Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Day 8 of the 31 Challenge

Hello my reader!  I've decided to toss my dubious nail art talents out there and join The Crumpet in her next awesome Laid Back 31 DC.  I love following these challenges because it shows me a lot of wonderful art, introduces me to a ton of great blogs and gives me inspiration to perfect my manicures.

Well I missed one!  I was overwhelmed by weather and work and didn't realize it until late last night. 

Duochrome, Holo or Flakie was the prompt for last night.  I have a lot of polishes that meet those requirements.  I don't which is harder, having a ton of polishes or only having a few.  Also, I wasn't sure where the glitter/flakie threshold was.  So, after an evening of playing with my polishes I did this.






I was going for a sort of sunflower against the night sky.  Maybe in an impressionist sort of way.  You know if you squint and look at it from far off!  Really I do like them.  My bonus mom loves sunflowers.  She had a serious surgery Monday so I'm hoping these will cheer her up!

I hope you all are staying warm and dry! 

Monday, February 25, 2013

Day Seven of the 31 Challenge

Hello my reader!  I've decided to toss my dubious nail art talents out there and join The Crumpet in her next awesome Laid Back 31 DC.  I love following these challenges because it shows me a lot of wonderful art, introduces me to a ton of great blogs and gives me inspiration to perfect my manicures.

Alas today I felt uninspired.  It was a short weekend and long day.  The danger of foot deep snot looming over me.  I went boring.  Forgive me faithful fans!  I promise to be more perky next time!!





Okay so I did my nails different colors and then topped them all differently.  On my fore finger I used Zoya's "Opal"  Which didn't show up very well, so I used it on the middle finger as well.  On my ring finger I put purple glitter over the purple polish.  My pinkie was sort of an experimental fail.  Hehe.  I got Sinful Colors "Tokyo Pearl"  I thought it would be a shimmery top coat.  Interestingly it was an opaque polish.  O.O  well  good to know because the color is pretty!  Alas it completely covered the red. Heh.

More excitement and awe tomorrow!  Have a great day everyone.

Sunday, February 24, 2013

Rainbow stars!

My sister loves rainbows!  I call her my baby sister, even though she's old enough to drive, drink and get into trouble.  But what can I say, the urge to fuss over her is still pretty strong with me.  So my baby she remains. 

This weekend I got some rhinestones in the mail from MASH.  I got round and star shape.  I painted my nails black with Sinful Colors "Black on Black"  Then I did a thick top coat and put the stars on across the tips of my nails.

Is it strange that I'm almost ashamed to admit that I used Northern Lights on this?  Really the stuff is becoming an addiction.  Heh. 

I really like how this came out.  I think next time I might try doing a sky or darker blue for the background.  The glequin doesn't pop quite as much as I would like.  In the house you can barely tell I have them on!

However I have a-LOT more shiny things that I can use!  So I'm not going to stress about it much.  I hope you all are still having a great weekend.

Saturday, February 23, 2013

Nails Under the Sea

So yesterday I got some new nail art plates.  So I used my most anticipated pattern the fish scale one.

I painted my nails with Orly "Jealous Much" a pale cream green.  Then I dabbed China Glaze "Watermelon Rind" OPI "Unfor-Greta-Blue " and "Jade is the new black"  mixing the colors for a underwater effect.  Then I stamped the patern with OPI "Here today, Aragon tomorrow and topped it with my beloved Northern Lights, aka Teleporter Polish.

  

I love how they turned out.   I know it's just a little color mixing and blending with a stamp over it, but no one said it had to be complex to be pretty, right!

Well today I got my shipment of SEVEN Zoya polishes.  So I have a whole basket of new toys to try out.

I hope you all are having a wonderful weekend!

Friday, February 22, 2013

MASH delivery

Well I found a sale.  Who can resist stamping plates for half off?  Not this nail art lover!!  MASH had some fantastic plates.  I contained myself to three.  One that I have wanted for a number of weeks

The scales pattern.  I love mermaids and sea patterns.  I've seen this pattern around in several posts.  When I saw it on sale I hit the cart button so fast heads spun.  I also love the swirl hearts.  I'm really happy with this plate, and you all will be seeing it on my nails soon.











