Facets of Fuchsia

Today's polish was part of my birthday haul. I'm sure you all know by now how much I love purple on my nails ... and glitter, so this is really a perfect polish for me.

This is Revlon Facets of Fuchsia. I found this polish extremely hard to photograph. The glitter definitely turned more purple in this picture than the extra bright true fuchsia that can be seen in person. Facets of Fuchsia has a black jelly base with beautiful large and small fuchsia hex glitters. This is three coats of polish. The first coat went on very, very sheer, but it builds up quite nicely. I tend to use thicker coats and could have gotten away with two coats. I simply did the third in hopes of getting more of the larger glitters. Sadly, most of the large glitter refused to budge from the sides of the bottle and those that did wanted to stick to my brush more than my nail, but given more time and patience I'm sure I could have gotten more on my nails. I didn't have any problems with the glitter sticking up too far, but like most glitter polishes it did have a texture. A top coat smoothed everything out nicely though.

Some of you may be thinking this polish looks familiar. And it should! Revlon is the reigning Queen of the Dupes. Facets of Fuchsia is a near exact match for Deborah Lippmann's Bad Romance. I don't own Bad Romance, so I can't give you a comparison post myself. However, I did find a really great comparison post done by Fab Fatale. Find the post here: Bad Romance vs. Facets of Fuchsia and make the decision for yourself. Is Facets of Fuchsia enough dupe for you?

::Thank you, Vee of Masquerade Nails, for sending me on a search that let me know Revlon made Facets of Fuchsia (part of a limited edition collection) a permanent part of their polish line. They simply renamed it Scandalous.::

Veterans Day Tutorial

Here in the Untied States we have Veterans Day, a holiday to honor our armed service veterans. For other countries, there is Armistice Day or Remembrance Day. With the exception of Italy who celebrates on the 4th, these holidays are celebrated on November 11th. Here is my attempt to honor US veterans, the only way that truly comes from the heart, with nail art. It's a photo tutorial too!!

I used Wet n Wild - I Red a Good Book and L.A. Colors - White for the stripes. The blue is China Glaze First Mate and the stars and holo glitter were painstakingly dug out of Wet n Wild Fergie - Hollywood Walk of Fame.

I've been asked many time how I get such perfect stripes. I wouldn't exactly call them perfect, but I'll take a moment to explain. As you can see in the second step, I use tape. I don't use any special kinds of striping tape or anything, just regular scotch tape. I put a piece of tape on some wax paper and cut notches along the length, as evenly spaced as I can get. Once I have notches across I use them as a guide and cut the whole way up the tape. After that, it's simple to peel the tape off and create stripes with it along my nail. Make sure your nails are completely dry before you put tape on them. Press lightly along the edges and make sure you get the tape into the edges of your nails. If the tape has any bubbles near the edges or there are any raised parts polish will seep under and it might ruin your stripes. Paint over them and immediately—carefully—remove the tape.

Cut the tape larger or smaller for larger or smaller stripes. I've used this method to create stripes side to side, up and down, and sunbeams too so be creative. And, if this isn't enough to make you happy, just think of all the money you're saving by not having to buy striping tape!

I Wanna Be A Mermaid

I've been calling this mani 'I Wanna Be A Mermaid' in my head from the moment I thought of doing this and after it was finished I found it a perfect fit.

The sequin glitter I used was one from my birthday haul; thinking the glitter was bigger I was going to line it up and overlap it like scales. With how small the glitter turned out to be once removed from the bottle, I decided to simply sprinkle some of it over a wet nail to create a mermaid inspired accent nail. Wet n Wild Club Havana is my base color. Using orange seems like an odd choice since most mermaids of legend are green or teal, but using orange felt right to me. I made up for my odd choice of base color by using teal iridescent glitter for the 'scales'.

