First Video Blog! July Favorites

It's my first video! I lost my camera battery charger so I can't take pictures at the moment. I wanted to post SOMETHING so I decided I'd make a video! I'd been wanting to make a Favorites post for a while so here are my July favorites.

Aaaaand....I forgot a favorite so I made a second video! (Yes, it was that important!)

Hope you enjoy the videos! Let me know if you liked the videos and what topic you think I should talk about next!

P.S. Sorry about the horrible lag between the video and audio on the first video. I'm not sure why it's doing that. I'm going to try to fix it right now.

Skittle Gradient!

I have been in such a nail rut the past couple weeks! I have been wanting to attempt a gradient mani for a while now but always assumed it would be time-consuming and difficult. Then, I checked out this tutorial by The Nailasaurus and realized how easy it was! I also saw this mani while browsing through the Tumblr blog Fuck Yeah Nail Art and I loved the color scheme, so I decided to translate it into a skittle gradient mani!

First, I did two coats of OPI Did You Ear About Van Gogh?, a light putty color, as my base color. I did it, yes, at midnight, and let it fully dry overnight before starting the gradient. Following Nailasaurus' tutorial, I started on my thumb with Essie Tart Deco, a neon coral-pink. On my index finger I used Essie Mint Candy Apple, a bright minty aqua, and on my middle finger I used Essie Smooth Sailing, a shimmery cornflower blue. Looking at my finished mani, I wish I had a brighter, more pastel cornflower blue because I don't think Smooth Sailing really goes with the other two colors as well. I repeated the pattern for all the rest of my nails.

Sammy's tutorial is SUPER easy and FAST! I think it only took me about 15 minutes to do all of my nails. The gradient came out a lot smoother than I thought it would too. The only thing I will do different next time is use a different sponge. I decided to do this gradient on a whim so I didn't have the nice soft makeup sponges that she recommends. All I had was a really rough exfoliating sponge that, as I'm sure you can see, left me with a bunch of little fibers all stuck to my nails! I will definitely pick up some makeup sponges at Walgreens in the next couple days and you can expect to see a bunch more gradient manis in the future!

Essie Smooth Sailing

If I had to choose my top 5 favorite polishes (not that I could ever actually choose), this would probably be one of them. This is Essie's Smooth Sailing from their Braziliant summer collection last year. It's a medium cornflower blue color with silver and purple shimmer. It's such a unique color and I love the chunky shimmer.

One thing I also love about this polish is that it's a color that works any time of year. I wore it a few times during the winter, and I just wore it the other day which totally complemented my tanned skin. The application is just the best; this is two perfect coats.

If you were forced to choose a top 5 favorite polishes, what do you think would be in it? I think butter LONDON Wallis would also be up there for me; I'll have to showcase that one on my blog soon.

Essie Navigate Her

I'm sure you've seen this polish before, but it's probably one of my absolute favorites that came out this spring so I just had to share it. It's Essie Navigate Her, a light pastel spring green creme.

It applied like a dream in two perfect coats. It's different than a lot of other light mint greens because it doesn't have any blue in it. I absolutely LOVE this color! My best friend, who also bought it for herself, ended up not really liking it because she said the color reminded her of boogers. I was like... o_O...the most gorgeous boogers ever! (Ew, sorry, that was gross.)

Anyway, a few days after this I put a coat of butter LONDON Tart With a Heart over this and it was even more beautiful!

Essie Armed and Ready

Today I have for you a polish that I've been thinking about picking up for a while, and I recently decided to snatch it up when I was at Target! It's called Essie Armed and Ready, and it's a dark grey with some coppery shimmer. I've heard it called a dark olive green before, but I don't see any green in the base. Just grey. Totally gorgeous and unique!

It also had an amazing formula. You could probably almost get away with one coat, but I did two just to make sure everything was even. It wasn't too thick or too thin. Love it!

NOTD - Fun with Matte!

Okay, you guys, I seriously think this is one of my favorite manicures I've ever done. I've been dying to experiment with matte/glossy texture combinations, but I always forget until I'm already done painting my nails. Then I saw this mani, and I loved the design of the three colors. I decided to take the idea of the tri-color mani and translate into a matte/glossy texture design.