Thursday, February 21, 2013

Free hand swirls

I'm pretty sure days get twice as long after I get notification that something has shipped.  I've been waiting for my MASH and Zoya delivery.  It feels like I got the notice a month ago.  I check the status every day because I just can't wait to get what I ordered.  My order is now in town, but because of the snow storms they're staying at the Post Service.  *SIGHS*

So to soothe my nail polish withdraw I decided to try and paint some art free handed.  I used Zoya Blaze as the base color.  This is a seriously sexy nail polish.  A deep raspberry red with shimmer and sparkle.  Then I painted swirls with Zoya Trixie. 


For my first attempt I'm pretty happy with it.  Sure they aren't as smooth and elegant as I would like, but it doesn't really look like a money went at it either.  The silver reflects the red, so the lines are more opaque than they look. 

As soon as I get my new polish and nail plates I'll show you all what I bought. 

Have a great, and safe day.

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Day Six of 31 Challenge

Hello my reader!  I've decided to toss my dubious nail art talents out there and join The Crumpet in her next awesome Laid Back 31 DC.  I love following these challenges because it shows me a lot of wonderful art, introduces me to a ton of great blogs and gives me inspiration to perfect my manicures.

The inspiration for today is a color family.  I love green, so I did my nails in shades of my favorite hue.  I used OPI Here today Aragon Tomorrow for the base.  Then I did a white layer so China Glaze Cha Cha Cha would really pop.  Then a tip color of OPI Jade is the new black.  Then I glued some flower shaped rhinestones.  I slapped a layer of IMN Northern Lights on it for some additional sparkle.

  I've noticed that the Northern Lights really sparkle against the darker shades.

Lots of love to you all.

Saturday, February 16, 2013

Day Five of 31 Challenge

Hello my reader!  I've decided to toss my dubious nail art talents out there and join The Crumpet in her next awesome Laid Back 31 DC.  I love following these challenges because it shows me a lot of wonderful art, introduces me to a ton of great blogs and gives me inspiration to perfect my manicures.

I love purple.  It's one of my favorite colors.  However I had a really hard time coming up with something to do.  I surfed the internet for a while looking for something to really jazz me.  So I polished, removed, re did and just wasn't happy with anything.

So I went to find a different tool and saw MICROBEADS!!  I had picked them up a few weeks ago and forgotten I had them.  AND there was purple!!  SCORE!  So I finally got to do a caviar manicure!!  It's surprisingly easy.  And it's an interesting look!


For my ring finger I put on one of the OPI's liquid sand "Can't Let Go".  You know to change it up a little bit.  I love the liquid sand polishes.  You can find swatches of them everywhere.   The micro beads is the Michael's brand, the color is Heather.  I tapped them gently into Julep's Alfre.

Basically what I did was paint a thin coat of Alfre.  Then I gave it a little while to dry.  Then I applied a thick layer of the polish.  While it was still wet I pressed a slightly damp finger into a bowl of the micro beads and lightly pressed them into my nail.  To get a thick compact of beads, I picked up more beads and tapped them against the wet nail.  Then I went over it with a top coat.  To give it some extra glue. 

It looks very cool!!  I would love to go out with this look. I think when I go to Vegas I might go out with these one night. 

I hope you all are having a wonderful weekend.  I'm looking forward to see what the others do for the 31 day challenge.

Friday, February 15, 2013

New Nail Polish Mani

Of course when you get new nail polish, you have to try it out!!  So I broke out my favorite manicure technique.  POLKA DOTS!!!

The base is China Glaze "Watermelon Rind".  I put a coat of Finger Paints "Art You Wondering" to give it some wonderful sparkle.  Then I dotted Zoya's Trixie and China Glaze Coconut Kiss onto it. 

Dots!  Everything is better with dots!



Tomorrow I'm going to try and do a fish scale/ mermaid tail dotticure.  I'll post pictures if I'm successful.  Or you know at least semi-successful.

You all have a wonderful weekend

Thursday, February 14, 2013

Zoya, and other things!

