Orange and Turquoise Neon Leopard Print

Neons in summer is certainly nothing groundbreaking, but that doesn't stop them from being really fun. I absolutely love neon nail polish, and today's mani is a really fun color combo and print!

Read more after the jump :)

Contrast Multi Dots

My friends always make fun of me when I say "dotting tool," but let me tell you -- those things are the best. Today's manicure features some polka dots.

I've decided I'm going to try doing "read more" posts to reduce loading time for the home page. So read more and see more pictures after the jump!

Deranged Split

Sometimes, I want to try out a new polish color, but I don't want to do just a plain manicure. Doing a split manicure is a great way to reconcile that.

Sephora has been going through the process of revamping their polish line, and I picked up this one last winter before they actually discontinued their Sephora by OPI line in favor of the new Sephora X polishes. I think the bottles actually look different now. It's called Deranged, and it's a purple duochrome sort of color that flashes olive gold.

I paired it with China Glaze Exotic Encounters, which I actually used as the base here. I painted that, let it dry, then used tape and Deranged to make the diagonal split.

I think Deranged is a cool polish, and I'd like to try out more of the Sephora X polishes, although they're a little expensive for my tastes.

Turquoise and Rose Gold Dots

Sometimes you just wanna do something simple. And when that urge strikes me, I usually go with some polka dots.

I dug around my collection for some polishes that would look pretty together and settled on Barry M Gelly Hi Shine in Greenberry and ORLY Rage.

I used Greenberry as the base for all of my fingers except my ring finger. I used a dotting tool to add dots of Rage, and did an inverted look on my ring finger for an accent nail.

I'm definitely a fan of this color combo!

Nautical Skittles + Anchor Tutorial

I've been such a bad blogger lately! Sorry about that - I've been really busy with friends and my internship. I have a tutorial to make up for it :)

Nautical skittles! I really wanted to try out vertical lines, and it made me think of a nautical theme so I did an anchor accent as well. Here's the tutorial for how to freehand an anchor:

It's pretty straightforward, really.

For my thumb and middle finger, I used a base of China Glaze Sea Spray then topped it with two coats of Candeo Colors Divebomb. For my index finger and pink, I started with a base of OPI Goldeneye. I let that dry completely, then I used striping tape and China Glaze First Mate to create the vertical stripes.

For the anchor nail, I started with a base of China Glaze Turned Up Turquoise and used a makeup sponge to add a gradient of Goldeneye. I freehanded the anchor using First Mate and a striping brush. All of my nails are sealed with Seche Vite for smoothness and shininess :)

I really love how these turned out! Vertical stripes really appeal to me, and I think my accent nail is especially cute.

Mentality Holo Nail Art

This post is pretty old (from like November or something), but for some reason it sat it my drafts for a long while. It was way back when I cut my finger open! Weird. Anyway, it's worth sharing, so on we go.

I was really excited to try Holo by Mentality Polish, which is a holo topcoat. I was a little bit underwhelmed, sadly.

I decided to try layering Holo over some neons. I started with a base of China Glaze White on White so the neons would pop. I layered two coats of China Glaze Sun Worshipper over that, then I used a dotting tool to make the dotted lines with China Glaze Turned Up Turquoise. After all that was done, I layered a coat of Holo over it.

Holo mostly wound up dulling the neon colors, which was sad. It looks so nice in the bottle! I couldn't really get the holo effect to show up. It may look better in the sun, but these photos were taken in the ever-cloudy Pittsburgh. I'll have to give Holo another shot and try layering it over a different color.

Oh well; at least the nail art is cool! They can't all be winners.

Throwback Thursday: Explosion Accent Nail

Welcome back to Throwback Thursday! Today I have a really cool accent nail that I really need to try again: the explosion.

I think this manicure is really fun! I always get really frustrated when I used tape though...I'm always messing up the base color because I'm too impatient to let it dry all the way. Oh well. For the accent, I cut out triangles of tape and carefully layered them over the base color. I painted the black and let that dry, and then I inched those same tape triangles up a bit and painted over the black with the silver. Seal with a top coat and voila!

I used China Glaze in Turned Up Turquoise for most of my nails. The accent nail is China Glaze in Purple Panic, black is Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Black Out and Milani 3D Holographic in HD for the silver.

Eclectic

Today, I present to you a manicure that I did a few months ago. I actually haven't been able to do my nails for the past few days since I'm recovering from foot surgery and need to stay off my feet. I already feel bad that my parents have to wait on me, so I'm not going to have them hunting around my room for nail polish too! In the meantime, I bring you this colorful mani:

I think I was just too indecisive about what to put on my nails, so I went for a mix of things. I used a striping brush on my pointer finger and dotting tools for my middle finger and pinky. The purple is Milani One Coat Glitter in Purple Gleam (I always find that these "one coaters" really need two coats), the yellow is Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Mellow Yellow, and the turquoise is Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in The Real Teal. I was really happy with how this came out! The colors worked nicely together.