a-england Saint George

a-england Saint George is one of my favorite polishes of all time. It's an absolutely stunning dark teal polish. It goes on easily in 2 coats, and possibly one coat depending on your application but I prefer thinner coats.

I've purchased this polish a few years ago, but it's still available. The a-england website has a list of places where you can buy it.

A-England Dragon

I didn't manage to get lightbox shots of this mani, but the polish is so pretty that I still wanted to show off the only indoor shot I got.

This is Dragon from A-England. It's a beautiful muted green scattered holographic that goes on well in 2 coats.

Baseball Nail Art

I apologize for the lateness of this mani! I went to a Chicago Cubs game on August 5th and did this manicure for the game. Sooooo pretty late lol. Here it finally is though :)

Products used:

Funky Fingers Gesso

Zoya Sooki

A-England Tristam

Grey and Green Skittles Style Nail Art

Just a quick post with a quick mani design from me today :)

For this mani, I used KBShimmer How You Dune? and A-England Dragon. How You Dune? went on in one coat for me! I'm pretty sure it used to take 2 coats so either my application changed or the polished thickened up a bit. It wasn't too thick to use at all so I'm guessing my application changed.

Anyway, a one coat light grey is awesome.

I love grey and green polish so pairing gorgeous versions of both these colors made for a winning mani for me :)

St. Patrick's Day: Green Studded Skittles

I love green nail polish so St. Patrick's Day is a great excuse to use all of them!!! LOL

This year, I decided to forgo the usual St. Patty's designs of shamrocks, rainbows, and leprechauns and just focus on using green polish.

For these skittles, I used a combo of Essie Mojito Madness and A-England Dragon, both fabulous one coater green polishes.
I also used straight nail vinyls to create the design. I REALLY like these. While striping tape is super cheap on eBay and nail art supply sites, I don't find that it sticks well enough and nail polish often seeps underneath the tape. These vinyls also come in three different widths which make designs super easy to do. I used the skinniest vinyls for my ring finger and the medium one for my index.

My manis don't often get seen (except on the internet, lol) since I'm a stay-at-home mom. But the children's librarian complimented this one during baby story time which made me day!

Pastel Galaxy

I don't know if any moms read my blog, but if you are a mom you just migth have heard of the Baby Center website. They have tons of information about babies and kids plus several chat boards. One of the boards I belong to has started a nail board that is going very strong! (Shout out to my BHB ladies!)

What's great about that is that we understand time restraints since we are all moms. We're all super supportive of each other which can be rare both in mom groups and the nail polish community. It's a neat little haven.

Anyway, we've decided to do weekly challenges. We get one theme for the week. Again as moms, getting a whole week to do a challenge works great! This week's theme is galaxies. I've done regular and Northern Lights ones. Today I decided to go with another "new" one and do pastel galaxy nails.

I followed a few different tutorials for this one and made it my own. It's not as pastel as other pastel galaxy manis, but I like some of the pops of dark colors.

I used a crap ton of polishes too:

Base is two coats of Sinful Colors Candy Coated.

I added the galaxy using Wet n Wild French White Creme, Barry M Blueberry, Zoya Pippa (yellow), Sinful Colors Fig, A-England Lake of the Lake (purple holographic), Zoya Pippa (pink), Revlon Minted (mint green that was mostly used to tone down purple base as Minted was pretty sheer), and Nubar Absolute (very lightly sponged to add the shimmery effect).

Happy Birthday, Tristan!

Today is my son's first birthday party! We picked a monster theme, and I did a mani to match.

The base is A-England Tristam since my son's name is Tristan. The glitter is Deborah Lippmann Happy Birthday. I added monsters for an accent.

Enjoy the mani! I've got cleaning and decorating to do ;)

Shades of Blue

I joined a new nail group called Nail Polish Challenge. There are new themes every Monday and Thursday. It's super laid back, and there's no pressure to complete all the challenges. Plus if you don't change your polish every day (there's no way I'd have time for this!), it gives you a bit of time between each challenge day.

Today's challenge is shades of blue.

I used Hit Polish Superman as the base. The accent nail was done with L'Oreal Notting Hill Blues, A-England Tristam, and Zoya Liberty.

31 Day Challenge, Part 2!: Day 24, Inspired by a Book

My thought process to complete today's mani was a bit different than normal. I decided I really wanted to use A-England Tess D'Ubervilles somehow in this mani because 1. it's beautiful!, 2. it's one of my few untrieds, and 3. it's named after a book heroine.

Here is Tess on it's own. A-England says Tess is "like the secretive black of a deep forest, sublimely displaying its provocative emerald secrets" and I think that describes it well! The emerald shimmer peeks out from the black base.

I can't leave well enough alone searched for a cover of Tess of the D'Ubervilles by Thomas Hardy for inspiration to add to this mani.

Source: Phillip J. Pirages

 This cover is the first edition illustrated copy from 1891-1892.  I took my inspiration from the the corners on the cover and the square/diamond pattern there.

I stamped using BM 203 and Barry M Foil Nail Effect Gold.

Check out other manis inspired by books below!

31 Day Challenge, Part 2!: Day 23, Inspired by a Movie

 

My favorite movie of all time has got to be The Little Mermaid so of course I had to use it for today's inspiration.

I went with a mermaid mani. On ring finger, I created multicolored dotted scales and did scales using glitter on the other nails.

The base coat on this is 2 coats Sinful Colors Rise and Shine. It doesn't dry to a shiny finish, but I wouldn't call it a matte finish either. It's pictured on its own below.

