Valentine 2014

Look at me, all posting a holiday mani on the actual holiday instead of a week later (or two weeks in the case of this past Christmas!).  Not that this post went off without a hitch.  I was originally planning to have this up Wednesday and then do another Valentine design Thursday, since I had the day off from work.  But then word came of the impending snowpocalypse and schedules got switched, I ended up going in to work only to come back home when we shut down at noon because it was so bad out, and by then I...well, I just pretty much said screw it, ha!  So without further ado, here is what turned out to be my lone Valentine manicure this year.

For this design, I started with 3 thin coats of China Glaze White on White.  The design is from Winstonia plate W102.  The polishes used are all Konad Special polishes: red, pink, pastel pink and dark red.  I dabbed the 4 colors onto random spots of the design so that they would blend slightly during scraping.

At first, I felt like they needed something more, but the longer I wore them, the more I enjoyed them just the way they were.

Even though I'm not really one to celebrate Valentine's Day, I do seem to like doing Valentine themed designs. Maybe it's just because they are so many darn heart patterns in each stamping set I own.  I also find that I really enjoy the outcome when I use white as a background for nail art, and this design is no exception to that.  So this was definitely a win-win in my book.

Liquid Lacquer Pink Elephant

Alright, so here we are with the 4th and final Liquid Lacquer polish from the blogger package.  This glitter topper is called Pink Elephant.  I have two combos to show.  These swatches have been sitting on my laptop for a while.  I wore a few other polishes in between and I also had a few breaks, hence the longer silver nails and shorter blue ones.  I went back and forth on whether to re-swatch these because of that, but finally decided just to go for it as is because I've put off this post long enough, over thinking it.  And I don't think any of you will mind.  First up is one coat of Pink Elephant over Zoya Trixie.

Pink Elephant is a clear base with different sized hexes and squares in neon pink, black, white and grey.  It does remind me a bit of DIFFERENTdimension Another Brick in the Wall, which I reviewed last month.  Pink Elephant does not have any holographic micro glitter, which I think I prefer that it doesn't.  And I love, absolutely love the grey matte glitter in Pink Elephant.  Both are great glitter toppers but I think I would give a slight edge to Pink Elephant just based on my personal preferences.

I have to say, I'm a little bummed about the way this photographed.  I tried a few times but I could not capture how cool Pink Elephant truly looked over Trixie.  The grey matte glitter especially looked really great against the metallic silver background.  The second combo I have to show you is one coat of Pink Elephant over OPI Suzi Says Feng Shui.  I loved this glitter over a cream base as well.

Check out Pink Elephant and a ton of other great polishes on the Liquid Lacquer shop page.

Liquid Lacquer 80's Baby

Today I have the first of 4 polishes I recently received from Liquid Lacquer.  There were a few polishes I had been eyeing, so I decided to apply for Melissa's blogger package.  I thought it would be a great way to order some polishes that I wanted and in the process try out a few polishes that I might not normally have chosen on my own.  80's Baby is a perfect example of that!  I don't think that I would have ordered this glitter on my own, so when I got it as part of the blogger package, I was a bit nervous.  Especially since I don't consider choosing glitter and base color combos one of my strong points.  But after testing out a few combinations, I came across one that just wowed me.  This is 80's Baby over Orly Lucky Duck.

80's Baby is a mix of mostly neon colored glitters: yellow, pink and green, and winter white matte glitters in a clear base.  I went from not being sure about this glitter to wearing this combo for 5 straight days.  I tested this over several different base colors.  Some combinations worked well, some were...well, just wrong.  As in "I'm not even going to show you" wrong.  But 80's Baby/Lucky Duck was a winner and my absolute favorite.  It really looks awesome over white too.  I went with Lucky Duck for this post because it seems neon glitters over white is a common find on the internet so I wanted to try something a little different.  But I will definitely be wearing this over white one day soon because I loved my test swatch of it.  Here's a shot of 80's Baby over Milani White On The Spot, China Glaze Lemon Fizz and Finger Paints Black Expressionism.

Some of the neon glitters really pop over different base colors and some kind of disappear on certain shades, but each combination offers a great look.  The lime green squares, for example, really pop over Lucky Duck.  But see that big translucent neon green hex in the middle of Yellow Fizz?  There is also one on the black swatch, to the immediate left of the big pink hex.  But it just kind of melts into the black background and the same thing happened over Lucky Duck.  But for how great the other colors look, that's a trade-off I'm willing to make.  And they show up just fine over other colors, like Lemon Fizz.

