Third day transformation with Glam Polish You're Our Only Hope, Frank!

Hello everyone!!

For today's post, you guys are going to have to forgive my day three tip wear. I was too excited about this polish to really worry about all that. I will have to wear it by itself another time. So, I had been walking around feeling blah about my Femme Fatale The Secret of Secrets when this beauty arrived in the mail. I thought the color was spot on to layer over so I tried it....and loved it!

This polish is so complex I'm not sure what all is actually in there but I do detect small color shifting flakies, some color shifting iridescent glitter, the same one that is throughout this Magical Creatures collection, and holographic microglitter. It was so sparkly, I loved it!

Someday, I will wear this all by itself but I have a feeling this one looks spectacular over a variety of colors.
This is a limited edition shade but it's still available on the Glam Polish website.
Until next time!!

Stash Swatch - 2true Shade 10

Hi all!

I have a second 2true shade for you today, Shade 10 (aka St. Tropez?). This is the second of the 2true polishes I picked up on a trip to the UK in 2012. This one is also a foil, much like Shade 9, more brown than coppery however. I really really loved this one. The cooler tone of this shade seems to compliment my skin tone better and I think it's even more interesting than Shade 9. You can see these bits of blue and red foil flecks in there that really add a lovely bit of complexity to this polish!

The above two pictures were taken in my lightbox. The below two were taken in my bathroom. Something about the combination of lights in there shows a different side to a lot of my polishes and you guys will be seeing more bathroom pics in the future! I really liked the way this one looked in my bathroom. Those blue and red flecks really sparkle here. Look at my blurred out index finger!

These polishes have really opened my eyes up to complex neutral foils. I really wish I had been paying attention when Sephora Formula X Alchemy was out. What are some of your favorite neutral foils?

Stash Swatch - 2True Shade 9

Hi everybody!

The polish I'm going to show you today has one of my favorite finishes ever. Foil! Yes, these polishes are highly annoying when you're removing them because those little bits get everywhere but I think it's worth it. I love how sparkly these polishes are without the topcoat eating behavior of glitters. Not that I don't love glitters, but they do take some extra work. 

This is 2True Shade 9. I looked really hard on the bottle to find another name for this polish but Shade 9 is all I found. A little internet digging shows that it could also be called Rio. Either way, it's a coppery foil that took me three coats to achieve opacity. I have a very prominent nail line and it seems to take me more coats to get rid of it than most others. The consistency was great! Another annoying aspect of foils is the clean up. With Shade 9, I had barely any clean up to do. There appear to be some tiny pink and gold flecks in this polish, which gives it a nice complexity. 

 I don't really have much else to say about this polish. I have a couple of others from this brand that I'll show you in a future post, another foil and a glitter. All of them were bought by me in London at a Superdrug.

Salon Perfect Brown Sugar Zoo Skittlette

We had a fun weekend here this past weekend! We took the munchkins to the zoo. The little one is two months old and slept through the whole trip but my almost two year old toddler loved it! I had done my nails for the occasion so I'll show you that in this post.

This is one of my favorite manis I've done in a while. You can see all the polishes I've used below. The brown is Salon Perfect Brown Sugar, which I think is a dupe for China Glaze Midtown Magic. I have both, and I love it so much that I don't mind that I have both! The gold sparkly nail is done with Polished by KPT Triomphe-nt Night from the Paris collection. The animal print accent nail is done by randomly sponging the two above mentioned polishes along with OPI Rollin' in Cashmere and Sally Hansen Copperhead onto Orly Powder Puff, my favorite off white base for nail art. I really wasn't sure about OPI Rollin' in Cashmere in the bottle when I first got it. I got it in a package with Comet in the Sky and Snow Globetrotter. When I sponged it over the other colors though, it gave it a lovely satiny gold look and I can see myself using it in nail art quite a bit in the future! The image for the stamped accent nail is from the MASH plate m78. 

I posted a picture me wearing this mani and my two little boys in the background on my Instagram account. If you also have an Instagram account, look me up!

Again, thanks for looking!

Wet n Wild Rustic Color Block

Hey everyone!

