OPI Houston We Have a Purple franken

Hey guys! Here is another one from the vault! This is with OPI Houston We Have a Purple. This was part of their sorbet collection released last year.

The glitter in here is again Love and Beauty glitters Purple and Green. For this mani, I painted a coat of Houston We Have a Purple and then I mixed a few drops of each glitter with the color in a little foil cup. I painted my nails with two coats of this mix.

Here it is in the shade.

Essie Smooth Sailing Clouds

Hi folks! So guess what? I'm in London, England now! I'm here on vacation, visiting my cousins. I spent all of Christmas traveling, which was crazy awful but then I got to participate in my first Boxing Day! For those who don't know, Boxing Day is equivalent to Black Friday in the US. Biggest shopping day of the year. All I bought was nail polish and I did get a couple of deals. I only bought polishes I didn't think I could get in the US easily but that still ended up being quite a few! For my next few posts, I'm just going to show you guys a few manis from the vault.

Today's mani features a design I haven't shown before. This another one from the vault before the blog. I first saw the cloud mani created by Nailside. She even has a tutorial for it. It's such a simple art but looks amazing in real life. The colors I used for this one are Essie Smooth Sailing, Icing Glimmer and Wet n' Wild Black Creme. Smooth Sailing is such a great blue, great formula.

Peppermint Candy mani update

Hi everyone! Merry Christmas for those who celebrate it! Most of our family is not Christian but my husband's family here has always had the tradition of celebrating it with a tree and presents and food so we did all that last night. Christian or not, I think this is a fun time of year. I guess I had another Christmas mani in me too! This is kinda cheating though...I just updated that last one. I really really couldn't let this season go by without taking advantage of my striping tape and creating a candy cane accent. This may not have been the perfect mani to do it with but I had just enough time to do the accent without doing all my nails over.

So, that's pretty much it. I used Nanacoco Irresistible Charm (previously seen here and here) for the accent nails. For the wider stripes, I doubled up on the striping tape by placing them side by side.

What do you guys think? Awkward accent nail or just right?

Peppermint White Chocolate Mani

Happy Holidays everybody! This is might be my last post before Christmas but then again, maybe not. I'm not sure what I think of this one. I kept feeling like it looked like peppermint candy so I guess it could just be a winter themed holiday. The colors remind me of Christmas though.

The polishes I used for this are Wet n Wild Break the Ice, Love and Beauty Green, Red and Gold glitter. In order to prevent having a million coats of glitter on my nails, I painted two coats of Break the Ice on my nails and then premixed a couple of drops of each glitter with a few drops of Break the Ice in a small foil cup. Then I painted a coat of that onto each nail.

I have no idea what's going on with my ring finger nail. I must have been really distracted when I filed that one. I've fixed it since seeing this picture! 

It's not horrible but I always think this type of manicure always ends up looking at little bit better in pictures than in real life. What do you guys think? 

Deconstructed Christmas Tree

Hello folks! So, I used to love watching cooking shows, especially the ones that are a competition and all these brand new chefs are trying to outdo each with the trendiness and uniqueness of their dishes. Invariably, some classic dish or another got "deconstructed". I loved that part. An apple pie would get broken down into it's individual components and strewn about a plate, altered into a new texture or shape, until the whole thing looked like a piece of modern art with minimal resemblance to it's origin. Somehow, apparently when you put the pieces together in your mouth, voila, apple pie!

Today's mani reminded me of something deconstructed. This may be a stretch but I'm calling this my deconstructed Christmas tree.

There's the green for the tree, the white for the fake snow, the gold glitter for tinsel and the multicolored ornaments!  The polishes used in this mani are Orly Meet Me Under the Mistletoe, again, Wet n Wild Break the Ice and a Love and Beauty gold glitter. For the ornaments, the blue and red were Nanacoco polishes, the green is China Glaze Emerald Fitzgerald. The stamp is from the Bundle Monster plate, BM 206.

Fun, huh? Well, Christmas is almost here. I probably will have a couple more Christmas oriented manis to show you and then back to regularly scheduled programming!!

