Pastel Galaxy Tutorial!

Sorry it's taken me so long to post this! I had a surprisingly busy week for it being the end of the quarter. I recently did a pastel galaxy mani inspired by the lovely @squeakynails on Instagram, and I wanted to share how I did them. Tutorial away!

The first thing I did was use my favorite base coat from Jior Couture, three thin coats of "You're Such A Budapest" from OPI, and NYC Grand Central Station.

After that all dried, I started to sponge on the three pastel colors that I chose for this. I used "Funny Bunny," "Sprout," and "Rain Boots" from B Squared Lacquer. I did this step until the base was no longer visible.

At this point, some of you might want to just add some stars and glitter and call it a day, but I wanted the colors to look a little more muted so I added another step. I decided to sponge on a thin layer of "You're Such A Budapest" on top to tone down the other colors and give it a more muted look. It might not look that different in pictures, but it looked much more toned down in person!

After that I added one coat of "We Kill the Sparkly Ones For Free" from Supernatural Lacquer while the others were still a little wet so that it would blend a little better. 

After the glitter dried a little bit, I started to paint on some "stars" and dots using "Snow Me White" from Sinful Colors.

Once the stars had dried, I put on another top coat layer and cleaned up the edges! Happy day! Here's the final product in the shade and in the direct sunlight. The sun made my hands look weirdly red in these, but at least my nails are sparkly! Hopefully this helped make it a little easier for those of you who don't try galaxy nails much. If you recreate them and you have an Instagram, tag me @whimsicalicious, I'd love to see them!

Shade

Direct Sun

Jior Couture Customs! (picture heavy!)

For those of you who don't follow me on Instagram, I recently purchased a few custom polishes from the lovely ladies at Jior Couture. I've always been hesitant to try to get custom polishes since they generally cost more and I was never sure if I would end up liking the result. In this case, I had no concerns going in and no regrets coming out! These ladies are magicians, I tell you. Since I love everything I've ever gotten from them, I was thrilled to get a chance to make these customs that are very close to my blackened heart.

As you may or may not know, I spend my Sundays with close friends and some family playing pen and paper RPGs. All of these polishes were made with some of my most beloved characters in mind. Even if you don't know what that is, I'm sure you can still enjoy the beauty of these polishes!

First up! Quui was named after my monk during our Rise of the Runelords Pathfinder campaign. She had some awesomesauce orange monk robes, hence the color inspiration! The only pictures I can find are both not wearing orange robes and designed off of Diablo 3 monks, but my D3 monk had the same name! So it all works out.

(Image Source: http://fc04.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2012/172/1/b/diablo_iii_monk_by_zaphk-d54a7dv.png)

My girl Quui wrecked the absolute crap out of things until she was squashed. Like, literally. A stone giant smacked her into the ground and she was pudding. Nevertheless, she will go down as one of my favorite characters I've played! So this one was dedicated to her lovely self.

For this, I did two easy and amazing coats of Quui from Jior Couture. After that, I used "Little Brown Dress" from Essie, "Cypress" and "Never Nude" from Cirque Colors, and "Wooden Shoe Like to Know?" from OPI to make some mountains. These are the mountains that my lovely monk was squashed in! I decided to add some dots to the top because it looked very empty. For some reason, my skin looks very colorless in this picture where it didn't in person. As expected, this polish is perfect in every way! Great coverage, amazing dry time, and no staining when I removed it. Love, love, love.

Here's a bit of a closer view!

(Image Source: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgASzXGnLPKnoQOEtu7w_ud-BqV6Mx69V5RWh5XNgG2ueH5DWvjCpoz_V9DDeP7YlN13cD5XC4yJXoxmvjRNNPCeNpTD6T8NSEE4oN-dSsNgjplVu0eWjb0PZKS0vp1xu-Tm6minJViAujn/s1600/The_gelatinous_green_cube_by_Shockbolt.jpg)

Next up is Quiemita! Named after my cave druid in our first Pathfinder campaign, this gorgeous green is so exactly what I've been missing from my collection. I've spent forever trying to find this shade, and Jior Couture nailed it! I had acidic slime in mind when I designed this one, as Quiemta was a cave druid. After some random number of levels that I can't remember, she could have turned into an ooze (how awesome is that?) so I thought it was fitting. Quiemita, too, met an unpleasant fate. She was actually killed and then resurrected and then killed again like twenty minutes later in a TPK. GOOD TIMES. This was one of my favorite characters to play ever. She grew up in a cave, so it was really fun roleplaying her not understanding any social cues. For example, one time I super failed a roll to understand someone giving me sign language cues and I fell into some water and blew our cover. Anyway! To the actual polish.

For this lovely business here, I used three coats of Quiemita for the base. It was pretty opaque in two, but I prefer not seeing my nail line. The wonderful Quiemita's favorite food was cave mushrooms, so that's what I decided to draw! You should have seen the practice mushrooms for this, it was just a hilariously bad process. For the mushrooms, I used a base of "Yes Your Majesty" by Stardust Polish with "Little Brown Dress" by Essie for the dots and outlines. The underside of the mushroom is "Butt Bootie Naked" by Lacquer Lust and the stem is "Wooden Shoe Like to Know?" from OPI. As per usual, this polish was perfection. It dried very quickly and was easily removable despite being super glittery and gorgeous on the nail!

A sort of close up to see my mushroom that I'm unreasonably proud of and a better view of the shimmer!

