Zoya Blaze and Shimmer Polish Irene + loose glitter and striping tape nail art!

Happy Wednesday everyone! Sorry I've been absent so far this week - I just started a new job (well, returned to an old job actually) and I haven't had time to post during lunch like I usually do and have been too busy at night as well somehow. UGH. I still don't have much time for a post this AM but I really wanted to show y'all these so I'm gonna make it quick!

Earlier this week I wore Zoya Blaze for a day by itself and then the next day I added some art to it. I have to tell you guys, as in love as I am with Zoya Aurora, Blaze is a very close second. I usually don't even like wearing red that much but I was just in love with this polish.

This is three coats with a coat of Seche Vite. Two coats made it opaque but I wanted to see if three would make it a little richer/make me drool a little more. It did.

The teeny sparkly particles are actually holographic, which my camera doesn't understand very well apparently. Rest assured this polish is WAY prettier IRL, I couldn't stop staring at my nails. Another thing I like a lot about it is that sometimes it pulled true red on me and sometimes it pulled a more rich berry sort of shade. Sigh... in love.

When I decided to add some art to it I had a hard time figuring out what I wanted to do. Red is hard to embellish without looking festive (at least to me) so it took me a while to settle on these designs. I tried a couple other designs on my thumb and middle finger and hated them (I don't even remember what they were haha) so I took them off and started over. Here's the final result!

I used loose hex glitter from Born Pretty Store to make the patterns on my thumb and middle finger and the gradient on my pinkie. I placed them by licking the pointy end of an orange stick and using it to pick up the glitter and put them on my nail while my polish was still wet. On the nails that were already dry from the day before I added a thin coat of Gelous and placed the glitter on that instead.

My pointer and ring finger were done by placing striping tape in the patterns I wanted, covering them with a thick coat of Shimmer Polish Irene, and removing the tape while it was still wet. I love Irene - it's very similar to China Glaze I'm Not Lion, which as you guys know is one of my favorites EVER. I can't get enough finely-milled glitter, especially for nail art. The thing that sets it apart from I'm Not Lion (in addition to a lighter/slightly more silvery color) is the fact that it also has tiny blue glitter in it, which I didn't even notice until I was wearing it. Love u, Shimmer Polish.

That's all for today! What do you guys think of these? When I first finished them I wasn't sure about them but then decided I liked them a lot. I think they look rich and sort of elegant without looking festive. I also love these two polishes and I always love glitter so I'm sure that doesn't hurt!

You can buy Shimmer Polish on Etsy and I got my loose hex glitter from Born Pretty Store (you can use my code CLJ61 for 10% off your order too!)

Disclosure: Some of the products in this post were provided for review.

Early Valentine's Day heart nail art with Nail Candy pens

Happy Friday, everyone! I finally managed to do my nails last night and I'm excited about showing y'all! A week or so ago I was contacted by Caroline from Nail Candy to see if I'd be interested in reviewing some of their nail art pens. I immediately said yes because I've never tried nail art pens and I've always wanted to. She sent me two of their sets - Love Letter, which is a special set for Valentine's Day, and Be Brave. I'm gonna show y'all the Love Letter set today!

This set comes with 4 colors - neon pink with a blue iridescent shine, iridescent white, bubblegum pink, and candy-apple red. None of the colors have names but I've swatched them in that order. You can unscrew the whole top of each color to use the regular nail polish brush, or pop the cap off to use the pen nib. You can also unscrew the colors from one another and stand them on their ends for easy polishing if you are using the brush.

This is three coats of each color and the formula was pretty good. It was a bit streaky on the first and second coat but a third coat evened everything out nicely. The only color that gave me some trouble was the white - it's very brush-strokey, which you can see in the pictures even though I applied it very carefully to try to avoid brushstrokes. These swatches are without topcoat, and I'm sure the brush-strokey-ness would be alleviated somewhat with the addition of topcoat.

My favorite colors are easily the iridescent pink and the red. They're both beautiful!

The pen nib is quite tiny and precise. This picture compares the nib with my two most-used brushes and as you can see it's smaller than both of them.

Since this is a Valentine's Day themed set, I wanted to do some Valentine's-y nail art with them!

This was actually the second time I tried these pens on my actual nails. The first time was a pretty abysmal failure and I disliked the result so much that I took them off that night and vowed that no one would ever lay eyes upon them haha.