Chit Chat Nails Skittlette Entry

I'm so excited about today's post! I'm going to show you my first entry into a nail contest of any kind. These were my submission into Chit Chat Nails Skittlette Contest. I played around with a few different looks, asked everyone at work what they thought, and this is what I finally decided on . I will show you three other looks that were contenders as well in their own blog posts.

For this look I used L'Oreal Rainy Piccadilly, L'Oreal Tea and Crumpets, Maybelline Sea-Quin and WnW Black for the stamp.

So, what do you guys think? To see all the other entries, follow this link.

Nanacoco Irresistible Charm Holly-Day Mani

As many other bloggers have done now, I want to take a moment to comment on how heartbreaking and cruel the recent shooting in Newtown, CT has been. I am not a parent yet myself but I can just imagine how horrifying a seemingly normal holiday season has become for those families and friends of the children killed. I feel like as a nation we seem to stumbling from one tragedy after another, grief piling upon grief, more so in these last few years than I can remember. I'm not sure what we're headed towards.

In the grand scheme of things, polishing your nails sounds about as trivial as it can get. It is still, however, something that brings me a measure of happiness and pride and so I continue to turn towards it for comfort and distraction. I have been made to realize, however, that we all need a certain balance in life and that's my goal every day.

I'm sorry about the pun in the title. I drafted this post a long time ago and I thought myself somewhat clever for coming up with that name, only to realize that now that it's closer to the holidays, I'm going to see that pun done over and over...  For this holiday mani I used Nanacoco Irresistible Charm and NOPI Not a Gold Digger again, just like I did this mani. Just like the name says, this color really is irresistible!

The holly on the accent nail was done with Revlon Emerald City and Irresistible Charm and a toothpick! 

I have yet to use Emerald City as a full mani but I can see that it would be really beautiful. 

Sinful Colors Boom Boom Birthday Mani

Hi Everyone! It was my birthday this last Friday and I hadn't necessarily planned anything specific for my birthday mani. It just so happened that this is what I was wearing on my birthday so here it is, my birthday mani!

For this mani, the colors I used are Sinful Colors Boom Boom on the index, Sinful Colors Secret Admirer on the pinky and Sally Hansen X-treme Wear Black Out with Boom Boom for the marble on the middle two fingers. More and more, I have been really happy with the way some of the Sinful Colors marble. Boom Boom is a great bright pink that doesn't lean into the neon range. It applied with a consistency that was a cross between creme and jelly. There is great pigmentation so two coats was all I needed to get full coverage. As with many of the SC polishes, there was a great shine without even using top coat. Here, I have already applied Seche Vite. 

For my actual birthday, the day started off with a gift and hot breakfast from my sweet husband. Then a long, long day at work, followed by dinner and tons of fun at Dave and Busters. For those of you who don't know what it is, it is basically an arcade where you spend money to get tokens that you then use to play various arcade and carnival style games. I always have a ton of fun there. It had been a long time since my last trip so it was a blast!

Meet Me Under the Mistletoe Mani Update with my first nail art brushes!

Hello all! Before I post about my birthday mani in my next post, I wanted to show you a little update on my last mani. I didn't think I was going to post about it but it did look pretty cute so here it is. I finally got a set of nail art brushes from an Ebay seller here. I was so excited to receive them in the mail that I had to use them right away! I decided to go with the simplest thing ever and just paint some stripes on the tips of my nails. The stripes were created with Revlon Gold Coin. The other polishes again are Orly Meet Me Under the Mistletoe, China Glaze Riverter Rouge and NOPI Not a Gold Bigger on the ring finger.

Orly Meet Me Under The Mistletoe

Guys, I can't believe how busy I feel like I've gotton at work lately! I feel like I went from 0 to 60 in no time flat and now I'm running to catch up with myself! Being busy is a good thing, not complaining, but it's a huge departure from what I did for three months after residency. On the plus side, I do love the places I'm working at and more particularly the people I'm working with. That cannot be overstated.

Anyway, I did take some down time I had over the last couple of weekends to experiment with various looks on my nails. I'll try to show you my current NOTD's but in between, I'm excited to show you various other looks I tried. After that introduction, let me tell you that this was a manicure I ended up wearing for a few days and just took off today.

