Nail Art with Megan - Simple Steampunk

Today I have a real treat for you, some nail art! I have never been able to make nail art work for me, I end up getting frustrated and wiping all of it off every time I attempt something. However, my older sister Megan is a fellow nail polish lover but her ambition with it has always been nail art and she is quite good at it! So to fill the nail art void on my blog, she will be guest posting every so often with a nail art manicure, yay! Here is her first post, I hope you love it!

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First off, I'm really excited to be a guest on my sister's blog. I love reading her posts and feel very special. :) This blog is actually what inspired me to start doing nail art, with access to so many of her pretty polishes, who couldn't help but let their imagination run wild?

Before I start a new design, I do a ton of searches on Google and YouTube for inspiration. My favorite channels are Young Wild and Polished and SimpleNailArtDesigns. Tip: don't try to duplicate another's design exactly, you'll just end up frustrated. Take their look and tweak it into your own cute style!

For this post I decided to go with a steampunk design, I'm obsessed with the fashion and it's a goal of mine to be able to rock that style on a daily basis! I started with two coats of Petites Bronze Baby, then used a small disposable eyeshadow sponge to dab on Petites Blackberry in alternating corners on each nail. Most tutorials advise using a makeup sponge for the gradient look, but I've found the eyeshadow sponge gives me more control. For the wheels and cogs I used Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Pumping Iron and Milani Good Morning Sunshine. I use a small bristled paintbrush and a mini dotting tool for the designs. The top coat I used is KBShimmer Clearly On Top.

I must confess that with all my designs, I always manage to mess up on at least one nail and have to redo it from scratch. Don't get discouraged if this happens to you, trust me it's always worth taking the extra time! I'm so happy I got to do this, please leave lots of positive comments so my super sister will let me do more! ;) Big thanks and lots of love!

Megan

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Let us know what you think about this awesome steampunk mani! Do you like the steampunk style? Would you rock these nails? Thanks for coming by and have a great rest of your weekend!

❤ Kellie

Teal Marshmallow Sandwich

Hi friends :) I have a glitter sandwich to show you today! It's two coats of Essie Marshmallow, two coats of Milani Teal, and another two coats of Marshmallow. Teal has a clear base with small blue glitter and large hex emerald green, silver, and blue glitter. Marshmallow is a squishy pale white jelly. I love how this turned out! It was one of those "can't stop staring at my nails" mani's.

I picked up both these polishes at CVS. I can't believe I didn't have this Essie before, it's fab! Any other glitter sandwiches I need to do with it?

Milani Gold Glitz

This is one of Milani's "One Coat Glitter" polishes, the gold shade. It's not my favorite tone of gold, too warm for me, but it's still worth trying out I thought. I wouldn't quite say Gold Glitz is a one-coater, but it come pretty darn close. I used two to get it fully opaque. I like how there are different colors of glitter in the polish to make it have depth. It does dry really gritty though, so be sure to use a good top coat.

Have you tried any of the Milani "One Coat Glitter" lacquers? I really like the red and am trying to hunt down the purple still!

xoxo,
kelliegonzo


This was sent for review.

Healing Gems

Milani has put out a polish that is a dupe of one of my favorites from a much more expensive brand. Gems is styled along the same lines as Deborah Lippmann's Happy Birthday minus the pink glitter. I decided to use it as a gradient on top of the lacquer I reviewed earlier today for you, Dr. Remedy Healing Heather Grey.

I think this glitter polish is a bit gummier than it's richer doppleganger but other than that it's just as fab and luxe! You can get Milanis from most CVS stores or online at MilaniCosmetics.com for about $5.

EDIT: I've been told that the new batch of Gems will have the pink glitter in it :)

xoxo,
kelliegonzo

These were sent for review.

Milani Digital

I am super bummed that Milani is not sold in my town :( But I can find it on occasion when I go home to Nevada, because they have CVS! We are stuck with crappy Rite Aid in Utah haha. I got Digital for Christmas when I was visiting family and I was so happy! I had been really wanting this guy and hadn't been able to track it down. It's a rose pink scattered holo stunner. This is three coats.

xoxo,
kelliegonzo

Milani Hi-Tech

Scattered spring green holo from Milani, Hi-Tech. Love these "3-D" polishes.

xoxo,
kelliegonzo

This was sent for review.

milani bare it all

the milani bare it all collection is full of naked people! not really, but if you address your polishes like real live entities, as i do haha, then it kind of does! these colors are all nudes, neutrals, and soft pinks, lovely and minimalist.  their slogan for this set is "less is more" and ya know what?  sometimes i have to agree :)

truth or bare is a creamy peach that doesn't give me mannequin hands, but warms them up just a smidge.  two coats on a nude?? unheard of!

bare with me is a pale pink shade that we've all see a billion times, but that's alright.  she's right at home in this collection.  three coats on this milky creme.

bare necessity (did anyone else just start singing the song from The Jungle Book just now?) is a pinky taupe creme.  this is the only one that i didn't terribly love, though the formula was top notch.  i messed up one nail which is why you only see three...sorry.  two coats.

there is also teddy bare (a particulière dupe), bare to wear (a grey taupe), and bare in mind (an iridescent pink) in this collection.  have any of you tried these yet?  how do you like these neutral collections that are showing up?  i rather like them though i usually only find about one or two "must-have" colors in the bunch.