(Image Source: http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120409013052/warhammer40k/images/f/f9/Sister_Praying.jpg)

Last but abso-freakin-lutely not least is Moll. Moll was named after my Arch Militant in our very first Rogue Trader campaign. Mind you, that picture is of a Sister of Battle, but it's exactly what Moll looked like. The 40k world is one of my favorite things since sliced pie, so getting to have essentially limitless funds and connections in it was pretty awesome. Like, I had my own army on our ship. I saved this character for last since she is the only one still alive! Our campaign ended suddenly when my jerk friends were jerks and broke up our ship, but she will live to murder them in my campaign someday.

As with Quui, this was two coats and a breeze to use. Since Moll was an insane murderer, I gave her a blood accent nail using "Through the Fire" from Deborah Lippmann. In fact, I designed this polish off of the blood that she tended to spill. I miss the heck out of her! As with all of the above, I'm entirely in love with this polish.

More of a close up on this juicy, red holo!

Overall, these polishes were everything that I wanted and more than I expected! They were made and shipped in record time, and there was clearly no lacking in quality in the process. If you've ever been hesitant to buy custom polishes like I was, look no further! Jior's got you all set up. Check them out at www.jiorcouture.com.

Disclaimer/Note:
If it wasn't obvious, I paid for these myself. I wasn't asked to review them, I just honestly love them and wanted to share my experience!

Family Appreciation Nail Art #4 - Coffee, Teaching, and More!

Sorry I was MIA for so long, I've been fighting tooth and nail to finish this quarter strong and get into a child development undergrad program! As a reward for your patience, I've saved up a few posts that I think you will enjoy. First up is my final family appreciation post (for the time being). I saved my mom for last because she, like many moms, is probably my biggest fan. She is constantly looking at my Instagram (and updating me on how many followers I have, thanks Mom!) and liking/complimenting everything that I do. As you've seen from the last few family posts that I've done, I have quite a bit in common with all of my family members, but personality-wise I'm probably closest to my mom. As a result, her nail art is sort of an amalgamation of a lot of different things that we have in common or that remind me of her. So here we go!

First up is my thumb. This one was slightly more related to the names/themes of  the polishes than the actual design itself. Blue is my mom's favorite color though, so it worked out well! For the base I used two coats of "The Cold Never Bothered Me Anyway" from Royal Polish. And yes, I am a 6 year old at heart, so I've seen Frozen about a million times. My mom is a third grade teacher, so of course she knows all about it too! On top of that, I did one coat of "Men of Letters LE" from Supernatural Lacquer in the center of the nail. I just used the stock brush for this, so it's not perfect, but still pretty even. My mom used to watch Supernatural with me all of the time in high school, so every polish I get from this amazing brand reminds me a little of her! On top of THAT, I did one very thin strip of "Alpine Snow" from OPI. My mom was born in Colorado and used to ski as a child, so this one reminded me of her as well. I also used the stock brush for this, so the line isn't perfect. I was really happy with the final effect on this one! Very simple, but pretty.

For my pointer finger I decided to do a galaxy nail again. Every time I do galaxy nails my mom absolutely loves them, so I thought I should do one for the nails that were dedicated to her! This is probably one of my favorite color combinations that I've done and I really wish pictures did it justice. I liked it so much that I did my right hand all galaxified and did a tutorial on it! Since I'm going to have an entire post about how I did this nail and all of my right hand, I'll skip the spamming of polishes and mini tutorial on this one.

For my middle finger I decided to do another gradient. I am honestly obsessed with gradients and I do them whenever physically possible! In fact, I think I may make another post about them later today. I'm in a blogging mood. Anyways! For this I used a base of "Butt Bootie Naked" from Lacquer Lust. This is one of my all-time favorite polishes! On top of that I sponged "BBN," "Wooden Shoe Like to Know?" from OPI, and "Little Brown Dress" from Essie. I was pretty happy with it plain, but I decided to add a little nail art design of what inspired this color combination: coffee! My mom and I are both avid caffeinistas, a word that I really hope I was the first to think of. For this, I used "Alpine Snow" again and mixed in a little of "BBN" on the top of the cup and for the little swirly coffee lines, or whatever those are. For the little heart at the bottom, I used a dotting tool and "Yes Your Majesty" from Stardust Polish.

For my ring finger, I decided to do a sort of recreation of the apple mani that I did for an untried challenge hosted by two of my favorite Amys on Instagram. My mom is a teacher and I'm in school to be a teacher, so apples are obviously like half of what I eat. If only that were the case...Anyway! I used a base of two coats of "Totes Magotes!" from Dollish Polish. So glad I got this while it was available, I live by this minty holo! On top of that, I used the stock brush and "Yes Your Majesty" to make the little apple. I used a thin line of "Little Brown Dress" to make the stem and used some of my "Alpine Snow/BBN" mixture from my coffee nail to give it a little shading. I was surprised how much I liked this nail since I didn't think my original apple mani looked like an apple at all! I gotta represent my home state though. :)

For my pinky, I actually represented my mom's home state! She (along with most people in my house) is a huuuuge, huge Broncos fan. Unreasonably huge. She grew up in the Denver suburbs and has remained a die hard fan in her years away from the state. So I decided to do a John Elway nail! I used a base of one coat of "Ay Poppy!" from Cult Nails and a 7 I dabbed on using "Absolutely Alice" from OPI. For those of you who don't know this, I'm a huge Alice fan and I was so thrilled when a wonderful lady I follow on Instagram was selling hers! Again, I just used the stock brush for this. I guess I was just anti-nail art brushes on this mani. Topped them all off with Cover Me top coat from Jior Couture and went on with my day!

I honestly wore this for like three days, which is a pretty long time for me. Partially because I was so busy with school, and partially because I liked it so much I didn't want to remove it!

Hopefully you all enjoyed my last family-inspired mani for the time being!