Faceted

Today I have another glitter swatch. And I thought, why not start the holiday posts early? This is Faceted from the Sinful Colors Holiday Shimmers Collection.

I used two very thin coats of Faceted over Wet n Wild On a Trip. I'm not usually a big fan of bar glitter but I love this. It's just the right amount of bar to shimmer.

Add some character to this mani by doing the first coat of glitter normally and the second with a few side to side swipes. This will turn the bar glitter so it's not all going in the same direction.

I didn't manage to get any really great pictures of this polish on my nails so here's a picture of the bottle. This glitter is definitely in my Top 5 ... maybe even in my Top 3.

Maple Syrup from the Daily Lacquer

I'm really sorry for such a late night post guys, but I am so behind on picture editing. Still, I just couldn't put this post off another day. I entered into a Facebook flash giveaway from the Daily Lacquer last week totally not expecting anything, but I won! As one of three winners, I got to choose one bottle of Daily Lacquer's nail polish. Beyond exciting!! I decided to take a chance and ask for Maple Syrup from what was the then upcoming Buddy the Elf Collection. This collection is now out and selling like wildfire along with her Sailor Moon inspired The Lovely Moon Collection and The Holo-Day Lovelies Collection. She totally deserves some major kudos!

I can't compete with the awesomeness of Daily Lacquer's bottle photos, but I gave it a shot. I love these bottles. They are just the perfect fit-in-your-hand bottles, and they look pretty too! Made even prettier by that cute glued on bow. What's better than such a personal touch to every bottle?? You just don't get that from big name brands.

My first use of this beautiful brown/bronze/gold glitter was over China Glaze Holly-Day. This combination is such a rustic Christmas combo.

My next choice was brown. I used Sally Hansen Chocolate Creme. It went on a lot darker with two coats than it looked in the bottle. In the bottle it was a gorgeous chocolatey brown. On my nail it turned black.

However, this color change was a good thing. It shows just what a chameleon Maple Syrup truly is, because it didn't get lost in such a dark color! It actually spiced it up. In my opinion, this glitter can go over anything and look amazing.

Did I mention this is my first Indie polish? I'm happy to say all the hype is well deserved. Maple Syrup went on smoothly. It wasn't thick or gooey and had no overpowering polish scent like a lot of big name brands. The glitter applied really easily. I didn't need to dig at all for the larger glitters. And using two coats of glue before my base coat made removing the glitter a snap ... or rather a peel. :)

L is for ...

It's Wednesday again, and you know what that means—another ABC Challenge mani.

L is for ... Lemur Catta aka the Ring-Tailed Lemur!

I think lemurs are some of the most adorably weird creatures. I think of them as a combination of a koala, a cat, and a dog. Yes, that's silly of me. But they have the furry fluffy coloring of a koala, the slinky graceful body of a cat complete with long twitchy tail and there's something oddly reminiscent of a dog in their face. I think it's the long muzzle-like nose and the big expressive eyes. Look through some pics of ring-tailed lemurs and tell me I'm not right!

I decided on a green background for these nails. When a lemur isn't in the trees, they're usually bouncing around in the grass. Green seemed like a good idea. I used two coats of Sinful Colors Exotic Green then mixed it with a little white and used my eyeshadow applicator to dab on the lighter green. You know how I love my texturing. :) The rest, lemur face and tail, were all hand drawn.

500 Follower Giveaway!!

Hey girlies!! My internet was down all yesterday or I would have had this posted much sooner. Check out my 500 follower giveaway. I don't have 500 followers yet ... but I hope to after this. :)

Please read the rules before entering.

Rules:

Giveaway is open to United States residents only.

Giveaway ends midnight, 12/03, and the prize will be shipped that weekend (as long as everything goes to plan). This will give me time to verify entries and choose a winner. A winner will be chosen at random and will have 48 hours to reply to winning email. If I get no reply, I will be forced to choose another winner.

All entries, except your email address (I'll need that to contact you), are optional. I would love to have you as a follower, but I will not require it for this giveaway. However, remember that each completed entry gives you another chance to win. :)


a Rafflecopter giveaway
The prize was purchased by me and this giveaway is in no way sponsored, endorsed, or administered by, or associated with Bath & Body Works.