Application of 80's Baby was really smooth, but for the test swatches on the nail wheel it did take about 3 coats to get the glitter built up the way I wanted it.  For my actual manicure, I tried dabbing the glitter onto my nails, instead of brushing it on, and I was able to get the coverage I wanted in just one coat.  I finished off the manicure with one coat of Gelous and one coat of Seche Vite.

I'm so glad that I signed up for the blogger package.  I would probably not have thought to order 80's Baby myself and I would have really been missing out on a great neon glitter!  I'll have some more Liquid Lacquer polishes coming up soon.  In the meantime, be sure to check out all of the current Liquid Lacquer polishes available on Melissa's shop!

DIFFERENTdimension Another Brick In The Wall

Today I have the second Echoes Collection polish from DIFFERENTdimension that was sent to me for review.  Another Brick In The Wall is clear base polish with hex and square hot pink glitters in a few different sizes, black and white bar/rectangle glitters, black and white micro glitter and some holographic micro glitter.  I layered one coat of Another Brick In The Wall over Revlon Aquamarine from the Chroma Chameleon collection.

I love this combo!  I hate to give myself a little pat on the back but I will, because I'm usually so bad when it comes to picking a good undies color for a glitter topper that I can't help but be thrilled with how great I think this turned out.  I really need to experiment more when it comes to glitters and base colors and start trying out combinations that I wouldn't normally put together.

I was happily surprised with the application of Another Brick In The Wall.  I only needed one coat and was able to get a lot of glitter in just the one coat.  It actually wasn't that hard to get out the super large hot pink hexes.  My only issue with them is that my nail beds are so high and narrow, with such a big C-curve in my nails, that the big hexes are a bit too wide to fit well on certain spots of my nails.  But that's a completely personal problem because of my nail shape and I have that same issue anytime a polish has extra large glitters.  In spite of that, I just can't resist the mega glitters!  I love them.

Revlon Aquamarine is super thin, in case you were wondering.  I wore it once before and it took about 5 coats at least to be opaque.  Instead of dealing with that nonsense again, for this manicure, I layered just 2 coats over 1 coat of Finger Paints Black Expressionism, which has rapidly become my favorite go-to black polish.

You can check out all 6 shades from the Echoes Collection on the etsy page for DIFFERENTdimension, plus a ton of other great looking glitter polishes and holographic polishes made by Missi.

*Polish sent for honest review.  Review contains only my personal opinions.*

Spun Sugar: Take 3!

It has been a while since the last time I tried out the spun sugar technique.  My last attempt was not one of my favorites...it was ok, but not as exciting as the first time I tried this technique.  I had been wearing OPI We'll Always Have Paris Suede for about two days and was staring at my nails trying to decide if I wanted to change it up and the idea try a spun sugar mani again finally hit me.

Before I get any further, here are a few shots of We'll Always Have Paris Suede by itself.  This was two coats, no top coat.

I love the OPI Suedes.  All of them.  As a whole, it is definitely one of my favorite collections of all time.  Without top coat they are prone to chip quicker, just like most matte finishes, but application is so smooth and they just look fantastic once dry.  I think I'm going to have to try out each one of them as a base for a spun sugar mani at some point.  Just like with the my first attempt using OPI Here Today...Aragon Tomorrow Suede as my base, I love the way the subtle sparkle squeaks through between the strands of creme polishes layered over it.

For the strands, I started out with applying random lines of the original/non-suede OPI We'll Always Have Paris.  That was followed by strands of Orly Artificial Sweetener and Orly You're Blushing.  I went back and added just a few more strands of We'll Always Have Paris at the end because I felt it needed just a few more dark lines.  Once that had set up for a bit, I tried to get the surface as smooth as possible by applying a coat of Seche Vite, one coat of Gelous and then one last coat of Seche Vite to finish it off.

I can't wait to do another one, definitely one of my favorite techniques!  Also, I finally caved and bought myself a new camera with the help of some gift cards I was hoarding since Christmas.  It's a Canon PowerShot SX50 HS and I love it.  I think you can tell the difference in clarity right here in this one post between all the swatch pics of We'll Always Have Paris Suede, which were taken with my 9 year old Sony, and the pictures of the spun sugar mani, which were all taken with the new Canon.

Valentine's 2013

Last week I wore two different designs during the week for Valentine's Day.  The first design was my first attempt at using striping tape and the second design was straight out of my good ol' comfort zone...plaid stamping.

