Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Feelin' green!

Good evening!

Now that Thanksgiving has passed, I wanted to start doing more festive manis. I've no lack of reds, glitters, silvers, and other sparkly colors. Today, I felt like green; I don't do green very often because so many of them just don't look good on me. Over the summer, I picked up the Ulta exclusive Your Palapa or Mine? from OPI. It's supposed to be a dupe for Don't Mess With OPI, I don't know since I don't have it to compare them.

I applied 2 coats of YPOM and let that dry. It went on rather nicely for a creme, no streaks or anything. I then applied two coats of Fresh Frog of Bel-air. I passed it up when The Muppets collection first came out, but then I saw it CosmoProf when I took my nail tech course. I have alot of glitters, but not a green and silver. This is my first time using it in a mani.

I prolly could have done with a coat of Gelous before I topped with SV, since it wasn't completely smooth, but it wasn't so rough that it annoyed the crap out of me all day. Here's what it looked like all done.






Sunday, November 25, 2012

Stamping Sunday

Good evening! I hope everyone has had a great weekend, holiday or no. Today, I got a second Thanksgiving feast, because my grandma over seas on Thursday. The food was pretty awesome both today and Thursday, which was spent at my brother's house with him and his in-laws. I totally skipped the whole, Black Friday, corporate greed thing, but I did go out on Saturday and managed to support at least one small business. It was the first time I'd ever truly dusty hunted, and I found a brand new bottle of OPI's We'll Always Have Paris Suede :)

Today's challenge for Stamping Sunday was "over a blue base".

.....................

My problem wasn't what plates to use, I'd already decided on that. It was which color blue I wanted to use lol. It came to one of my newer ones, China Glaze's Blue Bells Ring from this year's holiday collection. This one is definitely a one coater, but I did two coats anyways. BBR is a metallic blue that tries to be reflective, but doesn't quite make it. It's not shiny enough. And let me tell you, it stains like a mofo. I made a mess of cuticles and whatnot, and man, it was a nightmare to clean up. I am not looking forward to taking this off >.>

My stamped images are snowflakes. I started with a full nail image on MASH 47 with Konad Special White. My thumbs got the image on Red Angel 119 in Color Club Perfect Mol-ten, then all of them got the two images on Bundle Monster 319 in Maybelline Blue Blowout and China Glaze Millenium. I really love how this turned out.



 


Saturday, November 24, 2012

What a busy week!

Good morning!

Sorry I haven't posted all week. I had full intentions of posting at least 2 or 3 times before today, but that just didn't happen. This week has kept me busy working and preparing for Thanksgiving, leaving me tired and not enough time to put up new posts.

So today's post is gonna be a big one. I have three manis to show you and more swatches :) Let's begin!

The first mani is the one I did up for Thanksgiving. I am extremely proud how this one turned out. It's a watercolor mani with stamping over it. My base color was 2 coats of OPI's San Tan-tonio, my watercolor colors were OPI's Flit a Bit and The "It" Color, Color Club's Rebel Spirit, and China Glaze's Winter Berry and Glittering Garland. For the stamping, I used Bundle Monster plate 05 and Red Angel plates 118 and 121 stamped in Pure Ice's Magic. I sandwiched SV between the base color and the watercolor, then topped it all off with SV.










Alrighty, next is the mani I wore on Wednesday. This is another one that I saw a friend on Face Book do. Last week, I traded for a matte polish that I've been wanting, not to just do for this mani. It went wonderfully, and I got OPI's Russian Navy Matte (now I just need the others lol!). So, I started with two coats of that and let it dry, not that it took very long. I then did flakie tips in Finger Paints Motely, and re-matte it all with Hard Candy's Matte-ly in Love.








Lastly, is Tuesday's mani, which is a quick swatch of Chanel Vendetta. This is just two easy coats topped with SV. I know it's hard to tell, but it has a subtle shimmer to it.








Now for the swatches! These are from China Glaze.

Electra Magenta- 2 coats





Sweet Hook- 3 coats





Winter Berry- 2 coats





Deviantly Daring- 2 coats





Unpredictable- 2 coats



None of these really gave me any problems, although Winter Berry was a bitch to clean up. It's red, so meh, it's gonna happen lol. Sweet Hook was the only one that needed 3 coats, but I expected that with being a light creme. Surprisingly, it wasn't horribly streaky.

