Zoya Vespa with Sinful Colors Last Chance Gradient

Hi everyone! The other day I managed to pick up a couple of the Zoya Pixie Dust polishes, Vespa and Nyx. I tried Vespa on first and I'm glad this is the texture polish line I chose to start with because it was instant love! Before I go on, let me just clarify that I bought these polishes myself. No freebies here :-)

I haven't been able to compare these with any other texture polishes but what I love about these is the sugary  sparkle that they have even without any topcoat! I'm not sure if you can see it in my photos here but if you follow me on Instagram, I posted a couple of photos a few days ago of this polish under flash and you can see the sparkle a little better. I have not tried top coat because I've been enjoying it without too much!

I wanted to see what these would look like as part of nail art so I started with something that has become relatively easy for me....a gradient. To do this I knew I couldn't just slap regular polish on top of it so I mixed some Sinful Colors Last Chance, a dark green creme, with a little of Vespa on a piece of foil.

Then a dabbed a piece of makeup sponge into the mix and dabbed it on to the tips of my nails to create a gradient.

What I was very pleased to see is that that I didn't lose either the texture or the sparkle! I think the texture actually became a little more pronounced.

I love this because it screams spring to me. Looks like sparkly moss.... What do you guys think?

Sinful Colors Envy St. Paddy's Watermarble

So...I don't have a drop of Irish in me (I don't think). I am not even going to drink this weekend (it would be criminal if I did). So I am celebrating the way I can, with a manicure :-)

I used Sinful Colors Envy for the first time in this mani. It's a great green was an almost one coater for me. The other polishes used are Sinful Colors Innocent, Sinful Colors Olympia and China Glaze White Cap. On the ring fingers the base was painted with SC Innocent and and on the middle finger the base was SC Envy. you can see that White Cap is over different colors on each finger.

With this particular watermarble I was so proud of my right hand results that I had to show that too. So here the debut of my right hand on this blog. Ta da!!!!

The gold shamrock on my left index finger was done with these large glitters I got from a random dollar store near here last summer. I have yet to use the other colors!

One last look, this is under softer lighting.

What do you guys think? My husband thought the glequin shamrock was too abstract. I kinda like it :-) Better than attempting freehand nail art.

Orly Torrid Anniversary Mani

Hello folks. Last weekend my husband and I celebrated our 2nd wedding anniversary. Can't believe it's been two years already! But a lot has happened in that time as well. Since it fell on a weekday, we didn't do any thing until Saturday when I we went out to a pretty sedate date night with a movie and dinner, in that order. We like to pretend we're old folks and catch matinee movies if possible. Plus with my pregnancy hunger pangs, it's better to have dinner earlier than later, anyway!

Of course, I had to have a mani for the occasion so I decided to borrow inspiration from our wedding invitations and try to recreate a portion of it. I used Orly Torrid for the look. For the accent nail, I used China Glaze Passion and one of the paisley images from the large Cheeky plate I. It had a few to choose from.

Here you can see the portion of the invitation that I wanted to mimic. I recently fell in love with the way the new Sinful Colors Matte top coat looks. It gives it a nice soft, glowy, satiny finish so I used that to mattify the finish of Torrid. This is not the first time I've used this top coat and I'll have to show you guys that look soon.

Below is the mani without any topcoat on it.

And here is Torrid, all by itself. 

I have so many reds like this now but I loved using Orly Torrid still. The formula was wonderful and this was two easy coats for full coverage. What do you guys think? Did I stick to the invitation look pretty well? I love the way it looks with the matte top coat.

Sally Hansen Wet Cement Stamped with flowers

Good Saturday, everybody! I just love weekends. Most of my weekends these days have consisted of sleeping in (which for me is like 8am), slow breakfast, TV or movies, doing my nails and catching up on some work from the week. The cold weather and snow has kept us both indoors for the most part all winter. We're just not winter people. I don't see any benefit to snow after the first pretty quiet peaceful snowfall of the year. All that follows afterwards is grey, grey, grey and I can do without that!

