Neon Rainbow Pride Nails

It’s June, and pretty much the entire month is associated with Pride celebrations. I was playing with drag diva pianist Jacqueline Jonée for her shows, so I wanted to do a set of rainbow nails to complement her “50 Shades of Jonée” theme. I’ve been itching to try out my neon powders with stamping, so keep reading to see how this was achieved!

I started by painting all my nails black with Black Lace, a color from Sephora’s ancient “5 day shine” series of nail lacquers. This polish was part of a set that was gifted to me for my birthday 9 years ago, and it still works great!

2 coat swatch of Black Lace from the Sephora 5 day shine collection.

Thermal Forest Landscape Nail Art

Awhile back, I tried out a holographic thermal top coat on my tax day nails and wasn’t so satisfied with the results. I vowed to try the top coat out with a different design that would really showcase its gorgeousness, so here I am presenting some thermal top coat nails, take two!

Because I knew that the thermal top coat had a slightly grayish undertone to it even when warm, I decided to pick a polish color that belonged to the same spectrum. Pictured here is 3 coats of The Color to Watch from OPI. It’s beautifully shimmery and has a slight pink-lavender shift.

Fun fact: this was one of the first bottles of OPI polish that I ever bought!

Knowing that my thermal top coat would make this color darker, I decided to make a forest landscape scene across my nails to mimic the look of dusk turning into evening. To accomplish this, I used the Harunouta-L072 plate.

Mermaid Nails

Summer is pretty much right around the corner at this point, and the temperatures have definitely been rising in the city! It’s been making me crave a beach day, or at least some mermaid nails!

I started by painting my nails with a black soak off gel polish from Born Pretty. I applied and cured 2 coats of color and followed it up with a layer of Clavuz no wipe gel top coat. Each layer was cured for 60 seconds in a 48W UV/LED lamp, and then a blend of teal and green chrome powders from iMethod Beauty was applied with a sponge applicator and sealed in with another layer of gel top coat.

I applied teal chrome powder to the tips of my nails and green chrome powder to the rest of the area in order to create this gradient effect.

Review of Born Pretty Glitter Thermal Polish in BP-GT02 Cloud of Purple Sky

Today’s review covers some of my favorite things: glitter, color changing polish, and peel off ability! Would you believe that you can get all of this out of one product?

This magical polish comes from Born Pretty’s Glitter Thermal series, and the color featured here is BP-GT02, Cloud of Purple Sky. It is a beautiful lilac shade when cold and turns platinum silver when warm.

There’s a typo on the box: it should read “Cloud of Purple Sky” as the name of the color.

Spring Floral Thermal Manicure

I love spring’s soft pastel colors and seeing trees blossoming everywhere. While everyone else is doing cute Easter manicures, I’m reveling in some sophisticated floral patterns.

I started by painting my nails with 2 coats of Born Pretty’s BP-GT02 Cloud of Purple Sky thermal polish. It looks like a breath of fresh air with its shimmery lilac and platinum tones and forms the perfect gradient for flower petals for this manicure.

Cloud of Purple Sky from Born Pretty is lilac purple when cold and platinum silver when warm.

Review of Aimeili TC06 Glitter Purple to Glitter Blue Color Change Thermal Gel Polish

As you all know, I love my thermal polishes, and this glittery jelly from Aimeili in color TC06 called Glitter Purple to Glitter Blue ticks all the boxes!

I’ve been working with gel polishes a lot lately, so as you know, this is not my first time trying out Aimeili’s line. I love their gels for their ease of application, beautiful colors, and long lasting formula. With a correct application of thin layers of gel over well prepped nails, you can expect your manicure to last until you get tired of the color or until your nails grow out.

TC06 looks like a candy grape color when it’s cold and turns into a medium light blue shade when it’s warm. It has small hexagonal and fine silver glitter pieces in the formula, and they distribute pretty evenly when the polish is applied.

The brush in the bottle is super easy to maneuver. Please watch my swatching video to see the application process!

Rainbow Streamers Manicure

Three cheers for surviving the first week back at school! I’ve created rainbow streamers on my nails to celebrate.

The first step is to paint all your nails white. I used a shimmery version from Julep called Steph.

Steph has a slightly pinkish tint to this shimmery white polish, but you only need 2 coats to get full coverage.

For the streamers, I used the image from the top left of the BeautyBigBang017 stamping plate.

To create a rainbow gradient across my nails, I used two colors at a time on the image, scraped the polish twice with a card to blend them slightly, and then stamped it at a diagonal. The polishes come from the Beauty Big Bang Metallic Polish series where 001 is purple, 002 is chartreuse, 003 is kelly green, 004 is turquoise, and 005 is red.

Sandy Beach Nails

It’s hard to believe that we’re halfway through August already! I have no idea how time has been flying by. To be honest, I did these nails 2 weeks ago but am only just now starting to catch up with my blog.

In any case, I still haven’t been to the beach this summer because I’ve been so busy. The closest I can get to one is through some nail art.

I started by painting my nails with Born Pretty Thermal Gel in color BP-5730. I love thermal polishes for their natural gradient effect and also for their ability to entertain me in different temperature settings! This one looks like a pale periwinkle blue in warm temperatures and a deep royal blue in cold temperatures. It also has the perfect sprinkling of two different sized glitters in the formula which truly makes it look more special.

 

I applied and cured this polish for about 1 minute and repeated the process for a second coat.

My next step was to create a sandy beach line along the half moon area of my nails. 

Jellyfish Ocean Manicure

Happy summer, everyone! Who is looking forward to going to the beach? I have to live vicariously through my memories of previous summers for now because I’ve been ridiculously busy this month with gigs, so I brought the beach to my nails with this jellyfish design.

I started by painting my nails with Recall from Born Pretty’s Flower in Sunshine Series. It’s a beautiful mermaid turquoise green color with a pearl pink sheen and holographic sparkles.

To create an ocean effect with some depth, I sponged on dabs of Diva into the Pool from Nicole by OPI.

For more contrast, I added a few dabs of Queen for a Night from Finger Paints. This was also a good choice for me because it alludes to the Queen of the Night character from Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute, which I am currently playing!

Review of Beauty Big Bang Thermal Nail Polish 019

Today’s review is going to focus on a beautiful thermal nail polish in color 019 from Beauty Big Bang. It’s perfect for use from fall to spring so you can really take advantage of the double sided nature of this polish with the changing temperatures outside, but it still proves to make even just washing your hands an entertaining experience all year round!

Beauty Big Bang Thermal Nail Polish in color 019 looks purple in the bottle but turns pink in warmer temperatures.

The bottle is shaped like a small cylinder and contains 9 mL of lacquer inside. The attached brush is wide enough to paint your pinky in one stroke and works well.

The outside packaging is classy looking with its gold foil text over a black background. You can find the ingredients, the item SKU, and printed very faintly on the side of the box in this instance, the production date and expiration date of the polish. They say that it expires in 3 years time, and in this case I may be more inclined to believe it as I have heard that thermal pigments can lose their effectiveness with age.

Regarding the color, I would say that the purple can be an intense grape candy shade when it is cold, but there is always a slightly magenta undertone to it because the warm temperature color is light pink. There is also a beautiful flaky shimmer in the polish that enhances the overall look of the finish.

The cold temperature swatch color reminds me of grape taffy but darker.

The warm temperature swatch is a sweet bubblegum pink.