I will note that this glitter wanted to stick to everything! And I kept knocking over the tiny bottle holding said glitter, spilling more and more. I really didn't really sprinkle the glitter over the nail since it refused to unstick from my finger. I had to gently dab my glittered finger over the nail to get it to stick. By the end, I had glitter all over me and all over my desk. I was very lucky not to have glitter stuck to any of the other nails besides the accent nail. The true horror came with putting the glitter back in the bottle when I was done. I tried using my Pickerr Uperr, a nail art brush, etc to sweep the glitter up. I finally, after much trial and error (and knocking over the bottle of glitter again and again), used a tissue and a folded piece of paper to sweep the glitter back into the bottle.

Ready To Start Your Christmas Shopping?

This isn't my usual post, but with Christmas just around the corner and many of us being short on money I'm sure, I think this is completely relevant.

Since the start of November and for the rest of the year, the Swagbucks Swag Store has lowered prices and rolled out limitless rewards. To break it down for you, all $5 gift cards will now be 500 Swag Bucks, $10 gift cards will be 1000 Swag Bucks, $25 Gift Cards will be 2500 Swag Bucks and so on. This excludes the $5 Amazon.com Gift Cards, which will remain their bargain price of 450 Swag Bucks.

Now you get more bang for your (Swag) Bucks, and with your leftover Swag Bucks, you can now snag even more rewards, because our old monthly redemption limits (except the $5 Amazon.com Gift Card) will be gone. You’re still limited to 2 rewards per day, but you don’t have to worry about which prizes you’re redeeming, because Swagbucks just expanded your monthly SB budget!

Also, just in time for the holidays, Swagbucks has brought back Expedited Shipping on all of the Amazon Gift Cards in the Swag Store. All you have to do is order and verify your gift card by 2pm PT to get it the next business day, select the Expedited Shipping option and chip in an extra 50 Swag Bucks! It's super simple and if you haven't verified your account it can be done easily via cellphone.
 
What does all this mean for you? It means, with a little work, you'll be able to get gifts for everyone on your list ... and maybe a little something extra for yourself with no money out of pocket. You can always cash in your Swag Bucks for items from the Swag Store or use the gift cards you can get to lessen the price of that must have item. The option of expedited shipping also means that you can shop for that last minute Amazon gift card ... which is always a good thing in my book because nearly everyone in my family has a Kindle! They would be more than happy to get free books and apps for Christmas and need never know that it was last minute. ;)

So, if you're not already a member of Swagbucks go sign up now and start earning. The sooner you join, the quicker you'll be able to start ticking names off your Christmas list.

I is for ...

I scoured the internet looking for something, anything, unique that I could do for the letter I in the ABC Challenge. I was going to do Rorschach ink blots, but I didn't have the correct tools to accomplish them the way I wanted. I attempted them anyway and ended up with an absolute disaster. I decided to start over and try something else. So ...

I is for ... Iguana. Not very unique, but I tried. :)

I used Revlon Garden as my base color. I lightened it and darkened it with white and black for the texture. I also added a few dabs of Color Club's neon yellow Yell-Oh! Looking through pictures of iguanas I found a beautiful green iguana that had light blue patches on its skin so I also added some dabs of Wet n Wild I Need a Refresh-Mint over the texturing.

Here is a closer look at the texture. I had a moment of panic upon realizing I had no scale stamps on any of my stamping plates. The one stamp that looked anything like scales was absolutely tiny! So, I settled for Born Pretty Store's m61 stamping plate. I used China Glaze Holly-Day and actually consciously slowed my movements so I wouldn't get the full stamp.  A first for me, but I wanted it to look uneven like scales and I also wanted some of the texturing to show through in places.

I wasn't completely happy with the texturing and scales so I added an iguana eye to my index nail hoping to give this mani some life. In this picture, before I removed the design, I decided to see what it looked like with a top coat. The nails lost nearly all the rough texturing I worked so hard to create, but I really like how the eye took on a more realistic quality. Look into it and tell me it doesn't stare back at you!

Birthday Haul

Welcome to my birthday haul post. This post is filled with things bought for me and gifts I bought myself. :)

First up is the gift my sister-in-law got me. Two Revlon polishes (Facets of Fuchsia & Carbonite) with a Revlon Quick Dry Top Coat, two L.A Colors Art Deco glitter stripers, an Ulta glitter (Pinata-Yada-Yada) , and an Icing holo glitter (Epic Winning).

