SquareHue May 2015 Swatches, Comparisons, and Nail Art

Hi everyone! Today I’ve got the SquareHue May 2015 box to show off on the blog! This next installment in the Decades Collection is supposed to represent the 1940s, and I think this box does a really good job of it – the color scheme is strongly reminiscent of a World War II propaganda poster (like Rosie the Riveter). Overall, I got a bold, strong, and somewhat patriotic vibe from this bunch of colors, and so I did this punchy double-layered star design. It’s bold and splashy and I love it! Read on to see all the stuff!

Julep April 2015 Swatches, Comparisons, and Nail Art

Hi everyone! Today I have my Julep April 2015 box (Paradise Collection) to show off on the blog (even though I missed the end of the month…again…)! This month’s box was full of brights, and, given how much I love bright colors, I had a lot of fun with this collection. I ended up picking four polishes and, as usual, I swatched them, did a few comparisons, and made some nail art. Since two of the polishes I chose were shimmery blues, I went aquatic with my nail art and did a little seascape with brightly colored fish.

Julep InstaGrim Part III: Chevron Candy Corn

Hi everyone! I’ve got the third installment of my Julep InstaGrim series, which completes my Halloween manicures! As I’ve described before, I created a series of Halloween nail art designs for Julep in order to help them promote their contest on Instagram, and am dedicating a blog post to each one; you can read more about it in my first post of the series. This latest one is about my version of candy corn nail art, which is to make a “Chevron Candy Corn” manicure. In total, the designs are:

1. Haunted Hollow
2. Ghastly Gradient
3. Chevron Candy Corn

The chevron candy corn design was inspired by some chevron decals that Julep sold in the October Maven window, which I picked up. When I was thinking of nail art to do for the InstaGrim contest, I thought of candy corn nail art because I love candy corn, but then I thought – nah, that’s been done to death. But then I thought: well, what about candy corn with a twist? And then these chevron decals came to mind, and I was sold on the idea! Chevrons are a great graphic pattern (quite suitable for bright colors) and they’re very of-the-moment. Plus decals/stencils are so easy to use to create clean lines. I didn’t end up using the Julep decals because I thought my friend Kimi might like them, so I came up with a DIY alternative for those of you who are not in possession of chevron decals. They work, but you can probably get better results with the professional ones. Read on to learn how to do them and see the tutorial!

Disney Series – Tangled Sun Half Moons + Tutorial

Hi everyone! Today I have the third installment of Disney-themed manicure series that I originally designed in anticipation of my trip with my friends to Disneyland, which happened last week. As I have said in some previous posts, I offered to paint my friends’ nails prior to the trip with designs they wanted, and ended up painting two designs on them (I still have two more that I haven’t done yet). So far in the series, I’ve featured this Minnie Mouse-inspired French tip design for my friend Kimi, and a manicure of Prince John’s crown that I designed for myself. The newest addition to the Disney series is this Tangled-inspired design that uses the sun motif from the movie in a half moon manicure. My friend Emma picked up this idea from the various other designs on the internet, and I augmented the basic idea to make it more interesting and complex. I had to make the design (very) abbreviated on her due to time constraints (you can see it by clicking on the Prince John link), so I executed the full look on myself. This post even has a picture tutorial for the design (my first tutorial ever!!!) so you all can see the process. Here is the result:

Julep July 2014 Maven Swatches and Nail Art

Hi everyone! I have some polishes from the Julep July 2014 collection today, which I first swatched and then combined into a zig zag manicure. This collection was full of a bunch of cremes, so none of the colors are super special. All the same, these polishes are quite likeable, and very bright and summery. I picked out the colors in the Bombshell box (Beverly and Lissa) and one color from the It Girl box (Dawn). Here they are: