Orly Liquid Vinyl stamped over Zoya Dove!

Brynn @ A Painted World 4 comments

Orly Liquid Vinyl stamped over Zoya Dove!

After several solid color manicures in a row I decided I needed some design in my life again. Since I finally bought a new bottle of black to play with I reached for a favorite of mine and put together a fun little combo. I think I forget how much I love stamping sometimes.

If you want to see a swatch of Zoya Dove you can find one on a previous post. It's a color that seems underwhelming in the bottle but always makes me fall in love with it all over again each time I love it. It's funny since when I ordered it I expected to just swap it for something else but it sucked me in!

I'm really into fall colors at the moment so I decided on a light grey base of Zoya Dove. I then grabbed my MASH image plate m72 using Orly Liquid Vinyl.

Love? I do! I've never used this design before and I'm sort of asking myself why I skipped over so much. It's so much fun and I love the contrast of the grey and black with the sharp lines of the design. It's so much fun.

I love that it's a bold design in neutral colors. Perfect combo. I don't have much to say about Orly Liquid Vinyl except it stamped really well. I haven't used it as a full mani but it transferred great and gave a nice dark black stamp.

Do you love stamping as much as I do?

Orly Gorgeous swatch!

Brynn @ A Painted World 1 comment

Orly Gorgeous swatch!

Hello Blogger friends! I'm so sorry I've been completely missing since my hounds tooth post from August 27th. I didn't intend to be gone this long and I'm kind of mad at myself for it. I don't even know how I let it go almost a month without posting something! To make a long story short here's a bit of a quick timeline to explain my lack of posts.

Aug 28th - Sept 3rd - I wore the hell out of the hounds tooth mani with several fixes throughout the week because I loved it so much! I didn't want to give it up. By the time I finally did (mostly because I officially ran out of my mini bottle of Orly Blackout) I slapped on a basic color that I can't even remember what it was.

Sept 4th - 12th - Have you ever been so busy with life that you suddenly look at a calendar and realize you haven't done anything to prepare for a vacation and it it's only a few days away? No? I'm not sure how I did it either but it happened. I ended up spending all my non-working and sleeping hours getting ready for our 4 day vacation to Vermont that I never made it back here. I had planned a design to wear while away and post right before I left but I ran out of time. I never even did the design and ended up wearing a basic Zoya Charla mani for my trip. It was completely destroyed hiking and canoeing but we had so much fun and it was great to get away.

Sept 13th though now - The hubby and I ended up coming down with colds the night we got home from our trip on the twelfth and we're still sick. I wore a basic mani of Zoya Breezi through this cold because it sort of matched the weather and how I was feeling. I wasn't interested in doing anything but the bare minimum and even went two days with no polish at all which I hadn't done in months! Crazy, I know! I'm finally mostly better so I'm trying to get back into my normal nail routine. So without further ado, here is my new mani.

I bought some new pretties this week to perk myself up after being sick for so long and I'm so happy with my first pick. I bought and used Orly Gorgeous from the classic collection which isn't a color I had heard about before but loved how it looked in the bottle. I actually put it down at one point and I'm so happy I went back to grab it before leaving the store!

I really love this color. It's pink and purple at the same time and is fun to watch it change in different light. Because of the purple flash it has a blue-ish undertone which I absolutely love on my skin tone. Plus, it's a pink which is sort of an automatic win in my book. I'm actually not usually a big purple fan but I love it in this polish. This is actually my first full sized bottle of Orly and I'm really happy with it. The formula was thin but smooth and the brush was a good size for me. I used two coats but some people might need three depending on how dark your nail lines are. Mine tend to be really light naturally so two thin coats covered well for me. I did have some bubbling that you can see in the pictures but isn't noticeable in person. I don't usually have bubbling issues but I can live with it for now.

I do have a fail to share though that wasn't this polish's fault but it totally destroyed my mani. During my shopping trip I also picked up a bottle of Yellow Stopper. I've been having issues with my nail polish staining my nails so I was hoping to use something to keep the yellow tint I've developed from getting worse. BIG MISTAKE! After using the Yellow Stopper under my two coats of Orly Gorgeous and one coat of top coat it basically became an instant disaster. Within an hour of finishing the mani my polish was starting to lift along the edges. You can see what I mean in the picture below.

To say I was mad was an understatement. At this point I wasn't entirely sure what was going on since I was using two new products at the same time (probably not a good idea). In some spots I could have peeled off entire sections and I had barely even worn it. Still, I kept it on to test it out. Today it completely fell off. Yes, the polish fell off my nails in full sheets of color. The ones that didn't on their own did with barely any effort and in moments I had 10 bare nails without a drop of remover. I was mad! I knew this had to be because of the Yellow Stopper as I've heard such good things about Orly before. So when I got home from work I re-did my mani using the same color since I hadn't even had 24 hours of wear.

Much better! This picture and the first one I posted above are of my freshly done mani without using the Yellow Stopper. As you can see it's not lifting around the edges like you can see in picture number 2. I'm confident that it won't pop off tomorrow either. I can say that I will never touch a bottle of Yellow Stopper again!

Black and White Houndstooth Stamp!

Brynn @ A Painted World 1 comment

Black and White Houndstooth Stamp!

At the last minute I decided to do a new mani design after my Zoya Pippa and OPI White Shatter nails took a beating the last couple days. I randomly picked a design and dove in with the plan of it just getting me through the weekend. What I didn't count on was falling in love with the finished product!

Some of you might remember how much I dislike working with my OPI Alpine Snow. White can be tricky in general but whenever I use this it seems like I'm 10 times more messy than I am with anything else. I'm not sure if it's because of it being a stubborn white or if I'm just not used to the large brush of OPI polishes but either way I kind of dread using it. This is one time though that I'm so glad I used it anyway!

I decided on a black and white design using the houndstooth design on plate m63 of my MASH plates. I've been eyeing this design for a while but kept picking other things. Now I'm wondering what took me so long! I didn't take a picture of the Alpine Snow because I was distracted by the hurricane update and then just started stamping. But I do have a picture of it from my 4th of July designs that I'll share just so you can see how it looks on its own.

(Ignore the 4th of July design on the other nails.)

This is two coats which isn't too bad considering it's a white which usually aren’t all that opaque. It goes on very streaky during the first coat but should even out with the second. I'm not sure if it's just my bottle or the formula but it's been kind of clumpy from the start and I've only had it a short time. It’s most definitely not anywhere near as smooth as my other polishes. It's just another thing that frustrates me about using it. Sorry OPI! Anyway, moving on to the good part!

How fun is that? I'm so in love with it that I don't even know what to say because I keep staring at my nails instead of typing. The way the black and white look together is fantastic and looks much better in person than the camera shows. You can see a small mistake on my index finger which the camera makes more noticeable than it is in person. I'm very low on my mini bottle of Orly Blackout so I decided to just leave it. Orly has been stamping pretty well for me so I might stick with it for black but a full size bottle instead. We'll just have to see how it goes when I'm actually at the store.

I'm not sure how normal it is to take the time to have nice looking nails in preparation for a hurricane but I couldn't just leave them all chipped and horrible looking. Plus I was pretty bored since the hubby was playing something on the ps3 and I was sort of sick of hearing about the ever changing forecast.

I hope those in the path of Hurricane Irene stay safe and everyone else send positive thoughts to the east coast!

My first ever water marble!

Brynn @ A Painted World 6 comments

My first ever water marble!

Ever since I saw a picture of a water marble I was fascinated! I automatically assumed it was complicated and dismissed the idea of ever doing it. Then I happened to come across a video tutorial on Youtube when I was browsing other nail videos. When I saw how simple it seemed I decided to give it a try. Then I put it off and sort of avoided it. Call me a chicken.

Then last night I once again was stuck on what to do next. I needed to do something because I can no longer leave my nails naked but I'm expecting my new Zoya order tomorrow (yay!). I left it up to the hubby again and of course the first thing he said was to do a marble. Sigh. He picked three colors he thought would be good together and declared it my new mani. So off I went and it was horrible. The nail polish decided it hated my water and refused to cooperate. I was frustrated and quite annoyed. So I ditched my room temperature filtered water and cleaned up the mess and walked away. I gave up.

Then this afternoon I decided I must win. I couldn't let it beat me. I grabbed some room temperature distilled water instead and gave it another try. Guess what? Success! It worked and I was thrilled. I taped up my fingers like one tutorial said which was weird and sometimes difficult. Especially when I had to finish the last few fingers with the others covered in tape. Anyway, I picked an order for the colors and dove right in. I'm very happy to say that I now have 10 water marbled nails and I'm very happy with how it looks. Was it messy? Oh my god yes! It's almost insane. I had so many toothpicks covered in nail polish, the bowl looked like half a rainbow exploded and very colorful pieces of tape were scattered around my table. I should have taken a picture of the aftermath but I didn't. In the end though, this was my result.

TaDa! My hubby's three choices were Zoya Breezi, Essie Turquoise & Caicos and Orly Blackout. He apparently really likes Zoya Breezi since it's the second time in a month that he picked it as part of his choice. The colors actually worked really well together and all three spread across the surface of the water pretty well. Its funny how doing basically the same pattern each time created such different results. It's actually fun to watch different designs appear in the bowl. Mine was wide enough that I could do two fingers at a time which made it much quicker.

You can see a little smudging at the base of my pinky from when I removed the tape. After that I cut the rest of the pieces off to avoid messing up all the work I had just finished. Even though Orly Blackout is normally quite dark, once it was in the middle of the marble and other colors it actually appears slightly brown on the nail. There's only one nail that it actually came out dark enough to be an obvious black. I'm still really happy with it though whether it looks brown or black.

So, would I do a marble again? I think so. It's fun to play with the nail polish and create a unique design in the water. Would I do anything different? Besides trying other colors, not really. I will cut the tape off all the nails next time but that's the only change. The tape is worth the effort as it made cleanup much faster. There was very minimal nail polish on my skin so it only too a couple q-tips to clean up the very edges of all 10 nails. I will jump right to the distilled water next time since that obviously worked much better. I guess our filtered tap water just isn't friendly enough. Would I recommend a water marble to someone else? Sure! As long as you're prepared for the mess and possible frustration if your nail polish and water won't play together. In the end it really does create an interesting effect.

Tomorrow my new Zoya order should arrive as long as FedEx delivers like they said they would! I took advantage of their promotion for reaching 50,000 'likes' which offers a free bottle of their Remove+ with any purchase. It's still going if you're interested and you have until the 24th! I can't wait to try their polish remover for the first time and play with my new colors.

Happy weekend!

NYC in Greenwich Village with Zebra print!

Brynn @ A Painted World No comment yet

NYC in Greenwich Village with Zebra print!

Goodbye blue, hello pink! After several weeks of reds, blues and more blue I have returned to my true color. I feel like myself again. Don't get me wrong, I love my other colors and designs I've done lately but wearing pink always makes me feel like me.

This time I pulled out a color I've had for a while and what I lovingly refer to as my 'cheapies'. I literally bought this at Target for a little over a $1 but I can't help love the color. It's a NYC in a New York Color Minute bottle named Greenwich Village. It's a berry pink but still bright and summery. The application isn't the best and it's no where near as smooth as Zoya but it's purely the color that keeps me coming back. Unfortunately, I completely forgot to take a picture of the color on its own! I painted them last night but wanted to wait for the sunlight and forgot. Oops!

What I do have photos of is my results after stamping over the Greenwich Village with my MASH plate m57. I picked the zebra print and used Orly Blackout that I bought in a miniature bottle. I can't really speak for how well it works for painting since this is my first time using it but I can say it stamped very well.

Call me in love! I'm not usually into animal prints but I can't stop staring at this design. The black pops off the pink really well. I've had this design in my head for days now and I'm so glad I finally did it! I'm thrilled with how it came out and I can see myself doing it again.

If you're interested in the color you can usually easily find them at Target and all the colors in this line are named after different places in New York City. It's a fun concept and an easy and cheap way to experiment with colors.

Now that Zoya has announced their promo to celebrate reaching 50,000 likes on Facebook I'll be planning a new order. Yay! If you haven't already, head over to the Zoya Facebook to learn about the details!

Happy Friday!

Mini Ulta haul!

Brynn @ A Painted World No comment yet

Mini Ulta haul!

I just got back from a trip to my local Ulta and have a little haul I wanted to share. I love going to Ulta! My only complaints are they need to carry more Zoya and I wish their nail polish wasn't so spread out around the store. Took me ten minutes to find the OPI shatter collection! Why they had it tucked in a corner on a little table is beyond me. Anyway, here's what I bought!

I finally found OPI White Shatter! I've wanted this since it came out and I first saw the pictures of the other shatter colors. When I finally found the collection the main display was all black and red. Honestly? The red doesn't look appealing at all. I usually enjoy red but as a shatter I just don't really get it. Anyway, the white was on a lower display hidden in the back and it was the only one left! Woohoo! I grabbed it and went straight to the checkout. I think I was so happy to finally find it in store that I just wanted to make it officially mine.

I also grabbed Essie Turquoise & Caicos which is a just a perfect name. I'm excited to try this one. It seems perfect for summer and almost like a little vacation in a bottle! I bought 'Baby' Blue from Nicole by OPI too but I'm going to pretend it's not from the Justin Beiber collection (so not a fan of his) and just enjoy the color. It's a nice sky blue which I needed to add to my stash. I already have a plan for this color for an upcoming mani. Then we have the mini bottle of Orly Black Out. I needed a black for some stamping manicures I want to do but didn't really need a large bottle since I never wear solid black on my nails. Actually, I don't even wear solid black in my wardrobe either. I almost bought Liquid Leather by China Glaze but grabbed this little one instead. We'll just have to see how it works out.

My hubby has decided that I'm completely addicted to nail polish and he's pretty much right. But what can I say? They're just too much fun. Also? Apparently OPI came out with a Shrek collection at one point that I never even heard about. My Ulta was sold out so I didn't even get to see the colors. I know at least one is called What's with the catittude? and I just love the name. I don't even know what the color is but I want it. That's probably what my hubby means when he says I'm addicted. Oh well. He bought a new PS3 game while we were out so we both got our new toys and everyone is happy.

Tomorrow is a mani with my one of my new pretties!