Quick Photo Dump ;D

Rica's "Squish the Rainbow" set

Unsure of the colors

A baby blue (not sure which) with Indigo Banana's Holo Top Coat

Water Marble using two Revlon colors (names unknown)

Attempt at leadlight technique using Rica's Squishy Lime and Squishy Grape(?)

Dark Blue topped with a ChinaGlaze Prism glitter topper

ILNP Ultra-Chrome Flakie collection (happy birthday to me)

Unknown colors, using nail vinyls to get the lightning bolt outline

An ILNP pink holo with negative space chevrons

All China Glaze colors

Birthday Nails, KB Shimmer "Shade Shifter" with Mundo De Unas Silver stamping polish

Birthday Nails, KB Shimmer "Shade Shifter" with Mundo De Unas Silver stamping polish

Light blue with a holo top coat and stamped with a blue mundo de unas stamping polish

Sorry I don't remember the names of everything. If you are seriously wondering what one is I can rack my brain and look through my polishes to try and figure it out per request. But for now it is 1am and I need sleep.

Seven months of silence. Well then...

Super big apologies to myself, my blog and anyone who cares. I've always been horrible at blogging, but seven months is pretty bad....

This summer has been hard on my nails since I have started working as my mom's Home Care Aide, which basically means I clean. A lot. So I had my nails as short nubbins for a looong time and am finally letting them grow out again. Additionally I went mostly dark on my instagram due to haggard nails embarrassment.

In February I went on vacation to San Diego. In May my maternal Grandfather died. In June we had a massive heat wave that killed 6 of my mom's 8 rabbits. In July I turned 27 and we got a new(to us) car, and August I am planning to get my drivers license.  So. Busy year.

I do have a few pictures to share and will probably post them as a big cluster single post. I'll try to list all the polishes I used but some of them I will undoubtedly have forgotten by now.

Aaaany way. I plan to start posting more, but I do not recommend anyone hold their breath for my upcoming posts.

Quick picture from today. Took it with my cellphone so quality is not amazing, soooo yeah.

Base color is Milani "Deep Thoughts" and the accent nail is topped with ILNP "Luna" and my top coat on all nails was Glisten & Glow "H K Girl"

China Glaze "Liquid Leather"

Amaaazing. Almost a flawless one coat black. If I weren't the queen of lazy I'd take loads of pictures but as is it is 2am and I am the queen of lazy. 

My first coat went on beautifully, and fully opaque except a few small patches. This is easily one of the best blacks I have ever used as I have always needed two coats to get full black opacity with other brands. Definitely glad I picked this up at Sally today. 

Now I wonder if the white I got will be equally amazing....

Update?! Oh my!

Soooo...I've been inactive for about 6 months. Apologies, but I am a lazy blogger, as I have said many times.

Today I wanted to mention I am going to be changing the name of my blog to match with my instagram and tumblr. The blog will soon be known as "Dat Polish" so heads up! I might do some posts about my favorite nail designs I've done over the last few months but I also may not. Again, lazy... xD

More stuff to come hopefully!

Why did I stay up all night?

To paint my nails, of course. Well that's not all I did but I did start painting pretty late... here's some back story:

For the last two weeks wild fires have been raging all over Eastern Washington, which is where I live. In the last 5 days the smoke in my area has be exceptionally thick, due to the fact that we had a lightning storm on the 14th that sparked a few fires and some are still going strong. In fact one was almost scarily close I mean this was a photo taken a block from my house:

In the lower right of the picture is where you can see the smoke billowing up and then the smoke blows into the left side of the picture. This fire was put out fairly quickly, but there were more started by the storm. In my neighborhood that day the smoke was thick, but that's not as bad as it got later in the week...

Lovely sunrise on the 17th which was the worst day for smoke I have ever lived through. Living in eastern Washington comes with some summer smoke, however the sun being a tiny red dot, they sky being sooty greyish brown, not being able to see more than half a mile ahead of you... that's all NOT normal unless you are VERY close to the fires. On the 17th most of the smoke was probably from the Chiwaukum Creek Fire near Leavenworth. Prevailing wind blew it right at us as this lovely satellite photo shows:

Satellite image from an article on discovermagazine.com

The blue dot is approximately where I live. Red dots are active fires and the smoke is pretty obvious. In fact the Smoke from the Chiwaukum Creek Fire was visible in SEATTLE. Which is on the other side of a mountain range from that fire.

ANYWAY, I am blathering about the fires because the smoke from them has been causing my mom, who I live with, a lot of issues with her lung and eyes. On the 17th she almost didn't eat because the smoke was making her nauseous, but once we sat in a restaurant for an hour while I ate she started feeling better and also got some food. Once in the car again she started feeling sick again. So we went to Walmart and got replacement filters for my air filter unit. so that at the very least we can have one room in the house with decent air to breathe. Last night my mom slept in my room on my bed because she needed restful sleep with clean air. So I let her. Which is why I was up allll night and decided to paint my nails at nearly 3am. If I'm gonna be awake all night letting my mom sleep in my bed I might as well do something fun and constructive right?

So now to the actual nail polish related bit of this post!

I decided I wanted to use one of my new ILNP brand polishes, because pretty, and I wanted to try negative space style art. As much as I wanted to use Exodus or Purgatory I decided
to go with something lighter since my nail beds are fairly pale and I didn't want the contrast to be jarring. In my opinion negative space with bright/bold/dark colors tend to look really odd. I find that pale, softer colors appeal to me more for this type of style. SO I decided on You're My Boy Blue as my color. It's a gorgeous dusty baby blue linear holographic. So pretty.