There is a bit more of a learning curve to nail art pens than I suspected and this is is mostly due to one thing (at least for me): if you use them on freshly-painted nails, you can't actually touch the tip to your nails (as you would if you were drawing on paper) because it dents/drags the wet polish. You have to hover the pen just over the nail while squeezing the polish out and at least for me that makes it difficult to get nice even lines.

For this second try at the pens I thought I'd be clever and topcoat my nails and let them dry before using the pens so I would be able to actually touch my nails with them. Unfortunately for me I picked a very slow-drying base color - China Glaze Sea Spray - and my impatience wouldn't allow me to wait more than 10 minutes before starting in on the art bit. I don't know what it is about Sea Spray (and its sister, Pelican Gray) but they are both very slow-drying colors, even with Seche Vite.

I decided to go for it anyway.

As you can see, these still aren't perfect, but they are WORLDS better than my first attempt. I started to get the hang of using the pens the longer I spent on my nails and I'm happy with how these came out.

I think these pens are good quality; they seem well-made, the colors are pretty, and they were even thoughtful enough to attach a tiny little wire nib cleaner to each pen in case the nibs get clogged (none of mine did).

I only have two complaints. The first is that I wish the colors were a little more opaque - I had to go over a few lines more than once, which was kind of irritating, but it's also a problem I mostly had with the white pen, which I suppose is to be expected.

My main complaint is that the polish tends to flow from the nib even when you aren't squeezing the pen, which would be fine except that I had problems with it flowing out too fast for me to control and it ended up making some of my lines lumpy and thick. I don't know if this is a problem with all nail pens or if this is specific to this brand (or even these specific pens I received), but it definitely made them more difficult to use, at least for me. I also got occasional bubbles coming out of the nib ends, which was irritating.

Unfortunately, I don't own any other nail pens, so I can't compare these to others in terms of the things I don't like about them. I may never love nail pens as much as I love my little brushes, but I'm excited to try them again and keep working on my skills with them!

Here's a special BONUS SHOT of my right hand - I had been eyeballing Floss Gloss Perf all night while I was doing my nails and finally decided to just give in and put it on my right hand. It's a gorgeous color and I love it even more combined with a glitter gradient and accent nail in Floss Gloss Stun.

That's all for today! Have you guys ever tried nail art pens? What do you think about them? If you own a brand other than these, do you have a problem with the polish coming out on its own or air bubbles coming out? I thought the pens would be so easy to use but I was wrong haha. They definitely have a bigger learning curve than I thought they would, but I want to try using them on dry nails one day and see if that makes a difference to me.

You can purchase Nail Candy pens on their website. They also have a list of other retailers on there!

Have a great weekend, you guys!

Disclosure: Some of the products in this post were provided to me for an honest review. All opinions expressed are my own and in no way influenced by anyone else.

Pure Ice Velvet polishes - Blue Midnight, Touch Me Softly, and Femme Fatale

Hey my lovahs! Uhhh so I was anticipating a ~*~super cool week of cool nail things~*~ for you guys but then I have been unexpectedly busy or exhausted every night and the one design I did do on Monday night I hated and took off immediately so you guys will probably never see that. ANYWAY, I will hopefully have time to do some nail paintin' tonight and have an arty post for y'all tomorrow, but for today I wanted to go ahead and post something that's been sitting in my drafts for a while - swatches of three of the Pure Ice velvet polishes!

I've worn all of these at some point over the last couple months and I was basically in love with them. The formula on all of them was basically identical so to avoid repeating myself like a weirdo I'll just say it all RIGHT NOW.

Application is fairly easy but you have to be quick because they dry like lightning. I used two fast coats for each polish and that's all they needed. Cleanup was a breeze and wear time isn't too bad - I think I got a full day of wear out of each of them even without topcoat and if you aren't as hard on your nails/don't wear lotion under your polish like I do you could probably get a couple days out of them at least.

The first one is Pure Ice Blue Midnight!

Blue Midnight is a deep blue velvet/suede polish. God it's so pretty.

Next is Pure Ice Touch Me Softly.

Touch Me Softly is a pinkish-purple velvet/suede polish. It's a touch darker than these pictures make it look, but every bit as pretty!

And finally we have Pure Ice Femme Fatale.

Femme Fatale is a deep hunter green, I wore this around Christmas and it was the perfect festive holiday green to me. Out of all three of the velvets I got this one has the least amount of silvery shimmer but I still think it's loverly.

Alrighty, that's all for today! What do you guys think of these? Did you pick up any of the velvet polishes when Pure Ice released all those awesome new shades? I wish I had gotten more than 3, I've checked several Walmarts since I picked these up and have never been able to find any others which makes me very sad because I LOVE THEM.

