Tuesday, January 31, 2012

OPI- Designer de Better

Well Hello!!! Welcome back:-) For today's polish, I know I'm a little late to the party and you have probably seen this before but.. well, I want a turn! When I first saw this one I thought, eh another silver foil, boy was I wrong!




This is a silver foil, but it has a bunch of copper foil in there too. All blended up it gives the appearance of a champagne color. It goes on really thin, I used three coats to get it where I didn't see bald spots. Because the coats are so thin though, the don't take forever to dry. This polish doesn't really have a texture, but it benefits from a layer of topcoat to give it that smooth mirror look.

Monday, January 30, 2012

Color Club- Red Velvet

Hi guys!!! So this will possibly be the last dark wintry color I post for a while! I am really feeling my spring- summer polishes and feel the need to add some color to my life! I do love my darker colors, but I don't think I can give them their proper lovin in my current frame of mind. I did want to show this one though before calling it quits! I got this one a few weeks ago and it has sat while I use everything around it. I stare at it every time a do my nails so I decided it was time. I must must must use this next fall! So beautiful!






From what I hear this is a dupe for CG Lubu Heels, but I don't have it to compare, so if your looking to get one I'm sure there are comparisons out there! This is a black jelly base on the watery side. I doubted it's ability to cover in two coats at first, but surprise it did it! The red mirco glitter in this does not get lost and absolutely glows! I found this really easy to control. I really like everything about this one. I slapped on Seche Vite and was good to go. Removal was even a snap! So for now this one is getting put away but will not be forgotten!

Saturday, January 28, 2012

NYC Sidewalks & Konad m60

So I told you I got the stamping bug, right? Well here is the next design I tried. This one is a personal fave, it makes me smile:-) I feel spring-y just looking at it. I got a sweater in these colors from Gap a few years ago and have loved this color combination ever since.
I started off with a base, followed by two coats of NYC Sidewalks, a nice medium grey cream. The name really describes it perfectly. It is a really nice color on it's own but once again I couldn't leave it alone. I used another full nail stamp on the Konad m60 plate, the paisley/flower one. For the design I use Sinful Colors white, then used my dotting tool to add some accents with Sally Hansen Xtreme wear in Mellow Yellow. This is an awesome yellow cream. I really really like the way this one turned out!!






Friday, January 27, 2012

Essence Forget Me Not & Konad m60

Hello again, and Happy Friday!!! I got the stamping bug again so my next two posts will be konads! Anywhozle... today's polish is Essence Forget Me Not. This was part of a collection called Blossoms. This is the only one I found, I actually spotted it in a display of other brands, and could not find the others anywhere in the store. My local Ulta is the only store I can find Essence in my area, and they have a less than stellar selection. It is usually empty and never has new colors:-( So I guess I should be glad I found this one, and at $1.99, I was a happy camper!
I adore this color, it is so pretty! I used two coats and it covered beautifully. It is a cream with a small amount of shimmer that isn't always apparent. It doesn't have much shine to it but since I always use topcoat, that isn't a problem.
I wanted to do something extra to this so I grabbed Konad m60, and decided on the graduated polka dots! I have a thing for polka dots:-) With this I used the recent fave Navy Baby.




Isn't Forget Me Not so pretty?!? They are one of my favorite flowers, so lovely and delicate!
 I thought this was cute, I'm a bit of a perfectionist so I couldn't wear this more than a day because the dots weren't straight, but I know I am my own worse critic sometimes. I did put this on in between giving my son horsey rides around the house so if I wanted perfect, that probably wasn't the best time, lol:-)

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Wet n Wild- Night Prowl

Hi Guys, we've made it half way through the week!!! Hope you are all holding up ok:-) Nothing to exciting going on here (which is nice), so I'll get right to it...
I've had this a while, and I've seen it a couple times swatched, so I don't know why I waited so long to try it. I kept meaning to, then I would get new colors and this got put aside. So I finally put this on and WOAH:-) It's so pretty and for $1.99 everyone should have this!
It has a thin black base and magenta glitter throughout. The first coat went on really watery, then 2 more thin coats and totally opaque. Because the base is so thin, the glitter doesn't get lost, it glows through each layer. You can click on the pictures to enlarge and get a closer look:


Even though it was thin, it was pretty easy to control and as long as you don't get too much on the brush, it wont pool. I haven't tried that many Wet n Wild polishes but maybe I'll look a little closer next time i hit the drug store.

Monday, January 23, 2012

Essie- Fiji & China Glaze- Fairy Dust

Hello:-) Hope you all had a wonderful weekend! I spent a good amount of time Saturday happily doing laundry in my new washing machine! Yay! You don't realize how much you really need these things until something breaks! I never thought I would be so happy to be washing clothes! It's the little things sometimes:-) We spent the rest of the weekend relaxing at home watching football, and going to my nieces baptism. That brings me to my girly mani, in baby pink!



