St. Patrick's Day Manicure! (with Daily Hues and Lacquer Lust)

Hey all! Happy St. Patrick's Day! I'm not Irish and I don't really love the color green (at least on my nails) but I do like participating in the festivities! At first, I had grand plans to do some kind of nail art, like a gradient or gradient dots, but I've been feeling like a zombie since Daylight Savings hit and the motivation and energy to actually do nail art has proved beyond my capacity at this point. There just aren't enough hours in the day! So after wracking my brain to come with ideas I settled on the old tried-but-true green manicure plus accent nail combo. It's not the original idea out there, but hey, it's something! Picking colors also proved difficult (the perils of having too many nail polishes to choose from-- I finally understand why bloggers and nail artists organize by color and not by brand!) but I eventually settled on Daily Hues Holly as my main green and Lacquer Lust One Lucky Unicorn as my accent nail. (The first time I've used a Lacquer Lust polish, so it's a new to me brand!)

Holly is described as a "highly pigmented evergreen holo" and that pretty much sums it up.With the name and color description, Holly is probably considered a holiday/winter/Christmas green but it's such a rich, vivid green color (without being too dark) that I think it's perfect for St. Patrick's! It is nicely pigmented, but the formula is more on the jelly side, so it is a bit translucent when you apply it. It builds up nicely but I found I needed three coats to make sure it covered my nail beds to the degree I wanted. If you have shorter nails or smaller nails, you could probably get away with two coats. It was super easy to apply and dried quickly!

One Lucky Unicorn is described as a "clear based polish packed with silver and gold holographic micro glitters mixed with translucent green and lime green hex glitters and a dash of spectraflair." This polish is so densely packed with glitter that it actually covers very well in just one coat, though of course there is a bit of visible nail line due to the clear base. I ended up using three coats to make it fully opaque-- if you don't care about such things, 1-2 coats would probably be fine. This also dries down quickly, but warned-- it's a real top coat eater! I put two coats on this and it could actually stand a third so if you have some glitter spackle or a really thick top coat, I would suggest using that and then a quick drying top coat!

I just can't get over how beautiful Holly is. I mean, look at it!! It's pretty much everything you could want in a green holographic polish. I do feel that the holographic properties to get swallowed a bit on the nail (as opposed to looking at the bottle) but regardless, it's a gorgeous green and a shade of green I would be happy to wear on my nails at any time, despite being generally green-adverse. ;-) One Lucky Unicorn is my introduction to the Lacquer Lust brand, which has released many pretty polishes since the brand started and I am happy to report that  I am impressed-- which is good because I have a few more polishes from them to wear! Hope you enjoyed this St. Patrick's Day manicure! Are you wearing green on your nails today?

Fourth of July manicure!

Happy 4th of July! We are currently experiencing an unusual heat wave in the PNW, though it feels a little cooler today than most of the past week. We're all heat wimps here! I was drenched in sweat last night while I removed my polish to do my 4th of July manicure. Yuck! But I wanted to do a themed manicure so I wasn't going to let the heat beat me. I had been kicking around an idea for awhile, and I didn't want to waste it.

I started with a base of OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls on my pinkie, middle and index finger. Once that was dry I used saran wrap to 'sponge' on Cirque Colors Rita on those fingers. Once that dried, I then sponged on Colors by Llarowe Living the Dream. Using saran wrap to sponge on different colors if one of my favorite nail art technique-- it's so easy and fun! I got a little overzealous in when I sponged on Living the Dream at first; my pinkie nail got a bit dark. Which, duh, makes sense because it's a dark color, but I thought it would be a little more sheer. Anyway! The joy of this technique is that it's different every time and very unique! I'm really happy with how this turned out.

On my ring and thumb I used two coats of Polish 'M American Spirit. This is a grey-white base with red, white and bright blue glitters. Perfectly in the spirit for the holiday-- some day I'll actually do a real swatch.

Artificial light (flash):

I was really proud of how my 'Cinderella' hand turned out, so I took a picture!

I hope everyone has a safe and happy 4th! Eat some good food, set off some fireworks, and hopefully don't start any fires!

4th of July mani!

I'm not dead! It's hard to convey how much I want to be blogging right now, but just can not spare a lot of (or any) time for my blog. I'm not quitting, but am trying to figure out how I can blog with more frequency. So sorry for my long absences-- I am still around! You can follow me on twitter (@lacquerland) or on Instagram (catray); I am fairly active on both of those social media outlets, though it's not always polish related.

I wanted to do a manicure to celebrate the 4th of July because, let's face it, I don't have much time to do creative manicures these days. So I actually did some nail art! It took two days, but I did it! I was tossing around some ideas and finally settled one what you will see below. I used Cult Nails Tempest as my white base on four nails and Colors by Llarowe Rubies & Rednecks on my ring finger as an accent (who knows when I will review this polish-- it's awesome!). Then I taped off the top of my nail and used OPI Wharf! Wharf! Wharf! on the bottom half. Pretty easy, but it did take two nights because I wanted the white base to dry so I didn't have to worry about ruining it when I applied the tape. 

This manicure also has a nautical feel to it, but that seems to fit with the 4th of July. I'm just happy I was able to come up with a themed manicure and I think it turned out pretty well! Hope everyone has a happy 4th!

4th of July Skittlette Mani!

Hey all! Hope that many of you are having a good time celebrating the 4th of July-- and if not that you are having a pleasant Thursday! This post is a little late because we've been doing a lot of cleaning around the house so we can move furniture and prep for the arrival of the twins, and in doing so lost our internet connection for awhile, whoops!

For this 4th of July, I had a hankering to try out a skittlette manicure, as pioneered Marta of ChitChat Nails. She recently did a tutorial on how to create this manicure and so I took it for a test drive! I already had in my mind two polishes I wanted to use: Julep Fireworks, a red/blue/silver glitter polish, and Julie G Hot Cinnamon, a red texture polish. Because I was afraid that the glitter and the texture might be too much, I decided to just do glitter tips and not full accent nails. I pulled out Cult Nails Tempest and Time Traveler and viola! A 4th of July manicure was born!

And, in true Marta fashion, I'm using props to show off my manicure! For this I used my husband's challenge coin from the Navy job he completed this past year, and a navy/white striped skirt that I'm wearing today.

Artificial light:

Natural light - sun:

I really like how this turned out. Since Hot Cinnamon has shimmer but not necessarily glitter, I don't think it clashes with the glitter from Fireworks-- nor does it look too busy. Part of me wishes I had used a lighter blue, given how close to navy blue Time Traveler is, but it's so easy to work with that I don't mind it, even if it is a little dark.

Happy 4th of July!