Good evening!
So I know I've been MIA this week. Half my office has been sick with the damned flu since Tuesday, so it's been just myself and my mother holding down the fort. It's been hella busy too, on top of it of it all, so I haven't had much time until now to post anything. Let's get started, shall we?
For yesterday's Texture Friday, I featured a new texture color. This is came from OPI and is part of the Brazil collection. Sadly, for whatever, OPI chose to make the texture colors as minis only, making me a sad panda and forcing me to buy 4 sets of minis to make my own full size. The color I wore yesterday is this year's Pantone Color of the Year, radiant orchid (or, at least it is to me). The color is Samba-body Loves Purple, and I needed 3 coats for opacity. It practically glowed against my skin, I love it.
And yes, it's a sparkly texture :)
On Thursday, I featured Just Spotted the Lizard and Shatter the Scales for OPI's Amazing Spiderman collection. I'm pretty sure that was the last collection that had a Shatter released with it. Two coats of JSTL, a coat of Seche, a coat of STS, and one more coat of Seche.
Wednesday I did a little stamping, again with OPI colors. My base was 3 coats of OPI's newest yellow, I Just Can't Cope-acabana. I'm slmost sure I could had done with 2, if they had been thick enough. This is a surprisingly pigmented and very nice applying yellow, and I've had some crappy yellows (hello, China Glaze Lemon Fizz!). A coat of Seche, then stamped with MJ Jr 8 in Incognito in Sausalito, then Seche again.
Tuesday featured a new to me brand, KB Shimmer. I've read lots of good things about the brand, so I decided to give it a try. I picked a color from the Valentine's set they (still) have for sale, Whole Lava Lovin'. First, just let me say, this is the first red holo that I have really wanted to have. It's a linear holo, but isn't over the top like some red holos I've seen. It's also not a bright, gaudy red that would look horrible on me. KB Shimmer describes it as a cherry red, but I think it has a little more pink in it. Two coats for opacity, and the Seche didn't dim the holo-ness :)
Monday's mani was rather boring compared to the rest of the week lol. I'm really on the fence on how it turned out, though. It's one of those manis where I think I should have stopped at the base and left it be, but I didn't.
The base was 2 coats of Zoya Normani. Now, I remember seeing another call the color putty grey and I have to agree. That's exactly what it looks like on me, the color of putty. It's not unflattering, but rather it's looks nice. I truly own nothing like it. Instead of stopping here, I added a coat of one of Finger Paints' newest flakies, I just don't remember which one (I really should write these things down >.<).
It doesn't look bad, I just don't think it looks that great either lol.
There you have it! I'm all caught up now :)
Good evening!
So, I have a bit of a Throwback Thursday for y'all :) I would suggest if you don't like Shatter/Crackles, you may want to pass over tonight's post lol.
Way back at the end of 2009/beginning of 2010, I really got into the nail polish community. What pushed me over the edge was the release of OPI's Katy Perry collection. It's one of the few collections where I own every color. For Throwback Thursday, I give to you Not Like the Movies with Black Shatter :) The crappy weather we've had here did not lend itself for capturing the color shift of NLTM, sadly.
Wednesday's was soft and pretty, I really like how it looked. I don't know if the collection was slated for release this month or next, but I found at Sally's over the weekend FingerPaints' new set of flakies, called the Kaleidoscope collection. They're not like their last set, these are softer in color, perfect for spring.
I layered two coats of Colorful Dream over Zoya Neely, then made it matte with Wet 'N Wild's matte topcoat.
On Tuesday, I used two untrieds, both from OPI. The newer was the Gwen Stefani collection released this month, In True Stefani Fashion. It's a square and hex silver holo glitter that can be layered or worn alone. I chose to layer it over Black Satin.
I was originally gonna pass on the glitter, until I realized it has square glitters. Love it!
Yep, it's Wednesday :P
Good evening! I've got a couple manis to show y'all tonight. Starting this week, I'm trying to use my untrieds before using some of my more well loved or favorite polishes. This may take a few weeks, since I've gotten quite a few colors that I haven't used in the last few months.
So let's get started!
First up is a, according to what I can find, VHTF OPI, Black Tie Optional. I found it in a rather unlikely place that I'd prefer not to disclose. Off the top of my head, I'm not sure which collection BTO is from. It's beautiful in the bottle, but the duochrome doesn't really translate to the nail. In an effort to try to get it to appear, I stamped over it.
Two coats of BTO with a coat of Seche, then stamped in Maybelline's Bold Gold using Winstonia's W201 (which stamped nicely), and a final coat of Seche.
Sorry for the slightly out of focus-ness, the weather was rather crappy and I had to use the flash -_-
Yesterday's mani was pretty simple, to be honest. It was blue holos :) Three coats each of China Glaze Kaleidoscope Him Out and Zoya Dream. KHO turned out to be more holo than I expected, but that's okay. I still like how this turned out.
