Wet n Wild Don't Break the Circuit (topcoat fail)

Hi everyone! This is the last of the blue manis from my blue week. This one I'm not so proud of. It looked good for maybe 20 minutes and then I ruined it :-( This is Wet n' Wild Magnetic Don't Break the Circuit.

It looks nice right? Beautiful blue color, strong magnetic stripes. The magnet itself doesn't have a finger rest on it so I accidentally bumped my index finger nail on it but no big deal. It was a small mistake compared to all the trouble I've had with it in the past. The one disappointment I did have was that when I first bought it, the polish looked like it actually had holographic particles in it. But when I worse, I didn't see a one, not in the bottle or my nails. Rite Aid lights fooled me!!

I usually don't take pictures of my nails if the next step is to just topcoat it. If I'm going to be doing more nail art, I might not bother. Something was nagging me about the topcoat step, though, so I decided to heck with it, I'll take pictures! I'm glad I did. My next step was to use Diamond Dry topcoat and this is what happened...

Whaa...? I lost my crisp lines! Maybe it's because I used the topcoat I did, maybe it's because I used a topcoat at all. But I didn't like it. I ended up putting some Revlon Blue Mosaic on the tips as a gradient but I still didn't like it. It came off the next day.

Has this happened to anyone using topcoats and magnetic polishes? I haven't used many magnetics but this was a new one for me.

Sparkly Sinful Colors Endless Blue with "Giraffe" Stamping

Hi everyone!

How is your weekend going so far? Mine's been good. Yesterday was one of the best days we've had this spring so far weather wise and my husband and I went for a long walk yesterday afternoon. We held hands, ate ice cream, watched a surprise free acapella concert at the local university where they had free bags of kettle corn. We ate that too :-) We joked around, talked about the future...it was fun! Now it's Sunday and we're both trying to catch up on some work. Well, he is. I will after this post :-P.

Speaking of which.....

This is the second of the blue manis I wore the week after we found out that our baby is a boy. This is Sinful Colors Endless Blue with one coat of Wet n Wild Blue Wants to be a Millionaire over it. A day later, it was begging to be stamped (I heard it) and so I went for the pattern that's been used as a giraffe pattern in other manis I've seen. To me, in this mani, it looks like wide spaced netting. The actual pattern is from the Bundle Monster plate BM 313.

I love Blue Wants to be a Millionaire. This is my first time using it and I'm kicking myself for not using it more before. It's got such a lovely fine holographic shimmer and one coat applies so evenly without changing the actual color of the base polish. I have its sister polish in pink as well, Hannah Pinktana or something. I need to use it too.

Here are a couple of pictures showing the mani before the stamping.

Pretty, huh?

Seven Deadly Sins Challenge Day 1: Lust

Hi everyone! So, on today's post, I'm super excited to say that I have joined a challenge based on the Seven Deadly Sins! I usually stay away from challenges because I never know if I'll have the time to do all the challenge manis and sometimes the actual challenge topics just don't call for any creativity in me. This particular challenge was created by Alice from One Nail to Rule Them All and Helena from Nail Wish and it's called the Deadly Sins Challenge. 

Illustration by Dahlig (her DeviantArt is http://dahlig.deviantart.com/)

The first week challenge is Lust and we can do both of the challenges or just one. I chose the Day 1 challenge and decided to do something that I've been thinking about for a long, long time. 

I had seen a Tadashi Shoji dress on Pinterest that immediately had me wondering what it would look like as a mani. After having it in the back of my mind for a while, I decided that I needed a black jelly to make it work, so frankened one. Then I sat on it some more. 

Finally, this challenge was what prompted me to get my act together and see if I could capture the lace under black guaze look. 

I think it looks ok in pictures but it falls a little flat in real life. I did enjoy finally getting my butt in gear and trying to get my idea onto my nails. The polishes I used are Sinful Colors Snow me White and WnW Black Creme. The black jelly is created from the Black Creme.