I started with two coats of Essie Bobbing for Baubles, a true navy creme. Then, I applied a coat of Essie Matte About You, a matte topcoat. I love matte topcoat because it allows you to turn any polish into a matte, however I have problems with it applying unevenly sometimes, leaving still-shiny patches on my nails. Solution? Create a design with glossy topcoat (I used Seche Vite) over the matte, covering the uneven spots! 

For my third "color", I used Essie Pure Pearlfection, a layering polish with fine purple and blue shimmer. Instead of making them super sharp lines like in the tri-color mani, I free handed the designs with an Orly detailer brush (partly because I'm too impatient to wait for my polish to dry and do the scotch-tape method of creating sharp lines!). I LOVE the final result. The contrast between the matte, glossy, and shimmery finish on the navy blue background is gorgeous, especially in the light. I am definitely going to try this again with other colors and effects.

What do you guys think of this mani? Are you as in love with it as I am?? :-D

NOTD - Flaky Sandwich

Glitter/jelly sandwiches are something I've been wanting to try for a while, ever since I saw the trend start popping up amongst other nail blogs. If you are not familiar with this term, it means a layer of a jelly (sheer) polish, a layer of glitter, and then another layer of the jelly polish. It creates a really cool effect, and makes the glitter less blingy, which is a little more my style.

I've seen a ton of glitter/jelly sandwiches using nice bright colors, but it's still winter so I wanted to do something more subdued. I have this really cool Ulta brand polish called Lav-ish, which is a murky, muted sheer lavender with a fine bit of gold shimmer to it. I did two coats of Lav-ish, and then decided to amp up the gold shimmer factor by doing a layer of Essie As Gold As It Gets, a gold flake in a clear base. Then another layer of Lav-ish on top of that to finish it up.

I love AGAIG straight-up layered over another polish, but adding a sheer wash of that murky lavender over the top really made it something different and interesting. What do you think of this combo? Would you try a flaky/glitter/jelly sandwich like this?

NOTD - Coral and Gold

We had some weird weather in Chicago this weekend. On Friday, we had our first major snowfall this winter. I think it was about 8 inches by the end of the night. Then, last night, we had a rain and thunderstorm. Whaaaa? This morning, almost all the snow was melted, leaving huge gross muddy puddles, and the sky was gray and misty. Gloom and doom all the way. I needed something to remind me that we are on the other side of the winter solstice and spring WILL be here soon, darn it!

Flash - It's not really this pink

I thought that OPI I Eat Mainely Lobster, a bright coral with subtle gold shimmer, would look gorgeous layered with Essie As Gold as it Gets, a gold flaky topcoat. I was slightly disappointed the first time I ever wore Lobster because the gold shimmer didn't really translate onto the nail, but with a coat of As Gold as it Gets over the top, it becomes everything I ever wanted it to be!

I had a hard time photographing this polish! Under the flash, it came out looking pure pink, and you couldn't really see the gold flakies. In artificial light, it looks closer to its true color, although it's brighter than it looks in the photo. I'll have to try it outside tomorrow, if we have any sun. Pleeeease let there be sun tomorrow!!

On a side note, I just realized that twice in the past few days, I've layered an Essie luxe effect over an OPI polish. I guess they make a good team :)

Artificial light - This is more true to color

NOTD - Sunrise at Sea

Just a quick NOTD - I call this one Sunrise at Sea because it reminds me of orange sunlight reflecting off calm waves on the beach in the morning :) I started off with two coats of OPI Stranger Tides from the Spring 2011 Pirates of the Caribbean collection. I absolutely love this polish - it's a very unusual, yet soft and gorgeous, murky sea foam green. I layered one coat of Essie Shine of the Times, an orange-green shifting flakie, over the top. I did not start getting into nail polish until after the original Sally Hansen Hidden Treasure was officially HTF, so I was over the moon when this Essie dupe came out. I prefer it over pastel colors such as this because I think it brings a softer, more ethereal look to the flakies, as opposed to the harsher color shift I see when it is layered over dark colors.

I love this mani! Have you snatched up this Essie polish yet? What is your favorite color to layer under it?