Ocean Nails

Arden: All my kids at church have been on spring break for the last couple of weeks, and it's made me miss getting a spring break pretty bad!  Why can't they give you a mandatory week off work every spring?  There's just something about spring that makes you want to jet off to somewhere sandy and warm. 

My manicure today is inspired by this picture of the ocean I took at the beach a couple of years ago on spring break.  Isn't it beautiful?

I love how the ocean water changes from green to blue, so I created a manicure that did the same!

I worked on one nail at a time, and tried to apply each color while the previous color was still wet so they could swirl together a little.  (It's kinda hard to see this effect in the darker colors, but it come across pretty well with the lighter colors.)
 
Colors used (from dark to light):
Butter London Blue Coat
Color Club Blue Velvet
Butter London Blagger
Julep Diana
Essie Mint Candy Apple

I then added a top coat of Girly Bits Cosmic Ocean to give them that cool, glittery ocean look!

This post is part of a spring nail art competition Julep is holding; they are by far my favorite nail polish company, so you should definitely go check out their colors and consider getting some yourself!

Guest Post! Kissed by a Rose

Lisl here! It's been a long time since either Arden or I posted (long story short: life happened), but Casa de Polish will not be neglected.  I'm super excited because my two best friends from elementary school guest posting today!  Take it away Karebear and Sher!

Hello, Casa de Polish followers, minions, and fans!

Karen and Sarah here, two of Lisl's longtime bffls. We are both beginner nail artists, with more passion than practice, and today we set out to try out this pink mani with black rose accent nail from one of our other favorite nail blogs, Pshiiiit.

We went through Sarah's collection to  find colors that closely matched the original and came up with:

Base coat: Essie - Feed Me

Main Pink: Unforgettable Moments - Pink Lai

Dark Pink: Essie - My Place or Yours

Light Pink: Essie - Blanc

Main Green: Julep - Courteney

Dark Green: Butter London - Thames

Gold Highlight: Nail Rock - Venus Gold

Top coat: Seche Vite

STEPS

1. Base coat, pink coat with a black accent nail

Sarah:

First, I painted my nails with Essie - Feed Me. I don't think this is actually a base coat but I've been using it as one. Next, I painted all but one of my nails with two coats of Essie - My Place or Yours and then the accent nail with one coat of the very solid, very mysterious Noir polish of unknown origin. I've never had a decent black before, so I was very excited to find this in the cupboard under my sink!

2. Roses.

Karen:

I started by dotting two dots of Unforgettable Moments - Pink Lai where I wanted to paint the basic flower shapes. I then filled them out into irregular blobs, and waited for them to dry. Protip: Make sure the pink flowers are small enough so that you can add leaves around them.

I then added shadows in the darker pink My Place or Yours with a dotting tool. While the roses dried, I added leaves in the main green color, also with a dotting tool. I finished off the roses with white highlights (light pink would work well as well). 

As you see from the photo, I started out with a dotting tool, but ended up using a mechanical pencil to do smaller dots because it had a more precise tip. I then shaded the leaves with dark green, and added gold highlights to make them pop.

Here is a handy gif if you are more of a visual learner than I am:

3. Top coat & Cleanup

Sarah:

Seche Vite is arguably one of the most useful polishes in my opinion, as it makes everything super shiny and smooth to the touch. I ran out a few weeks ago, so inviting Karen over was very strategic on my part.

4. Admire

They are so, so pretty!

We hope you enjoyed this rose mani. Try it yourself and let us know what you think!

33DC - Euro Nails!

Hey guys!  It's 33DC time again! Today's theme was European nails so I (this is Lisl, by the by) decided to go for Euro nails, literally.  As in, I used actual Euros left over from my trip to Greece to do my nails!

I started out with a base of Butter London Bit Faker, which I stole from Arden.  It is an excellent, excellent polish. It took me three coats to opacity, and though I dabbled a little to fill in patches with the third coat, it honestly wasn't necessary. I am just obsessive. 

Then, to get the Euro prints onto my nails I followed this coin stamping tutorial that I found on YouTube, with a few adjustments.  For those of you who don't want to watch the whole tutorial it was pretty simply. I used:

1. Euro coins

2. A stamping kit scraper

3. A stamping kit stamper

4. Essie Good as Gold

I painted Good as Gold on top of the coin, scraped it off with the scraper (it took a few light scrapes to get all the excess polish off) and then transferred to the stamper, just like regular stamping. Then on to my nail it went!  I don't know what happened with middle finger up there. Just ignore that I guess.

Overall I thought it looked really cool! The technique was a little messier than normal stamping. Coins aren't really designed to be used in this manner exactly, but it was fun and cool and on theme!  Europe is a huge huge place so there were a lot of places to draw inspiration from, and the manicures that came out of this theme were super cool and very diverse. Check out the other manis below the jump!

33DC - Wave Nails (A Pattern From My Wardrobe)

Hey y'all! It's Lisl!  Today's 33DC prompt was "a pattern from your closet."  I chose to base it off the white stripe in that dress I'm wearing up there!

33DC - Citrus Nails (My Favorite Brand: Butter London)

Hey y'all! It's Lisl. This is a day late, but today/Wednesday's theme for the 33 Day Challenge is your favorite brand!  I happen to love Butter London.  I have had really excellent customer service experiences with them, plus their polishes are uh-may-zing.

33DC Coral (Animals) Nails

Hiii! It's Lisl, and I am super pumped to share my manicure for the 33 Day Challenge "Animals" theme.  I decided to do a manicure based on my favorite animals, the animals I'm basing my Ph.D. research on - corals!  So, my BFF Steph's husband Jonah refuses to believe that corals are anything other than rocks or plants, but I promise you, Jonah, they're animals!  And they're awesome! Which is why I am manicurifying them.

Abstract Nails

Arden: Hey everyone!  Sorry for my absence last week-- I was hanging out at the beach with my family!  Today's prompt in the 33 Day Challenge is "abstract nails."  Wow, there were a lot of different ways to go with that one!  For inspiration, I googled "abstract art" and found this neat painting:

I started by painting my nails with two coats of Revlon Timeless.  I then dabbed on a bunch of other gray polishes using Saran wrap, before moving on to adding the blue splotches.  I then added a top coat of Essie Good to Go and voila! 

Colors used:
Julep Stevie
Maybelline Color Show Impeccable Greys
Julep Annette
Julep Faye
Butter London Blagger

What do you think?  The blue in the nails doesn't really match the teal in the painting, but I still think these nails can count as abstract.  Up close they do look a little more like swirls than actual paintbrush strokes, but I worried that if I used a brush they would come out all funky.  At least I knew Saran wrap nails would look cool!

Please excuse the chip on my pointer finger-- Saran wrap nails always chip so easily!

Let me know what you think of these nails in the comments, and as always, check out the other entries in today's challenge below!

33DC My Most Used Color Polish + 100th Post Giveaway!

Hey y'all! It's Lisl!  So it's the second day of the 33 Day Challenge that Arden introduced on Monday. Today's theme was "Your Most Used Color Polish," which was a bit of a toughie for me because I don't actually know which one that is.   So, instead I went with two colors that I am pretty sure I use very very often:  Butter London Blagger (my favorite blue polish evar) and China Glaze Make an Entrance.

Plus, Blagger seemed very appropriate because our 100th post giveaway is going live today and we're giving away Butter London Blagger, as well as Julep Bunny and Julep's Oxygen Nail Treatment!  Jump through to the rest of the post to find out more about the giveaway and enter!

Flag Nails: Happy Birthday, America!

Arden: Happy July 4th, everyone!  Here are the patriotic nails I'm rocking today.

I started by painting my nails with two coats of OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls.  Then I added the red stripes using our Color Club red striper polish.  Next, I painted on Butter London Blagger using one of the flat brushes from our MASH nail art brush set.  And finally I added the white dots using a dotting tool.

Star Trek Nails

Arden: I just discovered these pictures on my computer and can't believe I never blogged them!  To celebrate going to see Star Trek Into Darkness at midnight the night it opened last month, I did a Star Trek-inspired manicure.  These nails are meant to evoke the uniforms worn by Starfleet officers.

I started by painting my nails Essie Red Label, Butter London Blagger, and Sally Hansen Butterscotch.  (I bought Butterscotch because I had a coupon at CVS, and also because I had never seen a mustard yellow polish before.  It really is a unique shade of yellow.)

May Tri-Polish Challenge Day 4 - Tuxedo Nails + Mini-Tutorial

Ok guys!  This is it. Today is the last day of the Tri-Polish Challenge for May.  I did it!  I'm done!  I don't know what it was about this month, but I feel like it was extra hard, but I did it! Go me!  

So, perhaps you have not been keeping up with the Tri-Polish Challenge and wonder what my SUPER GRUELING task was.  Let me tell you:

I picked three nail polishes (OPI - Quarter of a Cent-Cherry, Butter London Blagger, and Cover Girl Non-Stop Stone), for the three assigned colors this month - red, blue and grey and created four manicures using those polishes.  Want to see the other ones? Check them out here, here and here.

Anyhoodle, I felt like the colors I chose this month were really mens-wear-y so I decided to make some tuxedo nails.

Keep reading for the tutorial and more pictures!

Crumpets Nail Tarts: May Tri-Polish Challenge Day 3

Hey y'all, it's Lisl. So here is my third Tri-Polish Challenge manicure for May presented without comment.

Just kidding! I have so many comments! Read on!

Before I start the commenting, here's the deal with the Tri-Polish Challenge.  It's a challenge organized by Crumpet's Nail Tarts.  The rules are simple.  Every month there are three assigned colors.  This month it's grey, blue and red and I chose the nail polishes Cover Girl Non-Stop Stone, Butter London Blagger and OPI Quarter of a Cent-Cherry.  Now I just have to create four manicures using those three polishes!

For manicure #3 I was inspired by all the pretty rose manicures I've been seeing recently, like the ones on Polished Elegance and Nailasaurus. I started out using striping tape to make vertical stripes on each nail, with Sally Hansen White Out as a base.

Crumpets Nail Tarts: May Tri-Polish Challenge Day 2

Hey y'all, it's Lisl.  It's a little late now (I mean as I'm writing this, not as you're reading it. I don't know your life), so I'm going to keep this quick!  This is my second manicure for the Tri-Polish challenge this month.  

(Tri-Polish Challenge recap: there are three official colors for the challenge every month, I pick three polishes corresponding to those colors and create four manicures using those colors!)

Crumpet's Nail Tarts: May Tri-Polish Challenge Day 1

Hiya! It's Lisl.  So we are coming up on the tail end of May, which is absurd because I'm 90% sure that yesterday it was February, but whatever.  End of May means it is Tri-Polish Challenge time again, and this is great because challenges give my life structure, and I am a child and require lots of structure in order to be able to do anything.

Anyway. Challenges have RULES and the full rules for the Tri-Polish Challenge are here.  But the simple story is this:  there are three official colors for the challenge every month, I pick three polishes corresponding to those colors and create four manicures using those colors!

This month I chose OPI Quarter of a Cent-Cherry, Butter London Blagger, and Cover Girl Non-Stop Stone.

I started with a base of Quarter of a Cent-Cherry.

Two things about this nail polish.  One: when I was cleaning off the edges of my nails it bled all over my cuticles and then stained them bright red.  So that is what is going on there. Two:  it looks CRAZY different depending on what light it is in.  I started out all "this is a lot darker than I expected," then I went into the bathroom and it suddenly turned bright red.  Here is a very janky picture of my nails in the bathroom!

Nail Art Nail-Off: Matte Nails

This week on Nail Art Nail-Off, we're experimenting with matte nail polish!  Matte nails are pretty fashionable right now, and there's actually a lot of fun stuff you can do by mattifying (is that a word?) your manicure!

Arden's take: I started by painting my nails with two coats of Maybelline Color Show's Impeccable Greys.

I then added a thin top coat of Essie Matte About You.  If you want to read more about this matte coat, check out my review here.

I then cut 3 triangles out of Scotch tape and applied them to my nails leaving a star burst pattern visible at the tips.  I'm afraid I forgot to take pictures of this step, but I went back later and took a picture of the tape so you could get an idea of how to position it:

As Seen on Pinterest: Fish Scale and/or Mermaid Nails

Arden here: Today I tried something I've seen a couple of times on Pinterest, a nail design that looks like fish or mermaid scales.  This is one of the favorite ones I've seen:

from http://little-nails.blogspot.com.au/2012/07/picture-polish-blog-fest-2012-pshiiit.html?m=1

I decided I'd try to model my fish scale nails after the most famous literary fish scales of them all-- yes, that's right, I'm talking about The Rainbow Fish.

I started by applying on two coats of Maybelline Color Show Shocking Seas. 

Then I took A BUNCH of colors and dotted on colorful scales!

As Seen on Pinterest: Criss-Cross Taping Pattern

Arden here:  I've got a quick "As Seen on Pinterest" for you today!  I saw this design on Pinterest last week, and knew I just had to try it!

from http://pinnailart.com/note/5602#.UWDQckQsIeN, but I don't think that's it's original home.  If you find it, let me know!  I want to give proper attribution.

I chose to use Butter London Fiddlesticks and Zoya Storm.  I started with a base coat, then two coats of Fiddlesticks (except for my accent nail, which was Storm).

I Can't Afford That - Tokyo Street Style Nails

Hey y'all! Welcome to my new regular feature, "I Can't Afford That," where I take manicure inspiration from expensive fashion things that I do not have enough money to buy.  I may never wear these outfits, or pretty dresses (I will probably not even touch them or be close to them ever), but at least I can recreate elements of them on my nails. That's kind of the same, right? Right?

Anyway, today's manicure is inspired the above photo (taken at Tokyo Fashion Week by Hbnam for Style.com), which I found through one of my favorite fashion blogs, The Man Repeller.  Omg that hair, and I am a sucker for a good pencil skirt.  I guess since I don't know who makes the skirt, or the hair, it could potentially be not outlandishly expensive, but I don't think I could afford emotionally to dye my hair blue ombre (as awesome as it looks), so let's go with that in order to stick with our theme.