Bug Mani

Zoya Irresistible Gradient Butterfly Wings

9:00:00 AM

Hey everyone!!  How are you today?  Are you enjoying the Spring weather??  I think I would be more if my allergies weren't totally kicking my behind.

A few weeks ago I received the Zoya Irresistible collection.  I really like foiled polishes, but not in the summer.  To me, foiled polishes are a Fall/Winter look.  I was beyond stumped with what I should do with these polishes.  I was almost at the point of just swatching them and bringing you all a swatch post.  My Little Canvas mind though could NOT bring myself to do that though.  I was DETERMINED to make these beauties into a Spring/Summer manicure.

After much consideration, I remembered my monarch wings I did last year using Zoya Lianne.  I thought to myself "how gorgeous would monarch wings look with these polishes??"  I grabbed my nail art supplies, and got to painting.  Here's what I came up with.




Colors Used:
  • Thumb Gradient
    • Zoya - Bobbi to Hazel
  • Pointer Gradient
    • Zoya - Hazel to Rikki
  • Middle Gradient
    • Zoya - Rikki to Kerry
  • Ring Gradient
    • Zoya - Kerry to Amy
  • Pinkie Gradient
    • Zoya - Amy to Tinsley
  • Orly - Liquid Vinyl
  • Sinful Colors - Snow Me White
Since I wanted to use all six polishes, I decided to do a gradient on each nail.  I wouldn't suggest using these polishes for a gradient unless you have some patience with the clean up.  These polishes, especially Hazel, Rikki, and Kerry, are heavily flecked with gold foil pieces. They are gorgeous, but if it gets on your cuticle or skin, it takes a while to clean up, and gets everywhere.  It's like when you open a card with glitter and you find the glitter months later.  I still am finding the flecks on my clean up table.

My Thoughts about the Irresistible Collection:

LOVED these polishes, especially in the sunlight.  As soon as I was done painting and took a look at my nails, I quickly realized why these were released as summer polishes.  The colors are so bright that they are perfect for the summer!!!!

Tinsley is the rose gold foil finished polish.  It's a unique color which my collection is lacking.  It is a perfect, work appropriate color.  I'll be saving this polish for fancy occasions.  Bobbi is the most fun, in my opinion with it's bright magenta color. It's perfect for summer!!!  I thought Kerry was going to be more yellow, but it turned out to be a lot more gold then the little swatch on Zoya's site.  If you are a lover of gold polish, this one should go in your must have list.  As a lover of blue, Hazel  is an automatic win.  Not only will this polish be good for summer, but also for some winter snow nail art.  Rikki is a neat green with gold flecks in it.  I wish I had this polish at St. Patrick's Day!  I know, summer polish, but with the gold and green, my mind automatically is creating St. Patrick's Day nail art with it.  Finally, we have Amy, the orange foil polish, which is pretty, but not my favorite.  I'm not a huge orange person, I have them for nail art, but rarely wear them alone.  If you wanted to do plain foil monarch nails, this would be the perfect polish to use for it.

What do you think of the Irresistible collection?  Loving or hating the nail art I created using them?  Have you thought of any fun ways to use them yet?

Whew, that was a long post.  Until next time, <3.


**The 2013 Zoya Irresistible Collection was provided by Zoya for Promotional Purposes.  I purchased Sinful Colors Snow Me White and Orly Liquid VInyl.  The opinions expressed are my own, please view my disclosure policy**

Color Block Mani

Free Hand Color Block Nail Art Tutorial

9:00:00 AM

Oh hello, posting on a day I normally don't.  Is this going to throw off my OCD?  Well we shall see.  Tutorials I guess are a breed of their own.  Maybe from now on I'll include a tutorial with each post?? hmmm.

After I posted my Tiger Tutorial on Instagram, @aydixiii stated I should make more tutorials like it.  I asked her which she would like to see, and she picked my free hand color block nail art, as shown below!  So, my wish was her command!!!  Let's take a look!!



