Monday, August 27, 2012
Guest Post at Polished Prisms!
Hey everyone! Today, I have a guest post up at Polished Prisms for Hannah's Glitterific series! It's my first guest post and I was so excited to contribute to this series. Check out the guest post here. It's all about some awesome glitters from The Hungry Asian! And if you don't already read Hannah's blog on a regular basis, make sure to subscribe. She's got some great posts, I know you'll all enjoy her blog!
Thursday, August 16, 2012
Spring ASBMF Challenge #12: May Flowers!
Um, ya...wow, remember this challenge? You know the one that started in April...that I still didn't finish.
...awkward silence...
Trust me, I had no intention of putting the next challenge post off for this long. I believe my last challenge post was in June, which wasn't so bad for only having three parts left to do. But considering that it is now mid-August...well, smooth move exlax! I think it was just one of those things where, each time I went to paint my nails, I thought of the challenge but wasn't really sure what I wanted to do and just decided, "oh what's one more week?" instead. Well Sarah, do a little math here...what is "what's one more week?" times 6 weeks? Answer: way too friggin' long to be procrastinating on finishing this challenge!!! You may be asking, why even bother? Well...I don't know. Even though I feel like a bit of a jackass for putting these last three parts off for so long, there is another part of me that doesn't want to just quit so close to the end and then pretend like it never happened. So instead, here I am in mid-August with a post on...May flowers...lol.
This is two coats of Styled Out, from the Maybelline Color Show line, stamped with Konad plate m64 using Konad Special Polish in pastel blue. Styled Out is part of the Denims set of polishes from Maybelline's Color Show line. This is really the only Color Show polish I was interested in getting when I saw the swatches. I might even grab a back up bottle since the bottles are only 7ml and this color is stinkin' gorgeous! My favorite color may be green, but when it comes to polish, I can't resist a sparkly dark blue. I used two coats but it was near perfection with just one coat. I'm just crazy and felt like I needed to have a second coat because of some spots that seemed patchy to me, which in reality were probably fine.
The pattern is not your typical flower pattern, but I really like it and have used it a few times before this. It has sort of a country/farm house feel to it. Sort of reminds me of a pattern you might find on an old bandana, other than the typical paisley designs you normally see. I also love the blue on blue look. I don't stamp enough using something in the same color family as my base color and I really need to do it more often. I'm getting in the habit lately of over analyzing what to paint on my nails instead of remembering that sometimes the simplest designs can yield the most amazing results. "Keep it simple, Stupid!" I have to remind myself of that every so often.
If you hadn't noticed, I decided to set up a custom domain so my blog address is now officially Allthispolish.com, and I'm also experimenting a bit with an updated watermark to match. I actually bought the domain a couple weeks ago, but thanks to a bit of over zealousness on my part, I managed to screw it up. It wasn't working and I didn't realize at first that I had done something to directly cause that, so I ended up waiting about a week and a half before trying to investigate what the issue was. Then, with a little help from a friend at work, I got it fixed. Here's a hint to anyone who is thinking of buying your custom domain through Blogger...when you get your Google domain registration confirmation email, DON'T activate Google Sites when you click the link to create your administrative account. In fact, don't even click the links in the email at all, unless you're thinking of using Google Apps to set up a custom email address. The domain will redirect to the blog on its own within a day or two. But activating Sites will cause Blogger to think some other blog is already using that domain and it won't redirect automatically. All you would need to do then is deactivate Sites and add the domain manually to your Blogger settings, but Blogger and Google Apps don't always want to cooperate so it may not get corrected on the first attempt. Ok, end of rant, hee hee. It's all good now so who cares! Now to see if I can get the last two parts of this challenge posted before, oh let's say Christmas, lol.
...awkward silence...
Trust me, I had no intention of putting the next challenge post off for this long. I believe my last challenge post was in June, which wasn't so bad for only having three parts left to do. But considering that it is now mid-August...well, smooth move exlax! I think it was just one of those things where, each time I went to paint my nails, I thought of the challenge but wasn't really sure what I wanted to do and just decided, "oh what's one more week?" instead. Well Sarah, do a little math here...what is "what's one more week?" times 6 weeks? Answer: way too friggin' long to be procrastinating on finishing this challenge!!! You may be asking, why even bother? Well...I don't know. Even though I feel like a bit of a jackass for putting these last three parts off for so long, there is another part of me that doesn't want to just quit so close to the end and then pretend like it never happened. So instead, here I am in mid-August with a post on...May flowers...lol.
This is two coats of Styled Out, from the Maybelline Color Show line, stamped with Konad plate m64 using Konad Special Polish in pastel blue. Styled Out is part of the Denims set of polishes from Maybelline's Color Show line. This is really the only Color Show polish I was interested in getting when I saw the swatches. I might even grab a back up bottle since the bottles are only 7ml and this color is stinkin' gorgeous! My favorite color may be green, but when it comes to polish, I can't resist a sparkly dark blue. I used two coats but it was near perfection with just one coat. I'm just crazy and felt like I needed to have a second coat because of some spots that seemed patchy to me, which in reality were probably fine.
The pattern is not your typical flower pattern, but I really like it and have used it a few times before this. It has sort of a country/farm house feel to it. Sort of reminds me of a pattern you might find on an old bandana, other than the typical paisley designs you normally see. I also love the blue on blue look. I don't stamp enough using something in the same color family as my base color and I really need to do it more often. I'm getting in the habit lately of over analyzing what to paint on my nails instead of remembering that sometimes the simplest designs can yield the most amazing results. "Keep it simple, Stupid!" I have to remind myself of that every so often.
If you hadn't noticed, I decided to set up a custom domain so my blog address is now officially Allthispolish.com, and I'm also experimenting a bit with an updated watermark to match. I actually bought the domain a couple weeks ago, but thanks to a bit of over zealousness on my part, I managed to screw it up. It wasn't working and I didn't realize at first that I had done something to directly cause that, so I ended up waiting about a week and a half before trying to investigate what the issue was. Then, with a little help from a friend at work, I got it fixed. Here's a hint to anyone who is thinking of buying your custom domain through Blogger...when you get your Google domain registration confirmation email, DON'T activate Google Sites when you click the link to create your administrative account. In fact, don't even click the links in the email at all, unless you're thinking of using Google Apps to set up a custom email address. The domain will redirect to the blog on its own within a day or two. But activating Sites will cause Blogger to think some other blog is already using that domain and it won't redirect automatically. All you would need to do then is deactivate Sites and add the domain manually to your Blogger settings, but Blogger and Google Apps don't always want to cooperate so it may not get corrected on the first attempt. Ok, end of rant, hee hee. It's all good now so who cares! Now to see if I can get the last two parts of this challenge posted before, oh let's say Christmas, lol.
Saturday, August 4, 2012
Spun Sugar Sparkle
I had recently received the mother load of a swap from Jen from The Polished Zombie. Seriously, it rocked my socks off. Which was convenient since she also sent me a pair of socks...monkey socks!
 |
| Cell phone pic...I was too excited to get my camera out and set up for a nicer shot. |
I was anxious to try out the polishes from the Color Club Take Wing collection she sent me, I've been wanting them for a while now. I started with two coats of Color Club Fly With Me. I wanted to use more than two colors for the spun sugar part so besides the other two Color Club polishes, Daisy Does It (yellow-hard to see, but it's there, trust me) and Sparkle and Soar (orange), I also used two Zoya's...Charla (blue/green) and Kym (red).
The sparkle/glass fleck polishes gave me a bit of a hard time trying to get consistent polish strings. You can see where a string of Charla sort of broke half way across my middle finger when I was applying it. It took a while for the polish to thicken up, and then when they finally did get thick enough to create strings, it suddenly would become too thick super fast. I can't say for sure if that means that creams work best for this technique, or if there were other factors involved like humidity that could have affected it, but it seemed like I had a much easier time when I used cream polishes for this.