For the first design, I started with a coat of Milani's one coat glitter in Red Sparkle.  Once that dried, I taped off 4 lines at random on most of my nails with striping tape.  Then, one nail at a time, I painted on one coat of Finger Paints Black Expressionism and immediately peeled off the striping tape to reveal the red glitter beneath.  On my ring finger, I stamped a hearts design from Bundle Monster plate BM-317 using Konad Special Polish in black.  Then I finished all the nails off with a coat of Seche Vite top coat.

The only thing I don't really like about the Milani one coat glitters is that when they dry, there always seems to be a few dull looking spots that top coat doesn't even seem to help.  I still loved the look but I kept thinking it might have turned out better if I had used Nubar Fire Sparkle like I did for Valentine's Day last year.

For the second design, I started with two coats of OPI Mod About You.  The plaid design is from Konad m60, stamped first with Konad Special Polish in black, then again with Konad white.  I was planing to stamp a single heart on each tip, but I could see the black lines showing through the first heart I stamped.  So I quickly scrapped that idea and grabbed the first red polish at hand, China Glaze Red Satin, and my dotting tools.  I used the largest dotting tool to dot one heart on each nail.  Then I re-dotted over the hearts using China Glaze Ring in the Red to add some glitter and also because Red Satin was a bit jelly and not quite opaque enough by itself.

I loved both of these designs but of course, big shocker, I loved the plaid more!

KBShimmer Berry Patch

After taking off my dark green snakeskin mani, I wanted to go in the opposite direction with something a little softer and girly.  Gah!  Me, girly?  Well, only when it comes to nail polish!  A few weeks back, I made my first successful indie purchase off Etsy.  I usually get shut out on Etsy restocks because I think I hesitate and over-think what I want to buy or just don't have a game plan going in.  But when KBShimmer did her last restock, I managed to snag Newsprint and Berry Patch.  Newsprint was the reason I was stalking the restock to begin with, but when I saw Berry Patch, I knew I had to have it also.  I'm so glad I got it because it's awesome!  When my shipment arrived, I kept staring at the bottle.  It makes me want to run out and get a fruit smoothie!

There is such a great mixture of glitters in this polish.  You've got micro glitter in different shades of pink, some small metallic purple/raspberry hex glitters, small holographic hex glitters and big blue hex glitters, which I think are a perfect contrast to all the pink glitter and the creamy pink base.  I love glitters like this in pastel cream bases!  They are some of my absolute favorite polishes.  For Berry Patch, I started with three thin coats and then added one coat of Gelous and one coat of Seche Vite.  I just couldn't narrow down which photos to use so get ready for some pic spam.

I can't wait for KBShimmer's next restock.  A date hasn't been set yet but she did announce on her Facebook page that she plans on having the next restock on her own website, KBShimmer.com, rather than on her Etsy shop.  She also has a line of handcrafted soaps, scrubs and balms.  I haven't purchased any of those myself but if I'm lucky to get a few more polishes on her next restock, I plan to buy a few of the soaps or the sugar scrubs as well.  They look great and I've heard some good reviews from others who did purchase soaps along with their polishes.

Spring ASBMF Challenge #7: Glitter Tips!

For part 7 of the ASBMF Challenge, I had a ton of ideas for glitter tips and didn't know what direction to go in.  One of the ideas I had involved using one of the new jelly polishes I had recently received from Birchbox when I bought the Zoya Blogger Collection.  I didn't have a definite plan, I just knew I wanted to try out one of these newbies and thought maybe I could make sort of a glitter tips/glitter sandwich combo out of it.  And that is basically what I ended up with.  It was a lot more subdued than some of the original ideas I had in mind, but I think the end result was a subtle and elegant little manicure.

Out of the three Blogger Collection colors, I decided to use Zoya Belle because it is the most unique jelly out of the three.  It's the most unique jelly I own actually.  The shimmer in it makes it looks not quite as squishy as other jellies, but it's still got a lot of jelly characteristics to it.  Here is three thin coats of Zoya Belle over nothing but Orly Bonder base coat.

You can see there is some visible nail line even with three coats but I think adding a fourth thin coat or having used three thicker coats instead would have taken care of that.  The glitter I decided to use was China Glaze Techno, which is a clear base full of holographic hex glitter and holographic micro glitter.  For application, I just used the bottle's brush to dab the glitter around on the end of each nail.  After it dried, I dabbed the brush around the tips a second time just to get some more hex glitters on there.  Techno right on top of Belle was pretty harsh on the eyeballs, to tell you the truth.  It was "Japanese anime cartoons causing seizures in kids" type harsh.  If I hadn't already considered layering the glitter between the jelly, I probably would have ended up taking it off at that point.  Techno looks great over so many colors, so I'm not really sure what happened when I layered it over Belle that made me dislike it so much, but I think maybe the shimmer in Belle and the holo in Techno just weren't able to play nice with each other.  I wish I had taken a picture of the glitter like that, but it just slipped my mind at the time.  After the second coat of Techno dried, I added two super thin coats of Belle and that just transformed it into something totally different!