Nail Whitening Tutorial

Lately I've been noticing my base coat just hasn't been doing its job as well as it used to. I'm sure it has something to do with all the swatching and daily nail art I've been doing, but that doesn't make the staining any less horrifying. It was definitely time to do another whitening treatment. I promised with my last whitening tutorial that I would try one of the other methods of whitening nails so I leave you with this to try over the weekend.

There really doesn't seem to be much difference in my before and after photos, but it is very noticeable in person. I admit, I'm a one hand painter. If I have no where to be, I only paint my left hand. So the staining was much worse on the hand you see in this tutorial. After ten minutes, my right hand was nearly stain free—after fifteen it really was stain free, so this method really does work and with much less effort on my part than the peroxide/baking powder method I tried last time.

So, while your out shopping this weekend pick up some denture cleaning tablets or crystals and give this tutorial a try. :)

Happy Turkey Day!!!

Surprise!!! I got my Thanksgiving nails done last night so I decided to schedule this to post while I'm not home. Right this second, I'm enjoying turkey and stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy and many more yummy, yummy things. :) I hope you guys enjoy this mani and have a wonderful (and safe) Thanksgiving.

I did Pilgrims and Indians. The Indian nails were inspired by this absolutely gorgeous printed skirt I found browsing Google. If I could find this skirt for sale somewhere I would totally buy it ... and I don't wear skirts; I just love it that much!

And you can't forget about the turkey on my thumb. I'm sorry the picture is kind of fuzzy. I couldn't get my hand twisted just right to get anything better than this.

Enjoy and I'll see you tomorrow. :)

K is for ...

Another day, another ABC Challenge post. With K words like ketchup and kazoo to choose from what was I going to do?? It actually took me a few days and much dictionary browsing to find something worthy of a mani. I bring you:

K is for ... Koi.

I confess that when I started these nails I still had no idea how I was going to accomplish them. I knew I wanted to do koi and use Wet n Wild Club Havana and white to make a splotchy pattern but that was about it. After using two coats of Club Havana I decided to use saran wrap to dab on the white. This gave the koi a very unique swirling watery pattern. I also used the saran wrap to dab on some Pure Ice Poker Face, a sheer shimmery golden orange polish, in an attempt to create the glittery metallic looking scales of a koi.

I'm sure you know by now how much I love my accent nails. So, no matter how unique these nails looked alone, I just had to add an open-mouthed, barbel-whiskered koi like fish face.

I will not be posting tomorrow as I will be spending the day with family. To those who celebrate, Happy Thanksgiving. To those who don't, have a great day anyway. Spend time with family and be thankful for all you have. :)

Sleep Tight

After the disaster of my last night sky nails I thought it was time to try again. What better time to post night sky nails than at night?

I used China Glaze First Mate as my base color. I dabbed a very small amount of black around my nail near the cuticle to show some depth. The gradient was created by first mixing First Mate with some white and dabbing down my nail. China Glaze Secret Peri-Wink-Le was mixed with a very small amount of white and then a bit more to create the last two 'layers'. I used white polish and a sewing needle to dot the stars on, using more or less white to create larger or smaller stars. Be random. :)

Heels of Dazzle

So many nail polish brands are coming out with some really lovely holiday collections. It leaves me wanting to buy and swatch them all for you. Sadly, I don't have the money to buy them all ... but I did buy a few. Today's post is Heels of Dazzle, which is another from the Venique 2012 Holiday Collection.

Heels of Dazzle is a shiny red sequin style hex glitter in a thick and clear base. I was drawn to this glitter because it is just so different from the other holiday glitters this year since a lot of brands went with ultra-fine glitters.

Shown above is one coat of Heels of Dazzle layered over L.A. Colors Black. At first, I was just using the black base to really pull attention to the red, but I came to really love this decision. As you can see, in some light the red really pops and in others it's a hidden mystery. It's like opening that one present on Christmas that you didn't manage to find hidden around the house (yes, I was one of those kid!) and being completely and totally surprised—but in a good way.