I just wanted to let you know that Zoya is having a little V-day sale.  They are giving away three free nail polishes with the purchase of 25.00.  Now that is a snap to do with all of Zoya's beautiful colors.  I know because... I've just done so.  Easy peasy, like falling off a bike.  Ahem.  If you do so, I am taking part of the Share the love program.  So if you AREN'T Signed up You can use this, make an account and then get a free nail polish.  Which may or may not be stackable with the other, I didn't check.  I'm sorry... I'm a bad panda.  But here is the link about Share the Love.

Also, today Hubby had to work.  = /  Which made me a little sad.  So I won't see him until later tonight.  Instead my friend went out with me.  About a week ago, I introduced my friend to nail art.  she has taken to it like a duck to water.  She's taken to it so well... she can already do water marbling!  Seriously!  I showed her a youtube video the next day she was like LOOOKIE WHAT I DID!!  I can't do water marbling with my literally WEEKS more experience than she has.  Life is not fair.  BUT her nails look awesome!!

So today, she went out with me and you know what.  Two nail polish lovers shopping together without a cool head in the mix gets expensive.  FAST.  It's totally AWESOME because I can buy nail polish without feeling guilty!  I should do a haul of just what I got this week.  Because it's a lot of polish.  But it's all totally freaking awesome nail polish.  I am still not ashamed. 

I did find the most wonderful stuff though!  I had to share it with my one follower!  It's called Northern Lights top coat.  My friend and I, we call it Transporter Polish.  ((Because, we are both unabashed geeks) 


I found it at Sally Beauty Supply.  When I first saw the bottle it looked like this.  Not very impressive right?  Well I read on a blog and the woman RAVED about it.  She swore she used it on every manicure she has.  I did not see the appeal untili a very magical thing happened.

I shook the bottle.








Check out all that glitter!!  Of course you can't see it because hologram glitter is a pain in the ass to photograph but this stuff is AWESOME! 

My friend and I stared at the bottle for a few seconds like star struck four year old glitter-holics.  Then she says "It's like the Transporter from StarTrek".  Then picked up two bottles for herself. 





Blurry picture to show the SPARKLE! 


So I'm telling you.  If you love sparkly nail polish you should get this.  If you like a nice sheen of sparkle over your nails, just a little touch of glamor.  You have to go see this stuff.  Really I'm wondering how I lived without this stuff for so freaking long.

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Manicurity

Hello there my lovely fellow polish lovers!  I just wanted to take this moment to share with you a give away.  One of my favorite nail blogs is Manicurity.  She always has great nail art to share!  She recently hit the HUGE milestone of 500 followers.  In honor of her achievenment she's doing a great giveaway.

Please check it out and follow her if you so desire.  She has a pretty awesome sense of humor I think.

Thanks and have a great day

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Day four of 31 Challenge

Hello my reader!  I've decided to toss my dubious nail art talents out there and join The Crumpet in her next awesome Laid Back 31 DC.  I love following these challenges because it shows me a lot of wonderful art, introduces me to a ton of great blogs and gives me inspiration to perfect my manicures.

I have a lot of pink polish.  I don't really know how I ended up with so much, considering I'm not a big fan of pink.  I know that the wonderful Julep sent me several shades.  This also gave me a chance to work on my lines.  I really liked this manicure.  I'm proud of how it came out.


Nice right!!  I was going to add polka dots (Who doesn't love polka dots, right?)  But the dots made the manicure look to busy.  I changed up the pink lines with gold and silver.  I need to improve my photography skills, because the manicure does look a lot better in person.

Sunday, February 10, 2013

Day Three of 31 Challenge

Hello my reader!  I've decided to toss my dubious nail art talents out there and join The Crumpet in her next awesome Laid Back 31 DC.  I love following these challenges because it shows me a lot of wonderful art, introduces me to a ton of great blogs and gives me inspiration to perfect my manicures.

The prompt for today was GOLD!  I quickly found out, I don't really have any true gold nail polishes.  I don't wear gold because of the yellow hue to my skin.  So I went a hunting and couldn't find any shades I liked that weren't glitter bombs that I liked.  I was defeated. 

So the other day I was doing a manicure for a friend who requested space on my nails.  You can see it down at VBF Birthday.  As I was looking for appropriately colored planets I pulled out OPI Warm & Fozzie from the Muppet collection.  ((I have them all I love them, I'm basically a big kid and I like it that way))  And it's kind of gold!  A dark gold but gold.  WOO HOO!!  Phase one completed!!