The green is Orly Meet Me Under The Mistletoe. I know this is from an older release but it is just gorgeous. I believe it is a core color. Look at that bottle shot! On the nail, it doesn't have quite all those colors but it does have a wicked sparkle. I should get different lights to show the full shimmer effect. I got it opaque and even in three coats due to the jelly base. For the accent nail, I went with China Glaze Riveter Rouge from the Vixen collection. That is the only collection I have all of the polishes for. Also, my first China Glazes. It was opaque in two coats. It's a lovely red with microfine particles of gold. You can see that in the bottle. So gorgeous! I made the gold dots with a dotting tool and NOPI Not a Gold Bigger. It seems to be my go to gold polish for the month. 

And now for a lot of pictures....

Mint Fizz and Flowers

Hi everyone! I hope December has been treating everyone well so far! It's a Monday but I can't help but be happy that this week is here. It's my birthday at the end of this week and I am that much closer to my vacation at the end of this month!! I always tend to be a little bit down around my birthday but I'm not going to let that happen this year. Anyone else get like that? I can't really explain the phenomenon.

Oh, did you notice my new blog header? I've been wanting to do that forever but I had to wait till I had accumulated enough posts so that I had a few good manis to choose from. Anyway, I am now posting the update to my Ulta Whatever Floats Your Moat mani that I posted last time. I added a coat of Revlon Mint Fizz, a semi sheer electric blue mint scented polish with blue microflakes in it. It seemed to go with Whatever Float Your Moat so well! It toned down the power of the blue just a bit but added this amazing shimmer and sparkle to it!

Next I added some roses on the ring finger with Love and Beauty Aqua. I've featured this polish a few times before. I think I love it! The flowers were inspired by Raggio di Luna. She does so many freehand flower manis that I just finally had to try my own! I think she does hers with acrylic paints and a nail art brush but I did these by plopping a drop of polish on the nail and drawing into it with a toothpick to take away polish along those lines. Once I get some brushes, I plan on using those to expand my drawing repertoire. So, should I do more flowers in the future? I think I will.

I've been lately getting into taking pictures with my phone and using various programs on the phone to touch it up a bit. I have a separate Instagram account where I usually post those but I thought I'd post a few of them here and there on this blog for your viewing pleasure. This is a willow tree in front of my parent's house. Eerie, isn't it?

Ulta Whatever Floats Your Moat

Hello lovelies! For today's post we are back to, guess what? Blue!! And what a blue it is! This is Ulta Whatever Floats Your Moat. It's a blue with jelly like consistency. I suppose you could use it in a sandwich but personally I would have to make it more translucent before I did that. It is very reminiscent of Revlon Royal. I have not done a side by side comparison but from what I remember, I probably don't need both. But...look at it!! I could not pass up this glowing beauty at the store.

I know, it looks like there's visible nail line all over the place. Oh my god! It's looks like x-ray vision to my nails underneath. Actually, it wasn't at all visible in real life. My camera always destroys any claims to proper clean up, lack of visible nail line and the amount of purple or pink that actually exists in a particular shade. 

The glow that came from this shade made me happy the entire day. Stay tuned for the next post though. I'll show you what I did with it to make me even happier!

Color Club Rev'd Up with Dots

Hello everyone! Some sad news, one of my darling grandmothers passed away yesterday in her sleep. I feel terrible for my parents, my dad especially. Can't be easy, no matter how much you expect it. I debated whether to post about this here but think this blog is not only all about my nails but a little window into my life as well.

Well, on to the nails!! Here is my follow up post to the Color Club Rev'd Up post. To create this look, I went with my trusty dotting tools and a few bright colors...

The colors I used for the dots are Sinful Colors Soul Mate, Sinful Colors Innocent and Kleancolor Beach Blue.

Full disclosure? I originally did this design on my big toe as a pedi. I loved it and I had to see it translated to the fingernails.

I am going to spend some time today working on my first contest entry ever! Wish me luck. I'm super excited about this one.