Adding a second layer of glitter gave me another surprise. Adding more glitter on top of the first coat caused it to begin reflecting the light off of each other. This caused fiery glints of color. The flares of fire really aren't this prevalent in all lights. It's more something you'll catch out of the corner of your eye or with a motion of your hand. It will capture your attention but will disappear when you look closer. I was really lucky to capture this with my lightbox and such direct lighting.

I added a top coat to seal the polish and give this mani a perfectly smooth finish. I was pretty darn impressed with how flat this glitter sat on my nail. There was only one problem piece and it was simply a defective bit of glitter that had gotten cut in half leaving it with a rough edge. It was easy to remove and the top coat filled in the gap.

A tip to distributing the glitter without large patches: give your brush a side to side swish as you drag it up your nail. It's not a perfect solution and you'll likely still end up digging for glitter to fill a spot or two but not as much. You can also try the dabbing method with your brush. A dab here and there can really distribute the glitter. :)

Star Spangled vs Runway Sparkle

While browsing through a beauty salon catalog I came across Venique and their new Holiday Collection. I immediately fell in love with their Twinkle Surprise gift box. It contained two of their three holiday reds — Runway Sparkle and Heels of Dazzle. Today I'm bringing you a swatch of Runway Sparkle and a comparison on how this shimmery red holds up against Orly's Star Spangled.

Here is Venique Runway Sparkle on my nails. It's a lovely rich red with a sparkle of bright red shimmer. I knew the moment it went on my nails that I had a polish very like this in my collection. It didn't take much digging since I don't own many reds.

I decided to use some fake nails to test these polishes against each other since I was already sporting some nail art. Here is how they hold up with one coat over clear fake nails. There's really not much difference at one coat except that the Orly is a much more sheer polish.

At two coats you really start to see that Venique's Runway Sparkle is a deeper shade of red. You also see that it layers much better than Orly's Star Spangled. Orly is still very much a sheer while Venique has turned nearly opaque with just two coats.

At three coats Venique has taken on a very noticeable, darker shade of red and has reached full coverage. However, you also begin to see a big difference in the amount of shimmer. Orly is packed full, with nearly every inch covered in shimmer. Venique isn't quite so lucky. The shimmer is more thin and spread out leaving it to get a bit lost under its darker red base.

Top coat is definitely needed as shimmer polishes almost always have a texture to them as the base settles around the shimmer. With some top coat the difference in shimmer is really noticeable as light gleams off the shiny surfaces.

The reason I chose to use clear fake nails was for just this reason. In the bottle, Venique looked to have a lot more shimmer than was showing on my nails. It left me wondering if the shimmer was sticking to the sides of the bottle. Flipping the nails over shows that, while Venique still doesn't quite live up to Orly's shimmer packed polish, it does have more shimmer than it shows. It doesn't stick to the bottle though, it just sinks on the nail!! When I buy a shimmer, I definitely want shimmer so I lean a bit more towards Orly for this reason but the deeper shade of red Venique uses makes me want to reach for it more during the holiday season.

In the end, the question is: Dupe or Dupe Not? The answer is that Venique Runway Sparkle is definitely not a dupe for Orly Star Spangled. Over all though, I'm happy to now own Runway Sparkle, and I do like the Venique formula a little bit better because at three coats Orly Star Spangled still wasn't getting full coverage. I just wish Runway Sparkle had a more present shimmer.

J is for ...

I'm pretty excited to share today's post with you. This is for the letter J in the ABC Challenge. J is for ... Jester.

I was inspired by Harley Quinn from Batman. Harley has always been one of my favorite Batman characters even though I don't read the comics or watch the animated series. Harley Quinn, as suggested by the play with her name, is clad in a traditional harlequin jester outfit. I used L.A. Colors Black and White with Wet n Wild I Red a Good Book to create this look. No tape was used in the making of this mani. You're stunned, I know. ;)

You can look to the Wikipedia article on Harley Quinn if you'd like to see my inspiration.

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. :)