  1. First step is to paint your nails a base coat of white polish.  For my manicure, I used two coats of Ulta - Snow White.
  2. With a nail art brush, striper, or toothpick, draw on the outline of the color block.  I used a nail art brush and Orly Liquid Vinyl.
  3. Pick as many colors as you want to fill in the white space.  With a dotting tool or nail art brush, fill in the white space leaving as much of the outline as possible.  Notice the uneven black edges in the 3rd picture, it is supposed to be that way.  The base black is an outline for the color block, not your final lines.
  4. With the nail art brush, striper, or toothpick, go back over the original black lines.  This will clean up the edges and give your manicure a more color blocked look.  Add a top coat, clean your edges, and viola   Done!
Even though I am obsessed with tape manicures, I really enjoyed doing this manicure by hand.  With more practice, my lines will be straighter, and I hope that one day I can make it look like I did accomplish it with tape.  If you are wanting to do this manicure with tape, I would start by painting your base coat whatever color you want your line to be, then place the tape on the nail, then dot in the color.  This is the technique I use when I do my checkerboard nails.  To me, both look different, and I prefer how the lines overlap the color block on this, instead of the color kind of sticking above the tape design, if that makes sense.

What do you think of the abstract color block.  Do you enjoy the tutorial?  Should I start including more of them in my posts??  What would you like me to re-visit with a tutorial??


Tomorrow I have a very neat post for you, so I hope you enjoy!!  See you then! <3

Color Block Mani

Zoya Stunning Tape Manicure

9:00:00 AM

Well hello again, polished peeps!  I hope you are doing well!!  Did you enjoy my new Nail Artist of the Month feature??  I really enjoyed it and cannot wait for June!!!  I already have a few people in mind.  Before I start babbling, let's move onto my own nails!

Oh Zoya, you have really hit a home run with the Stunning Collection.  This collection consists of 6 fun colored cream polishes.  When I first saw the press release, the nail artist in me needed all of them because they are PERFECT shades for different nail art designs.  Just as I did with the Pixie Dust Polishes, I wanted to get a feel for all of these polishes.  I needed to see what the colors looked like on a nail and how they worekd with my nail art supplies, such as dotting tools and nail art tape.  In my last mani, I was able to practice with my dotting tool, so it was time to determine if the Zoya Stunning polishes were good tape mani polishes.  I was quick to find, they were!!!!

Let's take a look!  Forgive the pictures, my light box hated me.  Good news though, now that it's Spring and the sun seems to be in the right part of the sky, I'm able to start taking outdoor photos again!!! 




Colors Used:
  • Sinful Colors - Snow Me White
  • Zoya - Josie
  • Zoya - Rocky
  • Zoya - Micky
  • Zoya - Thandie
  • Zoya - Darcy
Aren't they so bright and pretty???  Now for those of you who do not like nail art tape, or claim to not be able to use it, I truly believe it is not a problem with you, but instead with the polish that you are using.  So I shall now share my little tips and tricks to get the perfect tape manicure.  First tip, work one nail at a time.  You can tape all your nails at once if you like, but whatever you do, apply your tape and remove one at a time.  If you do all at once, you can smudge a nail or have polish drying too fast and the tape not removing right.  Secondly, do NOT use a super fast drying polish.  Those 60 second fast dries or even Essence polishes never work.  The polish dries too fast, it will dry to the tape, so when you remove the tape, you will be removing the polish as well.  Finally, always paint two thin coats over the tape.  I know that some bloggers say do one thicker coat or just one coat, but I find this never works.  I personally want my tape manicure top color to be dark if it's black, and vibrant if it is a color.  When working with black, let's face it, there always is a bald spot and who wants that.  I will paint one thin coat on and let it dry completely.  Once dried, I will paint a second coat on, then remove after about 10 seconds.

What I love about the Zoya Stunning polishes is that they are all bright and vibrant with one coat.  They also dry fast, but not too fast that they do not work with a tape manicure.  I found that they were the perfect dry time.  By the time I was done doing all 10 of my nails, I really didn't need to put on my OTD Top Coat because my nails were completely dried.  

I would have been perfectly fine to break my own rule and do 1 coat on each nail before tape removal, but instead, I did one thin, followed by another.  I waited my 10 seconds and began removing tape, and I had no issues of the polish peeling off weird or having uneven lines.  Now the pointer finger is a tad funky because I had a boo boo and some tape stuck to it while wet and I had to touch it up with a nail art brush, but all other nails are perfection.

If I had to pick a favorite color from the Stunning Collection, well that's a tough one.  I think right now I'm in love with Micky because I have a great nail art idea for it.  It's the perfect bubblegum pink polish.  I also enjoy Josie because I do not have a green polish in this color.  It's perfect for leaves, which now that it is flower season, I will be doing a lot of.  Darcy is a gorgeous bright yellow which I can see myself using for many different flowers as well.  I even have a great nail art idea using that polish as the base.  Thandie is a great orange too, it isn't too bright, and it isn't too dark.  Rocky, well you saw my rave about it in my last post.  See, I told you that I can't pick just one!  I still have yet to use Yana, but that is a darker pink cream which is just drop dead gorgeous as well.  I did swatch it on a nail quickly, but since I was dead set on using Micky, I put Yana in the corner and painted on.

