Favorite SOG mani's to date

I thought since I just created one of my favorite SOG mani's so far, that maybe I would do a post on a few of my favorites.  These aren't necessarily in order of my faves, but rather I am working in reverse chronological order, LOL.  I guess since that is how my charting always is, that's the only way my brain really works anymore.

This is a very pic-heavy post.  But I assume none of you mind a little "polish porn".  :-)


Aragon Holo
This is the latest favorite, and my current manicure that I just did.  This is OPI Gelcolor's Here Today, Aragon Tomorrow (given to me by a friend) mixed with coarse grade spectraflair.  I'm in love.  I had a great Christmas mani (below) but I wish I had thought of this combination earlier!  :-p

This color wasn't really one of my favorites straight out of the bottle.  It's such a dark color it really looks almost black.  I really didn't need another nearly black polish.  When I mixed a few drops though with a rice-grain sized amount of spectraflair - WOAH!  Amazing forest green linear holo!  The pictures really don't capture the linear-ness of it well unfortunately.  My big camera's batteries are recharging.  Maybe I can add some better pictures tomorrow in the sun.

I am using an old contact lens case to mix in, as was suggested by a member over at The Purse Forum.  It works really well in fact, and then I can store what I have left over from the mix (in case I need to do any repairs), and it's protected from the light as my case I'm using is opaque heavy plastic.

Blingy Red Funky French

My previous manicure was the one I did for this Christmas - my beautiful holiday mani!  No mixing involved here.  I used two coats of Gelish Waterfield as the base color, then did two coats of Red Carpet Manicure Glitz & Glamorous on the tips (a dupe for Gelish Queen of Hearts).  I use a small old eyeshadow brush dipped in alcohol to clean up my smile lines.  Very easy.  

A couple days before Christmas I added the little reindeer decal to my ring finger (sorry for the crappy cell phone pic on that one).  

It was a great mani that I kept on the full two weeks (i'm usually bored with it and change it up after about 10 days).  Even then I was reluctant to take it off and change it, but i was anxious to try out a newish color in my untried stash, and the new lamp I got for Christmas!  :)  

Color Morphing Mania

A few mani's ago I did a color-shifting mani.  I used a chameleon pigment from Sik Custom Paint that shifted teal, blue and purple. It was incredibly hard to capture the color-change, but it was another I left on until I broke too many nails after just coming back from vacation that there was no real fixing it.  

Here I mixed the pigment powder with Gelish Structure gel and applied it over a base of Gelez Pitch Black (a black creme).  Color morphing pigments show their many true colors best when over a black base.  Lots of pics of this one, since it was so hard to really capture the color shift and get all the colors.  

Flame Swirl Funky French

Another great one that I got a lot of compliments on - my flame-swirl mani.  I used Gelish Ambiance here as the base.  Then I put small dots of Orly Gel FX Rage and Artistic Colour Gloss Eccentric on the tips, and used a dotting tool to swirl the two colors upward together.  Very easy to do, even if you think you can't keep your hand steady enough to do a traditional french and keep the smile line clean.  

The Orgasm Mani

........Meaning the mani I used my NARS Orgasm blush as a pigment for this.  What were you thinking?  Get your minds out of the gutter!  :-p

For this mani I scraped a little of the blush onto a blob of Gelish Structure and mixed it in.  I applied 2 coats as the base and then did the tips in Gelez Pitch Black.  Again, I cleaned up my smile lines with the eyeshadow brush and alcohol.  

Up in the Blue Holo

Another great favorite: Gelish Up in the Blue mixed with Spectraflair.  This was before I got the coarse grade, so this one is made with the mid-grade.  It's still very holo, just not quite as sparkly as the coarse grade.  It's still plenty sparkly though!  

After about a week or so I was dying to try to see if you could water marble with SOG.  Well, you can.  Messy, yeah a little.  Actually not as bad in my opinion though as doing it with regular polish, as you can just use a towel to wipe off any excess and peel off your tape before you cure.  Clean up from the cup..... not so easy.  Thankfully I used a plastic cup.  Defnitely don't use anything you'd want to keep.  :-p

The water marble was done with Artistic Colour Gloss Wham, Fly and Deblu.  I did it over of course a completed SOG mani, since the mani was about a week old.  I would recommend that - If you don't like the way it came out, then it's easy to wipe it off and try again!  :-)

Breast Cancer Awareness

I loved my breast cancer manis.  I've done two of them.  First of all, I love french manicures, and I wholeheartedly support breast cancer research and anyone who has been affected by breast cancer themselves or in a family member, friend, etc.  