That's it! I'll post more info on the swatches when I add them to proper swatch page. Laters!

Sunday, November 18, 2012

A copycat and more swatches!

Good evening!

I know that today being Sunday, I normally feature the Stamping Sunday challenge, today's being some aspect of matte. Now, I love matte, so you can imagine my excitement to do a stamped matte mani. Unfortunately, that turned out to be a complete fail. So much so, that I'm kinda embarrassed to show it here.

I do, however, have one to show from Friday. It's a bit of a copycat, as I saw a friend on Face Book post this early last week. Hers was OPI's Unfor-greta-bly Blue with an accent of Absolutely Alice. It was gorgeous. I wanted to do this myself, since I have Greta and hadn't tried it out. Instead of Alice, though, I used Simmer and Shimmer. I did two coats of each, then two coats of Gelous over Simmer, then finally SV over everything. I love how this turned out.








Now for some swatches! These are the last of my new Zoyas. Enjoy!

First up is Frida. Frida is teal green jelly that builds up nicely. I did 4 coats for this swatch, no topcoat.






Next, is Elisa. I knew I had to have Elisa when I saw it. Elisa is a gorgeous, gorgeous, lit from within, red shimmer. I truly don't own anything like it. Two coats for my swatch, no topcoat.






Third is Blaze. Blaze is a cool toned burgundy with irregular sizes of holo glitter. It's scattered holo, but holo nonetheless. Two coats, no topcoat.






Last up, is Storm. Storm is the same thing as Blaze, but in black. I can totally see this as a mani for New Year's Eve. Also two coats, no topcoat.






That's it! Enjoy your night!

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Sometimes simple is better

Good morning!

I didn't find out until after I did today's mani last night, that today is World Diabetes Day. Otherwise, I would be showing off a blue mani for this cause, since both my dad and my aunt, his sister, are diabetics. I do have a swatch of a blue polish; does that count? :P

Anyways. I've been dying to wear silver/gray polish, but for the life of me, I could not get inspired for anything =\ Yesterday, I was looking at my wall o' polish and decided then I wanted to do an accent nail mani, so I picked out two of my favorite silvers/grays. Personally, I think it's a tad early to sparkly, holiday-esque nails, but I didn't care lol.

The colors I picked were OPI's Lucerne-tainly Look Marvelous and Rinse Charming as the accent. Omg, can I say much the accent on my left hand was pissing me off? I redid for the third time this morning, because it just wasn't coming out right at all. I did three coats of LLM and two for RC, topped with Poshe.







Now for some swatched! All three are Zoya, and I picked them at Ulta a few months ago on clearance :) First is Nimue, then Lotus, and lastly, Kristen. All three are swatched with three coats. Nimue is silvery purple frost. Lotus is a slightly dusty purple with fine pink glitter. Kristen is light blue-grey creme; my pics show it more blue, but it's not.












Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Silver dupes

Good morning!

I know I've been a little slack in my dupe posts for the last few weeks. No excuses, other than I either forgot or was lazy xD

Today, though, I have one for you. I'm a little surprised that I don't have more silvers, to be honest. I think I love silver polish as much as, or more, than I do blues, and I'm talking true silvers. Not grey, but silver. I do have more silvers I want to compare, but they're unrelated to this post, as they're completely different. These two I'm showing you today are sparkly silvers.

Let me introduce to you today's comparison: Zoya Trixie and OPI Rinse Charming.


In the bottle, they appear to be the same thing, Trixie may be a little thinner. I also know you can stamp with both.

When I got them both on the nail, I could see the differences. For my swatches, I applied two coats of each. The first difference was obvious: Rinse Charming is practically a one coater, since it's a foil. It also dries to a more dull finish, sort of like the dull side of aluminum foil. Trixie is still rather sparkly without a topcoat, so it appears to more sparkly than Rinse Charming. Rinse Charming also has something of a texture to it when it's dry.

On the nail- index and ring are Trixie, middle and pinky are Rinse Charming.