Here's the dress that inspired me:

From: http://www.stylebistro.com/runway/New+York+Fashion+Week+Fall+2012/Tadashi+Shoji/1dHUggmWw-D

Sinful Colors Endless Blue

Hello everybody!

Surprise, surprise! Today's post is another Sinful Colors post. Taking a quick survey, I can easily say that that is the brand I have the most polishes from. Today, it's Endless Blue. I love that name. Makes me think of endless blue ocean, which in turn just makes me think of fun vacations I've been on.

My love affair with blue started when I first put on Revlon Royal. This was in the days before the blog, a good camera or the light box so I need to redo that mani someday for the blog. With that first encounter, I knew that bright blues were my weakness. I thought I would be satisfied with Royal for a while, but then I started seeing picture of Nails Inc. Baker's Street. I started coveting all blues that were similar. Fast forward to the recent past and the Sinful Colors Endless Blue release. It was inevitable that this blue was going to find it's way into my stash, to join all it's brothers and sisters in this particular bright blue family. Endless blue itself has a nicely pigmented, funny smelling (a smell I'm starting to associate with these blues), slightly pulling quality to the formula. I did find myself thinning it a bit for the second coat. Otherwise, there was no streakiness and hardly required any clean up, which is a good thing since it is a blue.

Now, let me tell you another reason I chose this blue that particular day. Last week, my husband and I found out the gender of the baby....and it's a boy!! I was wearing blue all last week, featuring Endless Blue. I will show you the second look in the next post. Here is the bump picture, the only picture showing my right hand.

And the rare appearance of the thumb!

Let say a little bit about striping tape designs. I first fell in love with them when I saw Sammy from Nailasaurus doing them such as in this mani, one of my favorites of hers. I had to try it! So, I figured I would start with just a couple of accent nails and see how it goes....it took me forever!! I think if I want to try this again, I should get a pair of narrow, pointy tweezers because I was struggling a little bit with those silly skinny pieces of tape. That being said, I love the result :-) I love how versatile you can be with designs, and the designs are only limited by your imagination. It feels like geometric doodling, and I love doodling. I will have to try this technique again.

L.A.Girls 3D Effects Part 4: Dazzling Pink and Sparkle Ruby

Hello, readers! It's the weekend! I hope you have all been having a good weekend so far. I spent the day with my husband yesterday visiting some good friends of mine from residency at a baby shower. It was great to catch up, see old faces. And now, with most of us being parents or (like me) would be parents, baby/parenting talk has become way more interesting!!!

Ok, so this post is going to show you the last two colors that I picked up from the L.A. Girls 3D Effects collection. The first one here is called Dazzling pink. Now, I just could not get my camera to pick up the pink color of the polish without making it all orange! It was aggravating. I think I did learn a new feature on my camera after I swatched this polish though, so maybe from now on, I'll be able to more accurately white balance my pictures. Just as a reference, I added some phone pictures on the bottom of the post because I think that does a better job of showing the true color. The swatches of this color are with two coats, no topcoat.

The next color is Sparkle Ruby. This is the only swatch in which I used one coat. Yes, this is one coat! I was so amazed by how much a coat covered that I just didn't bother putting a second coat on. You could get more sparkles by putting a second coat on, probably.

Now I'm going to show you the gradient I did with these colors. I took these pictures outside in weak sunlight (that's all I had). You can see that the pink is definitely more pink in natural light.

Edit: I'm adding links to the other swatch posts so you can easily click from one part of the collection to another:
3D Silver and Black Illusion
Brilliant Blue and Teal Dimension
Purple Effect

L.A. Girls 3D Effects Part 3: Purple Effect

Hello everybody. It is time for the third part of the collection. I've decided that this one is going to be on it's own because it is just so beautiful and I took way too many pictures. This is called Purple Effect.

I just loved everything about this one. Purple is one of my favorite colors. The holographic shimmer in this one was more pronounced than the others. Plus, it went so well with my orchids that I just had to pose with one of them. This one was one that had fallen off its stalk and was a little on the dying side but to me, that just makes it highlight the perfection of the polish.

Two coats again. No problems with streaking or dragging. This is without top coat.