Both times I have done it on myself it's been as a french manicure.  I use Gelish Ambiance for my base and Gelish Sheek White for my tips.  I used Gelish Passion to paint on the Pink ribbons.  

For the other mani below, which I did on my mom back in October for breast cancer month, I used Gelish Less Talk and the Pink Ribbons were water decals.  

The Ruby Slipper Mani
One of my all time favorite combos is what I call the Ruby Slipper mani.  It's a dark color (like a dark purple like Entity One's Midnight Runway (a dupe for the Original Gelish Bella's Vampire), black or a dark blue) with Gelish Good Gossip layered over it.  Good Gossip is a very versatile color.  It looks amazing on it's own, but since I am weird about reds on my own hands and like dark colors, this combo is perfect for me.  :-)

And when I say the "original Bella's Vampire", let me explain..... It seems to me that gelish has changed the color somewhat.  Bella's Vampire was one of the first colors I ordered when I started SOG a year ago.  It was very much purple, not a dark red as the name (to me) would imply.  However, I recently picked up a new one in a mini version from Sally's and it is decidedly a dark red.  Not even close to the very dark purple that was my original one.  No biggie to me, as the Entity One color was a dupe for it.  And the newer version I have is what I always expected the color to be!  Win win for me!

Here you can see that the Entity one (on left) and the Orignal Bella's Vampire (on right) I had were dupes, and both very, very purple!  I'm trying to get a good shot of the new bottle I have's color, and will update this post when I get one.

At any rate, this is 2 coats of Entity One Midnight Runway with a coat of Gelish Good Gossip over it.  Forgive the odd-looking middle fingernail.  This was in my early stages of SOG, and the very first time I ever tried to sculpt a tip on a broken-way-too-short-to-make-me-happy middle fingernail!  Not a bad try for a first attempt, but I have much improved over the past year when I have to do this!  :-)  I had used a clear gel here, so it makes the color look a bit sheer and patchy on the tip of that middle finger.

I get TONS of compliments on this combination whenever I wear it!  Try it!  You will too!

Bella's Holo
One of my very first favorites was another combination creation of mine.  I desperately wanted a medium-purple holo.  So I made one.  This was 6 drops of Gelish Sheek White mixed with 4 drops of my original bottle of Bella's Vampire (further proving it was truly purple) and then I added Supernail Silver Rush holographic glitter powder I got from Sally's.  This was long before I discovered spectraflair.  The Silver Rush doesn't make a linear holo, but it was a very pretty mani.  Sorry, the first pic is a cell phone pic, but was more representative of the color.  The other two the flash made the purple appear much brighter than it was in reality.

Well, that's it.  I hope you enjoyed this latest picture heavy post.  :)  See you all soon!

UV Light Cured Gels - CFL vs. LED

Let me start out this post by saying I am NOT an expert in this.  Don't take what I say here as gospel please.  This is merely how I understand it, and hope it may make some sense to others and help them understand it as well.

As more and more gel polishes come out on the market, it seems more and more of them are also "LED curable".  This sparks much debate over what is better, LED lamps or traditional Compact Fluorescent (CFL) UV lamps?

So, here is how I understand this whole concept, and someone please let me know if I am totally wrong or can shed even more light on the subject.

UV stands for Ultraviolet light, which is a type of light in a wavelength that our naked eyes cannot see (about 100-400 nanometers (nm).  The reason UV lights look blue/purple is because that is the first wavelength of light our eyes CAN see.

ALL Gel-curing lamps emit UV light, but the bulb by which they do so differs, Thus....

There are two types of bulbs used in gel curing lamps that emit UV light - Compact Fluorescent and LED

1. Compact Fluorescent (CFL) bulbs emit a broader wavelength range of light
1. The light is more diffused, thus longer cure times
2. CFL bulbs have been around a long time, are cheap and easy to come by, and a lot of research has been done on them.  
3. CFL UV curing lamps are much cheaper
2. LED bulbs emit a narrower wavelength range of light
1. Light is more concentrated and targeted, thus allowing for a faster cure time
2. LED bulbs are not cheap and possibly not as easy to come by for manufacturers, thus they are more expensive lamps
3. Not as much research has been done on LED curing lamps (as compared to CFL) because they are newer.

Gels that are sold as LED cure will also cure in CFL UV lamps, But all UV curable gels will not cure in LED lamp.  This goes back to the narrower wavelength of LED bulbs.

Just for an example, say the wavelength of a particular brand of LED bulbs is only 10 nm, the Gel Manufacturers that sell LED lamps have their lamps using bulbs that cover the wavelength of light that their photoinitiators (what makes the gel harden) cure at, and this isn't the same across all brands.