 This weekend I thought since we were going to Lola's baptism, Fiji would be the perfect pink:-) Fiji is a really light pastel, with a nice creamy formula. It was a little streaky on the first coat but evened out nicely on the second. It was very pretty on it's own, and I apologize for not getting pics of it by itself. But I wanted to try CG Fairy Dust, and haven't been able to make up my mind what to put it over, so this I though would be perfect. FD has is loaded with holo micro glitter suspended in a thick jelly base. It went on a little thick, but it wasn't too hard to control. It needs to be that thick to keep the shimmer evenly distributed through the polish. I liked Fiji, and I loved it with Fairy Dust. It was so pretty and not so stark as Fiji was alone.
I have to say, capturing the effect FD had was really hard! You have to trust me that this is way better in person! You know what it looks like? A shimmery little pink tutu, the kind with glitter on it!

Friday, January 20, 2012

China Glaze- Techno

Hello and Happy Friday!!! I'm feeling kinda loopy tonight, I think this last week at work has my brain on overload! Anywho.. I wanted to get this up tonight. I usually schedule my posts for the next day because I write them up late at night, but I feel the need to do this now so you can see my new pretty!
Today I have China Glaze Techno over Sally Hansen Navy Baby (I have previously called this Rimmel, it is not, oops). I had a hard time getting the 'navy' to show up, it looks black in most light. None the less, I don't care, I loooveee this:-)
Techno isn't new, it was out with a line of China Glaze glitters before, but its being released with their spring Electro-Pop collection (which I also love). It makes any color interesting, with holo micro glitter and hex sequins. In the light you can see a rainbow of colors bouncing off the sequins like little mirrors. To me it looks like the sky on a really dark night with all the stars out. This is just so damn pretty.






I used Sally Hansen double duty basecoat, then one layer of Navy Baby. Yes, I said one! This covered so well I looked at it under every light in my house to see if it truly covered, and yep! It did dry almost satin though, but I didn't worry about it since I was putting Techno over it. You can see in the picture it bubbled a bit. Blame me, I shook it:-( Oopsie! On top of this I put one coat of Techno, then one of Seche Vite. It is so glossy! Seriously pictures do it no justice...and it would look great over so many different things! If you like glitter at all, this is a must buy!

Thursday, January 19, 2012

China Glaze- Lorelei's Tiara

Hello again:-) I am currently very happily snuggled under a blanket on my couch, and waiting for the hubby to get home. I figured I'd catch up on here a little bit, and get this polish posted!
Today I have Lorelei's Tiara, from China Glazes Eye Candy Collection. Isn't she lovely...Isn't she wonderful! (Yes Stevie Wonder is running through my head right now!) Anyways- I love this! It went on really easily, it wasn't too thick like some glitters this dense can be. It wasn't too thin. It sat right where i put it and I actually got this opaque in two thin smooth coats! It did require two coats of topcoat, and you could still feel some texture, but honestly who cares when it looks like this!


I don't know what else to say, this one is perfect! The colors suit me, application was good, it made me happy to look at...:-) What more could a girl ask for?

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Essie- Shine of the Times

Hi again! So I hope everyone is staying warm! It seems like winter hit all of a sudden and even though it should have been here a while ago, none of us were really ready for it.
So today I have Essie Shine of the Times. I will be featuring this again soon. I plan on swatching it over several colors so that you can see how it changes depending on what it is worn with. But for today I have it over a Petites color which I really like but cannot figure out what the name is... I don't know if it had a tag that came off, or if it never had a name in the first place. Anyways its a really nice rich wine-red color. I used 2 coats of that, then one of SOTT. I was really excited to get my hands on this. I had wanted Hidden Treasure for a long time but hadn't been able to get my hands on it. I have always loved how flakys looked in the pictures I'd seen, so you can imagine how thrilled I am with all the choices in recent collections!
This one is the traditional red-gold-green flaky. I wore this for my weekend wine tasting. I wore it matte, but am showing you glossy as well. For the Matte top coat, I used Hard Candy- Matte-ly In Love. I used two coats of this because I've never used it before, it didn't look fully matte with one, and I've heard matte polish wears differently. I don't know if this was necessary, but that's how I did it...



Here are the glossy pics, I just slapped topcoat on over the matte...



I like them both ways, I was torn. But looking back at the pictures, matte is definitely cool, and I think I prefer it.