Edit: I'm adding links to the other swatch posts so you can easily click from one part of the collection to another:
3D Silver and Black Illusion
Brilliant Blue and Teal Dimension
Dazzling Pink and Sparkle Ruby

L.A. Girls 3D Effects Part 2: Brilliant Blue and Teal Dimension

Hello, hello!

I am in a good mood today!! It finally looks like spring is here to stay for a while. I will just cry if it ever dips below 40 deg F again this season. Right now, it looks like the highs for the week are going to be in the 70s and that is alright with me!

Moving along, I have two more polishes from the L.A. Girls 3D Effects line, Brilliant Blue and Teal Dimension. Let's just jump right into it.

This is two coats, very easy to apply, well pigmented base. The lighting system I have right now doesn't really allow for the true rainbow type colors to shine but trust me, they are there. I think it looks fabulous even without the rainbow sparkle though.

In the picture below, I tried to take an extreme angled photo to see if the scattered holo would show up any better.

Ok, now on to the next color, Teal Dimension. Two coats again, no topcoat. Beautiful, beautiful color. I love my teals!

Here are the angled pictures again.

Next post is going to be a solo feature because I took way too many pictures and I can't narrow it down!!


Edit: I'm adding links to the other swatch posts so you can easily click from one part of the collection to another:
3D Silver and Black Illusion
Purple Effect
Dazzling Pink and Sparkle Ruby

L.A. Girls 3D Effects Part 1: 3D Silver and Black Illusion

Hey everybody! Hope everyone is having a good weekend. My parents are at our place for the second time since we've moved and currently I am being tortured by the amazing smells of my mom cooking classic South Indian dishes in the kitchen. I am so hungry!

To distract myself, I will show you two of the seven colors that I picked up from the L.A. Girls 3D Effects collection. It actually has eight colors but Electric Coral was gone when I went. The whole collections was  gone in the blink of an eye, at least in my area. I do believe you can still get them online, though. I know www.CherryCulture.com has that brand.

The first of the two I'm going to show you today is called Black Illusion. As with almost all of the polishes of this collection, it has a nicely pigmented, jelly base with scattered holographic particles. Rainbow colors are seen in a very scattered fashion under certain indoor lights and sunlight. Otherwise, it looks like it has a lot of coarse sparkle in it. I loved this color very much. The application was great. It took just two coats to get very nice coverage and lots of sparkle.

The next two pictures are angled and blurred a little bit to show off the subtle holo-ness of the sparkle.

The next polish I will show you is actually the first one I wore and it had me hoping the whole time that the rest of the collection was better. Because of the lack of a base color, it took four coats to feel like I had good coverage.

The good thing is, the holographic nature of the sparkle is a bit more evident in this polish. It reminds me quite a bit of the silver Milani holographic polish, but maybe more sheer. I have plans for some good use of this polish though, as you'll see in the future.

I am going to apologize in advance that I am not putting all the swatch pictures in one post. If you are planning on purchasing it now, I will say that I loved all the polishes, I was just put off by the sheerness of the silver. The rest of them all covered very well in 2-3 coats.  I would love to put them all in one post but I just can't carve out enough time to edit, crop and watermark all those pictures in one go. So, hope you don't mind....the best is yet to come!

Edit: I'm adding links to the other swatch posts so you can easily click from one part of the collection to another:
Brilliant Blue and Teal Dimension
Purple Effect
Dazzling Pink and Sparkle Ruby

Barry M Prickly Pear and OPI Rally Pretty Pink Dots update

Hey guys!!

I loved yesterday's mani so much, but in typical me fashion, I could not leave it alone. I liked the dots on the accent nail so much I wanted to keep going on all the other fingers.

I don't have much more to say about this mani, but that I love it. The color is just want I want right now. So, for now, I'll just give you guys a lot of pictures.

I happened to be wearing a necklace to work that seemed to go really well with the colors of this mani. So, it needed to be in the photo shoot as well.

So, what do you think? Do you like yesterday's simpler mani better or it is better with all the nails with the design?