For example, say Gel Brand A cures at 325 nm, and Gel Brand B cures at 355 nm (and I'm making these numbers up as an example only, I don't ave brand names here that use those specific numbers)

The wavelength of light for Gel Brand A's lamp might be 320-330 nm, but that wouldn't cure Gel Brand B's gel product.

However, if a CFL UV lamp covers the range of say for example 320-375 nm, it would cure both brands.

When looking at the directions for any gel polish product, many of them that are LED curable will also give CFL UV cure times.  If they don't ask the manufacturer if they have UV cure times if you can.

Remember, both types are emitting UV light, so if the reason  you want an LED light is to avoid UV exposure, that just isn't the case.  The advantage LED lamps have is faster curing, so that might lessen UV exposure slightly.

If speed of curing is what makes you want an LED lamp, just remember that not all gel products are LED curable, so buy accordingly.  Also, because of the narrow LED wavelength, even all LED lamps may not cure all LED gels.  Granted, some LED lamps will have the same wavelength and cure another brand's product, it might not.

A good thing to remember - always do you research, and don't believe everything you read.  Always consider the source as well.  Plenty of genereic lamps are popping up, and they all claim they will cure all gels, while the manufacturers maintain that only their lamp should be used.  On both sides is it a scheme to make more money?  Maybe.  But the manufacturers have tested their product with their lamps.  Do you think that seller that is selling the lamp has really tested all those products?  I doubt it, but who knows, as I did my own test with my LED lamp.

That's not to say one shouldn't try it, just remember you are doing so at your own risk.  I use a generic 36 watt CFL UV tunnel lamp.  So far I've had no issues with wear time or issues with it obviously not curing.  I also have used a Better LED lamp.  I liked it briefly, then found I was having issues with curing, especially on the tips.  I dont' want to risk allergies due to over exposure to an under cured product, so I chose not to use it.  Many others use it and have no problem.

Some interesting articles and other posts on CFL UV vs. LED UV and the safety of nail curing lamps, from a variety of sources
The Science of Gels
What makes a Gel Cure?
Is the UV light a skin cancer risk?
Ultraviolet Manicures: UV cured gel, LED cured gel, and should we worry?
Do nail lamps emit unsafe levels of UV light
7 secrets to curing UV gel Nails
UV or not UV?
Two Words.  Doug.  Schoon.  - Discussion with Doug Shoon on LED/UV lights from Nail Talk Radio

Color Morphing Powders and Spectraflair

A while back I purchased some color-morphing powders from an Australian blog that I follow - More Nail Polish  It's a great blog, and anyone interested in holographic nail polishes and frankening polishes should go visit there!  Another great one for pigments, glitters and more is Polish and Pigments.  While I don't do much with regular nail polish, although I own plenty of it, Pretty much all of the frankening and mixing can be done with gel polish as well.

I never mix up whole bottles of anything.  I merely mix small batches to do manicures and what I need on a square of tin foil.  If it doesn't come out to be what I wanted, I've not wasted much.  The downside is if you have to redo a single nail or just fix a small chip, it's a pain in the arse.  

Anyway, back to the stuff I bought!  :)  

I ordered some coarse grade (35 micron) spectraflair from her, as well as 3 color-morphing pigments.  She has MUCH better pictures than anything I captured on her blog.  She also just over the past couple days did swatches of some color shifting powders from TKB Trading, which I ordered a couple weeks ago but haven't swatched yet.  I'm even more excited to get working with them now that I've seen them on her blog!  

The manicure I just did and am sporting now is Spectraflair.  I mixed a small amount of the Spectraflair with Orly Gel FX Ruby on a piece of tin foil.  I find that most of the time my mixtures that I'm applying with a separate brush apply a little bit thinner than if I'm using the brush from the bottle, so this is 4 coats.  The pictures really do not do it justice.  It's a beautiful dark red with that amazing multi-colored holo shimmer you get from Spectraflair.  I'm absolutely loving this color...... way more than I liked Orly Ruby by itself, and I actually did like that color!  LOL.  It's actually a darker, deeper red than it appears in this picture.  I had a hard time really capturing the color, but you can see the sparkle!

The color morphing powders are equally amazing.  There are 3 - Blue to teal green shift, Green to gold shift, and red to green shift.  The red-green has the most distinct, obvious color shift IMO.  I love it!  For these swatches, I did 2 coats of Gelez Pitch Black as a base.  I mixed each of the color morphing powders with a little clear, and applied 2 coats of that mix over the black base.  

In order to try to show the color shift even better, I made a little video.  It doesn't do them justice though!  

