Watercolor Nails

So, totally inspired by Sarah of Chalkboard Nails, I decided to try my hand at watercolor nails. Hers looked amazing! I had enough similar colors, so last night I decided to give it a whirl.
I had just pulled out OPI's Skull & Glossbones, I had thought about trying a sponge with it - but when I read she used that as a base, I thought it was perfect.
In addition to that, for the dots of color, I used Color Club Raspberry Rush, Maybelline Express Finish Sunshine, Sinful Colors Fly Away, Envy, and Amethyst. I would like to try this again with other colors, it was fun! I think my pinkie and ring turned out a tiny bit muddy but overall I'm really happy with it.

So, what do you guys think? They're pretty easy, if you just follow Sarah's instructions - I'd like to see it if anyone else does these!

OPI Movin' Out

...or, oh em GEE this is freaking fantastic! I can't even tell you how many different colors float through this amazing multichromatic polish.
So, OPI Movin' Out is a discontinued, somewhat hard to find polish from the 2003 Holiday On Broadway collection, with other amazing polishes like La Boheme and Man Of La Mancha. I have a couple others from this collection, Rent and Mamma Mia and I'd really like to nab all of these. I've tried Rent out, and I think all three of the polishes I have require layering. So for this, I just layered Movin' Out over a straight up black - Essie Licorice. And, wow. There's emerald green, acid green, purple, gold, pink. And probably more, but you get the idea!
Let's just stop the raving and go right on to photos, because I have a lot. The first photo is indoors - I think it shows the shift to emerald green the best out of all the photos I have. I rarely EVER take a photo indoors, but when I saw that shift I had to try to nab it, and I couldn't get it outside at all. The rest of the photos are just in natural low light.

That is SO freaking cool! You can click to enlarge these, and you might want to. So, do you have this beauty or have I inspired you to go and hunt for it?

Top Picks For 2011, Part Five

Last part, and all holiday polishes! There are so many more awesome polishes I could have put on this list, but that's okay - 25 is a good number, right? Let's jump right in!
OPI Warm & Fozzie. Whew, is this foil a looker or what? I even see duochrome in it!

Orly Au Champagne. The perfect holiday shimmery white, fully opaque at two coats and really stunning.

China Glaze Blue Year's Eve. Oh wow, this one just glows - it's a stunner! I didn't even think I would love this as much as I do.

Of course, if I'm mentioning Blue Year's Eve, I cannot skip out on the beautiful evergreen Glittering Garland, from the same collection.

And finally finishing up, Orly Ingenue. A beautiful pink absolutely packed with gold shimmer? Guh. This is too pretty, and I just loooove shades like this.

Well, that's it! I hope you enjoyed seeing my choices, were any of them yours, too?

Top Picks For 2011, Part Three

I could pick SO many more than the ones I'm showing you, but this has been fun taking a stroll down photo-memory lane!

OPI Glacier Bay Blues. The second one to make it into my top picks not released this year, but acquired this year! How can I resist adding this one in - it's a stunner.

China Glaze Skyscraper. Again, from their fall collection - I really really loved that collection, so many great colors to choose from!

Color Club Alter Ego. Yum, I just love the complexity of this!

Orly Fowl Play. Boy, did this cause a stir among the lacquerheads of the world or what! For good reason - this is a purple flakie stunner and a dupe to the much beloved and discontinued OPI Merry Midnight.

Last for today and most certainly not least, China Glaze It's Alive from the Halloween collection. Gosh, they really do the best Halloween collections. I can't wait to see next year's!

Just two more days left of great polishes from 2011!

OPI All The Berry Best and Gift Of Gold

These two lovelies, All The Berry Best and Gift of Gold, are from last year's Ulta holiday exclusive set. I am big on the accent nail, and Gift of Gold is too thick for a gradient, anyway! You could probably thin it down, but I quite like it on its own on my ring finger with the pretty All The Berry Best as the backdrop.
All The Berry Best is, as advertised, a berry red shimmer - very pretty and glowy, and the shimmer is a subtle gold that only really comes out to flash in direct sunlight. Very pigmented, I only needed two coats.
As I mentioned, Gift of Gold is a pretty thick, well packed glitter, I only needed two coats for complete coverage. It's a fine gold glitter with bits of silver and red as well - it's really quite gorgeous and blingy!

Wow, look at that gold shimmer coming out to play in direct sunlight! So pretty. I really like this combination.

Focus On Holographic: OPI DS Reflection

OPI DS Reflection is a scattered holo. This is two coats of perfection! Reflection is a coral, but more strongly pink than peach, and it has a gold flash in addition to the holo. So, would this be a duochrome holo? I guess so! I think this is probably the least holographic of the seven shades I picked out to show for Focus On Holographic week, but that's okay with me. This was a well applying shade, I had no coverage problems and I really could have gone with one coat on this if I had been more careful. I just had a few spots to cover in my second coat.

You'll probably need to click to enlarge this if you want to check out the rainbow of sparkles. See the gold flash in the bottle on that second shot? Wow!

