SquareHue June 2015 Swatches, Comparisons, and Nail Art

Hi everyone! I’m back with the new SquareHue box for June 2015, which was inspired by the 1950s! This is most definitely the nail polish box that is getting me 100% geared up for summer – you really can’t go wrong with fun, bright cremes like this. Just looking at these colors makes me want to sit down in the backyard and drink some ice cold, homemade lemonade (one of my favorite summer activities 😀 ). I got such an upbeat and fun vibe that I ended up using the three polishes to do some awesome tropical nail art, complete with palm fronds and flowers. A little Elvis in Hawaii, maybe?

With this latest installment of the Decades Collection, SquareHue has now reached the midway point of the year, so I thought it’d be fun to take a look back at my blog posts about the first half of the collection. At the end of this post, I have links to each of the posts, and a bunch of photo grids!

Julep InstaGrim Part I: Haunted Hollow

Hi everyone! I have some exciting news today – something SO incredible that I can’t believe it’s even real! In short (more details after the cut!), Julep asked me to create Halloween-themed nail art for their ongoing “InstaGrim” contest, and I accepted! WOOHOO!!! I was given free reign over the design I chose to do, so I went wild and made, not one, but THREE designs because I couldn’t choose just one idea! Julep makes some fantastic polishes and products that inspired me in different ways, and that’s how I ended up with three good ideas. So I’m writing about each in a separate blog post!

This post is about my first design in the three-part InstaGrim series: the Haunted Hollow. It’s the hardest design I did out of the three, and the one that Julep used as the featured picture for their page (and my personal favorite!). You know how in some movies, there are those creepy trees whose bark patterns kind of look like faces? Yeah, that’s what I was going for. I wanted to put those trees in a spooky forest with mysterious, glowing eyes coming out of the darkness. In order make this design extra-awesome, I used a black light reflective white polish (Julep Dana) to make the eyes really glow in the dark!

Pumpkin Patch Nail Art with Julep

Hi everyone! I am back with exciting nail art…finally! This month’s outrageous workload may be wearing me down a lot, and we’re only one week in, but I still really wanted to do nail art so I made it happen.

Today I’ve got another seasonal design to add to my fall nail art catalog: a pumpkin patch! The idea for this design came about when I shopped at Julep’s secret store this month and picked up the “Pumpkin Patch” duo (Mariska and Lizanne). When I thought about the two colors together, I went with the obvious and decided to use both polishes, plus a whole bunch of others, to paint a pumpkin patch on my nails. Since this idea was pretty heavily related to Julep’s “Pumpkin Patch” duo, I decided to go with Julep polishes for the whole thing. Besides, so many Julep polishes are sitting in my box of untrieds – just waiting to have their moment to shine – so I thought I’d give a bunch of them a go. I have a mini-tutorial at the end for anyone interested in seeing the process!

There really have been quite a few fall designs that I’ve done recently. Autumn is definitely nail art season for me.

OPI Nordic Collection Nail Art – Fall Foliage

Hi everyone! It’s autumn! Yay! I think this is the first time I’ve ever been excited about summer transitioning into fall; I have always associated autumn with the start of school, making me dislike the season as a consequence, but I think I’ve finally gotten rid of that feeling since I no longer have a summer break that I have to drag my feet from. Fall actually seems appealing now: brightly colored leaves, the upcoming gingerbread lattes, Halloween, Thanksgiving, apple season…fun stuff! Summer was pretty saturated with things to do, and, even though I had a blast, I think I’m ready to move on. Even though autumn is shaping up to be a pretty busy time of year for me work-wise, I think I’ll have enough delicious gingerbread lattes to savor while powering through (and enjoying myself along the way)!

So today I have some seasonal nail art to show my excitement for the beginning of fall! In my last post, I mentioned having a “Star Trek Manicure Party” with my sister, where I brought the entire OPI Nordic Fall/Winter 2014 collection along so that we could both paint our nails. My manicure used a whopping seven colors – mostly browns and pinks – to create a design of a tree with golden leaves and clusters of pink berries (like the tree in my family’s front yard). Check it out:

Julep September 2014 Maven Swatches, Comparisons, and Nail Art

Julep September 2014 Gilded Leaves Nail Art

Hi everyone! I’ve got a big post today featuring polishes from the September 2014 Julep Maven collection (Art Walk). I swatched all the colors I picked and then combined them into nail art. That’s kind of becoming a “thing” on my blog with the Julep Maven colors I’ve been picking…you know, nail art with all the colors. This month, I picked the It Girl box because it was the only one with colors I liked and didn’t have dupes for. It was kind of astonishing that I was so decisive about picking; usually, I pick a box quickly but I have a hard time choosing polishes to add on. For this month, I was FOR SURE picking It Girl only. It helped that the beauty product in all the other boxes was a lip crayon, which I couldn’t see myself using at all.

The colors Julep had for this month were mostly cremes, which was a bit underwhelming to me. Considering how much I’ve enjoyed the shimmers, metallic foils, and glitters from Julep that I’ve tried in the past (here’s looking at you, Phoebe), I keep hoping for more of those finishes instead of cremes. I feel like there’s a lot more room for innovation and outside-of-the-box colors with non-creme finishes, since there’s only so much you can do with solid colors. At least the It Girl colors from this month filled some gaps in my collection, and I was pretty excited about the gold (Mahima). Plus, there was one satin finish polish in the box (Ryan) that I was curious to try. Anyways, on with the swatches!

Julep “Family” Vintage Rose Vines Nail Art – Starring My Family

Hi everyone! I’ve got a very special manicure to show off today: these lovely vintage-looking rose vines. Look closely to find the hidden message:

Yes, that’s right, this manicure is about my family! I took advantage of the fact that Julep gives their nail polishes women’s names, and acquired a bunch of the colors with the names of my family members. The ones I have here are all from my maternal side of the family, since Julep doesn’t have many names from my paternal side. When I looked at the colors all together, I came up with the vintage rose vines idea and it was perfect! At first, I was worried that the colors would be too disharmonious to look good as nail art, but in this design they look awesome together – kind of an antique look. Plus, the vines allowed me to spell out words on my nails (left: “family”, right: “love”), which was what I really wanted to do. It’s also very appropriate that these are rose vines, since my maternal great-grandmother was named Rose.

Southwest Cactus Landscape – Sally Hansen I Heart Nail Art Contest

Hi everyone! I’ve created another manicure that I want to share: this awesome desert landscape with a bunch of cacti! Since this mani turned out so well, I will be submitting a photo of my nails to the Sally Hansen I Heart Nail Art contest. For this month and the next two months, Sally Hansen is holding a nail art contest inspired by different themes. The theme for this month is “Color Destinations”, so I figure this design inspired by the American Southwest fits the bill. I worked really hard on this design, and I like the result, so I think it would be great to participate in the contest. If you want to vote for me, you can do so here:

http://www.sallyhansen.com/i-heart-nail-art/contest/entry-emismanis-1400816457