October manis

Hi everyone! Hope everyone is having a wonderful and safe Halloween! About to get my boy in his skeleton costume and hand out candy to the trick or treaters!

For today's post, I debated doing another Halloween mani for you guys. But, seeing as how it's already Oct 31st and I didn't get my act together in time to do one, I decided to do a post of this month's manis instead. I always mean to do a summary post at the end of each month but always forget :-(

Anyways, I started off this month celebrating my one year blogiversay with Hits Mari Moon Cutie Pie, amazing multichrome polish

Then, the first of the two orange polishes I wore this month, China Glaze Riveting. I experimented with hand placed glitter on this one.

This month, I participated in more Adventures in Stamping Sunday Stamping challenges than ever before. Here is the first of them, stamping over black. I recreated an amazing mani by nailXchange on MUA.

I kept going with my new hand placed glitter accent kick and mixed some textures in this next skittlette mani using Confetti Dance Party Pink and Zoya Dahlia.

Then I had to do it again here with Icing polishes. Icing Sand in Sunset and Blow Pop skittlette.

Next my second of the three Sunday stamping challenges I did this month and the second amazing orange I wore, a holo this time! This is stamping with Bundle Monster images over Jade Uau!

Here is Jade Uau! by itself. What a stunner!! I already want to wear it again but it's too bad the sun has left us here.

Finally, another Halloween mani for the month. With this one, for the first time, I used a combination of randomly hand placed matte glitters with a glitter polish to create a different look. I also used the stamping decal technique for the first time with the skull's eyes.

Finally, no manis, just a post about my sweet boy and pumpkin carving.

On a personal note....

Hi everybody :-)

Even though I have a few manicures waiting in the wings to be posted, I have decided to deviate from nails for a bit and talk about my weekend. My husband, my son and I shared a first together this weekend, pumpkin carving!! Can you believe I have lived in this country for twenty-two years and this was the first time I've carved a pumpkin for Halloween? I was inappropriately excited for this activity. (Or maybe there is no inappropriate level of excitement when it comes to pumpkin carving?) If you follow me on Instagram, you will see how excited my son was too on our way to my husband's cousin's house, where we actually did the carving. Just kidding, he's a baby. He slept the whole way there ;-)

Here's the little munchkin being held by one of his aunts. I am getting used to it a little bit now but you would not believe how much stuff a little baby ends up bringing with him whenever he goes out. At least he does if he has us for his parents. Maybe we'll learn to pare down over time but experience has taught us so far that we generally regret it when we don't bring something because that ends up being just the thing we need. Once it was a pacifier, another time it was his wrap, another time a blanket, a sweatshirt....an on and on. Now we just bring everything. :-/

He hung in there initally and let us prop him up and take pictures in his cute fox outfit. Then, sure enough, he got fussy and eventually ended up with his dad in a wrap in order to take a nap. Dad was more interested in the game than pumpkin carving anyway ;-)

For my first pumpkin ever, I chose a pretty simple bats flying motif and I'm pretty proud of how it turned out!

I love how it looks all lit up in the dark. 

Baby got his own baby pumpkin and to commemorate the occasion, I designed a little devilish letter N for him. He'd woken up again at this point and once again, we decided to test his limits and try to get some pictures with his pumpkin. He wasn't having any of it!

It was so much fun. I can't wait to do it again next year!!

Sunday Stamping: Halloween Stamping, Black and White Halloween mani with Hard Candy Black Tie Optional

Hi folks!

This post is going up late, seeing how Sunday is more than halfway over. This is my mani for the Sunday Stamping challenge, Halloween themed stamping. I really, really wanted to do a black and white gradient so I finally did it for this mani. Then I took Hard Candy Black Tie Optional out of my untrieds and used it with a few randomly yet strategically placed matte glitter in orange, purple and lime green. I added glowing orange eyes to the skull while the image was still on the stamper, stamping decal style. If anyone is curious about what I'm talking about, I can elaborate if you ask me.

I really love how this looks. Love the randomly hand placed glitter mixed with the black and white glitter. I placed a few glitters down first, then painted a coat of BTO, then placed a few more glitters over it. A lot less time consuming than you would think because it was random placement. I will have to do this technique more often. Gives the impression of having an entirely new form of glitter polish.

Here's all the polishes used in this mani. The plate is Bundle Monster BM 225.

Wet n Wild Ebony Hates Chris

Sinful Colors Snow me White

Sally Hansen Wet Cement

Hard Candy Black Tie Optional 

Sinful Colors Courtney Orange

An amazing orange holo: Jade Uau!

Hi all! Quick post today. This is the base of the last mani I posted, Jade Uau! How incredible is this? I had to give it its own post. I got this polish from Ninja Polish. I love shopping from them. They have good customer service and I have always been able to trust my purchases from there. So far, everything has been shipped properly without any broken bottle disasters. 

Adventures in Stamping Sunday Stamping: Jade Uau! with Halloween stamping

Hello lovelies!

Today I'm presenting another Adventures in Stamping Sunday Stamping mani. The prompt this time was over a holo base. Since I had just received a shipment from Ninja Polish with a few Jade holographic polishes, I had to try out one of them. This is Jade Uau! and wow, what a color! I think I'm falling in love with orange!

I had been really wanting an orange holo and this fulfills all my wishes :-) The house stamp comes from BM 305 and the Jack-o-Lantern stamp comes from BM 224. The black I used is Wet n Wild Black Creme. And, some hand placed black hexes on pointer and index fingers to round it out.