Then of course I had to figure out the design.  I hunted through all of my favorite blogs looking for inspiration.  Then I remembered that Chalkboard Nails had a beautiful design I see quite often called a fishtail.  Now I don't know if she came up with it, but she uses it to great effect.  Luckily she had tutorial!  So I found some other metallic polishes that I liked and whipped up this lovely manicure.


I'm still working on my photography.  A lot of bloggers out there take beautiful pictures of their nails.  I typically do mine in the evening so I can't take advantage of the windows.  ((Darn you winter!))  But everyone was a noob once, right!

The colors in this manicure from cuticle to edge is OPI- Warm & Fozzie, Julep- Rebel, and Julep Evangeline.  Evangeline came in my JULEP MYSTERY BOX!!  I promise I'll do a reveal soon.  I loved all the colors.

I look forward to seeing the rest of the mani's in gold!
Happy Sunday!

Friday, February 8, 2013

VBF Birthday

So yesterday was my VBF (Very best friend)'s birthday.  So to commemorate her wonderful entrance into the world, I painted her favorite thing on my nails

SPACE!!  The Final Frontier.  No star-ships because I'm not that good yet.  I'm not good at galaxy nails yet.  I don't know if I lack the colors or the technical know how to do them.  So I did them with some planets to make it look less poopy!  Next year they'll be better!!

Hi Alex!!!

I called my VBF (Very Best Friend) yesterday to wish her a happy birthday.  After wishing her a happy birthday, talking about her dog, my cat and our various gripes about our jobs she told me that a friend of ours told her he thought I'd been hacked! 

She asked him why he thought that and he said "Well, I follow her on Google and suddenly all I see is nail polish about her."  Apparently he thought the nail ninja mafia had gotten to me!!

Which I suppose they have.  Since I have totally caught the nail art bug.

So HI ALEX!  Still me.  Just on a hobby craze.  Love you, kiss the wife for me and post more pictures of your puppy!!

Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Playing with my nails

So I was going to try and do the spotted water trick I've seen done.  Here, by cute polish and here by Simple Little Pleasures.  I love Simple little pleasures one the best.  I like her tone of voice it's very calm and some how confident.  Sort of like, it's okay you totally can do this.  I'm odd.

Alas... I didn't get spotted nails.  Nope, FAIL!!  I think it was the black I was trying to use.  I'm going to try and see if I can find China Glaze Liquid Leather and see if I get better results.  But I got... well a horrid result.

So I tossed the black back and decided to try something different.  I follow HARD LACQUER, and I love her style.  And she had sugar spun nails today.  So I copied her.
I have no shame!!

I discovered I had like five shades of teal!  ((I like teal!!))  So I got them all out and some silver and  went to town.  All in all, I really really like it!  I think I'll use this technique again.

Also, watch more of Simple Little Pleasure's videos.  She's really good at showing you her technique.  Cute polish has GREAT tutorials.  So give her a watch as well.

Also, thank you for inspiring me Hard Lacquer.

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Day Two of 31 Challenge

Hello my reader!  I've decided to toss my dubious nail art talents out there and join The Crumpet in her next awesome Laid Back 31 DC.  I love following these challenges because it shows me a lot of wonderful art, introduces me to a ton of great blogs and gives me inspiration to perfect my manicures.

I have one silver polish!!  Obviously this needs to be corrected, but in the mean time, I decided to go with my favorite technique.  STAMPING.  With a slap of glitter, because everything is better with glitter, right!!





I just got Rebel from Julep.  So of course I had to use it for this challenge.  This nail polish does have a nice duochromatic effect, but it was hard to catch.  The stamped black is Sinful Color, "Black on Black"   I got the GALS Fairy Stamp set from Amazon, which is what I used.  GA33 for those that are interested in plate numbers.

I can't wait to see what everyone else comes up with.
Happy Tuesday

Monday, February 4, 2013

Zoya Polish Haul

I placed an order through Zoya using my code for a free bottle of polish. 

I ordered three polishes, one was one of the new PixieDust, Vespa. 

Green is one of my favorite colors, but this polish doesn't look good on me.  It's a little pale.  I should of gotten a spoon which Zoya, but I was so excited I couldn't wait.  Silly impatient me.