Shimmer Polish Carol with some blue triangle nail art!

Hey loves! I've been kind of a slacker about blogging for the last week or so but I'm back! I'm gonna hopefully make up for my absence by showing y'all a few cool things this week, starting with Shimmer Polish Carol.

I just have to tell you guys right off the bat that I'm basically in love with this polish. My sister and I said that it looked like a beach in a bottle the first time we saw it and after wearing it I still think that. Carol is a gorgeous little thing composed of blue, copper, and gold hex glitter and microglitter, and (I think) some dark brown or black microglitter and hex glitter as well. It is seriously stunning.

These pictures show two and a half-ish coats with two coats of Seche Vite. It was opaque in 2 coats but I added another thin coat since I was taking pictures of it and I'm a perfectionist. It's a bit of a hungry glitter but not too bad and application was perfect. I have no complaints!

I wore Carol on her own for a couple days and then decided to spice her up with a little bit of nail art. I recently received a set of detailing brushes for review from Born Pretty Store and I was excited to try them out so that was an added bonus.

The set comes with four brushes in sizes 0, 00, 000, and 0000 (from smallest to largest).

I took the above picture to compare the brush sizes. From left to right the brushes are 0, 00, 000, 0000, and my small cut-down detailing brush that I usually use. The detailing brush I'm used to is a lot smaller than the ones from the BPS set, so I was a little nervous about trying these brushes.

I also did a quick comparison of line thickness using each brush. From left to right the lines were made using brush 0, 00, 0000, 000 (I messed up the order when I was doing the test lines haha), and my original detailing brush.

Since I'm used to such a tiny brush I decided to try the smallest one in the Born Pretty set (0). I didn't like it at first only because it was thicker than what I was used to, but after a couple minutes I got the feel for it and started liking it a lot.

Originally I was going to do some sort of wave-like shapes on my nails since this polish reminds me so much of the beach, but then my hand just started painting triangles (all on its own) so I went with it.

The triangles were all freehanded with the size-0 brush from the Born Pretty set using China Glaze Hanging in the Balance, which I wanted to use with Carol because it's almost the identical color of the blue glitters. Also because I am having a bit of a love affair with it.

I did this as sort of a quickie design on Sunday afternoon and planned to take it off and paint my nails again later that night, but I ended up liking it so much I just left it! Something about the rich blue creme on top of the insanely sparkly glitter just really makes me happy, and I'm sure you guys know how much I love some triangles.

Even though I was nervous about using a slightly bigger brush than I was used to, I got the hang of it pretty quickly and I can say I'm really happy with these brushes. I will probably cut down a couple of them to see what they're like that way too! The quality of the brushes also seems nice - they seem sturdy and well-made and the shape is perfect. I can't speak to longevity since I just started using them but if I remember to I'll give you guys a progress report in a few months.

I had been wearing Hanging in the Balance on its own on my right hand while I was wearing Carol on my left, so I decided to do some glitter gradients too! Carol gradated beautifully and as you can see on my ring finger it also makes a lovely layering polish (that's one coat over HITB). I'm smitten with the way this glitter looks in gradient form.

LOOK! I also took a macro(ish) bottle shot of Carol to show you guys! This polish seriously has so much going on that it's kind of impossible to see in pictures, much less try to describe, so I wanted to try to do it a bit more justice with a bottle shot. I don't have a macro lens but I took a pic anyway and then cropped it close and I think it looks almost as nice as a real macro! I hope so anyway...

WHEW. That was a BIG POST for me to start this week with. I hope y'all had a great weekend and I'll see you again soon!

P.S. You can find Shimmer Polish on Etsy and the listing for Carol is here. The brushes I used are from Born Pretty Store here and you can get 10% off using my code CLJ61.

Disclosure: Shimmer Polish Carol and detailing brushes were provided to me for review. All opinions are my own and are in no way influenced by anyone.

Shimmery, swirly turquoise & purple nails!

HEY GUYS! I'm back! I expected that after last week I'd probably spend most of this week NOT doing nail art, but last night when I was painting my nails I was kind of grouchy and tired and I knew that if I did a little bit of artin' that I'd probably feel a little better (I was right). So this happened!

I have a lot of new, untried, REALLY PRETTY polishes in my collection right now and I'm trying to take a break from buying polish for a while and use all of the lovely things I already have. I had a hard time last night deciding exactly what to use since my Zoyas just came in from the promo, but then I pulled out butter LONDON Two Fingered Salute and I knew that it would be at least one of the polishes I used. 

