Sunday, July 22, 2012

Purple and Polka Dots

Just a quick post to let you know I'm still around!  I've gotten a little blog lazy lately b/c of a lot of real world stuff going on all at once, one of which was a bridal shower I went to for a friend of mine last weekend.  I got a cute purple top with white stripes to wear to it.  I wanted my nails to match but not be too matchy, so instead of doing stripes to match the shirt exactly, I decided to mix patterns and wear purple with white polka dots on my nails.


The purple is OPI Funky Dunkey, which matched the purple in the shirt exactly!  Then I just used Konad Special Polish in white and Konad plate m79 for the dots.



A super simple manicure but I think it was the perfect choice to go with my outfit.

Monday, July 9, 2012

NerdLacquer - All of Time and Space

At some point this past weekend, the plan was for this to become my base for some type of stamping manicure.  But it's so epic on its own, I couldn't bear to cover it up just yet so stamping has been put on hold.  Since NerdLacquers are basically an endangered species now, I wanted to layer it over something to help make the bottle last longer but, at the same time, not affect the basic color of what it should look like on its own.  So I googled swatches to see what others had used and I kept coming across Zoya Bevin.  And as you can tell from comparing it on my nails to the bottle shot, it really is the perfect choice.


I love the combination of the green base and fuchsia and silver micro glitter plus the larger fuchsia and silver hex glitters, but I really can't get over the silver shimmer.  I think the silver shimmer is what brings everything together and just makes it so amazing.  I've been staring at my nails all weekend.




I only have 4 NerdLacquer polishes right now, which I was lucky enough to be able to buy off of another blogger, and they're probably my most prized possessions when it comes to my polish collection.  They're little bottles of awesome.

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Happy 4th of July!

Happy Independence Day everyone!  Here's my manicure for the holiday this year.  I've had this on since Sunday afternoon.  I was thinking I might do a second manicure for July 4th but I might just end up leaving this on my nails for the rest of the week instead of changing it.


This was supposed to be a simple manicure but it turned out to take a hell of a lot more time than I thought it would, mostly due to uncooperative glitters.  I started with two coats of Zoya Cynthia on all of my nails.  Then I applied one coat of Candy Lacquer's American Pie to three fingers on each hand.  My only complaint with American Pie is that the red hex glitters did not seem to want to come out of the bottle.  It was really weird and a little frustrating because there are a lot of red hex glitters in the bottle, maybe not as many red as blue and white but enough that I expected to get a few on my nails naturally.  But the majority of the red hexes you see on my nails were ones I placed individually with a toothpick.  Other than that, the application was easy and I really like the glitter combo in this polish, especially over such a dark blue like Zoya Cynthia.


For my index fingers and thumbs, I used Wet n Wild Stars & Stripes.  This was the glitter that really gave me a hard time.  When I originally bought it a month or two ago, I pretty much expected that I might need to fish out a star or two during application, but I had to place every single glitter by hand, including the bar glitter!  There is certainly a lot of stars and a ton of bar glitter in various sizes throughout the clear(ish) base (it's a little cloudy looking), but each time I tried to put on a coat with the brush, it looked like I was applying top coat.  I got no stars, I got no bars.  Ok, well maybe two or three measly little itty-bitty bars, but none of the thicker bars and not a damn star.  It was hard just trying to scoop them out from the bottle in the first place.  They just did not want to stick to the brush and come out.  In the end though, I managed to get just enough stars and bar glitter out of the bottle and placed on my nails using a toothpick.  Even though it's a total pain in the ass glitter, I don't regret buying it.  First of all, it's Wet n Wild, so super cheap.  I've spent more on a cell phone app than on this polish.  The stars are a perfect size too...not too big, not too small.  And did I mention the stars are holographic?  I didn't?  Oh, well hey, the stars are holographic!  So ya, it was worth the aggravation.


I applied two coats of Seche Vite and then realized that I probably should have added at least one coat of Gelous first to really cover the stars sufficiently.  But then I thought, well why not put the Gelous on top of the Seche Vite?  So I did and it worked great.  Booya!  The Gelous dried just as shiny as the Seche Vite had been and if I didn't use the Gelous, I probably would have needed another two coats at least of SV to contain all the points on the star glitters.  Even a friend at work made a comment on Monday, while examining my nails, that you couldn't feel the stars at all.


Here's hoping everyone has a great holiday today!  Enjoy the parades, barbecues, fireworks and hopefully some good weather!

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