post set to come out soon! In a spur-of-the-moment burst of creativity, I combined two Julep purples – Joanne and Glam Roc – to get this textured half moon design. Considering that not much planning went into this, I think it worked pretty well! The two purples are great together, and a half moon design is a nice way to incorporate textured polishes into nail art.

Dark Red Reverse Gradient Hearts

Hi everyone! First, a reminder: please vote in my blog poll if you haven’t already! I’m halfway through cataloging my stash, and I already have an inkling about which color I have the most of, but I’d love to see which one you all think is the winner! Expect to see a blog post coming in a few weeks with the results!

Today I’ve got some simple gradient nail art that, as you can probably guess, I was originally planning for Valentine’s Day, but didn’t get around to until now. It kind of turned out to be a #nailfail because the topcoat bubbled like crazy around the hearts, but I suppose it looks tolerable. At least I got to use a bunch of my all-time favorite red polishes, and it wasn’t all that difficult!

Swatch – Zoya Arabella

Hi everyone! I have more nail art coming up soon, but until then, I have a short post about Zoya Arabella! This polish is from Zoya’s recently discontinued Pixiedust line of textured polishes, so as you can see, it dries with kind of a bumpy matte finish. I picked this particular polish because I really liked the dark pink/berry color, and the fact that it’s got some little pieces of glitter for some sparkle.

Julep February 2015 Swatches, Comparisons, and Nail Art

Hi everyone! I know it’s kind of late in the month (the March reveal is, like, today) but I of course need to do my monthly Julep Maven box post! Today I have a post about my picks from the Julep Maven February 2015 collection (Afterglow), which is the first box I’ve customized. That’s right – I reluctantly switched to My Maven so that I can get what I want out of each collection, and avoid things I don’t. It makes sense at this point, since I usually never want the beauty products and Julep has been putting more and more of them into the Style Profile boxes. Now it’s just polish for me! Yay!

This month, I chose my three favorite polishes from the February collection, plus I got another one (Hartleigh) as a freebie, for a total of four polishes. I used them all to create a nail art design that somewhat echoes the dark, rich florals that were part of the collection artwork.

Three OPI Swatches – Warm Me Up, Right Off the Bat, and First Date at the Golden Gate

Hi everyone! These past few weeks have been a little busy for me, so I haven’t had much time for nail art. Instead, I thought I’d show you all some swatches of the three random OPI polishes I wore!

Valentine’s Day Mani Swap with @fishnails on Instagram – My Recreation!

Hi everyone! I’ve got the second part of my Valentine’s Day mani swap with @fishnails on Instagram, and, this time, it’s me recreating her design! As I wrote in my previous post about my own design for the swap, a mani swap is a shared exchange of nail art designs between two people, after which each person recreates the other’s design. Her design for the swap was a kind of mix-and-match manicure inspired by those heart-shaped chocolate boxes you see around Valentine’s Day, and here I have my interpretation of it for you all to see! This is actually my first manicure that incorporates negative space elements – yay for new things!

Valentine’s Day Mani Swap with @fishnails on Instagram – My Design!

Hi everyone! I’ve got something special today – a mani swap! The super awesome @fishnails on Instagram and I decided to do a Valentine’s Day-themed mani swap (each person comes up with a nail art design and then copies the other person’s design) and it was so fun! I had never done a mani swap before, and now I’m absolutely stoked to do more in the future!

Since this is really two nail art designs, I’m going to divide the mani swap up into two posts! This one will be about my design for the swap, which features a glittery, electrocardiogram-like heart rhythm on top of a subtle gradient French tip. While it may not be the most original design (there are a lot of heartbeat nail designs on the internet), I really like the heartbeat pattern for Valentine’s Day because it’s a bit offbeat and nerdy, but still relevant. Of course, I couldn’t waste an opportunity to talk about science on my blog, so I have a small bit at the end about the parts of a “heartbeat” on an electrocardiogram (also known as an EKG or ECG). Before I move on to technique, here’s the pic of the mani swap! AAHHH SO CUTE!!!

The Great Nail Polish Stash Organization Project (What I’ve Been Up To)!

Hi everyone! I suppose I’ve been away from blogging for a while…oops…I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to leave my blog alone for this long! Things just got really busy for me, and blogging kind of fell by the wayside. If you’ve been checking my Instagram, you can probably tell that I wasn’t doing nothing all this time. Somehow, though, I didn’t have quite enough energy to post everything on my blog. To make up for it, I’ve prepared a whopping 5 posts that will come out in the next few days, so you readers have something to look forward to!

Anyways, I thought I’d update you on my progress with my New Year’s Resolutions, specifically the first one: destash! My goal is to get rid of 100 bottles of nail polish by the end of March, and I’m well on my way there with over 60 bottles in my destash box already. While deciding which bottles to get rid of, I realized that I’m beyond the point where I can rely on my memory to tell me what I have, and I should probably develop a system of cataloging my stash so that I can prevent getting lots of dupes. After thinking about it for a little while, I’ve figured out how I want to get organized, and I’m making progress!