Snowflakes

The only time there is ever too much snow is when it's outdoors.  Says the person who grew up in Blizzard Alley.  Heh.  Today it's snowflake nails.

To create this look I used four coats of Orly Angel Eyes from the Naughty or Nice Holiday 2012 Collection.  On top of this I used a coat of Seche Vite to distance the glitter from the stamping I was about to do.  In order to create the snowflakes I used Konad Special Polish in White and the following plates: Bundle Monster BM14, BM-319, BM-323 and Konad m59.

My Very First Knockwurst

Today I have another lovely polish that is great for wearing to work.  This one is OPI's My Very First Knockwurst from their Fall 2012 Germany Collection.

It's on the sheer side, but it only took three coats to arrive at this opacity.  The coverage was very good and evened out nicely.

OPI My Very First Knockwurst has quickly become one of my "go to" polishes for when I need a more conservative or understated look at work.

A Little Leopard

I'm loving accent nails this winter.  It's a great way to do a little extra when one is strapped for time.  This is my first time free-handing leopard print (I usually use a stamp) and I'm pretty pleased at how it turned out.  I was inspired by a manicure from Fashion Polish (I think) Kayla Shevonne, although I didn't pin the manicure and now I can't find it.

Here I've used one coat of Color Club Wild at Heart which is all it takes to arrive at full-coverage perfection.  For my accent nail I used two coats of Zoya Shay then dabbed on some spots of Wild at Heart and outlined them using Sally Hansen Black Out to create the leopard appearance.

*Update 12/11/12: Found the manicure I was inspired by!

Where's My Chauffer

To me, nothing says winter more than a blue and silver polish combination.  I've been stalking Target looking for the new Essie winter collection which contains a gorgeous opulent turquoise: Where's My Chauffeur. Finally I found it at a Target 90 miles from my apartment; it was mine!

To spice this manicure up a little I used two coats of a silver top coat from Avon Markwins on my accent nail over one coat of Where's My Chauffeur.  I don't know the name of the polish but it's basically just silver microglitter.

On the rest of my nails I'm sporting three coats of Essie Where's My Chauffeur.   I found the formula on Where's My Chauffeur to be rather disappointing.  It was streaky like I've found in a lot of other Essie polishes but the beautiful color helps make up for it.  The formula wasn't so terrible that I've considered getting rid of it already so that's a plus.

Caramel Toffee Swirls

I love caramel and toffee.  Such delicious combinations of melted sugar, butter, and vanilla.  They melt in your mouth, are smooth, and amazingly creamy.  Mmmm....

That's the idea I had in mind with a water marble I created.  My base color was two coats of China Glaze Kalahari Kiss.  I alternated drops of China Glaze Call of the Wild, China Glaze Desert Sun, and China Glaze Kalahari Kiss into a cup filled with deionized water and then drew some shapes using a cooking skewer.  The final result?  The appearance of caramel swirled together with toffee on my nails.  Yum!

I don't usually show my left hand on here.  The nails are short and damaged, still, from the excessive nail biting that haunted my younger years but I really like how the water marble turned out on this hand.

I think from now on I'm only going to do water marbles based on food.

Nite Owl

A lot of time the holidays are so "go go go" that it's hard to get a moment alone to think, much less do my nails.  It makes sense then that while I'd love to be doing my nails in snowflakes, presents, and Santa Clauses, I usually just have time to throw on a nice nude polish!

This is three coats of Orly Nite Owl from the Fall 2011 Birds of a Feather Collection.  It's a gorgeous shade of taupe with tiny flecks of silver thrown in.  It's one of the most perfect shades of polish to wear to work if you're in a conservative office as well.

Lorelei's Tiara

Based off how much I loved wearing OPI's You Glitter be Good to Me, I went through my stash looking for any other glitter polishes, tried or untried.  One polish I found was called Lorelei's Tiara by China Glaze.  I guess it's from the 2011 China Glaze Eye Candy Collection.  I bought it because it was a shiny shade of silver and blue.

This is two coats of China Glaze Lorelei's Tiara.  It's tiny silver glitter with larger blue hex glitter mixed in.  So glittery and shiny.  This combination of colors always reminds me of cold winter days - which I've had plenty of so far this winter!

Kiko Holos

Kiko Make Up Milano is an Italian cosmetics company that has a large line of affordable nail polish available in a variety of colors.  This past quarter they released a couple of new holographic nail polish shades as part of their Lavish Oriental Collection and my friend Candice from Mademoiselle Candy was able to get two of the shades for me!