My previous manicure I had on was also a color-shifting pigment that I got on Evil-Bay.  It was from Sik Custom Paint, and it was a green-blue-purple shift.  I had a REALLY hard time capturing the color shift in that one, as it was really dependent on the lighting.  In some light it was very teal green, in others very purple.  In the sun the green was the most obvious, while indoors it was the purple, and in dim lighting it was the blue.  Very pretty color.  Again, it was done over black for a base.

Soak off Gel Water Marble and Peek-a-boo glitter

This next tutorial is a two-for-one special, LOL.  Within the video for the water marbling, I give you a quick how-to on doing a Peek-a-boo glitter design.  


Water marbling...... Well, let me say that I am the queen of suck when it comes to doing this with regular polish.  So, if you are like me and gave up on the idea of water marbling, give it another try with the gel polish.  It's much easier, and if you mess up you just wipe it off and start over!  


Personally I like to do this over a completed manicure.  That way, if I mess up and/or hate the way it came out I can easily wipe it off and try again without ruining what's underneath. I've done it this way and it came out fine and wore as well as any other manicure.  I usually just do this as an accent nail or two.  Another advantage to doing it over a complete manicure - it can spice up a mani you are getting bored with.  


In addition to your regular nail supplies you need a small cup with some room temp water (I use bottle water because I live on a well and our water sucks, LOL), lots of extra paper towels handy, and some toothpicks or manicure sticks.  


Since I like to do this over a completed manicure, I recommend doing a start-to finish manicure.  I do like having a base color, as some areas of the water marble may be sheer and color would show through a little bit, so use something complementary.  Alternatively you could do just base and topcoat with no color in between, or do just one layer of color instead of two.  


Water marble nails:

1. Open all your bottles of gel polish you are using and line them up around your cup in the order you want to drop them into the water.  
2. Drop the color into the water
1. The first drop will spread out the most, and will almost disappear onto the water surface because it's so thin
2. The next drops wont' spread as much, and you may have to shake the cup gently to get them to spread a little
3. Hold your brush close to the water and just let the drops fall.  You don't want to touch the brush to the water as you can contaminate your polish then.  You also don't want to let the drops fall from too high above the cup, or they will just sink right to the bottom and not spread out
4. I usually do 2-3 rounds of my colors
3. Make your design
1. Take a toothpick, manicure stick, dotting tool or whatever you want to use, and make your design.  You can carve out from the outside in toward a center point, in from the center toward the outiside, etc.  Whatever you want to do!  
4. Dip 1-2 fingers at a time, depending on the size of the cup you are using and your design.  
1. You want to dip them in with our nail plate parallel to the top of the water and the design, as much as possible
2. try to do this in one smooth motion into the cup
5. With your fingers still in the water, clean up all the excess polish on the surface of the water with a toothpick, manicure stick, etc. 
1. It's going to form a gloopy mess on the stick
2. This is why you need plenty of paper towels handy to set this messy stuff on top of!  :)
6. Clean up your fingers
1. I use a paper towel to wipe off the bulk of the mess on my fingers
2. You can then take a manicure stick and clean up around the cuticle and sidewalls
3. wipe a cotton pad or ball with alcohol over your fingers to remove any remaining gel before you cure.  
7. Cure for 2 minutes in a UV lamp
8. Apply Top it off, cap free edge, cure 2 minutes

The Peekaboo glitter nails:

This is something you can do as a complete manicure when you are first doing it, or something you can do as an add on over a previous glitter mani when you get bored with it (is it even really possible to get bored with a glitter mani?  LOL).

I've also done this to make a french with glitter tips.  Instead of adding glitter only at the tip, I will do the whole nail as glitter, then add a color and carve out the smile line.  It makes a much smoother and cleaner smile line than when I try to just add a tip of glitter.  The whole manicure ends up being smoother as well when done this way.  And you can carve out whatever you like as a design, leaving the glitter "peeking" out from under the color.  

1. Start out with your basic glitter manicure: base coat, 1-2 coats of color and then glitter scrubbed into the tacky layer
2. Now you can proceed one of two ways
1. Apply top it off and put your color over it, carve design, cure and topcoat again
2. Simply apply color over the glitter instead of top it off first, carve design, cure color coat, and then apply top it off and cure
3. Either way you want to do this, when you apply your color coat, just make it a nice, thin layer
4. Take a small brush dampened slightly with alcohol and carve your design out of the color
1. You can also use a toothpick, corner of a manicure stick, dotting tool, etc. 
5. You may want to flash cure each nail for a few seconds as you go.  
1. If you let it alone too long the nice crisp line will start to blur a little sometimes
2. If you have very small/narrow areas you carved out, the gel polish will try to self-level those right back together.  
6. When you are done carving your design, cure in the UV light 2 minutes
7. Add top it off, cap free edge, cure 2 minutes.