Techno was so pretty layered between Belle instead of just layered over it.  You could still see the holo in the glitter come through but without feeling like someone was smacking you in the face with a disco ball.  Here's a reminder of what's yet to come and, as usual, be sure to check out the other ladies who are participating in this challenge!

Hannah from Polished Prisms
Amanda from Mandy's Polish
Heidi from DIY Polish & More
Katee from A Girl and Her Polish
Charlotte from Charlotte's Nails
Tess from Football and Fingernails
Karine from Karinea0a
Victoria from Manicurator
Sharon from What Color is My Coat?
Ashley from One Nail To Another
Dani from Rustic Comfort
Sue from Creative Nail Design by Sue
Amanda from Counting Down to Bliss
Kayono from Neues vom Kellerkind
April from Munia's Nails
Sharra from The Blahg
Jess from Nearly Natural Nails
CR from Color Me Silly
T from Mami Blogs
Alyson from Beads. Nails. Food.

Zoya Blogger Collection

So this post is a little overdue.  I received my Zoya Blogger Collection about 9 days ago, but it took me three attempts at pictures over the past week and a half to get the lighting right for these bottle shots to even come close to showing the beauty of these colors.  The Blogger Collection is a collaboration between Zoya and Birchbox, both of which I've mentioned several times on my blog.  I don't remember exactly how long ago it was, but I did participate in voting on the mood boards, created by bloggers, in order to choose the colors for this collection.  When the winners were chosen and the collection came out, I almost didn't order it.  But I quickly realized the colors were all jellies and two out of the three are like nothing I already have.  So then it didn't take long for me to place my order.  The set is $22, which is actually a couple dollars less than what you would normally pay for 3 bottles of Zoya, and Birchbox is offering free shipping on this collection.  Plus, I had some Birchbox points saved up on my account, so when I applied them to my order, it took 10 dollars off and this little set of lovelies became mine for just 12 bucks!

The blogs whose mood boards won are blogs I'm sorry to say I'm not familiar with.  All three blogs are full-on beauty blogs and I tend to lean more towards nail polish specific blogs.  But if you're an avid beauty blog reader, I would be sure to check out the three blogs behind these polish creations.  Coraline is a "warm juicy tangerine" inspired by the mood board designed by Eleventh Gorgeous.  I don't have any true orange jellies, so I'm happy to own this one.  Kate is a "pinkish grapefruit" based on the mood board designed by The Small Things.  This reminds me of a few of the OPI Texas sorbets but I haven't compared them yet.  Regardless, it's a gorgeous color!  And Belle is a "a coppery pink which features microscopic bits of iridescent glitter" created from the mood board designed by Captiol Hill Style.  That's right, it's a jelly with shimmer!  I'm most excited about this one!  Belle is definitely unique compared to any jellies I currently own.

I can't wait to try these out.  I wanted to try them as soon as I got them, but I was in the middle of working on ideas for my Rainbow After the Rain manicure and these didn't fit in with that.  But after I do my ombre for part 6, I'm thinking I might try to incorporate one of these in the glitter tips part of the ASBMF Challenge.

One of the other great things about this set was that once I ordered, I was able to forward a copy of the confirmation email to Zoya and I received 200 points towards my Zoya Share the Love points total.  The Zoya Blogger Collection is still available for purchase through Birchbox but I'm not sure if the Share the Love points are still available for redemption on this collection.  They had posted on Facebook on April 27th, that you had until midnight that night to set up an account with Zoya, if you didn't already have one, in order to redeem the 200 points.

If you're not familiar with the Share the Love Program, it's basically a system where you can get rewarded by Zoya for referring your friends and family to sign up with Zoya.  Speaking of which, if any of you do not already have an account with Zoya, but have been thinking about it, now is a great time to sign up.  If you click on my personal link and set up an online account (click "create an account" at the very top once you follow my link), a coupon for a FREE Bottle of Zoya Nail Polish will automatically be placed in your new account and can be used immediately on a current order.  TIP: If you use this coupon and add 2 more polishes to your order, you get free shipping too!  The coupon will appear in the "My Coupons/ Promos" section of your "My Account" Page.

