L'Oreal Sexy in Sequins with freehand stripes accent

Hi everybody,

I'm going to go against the grain today and do a non-Valentine's Day mani. Historically, anytime I try to do a Valentine's Day mani, it just blows up in my face. So this year, despite evidence of it all around me, I didn't do a Valentine's mani. I actually even forgot it was Valentine's Day until my husband came home with a bunch of roses after grocery shopping. It was so sweet of him!!

What am I going to show you instead? One of the L'Oreal textured polishes called Sexy in Sequins. I didn't take a photo of it in the textured state. I honestly forgot but I do remember that it took three coats of topcoat and still had a slight bumpiness to it.

 I was actually kind of disappointed because all that lovely gold shimmer in the bottle was hiding on the nail. It ended up looking darker and less shimmery than I thought it would be.

Anyway, happy Valentine's Day to you all and thanks for looking!

L'Oreal Rainy Piccadilly watermarble skittlette

Alright! Good morning, everyone!! It's Jan 7th and for the first time I feel like I can take a deep breath after the end of the year/beginning of the next year rush! 

It's also my son's 5 month anniversary today so here's the obligatory statement about oh my gosh, how time flies!! It's been flying so fast I've had barely any time to do my nails. At least not in a blog worth sense. The last mani was so shoddy I hated having it on my nails. The one before that was awesome but I didn't have time to take pictures!! I'll have to redo that one. So, lucky for us, we have a few manis in the files waiting for their time to be shown. Here is one of them!

I did these a long time ago and posted a not so great picture on Instagram, promising that I would show better pictures soon. Well, here it is weeks later. The main color for this is a wonderful teal by L'Oreal called Rainy Piccadilly. I had used it in the past in a different skittlette here.

My favorite parts about this mani are actually the accent nails of watermarble and the texture polish. This is the first time I did a horizontal stripey watermarble and I loved it! I have to credit My Simple Little Pleasures on YouTube for the first time I saw this method of creating a water marble design. She has so many different ways to create watermarble designs that I haven't even touched on yet! The colors I used for this one are L'Oreal Rainy Piccadilly and Club Prive.

Finally, the textured polish is one of the Gumdrops by Nicole by OPI. It was a teal color that I only found at Target. This one is called Emerald Green. I wore it without a topcoat as intended but the shimmer in there is so amazing that I have to wear it with topcoat at some point.

Petities CQ Solar skittlette with rhinestones

Hi everybody!

Before I get started with showing you today's mani, I want to share something very cool. Some time ago, I found Meghan from Will Paint Nails For Food on Instagram and I started following her blog because of her awesome manis. Recently though, she has been doing an awesome series of posts called Blogger Bootcamp in which she gives much needed and very useful advice to beauty bloggers. Even though I've been blogging for over a year now, I found many of her tips on point. The last post in the series invites bloggers to participate in a group critique. Although it's been less than a day, I've received so many great suggestions from other bloggers that I'm seriously considering making a few changes here in the near future. If you are one of those bloggers, thank you!

Ok, on to the mani. This is a brand that I've only found in Rite Aid. It's CQ Petites and this purple color is Solar. The black with the silver flecks is L'Oreal The Queen's Ambition.

I used rhinestones for the first time ever in this mani. I kept the mani on for four days and the two rhinestones on the right hand were both gone by the end of it. The left hand hung on though! I used tape to create the design on the ring finger.

Pink Stripes! L'Oreal Check me Out with Barry M Pink Silver Glitter

Good morning everyone! How are all the northern hemisphere folk enjoying the summer? For me, this is pretty much the best weather. When I'm at home, I leave the windows open and let the house adjust to the temperature outside. It's always just a bit cooler inside, which is great because we don't even have to turn the air on! 

The increasing warmth outside finally begged me to wear something bright on my nails. I picked L'Oreal Check me Out! The name is fitting because this bright pink really does beg for attention! For the accent, I chose Barry M Pink Silver Glitter and did some stripes with striping tape. The pictures where the pink really pops are all from my iPhone. That seems to be the only color correct camera I own!

I wore this on a sunny, sunny Sunday and I went outside in my PJ's with my morning coffee to take these pictures. I was not using any of my fun cups that day.

