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.

I've Been a Bad Girl...

So I redid my budget about a week ago, and I had made the decision to spend less on nail polish to save for some special out of country polish as my birthday present to myself. I started out well, only purchasing 3 items on payday.

Revlon's Berry Haute lipstick, Revlon's Emerald City Matte Suede (was released for xmas, but is now a permanent part of their collection), and Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Xtreme Wear in In The Spotlight (yay bar glitter!).
I have swatched Emerald City on a fake nail as I do know the blogging world was unhappy with it's matte finish when it was released. I have to say, as a matte polish, it's well, just bad, but if you put a top coat on it, it's a very pretty green, and a good addition to any collection.

Yesterday I went to Micheal's to buy some holographic fabric glitter (I'm planning to test this for frankens), and while there I decided to check out the Winners next door.....BIG MISTAKE. So I head to the beauty section and they got new stuff in. I found two different Color Club packs, a Goldie pack, a whole bunch of Cosmetic Arts bottles (never heard of this brand before), and many others. Basically I blew my budget, and am now broke till next pay.

Color Club's Catwalk Queen collection containing (via the back of the package, none of the bottles have name labels on them) Front Row Diva, Runway Muse, Vintage Couture, Ready to Wear, Fashion Addict (wtf? Fashion Addict is suppose to be a lighter pink holo, which I do own) and Catwalk Queen, plus a cuticle softener. So the "Fashion Addict" in this set is a purple cream.
Color Club's Dance to the Musique collection containing Feel the Beat, Velvet Rope, Slow Jam, Electronica (I now have two of these), Groove Thang, After Hours, and a nail strengthener.
None of the Goldie's have a name, the middle one is a light pink, the other two have holo glitter in them (yay holo!). The Cosmetic Arts nail polishes do not have any names on them either. If anyone has any info on this brand please share, as I've never seen or heard of them before. The Chi is called Love That Milky Way Shake. Odd name but it looks promising. Lastly is the two Essie's, Trophy Wife and Aruba Blue.

All except the Essie's are from Winners. I found the Essie's at Shopper's Drug Mart. While I'm happy that they are more available to me now, the price of the drugstore Essie's is 2 dollars more than the salon Essie's. Now I think that is just plain wrong.

The whole time I've been writing this my mom's cat Simon has either been sleeping on the chair snoring loudly, or sleeping beside me snoring loudly. Here's a pic of the cutie.

Handwriting Survey Tag

Although I wasn't tagged, I decided that I wanted to do this survey.

Click to enlarge.

I didn't tag anyone, because I think that everyone who wishes to participate should, tagged or not. It was fun.

Here are the questions:
1. What is your name? And your blog name?
2. Blog URL
3. Write: The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.
4. Favorite quote
5. Favorite song
6. Favorite band/singers
7. Say anything you want.
8. Pass it along to a few bloggers!

Rouge Braise Refreshed

Since this beautiful polish wears at the tips like nobody's business, I decided to add to it to wear it for one more day.

China Glaze's Fault Line over Lise Watier Rouge Braise. I finally got my Fault Line to crackle nicely. I was having the same issue with it as a lot of other bloggers seemed to be having, it would barely crack. I did a thin fast coat. I like how it made the Lise Watier polish look more orange, it refreshed the manicure even more.

Rouge Braise

Today I have photos to share with you of a very beautiful, and probably not well known, nail polish.

Second picture is with flash to show the awesome sparkle of the polish.

This is Rouge Braise from Lise Watier. It is a pinky/coral base with gold shimmer, foil. The name is french, rouge means red, braise means glowing/embers (I think the name suits). For the winter collection there were two limited edition nail polishes released, this being one. It is the first time that I have seen this brand sell nail polish. The quality is really nice. The polish went on smooth, shines and glitters like there is no tommorow, as pretty out of the bottle as it is in the bottle. The only downside to this polish is that the tip wear is horrible. Not even a full day of wearing it and you'll notice a lot of tip wear, no matter what top coat you use. This bottle now ranks up with my faves.

Recent Haul

This is the whole Tronica Collection, Orly's Royal Velvet, some Sally polishes (the first two have scattered holo glitter, the third is magenta with gold shimmer and the last is a blue shimmer), and Mango Mend (which I've been testing to see how it works for my cuticles).

I found these with the acrylic nail supplies at Sally Beauty Supplies. One is hex glitter, the other is fine holographic glitter. I am hoping that the holographic glitter will work for frankens (really need more holos in my life).

Lastly this arrived in the mail today. It is from the Born Pretty store. Last month I had found a promo code posted on a blog (cannot remember who's now) to get this plate free, which I promptly used. It was right before Chinese New Year, when the store happened to be closed for a while. As you can see, this is the Hello Kitty fauxnad plate.

I'll be sure to post about the Mango Mend, and about the holo glitter to let you know how both work out. I did try some of the hex glitter in clear nail polish to see if it would sink or stay floating, and it sunk to the bottom, and would not come out when I tried to use it as a topcoat. So the hex glitter will have to be used as is as and addition, for nail art.

Frosted Cake

I`m sure that by now everyone has seen all the beautiful swatches of Lippmann`s Glitter in the Air. When I first saw this polish I was intrigued, it`s not really the look I would usually go for, but the more swatches I saw, the more it grew on me. And then inspiration struck as I was wearing my previous mani. I present to you my franken, Frosted Cake. The name came from a co-worker tonight that said that my nails looked like frosting on a cake :D

This franken is not meant to be a dup (as it isn`t near), but it was inspired by Lippman`s polish. It is a blue based (a lot more so then the picture portrays) milky jelly with multiple glitter in it. I used close to 1/4 of a bottle of Essie Waltz, about the same amount of a clear polish, 1/10th of a bottle of OPI What's With the Cattitude?, and 2/3 of a bottle of Wet N Wild Party of Five Glitters. The glitter does sink, so I basically shake it a bunch, do one coat on one hand, shake, do a coat on the second hand and repeat.

Unfortunately my middle finger on my swatching hand got a huge chip and is now nubby. I have a nubby nail on each hand now, looks so out of proportion :/

Shimmer and Glitter

Last night I could not decide what to wear for a manicure today. I did about 3 manicures before I was too tired to change the last one, so I stuck with it. I am not very fond of it, and had zero intentions of taking a photograph of the mani, but at work today I had a lady and her daughter comment on how much they loved it, and they asked where they could purchase the colors. I told them where, but they didn't want to make an extra trip to Sally's beauty supply, so the mother asked me to help her pick out colors at the store that would be easy replacements, which I gladly did. This alone made me so happy. The mother also called the store later on and asked if she could see the rest of the collection (what I was wearing is not out on the sales floor yet) and I told her to come in for my shift tonight and I'll gladly show her the rest. I've actually made up a wheel with the colors that I myself have purchased so she can really see them. I think i'm only missing about 5 colors from the whole collection.

It's the reason why I still photograph my "fails" and post them, because you never know when something that I dislike may inspire someone else. This is also why I started this blog, to share with other people.

The second photo is with flash and is posted to show some of the blue shimmer, which did not show up well in any photograph that I took, compared to how I see it when I am looking at it irl.

I am wearing two coats of a shimmer blue from Sally Beauty Supplies (812097), which is actually more opaque under the lights than it appears in the photos, and three coats of Wet N Wild Party of Five Glitters, over the Sally.

The Wet N Wild polish has a smooth finish to it, I only had to use the normal one coat of Seche Vite. It did dry in decent timing, and did have nice coverage. I am not a fan of the brushes on these polishes, they're a bit too big and too splayed for my liking. I also have several uneven cut or extremely splayed brushes in the ones I bought. And as per usual with glitters, this one is a pain to take off.

Flakies!

My current mani is a pretty mixture of flakies and glitter in a darker pink base.

This is Sinful Colors in Deep Red Ocean. It's an interesting darker pink (not red like the name) jelly with glitter and flakies. The application is pretty well, but a lot of care is needed to get the flakies to lay flat, and to not have the flakes overhanging the edge of your nail, or on your cuticle. I did use two coats of Seche Vite (my fave topcoat) to help smooth the roughness of the flakies. I like it, and I want to see more colors like this. I have a lighter pink version as well, but I think this would be awesome in all the colors of the rainbow. Don't you agree?

The second picture is with flash, to show some of the different colors of the flakies (they show up greenish, yellow, orange, pink).

What Kind of Polish Do You Want?

Scrangie made a post today of an informal poll asking her followers to write in the comments section what they want to see for nail polish. I wanted to share my answer on my blog as well.

Number one for me is holos, ones like gosh/omg/kaleidoscope, a nice rainbow of them, dark colors, emerald green, varying blues. Multi-chromes (like ozotic, but available in canada). Flakies in many many colors. Blue, green and purples jellies, of all different shades. Magnetic polishes (and for the love of it have them available to canada). More duo-chromes would be nice. Also mixed sized glitters in jelly bases (like lippman), with big hex, small hex, round, flecks. Some space polishes, the ones with a dark blue or black base and so much shimmer and glitter in it that it's like looking through a telescope. And lastly more crackle/shatter in many many more colors (green both light and dark, blue of the same, purple that will actually crack).

It's a decent sized "wish list", but it's all stuff that isn't out there, or available in Canada, especially in my small city.

From reading the comments on Scrangie's post it seems that a lot of us nail polish lovers are looking for the same thing, just that the companies aren't delivering.

Blue Franken

The other night I was in a franken mood, and this is one of my creations.

It's somewhat streaky for application. It's a little on the dusty blue side, which adds interest. I don't believe that I have any similar in my collection, which is always a good thing. I added Wet N Wild's The Gold and the Beautiful on top. I kept thinking of Aladdin while wearing this, lol.

I am also noticing in these photos that my cuticles appear a lot dryer and in bad shape on camera, compared to how they look to me irl. I will try and fix this, my apologies.