Stock Photo from ILNP website

 Once my color was decided I applied a base coat, the one I used was NailTek Foundation II, which is a ridge filler and strengthener combined. TAKE NOTE this brand is not 3-free so there is Toluene and Formaldehyde in it, I looked up an ingredient list for those curious. However I like it because it does help my nails stay strong and it also has the ridge filling which I really wanted for the negative space look. Seeing gaping ridge lines in my area of no polish would have killed me. Although I don't have super bad ridges, I do have some that annoy me even if they are minor. After base coat was on I waited a good half hour before the next step to be 100% sure the base was dry.

Once my half hour was up, I put a lightning bolt nail vinyl (bought here) on my index finger, made sure it was firmly attached and properly pressed into the creases between my skin and nail bed. I didn't want to mess this up. Sadly I managed to do so anyway. After I had applied the vinyl I threw down three coats of You're My Boy Blue as quickly, yet carefully, as possible then removed the vinyl with tweezers. I was very pleased wit the outcome until I noticed a teeny area where the polish had gotten under the vinyl. I cursed a bit but decided I didn't want to remove it and start over as the removal process on one finger would mess up my base coat on other nails. I decided to keep going and I am glad I did, rather than, say, giving up completely.

I worked nail by nail, apply vinyl (ultra super carefully and securely), apply polish, remove vinyl, repeat on next finger, until both hands were done and then I waited for 20 minuted before adding my top coat because if the top coat smeared the polish into my negative space I'm not sure I would have taken it very well. But it went perfectly, no smears, no streaks, just glorious glossy holo blue and negative space lightning bolts! After a bit of half-assed clean up I was content to rest and take my glamor shots then veg on Netflix. Here are a two images of the final result:

Indoors under CFL bulb.

Outdoors in full morning sunlight.

So there we have it. the product of just over 2 hours of nail painting, which would have taken less time if I weren't being such a perfectionist. I love them and so do most of the people I have shown them to.

Ever tried negative space? How'd it go for you? If you haven't tried it yet what do you think of it and would you ever try it?

Throwing down some pictures!

These are just a few photos I took last night of the five polishes I got at Wal-mart on the 12th. There are three SinfulColors shades and two Pure Ice shades. I think I will start with the Pure Ice. :3

Pure Ice, Speechless (bottle)

Pure Ice Speechless (bottle and swatch)

Pure Ice, Speechless (swatch)

First you will probably be noticing the bottle looks dark but the polish looks pretty bright, yeah? Well that is because the swatch is on a clear stick with a white background and the polish it's self is a very sheer jelly style polish. It's a very vibrant, beautiful color but I know I would have to tone it down somehow to have it look good on me, I will probably use it over a darker color in the future.

Pure Ice, Laven-dare (bottle)

Pure Ice, Laven-dare (bottle and swatch)

Pure Ice, Laven-dare (swatch)

 So I love this color, not so much the way it applies.... Shown here is two coats on a swatch stick and you can clearly see it is still pretty streaky. The color is so pale I almost thought it was a pale-gray-off-white, but it is actually a very subtle purple-off-white. It reminds me more of faded Lilacs than Lavender but regardless it is gorgeous. I will be interested to see how it looks on my actual nails and if it will smooth out after adding a top coat as many super pale colors tend to in my experience.

On to Sinful Colors!

SinfulColors, Island Coral (bottle)

SinfulColors, Island Coral (bottle and swatch)

SinfulColors, Island Coral (swatch)

Wowza that's blinding. It's a lot less IN YO' FACE when you look at it in real life. My camera decided "Lets see if we can't blind people with this color!" Basically imagine the color pictured toned down a level, it's actually very pretty and while I don't see myself using it for full coverage it will be great for nail art!

SinfulColors, Mint Apple (bottle)

SinfulColors, Mint Apple (bottle and swatch)

SinfulColors, Mint Apple (swatch)

My camera needs a kick in the teeth. This color is much more pale in the real world. It's a gorgeous shimmery green color that I have been wanting for a while, finally found and HAD to buy. It applies pretty solid in two coats and is not streaky at all unless you actually have too little polish on the applicator brush. It's super SUPER pretty. Just sayin'.

SinfulColors, Rise & Shine (bottle)

SinfulColors, Rise & Shine (bottle and swatch)

SinfulColors, Rise & Shine (swatch)

This is a beautiful green leaning teal with a subtle shimmer. It's a pinch streaky in application but I'm sure that can be mastered by people with better technique then me. I really love this color because it is so bold and all around pretty. And I am not sure when I will use it first on myself but I want to use it in something awesome that does justice to the color.

Anyway, there they are. This post took me two days to finish thanks to interruptions form friends, then needing to sleep, and after that being lazy! xD

Happy painting! 8D

This is what happens!

Whenever I make a blog I never update it regularly. I'm. A. Bad. Blogger. But I will continue to blog anyway cuz why not? 

My birthday rolled around on the 7th  and I got 80 dollars to play with. What did I do with it? Blew most of it on nail polish of course! I have several packages arriving next week and tomorrow and HOPEFULLY Will get my booty in gear and do some posts about them.

I also got the Winstonia 1st generation stamping plat set. AND a set of the Winstonia 5x2 Dotting tools that actually has 10 different size dot tips! My last set (a generic bought on Amazon) had 6 sizes on a 5x2 set, how rude. So today after the mail arrived (quite late due to a substitute mail lady) I had the fun job of reorganizing my stamping plate sin the place binder thing I have AND removing all those blue films... which wound up with these results:

Nails are not tools they tell me, don't use them for anything they say... THEN WHY ARE THE SO GOOD AT PICKING AT THINGS?! (that's a big chip in the tip of my actual nail not just the polish in the first image in that collage)

Anyway will update eventually with something interesting I'm sure, hopefully sooner rather then later.

Sincerely, 
Emily the Bad Blogger