There is still slight holo action in the shade!

Icing Blow Pop and Sand in Sunset skittlette

Hi everyone!

A few weeks ago, I went to stay with my parents for a week. Ever since I got into polish, going to my parent's place has become the biggest tempation for nail polish buying, bar none. They live within minutes of...everything! All the pharmacies, Walmart, Marshalls, TJ Maxx, Ulta, Sally's, Meijers, Target...and Icing. I realized a while ago that Icing sometimes comes up with some really unique polishes that I can't get from drugstore brands. My parents' place is the only place with an Icing store nearby. Of course, I had to shop. Here I have two of my picks from my trip there. This is Blow Pop, a neon pastel pink, and Sand in Sunset, a textured gold polish. Top picture is in the sun and bottom picture is in the shade.

Although I don't usually care too much about formula if there are slight flaws and the color is nice, I had an incredibly hard time with Blow Pop. It was awful. Although the pictures don't show it, it was streaky beyond belief. Even with three coats, I could tell there were some thin patches. I needed large amounts of patience to work with this polish. Which meant that with a baby around, it took me three days to finally finish this mani to the point where I was somewhat happy with it. I couldn't just slap the polish on and go. Oh well, the color is unique to my collection so I will keep it for now. I would hate to even give away this polish, that's how bad I think it is.  The textured polish, however, was fine. It was really thick so it only took one coat to cover the nail. Also, it took a while to dry...but it's pretty so I'm willing to live with that. All in all, it was a frustrating mani but I liked the way it finally ended up looking.

Zoya Dahlia and Confetti Dance Party Pink skittlette

Hi folks! I've got another skittlette for you today! This time I mixed textures and I really liked the end result. I have become addicted to the skittlette ever since I saw Marta from ChitChatNails coin the term. I love every single skittlette she comes up with, which I can't say the same for mine. I do love this one though!

The polishes I used here are Zoya Dahlia which is the black texture polish and Confetti Dance Party Pink. Isn't that just the most yummy pale pink ever? I believe that was three coats. Two coats for Dahlia. Then for accents, I did a hand placed glitter accent on the ring finger with black hexes and hot pink iridescent hexes. On the middle finger, I stamped using an image from Gals Fairy Set plate GA30 again. I added those hand placed glitters on the stamped image as well. One thing I didn't like about this image is that I couldn't get it to stamp on my full nail. Otherwise, I'd have been 100% happy with this mani. What do you guys think? I'm on a roll with these hand placed glitters here.

Adventures in Stamping Sunday Stamping: Oil slick butterfly wings (stamp over black)

Hi fellow lacquer lovers!

Today's post is another one based on a Sunday Stamping challenge through the Facebook group Adventures in Stamping. The challenge for this week was stamping over black. So for this challenge, I decided to finally do a mani I had been thinking about for more than a year, ever since I first saw MUA user nailXchange do it.

This mani is done by using a few different colored chrome polishes to stamp over black. I wanted this bright oil slick butterfly wings look to it. It kind of falls flat in real life. I don't know if it's because the colors don't pop enough or if my stamping needs more work. But...I did not impress myself with this one.

This is an outside picture above.

Here's what I used for this mani. All the China Glaze colors are from the Romantique Collection.
Wet n Wild Ebony Hate Chris - love love love this black, nearly a one coater.
China Glaze Cherish (light green)
China Glaze Adore (blue)
China Glaze Emotion (pink)
China Glaze Harmony (purple)
Red Angel Plate RA 107

That plate, now that I look at it, has a few more interesting looking designs!! What do you guys think? Cool or did it miss its mark?

China Glaze Riveting Skittlette

Hey everybody! Another quick post for you guys today. I had this mani on a while ago, when the weather was still clearly summer. My nails are slightly rounded because it was soon after delivery and well... I felt like I had to have rounded nails. The first picture is in my lightbox indoors and the second picture is in full sunlight. Look at that amazing shimmer!! 

After wearing it plain for about a day, I did a simple skittlette by stamping the ring finger with an image from the Gals Fairy set plate GA30. On the other finger, I added some hand placed glitter. First matte black hexes in size 0.062 then metallic orange ones in .040 on top. These pictures are taken in the shade.

Thanks for looking!!

1 Year anniversary!! Too Special to Wear: Hits Mari Moon Cutie Pie

Hi folks!! Last Sunday, I decided to browse through some older posts. On a hunch, I looked up my first post and was amazed to realize that it's been one year since I first started blogging!! I'm so happy I stuck with it and I'm looking forward to a bunch more years of doing this! 

Happily, I was already wearing another one of my "too special to wear" polishes, Hits Mari Moon Cutie Pie. I fell in love with duochromes and multichromes when I first saw pictures of the old Sally Hansen Prisms collection. After being drawn in by the "Rainbow in every bottle", I had to have my hands on more. When I saw the entire collection of Mari Moon multichrome polishes for sale at Ninja Polish a long time ago, I took the plunge. Then I sat on it....for a long time. The uniqueness of the polishes and the small (~8ml) size of the bottles kept me from just using them on a whim. Well, no more!! I will not let fear of running out keep me from using these. 

I've worn it here as two coats over black. The next day, I added black triangle half moons and hand placed silver glitter for extra sparkle. I got a good five days wear out of this! Forgive for the excess of pictures. This is still far fewer than I wanted to.

And, the video!