Saturday, August 25, 2012

Butter London swatches!

Sorry that I took so long to swatch my Butter Londons. I got really lazy and also my dad likes to hog the computer a lot now since he installed Windows on the MAC again and downloaded Day Z onto it.

Y'all have seen the Butter Londons already, but for those that haven't.... There you go. :D



1. Slapper
2. Snog (with half NYC Matte top coat)
3. Scoundrel
4. Marrow
5. Artful Dodger
6. Hen Party

I guess I could have taken a picture elsewhere... But my leg works too, right? Yeaaaah...

Alright. And for Sunday, I plan on practicing dry marbling since my friend's girlfriend wants them.

Thursday, August 23, 2012

Gradient Cheetah Print with Glitter Zebra Print Accents!

That was a mouthful. My friend Anna wanted some cute nails, and after ten minutes of exploring the internet for her soul searching design, her heart melted over a mani that was rainbow gradient with cheetah and zebra print. She didn't want rainbow though, so I had her pick colors from my magical polish boxes. 

She chose for this mani:
  • Black Poppy's '0010 (or it might be 045)'
  • e.l.f.'s 'Coral Dream'
  • Sally Hansen's Xtreme Wear '360 Mellow Yellow' 
  • Black Poppy's '0020 (or it might be 046)'
Along with a China Glaze base coat and Seche Vite top coat.




Also, my Butter Londons are here! OH LAWDY. I'm gonna swatch them right now.


Tuesday, August 21, 2012

I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream!

Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream to be precise.


And alas.. The sad fate every lacquerista must face.... A broken nail. Seriously, I had gone two weeks with just gluing it back together with tons of base coat and top coat layers because I couldn't accept having a broken nail. But it's about time to just let it be.. Also I don't think it would grow back with all that base coat and top coat goop sitting on and under the broken piece. .-.


For this mani I used:
  • China Glaze Base Coat
  • e.l.f.'s Mint Cream
  • China Glaze's Mahogany Magic
  • differentDIMENSION's Social Suicide
  • Blue + Orange + White acrylic paint = light brown
  • Essie's Good To Go Top Coat
This is my paint station because I couldn't find a beige striper for the life of me. I just used the first piece of paper I found for my paint mixture.

 

Bonus cat! His name is Luke. He's chillin' over my newly organized nail polish shoe box. :D


I already miss my sharks.

Friday, August 17, 2012

e.l.f. nail polish review and BATTLE OF THE FLAKIES!!!

So I got my e.l.f. nail polish shipment in the other day! Whooooo! I took advantage of the 50% off the whole website discount and bought me some more nail polish. Where can you go wrong with $1 nail polish? Originally, e.l.f. nail polish was $1, but they upped it to $2 for their new formula. And half off took it back down to $1 again. But still. $2 nail polish! That's always welcome in my home!



Now I want to clear everything up about e.l.f. nail polish. THEY ARE AMAZING. The quality is wonderful for $2, and I would definitely recommend that everyone buy it. It would save you a lot of money compared to the bigger brands. BUT the reviews saying that the smell is unbearable is very true. The gold sparkly one and flake one smelled the worst. OH LAWDY the gold one's smell punches you in the nose HARD. But all in all, you don't buy nail polish for the smell, you buy nail polish for the quality of the polish. Which in my book, they get an A+. Don't like it? Go buy scented nail polish.


1- Light Pink
2- Dark Glitter Purple
3- Coral Dream
4- Party Purple
5- Golden Goddess
6- Mango Madness
7- Fair Pink
8- Lilac
9- Dark Navy
10- Gum Pink
11- Mint Cream
12- Purple Pleaser
13- Mint Cream with differentDIMENSION's "Social Suicide"
14- Lilac with e.l.f. Fairy Dust

BATTLE OF THE FLAKIES!!!!
 
15- Dark Navy with two coats of Fairy Dust
16- Dark Navy with one coat of Essie's "Shine of the Times" (I forgot to top coat it)



Regardless of the top coat, you can obviously notice that Essie's flakies come in a larger quantity compared to e.l.f.'s. Not saying that e.l.f. is bad. I actually prefer e.l.f. over Essie a little bit. Only because the flakies aren't as harsh as Essie's. They're both cute, but it's up to you to decide!

BONUS
My shark nails when I'm texting! Looking down makes me so happy. Nobody understands. @___@ Don't hate on my old phone and make-up stained screen. The sharks are like.. OM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM on my keyboard! It's so exciting. :DDDDD


Tuesday, August 14, 2012

SHARK WEEK SHARK WEEK SHARK WEEK

Nobody understands how long I've been waiting to do this mani. Nobody. Seriously, I've probably been counting down since January. I remember looking it up online in my Spring semester English Comp 1 class and it had said Shark Week 2012 was many many many moons away. AND NOW IT'S HERE. AHHH. I also took pictures during the whole thing for once so maybe people can use it as a tutorial? Scroll down for tutorial!


For this mani I used:

  • China Glaze Base Coat
  • Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear: 130 Blue Me Away!
  • Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear: 460 Wet Cement
  • Maybelline Color Show: Porcelain Party
  • Essie: Lolipop
  • Stripe Rite: Red, White, and Black
  • Essie Top Coat: Good To Go!
Shark Week Tutorial
I'm not the best instructor, but here we go!
Also, I recommend cleaning as you go! Not just waiting to clean at the end!

Step 1: Paint your nails blue! Whatever blue you want. And between me and you, the blue is a bit darker than the picture shows it. If I don't take pictures with flash, then they're blurry and yellow/orange tinted because of the lights. Also I can't go outside to take pictures. A) I'm lazy. B) It's 3:00am for me right now.


Step 2: Add some little sharks to your nails! You can put them on the typical accent nails or wherever you want. You can tape this or freehand it. I chose to freehand it because I didn't want them to look like triangles, I wanted them to look like sharks. Obviously.


Step 3: I sponged a little white tummy on my sharks. But you don't have to do this. You can skip this step if you want. I'm just going the extra mile.


Step 4: You're gonna have to decorate your little sharks with eyes, a mouth, and some sharp teeth! For that I used my Stripe Rites. You have to be very patient with the teeth.. Then you can start your blood splatter. Tape around your nails because this makes a BIG mess as you can see I dripped it on my palms. Whenever I splattered a nail, I lifted all my other fingers up so I wouldn't mess them up. For blood splatter, take a straw and dab it in polish but not too much or it will just throw a glop of ugly on your nail. Then when you have an amount you like on your straw, blow into the straw fast and it should splatter! NOTE: This does not work every time. Again, more patience is required.


 And that's it! You have your shark nails! Happy Shark Week everyone! :D

Friday, August 10, 2012

My nail polish collection!!!

As of a few days ago, I counted all my nail polish bottles and reached the number of................
114
I thought I had more when I had finished counting them, but oh well! It's still a lot, and at least I broke the triple digits.



And still counting! I'm so addicted. I've already ordered more nail polish and I'm expecting to have them by next week. I ordered a bunch from e.l.f.. Even though I've heard not so great things, everyone deserves a chance! I also bought a couple of indie polishes from DIFFERENTdimension! I bought two polishes, one called 'Social Suicide' and the other called 'Purple People Eater'. I'll do reviews about them later! 'Purple People Eater' looks more of a Halloween polish so it will be a while before you hear back about that one.

Happy birthday!

Today I turn 19! How exciting! To celebrate, I have some birthday nails to share with you. I actually did these Sunday, but I was able to hold off my excitement and wait until my actual birthday to post them. c:


The first time I did the cupcake, it turned out bubbly and awful and the confetti glitter polish I tried using for the sprinkles didn't look as good as I had imagined. I think they even caused the bubbles because I had to glob it in order to get the glitter where I wanted. I tore the first cupcake off because of that. The second cupcake (in the picture) turned out way better and not bubbly! 
BUT. When I took the first cupcake off, even though I had used two coats of base coat... My nail was stained orange. So I'm very fearful of taking this manicure off only to find natural orange nails. ; ~;

I used:
  • Seche Clear base coat
  • Zoya: Lara
  • Stripe Rite: Black, Hot pink, light blue, and a shimmery gold/yellow.
  • Maybelline Color Show: Porcelain Party
  • ULTA: Piñata-yada-yada
  • Essie: Lollipop
  • Seche Vite top coat (left hand)
  • Essie Good-to-go top coat (right hand)

I used different top coats because I had ordered the Essie top coat online and received it that day. Without thinking, I grabbed what I needed and headed over to my boyfriend's house with my Seche Vite instead of the Essie Good-to-go.

NEXT WEEK IS SHARK WEEK!
SHARK WEEK
SHARK WEEK
SHARK WEEK
WHOOOOOOOOO

Thursday, August 9, 2012

Black Poppy Polishes.

Like I mentioned previously, I'm going to review these Black Poppy brand polishes for you! They don't seem to have names on the bottoms. The only thing that changed were some numbers. The creme polish was 0010 and the glitter polish was 0020.
I picked these babies up from Pac Sun for $3.99 if I remember correctly.


The polishes are amazing. I want to compare them to OPI because they just cover the nail perfectly. They aren't too liquid-y; They're not too thick. It takes two coats (three if you want that extra sparkle for the glitter polish) and look lovely. 

I made a mess though when I was putting the glitter polish on the nail wheel. And the creme suffered a little damage.. :p



Wednesday, August 8, 2012

My nail wheels currently.

 A quick note before the post. Um, if anyone can help me out with figuring out how to get tabs into this profile it would be much appreciated.. I can't figure out this website and HTML for the life of me. I want tabs so everything is easier to access and all that hooplah. :c (I'm playing around with my settings right now, don't freak out when things are changing. I think I've got this!)

I have some nail wheels I'd like to share with everyone! Bear with me, I have no patience for my nail wheels and use them to get a basic idea across. When I do my actual nails though, they must be perfect. c:


For my first nail wheel, we'll start at the one facing our 12 o'clock which is the pale blue flowery one and go clockwise. 

The pale blue flower nail was actually inspired by my deodorant! I thought it was a cute design, so.. Why not?
Next is the glitter gradient pink one with a ribbon and heart jewel, which was based on my Victoria's Secret lotion bottle. Again, why not?
Next is the Triforce, then Pokemon inspired designs, Calico Cat print, Snow Leopard print, Pale green with gold dust (I don't remember the name for this mani design), Crackle, Gunter from Adventure Time, a Cotton Candy glitter look, Revlon's Moon Candy, Cheater Galaxy with glitter dust thrown on it, a cheesy heart with red and purple glitter, an interesting twist on a french mani I saw on Google, more glitter, and Cherry Blossoms/ Arizona Tea can.


My second nail wheel includes swatching lots of glitter, Fish tail, a 3/4th (?) moon mani based off of my hair dresser's blouse, more glitter fun, hot pink zebra stripes, Dry marbling (Or what I like to call: Glob-that-shit-and-marble-it around-before-it-dries), vintage vertical stripes, horizontal stripes based off of my index card box, 3 nails for Pink Floyd (even though I've never been a huge fan, I just thought the concept was interesting), an anchor, and ugly owl that I gave up on, and... Glitter.



My third nail wheel went through some of my rage when I couldn't do blood splattering properly. That's when I realized I could do circles, but for splatter I needed smaller straws. WHICH I STILL NEED TO GET BECAUSE IT'S ALMOST SHARK WEEK!
Anyways.
On this wheel I swatched some lost metallics I stumbled across, some mint chocolate ice cream nails, cupcake nails, some crazy thing that looks like a dots party, my tuxedo and red dress (when I actually did the tuxedos I added bow ties), a little more dry marbling, a beachy theme, cotton candy, and a pink and blue and silver glitter than shines so amazingly bright and sparkly. I could stare at it all day.



I have one more wheel but I have neglected to take pictures of it. You aren't missing out on much anyways. On my fourth wheel I've been swatching my new Zoyas and Essie Luxeffects. I've also been swatching some ULTA polishes as well as some Black Poppy polishes I picked up from Pac Sun. I will probably do a review on the Black Poppy polishes later. :D

Monday, August 6, 2012

Tuxedo Nails with a red dress accent.

Or as my friend called it, an orgy with 8 dudes and 2 chicks.


I just washed this mani off last night to make room for my birthday nails. Still debating on if I should post them now, or wait until my actual birth day. 
Anyways!

For this fancy mani I used:

  • Seche Clear base coat
  • OPI's: Black Onyx
  • Maybelline's Color Show: Porcelain Party
  • Markwins' Professional Nail Polish: 17 (no name, so I just like to call it red velvet)
  • Stripe Rite: Black and White 
  • Seche Vite top coat

Summer fun!

I did these nails two weeks ago, but since this blog is fresh I wanted to get a couple recent things posted. These nails were specifically for "It's So Easy"'s nail art contest which ended on July 31st. And after reading the fine print, turns out you could only enter one nail. Soooo I entered my ring finger nail of course.


I based this design off of a wall paper I found on Google images. Looking for it now though, I can't find it. Of course. 

I also can't remember which polishes I used to make this. But as soon as I start posting current images of my nails, I'll be more than happy to say what polishes I used. For this mani, I know I used Sinful Colors and Sally Hansen's Xtreme Wear polish, but I don't remember which colors. And Stripe Rites of course.

Created a polish blog finally!

I'm very excited to say that I've finally created a polish blog after much brainstorming for a blog name. I've only used a tumblr for my nail art and Facebook and Reddit. I'll continue to use those, but a blogger is just a bit more important than those. Hopefully my blog will be able to hit it off after a while and maybe I'll have contests for each followers milestone. :D

Now only if my dad would get off of the main computer I could access all my images and begin posting things..