tart deco creamsicle

I'm gonna start this post by saying: Essie Marshmallow is a perfect polish. You need it. I use white in a lot of my designs but I think the flat, opaque look of a standard white creme can look cheap and plastic-y, or like White Out. Marshmallow fixes all these problems: it's a sliiiightly off-white jelly that's opaque in three coats and creates a lovely, soft, deep white that's much more sophisticated looking than your run-of-the-mill white creme. SO GO BUY IT RIGHT MEOW.

I started off with three coats of Marshmallow. There's some VNL (visible nail line) in these photos, but it wasn't as obvious in person. Then I freehanded some the colorblocks? wings? curtains? whateva you wanna call 'em in Essie Tart Deco, a fabulous orange-leaning coral creme that makes me look wicked tan. I read online that it needs a zillion coats to become opaque but over Marshmallow, it was opaque in just one. Awwwwwwwww yeah.

I wanted to outline the Tart Deco in gold, but my gold foil (Essence Shiny Godness) is quite dark and wouldn't have meshed well with these bright colors. What's your favorite gold foil?

So yep! There ya have it. This reminds me of one of those creamsicle 50/50 bars I used to get after school as a wee tot. I just did a google search for "creamsicle" to put a photo in this post and found a site that sells creamsicle-flavored condoms. Now I'm scarred for life...and you are too. Sorry not sorry.

Also, can I just say I LOVE having oval nails? No breaks or anything. Y'all should try it.

red hot flakies

I wore this manicure over a month ago, before I moved out of my dorm and my super long nails were torn to shreds (RIP nailz). My physical therapist's assistant said this was her favorite manicure she'd seen on me, so I'm SUPER disappointed that I could not get it to photograph correctly. Stupid flakies. I broke out my SAD lamp for this because my external flash was creating too much glare on the flakies, and still you can't see all the gorgeous gradations from violet to gold in the flakies polish. For those of you unaware, a "flakies" polish is made with strips of mylar (yeah, that weird metallicy stuff balloons are made out of) and the effect is softer and more mottled than standard glitters.

This is three coats of Finger Paints Asylum over two coats of Zoya Kylie 2. 

NONE OF THESE PHOTOS CAPTURE THE BEAUTY!

The flakies are just so duochromey and perfect. So stunning against the bright coral of Kylie 2.

Anyone have advice on how to properly photograph flakies? It's really tearing me apart. Like, really.