30 Manicure Challenge - Manicure #6

Number six of the 30 Manicure Challenge is violet nails.

 (without flash)

(with flash)

I chose a new addition to my collection, Orly's Oui.  This is a beautiful metallic purple with gold shimmer.  Definitely my type of polish.  Application was good, and dry time was good (Orly is known for uber long dry times).  I'm just in love with this color.

30 Manicure Challenge - Manicure #5

The fifth manicure is a blue manicure.

 (without flash)

(with flash)

This one took me forever to decide on, because of all the colors out there blue is the one I own the most bottles of.  I finally settled on a new addition to my collection, and boy was I not disappointed.  I chose OPI's Swimsuit...Nailed It!.  This is a very brilliant blue.  It's like a bright, dark toned blue.  It went on smoothly.  I could not stop staring at my nails while wearing this.  The only downfall to this polish is that it stained crazy bad, both nails and cuticles (I'm messier with wide brushes, and don't really like them).  Despite that this is a polish that I think everyone should add to their collection, it truly is an amazing color.

30 Manicure Challenge - Manicure #4

The fourth manicure is a green manicure.

(without flash)

(with flash)

I really wanted to wear one of my new polishes, that I'm now totally in love with.  This is Androgynie by Orly.  It is a very dark olive base with small glitter and bigger hex glitter.  The flash picture shows the base color better.  For some reason it was really hard to get the proper color to translate to film without it looking black.  The application was smooth, there's a lot of glitter in there too.  I would love to see other color with this type of glitter, it's such a fun polish.

30 Manicure Challenge - Manicure #3

The third manicure in the challenge is yellow nails.

The base is Color Club Almost Famous, the shimmer is Wet N Wild Cozumel (one of their Craze minis), the green glitter is an L.A. Color striper.  The stars used are meant for scrap-booking, from Martha Stewart.

This definitely wasn't a favorite manicure of mine, I was itching to take it off less than 24 hours after putting it on.  A bunch of the stars fell off in my sleep as well, guess they needed more than one coat of Seche.  The yellow is a nice color, it doesn't suit my complexion though, and I rarely use yellow.  Also I have found that yellow polishes tend to be streaky uneven pains in the butt to use, no matter what brand.

30 Manicure Challenge - Manicure #2

Challenge #2 is orange nails. I decided to try an unworn that I purchased last spring.

 (without flash)

(with flash)

I chose Finger Paints Outta Sight Orange.  It's a nice orange jelly with shimmer in it.  It went on pretty well, not really any issues.  This is 3 coats.  I somehow have a lot of oranges, even though it's another color I don't really care for.  I also used orange rhinestones and orange teardrop plastic pieces to make it a little less ordinary.

Found a Great Giveaway!

Lucy's Stash is hosting a 1300 follower giveaway, the prizes are awesome and the blog is a great read!

30 Manicure Challenge - Manicure #1

I recently found a 30 Day Manicure Challenge floating around some blogs and decided to give it a go myself.  I am making one change to it though, instead of it being 30 days, I'm making it 30 manicures.  I wanted to this because I might not have the time to change my mani each day, and if I do something I really like I'd like to wear it for more than one day.  Here is the challenge:

(click to enlarge)

I think this will be good, and fun to do because it will challenge me for some of the patterns/inspiration, and make me think a bit more out of the box.  It's also good to challenge yourself once in a while :D .

Manicure #1 is red.

(without flash)

I used China Glaze Poinsettia as a base (one coat), then put Color Club Feel The Beat over top (one coat), followed by Sally Hansen Hidden Treasure.  I personally am not a fan of red on my nails, hence why I dressed it up with flakies.  In fact, I own more pink than red, and I hate pink :P.  I guess I just haven't found "my" red yet.

Do you guys have a favorite red?

*PS.  I just noticed that I forgot to mention that I used Essie Matte About You as a topcoat.

Tinsel Revamped

In the usual me style for day 2 of wearing Tinsel Town I wanted to change it up a bit.  I recently bought some new shatters, and decided to add Navy Shatter (OPI) on top.

(with flash)

I honestly wasn't impressed by the results.  I think Tinsel Town looked better on it's own.  I will have to experiment some more to find colors that go well with Navy Shatter.

Tinsel For Your Fingers

I present you with China Glaze's Tinsel Town from their current winter collection.

It's a greyish silver glitter with fine glitter and some slightly bigger hex glitter.

 (without flash)

(with flash)

I fell in love with this glitter from the moment of application.  It went on smoothly, with no hassles.  It only took two coats for complete coverage.  This is like dream glitter for me, and I wish China Glaze had a whole collection of them, even part of their regular collection, of a rainbow array of colors.  This will definitely make it into my lists of go to glitters for quick easy manis.

Mint, With Sprinkles!

I decided the other morning to make a play on my previous franken, Frosted Cake. I wanted to use the same idea of the the jelly with glitter, but a nice minty green this time. I rather like the color that came out, but it seems a little short on the glitter.

(without flash, 3 coats)

(with flash)

I used the same polishes as last time, Essie Waltz (really love this jelly white for frankens, need more!), Wet N Wild Party of Five Glitters, and two different mint greens that I had in my collection, and some clear nail polish. It's got a nice smooth formula for all that is mixed together, goes on really well.  I'm thinking about making 2 more frankens that play on this (and will use the last of my Essie Waltz).  I know I want one to be purplish, but am unsure of the fourth color.  What do you think?

I Am Back!

As the title states, I am back! I do apologize for such a long absence. Since my last post I've dealt with increased work stress, which is now gone as I have a new job, with a nice regular schedule and guaranteed days off (so so so ecstatic for this!). I had also cut and bitten (so horrible of me) all my nails shortly after my last post, and they stayed that way until recently. I get frustrated trying to polish stubby nails and tend to take less care of them, so I felt it not in anyone's best interest to see pictures of that mess. Also the main reason why I wasn't able to blog was because my laptop's video card went kaput on me. All I had was a computer that is about 7 years old that isn't great for any of the activities I use mine for. Now I have a brand new laptop that is just perfect, but I still haven't fully transferred all my old info onto it. I have been polishing my nails again, and have taken some pictures (gotta find my previous editing program) that I will hopefully be able to create a post soon. I also have been rethinking my spending and have not been buying a lot of polish lately (trying my hardest to stay away from shopping, period).
That's it for now, happy polishing!

xox
Danielle

Gems

I have some pretty glitter to brighten up your day.

(flash)

This is Milani Gems over an off-white base. Really pretty glitter mixture. Application was as decent as I think you can get with multi-sized glitter. Removal was a pain, but that is expected.

Flirty/Shy

Today I have a very fun nail polish to show you. It's Flirty/Shy from Claire's Mood Polish line.

(as my hands were at the time)

(cold)

(warm)

(showing the mixture of cold and warm)

Now it did not show well in my photograph because my hands were too cold at the time, but normally if you have longer nails you will see that where your nail bed is it's the lighter color (warm) and once your nails are past your nail bed it becomes dark (cold). The last picture does show the opposite way of how the colors normally show up (had to use water to get it to change color). So you end up with a very interesting french like manicure, with less work.

This polish had a nice application, and actually dries in an odd semi-matte plastic finish, so you do need a top coat to make it look nice. Tip wear was about my only problem with this polish, as it happened quite fast. It was really fun to wear though, and I loved the "french" manicure effect it created. I found it so fun that I went out and bought two other colors yesterday.

Royal Gold

This was my mani a little bit back.

(flash)

Revlon's Top Speed in Royal as a base and Milani Jewel FX in Gold. My nails did give me the royalty feel while wearing this combo. Royal is a really nice jelly polish, but beware the staining! Where I had gotten polish on my skin stayed stained even after clean up. Definitely use a base coat with it. A little note as well, as you can imagine, the glitter was a pain to remove.

Silver Dazzle

A couple weeks ago I took a trip to the other side of town to check out a drug store that sells some brands of nail polish that I cannot get anywhere else in town. I was in luck, the reline was done on the Milani collection, so I was able to pick up a bunch of the one coat glitters. This is the first one I decided to wear.

This is Silver Dazzle from Milani. While it says that it's a one coat glitter, I felt that it needed two for full coverage. I was amazed by this color. I could not take my eyes off my nails, and I don't think any other color in the collection will be as great. It was also pretty easy to take off for a glitter. This is definitely a must have for any collection.

Mini Haul and Easter Eggs

I saw a displayer being put up the other day at work and promptly went over to it to grab the new polishes. They were the Wet n Wild spring colors.

There names are, starting with the blue, Bird Bath, Garden Hose, Collecting Pollen, Laughing Lilac, Cherry Blossom and Sunburst.

I proceeded to use all these colors for my Easter mani.

I did a skittles mani, and used my dotting tool with the magenta polish (Laughing Lilac) to do the dots, and the brush on the other end to do the squiggled line. A representation of the Easter egg.

I was not too impressed with the polishes. The blue and green were okay in 3 coats, the pink and orange could have probably used a 4th, and the yellow, even at 4 coats still was uneven. Also after not even a full day I had a lot of tipwear.

Too Violet

At the start of the year I placed an order on transdesign to knock a couple polishes off my wishlist. The sun was out the other day, so I thought that it would be perfect to break out this polish.

(with flash)

(with flash)

This is Color Club's Too Violet. It's a really pretty magenta with holographic glitter. While I was happy to be able to find this color, it was only available in a mini bottle. I might have to buy another one at a later date.
The last two pictures are with flash and blurry on purpose to show the bling of the polish. Also that is the empty garbage can from garbage can candy :D One of my favorite childhood candies.

Fireberry Red

I present you a color that I rarely ever wear, red.

(with flash)

This is Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Fireberry Red. It's a jelly red with some very small flakes and glitter in it. I think that this one is prettier in the bottle than it is on the nails. You see more of the flakes and glitter in the bottle. Also it seemed to go on uneven, I believe this was 4 coats.

More Dots! More Dots!

So if you're a World of Warcraft addict like myself you'll get the title :D

Expanding on my dot mani idea from the other day I created this one:

(flash, most color accurate)

All colors used are from Color Club. Base is Rebel Debutante, blue is Gossip Column, magenta is Ms. Socialite and the yellow is Almost Famous. I love this mani, so bright and fun. Color Club has an awesome polish formula, so smooth and easy to apply. Now I need to get myself different sized dotting tools for some more fun.

Amazing Giveaway @ Mon Coin a Moua

Stumble across this nice blog through other bloggers links. The owner is hosting an amazing giveway, and I felt that I should share it.

Such a great giveaway! While you're at her blog, read back, there's a lot of nice swatches, and brands you may not know much about.

Spring Dots

I happened upon 3 new Revlon shades in a displayer at work, bought them and then decided I needed to do a spring like manicure.

This was me just playing around. I wanted to see what the orange was like. It went on smoothly and dried in decent timing. I like the orange but just felt it was so plain, so I took a toothpick and just started adding dots.

(flash)

The picture with flash is the most color accurate. The orange is Revlon Tangerine, the blue is Revlon Blue Lagoon, the yellow is Revlon Sunshine Sparkle, the magenta is Color Club Ms. Socialite and the green is Color Club Rebel Debutante. I think it's nice and bright and perfect for the spring. :D

Ultra Violet Revamped

I decided to make my Color Club Ultra Violet mani a bit more interesting after a couple days of wear.

Base is Color Club Ultra Violet, glitter is Funky Fingers Hyperi, crackle is China Glaze Crushed Candy. You still got to see the blue flash under it all :D

Ultra Violet

So for some reason this time my fake nails kept popping off. Now I'm still trying to fix my damaged nubby nails. So in the meantime I have some pictures that I took a couple weeks back and didn't get to posting.

(with flash)

(was taken pre-cleanup, sorry)

This is Color Club's Ultra Violet (3 coats). This is one color that I believe every nail polish addict/lover should have. The photographs don't even do it justice. It is an awesome purplish magenta with a beautiful blue flash. It goes on very well, and does not need a white base like neons. I was staring at my nails all day while wearing this, and playing with the light reflecting to get more blue flash.

Ocean Marble

I have some nail art for you today, in the form of a water marble mani.

I did two coats of white as a base, then used Essie Aruba Blue, Essie Trophy Wife and China Glaze Sexy in the City.
I accidentally double marbled my right hand ring finger, and purposely my right hand index (to cover white spots).
It reminds me of water in the ocean. The pictures didn't pick up the shimmer coming from the Trophy Wife sections.

St-Patrick's Day Mani

I have a pretty holo franken to show you guys! This is what I plan to be wearing for St-Patrick's day, for now.

The mixture is not quite half a bottle of Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Emerald City, not quite half a bottle of clear, and a whole lot of the glitter powder for acrylic nails that I posted in my haul a couple posts back. To recreate this I would use less clear polish. This is 4 coats of the polish. I am hoping to see sun to get a picture of the sparkle prior to taking it off.

A note on the glitter powder I used. It does not melt in the nail polish (yay!) and is really fine (you still need a topcoat though), but it does settle really really badly. I had to recap the bottle and shake it well every couple of nails.

As you can see I'm back to wearing fake nails. I had a huge anxiety attack last week and bit off all my nails to the point where it hurt to touch anything, something I have not done in well over a year.