It's been a while.... I am going to sound like a broken record but I cannot believe how crazy busy life is these days.

The mani I'm going to show you today, I wasn't really too excited about it. I painted a base of Wet n Wild Ebony Hate Chris and layered Wet n Wild Rustic over it. I don't like how I can see black edges under Rustic.

I really wanted try my hand at a color block design. I think I may have to retry.

The colors I used are:
Wet n Wild Craze Rustic
Wet n Wild Ebony Hates Chris
Wet n Wild Ocean Grotto
No name pink foil

Because of being somewhat disappointed with this. I tried to save it by adding glitter, haha. I added Laquerlicious Mocha Sprinkles.

What do you think? Does the glitter make it ok or was it too much? I thought the colors went really well together!

Sinful Colors Mercury Rising splatter skittlette

Hello lovelies!

How is everyone? Hope everyone had a good weekend! I can't believe how busy things have suddenly become for me! Between a baby that still wakes up multiple times a night, a full time job that's ramping up, THE exam of my career coming up in three months and the holidays, my plate is so full I'm surprised I'm still carrying it!! 

Anyways, I'm not going to say much here except that I loved this mani and I wish I'd worn this longer. This is my first splatter attempt and I finally got the hang of it with some trial and error. Aaannnd, I love the results!! I especially love it as an accent nail.

Polishes used in this mani:
             Orly Powder Puff (3 coats); this is my go to off white
             Wet n Wild Femme Trouper (texture, from Rite Aid)
             Sinful Colors Mercury Rising (brown with shimmer, 2 coats)
             Wet N Wild Fast Dry Ocean Grotto (lovely green foil shimmer but sheer on its own)

Another dress inspired mani with Salon Perfect Brown Sugar

Hi folks. Survived another week! It's a bittersweet end though because I'm on call this weekend and hauling my 33 week belly around the hospital is going to be a chore.

I have a pretty sweet mani and a new to me technique to make up for it though! This mani is the first time I attempted the whole brush stroke nail art look. The verdict: I love it!!!  I actually thought of it in order to match a certain dress I wore this week, which I'm showing you at the bottom of the post.

The polishes I used for this are Salon Perfect Brown Sugar, seen above, Salon Perfect Faux Glow, which you saw last in this mani, and Sinful Colors Fig. I used two coats of Brown Sugar on the plain nails and for the accent nails, I used two coats of Faux Glow and then painted freehand strokes with Fig with a small nail art brush randomly starting at the cuticle and ending before I got to the tip. Over that, I did the same thing with Brown Sugar, stopping even earlier to allow Fig to show through. I do believe Brown Sugar is a dupe for China Glaze Midtown Magic. I have both, never worn Midtown Magic but in the bottle they look exactly the same!

And here's me, sporting the dress and the mani.

Why did I get all fancy, you might ask? No? I'll tell you anyway. This week, I got to meet some fellow Cleveland bloggers for the first time! I have been following both Michelle from All Lacquered Up and Andrea from Chickettes for a little while now and it was so nice to realize that we actually lived in the same place! I really started this blog as a way to just talk about and expand a little on my hobby and get a little more interaction from other people just as interested in this hobby as me. I have my own little corner of the internet and it's fun when I get you guys dropping in as visitors to check out what I've been doing. (I love your comments too, hint). Having an actual meetup with other nail bloggers, though, seemed to take it to another level. It was just neat to get out of my usual routine and interact with women from a completely different background from me and be able to share in a common interest! Anyway, can you tell I don't get out much, haha? Most times it really feels like work and baby are my life. I'm really looking forward to more meetups in the future!

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.

Pinterest inspired skirt mani

When I first got on Pinterest, there was this picture of a skirt that really drew my eye. I pinned it, then I started wondering what a mani inspired by that skirt would look like. A year later, I finally had the polishes that might make it work.

China Glaze Ingrid

Today begins the first day of my career as a legitimate independant practicing physician with my very own patients. I figured I probably shouldn't have tiny blue flowers on my nails when I talk to a gentleman about performing his vasectomy. So I've put on something a lot more sedate and professional looking.