For the accent finger, I created scales by dotting on Sinful Colors Rise and Shine, NYC MoMa (pink), Illamasqua Phallic (dark blue shimmer, but reading almost black here), Wet n Wild Metallic (silver), and A-England Lady of the Lake (purple holo).

For the other fingers I did a gradient using NYX Girls Emerald Forest and then painted Orly Mermaid Tale over whole thing. Mermaid Tale is a very fitting polish to use for this mani, I think!

Check out other manis inspired by movies below.

31 Day Challenge, Part 2!: Day 5, Blue Nails

I didn't have time to do all the manis I wanted to before Christmas, but since it's still winter here (and will be for a while!) I figured that it would still be okay for this mani. I was inspired by this mani from Nail Polish Wars. 

To fit today's theme, I used A-England Tristam for my base except on my ring finger. On my ring finger, I used a base of Essie Marshmallow followed by Glitter Gal Light as a Feather.

For the snowflakes, I first painted on white polish then followed it up with Light as a Feather.  The black on the snowman is Hits Zeus.

Check out other blue manis below.

31 Day Challenge, Part 2!: Day 4, Green Nails

So I was staring at all my polish trying to figure out what I was going to do. I knew I wanted to use Essie Mojito Madness since I hadn't used it yet, but I wasn't sure how. Nothing was coming to me so I headed over to my Pinterest board and was inspired by this post from Nail Polish Wars.

I used two coats of Essie Mojito Madness on my accent fingers (I chose my thumb and ring) and 2 coats of A-England Dragon on the other nails. I also used Dragon to create my spots and Rimmel Black Satin to finish them off.

I'm so happy with how this turned out! I love green so this mani is pure love for me. Enjoy the other pictures!

Check out some other green manis below!

A-England Jane Eyre

Just a quick post for today.  For this mani, I used A-England Jane Eyre as my base coat. I used 2 coats, but you could get by with 1 thick coat.  As usual, this A-England polish applied wonderfully: good pigmentation, opaque in minimal coats, smooth, and not too thick or thin. On my accent finger, I applied a skull water decal.

Jane Eyre is part of A-England's Gothic Beauties collection. Most of them are black with a shimmer.  Jane Eyre has a purple shimmer to it that is most noticeable on my pinkie finger.  I have another Gothic Beauty that I'll show you later :)

31 Day Challenge: Day 22, Inspired by a song

Today's theme is Inspired By A Song.

My favorite ever Disney movie is The Little Mermaid. For today's challenge, I was inspired by the song Under the Sea from The Little Mermaid. I think that I'm decent at nail art, but not super good so I decided to go with some cutesy under the sea critters on each of my nails.

I started with a base of A-England Galahad and then added 1 coat of Wet n Wild Cost Is No Issue. Then I added a crab, whale, octopus (well, quadpus), and a fish to my nails. I love the way the crab and the whale turned out the best.

Check out some other manis inspired by songs below.

Monday Mani: Butterflies

Today's Monday Mani theme at Polish-aholics Anonymous is Butterflies. I thought I would go simple with this one and so I decided to stamp.  I did a flower on my pinkie, and it sucked so I didn't do anymore. Even though I haven't stamped in a while, this still turned out pretty good.  The base polish on this is 2 coats of A-England Galahad.  The stamping is Mash Plate 18 with Wet N Wild Black Creme.

A-England Dragon

Today, I have the last of my A-Englands to show you. They are more holographic polishes made by the company, but I only purchased four.

So this is the end of my mini A-England series, but the beginning of a new series: Green!  I love green polish so much, and it's very fitting since St. Patrick's Day is coming up too. (I'm a wee bit Irish!).

A-England Tristam

Continuing on with my A-England series, I have Tristam for you today.  The color is dark blue holographic.  Application and all that jazz was wonderful so I won't bore you with the details.  Just enjoy these photos!

Both pictures were taken outside on a cloudy day so I did use flash as well.

Monday Mani: Sun, Moon, Stars

I decided to incorporate my mini-theme of A-England with this week's Monday Mani theme at Polish-aholics Anonymous. I choose A-England Lady of the Lake as my base, although Tristam would have been a most fitting choice.

I love holographics, and A-England sure does make some nice ones. Beautiful application and color. I used 2 coats for this just because I found some spots that were lighter and I wanted to make sure everything was covered up.

It wasn't super sunny the day I took these pictures so you can't see the holo effect as well as I wish.

Then using my Migi nail part pens, I drew on some stars and a moon on my ring finger. I was in a bit of a rush so I don't think it looks as good as it could have. I will definitely revisit this idea in the future.

A-England St. George

Not too long ago, I received 5 A-Englands in the mail from Llarowe.  They are such beautiful colors so even though I have other untrieds to use, I decided to use these first!
I will be posting a mini A-Englands series here.

I knew I had to have this color because I love greens and holographic nail polishes. This picture is outside and in the sun and you can really see the gorgeous holographic effect here. Drool.  Here you can see St. George is a dark-ish green with some big splashes of teal. Without the holo effect, it would remind me of Nicole by OPI Khloe Had a Lam-Lam.

This one is still outside but when a cloud passed by. You can still see the holo effect, but it's not as present. Here St. George seems shows a more of a forest green.

Not only does this polish look pretty, but application was wonderful in 1 very easy coat. I had very minimal cleanup to do here. 

I really love this polish. You all should pick this one up when you get a chance!