In the end, I was feeling about 50/50 on this manicure. The Color Club polishes are gorgeous though! I think next time I'll use one of them as a base for a stamping instead.
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.
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!
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!
Saturday, June 30, 2012
Spring ASBMF Challenge #11: Eggs and Chicks
If this post wasn't part of the ASBMF challenge, I might have instead titled it "Why Sarah doesn't do freehand." Although, let's be honest here folks, if it wasn't for the challenge then this post wouldn't even exist. This is waaaaaay out of my comfort zone. I envy people who can draw those cute little animals on their nails. Did you ever see Simply Rins Little Pink Pigs? Adorable!!! And she makes it looks so easy. I love them. But I doubt I would be able to recreate them. Granted, I haven't tried anything like this using acrylic paints yet, which does seem like it would be easier to draw with. But even with paints, I highly doubt I would come even close. My little pink pigs would come out looking like they had one too many rounds at the bar last night. Or that I had one too many rounds and then tried to paint my nails in a drunken stupor! Sadly though, I couldn't seem to avoid trying freehand on this part of the challenge. It may be the Spring Challenge, but thanks to my procrastination, it's the last day of June. So I didn't want to make little chicks and pastel eggs or anything that would have been more Easter time appropriate. And I didn't even have any useful stamps to Konad my way out of this. My inspiration was actually a picture I had seen a hundred times before in a wallpaper app on my cell phone. It's one of those dorky-funny kind of pictures and I hadn't really thought about using it for nail art before until I was scrambling today to try and knock out this part of the challenge already.
My version has a few slight differences, besides looking no where as cute as the original illustration. I reversed the position of the cow and chicken so I could put the chicken on my index finger instead of trying to fit her on my pinkie and I added spots to the cow's face. In the pic, clearly a cow even without spots on his face. On my nails, some sort of weird white horse head attached to a cow's body. Horsecow? Cowhorse? Corse? Ya...so I decided to spot his big ol' noggin too. Then I drew the cow-spotted egg (or something sort of resembling an egg-like shape) on my thumb. Anyway, I'm just posting one picture, I'll spare you from having to look at more. I present my Eggs and Chicks (and Cow).
Phew! That hurdle is out of the way. May flowers should be easy enough and I'm actually looking forward to the newspaper transfer compared to this freehanded flop! Then it's just the design of my choice left to do. Oh, and in case you were wondering, here's a quick run down of the colors used:
base - Zoya Bevin
bodies/egg - Wet n Wild French White
cow spots/eyeballs - Wet n Wild Black Creme
nostrils/horns - Zoya Caitlin
hen's comb - Zoya Sooki
feet/beak - China Glaze Sun Worshipper
Just a reminder that, while I'm still struggling with Spring lol, the rest of our Facebook group is just starting the Summer challenge. There's still plenty of time to start up if you're interested. Check out our group page to join!
My version has a few slight differences, besides looking no where as cute as the original illustration. I reversed the position of the cow and chicken so I could put the chicken on my index finger instead of trying to fit her on my pinkie and I added spots to the cow's face. In the pic, clearly a cow even without spots on his face. On my nails, some sort of weird white horse head attached to a cow's body. Horsecow? Cowhorse? Corse? Ya...so I decided to spot his big ol' noggin too. Then I drew the cow-spotted egg (or something sort of resembling an egg-like shape) on my thumb. Anyway, I'm just posting one picture, I'll spare you from having to look at more. I present my Eggs and Chicks (and Cow).
base - Zoya Bevin
bodies/egg - Wet n Wild French White
cow spots/eyeballs - Wet n Wild Black Creme
nostrils/horns - Zoya Caitlin
hen's comb - Zoya Sooki
feet/beak - China Glaze Sun Worshipper
Just a reminder that, while I'm still struggling with Spring lol, the rest of our Facebook group is just starting the Summer challenge. There's still plenty of time to start up if you're interested. Check out our group page to join!
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