This was a picture taken inside with the light box and my regular camera. You can see how the picture quality is great but the color is all off. I also tried to freehand an accent nail here but I did not end up liking it as much. Hence, the stripes.

So, what do you all think? I'm slowly transitioning to brighter colors now. Still trying to figure out how to wear work appropriate neon!

This one got a rating of a mere 7/10 from my husband. I loved it way more than that!

Seven Deadly Sins Challenge: Day 9 - Wrath (My first water spotted nails!!)

Hi guys! So, it's time for another challenge post. The details of this challenge are explained in this post.  Today's challenge prompt is Wrath. "Get mad trying, again, that technique you know it's going to be a fail."

So, for my wrath mani I decided to tackle a technique that has made me pretty angry in the past, the water spotted technique. To know what I'm talking about, here is the tutorial I first saw by cutepolish and then some brilliant examples of this by Spektor's Nails. My initial problem was that I kept trying to use hand sanitizer and could not find the right one. I would keep getting one giant spot in the middle which was not at all useful. Then, on instagram, where I vented about this, someone suggested I try using hairspray. Two dollar Suave hairspray and a few attempts later, I think I got the hang of it! So here are my water spotted nails.

For the base I used Forever 21 Love and Beauty Lavender and the gold is L'Oreal Because You're Worth It. To tell you the truth, I'm a little meh about the mani right now. Maybe it's because of my color choices or maybe I need to add a third color. I'm not writing the technique off at all. I just need to try it with other colors, I think.

Here is Love and Beauty Lavender all by itself. Isn't it pretty?

L'Oreal Notting Hills Blue mani update

Good morning! As previously mentioned, today I want to show you guys the update to last mani and the reason I fell in love with the Sinful Colors Matte Top Coat and why I bought two backups. This is the previous mani with the addition of glitter tips and Sinful Colors Matte Top Coat.

I freehanded the chevron tips using the brush from the bottle. I love how the matte top coat gives it such a satiny or rubberized finish to the mani.

This is how it was before the matte top coat.

With this particular mani, I much prefer it mattified. What do you guys think?

L'Oreal Notting Hill Blues with Sinful Colors Super Star Star

Hi everybody! Hope you all had a good weekend. I sure did! I even had energy this weekend and did some cooking and socializing. It was great! The mani I want to show you today uses as it's base, L'Oreal Notting Hill Blues. I picked this wonderful polish up at Rite Aid on sale a little while ago. I love digging through clearance bins, I've found some good gems this way! This one is from the British Shade Invasion collection and, of course, refers to the famous vibrant blue that can been seen in the Notting Hill district shading doors and store fronts.

For the accent nail, I chose to do a taped off star with Sinful Colors Super Star. It shows up pretty well in the picture but in real life, there was not enough of a contrast for the glitter to stand out against the blue background. They complement each other well, but maybe too well for this design.

In my next post, I will show you guys the update to this mani that made me love it so much more!!

And now, for a non nail picture. I decided to try making ratatouille for the first time. I had just washed the veggies and was getting ready to cut them and they looked so pretty I had to take a picture! Yummy!

Flowers For Audrey - Skittlette contest runner up #2

Hello everyone! I don't know what happened since I got back from vacation but my nail mojo is all gone. Bad nail breaks, brilliant ideas with horrible execution, bad application, bubbles, smudges, chips all happening so much more than they used to last year! Not to mention I've inexplicably developed nausea every time I paint or even think about painting my nails. Sometimes it's worse than other times and I power through but I really hope it goes away soon. Good thing I have some pictures stored away for you guys for a rainy day!

This is the second of the three runner ups for the skittlette contest entry.

For this polish I used China Glaze For Audrey, Sinful Colors Rich in Heart and on the accent nail, the leaves are a combination of Revlon Emerald City and L'Oreal Tea and Crumpets. I did the flowers and leaves with a toothpick. I'm really a fan of these tiny flowers now. I think I've improved on my skills on those flowers even since this mani.

I definitely think this one is simpler than the other two, but I really like the way it looks. I love the color combination for some reason.

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.