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?

Memorial Day Weekend Nails

Hope you all had a great and safe Memorial Day weekend! I know I did and my was it a busy one! Did some relaxing of course, had a couple of BBQs, bonfire with my best friends, and sadly now it's all over and back to work! I had two different nail looks this past weekend though they weren't very festive rather I just picked a couple colors out that I liked and popped out. At the beginning of the weekend I chose to go with one of my favorite colors from Pure Ice, "Getting Gorgeous." With blue being on of my favorite colors it's not a surprise, to me at least, that it's on my favorites list. However if you do look pretty closely at "Getting Gorgeous" and OPI's "DS Magic" they look almost alike but I feel that they're just a bit different. At first glance you might think that it's just a blue nail polish but if you look closely you're able to notice purple flecks mixed in with the blue. I'm highly fascinated with this color and it is so much better in the sun though it was sadly hard to capture through the lens of my camera phone (sigh).

My second nail polish look of the weekend was "Warhol" from the Color Club Poptastic collection which I'm not sure when it came out but I do know that I go all but one of the colors from the collection at Ross Dress for Less store. This color is like a hot pink but is a bit darker of a tone and since I haven't done any neon or super bright colors lately, I went for this one! I usually do two thicker coats and top it off with my top coat and it's pretty solid after that!

Halo Hues 2013 Throwback

Yesterday I was deciding what I should do with my nails and I had this great idea of doing tips with just rhinestones. Though it was a great idea until I went and tried actually to execute my plan, well let's say it probably wouldn't have worked out too well. So I stuck with the doing my tips idea and grabbed Color Club's "Eternal Beauty" and my round brush from Sally Beauty Supply to scult my tip color.

 

You may or may not be able to tell from this picture but I get very OCD and focused when I'm doing just tips on my nails. I always start of with 1 coat going in a semi arch/curve with the nail polish and farther down than where I'll sculpt the lines to. I like doing this because then I can make the thickness of the tip thinner if I want to instead of having to add more polish for them to be thicker. With my brush, I dip into my acetone and I switch off from starting in the middle of my nail or on one of the sides and move my brush in an arch/curving motion. It takes a little bit of time to get the extra nail polish off, but it's definitely worth it in the end! Instead of doing 1 coat on both hands, I'll do my left hand first, take the extra off, and then repeat that on my right hand. It let's the nail polish dry and at the same time it lowers the risk or smudging! After I've done both hands, I'll go back and do the same thing again with a second coat of polish but instead of having extra, I try to stay in the curved line of what I previously did. That way you can follow the same line you created to get some of the extra polish off. If anybody would like me to do (but more like attempt) a video on how I do this, just let me know in the comments below! 

Since it's quite gloomy out today and was yesterday, here's an indoor photo with flash so you can all see the holographic goodness! Now I have stated in the title of this post that it's a throwback of some of the Halo Hues 2013 and I will go ahead and show you those! These are previous manicures that I've done with some of the nail polishes from the collection and some I personally find awesome! First up is one of the first manis I did after I got the set in the mail which was a gradient with "Eternal Beauty" and "Over The Moon." 

 This is the gradient mani in my room which doesn't have that great of lighting but you can still see how the gradient goes from purple to blue holographic from top to bottom. The holographic aspect of the polish is still visible indoors but you should see it when you're outside and the sun is shining! HOLY HOLO-GOODNESS. 

I just can't get over how awesomely holographic these polishes are! Every time I wear any one of them I always get comments and people freaking out about how awesome they are. These polishes are definitely ones that I like to wear a lot even if when I'm cleaning up they get holographic over my fingers. Can't be too sparkly now can you? Next up in the line of throwbacks is my mani using "Miss Bliss" and added some splatter on one full nail and half another nail. "Miss Bliss" is a nice pink holographic and of course, another one that I love. Honestly, I'm not sure how anybody couldn't like these holographic nail polishes when they go on great and well, let's just say they're quite badass.

Before I added the splatter, I just did 2 coats of "Miss Bliss" and put a top coat on them since it would take a lot longer for them to dry without one. This is indoors in my bedroom, again, and without any flash. You can see the holographic and then here's one with the flash on.

Here is the mani with the flash on my camera which shows a very rainbow effect! It's crazy how different the no flash and flash photos are from one another. Now onto the splatter! 

In my next photo, I used "Beyond" and just had to get creative and throw some rhinestones on there! I definitely had a good handful of time where I was rhinestone everything! This is a great black holographic and definitely shines like the others. I also got some up-close macro shots of some of the nails as well, which macros are pretty sweet. 

  

Well this concludes my post for now! I haven't really experimented with the other halo hues (I know I'm bad) but I shall do that soon and post some more about it!