Barielle Sale

Thought I should mention for anyone interested--Barielle products, including their shades line of nail polishes, are 25% off right now when you spend $50 or more (+ free shipping) til this Friday, 4/15 on www.barielle.com.  Please note I'm not affiliated in any way--just wanted to share the head's up!

shades Secret Encounter

I'm so glad the sun is out so I can start taking pictures again!  For the mani above I used Secret Encounter from shades (by Barielle), which is a shimmery wine / magenta.  It reminds me of Just Dancin from Confetti except with more shimmer.

I taped off part of the nail to add a swipe of Orly Rage from the Foil FX collection, which is a rose / bronze foil, and then I stamped the big white flowers using GCOCL plate K04.

Edit (4/17): I posted a pic of GCOCL K04 here

Tri Color Mani

Lately I just haven't been satisfied with sticking to one color.  For the look above, I started with shades (Barielle) Swizzle Stix:

Swizzle Stix looks like a regular baby blue but it actually has some green tones that make it closer to robin's egg.  It's more blue than other Tiffany blues (like China Glaze For Audrey) but its green tones really stand out when paired next to a solid blue like OPI No Room for the Blues, which is the middle color here:

I meant to do this with tape for crisp lines but I was just too impatient to wait for each layer to dry, so the lines look a little wobbly.

Zig Zag Tape Manicure Tutorial

Here's another mani using U-Concrete-Me:

I created the zig zag pattern by using tape and included a step by step tutorial after the jump:

Continue Reading . . .

shades U-Concrete-Me with Ribbon Tip

For the look above, I used U-Concrete-Me from shades (Barielle).  It's a nice medium dark grey that dries a little darker than the color in the bottle.  For the black and white ribbon accent, I painted layers of overlapping black and white. This would have been a whole lot easier with striper polishes but I couldn't find mine at the time.  The black is Misbehaving Mistress from shades and the white is China Glaze White on White.  Here's a step by step wheel if you're interested in trying it out:

Hope that helps!  Feel free to let me know if you have any questions / comments.