Hare Oceans of Alloys

Hello everyone! Good Monday morning! Not so good for me. I didn't sleep much last night but as Mondays go, it should be an okay one. It's breaking 60F today so spring is officially here!!

Today's post is another one of my polishes from my last Hare purchase during the Christmas season. I have to say, I'm not a huge purchaser of indie polishes yet but each time I try one of my Hare polishes, I get curiouser and curiouser about more of their polishes and other indies as well. This picture below was taken on the iPhone.

This is such a complex polish. It's hard to comprehend just how complex it is until you're holding the bottle in your hand and wearing the polish on your nails. You can see the copper and gold square glitter in the light teal jelly base but there are surprising flashes of green, purple, blue from small glitters that I suspect as being holographic glitters. The pictures below are taken on my actual camera. The colors look so different! I think the iPhone picture is actually more accurate...darn. So much for getting the pricey camera if I can't figure out how to get accurate colors on it.

This was a little bit of a pain to put on, as others have mentioned. It is thick and syrupy but I think it's worth it. This was two semi thick coats, simply because I couldn't get any thin coats until I put some thinner in it towards the end.

I have worn one other Hare polish and so far I'm impressed. Oceans of Alloys was sparkly and interesting and I can't wait to go through the rest of the Hare polishes I have!

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. 

OPI Too Hot Pink to Hold'Em and China Glaze Techno sandwich

Hey all! A simple post with a simple mani for you guys today. This is one from the sorbet collection that OPI put out a summer or two ago. This one is called Too Hot Pink to Hold'Em. Which is funny because in most lights, it's looks kinda red. I was sort of disappointed with the non-pinkishness of it all.

To create this sandwich, I layered China Glaze Techno in between a couple of layers of the OPI. Techno is a mix of small and large holographic hexagons. As you can see, when sandwiched inside the jelly polish, it gave off all sorts of different colored hues depending on the way the light hit it. People loved the subtlety of this glitter mani. So many compliments on this simple mani!

I tried to color correct this above picture because it did have a little tinge of pink to it in real life, after all. 

Orly Its Up to Blue update with flower accent

Hi! So as many of you might be aware, Google Reader is getting phased out. That's a bummer but I tend to use Blogger to catch up on all my blogs, anyway. Hopefully that doesn't get affected. For those of you looking for an alternate way to keep track of my posts, I have been on Bloglovin for some time now, as well as Hello Cotton. If you look over to the right, you will see the other ways in which you can follow me including Instagram and Tumblr. It doesn't matter how you choose to follow your blogs, just remember to add mine to your list if you are transferring out of Reader!!

Today, I'm going to show you one of my favorite manis ever!! This is the update to the mani I posted in my last post, where I showed you Orly It's Up to Blue mattified. That shiny ring finger was begging for some kind of detail so I ventured into the realm of freehand nail art. I took my inspiration from this pinterest photo. (Uh, a lot of inspiration) I just thought it looked so simple and pretty!

I think I could have used a little more practice to make the line and dots look better but I was pretty happy with the way it turned out!

What do you all think? Should I continue my exploration of freehand art? I think so! I love the results!

Orly It's Up to Blue

Happy weekend, everyone! I don't celebrate Easter, but for those who do, happy Easter! I guess what I would be really celebrating around this time of year if I still lived in India would be Holi, the festival of colors. I used to be deathly afraid of the entire holiday when I did live there, though. I hated seeing familiar faces all transformed into weird monsters with all the paints that were thrown on them. I used to have nightmares of the colors getting into my hair, my eyes, inside my ears and then never coming off. I literally hid in my bedroom all day and never came out. I was a weird child, I think.

Anyway, it's pretty funny to think about that because now I love colors!! Can't get enough of them. Here's one that took me a long time to get on my nails from when I first bought it but now that I've tried it, it has to be in my top ten. I used to wonder what a matted metallic blue green the color of the ocean would look like on my nails and then I finally just decided to find out.

The matte top coat I used here is the Hard Candy one. I tried using the Sinful Colors one first but I realized I wanted a much more mattified look. It looks like blue frosted glass to me. Much like this...

Image courtesy of One Rusty Nail (n/a) at http://www.etsy.com/listing/110325268/reserved-for-laura-satin-blue-glass

I left one nail shiny because my husband wanted it to be shiny and this was my compromise.

Here's how it looked without topcoat:

It really made me happy to look at my nails with this color on. What a vibrant color it is and it reminded me of my recent trip last summer to Mexico. These pictures were taken at Cozumel. Perfect color, right?

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!

Zoya Nyx

Hey guys! It's another Friday and that's a great thing! Today's post is a short one. I want to show you the other Zoya Pixie Dust polish I picked up, Zoya Nyx. This one is a periwinkle color, perfect color for spring.

Here are some pictures for your enjoyment.

Can you see the white dots in the mani? That's all the sparkle in the polish!! It's even blingier in real life. I love it!