Neon Disaster

Hey there lovelies! The other day a dear friend to my family was lost in a tragic accident.  I have felt so down I just haven't been feeling up to much of anything.  I tried to do a bright happy mani, and while I probably would have liked it most days I decided I didn't like it and changed it.  The update was even worse (for some reason my gradients are always not so great looking). I figured you guys might appreciate the bright neon nails I was sporting for about an hour.

I used China Glaze in Celtic Sun for the base with a coat of white underneath.  I dotted with China Glaze in Rose Among Thorns and Sinful Colors in Summer Peach.

So I decided to change my nails.  I stripped the polish off my ring finger, repainted it in Celtic Sun and tried a sponge gradient with Rose Among Thorns.  I hated everything about this.  The stamping looks messy and It reminded me of candy corn.  One of these days I will actually like a sponge gradient I do.  Maybe I am missing something?

My First Jelly Sandwich

Recently I've seen some really lovely jelly sandwiches on reddit lacqueristas.  I had never done one before, so I decided to try it out with some of my favorite jelly polish.

I used 3 coats of Sinful Colors in Irish Green, then 1 coat of Orly's Mermaid Tale, then topped off with another coat of Irish Green.

Lava Nails

Hello pretty people!  I present unto you red crackle over a yellow/orange gradient.  The gradient was kind of lost behind the crackle, but I like the effect. My boyfriend said the looked like lava.  I used L.A. Colors in Shock and Sinful Colors in Cloud 9 for the gradient and the red crackle is from Pure Ice and is called Show Stopper.

Recent Haul Swatches

 

 
Over the past week or so I have picked up a handful of polishes (no buy month is not working out so well.) so I figured I would do some more swatches.  So today I've got these beauties for you.  Pictured above are Sinful Colors in Luminary, Wet n Wild's Spoiled in I'm So Jaded, Finger Paints in Grape Gumball, and Lemon Sour.  So here we go....

Sinful Colors' Luminary just can't take a picture to do it justice.  It's a pretty peachy coral color with a shimmery sparkly something special to it.  When I walked by it at the drug store it immediately grabbed my attention.  It's part of the Sheer Shimmer collection, but coverage was surprisingly not that sheer.  Pictured here are 3 coats and it seems to cover decently.

Next we have Spoiled in I'm so Jaded from Wet n Wild.  The name doesn't ring true for me if they were going for the obvious pun.  This green is far from jade colored. It's a darker lime green with GORGEOUS gold shimmer.  It kind of reminds me of a lime green hot rod.  Application is interesting due to the wonky brush that this line has.  This one was much better than some of the others I've gotten, and I like the color enough to make up for it.  Pictured above are 3 coats.

Finger Paints in Lemon Sour is part of the Gumdrops & Lollipops collection which has been available at Sally's for a few months now I suppose.  It's actually clearanced right now, and you can find it here  for $3.29.  It's a creamy light yellow.  Yellows for some reason tend to be streaky but this one isn't too bad.  I only used 2 coats and it applied pretty evenly.  This seems like a yellow worth having.

Finger Paints in Grape Gumball is also from the Gumdrops & Lollipops collection and is also on clearance.  It's a really lovely purple color.  I gotta say I am in love with this shade.  It leans kind of towards blue and has a subtle shimmer to it which didn't photograph all that great but you can see it a bit there in my pinkie.  I liked this color enough I didn't want to take it off so I just decided to swatch a glitter I got recently as well and layer over top Grape Gumball.  Picture here is ONE COAT!.  I could hardly believe that.  I urge anybody that doesn't have this shade to go get it before it's gone forever. 


 So you guys get a bonus swatch (sort of).  I recently got this beauty at my local CVS.  It's Tazmanian Devil by Confetti.  It features medium and small sized hex glitter, and super tiny (I'm assuming round) glitter all in a rainbow of colors, but silver being the most prominent.  Here it is layered over Grape Gumball.  It lays really smoothly and is a pretty dense glitter.  I used 1-2 coats depending on the nail. 

Birthday Nails/NOTD

My boyfriend's birthday was yesterday and he picked out my nail polish for the day.  I gotta say it was not a bad combo.  He picked out Lacey Lilac from Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear and Frenzy from Sinful colors.

Thanks A Lot Walgreen's...

So I have been at Walgreen's everyday this week buying a couple bottles of nail polish.  Most of them were Sinful Colors, but today I picked up a couple Sally Hansen to diversify my haul  for the week a little bit.  

From L to R: Sinful Colors in Nirvana, Queen of Beauty, Pandora, Summer Peach, Forget Now 





Part 2 from left to right Frenzy, Hottie, Irish Green, and Mint Apple.

 Part 3 from left to right Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Golden-I, Lacey Lilac, and Sally Hansen Salon Nail Lacquer in You-Gurt Style which I got at Big Lots for $1.50.

 I realized that since I have been really actively buying nail polish there are a bunch I haven't used yet, and figured I ought to swatch some so I know how they behave.  I have never swatched anything before so, if anybody has questions don't hesitate to ask.


First we have Sinful Colors in Summer Peach.  I don't get the name on this one.  This polish is a bright orange neon as far as I'm concerned, and there isn't much peachy about it.  In the picture there are 3 coats.  It was a bit streaky going on the first couple coats but the 3rd cleared it up nicely.  I skipped the base coat and I'm happy to report I experienced no staining.  


 Next we have Sinful Colors in Irish green.  I love the color on this one.  I love greens, and this is maybe one of my new favorites.  I found it with the neons at Walgreen's, but beyond the bright green color this polish behaves nothing like a neon.  It's a jelly!  I love jellies!  It's sheer of course and pictured is 3 coats.  It goes on pretty smoothly and doesn't cure to a hard finish, but I really love this polish.  I highly recommend it.



the last of my swatches today is Sinful Colors in Nirvana.  I'm typically not big on brown, but this one is kind of different.  It's a beautiful grayish brown cream polish with great coverage.  This is only 2 coats, and I feel like if my first coat had been a bit thicker I might have been able to pull off a single coat.  Usually I would say Browns are more of a Fall/Winter color, but this shade could easily work all year round.   




Thanks for reading!  
Micoleslaw

Glitter Galaxy Nails!

Alright, so this week's theme on reddit's 52 week challenge is galaxy nails.  I've always liked the looks of them, but I'd never actually done them.  I had seen many a tutorial and they looked simple enough, and I'm happy to say they are pretty easy to do.  I must also say that clean up is kind of a bitch.  I have glitter everywhere.  

I think they look lovely and all but as you can see I still have a considerably amount of glitter around my nails after cleaning them.  I suppose I might have put a little too much glitter on them (as if that is even possible). 

Yes. That is a lot of damn glitter.  So much really that you can't immediately tell they are supposed to be galaxy nails, but c'mon, you can never have too much glitter.

I used China Glaze in Dorothy Who? for the base.  Then sponged on China Glaze in Flying Dragon and Ray-diant, and Sinful Colors in Paris.  Lastly, I topped it off with Twinkle, Twinkle by Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear and a coat of Seche Vite.

Highs and Lows

Hey everybody!  I figured I would post my haul from the past few days.  It's a pretty decent haul for me, and I'm mostly very pleased except one bottle I've mentioned already, but I will get to that when I get to it.  Anyhow.  Here we are....

 

As you can see here and from my previous posts The stamping plates and stamper my boyfriend got me came in.  He ordered the SHANY set of plates off of amazon.  They were very reasonably priced like $12 and let me tell you they work way better than I expected.  The only complaint I could possibly lodge is that some of the plates are slightly different than the photos showed on amazon.  Most noticeably the plate with the numbers on it.  I doubt I'd use it so it's really no big deal, but the font shown on amazon was kind of a cool techy looking font.  The font on the actual plate looks more like Times New Roman.  Which like I said I probably wont use it, and if I do i don't really mind anyway.   Overall I'm very pleased with them.  

 On to the polishes... Basically these next couple pictures just go down the line of nail polish.  I'll swatch/review these polishes as I get to them, maybe next month when I'm seriously going to cut back on my polish consumerism. 

 
Starting us off is another recent amazon purchase.  L.A. Girl Glitter Addict in Uninhibited.  It's a black glitter, folks, and I haven't put it on my nails but I'm excited about trying it out.  Next is L.A. Girl Glitter Addict in Synergy.  I'm liking the looks of this one too.  I realized this week I didn't have gold glitter really and ended up scoring 2 bottles.  This one I got at Rite Aid on clearance.  Next is Sally Hansen Diamond Strength in Multi-Faceted.  All I can say is gorgeous.  More black glitter mixed in with blue and silver.  If I hadn't gotten the stamping stuff in, I would be wearing this one right now.  Lastly we have Sinful Colors in Paris.  I like Synergy better but Paris is really not even in the same ball park.  The glitter is much more dense and all fairly small pieces from what I can tell, whereas Synergy is chick full of larger holo hex pieces. 

 
Sinful Colors in Flirting Nails, Cloud 9, and Beautiful Girl; and Essie in Sand Tropez.   Flirting Nails I bought mostly because I have very few browns/nudes and I like to have a well rounded collection.  I'm sure I'll use it eventually, but I like bright colors mostly, browns aren't really my thing.  Cloud 9 is really lovely. I don't have many oranges, which I guess is why I ended up getting it.  It is a really nice shade.  I plan on doing something with that fairly soon.  Beautiful Girl I already used as the base color in my pink leopard mani that I posted in my first blog post.  It's a nice cream color with good coverage.  Lastly, we have my first Essie!  I had been recommended Sand Tropez because the nudes I have tried left a lot to be desired.  I haven't tried it yet, but I will soon.

 

 
Here we Have China Glaze in Black Mesh (crackle), Dorothy Who?,  and Glam-more (crackle).  I haven't used black mesh, but I know what I'm getting into.  I love crackle, but I only had 2 and one of them was a white that truly looks like dried cream cheese on my nails (gross!).  Black mesh was just something I felt needed to be added to the collection.  Dorothy Who?  had been suggested to me a while back and I never bothered getting it because it looked pretty darn close to another blue I had in my polish arsenal.  After taking a closer look it's very different.  Can't wait to swatch it.  Lastly is the thorn in my side this week.  I tried a couple times to use Glam-more, because it was something unique and different in the way of crackles, but on my nails it just didn't work for me.  It barely crackled.  The glitter wasn't dense enough for my liking, either.  Below is a test I did on paper, which looks acceptable.    

This really only frustrated me more.  I'm going to take it back and exchange it I suppose.  I was pretty disappointed.  The color of it is great.  I'm not trying to discourage anybody from trying it.  I may have just gotten a bad bottle or something.  Anyhow... Thanks for checking this out. 

Stamping Success!

OK, so as promised here is my first (of many) stamped mani.  It's far from perfect but everything worked great.  I really couldn't be happier with the plates/stamper.  Sorry for the crappy quality pictures again.  I have been looking for my camera and I still haven't found it.  I might have to wait until my birthday gets here and hope that my darling boyfriend can pick up the hints I plan on laying down.

I used Sinful Colors in Easy Going for the base.  It's a really light light pink for those of you aren't familiar with it.  The stamping was done with China Glaze in Rose Among Thorns, which is a great reddish pink neon.  

Overall I'm pretty pleased with the results.  I'll definitely be doing more stamping in the future.

The Dawn Of A New Era

So, here is a bit about me...

I am a reformed nail biter.  My nails have always been messy and gross and I never took much pride in them at all until about a year ago.  I'm still a newbie in the lacquer community, but I'm learning as I go, and constantly trying new things.  It's been a LONG time since I have blogged, and I'm not sure how often I'll post but I figure maybe this could be an outlet for me to show off my nails to some folks who appreciate the time and effort put into them (my boyfriend is just not impressed any more... men...). 

To start us off I give you my most recent manicure.  The picture isn't awesome (note to self: stop taking pictures of your fingernails with your cell phone), but they were super easy to do.  It was really the first time I had done leopard print on my nails and I have to say I freaking love them. 

The base coat is Sinful Colors in Beautiful Girl, the middle of the spots is China Glaze in Rose Among Thorns (which is a neon, and it really makes the whole thing pop), and the edge of the spots is L.A. Colors in Fiji Purple BCC 559.