The Girl On Fire Nails

I’m not sure about everyone else but uh.. Fire is freaking hard to draw. However, I wanted to do my own version of the Girl on Fire nails, so I present to you fire nails for the artistically challenged!

I started with two coats of Sally Hansen Black Heart, then topped it with a coat of Essie Matte About You (which I’m quickly running out of :( ). Once that was dry I took scotch tape and cut tiny triangles out of it to make jagged zigzags/spikes. I put the tape on the back of my hand first so it’s not sticky, then I put it on my nail, painted over it with a coat of China Glaze Riveting, then I peeled the tape off before letting it dry. 

Also, how amazing are black matte nails? And Riveting is friggin’ gorgeous. I’ll do a legit review of it sometime in the future.

Essie Navigate Her

The other day when I posted 10 to Midnight I promised I'd show off Essie Navigate Her with a better picture, so here it is!

I love this green! I wish I had more pictures but unfortunately I didn't have many that turned out well.
But just look at this! It's so pretty! My boyfriend thinks cremes are boring, but I love them. :) And they're not a pain to take off unlike glitter!
This was the first non top coat (Matte About You and Shine of the Times) Essie that I've ever used and I loved it! The formula was great, and what you see in the picture is two coats. Unfortunately a fingerprint made it's way on as the top coat was drying. I had this on for two days and I didn't have any tipwear, which is so crazy for me because I get tipwear on almost everything after a day.
Essie Navigate Her is part of the Essie's 2012 Spring Collection, also called Navigate Her. It retails for $8 and can be found here.

Mermaid Nails + A Mini Lesson in Photographing Flakies

Lately I haven't been feeling very inspired when it comes to nail art, but after swatching Sinful Colors Kissy yesterday the colors got me thinking of the mermaid/fish scale nails that I have seen around. I've been meaning to get more practice painting designs on my nails so I thought fish scales would be something fun and easy to do!

Accent nail is two coats of Sinful Colors Rise and Shine topped with one coat of Sinful Colors Kissy. The scales were painted with Rise and Shine. The other nails are two coats of Love and Beauty Nude topped with two coats of Essie Shine of the Times.
This mani is essentially a collaboration of many of the things that I love in nail polish: flakies, glitter, accent nails, nude polish, and teal/green polish. Love.

Something I've learned from photographing Shine of the Times (and I'm sure this applies to other flakies as well), sunlight is necessary if you really want to capture the flakies. It's the difference between this

and this!

Helllooo giant difference. Also, if you're wondering, that's one coat of Essie Shine of the Times over two coats of OPI Russian Navy.