OPI Houston We Have a Purple franken

Hey guys! Here is another one from the vault! This is with OPI Houston We Have a Purple. This was part of their sorbet collection released last year.

The glitter in here is again Love and Beauty glitters Purple and Green. For this mani, I painted a coat of Houston We Have a Purple and then I mixed a few drops of each glitter with the color in a little foil cup. I painted my nails with two coats of this mix.

Here it is in the shade.

Essie Smooth Sailing Clouds

Hi folks! So guess what? I'm in London, England now! I'm here on vacation, visiting my cousins. I spent all of Christmas traveling, which was crazy awful but then I got to participate in my first Boxing Day! For those who don't know, Boxing Day is equivalent to Black Friday in the US. Biggest shopping day of the year. All I bought was nail polish and I did get a couple of deals. I only bought polishes I didn't think I could get in the US easily but that still ended up being quite a few! For my next few posts, I'm just going to show you guys a few manis from the vault.

Today's mani features a design I haven't shown before. This another one from the vault before the blog. I first saw the cloud mani created by Nailside. She even has a tutorial for it. It's such a simple art but looks amazing in real life. The colors I used for this one are Essie Smooth Sailing, Icing Glimmer and Wet n' Wild Black Creme. Smooth Sailing is such a great blue, great formula.

Peppermint Candy mani update

Hi everyone! Merry Christmas for those who celebrate it! Most of our family is not Christian but my husband's family here has always had the tradition of celebrating it with a tree and presents and food so we did all that last night. Christian or not, I think this is a fun time of year. I guess I had another Christmas mani in me too! This is kinda cheating though...I just updated that last one. I really really couldn't let this season go by without taking advantage of my striping tape and creating a candy cane accent. This may not have been the perfect mani to do it with but I had just enough time to do the accent without doing all my nails over.

So, that's pretty much it. I used Nanacoco Irresistible Charm (previously seen here and here) for the accent nails. For the wider stripes, I doubled up on the striping tape by placing them side by side.

What do you guys think? Awkward accent nail or just right?

Peppermint White Chocolate Mani

Happy Holidays everybody! This is might be my last post before Christmas but then again, maybe not. I'm not sure what I think of this one. I kept feeling like it looked like peppermint candy so I guess it could just be a winter themed holiday. The colors remind me of Christmas though.

The polishes I used for this are Wet n Wild Break the Ice, Love and Beauty Green, Red and Gold glitter. In order to prevent having a million coats of glitter on my nails, I painted two coats of Break the Ice on my nails and then premixed a couple of drops of each glitter with a few drops of Break the Ice in a small foil cup. Then I painted a coat of that onto each nail.

I have no idea what's going on with my ring finger nail. I must have been really distracted when I filed that one. I've fixed it since seeing this picture! 

It's not horrible but I always think this type of manicure always ends up looking at little bit better in pictures than in real life. What do you guys think? 

Deconstructed Christmas Tree

Hello folks! So, I used to love watching cooking shows, especially the ones that are a competition and all these brand new chefs are trying to outdo each with the trendiness and uniqueness of their dishes. Invariably, some classic dish or another got "deconstructed". I loved that part. An apple pie would get broken down into it's individual components and strewn about a plate, altered into a new texture or shape, until the whole thing looked like a piece of modern art with minimal resemblance to it's origin. Somehow, apparently when you put the pieces together in your mouth, voila, apple pie!

Today's mani reminded me of something deconstructed. This may be a stretch but I'm calling this my deconstructed Christmas tree.

There's the green for the tree, the white for the fake snow, the gold glitter for tinsel and the multicolored ornaments!  The polishes used in this mani are Orly Meet Me Under the Mistletoe, again, Wet n Wild Break the Ice and a Love and Beauty gold glitter. For the ornaments, the blue and red were Nanacoco polishes, the green is China Glaze Emerald Fitzgerald. The stamp is from the Bundle Monster plate, BM 206.

Fun, huh? Well, Christmas is almost here. I probably will have a couple more Christmas oriented manis to show you and then back to regularly scheduled programming!!

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.

Nanacoco Irresistible Charm Holly-Day Mani

As many other bloggers have done now, I want to take a moment to comment on how heartbreaking and cruel the recent shooting in Newtown, CT has been. I am not a parent yet myself but I can just imagine how horrifying a seemingly normal holiday season has become for those families and friends of the children killed. I feel like as a nation we seem to stumbling from one tragedy after another, grief piling upon grief, more so in these last few years than I can remember. I'm not sure what we're headed towards.

In the grand scheme of things, polishing your nails sounds about as trivial as it can get. It is still, however, something that brings me a measure of happiness and pride and so I continue to turn towards it for comfort and distraction. I have been made to realize, however, that we all need a certain balance in life and that's my goal every day.

I'm sorry about the pun in the title. I drafted this post a long time ago and I thought myself somewhat clever for coming up with that name, only to realize that now that it's closer to the holidays, I'm going to see that pun done over and over...  For this holiday mani I used Nanacoco Irresistible Charm and NOPI Not a Gold Digger again, just like I did this mani. Just like the name says, this color really is irresistible!

The holly on the accent nail was done with Revlon Emerald City and Irresistible Charm and a toothpick! 

I have yet to use Emerald City as a full mani but I can see that it would be really beautiful. 

Sinful Colors Boom Boom Birthday Mani

Hi Everyone! It was my birthday this last Friday and I hadn't necessarily planned anything specific for my birthday mani. It just so happened that this is what I was wearing on my birthday so here it is, my birthday mani!

For this mani, the colors I used are Sinful Colors Boom Boom on the index, Sinful Colors Secret Admirer on the pinky and Sally Hansen X-treme Wear Black Out with Boom Boom for the marble on the middle two fingers. More and more, I have been really happy with the way some of the Sinful Colors marble. Boom Boom is a great bright pink that doesn't lean into the neon range. It applied with a consistency that was a cross between creme and jelly. There is great pigmentation so two coats was all I needed to get full coverage. As with many of the SC polishes, there was a great shine without even using top coat. Here, I have already applied Seche Vite. 

For my actual birthday, the day started off with a gift and hot breakfast from my sweet husband. Then a long, long day at work, followed by dinner and tons of fun at Dave and Busters. For those of you who don't know what it is, it is basically an arcade where you spend money to get tokens that you then use to play various arcade and carnival style games. I always have a ton of fun there. It had been a long time since my last trip so it was a blast!