Ornaments Skittlette

I'm Back! Hi everyone! I am so sorry for going so MIA on you. Trust me, you will get a good explanation for what happened and where I went but for now, let's just say life got it the way. I'm back now with the third and last of the Skittlette contest entry candidates.

To get that amazing purple color on the first two fingers, I first painted them with Sinful Colors Mesmerize. It was what I thought I wanted in the bottle but on the nail, it looked too blue. I saw my bottle of Verity Deep Violet sitting on the table, fresh from being taken out of its shipping package, and I layered a coat of that over Mesmerize. That did it! Such a smooth purple jelly!

On the pinky, it is L'Oreal The Queen's Ambition and on my ring finger, I am wearing my now favorite white,  Wet n' Wild Break the Ice. The stamp is from the Bundle Monster plate BM 206. I think of it as the ornaments stamp now.

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.

China Glaze Creative Fantasy Skittlette

Hi everyone! Ok, I am starting to feel a bit more normal and more like myself. I think I'm finally done showing you some of my oldies and I'm excited for the next few posts. When Marta from Chit Chat Nails was hosting her Skittlette contest, I got excited and I did a few looks before I settled on the one that I finally submitted. In the next three posts, I'm going to show you the "rejects". Actually, I love all of these so it was quite difficult picking out one for the contest.

In this post, I'm showing you the skittlette featuring China Glaze Creative Fantasy from their most recent Cirque du Soleil collection. I used three coats for this mani. I do understand where people come from when they complain of the application. It wasn't horrible but maybe I had low expectations. I used a very careful application and tried not to go over the same place twice.

For the leopard print accent nail, I used a base of Revlon Metallic, and stamped with Wet n Wild Black Creme and the image from the Bundle Monster plate BM 221.  The glitter gradient was done with Revlon Stunning.

I love that holographic sparkle that can be seen with Stunning. What a pretty glitter! It's just simple enough that I can see a lot of different ways it can be used with other polishes.

December manis

Ok, these are a little overdue but I have to do it, it's tradition now! These are my December manis plus one that snuck in there from November cause I forgot to add it to November.

Purple Ombre Mani from two colors

Hello polish fiends! Ok, so I realize it's been a little while since my last post. It was all I could do to gather enough energy to clob this one together, and most of it was already written ahead of time! I just came back from my week long vacation in England. It was great....and I'm beat.  Between dealing with jet lag, getting back to my full time job less than 12 hours after landing and the chore of dealing with the misery that is a midwestern winter, I'm exhausted! So anyway, I hope I get back to some semblance of normalcy in the next few days. As you can imagine, it's been quite a feat to slap a couple of coats of color on my nails and call it a day.

Today's post is really from the vault. It's from back in the days before the blog, before a light box, before any concept of how to really take pictures of my nails. I am presenting them to you, however, because I still vividly remember how much I loved this mani. I created it to match a dress I was planning on wearing to some party and this is what I came up with.

For this mani, I used two colors. What's on the thumb and what's on the pinky. The color on the thumb is Sally Hansen Smooth and Perfect Satin and the color on the pinky is Sinful Colors Fig. To get the rest of the colors, I mixed drops of the two colors in various proportions to get that gradual ombre effect.

Here is the dress I was trying to match with my mani. I think it worked pretty well, don't you?

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?