Candy Cane mani with Zoya Sarah and Lacquistry Amazeballz

So the month of January is over so what better time to post my Christmas mani, right? Right. I'm only a little bit behind. I considered not posting it at all but it's too pretty!!

I'd been using Gelibility for my manis lately (you can read more about it in Andrea's review on Chickettes.com and be sure to read her update in this post) and changing it about once a week. This mani is done with Zoya Sarah and Lacquistry Amazeballz (love!!).

Here it is without the accent design.

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.

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.

Julie G Gumdrops Sugar Rush with triangles

Happy weekend everybody!

Hope everyone has been having a good weekend so far. I guess it's time for another post! For this one, I busted out another one of my many textured polishes that I seem to be collecting these days. This one is Julie G Gumdrop Sugar Rush. Apparently a dupe for Zoya Destiny (which I also have now) and OPI Jinx, which I resisted buying. I don't need to literally own ALL the textures, right?

Ahh, Sugar Rush. It's such a perfect name for this type of polish. I always think of sugar crystals when wearing these polishes. I had to take these pictures indoors with my lightbox since it was night time so the color may be a wee bit more orange than usual. I really should invest in a better lamp, I think.

For a little design, I taped off a couple of triangles and painted them with Julie G Hot Cinnamon and Tangerine Dream.

I did include a couple of sunlight pictures so the color can be seen better. This is also after a couple of layers of topcoat.

Sinful Colors Island Coral with stripes

Hello lovely polish folk! If you have been following me for any length of time, you'll know that I have a love of Sinful Colors polishes. What I have shown on the blog does not even touch the surface of the collection I have and I need to think of ways to correct that. Today's post features a few of the Sinful Colors polishes I have in the red/orange/pink/purple range. I picked Island Coral as the base to really get into the mood for spring. It shows up more orange in my pictures than it is in real life.

The inspiration for this mani is two fold. I saw a couple of manis a while ago on Lucy's Stash here and here, who in turn got her inspiration from Makeupwithdrawal from her post here.

Here are the colors I used for the accent nail. There are just too many of them to type out and I'm sure most of your eyes will just glaze right over that paragraph so I put the names of the colors right on the bottle caps in the picture. The base of the accent nail is Orly Powder Puff. 

After leaving it like this for a couple of days, I wanted to add a little something so I layered a coat of NYC Flashlight. It's a pretty, fine shimmery gold color that is much too sheer to be worn on it's own. It warmed up the mani even more and gave it a lovely shimmer. This topper is nothing earth shattering but I can see it looking amazing over a lot of different colors.

I loved playing with my striping tape for this mani. After placing the tape strips down, I used a fine nail art brush to paint the colors in between the tape. As each color was filled, I pulled up on the tape strip that came before, just to keep it from dragging. Even trying to work fast and pulling up the tape as I went along, there was a little bit of pulling on the color since it dried so fast.

Overall, I was really happy with the way it came out. I don't think I would have the time or patience to do all my nails like this but it turned out well as the accent nail. 

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!

Borghese Sonata Berry with accents

Okay!! The mani I'm going to show you today is simple but has easily become my favorite of the month. And to make up for the somewhat crappy pictures of the last post, I have included way more pictures than necessary in this one!

The polishes I used in this mani are Borghese Sonata Berry, Revlon Gold Coin and China Glaze Glitter All The Way. 

I adore Glitter All The Way. There are really small and slightly less small glitter pieces and the different colors I was able to pick out are gold, green, purple and red. The picture makes it look like there's blue but I can't see it in real life. 

As I said in my previous post, I did the accent nail by first painting two coats of Revlon Gold Coin and then using craft scissors to cut out two strips of painters tape, being careful to line up the zigzags with each cut. Then I applied them on the nail and painted two coats of Sonata Berry before taking off the tape with the polish still wet. Prior to doing the zigzag accent though, I went around for a day with just a plain gold nail. This is what that looked like...

In real life, I was a huge fan of the zigzag accent but in the pictures I'm loving the plain nail. What do you guys like better?

Borghese Sonata Berry with ZigZag

Hi everyone! Today's post features some quick and dirty phone pictures. It is actually the last iteration of a mani that's been on my nails for a few days now. I've been keeping it going by changing an accent here, layering a polish there. This is the final look before it gets removed altogether.

The base of the polish is an amazing oxblood color called Borghese Sonata Berry. I bought it a while ago at RiteAid on sale and I wish I had grabbed a couple more. In these pictures, it's three coats of Sonata Berry over which I have layered a coat of OPI Thoroughly Modern Millie. It's a really subtle polish that glimmers and has a faint purple/green duochrome to it. It was probably overshadowed by OPI Movin' Out which was part of the same collection, if I have my facts correct. That is an amazing polish that I currently own and need to feature on this blog sometime.

The accent was done by starting with a couple of coats of Revlon Gold Coin. Then I painstakingly cut a couple of thin strips of painters tape with craft scissors, being careful to keep the zigzags going in the same direction. I applied two of those strips on my nails and painted two coats of Sonata Berry over it before removing the strips of tape with tweezers.

I'm trying out some different hand positions cause I get bored easily. What do you think?

I finally got sick of not having good enough light (ie. no sunlight) to show off the shimmer so I had to resort to flash.

Ingrid Accent Update

I just can't leave a plain manicure well enough alone. It's ok. I love accent nails! They're a quick and subtle way to add nail art and an element of uniqueness to a manicure. I showed you the base of the manicure in my swatch of China Glaze Ingrid. For this design, I totally copied the idea from Jane from Nailside from this post. I wanted something that seemed appropriate for fall. I stuck to China Glaze colors for this. I used China Glaze I'm Not Lion from the Safari collection and Riveting from the Hunger Games collection.

Duochrome and Holograph Triangles

So, that last post reminded me of another manicure that I loved. This one involves a dupe of Beetle, Orly Space Cadet. I love how the various finishes are so different from each other but somehow work well together. Here I started with a base of Sinful Colors Vacation Time, then I taped off triangles of Milani Digital and Orly Space Cadet.