Feelin' hot hot hot!

Goooooood afternoon!

Summer has definitely cranked up here. With the hot weather comes my brightest colors. While I do truly wear what I want regardless of seasons, I tend to be seasonable in my color choices. I know that sounds contradictory, and I'm sorry for that, but it is what it is lol.

For work today, I had picked out a black and white outfit, so I wanted a pop of color for my nails. This was a hard decision, but I settled on Morgan Taylor's Shock Therapy. I can't even express how much I love this neon magenta. The only color I have similar to it is Zoya Charisma, and it's not the same. Shock Therapy was two, super easy coats with SV to seal it. I almost stamped a zig zag pattern over it, to match my skirt, but decided against it.

This week's Stamping Sunday challenge was birds and flowers. My base is a gradient of Zoya Purity, Tiana, and Eden, and that was over two coats of Purity. The stamped images were from FUN 14, stamped in MdU tutti. Seche, then Zoya's matte topcoat.

Sometimes, I really want to love a brand, but it just let's me down. Now, I'm the first to admit that I change my manis daily, so chipping and tipwear isn't a huge deal to me, but, for the most part, I don't have that issue much anymore, except with certain brands. Friday, I wore one that I just should have known better. 

When I was at Salon Centric a while back, hunting down Essie's neons from last summer, I came across their Cashmere Satin collection. Most of them were meh, but Spun in Luxe caught my eye. I finally got around to trying it out last Friday. I treated as I would any other matte, texture, satin, ect., but since I planned to stamp, I topcoated it. Two coats gave it opacity and SV to top it. Stamped over with myonlineshop Jr. 20 and MdU blue, and another coat of SV, then Essie's Matte About You. Sadly, I had some chipping out of the shower Friday morning, and it progressed through the day =\ Looks like that one will be hitting my destash pile.

As I did last summer, where I practiced water marbling every week, I've decided I need to work on my gradients. I'm just not happy with them most of the time, but I think I'm finally getting it. I think the gradient I did last Thursday could have been better, but it wasn't horrible.

I started with a base color of China Glaze White on White, 2 coats. For the gradient, I used Bottoms Up and Flip Flop Fantasy, which looks more orange than it really is. The colors freaked my camera out. SV to even it all out.

And Wednesday was simple stamping. The base color is OPI's This Color's Making Waves, which is gorgeous by the way. Stamping plate was Winstonia W311, stamping color was MdU mint.