For some reason another untried color popped into my head and then it wouldn't leave - I've owned Zoya Tru since it was released last spring and I've somehow never used it because I'm awful. I finally pulled it down from the shelf because my brain wouldn't let it go and when I held it next to TFS I was sold. DONEZO, this is what we're doing.

I painted my left hand in TFS with an accent nail of Tru on my pointer finger and then did the opposite on my right hand (one of my favorite things to do btw). Two Fingered Salute is everything I wanted it to be and more. The formula is amazing, a perfect two-coater - I feel like if you did thicker coats you might even be able to get away with one, which is pretty astounding for a light color like this. The copper flecks shift to pink in the right light and man you guys this polish is just BREATHTAKING. I don't own anything like it.

The formula and general amazing-ness of Tru is on par with TFS, too - a perfect two-coater that seriously glows, especially after topcoat. It's a gorgeous medium-dark purple with this pinky-coppery-goldy shimmer that is just... it's too much. I can't believe I waited this long to use it.

After I was done painting these colors I decided to do a variation of the holiday swirl nails I did last month. I wanted my hands to match but I wasn't in the mood to spend an hour on each hand, so I kept it a little simpler with a full-swirl pattern on my first two fingers and little swirls on the rest. I used my tiny detailing brush and freehanded all the patterns without really thinking about them very hard haha.

To be honest I think I almost like this better than the full swirly nails I did... I love the sort of double-accent nails with the reverse colors and I like the way the little swirls echo the full-nail pattern without being exactly the same. The best part was that this design only took me like 15-20 minutes for each hand, which is pretty much unheard of here in Dressed Up Nails land. I think I'm gonna be doing more manicures this way in the future!

My right hand got the same treatment as my left, albeit with the color scheme reversed. The swirls are also slightly bigger and obviously not as neat - curved lines are still a bit of a challenge for me even with my dominant hand so I'm just happy that my little non-dominant hand could do this at all haha.

That's all I have for you today, my lovely friends! What do you guys think of this mani? Are you into pointer-finger accent nails and reversed color schemes on your opposite hands too? Do you own these two polishes? Because if you don't, you NEED TO.

The Digit-al Dozen Does Art day 5 - Push-inspired geometric nail art

Happy Friday everyone! We've come to the last day of the Digit-al Dozen's art week and I have to tell you guys I'm pretty freakin' relieved. I'm really proud of the work I've done this week but I realized there's a reason I usually don't do nail art every single day... it's kind of tiring and very time-consuming.

Today's nails were inspired by Los Angeles-based artist and muralist Push. I can't find their work or anything about them anywhere online except for their Instagram account, which was introduced to me by a friend of mine who said that some nails I did looked like Push's work. I really loved all their stuff so I decided what better way to finish art week than with one of my favorite Push pieces!

The specific piece that inspired these nails is here. I was super drawn to it because as y'all know I love my geometrics and I loved the addition of all the black lines. I also liked the color scheme a lot.

These nails were all done freehand using my little detailing brush and my mid-length striper. I started with a base of one coat of China Glaze White on White, which you can't see anymore (of course). Then I used my tiny detailing brush to freehand and fill in all the shapes one by one, leaving a bit of space in between each shape where the black lines would go later.

Each nail is based off a specific portion of the original painting. They wouldn't have taken as long if I had just translated the general idea of the painting to my nails but I really wanted to try to replicate it as closely as possible. Because I'm a glutton for punishment.

I used a total of 15 colors (I think) for these so I am not going to name them all out here, but if you're curious about any just ask!

After all the colored shapes were down I used my mid-length striper and American Apparel Hassid to add the black lines between the shapes and then the lines cutting through the shapes. This was the easiest part and a big relief because I had already spent A WHOLE LOT OF TIME on the rest of the design. I really think the black lines are what pull the whole design together, too.

Also, because there is no way I'll be painting my nails again for the next couple days, I bit the bullet and did my right hand too. It's not quiiiite as neat as my left but from a foot away you can't tell the difference. I'm proud of how far my left-hand painting skills have come in the last year!

Well friends, that's all I have for you today. What do y'all think of these? I'm very proud of them and they're some of my favorites I've done recently! I'm such a sucker for geometric designs and the color palette is right up my alley.

Hope you all have a great weekend and don't forget to check out the rest of the ladies' designs for the last day!

