I've got the blues

Julie G Dance in the Dark gives me the blues. Why? Because it's blue.

Now many of you may not think that's such a bad thing. Honestly I wouldn't think it a bad thing either except that I thought I was getting a purple polish when I bought it. Really, it appeared to be a blue-leaning purple in the store but when I started applying it all I got was blue. Blue blue BLUE.

I suppose it's not a bad blue but it wasn't what I was expecting at all :(

That isn't my camera turning it blue. It really is a deep, vibrant blue. This is two coats, taken in full sun.

Obviously I wasn't happy with with the color so I topped it with Essie Shine of the Times.

Sparkles are usually a sure-fire way to cheer up :)

Team Dyan Manicure

Hooray for snow days! That means I get to post this mani a day earlier than I was originally planning :D I'm especially happy because this mani is in honor of a very special young lady named Dyan. Late last year Dyan had a serious medical emergency but every day she is getting better and stronger. Her and her mother have an incredible determination to overcome the obstacles that have been placed before them that I have found very inspiring. And so, when a group of polish lovers, bloggers and non-bloggers alike, came up with the idea of doing special manis in honor of her I immediately started brainstorming ideas.

When I found out that Dyan loves the color blue I decided this would be the perfect opportunity to use my bottle of Sinful Colors Ciao Bella that I bought for my 4th of July mani last year. This is two coats, no top coat:

Please excuse my lack of cleanup here, there's a bit of layering to come yet.

I love this shade of blue but I'm not sure it really works well on me so I grabbed my bottle of Liquid Euphoria Euphoric and layered one coat over Ciao Bella:

Unfortunately my camera just couldn't capture the true beauty of this polish. Such a magnificent blue/green/teal shift! Next I created a gradient with Jesse's Girl Glee:

At certain angles you couldn't even tell the difference between the areas with the gradient and those without but I managed to get a photo at the right angle to see it. At this point I finally put a topcoat on so I could start with the stamping. I used one of my newest frankens, Orchid Wine, to stamp with Mash plate M-25, then I layered Mash plate M23 over it with OPI DS Classic.

Best shot of the DS Classic stamping I could get

I love how the final results of this mani turned out and I hope Dyan likes it as well. May you have a swift road to recovery, Dyan!

In case you haven't seen them, here are a few more Team Dyan manis:

On Pretty and Polished

On Rebecca Likes Nails

On Sonoma Nail Art

On Polish Ninja

On Dressed up Digits

On Good Lack, Nail!

Crowned

Hurray for the weekend! This means I once again have time for my blog and all of you, my wonderful readers! Speaking of which, don't forget to enter my 200 Follower Giveaway if you haven't done so yet! It's only running until the 18th of December so you don't have much more time!

So, what have I got to show you today you might ask? Well, I'm rather . . . happy isn't really quite the right word . . . satisfied, that's it, I'm satisfied with the results of this. I decided to try a bit of polish layering. I used to be really big on layering back in high school (do not ask how long ago that was >.>) and decided to try my hand at it again. So recently I've been experimenting and this is one of my more successful experiments.

I started with Sinful Colors What's Your Name:

Next I brushed one coat of Jesse's Girl on each of my nails and put a second coat on my thumbs and ring finger nails:

 Shade

Sun

Next I used Sinful Colors Out of This World to put one vertical stripe down each of my nails and a second, horizontal, stripe across each nail that had two coats of Breathless. To finish the design I used a stencil and Out of This World to create a crown on the middle of each thumb nail:

And of course I finished it all up with Out the Door topcoat.

More Holo

Ok, I'm going through a bit of sunlight withdrawal what with getting up before sunrise and getting home at sunset and not being able to get enough time with the sun to be able to get decent photos for my blog. Guess it's time to pull out some of the older mani's I didn't post about this summer. Namely those with holographic polish.

This time around I have a lovely example of creative layering. I was attempting to use Jesse's Girl Confetti, a lovely purple-blue glass fleck polish . . . also a very SHEER polish. After hardly any coverage with two coats I gave up and applied Milani Hi-Res, then another coat of Confetti (just to get that blue shimmer over the holo), and of course I topped it with Out the Door top coat (if you haven't figured it out yet, I use OTD over everything).

Natural light

Full sun

Full sun with water lilly

One of these days I will do a full swatch of JG Confetti, if only to see how many coats it takes to actually achieve full coverage with it.