That's not to say that I can't work with grey on my nails :-) This is an update to my last post with Sally Hansen Wet Cement. This grey was begging to be stamped and I really wanted to try some tone on tone stamping. I had come across China Glaze Awaken at Ulta and bought it that day because I saw some great stamping potential in this charcoal grey chrome polish. I was right! It was perfect for this job!

The plate I used was BM 211. To add a little punch of color, I added dots with China Glaze Harvest Moon that I had also picked up on sale at Sally's.

I just love how the tone on tone stamping behaves in different light. From one angle, you can hardly tell anything is there. Then you just angle your hand a little bit......

And Bam! An intricate design. I love it! I know people get tired of nail fads like crackle, magnetics, etc but will people ever get tired of stamping? I don't think so. I know I won't. Along with gradients and watermarble, this is one of my favorite nail art tricks! What do you guys think? Will stamping ever go out of style?

Sally Hansen Wet Cement

Hi folks! Today's post is short. I just want to show you a beautiful drugstore polish that I didn't think much of until I put it on my nails. This is Sally Hansen X-treme Wear Wet Cement. My husband just saw this picture and said, "Are those your nails??" in a wondering voice. It was flattering :-)

Sinful Colors Athens Update

Hi everyone! So yesterday I showed you guys a mani with Sinful Colors Athens and a gradient tip with Zoya Ivanka. I said that I must have been channeling spring when I created it and you'll see why now.

I used China Glaze Passion for the stamping and the image came from the Cheeky plate CH33. Now, with the leaves, I really want spring to come already!!!

The first day I wore this mani out, I matched it with a pair of earrings that seemed to fit the color scheme perfectly. I tried to channel Marta's fabulous ability to create such gorgeous photos with jewelry on Chit Chat Nails but I feel like I just look awkward.

I don't know. What do you guys think? Maybe photographing with jewelry is not my thing or am I just being too critical?

Sinful Colors Athens with Zoya Ivanka Gradient

Good Monday morning everyone! Maybe it's not so good for everyone, in which case I hope the week only gets better. Also, I'd like to say a thank you to all my followers. I even managed to get a few new ones while I was somewhat MIA over the last couple of months. I started this blog and maintain it solely for distraction and enjoyment and as a way to do something completely different from my everyday life. It means a lot to me that you guys actually appreciate what I have on the blog to the point that you would want to come back another day! Someday soon, I'll have to thank you guys by doing some sort of giveaway.

Today's post shows part of one of my favorite manis from last month. I must have been channeling my need for spring when I created this because outside it looked like this:

I chose Sinful Colors Athens for the base of the mani and I sponged Zoya Ivanka on to the tips. I have not worn Ivanka on it's own yet but it was subtly gorgeous as the gradient on this mani.

Athens itself is a lovely polish. I loved it as much as I have loved all the recent Sinful Colors creams that they put out last year. This was two coats, minimal dragging, no pooling.

The spring time wish will be more evident in the next post when I show you what I added to this mani. What do you guys think of Ivanka as a gradient? On a lighter green or even blue, I think it would look even more fabulous!

Love and Beauty Red Glitter

I'm not going to be too talkative in today's post. I'm showing you a mani that I wore for a while despite it's relatively plain status. This is Forever 21 Love and Beauty Red Glitter. I am a sucker for glittery red polishes like this one and I do have a few. It's certainly not very unique but still a very pretty color. I wore it over a coat of a no-name red I had from ages ago but I'm not really sure that an underwear is needed with this polish.

The camera does show a slight hint of visible nail line which was undetectable in real life. Worn by itself, it would probably take three coats for coverage. Here, I used two coats. It is a bit top coat hungry so I have two layers of top coat on it. I usually do one coat of Revlon Colorstay topcoat followed by a quick dry top coat once that's dry. 

I am certainly looking forward to stamping on this in the future. Till next time...