Nail Art August Day 9: Bold

I won't lie, I had a little bit of difficulty figuring out what to do for this challenge. Bold to me is anything that pops. At first I thought neon, then I thought maybe colour blocking or some sort of design, like a tape mani, that would be really drastic. But I wasn't happy with either of those ideas. Bold to me also means contrast. So, having fairly light skin I decided to go with a really dark colour. 

I recently purchased OPI - Ink and now was the perfect time to use it! I obviously couldn't do just a solid colour so I chose to add some rhinestones. I've used these triangle rhinestones before (purchased from the Born Pretty Store) on my Taylor Swift Nails. In that mani I placed the rhinestones at the base of my nails, this time I placed them at the tips for an extra claw-like look. 

You may have realized I love simple manis, and yes, I absolutely adored this one. Normally I'd put a top coat on after the rhinestones but I knew I would be taking this mani off very soon so I put the rhinestones on top of the top coat. 

Aren't those rhinestones just gorgeous?!

Ink looks a little dark in the picture above, but IRL you can really see the duochrome flakies or whatever is in that bottle. I have no idea, all I know is it's magical. Ink is very similar to another OPI polish I own, called Russian Navy. RN is also a navy blue with pink glitter. The difference is that RN is a blackened navy blue and the glitter is very slight, whereas Ink is a bit more jelly (though opaque in two coats) with significantly noticeable pink flakes/glitter. I originally had a picture holding the two bottles together but it came out blurry :( 

I'm kind of loving this hand pose lately... 

Ink sure is a beauty! 

I felt like a bit of a witch with this mani... first of all because I have pointy nails but even more so because the triangle rhinestones accent the pointy nails. I really felt like I had claws! 

XO Natasha 

Taylor Swift: Red Tour

My friends and I are going to see Taylor Swift today! It'll be my first time seeing her, so I'm really excited. I'm also super excited to see Ed Sheeran. Of course, I had to paint my nails RED seeing as that's the name of her tour. I don't have many reds, my favourite is by OPI, called Comet Loves Cupid. I've had it forever and I think it's just a beautiful, classic red. My mom recently bought me another red though, by Essie, called Catwalk. It's got the slightest bit of silver shimmer in it, and it's a little darker and more fuchsia than my OPI red. 

I didn't want to have just plain nails so I decided to add some accents, using my new triangle rhinestones which are plain silver (or clear). I placed one triangle at the base of each of my nails near my cuticles, pointing out so as to accentuate my (sort of) almond nails. As my nails grow out I'm continuing to file them and bring out the almond shape again! 

I really love how this look turned out, and I love my rhinestones. Essie - Catwalk did not photograph correctly on my nails, it's a little darker and more fuchsia IRL. It looks like the photograph of the bottle below. 

Check out these beauties! 

This is a look I want to try out again, with a different colour, and possibly more rhinestones on each nail, or different placements of the rhinestones. 

What are your favourite things to do with rhinestones? 

XO Natasha 

Manicures for Friends!

My friends are pretty damn lucky that they have me to constantly keep their nails pretty... 

I did this for one of my friends. She LOVES glitter and couldn't stop staring at her nails! I used her silver CND Shellac polish as the base and put China Glaze - Nova on top. It worked well for a couple days... but since polish and shellac don't really work together too well it peeled a bit on a couple fingers. Nova was great to work with at first but like all heavy glitter polishes, it got super thick fairly quick.

This was done for my other friend. It's a nice way to jazz up a plain skittle mani! The teal colour used was Essie - Turquoise & Caicos. I used this for the thumb and middle finger, and dot on the pinky. The white on the first finger and pinky is a random brand from a random store. It has great coverage which I really like cause that's sometimes hard to find with whites! The base on the ring finger is NOPI - Positive Energy. For the thumb, the glitter gradient was created using Orly - Tiara. The dots on the pointer finger are NOPI - Look At Me, Look At Me. On the middle finger, there's some subtle holographic flakies, Zoya - Opal. The glitter on the ring finger is CG - Nova, I used two coats. The dot on the pinky, like I said, was the Essie polish, and then I placed a 1.5mm rhinestone (purchased on eBay) in the centre.