So, I kind of feel the need to compare this to OPI's Liquid Sand.  I have "Save the Night" and "Can't Let Go" from OPI.  PixieDust feels about as gritty as the Liquid Sand, which isn't terribly so.  However I think Liquid Sand has a better sparkle to it.  The glitter in Liquid Sand is bigger and reflects more light.  PixieDust is more subtle, but I don't know if that is because of the smaller glitter or if it's because of the lighter color. 

I like the formula.  Though I wish I'd of gotten a darker color.  Perhaps Dahlia or Chyna. 

I also got Zoya Blaze and Trixie.  I'll put swatches up of them soon. 

Glequin....

The wonderful and talented Sammy over at The Nailasurus apparently has coined the perfect manicure phrase that is new to me...

Glequin

Now I feel very happy when I have glitter on my nails so I think of this as GLEEquin.  The link describes and shows wonderful pictures of this awesome nail art form. 

Now if you all will excuse me.  I'm going to go by some sequins and disco ball my nails!

Saturday, February 2, 2013

Nominated for a Liebster award! (lots of talking)



I was nominated for a Liebster award by the fantastic Cazzy over at SpecialGirls Nails.    I had no idea what this was, which apparently isn’t uncommon!  But I think it’s totally fun and I always enjoy reading other blogs.  Also, it’s a great little ego boost.

I found the rules:
1)      Post 11 facts about yourself.  ((I’ll try not to share to much))
2)      Answer the 11 questions asked by the person who nominated you.
3)      Ask 11 questions to the people you are nominating
4)      Find 11 blogs with less than 200 followers and nominate them

Awesome!  Let’s do this magical thing!

February Julep Box

Okay, so I haven't been a Julep Maven long, but I -LOVE- these polishes.  Every single one of them. I changed my box to get the It Girl box and every color made me swoon.  I also got Oscar as an add on.  So, let me show you my awesome things!




So, this is Rebel and Marion. Both of these are a SINGLE COAT.  Full coverage.  I don't know if Julep tweaked their formula, but both colors glided on beautifully.
  • Rebel-  This was a little more matte than I expected.  But it's still an awesome nail polish.  It's named for Rebel Wilson of Pitch Perfect fame.  With her loud and proud personality, it would of been great for the polish to have more sparkle.
  • Marion-  Ooohhh baby.  I was drooling over this color since I saw it on the website.  It totally delivers.  A rich deep teal with silver sparkles.  This was the nail polish I didn't realize that I needed all my life.  

  •  Joan-  Oh Joan.  I love Marion,  but Joan is my favorite today.  It's a beautiful raspberry with golden shimmer.  I know it's suppose to be for Joan Crawford, but it makes me think of Joan from Mad Men.  Beautiful, elegant and sassy.  I did two coats of this polish, though one gave great coverage. 
Oscar!  I almost forgot OSCAR!  Sorry I was drooling over the other ones.  Heh

Oscar is a glitter, with three coats it's gives total coverage.  It looked fantastic over Joan.  I would also like to say this glitter came off like a CHAMP!  It was silly how easy it was to get off. 

I hope you all got some polishes you love too!

Friday, February 1, 2013

Day one of 31 Challenge

Hello my reader!  I've decided to toss my dubious nail art talents out there and join The Crumpet in her next awesome Laid Back 31 DC.  I love following these challenges because it shows me a lot of wonderful art, introduces me to a ton of great blogs and gives me inspiration to perfect my manicures.

So, this is my first nail art... I'm completely nervous and, it's not as perfect as I like.  The challenge inspiration is black and white.  I decided I would do a gradient for it!  Bad idea.  I'm not very good at gradients yet and the black totally overwhelmed the white.  So I got... dingy gray nails.  Then I decided I would SAVE it... and paint black tips and white moons.  Typically I can free and it quite well, but this time... FAIL!  Fail number two.  So, I fell back on my good ole reliable. 

POLKA DOTS!!  Which saved it pretty well I think.

I'm happy with it.  I'm proud of it.  I know it's not going to be the best, but I'm still totally jazzed to see what everyone else puts out there.

So, Happy Manicures!

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