Hot Chocolate Nights

There's a story behind the title of this post. I showed my co-worker this manicure, and she immediately said that it should be called "Hot Chocolate Nights". She explained that when you pull the strings of lights out of their box each year, hot chocolate is required while you sit and untangle them. :)

The base color is A-England Dragon and I used Sinful Shine Dark Room for the wires. Not much else to say except enjoy the pretty pictures! :)

 

Belated July Tri-Polish #3

I actually did do three out of the four Tri-Polish Challenge manicures last month, but I didn't get the third one published on time, and then it just sat around on my hard drive. But it was a really fun mani and even late, here it is!

The colors last month were blue, blue, and green, for which I used Pure Ice Home Run, China Glaze Man Hunt, and A-England Dragon. This one was on a base of Milani Whitest White, I think. I just used a striping brush to make a few randomly-colored vertical stripes on each nail, then added large dots with smaller dots on top of them. I didn't have much rhyme or reason for which color, other than using a base of A-England Dragon instead of white for the accent nail...but it came out pretty awesome, IMHO!

July Tri-Polish #2 - taped mani

It's day two of July's episode of the Tri-Polish Challenge, brought to us by the wondermous Crumpet's Nail Tarts! This month's colors are blue, blue, and green, and my polishes are Pure Ice Home Run, China Glaze Man Hunt, and A-England Dragon.

I have long admired the crisp lines of a tape manicure, but I find the tape itself to be so fiddly that I seldom have the patience for it. But it pops up in my head frequently, and you can see how often it gets pinned to my Pinterest board. I finally made myself just sit down and do it. I love the results!!

There's really not  much else to say about this manicure, so on with the pictures, and be sure to check out everybody else's Tri-Polish entries at the bottom of the post!

July Tri-Polish #1 - flowers and dots

It's that time of the month again! What? No, wait, I mean for the Tri-Polish Challenge from Crumpet's Nail Tarts!! What time of month did you think I meant? Never mind.

This month's colors are blue, blue, and green, and I chose Pure Ice Home Run, China Glaze Man Hunt, and my new favorite green, A-England Dragon! I know Home Run is kind of a turquoise/aqua/half-green-half-blue color, but it looks blue to me, and that's what counts, yes? That and it looks really good with the other two colors, and it's a new polish in my stash, which always gets preferential treatment.

Without further ado, my first manicure of the July session of the Tri-Polish Challenge!

Were there trumpets? There should have been trumpets. Fanfare of some kind, anyway. Heh. Seriously, I really liked the way this one came out. My inspiration for the ring fingers was a manicure by Radi D:

I wasn't paying attention and my flowers weren't as close to the tip as hers, and left no room for the pretty ribbons, but that's okay, because they still came out gorgeous in my opinion.

I used Milani Whitest White for the white flowers and Sinful Shine Dark Room for the black outlines. And that's really all that can be said about the manicure, so enjoy the picture spam, and scroll down to see all the other entries for today's Tri-Polish!

Framed Dragon

My most recent package from my polish exchange group actually made me squeal OUT LOUD when I opened up one of the polishes. This has been on my wishlist for nearly as long as I've had one, really. From one of the first indie polish makers (I didn't even realize they were an independent polish maker when I first got into nail art!), I received A-England's Dragon. I really did make my entire family laugh at me because I was opening up each of these pretty polishes in their little bubble wrap bags, and I opened this one up and my first thought was, "Oh, that's pretty!" and then I turned the bottle and realized it was A-England...I checked the label and squealed. Fairly loudly, I'm sure. And then I was jumping up and down like a six-year-old (I have one, so I know whereof I speak!) yelling, "I got DRAGON! I got DRAGON!!" And you know what? It didn't disappoint. In the slightest.

My photography skills just don't live up to the glorious beauty of this polish, so I have to share a picture from The Swatcoholic:

It really is this glorious in real life, especially in sunlight. I tried, but could not capture the beautiful shimmer or the holographic glimmers that made me wiggle my nails off and on all day just to see the sparkles.

I added some swirls with OPI Live and Let Die, and highlighted it with swirls and dots of Sally Hansen Celeb City, and my thumbnails used just dots down the center as accent nails.

Raggio di Luna's manicure here was the inspiration for the design, but I just looked through my Nail Art board on Pinterest to find a design that I could use to highlight Dragon in all its fiendishness.