If you're looking for some great one coat creams, I highly recommend these polishes!

What do you think of the Stunning collection?  Are you a lover of the plain tape manicure or want me to dig deep into my nail art brain and come up with some more ideas using these GORGEOUS creams?  Have any questions about how to get the perfect tape mani...please ask!!!

Well darlings, until next post, <3.

**The 2013 Zoya Stunning Collection was provided by Zoya for Promotional Purposes.  The nail art tape was provided by the Born Pretty Store.  I purchased Sinful Colors Snow Me White.  The opinions expressed are my own, please view my disclosure policy**

Nail Artist of the Month

May Nail Artist of the Month!

9:00:00 AM

Good Morning, everyone!  Today is the launch of my Nail Artist of the Month feature!  I'm very excited to get this feature started and really hope you enjoy the artists I introduce you to.

Today, I am introducing you to Casey.  Casey just created a nail Instagram called @nailsbycaseylane.  I selected her because I'm pretty sure she is my biggest fan.  It makes me smile that whenever I sign onto Twitter, she's there favoriting a Tweet.  Just brightens my day.  After a few conversations on Twitter, I quickly learned what a sweet and kind person Casey is, who paints her nails perfectly.  Seriously, to me it looks like they're professionally done.

Without further adieu, here's Casey with some gorgeous nails!!!


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Hello everyone! I was so excited when Alaina contacted me about doing this guest post. Not only is it her first Nail Artist of the Month feature, it is my first guest post as well. Actually it’s my first blog post ever… I’m not gonna lie, I squealed when I got her message Saturday night. I am so flattered that she picked me to do this. Thank you so much for the opportunity Alaina!

I’ll start by telling you a little bit about myself. My name is Casey and I’m 32 years old. I live in southwest Missouri with my husband of 11 years Mike, and our two pets Sammie the beagle and Pickles the Scottish fold. My day job is working in the patient finance department at a tiny little hospital that I love. My biggest and most passionate hobby is, of course, nail polish. I have been in love with nail polish for as long as I can remember. I remember asking for some for Christmas when I was around 11 or 12 years old, then spending the entire Christmas vacation doing my nails over and over; painting different nails alternating colors and then adding little daisies with toothpicks. I would spend hours doing it… just getting lost in the possibilities. I stopped doing more than just standard painting for several years after that. Then sometime back in 2011 I got on Pinterest… and that rekindled the love again. I saw a pin with a quote from Essie that said “Nails are jewels, not tools” and that did it for me. After that I got sucked into the rabbit hole that is the internet searching for all of the info I could find about painting your own nails and doing nail art. I haven’t looked back since! I like to think someday I’ll grow up and be a for real nail blogger, but for now I’m sticking to Instagram. Last week I started an account just for polish related pictures so that I could stop driving my non polish loving friends crazy with all of my polish posts. And so that I could ramble on and on about formula, finish, and all those other things I love to talk about. But do so freely and without fear of being judged and teased by the people who just don’t get it. :) Go check it out! Nails by CaseyLane. 

But that’s enough about me. On to the real reason I’m here… nails.

Alaina brought up the possibility of having me do a guest post a few weeks ago and ever since then I have been obsessing about what I would possibly do for such an exciting occasion. Mix-n-Match designs are my favorite because it gives me a chance to use several techniques in one manicure, so that is what I opted for. For the dots I used my trusty MASH nail art dotting tools. For the chevron I used large chevron decals from Make It Stick Designs on Etsy. (They can be purchased from her shop here, go check it out. She’s got great stuff.)

Full Sun:


 Shade:


And a close up of London, because I've just recently discovered the amazingness that is Zoya PixieDust and I am in L O V E!!!! I've only tried 3 textured polishes, and I love them all. But I love this one the most so far.


Polishes used:
Zoya Julie (soft purple shimmer)
Zoya London (PixieDust Matte gray)
OPI Black Onyx (black crème)
OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls (off white crème)
Hard Candy Black Tie Optional (black and white glitter)

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Gorgeous manicure, Casey!!!  So in love with it!!!  Miss CaseyLane will be starting her own blog (eventually but i'm peer pressuring her into making it sooner than later), but as mentioned, you can see her work on Instagram!  

Hope you enjoyed this new feature...can't wait to see who I pick for next month! <3