Both of these swatches were done using Nail Life Nail Revitalizer as the base, two coats of color, and one coat of Seche Vite for a top coat.

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Kiko 401: Peacock Green

The first is Kiko 401, Peacock Green, a very pretty steel blue holographic polish.  I've seen reviews calling this color a bright peacock green but I did not find that to be the case.  I found 401 to be much more muted, but still very pretty.  It does appear to have undercurrents of green color contained within, but definitely subdued.  I did have a patching problem on my pinky nail so I ended up redoing that nail; here the patching was my fault though: I accidentally applied the polish too thick.

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Kiko 402: Jewel Pink

The second polish is Kiko 402, Jewel Pink, a bright pink holographic color.  This is a lovely pink though not incredibly unique.  A patch developed on my pointer finger and I couldn't get it masked/covered very well again.  I'm not sure if it was a more difficult formula or if I didn't wait long enough between coats.

OPI Pink of Hearts 2012

This year's OPI Breast Cancer Awareness Duo included a pale pink cream, I Think in Pink, and a glitter packed topper, You Glitter be Good to Me.  I bought the collection because I was very excited about the glitter polish in this collection, and the glitter is awesome.  I made a full manicure out of I Think in Pink using You Glitter be Good to Me as my accent nail.

This is four coats of OPI I Think in Pink for my pinky, middle, and pointer.  My ring finger is two coats of I Think in Pink topped with three coats of OPI You Glitter be Good to Me.  I love love love this glitter.  

National Family Caregivers Month

November is National Family Caregivers Month.  Every disease is difference, but the selfless dedication of those who provide care to their family members is not.  For Alzheimer's Disease alone, there are 15 million unpaid daughters, sons, husbands, wives, and grandchildren who provide care to more than 5 million American's living with the disease.  To all the caregivers, thank you for all that you do.

For this manicure I'm wearing two coats of China Glaze Gothic Lolita and my accent nail has two coats of Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Lively Lilac.  The nails are then stamped with the opposite color using Bundle Monster plate BM-321.

Alzheimer's is represented by the color purple.  There are currently five FDA-approved Alzheimer's drugs that treat the symptoms of Alzheimer's; temporarily helping memory and thinking problems in about half of the people who take them.  These drugs do not treat the underlying causes of Alzheimer's.

There is no cure.  There is no chance for remission.

Fall Leaves

Autumn is fully upon those of us in the Northern Hemisphere and if you're lucky to live in the colder climates you've probably gotten to enjoy the changing leaves.  Now Thanksgiving is here and it's time to enjoy the last of the nice fall weather before everything becomes snowed over.  Zoya Yara is one of the few quintessential fall polishes I have and I couldn't resist doing a manicure with her then dressing it up for the season.

This is two coats of Zoya Yara stamped with Bundle Monster plate BM04 using Orly Luxe.  The combination is quite subtle but nice.

Wedding Pedicure

In October I was in a wedding.  Everyone in the bridal party had matching nails (my doing).  We all had french manicures and then added a bright color to our toes: OPI I'm All Ears.  We had open toed shoes and changed into matching flip flops for the dancing part of the reception.  I'd used I'm All Ears as my underwear for the heart glitter topper from the OPI Vintage Minnie Mouse Collection but I'd never photographed it on its own until now.

This one was a pain to photograph.  I couldn't capture the deep color of the polish so let's just pretend this is more magenta colored.  Within this jelly polish are blue and purple glass flecks that catch the light and throw off million of little pink sparkles.  

With the word pedicure in the title did you think you were going to get toe pictures?  I did wear this on my toes but I'm not that cruel!  Pictured here are three coats of I'm all Ears.  Lovely color.    

Berryeed Treasure

I'm not normally one for glitter topping nail polishes, I do prefer my cremes, but every now and then one comes along that I simply cannot live without.  Nalld'It Unique Polishes' Berryeed Treasure was one of those polishes that upon seeing I immediately needed to get my hands one it.  This polish came my way via the lovely Candice from Mommy Does her Nails (and Mommy does Design if you're in the market for a design solution).

I paired Berryeed Treasure up with Zoya Caitlin and Sinful Colors Savage in order to show it off for you today.  I'm using two coats each of Caitlin and Savage, and a mix of one to two coats of Berryeed Treasure on top.

Berryeed Treasure consists of large white hex glitter, medium teal, purple, and white hex glitter, medium square black glitter, tiny white hex glitter, white and purple bar glitter all suspended in a deep purple and magenta base.  I will say that every time I google "Berryeed Treasure" I find formulas that vary from mine.  For example I don't think my bottle has the same quantity of small white hex glitters that Let The Have Polish has, and as far as I can tell mine doesn't contain the large square black glitter that Hooked On Varnish has.  That's okay though, of the different formulas I've seen I like mine the best!

Happy Anniversary Delta!

Back in August my sorority chapter celebrated its 20th anniversary.  Whoo!  For the celebrations that day I dressed up my nails in my sorority's colors and mascot.  This November (today to be exact) my sorority celebrates its 29th anniversary.  Whoo!  It's getting old ;)

The sorority colors are royal blue, white, and silver.  The sorority mascot is a dolphin.  So for my festive nails I used two coats of Orly Sweet Peacock stamped with Bundle Monster BM-320 using Konad Special White.

Happy anniversary Alpha Omega Epsilon!

Guest Post: Iconic Paisley

Good morning!  Today I'm guest posting over at Ruby's Nails about a simple stamping design I did using an iconic image from the most recent set of Bundle Monster plates.

[Click Here!]

Stop on over and check it out!

My Shellac Experience

At the very end of October I had a week that looked like this:

Phew!  A little busy with a lot of travel and not a lot of "me" time built into the schedule.  I was the maid of honor in the wedding and the bride had requested that our fingers be done in a french tip.  Back in September I went on an acrylic adventure that made my nails very weak (but much longer than they were!), and two of my nails had problem areas on the tip where regular nail polish would not adhere for any length of time before chipping.

I decided to give CND's Shellac a try.  I'd heard Shellac was perfect for vacations or other periods of time where you just can't change your polish as often as you'd like.  I went to a local salon which charged me $55 to have the procedure done; the normal price was $40 but since I wanted french tips the price was increased by $15.  That was more than I was expecting to spend but I didn't have much time to back out of the procedure when I found out the cost (oops) since I was getting my nails done Wednesday afternoon.

These were my nails on Wednesday, day zero of my Shellac manicure.

Short, yes.  If you enlarge them you may notice that the nail tech got a piece of lint stuck under the polish on two of my nails.  That drove me a bit crazy so I tried not to look too closely at them.

My nails lasted like this for five days and then the polish chipped on one of my weak nails.  Since I was in North Carolina at the time I didn't get a photo of my nails till I got back home.  Here's what they looked like on day eight.

A significant amount of growth had occurred and my chipped nail was looking a little rough. I do think the chip blended in because of the french style.  This also helped to camouflage some of the growth.  To repair the chipped nail I applied base coat, color, and the Seche Vite directly over the Shellac but only overlapping a small amount.  This wasn't ideal at all.  The surface wasn't smooth where the Seche Vite overlapped and it eventually chipped again on day ten so I decided to take everything off.

I was a little worried about removal because there are special wraps that you apply to the Shellac but I decided to give it a go with the simple foil method.

I wrapped aluminum foil around a cotton ball soaked with acetone pressed to my nail (left photo below) which softened the Shellac up a lot.  I then just had to use a wood stick to gently scrape away the Shellac gel  in order to reveal my natural nail underneath (right photo below).

Simple!

Would I ever get shellac again?  It depends.  For a vacation or other time period where I just can be bothered to mess with my nails like I typically do then I think so.  But for a one-day or weekend event I probably would not, a chip-resistant polish would do for those events.  I do think if I used a solid color the outgrowth would really bother me but as long as I didn't push back my cuticles it probably wouldn't be so bad.

Tristam

It's been said that shorter nails are great canvasses for darker colors.  I'm not sure I'm ready to agree with that statement but I do think there are colors that look great no matter the length of your nails.  I've fallen in love with another polish, this one is A-England's Tristam.

Tristam is from The Mythicals and is simply divine.  It's like taking the night sky with a million stars sparkling, capturing it, and then bottling it as nail polish.  Seriously.

This polish is a gorgeous deep blue polish with holographic particles scattered throughout.  It applies flawlessly and has excellent coverage.  This is one coat.  One!

I think Tristam is a must have polish.  It's gorgeous, the formula is great, it applies like a dream, and it's one of the most magical polishes I've ever seen.

Dots Dots Dots Dots Dots

When I did this it was sunny, the weather was nice, and it was perfect for some super sparkling nails.  Now...not so much.

This is two coats of Layla 04 Ultra Violet on top of one coat of Seche Vite Dry Fast Top Coat.  The accent nail is two coats of Zoya Caitlin with dots of Ultra Violet on top.  This is without top coat.