One of my best water marbles:

The colors just all worked so nicely together, and it looked great over the holo-y background because in the sheer areas you could see the blue holo underneath.

Spectraflair Franken Manicures

Spectraflair is a holographic pigment.  It's actually intended for automotive paint and industrial uses.  That being said, here's my disclaimer:


It is recommended that you use a mask when dealing with Spectraflair.  If I were making large quantities of anything and had dust flying, I would.  I don't feel it's necessary to franken a tiny amount of gel polish.  I have several other "car paint pigments" and I've not had any fingers turn green and fall off, I've not had any reactions, etc.  However, if you are concerned or not comfortable using this, DON'T.  I am not recommending anyone try this or use any other product that isn't intended for use in nails or cosmetics, this is just my personal experience and what I do.  


Spectraflair is a very, very, VERY fine powder that has a holographic effect.  It actually comes in a few different particle sizes, from 20-35 microns.  What I have currently is the 20 micron size, but I'm trying to get some of the 35 micron size, as it is supposed to be a bit more blingy.  


The Spectraflair isn't a super-bright, obvious holo.  Indoors or not well-lit areas it just looks shimmery.  Outside or in well lit indoor areas however, it creates a very nice holo effect.   The holo effect is more predominant when used over a black base or other very dark color.  


I've mixed Spectraflair into Structure gel and also into a few colors of gel polish.  It seems to work fine either way.  With the structure (or you could use TIO), you can mix a tiny amount to make a more sheer topcoat, or you can mix a slightly larger amount in to get an opaque silver color.  Either way, the amount you need is REALLY tiny!  


For this Manicure I mixed up the Spectraflair with Gelish's Up in the Blue

Here is a close up of one of the nails:

 Here are some other samples I've done:

From left to right: Spectraflair mixed into Structure to make opaque, Spectraflair mixed with black and painted over a black base coat, Spectraflair mixed into Gelish Up in the Blue (I used a bit too much spectraflair here, but it came out great when I did the manicure), Spectraflair mixed with Gelish Exhale

Here is a the video on mixing spectraflair with Structure, but again you can use any color you want to mix with.  Or, you can apply any color polish, then use clear mixed with spectraflair as a topcoat over it.  :)

Rockstar (or glitter) Nails & Toes

Next up I have a tutorial for how to do Rockstar nails/toes (or Glitter nails/toes).  


It's a really, really easy process!  It's just like doing a regular mani or pedi, just with one extra step - you scrub glitter into the lefty tackiness of one of your layers!  Yep, that's really all there is to it!  

1. Prep your nails as usual - file and shape, do your cuticle work, clean off any dirt or filing dust, etc.  
2. Apply dehydrator and let dry a few seconds
3. Apply bonder if you need it and let dry
4. Apply thin layer of base coat, cap free edge, cure 1 minute in UV lamp
5. Apply a thin layer of color, cap free edge, cure 2 minutes.
• What color you choose is up to you, but I recommend using a color that's similar to your glitter color.
• For Example here I used a dark metallic silver because I was using silver glitter.  If I was using red glitter, I might use something like Gelish Hot Rod Red or Stand Out
6. You can apply a second layer of color if you want to, but if you are covering the whole nail with glitter as we are here, it's not really necessary.  
7. Using a small brush dampened slightly with alcohol pick up some glitter and gently pat and "scrub" it into the tacky layer
• Keep picking up the glitter and scrubbing it in until the whole nail is covered
8. After the entire nail is covered, take your brush and quickly brush back and forth and from top to bottom to brush off any excess glitter.  This also help make sure all the glitter pieces are laying flat.
9. If I'm using a larger size glitter, like 0.008" or larger, I generally will apply a coat of Structure gel over the glitter to help smooth it all out.  Alternatively, you can use two layers of topcoat if you need it.  
10. Apply top it off, cap free edge, and cure two minutes.  
• It has been recommended that you use a separate topcoat for glitter work so you don't end up with glitter mucking up your topcoat.  
• Personally, I haven't had an issue with this and have never used a separate topcoat.  Applying a layer of structure after the glitter would be done with a separate brush, thus your topcoat bottle brush would be protected anyway.  
• If a rare piece of glitter does end up in my topcoat brush, I just wipe the brush with a clean paper towel and it's fine.  I'm still using my original bottle of topcoat that I bought almost a year ago.