These are some of the things I picked up here and there for myself for my birthday. My light box just wasn't enough to contain them all. Five Pure Ice polishes, two L.A. Colors glitter polishes (one with flakies). There's a Sinful Colors bar glitter from their new holiday collection, and from the makers of my favorite Halloween pumpkin bottled polishes ... a snowman bottled polish with red and green glitter. I also picked up some square gems in various sizes and some loose black glitter. I've been dying for a black glitter polish but since I can't find any I'll settle for loose glitter. Last, but not least, down front you'll see four tiny bottles. I picked these up in sets of eight. This means I have eight various colored bottles of sequin style glitters, eight beads, eight bar glitters, and eight flakey glitters. You've already seen some of the bar glitters in use with my Happy Birthday mani. It's what made the cupcake frosting so shiny!!

Not all my presents were polish related. After hearing my whining about how I was almost out of my favorite Bath & Body Works Candy Corn Anti-bacterial my mom got me these. I'd be happy to do a review post on these if anyone is interested. Not sure how far you guys want me to stray from nail polish and nail related posts.

Yes, that is a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup ... and yes, it really is that big! My bonus-dad picked these babies up. There are two in a pack and they are each a half-pound. That's one pound of peanut butter cup in a pack. So far, I've only managed to eat a small scoop with a spoon.

This is me and my bonus-gram. We don't call them step in our family because we consider them bonuses to our families. Her birthday was yesterday, only a day between our birthdays, so we decided early on that we would share our small birthday get togethers. The lacy red cami and the black suit-style jacket I'm wearing was a present I bought for myself. The jacket actually came from a consignment shop, and I only paid $7 for it!!

                       

 

My mom took me shopping and I picked up these awesome boots and coat, both on sale. The boots, Mossimo, came from Target and were less than $10.50. The coat, Dollhouse, is from Boscov's and was $20. The boots will take some adjustment since I'm not used to wearing a heel quite that tall. My previous boots were about 3.5" while these new boots are about 4.5". An inch didn't seem like much added height until I put them on. Also, these boots are made really small. I had to go up a whole size, from a 7 to an 8, to be able to wear these comfortably. I've never had to go up a whole size, a half size sure, but never a whole size. I'm really glad I didn't try to order these online!

With Christmas and my niece's January wedding coming up I'm planning on purchasing a dress. While shopping I tried on this beauty and fell totally and hopelessly in love. Sadly, it was a $60 dress and was not on sale. I'm a thrifty buyer. To own so much nail polish I have to be. So I couldn't possibly talk myself into paying that much for a dress I'll wear two or three times ... if I'm lucky. However, Swagbucks was nice enough to offer me a $25 Amazon gift card for a recent post. Lucky for me, Amazon is selling this dress too, in my size even. It will take some luck since Amazon has only two dresses my size in stock and my gift card is still in processing (it could take up to 14 days to register in my account), but if the card comes through in time - with it and the money part of my birthday haul I should be able to purchase this dress without having to dip into my nail polish money.

Well, there you have it, my birthday haul. And what a haul it is!!! Be on the lookout for posts of the polish I received as I'll be working on getting swatches for them while doing my usual posts.

H is for ...

Hello again! I'm back. I feel much better for taking a few days off. Sadly, the cold weather is wreaking havoc with my nails. I've had more than a few breaks. Thankfully, only one of them is on my picture taking hand, and I'm happy to say it wasn't a bad break.

Today's post is another in the ABC Challenge. I'm really late posting but after I missed H is for Halloween on Wednesday ... well, I decided to hold off a few more days and do H is for ... Happy Birthday.

Saturday, the 3rd, was my 27th birthday and these are my birthday nails. I used two coats of Sinful Colors Snow Me White as my base color. On my index and pinkie I did birthday balloons via CutePolish. The middle got candles and the ring has a sparkly frosting loaded cupcake. I did it all in pink (Sinful Colors Beautiful Girl) because I'm ultra girly that way. I love pink. ♥

I'll post tomorrow with some pictures of my birthday haul. :)