The Digit-al Dozen Does Art day 4 - floral print nail art inspired by Gustav Klimt's The Kiss

Hey everybunny! We're on day 4 of art week and today I have some floral nails to show you guys.

I've been wanting to do floral nails for a little while because it's been a long time since I've done any, and I also knew I wanted to do a set of nails based off this painting - The Kiss by Gustav Klimt - so last night I decided to combine those two urges.

The Kiss was one of my favorite paintings for a long time when I was younger and though I've since outgrown my infatuation with it, I still think it's beautiful. When I picked this painting out for inspiration I wasn't sure which portion I wanted to translate to my nails - all of them? Her dress pattern maybe? But then when I was looking at it last night I got super pumped about doing the grass and flowers bit so that's what happened!

These were so easy to do but I am so happy with the way they came out. I'm proud of how closely they resemble the painting and they're also just so pretty and fun to look at. I'm pretty sure I'll be doing these again in the future!

These started with a base of two perfect coats of Essie Mojito Madness, which is hands-down one of my favorite polishes I own. Then using Zoya Shawn (the darkest green) and Revlon Emerald, I took my little detailing brush and added some grassy bits to each nail here and there.

Finally it was time for the flowers! Eeee flowers! Still using my little detailing brush I freehanded the flowers in Essie Marathin (light dusty pink), China Glaze Purr-fect Plum (deep purpley red), China Glaze Man Hunt (dark blue), China Glaze Flyin' High (light blue), China Glaze Happy Go Lucky (yellow), and Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Sun Kissed (orange). The centers of the light blue flowers were done with China Glaze Lemon Fizz.

I painted these at my friend's house while he was painting as well and I was glad that these weren't super complicated and precise because the best light in his living room was sitting on the floor under a lamp right in front of the TV, so I didn't really have a surface to paint on except my own knee haha. Either way I really had a lot of fun doing these!

What do y'all think of these? It's been a long time since I've done florals and I forgot how fun and pretty they are! This week has been fun and challenging but man I'm pretty glad that we're almost done with this theme. Don't forget to check out what the other ladies have for today!

The Digit-al Dozen Does Art day 3 - minimalist abstract water nail art

Hey lovers, happy Wednesday! We're halfway through the week, yay! I had different plans for what I was going to do with my nails last night but I got off work slightly later than anticipated and then I went running and then I hung out with my brother for slightly longer than anticipated so by the time I got home, had dinner, cleaned up, showered, etc. it was too late for me to want to do anything complicated to my nails. Truth be told I didn't even want to paint my nails AT ALL last night but that's the good thing about having committed to this theme week... I had to paint them anyway! We're learning so much about commitment and finishing what we start here at Dressed Up Nails this week... which, believe me, is a lesson that I need much practice in.

Anyway, many of the other ladies agreed to post Pollock-inspired splatters today and I was leaning toward doing a splatter of my own but even that sounded too difficult by the time I got started on my nails. So I had an idea and asked Google Images to show me some minimalist art. PERFECT.

I found this minimalist abstract painting by Sharon Cummings called Pure Water 112 and was immediately smitten by it. The website that the image is hosted on has right-clicking disabled (smart!) so I can't include the full image of the painting, but they did have this smaller zoomed-in version that I was able to right-click and save. Check out the big version at the link, though, because it's even prettier.

I don't know what it was about this painting but as soon as I saw it I really wanted to put it on my nails. It's so organic and soothing and flowy and I just like it so much.

I started out with a base of two coats of OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls, which apparently I can't stop using. The first couple times it took me three coats but I think it thickened up a little and I did slightly thicker coats last night because I wasn't interested in taking more time than necessary. I still can't get enough of this almost-white color.

When my base color was mostly dry I used my cut-down mid-length striper brush to paint on the pattern in China Glaze Ride the Waves. Because it's a jelly it was perfect for this design. I painted wavy patterns on each nail and then went back a second, third and fourth time over parts of the pattern to darken them up - I love this effect of jellies! After all the blue I added a few thin lines in black using American Apparel Hassid.

These still took a little longer than I was anticipating since I had to go over parts of them three and four times, but the organic nature of them made them fun to do and not stressful at all... I mean not that painting my nails is really *stressful* but sometimes I get too obsessed with perfection and that bit stresses me out.

I ended up liking these more than I anticipated and they reminded me that sometimes simpler designs can be really pretty too, which was a good reminder to have! What do you guys think of these?

Don't forget to check out the other ladies' nails for today!