Spring ASBMF Challenge #1: Spring Pastels

Yes, I entered my first challenge.  I can't believe it either.  I see people doing different challenges online all the time and it's like boom, boom, boom...they just keep spitting out new designs every couple days.  I don't know how they do it all, I think I'd give up after like day 3!  But then Hannah from Polished Prisms suggested a more laid back challenge on Facebook and she came up with this Spring "April Showers Bring May Flowers" Challenge.  We don't have set dates.  Everyone can do it at their own pace, according to what meets their schedule, which is perfect for me since I usually only change my nails once a week, maybe twice.  A few people are already on ladybugs, but that's the whole point...you do it when you can.  I just need to remind myself not to panic when I start to see more people getting days ahead of me, lol.  If you're interested in joining the challenge yourself, Hannah set up a group on Facebook, April Showers Bring May Flowers Challenge.  You don't have to have a blog, you can join the Facebook group and post your challenge pictures there instead.

So I was planning to start this a few days ago, but for some reason I really hit a brick wall trying to decide what to do.  Since Easter is this weekend, I wanted to kill two birds with one stone and pastels work great for Easter anyway.  I did have this elaborate idea for small Easter eggs all over my nails, which I actually attempted.  The end result though just reminded me that I need to invest in a small kit of acrylic paints for more intricate designs like that.  It actually was not completely hideous, lol, but because the nail polish is not as opaque as acrylic paint, I really had to layer the nail polish on to get the designs to show and that just made the whole thing a lumpy mess!  Off it came and on went plain polish just to get me through the next two days at work.  Last night I came home and grabbed a bunch of pastels ready to tackle the challenge.  I started with 3 coats of Orly Lemonade, hoping for inspiration.  I was planning to do a patchwork scotch tape design with Lemonade and two other Orly colors, Prelude To a Kiss and Jealous, Much? but then the idea of a water marble popped into my head and that somehow led to the idea of doing a splatter manicure instead.

I've never done a splatter mani before, but I've seen them online and I absolutely love them.  A splatter manicure is basically dipping a drinking straw in some polish and then blowing air into the straw with strong, quick puffs to make the polish splatter over your nails.  You repeat that with different colors to get a messy, but very cool effect.  I think mine was a success and a disaster all at the same time.  In the end, it was a success but along the way I definitely had some disaster moments and this is a technique that takes both practice and luck.  Since I was doing a splatter, I also decided to add another color, OPI Rumple's Wiggin', which is pastel purple.  The picture above is of the final manicure, which includes a coat of Essie Matte About You.  I decided to make it matte before even thinking to take a picture of it still glossy, d'oh!  So here is a picture of my right hand, which I don't usually photograph since I'm right handed and taking pictures with my left hand is a royal pain in the rear.  But I wanted to show how it looked with just plain top coat, so I snapped a pic of my right hand, before adding the matte top coat to finish it off.

If you've never done a splatter manicure and are interested, there is a good tutorial from The PolishAholic's blog that you can read and I would also suggest checking out the different splatters that Sarah from Chalkboard Nails has done.  If her splatters don't inspire you to try it, then nothing will!  Here's a link that will take you to a list of all her blog posts tagged with the splatter label, http://www.chalkboardnails.com/search/label/splatter.

A few things that I learned while doing this for the first time: practice and experiment!  There are various methods to do this and you might find one way works better for you than it does for someone else.  It definitely helps to hold the straw a few inches away from your nails.  Too close and you might get big blogs of polish that just flood your entire nail.  It also takes some practice to figure out exactly where to hold the straw.  I can't tell you how many times I tried it and the polish splattered in a circle around my nail without any of it actually hitting my nail!  I held my nails over a paper plate, which was resting on a big piece of cardboard.  I wasn't sure how far the polish would splatter, but it didn't go any farther than the edges of the plate.  It all will depend on how far away from your nails you hold the straw.  Just be sure to cover and protect the surface you are working so you don't get polish all over the place.  Here's a shot of how my paper plate looked after I was done with all 10 nails.

Even though it can be pretty messy, I definitely plan to try this technique again with different colors.  The edges between the splatters of color seemed to be more defined before I added top coat.  The next time I do this, I'm going to try to be more patient with drying time before adding top coat, to see if that will cause the end result to have some more sharp edges between colors.  But for a pastel splatter, I do like the way the colors kind of melted into each other.

***Edit*** April 8th 11:41pm: I had to come back and add a picture of my thumbs, especially my left thumb.  Even though my thumbs ended up having the least amount of splatter on them, I think I like them the most.  I don't know if it's that Orly Lemonade is just that pretty or if it's the subtle splatter versus the bigger blobs on all my other fingers, but I have been just constantly staring at my left thumb all weekend with this manicure.