xoxo,
kelliegonzo

these products were sent to me for an honest review. please see disclosure statement for more information.

milani neons

i have an TON of milani nail polishes that i have yet to show you, shame on me! but as my friend Nihrida said in a post this week, it's overwhelming sometimes when i think about all the unworn and unpublished polishes that i have.  that may sound ridiculous to you but it's true. i seriously need to have 50 hands or to wear skittles every day to be able to get through all the polish that i have :D

totally 80's looks like it might be wasabi colored, i.e. greenish yellow, according to the opaque bottle shade, but turns out it's simply a neon yellow jelly. not the brightest yellow i've ever seen, the hot topic one i have probably takes the cake on that. this one was still streaky after four thick coats, but dried well and without bubbles which was nice.

dude blue applied like a friggen DREAM! almost a creme, but a bit watery and it is neon but not BLAM in your face neon. i almost got away with one coat on this guy! but did two to cover the tiniest hint of vnl. love it.  these neons dry with the satin finish, but this was probably the least "satiny" of them.

 

awesome orange was probably my favorite out of these guys.  i really enjoy oranges, more than the average polish consumer i think :)  this jelly neon just really hit the mark for me, amazing opaque coverage, no vnl after two coats, and great intensity.  the milani brush gives me trouble sometimes but on this entire collection it covered pretty nicely.

pink rocks! is a shocking pink neon.  nothing really new here, but i actually really enjoyed this pink :)  i bought a second one for a giveaway i sent to a lucky girl.  two coats and still a bit streaky but that's cool.  sometimes neon doesn't need to be perfect because the resulting color "burst" blurs out any imperfections anyway!

fresh teal is the polish i thought was going to be my favorite but ended up falling a tad flat, although i still think it's a lovely color.  it's another kinda neon, kinda creme color.  this is two coats.  brighter and more turquoise than the opaque bottle color suggests.

and last is rad purple, another one that's inside color is vastly different from the bottle wrapper color.  weird and kind of annoying, but whatev.  i like the actual color better than the bottle color anyways.  i've heard folks compare this to deborah lippmann's call me irresponsible. ( i might do a comparison soon.)  i found this hard to get even looking unfortunately, though and my swatch is streaky :(   three coats.

*whew* more milanis to come folks :)  and giveaway winners to be announced SOON!!!

xoxo,
kelliegonzo

these products were sent to me for an honest review. please see disclosure statement for more information.

milani dress maker

i have limited access to milani as a brand in stores, but knew i HAD to have their new polish dress maker. why? because it is a dupe for the immensely coveted chanel jade polish from last year. and because i'm obsessed with mint greens :) so a lovely friend on twitter offered to find it for me! so nice!!

this green is literally perfection. amazing mintyness but not too pale, not too bright, with subtle green/silvery shimmer! this is three coats because it was a tad thick.

i have since realized that i could've ordered it online really easily haha. and it so happens that i visited my hometown like two weeks after i got this bottle and was able to find the entire Haute Value collection on display in a local CVS haha. so i picked up a new bottle and just had a contest for it on my facebook page :) congrats again Christina! be sure to become a fan of my page, as there might be more FB only giveaways coming up there soon ^_^

xoxo,
kelliegonzo

i received this as a gift from a friend. please see disclosure statement for more information.

milani 3d holographic

helloo kittens :D i'm getting excited/scuured for my birthday on sunday! i know it's not a big deal, but for real i am gonna feel old. i have always thought that 24 is like a legit grown-up haha so i no longer have my childish ways to lean back on! haha, i guess it had to happen sooner or later. pfft who am i kidding i'm always going to be a kid at heart :)

this milani collection is called the 3d holographic specialty lacquer, which came out this spring. the milani website says "The nail lacquer appears to color-shift as the illumination source or the viewing angle changes. This color phenomenon is based on Holographic Image Technology that makes a very thin, bright, embossed metallic flake look like a rainbow." well my my my haha. to be honest, i think they're pretty dope, but we've seen some great holo polishes in the past too. these are more like the china glaze kaleidoscope collection than the omg series, in comparison.

i don't have too many milani polishes, and if i remember correctly, the blue and purple of these might've been my first two ever. the drugstores around here don't carry the brand. the only store that has them is a smith's market place a few towns over, and even then it's only in the occasional display, never a permanent section. the bottle shape is alright, a little small. the brush is thin and small for my taste, think essie style, but still alright. holos can be tricky, sometimes cuticle pull can occur, but these were super easy to apply. these are all two coats.

hi-res is a nice lightish purple holo. i really like this one! i think a darker purple would've have been prettier and more unexpected though.

cyberspace is a sky blue holo. i thought the diamond would be my favorite out of the collection, but this baby ended up showing it up. super cute!

hd was a gift from my dear friend and fellow blogger miss Naive Nails. my display was ransacked by the time i got to it so she graciously offered to look for this silver/diamond polish and send it down my way. thanks girl! i love it :)

sunlight

3d is GOLD so of course i love it :) one of the only gold holographic polishes that i think i own, which is a downright travesty! i need more haha. these photos were taken with a bad setting on my camera i think because they suck. sorry! this one is really stunning. this color leans more towards the yellow side of gold.

flash

lamp light

did you pick up any polishes from this collection? what were your favorites? i wish i'd have gotten the pink one. i skipped the green, it looked just weird to me haha.