Gradient: Color Club "Beyond" and "Eternal Beauty"

Today I said to myself, "Self, I think it's time that you be creative with your nails. You're up early and have done what you can so far, so be fancy." So there I was, sifting, once again, through my heaping pile of nail polish wondering which ones I grab and use. I figured I'd pick a not-blue color since I just had one on and then I saw "Eternal Beauty" from Color Club, which I forgot when I HAD to have the entire Halo Hues set (which I do). So I grabbed that, thought maybe I'd take the blue one too..but I've done that combination before, so let's do a different one. Recently on Instagram I've seen someone do a black and red gradient design so I thought black and purple? Yeah those two definitely go together. So I sifted some more and grabbed "Beyond" which is also part of the Color Club Halo Hues from a couple years ago now (Jeez has it been that long?). And so the process began!

Now this process is an absolute MESS! And I wasn't pleased with myself that I haven't gone online and bought that new latex-y type thang that I've seen some nail people putting on the skin around their nails lately. Now that stuff is something I DEFINITELY need to get ASAP because I feel that it'll allow me to do messy designs and not take forever to clean up. Anyways, after I put my base coat on, I took small pieces of tape and only put them on the bottom of my nail/cuticle figuring that it couldn't be TOO big of a mess on the sides (yeah I was wrong). It becomes a little harder, in my opinion, to use the nail polish bottles when there's tape around all sides of the nail to avoid a messy clean-up.

Before I started I made sure to unscrew each bottle first so that I wasn't trying to do it with semi-stiff fingers due to having tape on them. I use a make-up sponge to actually apply the nail polish to my nail by painting the sponge with the nail polish first in strips and then I dab the sponge on my nail back and forth in a small circle motion so that it covers (mostly) my whole nail. I always go through all my nails first and then go back for a second coat repeating the same thing I did the first round. For this one though I did three coats just to be on the safe side since the purple didn't seem to be going on as thick as the black was.

The aftermath..oh how it was a mess! I had actually waited a little while because I started to clean up because I was actually rambling on to my mom about something that I can't remember. This allowed all the nail polish, on my nails and around them, to dry a bit so I first took a pair of tweezers and tried to peel/pick off as much of the dried on nail polish around my nails off. After that I used my regular angle brush, which is now dead, RIP, and tried to clean up as much as I could of what was left of the non-needed polish. I have found that black nail polish, whether it's this one or any other, is a PAIN to clean off because it seems to just never want to go away. That's my own personal view on it though. Either way, it was all totally worth it because 1. I've been pretty uncreative the last couple of years in terms of my nails, and 2. Do you see how it looks in the sun?

"Blue Funk" by Studio M

Imagine me rummaging through 4 drawers of nail polish, completely unorganized, sifting, sifting, sifting when....BAM! The heavens open and here is this beautiful bottle of blue nail polish that has only been used once or maybe twice in its entire life that it's been in my possession.

Source

Ha..I'm funny right? Yes okay, onward! I feel so bad when I neglect my bottles of nail polish and this is how "Blue Funk" made me feel (I apologized profusely). I'm pretty sure I bought this bottle at my local Meijer and if I remember correctly, I knew that this one a bottle I HAD to get. It's such an amazing shade of blue, dark but not too dark, and it goes on so well. It makes me think about those nice, gooey caramel..anything actually, but it just flows so well onto the nail. One coat probably would have been good enough but I safely stay with two coats because I like when a nail polish is opaque rather than sheer and see through. Clean up was a little bit of a pain I have to say but I'm thinking that was in part because of my cuticles (which are kind of horrible) and that my current bottle of nail polish remover isn't exactly that clear. Either way, I definitely recommend this nail polish especially if you love the color blue as much as I do. I also recommend the brand, Studio M, because, for one, it doesn't cost you $9 per bottle, they're pretty cheap, and their nail polish isn't crappy, goes on well, and who doesn't love those factors combined?

Of course the color is 5 million times better in real life but since I haven't been able to completely capture the true colors of blues, purples, and pinks yet with my Canon, I had to do slight editing in Photoshop. But don't let your judgment of my (hopefully not a huge pile of fail) photos stop you from looking into this AMAZING color! Until next time my amazing, funny, smart, beautiful, awesome as all hell, readers! <3

"Damsel" by JulieG and "Experimental Rocket" by Varnish Vixen

I love getting my Ipsy bags every month especially when they come with a new bottle of nail polish because..I love nail polish right? In my April bag I got this bottle of JulieG nail polish which I've never heard of before but I was really surprised at how thick and well it goes on and covers. I got a nice shad of pink that I really liked and of course I decided to try it out rather than sift through my unsorted collection to find a color I wanted to try. Since I haven't really done anything fancy or somewhat different than just plain nails, I threw some "Experiemental Rocket" from Varnish Vixen on my accent nail. I know I've posted about Experimental Rocket before which I had gotten on Etsy a while back and I sadly don't believe that the store is open/around on Etsy anymore. This makes me extremely sad because I love the color.

I'd also like to point out that it was kind of hard to really capture the in real life (IRL) color and hopefully I can work on that! I retook my original photos a day or so later since the weather decided to not be raining and all that along with some Photoshop retouching so thankfully I was able to make it look less pink purple and more pink. Oh and that's right! I decided to add some nice silver rhinestones (oh how I love me some bling!) on my accent nail and I think it adds a little flare.

The JulieG nail polish went on really well and I'm pretty sure that I could have only used one coat but I always like to do 2 coats just in case. It went on really smoothly covering all parts of my nail and added with a top coat, it just looked even more slick and smooth. I was really impressed with this nail polish especially coming from a brand that I haven't heard of before. This is one that I would definitely recommend to others to try although I'm not exactly sure how much a bottle costs in a store.

Sorry this was, obviously, taken a little shaky. My bad!