Sunday, January 15, 2012

Ulta- Love My Blackberry with Sally Hansen Set the Stage

Hello again! I hope everyone had a nice weekend! We had a really nice time wine tasing in the Finger Lakes. We went for a pasta and wine event with about 30 vineyard participating with a different paining at each place. It was a nice break to get away! As much fun as we had, it's nice to be relaxing on my couch right now and know that I have tomorrow off from work:-)
Anyways, onto the polish! I adore today's combo! I feel like rich purple and gold are a match made in heaven, and this reinforces that belief! Love My Blackberry is a dark blue toned purple. It was not easy to get the true color on camera, it tried very hard to look navy. It's ver rich and has a velvety shimmer. Two coats were all I needed.
I used Sally Hansen Set the Stage over the top to give a glossy finish with a little dose of sparkle. The glitter in this is fairly sparse, it contains micro glitter and larger hex peices. I love that StS dosen't try to be the star here,it just adds something extra.


This last picture is LMB alone with no topcoat. You can see the true color of it best in the bottle. So are you loving this one as much as me?

spring 2012 collections: a rundown

This is an awesome list of upcoming collections! I found this on Imperfectly Painted who provided this link to Squared Nails.

spring 2012 collections: a rundown

Friday, January 13, 2012

Sally Hansen Gem Crush Be-Jeweled

Hi Guys, let me start off with my mini rant! I do not like it when I get used to something (that works just fine), and then someone goes and changes it! I tried logging into blogger on my phone today and it informed me that I now need Google Chrome which my phone does not support....not cool! Now I just got on my laptop and it's all different, why do they do this???? I am not happy with you blogger, google, whoever did this!!!
 Ok now that I've said my piece, I'll move on...I cant spend too long on here or I'll go crazy. I started Hunger Games last night and I can't put it down. I was annoyed that work interrupted my reading today! So with only 50 pages to go, I plan on finishing shortly. I don't know why I waited to read this, it's awesome!!!
Onto the polish...Be-Jeweled! I almost didn't get this, I was looking for Cha-Ching! since everywhere I went for Love Marilyn was out of it, I figured this would curb my need. Rite Aid had buy one get 50% off the second so I just snatched this one up. Well I'm really glad I did because it's sooo pretty!This is a lilac glitter in a clear base with a sprinkling of rose colored pink larger glitter. It makes this polish really unique. The pink is kind of holo so it reflects multiple colors in the light. This one is really packed with glitter so it doesn't take much to get full coverage. And of course since its a glitter it dries amazingly fast! It is quite thirsty for topcoat though, I used two coats the night I put it on and another the next morning. The glitter is much shinier with the extra layer.So here she is:




I threw the blurry one in so you can see the different colors the rose glitter throws off. So what do you think? I really love this one, hopefully my husband does too since he informed me my violet leopard were "not your best" lol! At least I can count on an honest opinion! So have a nice weekend guys!

Thursday, January 12, 2012

China Glaze- Blonde Bombshell

Hi guys, I hope your week is going well! Everone here is healing up and I'm overdosing on Emergen-C trying to stay healthy. Gotta stay good for my weekend...:-) I did a few swatches the other day at my moms under her Ott light, and realized afterward I did a lot of purple polish! To give you a little break from that I added in Blonde Bombshell, from China Glaze's Eye Candy collection. I keep thinking that I am over glitters for a while, then more awesome glitters come out! Truth be told I will never really be over glitter, its too pretty! So here is one from that collection, inspired by Marilyn Monroe. BB went on like most glitter, a little sparse on the first coat then it built up with two more thin coats. This was pretty densely packed with different sizes of gold glitter. I just swatched it and used one coat of Seche Vite that quickly disappeared. If I were to wear this I would definitely need another to make it smooth.

This isn't the most unique gold glitter, but its a very nice polish. It's on the yellow side and doesn't look too bad on my hands. It almost leaned green-gold.
Anyways, expect to see a few purple's coming, I just have to adjust the color a little, because the all look a little blue in the pictures! Why oh why does purple do that?

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Lepoard Print with Revlon Violet and Sally Hansen Purple Diamond

Hi again! Working away this week, with some new things I hope you will find as exciting as I do! I thought I would create a Facebook page to to interact with you guys a little more. It's a work in progress but I hope for it to be fully 'put together' by Thursday or Friday. I also plan on adding a twitter. I have been using my personal ones and I think my family and friends are getting a little overwhelmed with nail stuff! Not everyone loves it as much as we do! I know, weird! So anyways, I hope you will check it out!
Now onto polish! Today I have Revlon Violet stamped with Sally Hansen Nail Prisms Purple Diamond. I used the leopard full nail pattern on Konad plate m57. I have to say I didn't expect it to be this subtle, but I love it! Its animal print, tamed! Revlon Violet is a red leaning violet, it went on nicely, i used two coats. It could have dried faster but it wasn't terrible. Than I used Purple Diamond (love!) for the design.


This last one is obviously before the stamping. All these are taken in my lightbox, with one coat of Seche Vite.