OPI Warm & Fozzie

image credit

Wocka Wocka Wocka! Man, I always did love the Muppets as a kid. Naturally, I was super excited to see a Muppets collection come out - but when I started seeing swatches, I was just underwhelmed. The only one I knew I absolutely had to seek out was the Fozzie bear one, Warm & Fozzie.
This is so, so cool! This is a multicolor foil that's almost hard to describe, there are so many colors going on here. I pick out gold, bronze, pink, and there are shifting colors here too. This was opaque at two coats and had a very nice application.
You can see in my photos the shift at the fingertips, especially at the last two photos - I think I even see purple and green here.

I am so glad I went on the hunt for this and nabbed it - it turns out it was the last one in the store, too!

Focus On Duochrome: OPI Glacier Bay Blues

Okay, let's start duochrome week out with a bang! OPI Glacier Bay Blues is from OPI's 2004 Canadian Collection. I found this at a dusty for $4, lucky me! It looks like an oil slick in the bottle. It's...amazing. Seriously, no words to describe how awesome this polish is. It's definitely a multichrome, but hard to capture.
I have heard this looks great layered, but it isn't necessary to layer it - I used it strictly by itself for these photos. Three coats made this perfection. This flashes turquoise, blue, and purple. I can see a weird flash of green even but no way did that even make it on camera. It's absolutely luscious - it almost looks like a jelly shimmer.
I took an inordinate amount of pictures and could not manage to scale them down much, so you get spam tonight for dinner. All of these are in low light, which seems to make for better duo/multichrome photographing.

You can click to enlarge these. Look at that bottle shot! It's amazing, right? Utterly gorgeous.

Layering: Zoya Anja and OPI Rent

I showed you Anja yesterday, and I thought this might look good with one of the OPI Holiday on Broadway polishes I picked up recently, Rent. Now, this doesn't look like much in the bottle. I'll show off bottle photos here, but it's thin and watery, and if you didn't know about layering, you might wonder why would I even want this polish?
It's not as strong of a duochrome as Movin' Out, from the same collection, but boy is this pretty layered. It flashes silver, pink, and green sparkles! I hope I captured that effectively here.
I'd like to encourage you to click on these photos and enlarge them. This is sooo pretty. I just used one coat of Rent!

Knowing that's a layering polish, isn't that last bottle shot gorgeous? I still have to play with Movin' Out and Mamma Mia, since I picked up both of those as well. I wonder what this looks like over other polishes? I need to try it out, have any of you got Rent and layered it?

Spam for Dinner

I've got some unshared stuff that I have laying around in my image folders, from...before. So after a brief query on twitter to see if anyone would be interested, which resulted in a resounding yes, I started pulling out photos.
Now, I have NO clue how many coats any of these were. So I can't help you on this. These were from maybe last summer and fall?

BB Couture for Men, Adam.

BB Couture Hermosa Surfer Girl

LA Girl Rock Star Paparazzi

NYC Love Letters over...UD Brick House? I'm pretty sure it's over Brick House.

Sally Hansen Hidden Treasure over OPI Suzi Says Feng Shui. *swoon* And look how short and rounded my nails were!

BB Couture Punk Rock Pink.

Urban Decay Id. *deep sigh*

I think that's all for now, I probably have more buried in image folders.

Focus On Glitter: OPI Absolutely Alice

Well, let's start this glitter-splosion out with a bang, shall we? OPI Absolutely Alice was an LE polish, and I got my little paws on it again at a local drugstore called Kerr Drugs. They had all of the Alice In Wonderland collection EXCEPT Mad As A Hatter, and I looked at all the locations in this city. Oh well - I may find it eventually for a cheaper price than Evilbay.
Anyway, this is a dense sparkly royal blue and gold glitter that covers well in two coats. I did three here just to smooth out any spots I missed and slapped some top coat on it, because it dries just a tad dull. As with most glitters, this dries a little gritty but one coat of top coat smooths it right out. I'm going to encourage you to click to enlarge on all the glitter photos this week.

Bottle shot!

Macro. So shiny!

I'm only going to "torture" you with a few HTF (hard to find) glitters this week. I've got a fun line up planned! I hope you enjoy these. And once again, thanks for participating in the poll!

Pink Wednesday: OPI Pink Me I'm Good

OPI Pink Me I'm Good was released for Valentine's Day of 2010, an ULTA LE Exclusive. I believe it was the only one of the collection that was new and not part of the core collection.
I had two bottles of this. One I gave away as part of a prize pack on Magic Maid, and the other I ended up selling before I moved.
BIG regret. It's been my favorite pink, ever! Then one day Jen of The PolishAholic found this at, of all places, CVS. She went and snatched up an extra and sent it to me - what a complete doll! So, this is my first time showing it off here at Nightly Nails. It can be a bit thick, but I've added a little bit of thinner to mine and it's perfect.
This is a mid-toned strawberry pink jelly that's jam packed with gold glitter. GUH. I call China Glaze Strawberry Fields a sister - not an adequate substitute if you're really lemming this, but it helps sooth, as does the new Revlon Grapefruit Fizz.

A decent bottle shot and a good close up. You can click to enlarge the other two photos. *swoon* So yummy.