Before & After: Cloudy Grapes

Hello!!

With this post I'm going a little bit out of my comfort zone again, with a milky glitter. These aren't my favorite type of glitters, but this one just called to me. This is The Polish Bar Cloudy Skies, a soft lilac creme base with purple and white glitters ranging from eensy-beensy to medium-large:

The Polish Bar Cloudy Skies, artificial light

Back when my cuticles were really bad, please just focus on the polish...>.<

I wanted to embrace the play of the white mixed into this polish, so I decided to go for an image normally associated with purple, but stamped with white; so I used images from Bundle Monster BM05 and Red Angel RA115, with Konad White polish:

I love that this stamping lets the base polish shine through, despite being a bold set of images. I should also say that I loved this polish because it applied so beautifully, it was like it didn't even have glitter in it. :)

Thanks for taking a look; tomorrow I'll be bringing you a design straight from the 1970s...:)

Hugs and love,
M.

Before & After: Quilt Envy

Hello!!

Today's challenge prompt is to try a technique you haven't tried before. I've been wanting to try a legitimate stab at quilted nails, but haven't had the chance (although I did do that one cheat with stamping). So I've given it a shot today.

I started out with a base of Ulta Envy, which turned out to be a very rich evergreen; I don't know why I keep being surprised when Ulta polishes turn out to be very nice, I guess it's because of the $2 sale price, lol, and it just goes to show you don't have to pay a lot to get good quality polish:

Ulta Envy

Then I put down nail tape in criss-crosses, trying to keep the grid as straight as possible. I decided only to do it on the accent nail, and do a sort of French-y thing on the others with the nail tape and sponging. Then I sponged over with The Polish Bar's Jasmine, a sweet shimmer polish with a bit of iridescent glitter:

Ulta Envy + The Polish Bar Jasmine

All quilted and cozy. :)

Because Jasmine already has glitters in it, I didn't put anything at the cross-points of the quilting. I do like this look, and it's fairly easy--the hardest part is getting the nail tape to be spaced evenly, but that's easy enough with a little patience. I also really like these two polishes together, and am going to add them to my list of cool combinations to work with in the future. :)

Thanks for looking, I hope you like it! Please check out the other manicures from the challenge prompt, linked below. :)

Xoxox,
M.