2013 Holiday Nails #2

I love this Holiday color from OPI.  It's called Wondrous Star and it's from the 2013 Mariah Carey Holiday collection.  It features a micro glitter base that is somewhere between silver and gold with chunky black glitter throughout.  Love the formula and the outcome!

Shot of the Day: 2013 Halloween Nails #4

This is one of my favorite looks I've done so far this season:

For this look, I used 'Where Art Renoir?' by Finger Paints, which is a really smooth, creamy formula with fine silver glitter.  I stamped with a Sally Hansen white.

Pretty witchy, right?

Shot of the Day: 2013 Halloween Nails #3

Ok so technically this is more of an El Dia de los Muertos look, but it definitely works for the season!

By the way, this base color is 'Iconic Orange' by Finger Paints.  See more swatches here.

Shot of the Day: 2013 Halloween Nails #2

In keeping with the Halloween spirit, I've been incorporating a lot of Halloween-themed nail art lately, so for the next couple of day I'll be posting pictures of those.  Here's from a day where I went a little stamp crazy...

If you can't see the designs clearly enough (sorry for the poor photo quality...I was having camera and lighting issues) the images include: A haunted house, a spider, a cloud of bats, "boo!," and two tombstones.  I added America Apparel's Glow in the Dark top coat, and it really enhanced the green and gave the polish more of a matte finish.

The kids at the library loved these when I went to work, by the way!  Of course, they didn't get to see the glow-in-the-dark effect, but still...I am loving getting to do all these Halloween manis.

Shot of the Day: 2013 Halloween Nails #1

Here are my first Halloween nails of the season!

For this look, I used two of the images from Cheeky's Happy Holidays Jumbo Plate.  They stamped perfectly and I got a lot of compliments at work!  What do you think?

Shot of the Day: Sinful Colors "High Strung" + Stamping

For this look  I used "High Strung" from Sinful Colors and stamped with China Glaze's "Liquid Leather," which is my favorite black stamping polish.

For the accent nails, I used "Clearly Spotted" from the Maybelline Color Show Polka Dots collection

Shot of the Day: Teal and Roses Stamped Mani

Here's the teal base I used for this look (by Finger Paints).  The second one is in brighter lighting:

And here's the look with the roses stamped in black by Forever 21:

The stamp really darkened the color, but I really enjoyed this mani and got a lot of compliments on it!

Shot of the Day: Gatsby Inspired Nails

Have you all seen the new Gatsby movie yet?  I haven't had a chance so far, but I'm a big fan of the book!  Anyway, I am loving all the Gatsby nail trends I'm seeing these days, so I thought I'd do a Great Gatsby manicure of my own! I wanted something very deco but also super sparkly, so I used Urban Outfitters Smokin as my base color:

This picture doesn't do it justice.  This polish is so glittery and sparkly, and it keeps that wet look, which really makes it shimmer in certain lights.  It usually looks like this champagne-gold color, but in certain fluorescent lights it looks more silver.  This polish also had one of the best applications of any glitter I've ever used, so guess what I did!  I went back to Urban Outfitters and bought a bunch more of their glitter polishes.

For my Deco stamp, I used Winstonia plate W111, which applied really well!  This black is probably my favorite black stamping color and it's from the Forever 21 Red Carpet Kit.

This photo was taken under fluorescent lights, and it definitely looks more silver here than gold.  I got so many compliments on this manicure, and it really popped with the black and gold accent jewelry I wore.

For this look, I used OPI Nail Envy as a base coat and Seche Vite as a top coat.  So what do you think?  Pretty fancy, huh?

Shot of the Day: Forever 21 Neon Polish and Stamping

I recently went on a shipping trip and came home with two nail polish sets from Forever 21: The Red Carpet Kit and the Summer Lovin' Kit.  I love them both so much! I was really surprised by the quality, especially considering that these kits are only $6.80 apiece!!  Here's a couple of swatches of the Highlighter Yellow color from the Summer Lovin' Kit:

My friend Cameron is a local artist here in Knoxville, and he was quite interested in my new stamping plates, so he decided to decorate my nails for me.  Some of the designs are from stamps, others are free-hand.  Here are a few pics from our epic nail art session:

Pretty awesome, huh? We used all kinds of stamps so I couldn't keep track of the plates we used, but I believe they all came from my MASH 26-50 Stamps and my Winstonia Plates.

Stamping Success with MASH 26-50 Plates

If you follow Polish off the Bottle on Facebook and Twitter, then you know that I have been super pumped about getting started with nail stamping.  Well, my MASH 26-50 Plates arrived last week along with my Konad double ended stamper, and I have been having a ball!  It's a much easier process than I thought it would be, and there is so much variety you can do with your manicure.  I feel like I'm an all-star nail artist now thanks to nail stamping.

So my first attempt wasn't perfect, but I wanted to try a small design instead of a full pattern first just to get used to the application process.  Here's a pic from my first nail stamp manicure attempt: