Yes, I finally get to post my Pink mani on the correct day!! I hope you all are having a lovely day; the weather here, again, is very grey and gloomy. Not typical summer weather for Florida!
Anywho, before I post my mani, I want to say a little something first. September is Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month. In support of that, the website http://www.tealtoes.com/ is asking all ladies (and men, too, if they chose!) to wear teal polish on their toes, or fingers, or, just in general, teal clothing. You can find more information about this on the site I mentioned and see the polish they have that is specifically for raising money for awareness and research. I'll be donning the teal tomorrow, just not on my toes :P
On to my mani! I started with the lovely Sparrow me the Drama from OPI. Mostly if not completely in opaque in two coats. I love this color, it's like the perfect dusty rose pink. Great for spring and summer. Topped off with Seche Vite since I wasn't done.....
Then, I whipped out my tape to create a look I saw months ago on Chloe's Nails blog. I taped my nails off, like so, one at a time-
And painted the taped off area with Lucerne-tainly Look Marvelous, again from OPI. Topped again with SV and let that dry. Taped off my nails again, when they dry, like this-
And used Lucerne-tainly one last time, with a final topping of SV. It's alot of SV that I'm gonna regret when I go to take this off lol. Now, I know this didn't come out perfect (two of my nails are a little messy), but this is my first time trying this. I love pink and grey together, so it made me happy :D
First and foremost, today's post would not be possible if it weren't for the lovely Miss Red Stewart. Her and I swapped last month: 2 Out the Door Northern Lights for the beautiful polish I'm about to show you. Big warning!! This color is known to stain skin AND nails!!! There are many wonderful suggestions to do before applying color and when you take it off. So here goes!!
Step 1- Double basecoat of Nail Envy Maintance (which I always use before a mani!)- Check!!
Step 2- One layer of Dating a Royal- Check check!
Step 3- Two layers of Swimsuit ....Nailed it! from OPI and one layer of Poshe topcoat- Check!
Step 4- Apply Vaseline around the nail to prevent skin staining and remove polish cuticle to tip, not side to side- Have yet to remove this, so I will let you know how the Vaseline trick works!
On to the pics! It was Saturday evening when I took them, so the lighting isn't the best, but it shows the true color pretty well. I think this color replaced my all time favorite blue, Blue My Mind <3. I meant to blog about this color yesterday..... yeah, it got crazy so that didn't happen lol. As you can see in just about all the pics, I have some staining on my index finger from where I cleaned off a bit of polish. When you figure it was only on my finger for an hour, that's kinda O.o
I hope you Wedenesday was filled with lots of pinkness! By the time I finished my pink mani, the weather turned stormy yet again and I couldn't get any pics outside. So here's yesterday's mani!
This is my first sponge mani, completely inspired by the same one Let Them Have Polish did a few weeks ago. Started with 3 coats of the lovely Wing It! from OPI. After that dried, for the most part, I dribbled a little bit of Grape...Set...Match! onto a piece of postcard-thickness paper and dabbed a makeup sponge in it. Then I just tapped it onto my nails!. I don't think mine came out as nice as LTHP's, but it's still pretty.
I wanted to try out one of my new holos from Color Club that I got last month after my fall. I had gotten Fashion Addict and Revvvolution, both of which came highly recommended. Fashion Addict received the honor of going on my tips Saturday. By the time I finished this mani Saturday evening, it was dark and stormy out, so I took all my pics Sunday morning. Now, there are alot, because the sun was playing hide and seek with the clouds. I'll post them all so you can see how the polish looks, but I have no indoor pics :P
I started with 2 coats of OPI's Rumple's Wigglin', so I didn't waste Fashion Addict. I have no pics of that either but I felt it wasn't neccessary. If you want to know what that looks like, just go to my OPI Swatches tab and scroll down to the Purples group. Once Rumple's was dry, without a topcoat (I let it dry naturally), I applied two coats of Fashion Addict and topped with CND's Super Shiney. FA is sooo pretty and easy to work with. I could have been fine with one coat, but I wanted to really show. Also, this is day 3 with this mani, and with the exception of a tiny chip on my right hand middle finger, Super Shiney is holding up very well. It could dry a little faster, but then I got spoiled with Seche.
On to the pics! The first group was taken with more cloud cover than the others.
You can see the holo better in the rest of the pics, but I will tell you, FA is a subtle holo. That works for me, but I know some like a holo that's ver in your face. The only way I was able to achieve was when I turned on my desk lamp, which is halogen, when held my hand under that lol. Aside from that, it's subtle and not real easy to catch on camera.
One of those manis that just wouldn't turn out the way you wanted it? Yeah, that was me yesterday. The mani I had planned for my first Pink Wednesday in about a month is not the one I'm about to post. I had pictured in my head a pretty pink and white striped matte mani......... What I got was a mess. I had done my two coats of Alpine Snow and SV first, then cut up pieces of Scotch tape to make the stripes. Holy heck, I had so much bleed through, it was ridiculous. So I took all that off and started over, this time using just the pink. This is two coats of Ate Berries in the Canaries, which is just a perfect transitional pink.
My newest red, Sooki from Zoya! This is my first color from Zoya, and I have nothing but good things to say about it. I wasn't sure if the color itself would look good on me, since an odd shade of red for me. I figured even if it didn't, I'd keep it purely because I'm a Truebie <3. Thankfully, it does work with my skintone.
I read up a little on this color before I bought it; one review called it a jelly. I don't agree with that fully and I'll tell you why. First and most important, this color is almost opaque in one coat! I did two for my mani, but I could almost have gotten away with one. It's just not translucent enough to be a jelly. It IS shiney like a jelly without a topcoat. Also, it applied smooth as silk; I was really impressed with that. The only thing I don't like is the dry time. Even with SV as a topcoat, it took long to dry, but I've read that's common with Zoya.
On to the pics! Sorry for the blurriness of some of them, I honestly didn't know until long after I took them. As I said, this is two coats of Sooki topcoated with SV.
After that was dry, I grabbed my Scotch tape and taped them off at a diagnol. Then, I applied Midnight Cami from Essie. I love this blue; it has a touch of shimmer in it you can see in the pics. I've used it before in a tape mani, but not by itself.
It's been about 3 weeks since my last post. Real life has gotten in the way of so many things lately. One good thing: With the exception of a handful, I finished up swatching all my OPI polishes and got them editted and posted on the Swatches page. All I have left to do are about dozen other colors/brands. I don't have any manis to post, but I figured it wasn't worth trying to do one when I'm trying to swatch colors. I may have one to put up next week, though, since I have a party to go and I want my hands to look nice :) Stay tuned!