Monday's mani featured a glitter topper that I had passed on when it was first released. See, when OPI unveiled their collection for Oz, the Great and Powerful, I was extremely underwhelmed with it. I had expected brighter colors, and I wasn't alone in my sentiment. However, the same was said quite a bit with the Pirates of the Carribean collection that I love so much.
Last month, though, I impulsively bought Lights of Emerald City. It's a glitter topper made up of square glitters, matte and sparkly. I happen to love square glitters, and matte glitters, so in my bag it went.
The base color was 2 coats of OPI's Black Onyx. Now, I didn't realize how thick the clear base of LOEC was, so I just applied it like normal, at two coats. I topped it with Seche, then added a coat of OPI's Matte Topcoat. You can see that there are bubbles in the clear base from LOEC, because of the thickness. I think next time, I will sponge it on instead. Otherwise, I love how this looked.
Good evening!
I hope everyone has enjoyed their last weekend of September :) As we go into the last three months of the year, I both look forward to and dread this time of year. I have a love/hate relationship with- I love going into fall/winter and everything that goes with it. However, the one thing I hate about it is ALL THE GOOD FOOD! It's my undoing :P Sadly, we've already started with fall food in the form of pumpkin lol.
Anyways! Today's Stamping Sunday theme called for ungirly nails, meaning no glitter, no bling, no pink, no Barbies or princesses, nothing like that. The first thing I thought of that was the furthest from girly were dragons. So, dragons it was!
My base color was two coats of OPI's Peace & Love & OPI from their fall collection. This is beautiful duochrome that shifts from purple to green, to grey in some lights. I topped it with Seche and cleaned up the mess I made of the skin around my nails. My stamped images were from Messy Mansion plate MM05 stamped in OPI's Every Month is Oktoberfest. I think maybe I should have used a bolder color, but I kinda like the subtleness of it.
Good evening!
Today's Stamping Sunday challenge called for two stamps in the same image. This one gave me a bit of a problem; last night, when I was doing up my mani, the two images I wanted to use just would not play nice. I ended up redoing the entire thing with different images.
I started with two, very nice coats of China Glaze's Deviantly Daring. I absolutely love this color. It's not quite a true duochrome, but it is a gorgeous color. I topped with SV so I wouldn't ruin the base. My image plates were Shany 08, 12, and 13, all stamped in China Glaze's Millennium. I made quite a mess of my color, so I cleaned up before putting a final coat of SV on. That seemed to help prevent smearing.
Sorry for the crappy pictures, it had rained most the day so I couldn't get any outdoor shots.
Good afternoon! So, yeah, today's post is gonna be a big one, since it's been 10 days since the last one. BUT it also finishes up the challenge I had going, so yay me! Gotta love veing busy with family and work :P
Let's see...... I left off at "a color from your favorite collection", which was an easy pick. I think my collection, so far, is the Katy Perry collection OPI released January 2011. It's one of two or three that I actually have all the colors from. The color I chose was Not Like the Movies (duochrome version). Of course, I had to Shatter it, too. Sorry for the blurry first pic >.<
(Sorry for the blurriness in that one too!)
Alright, after that was "a color that is a glitter". I kept seeing people in the Face Book groups I'm in rave about Lorelei's Tiara from China Glaze, so when I saw it on clearance at Sally's, I snagged it. I didn't want to completely glitter bomb my nails, so I thought I would do glitter tips over a matte base color. For that I used Zoya Loredana matte. I'm thinking it might not have been the best idea, but it's not truly hideous either lol. The glitter tips might have looked better with a black base instead.
Next, I have for you is "a color that is pastel". One thing I don't have alot of is pastels, but I had bought Kinectic Candy from China Glaze about a month ago. Let me just say, I love this color. I don't know why, but I think of a blue mint whenever I see it. I topped it off with the scattered holo goodness that is Fairy Dust, also from China Glaze.
"A color that you used to hate but now like".......... That could only be the color green. For years, I used to refuse to wear green; my parents loved to stick me in that color, and pink, when I was a child. I didn't really start wearing green until 5 or 6 years ago. For this challenge, I picked Gaga for Green from China Glaze topped with Call me on my Cell-ry from OPI.
This next challenge was originally called "a color that you would wear at your wedding". Well, I'm already married, and I had boring French tips for it, so I changed to if I ever got married again. I would definitly chose I Vant to be A-Lone Star from OPI. It's such a pretty pale blue, you could almost call it a neutral lol.
The next two challenges I switched around to accomadate Pink Wednesday. For that, that challenge became "a color that is easy to apply". For me, the whole Zoya brand are easy to apply. For this, I chose Katy, which I just love. Again, sorry for the blurriness of the first pic.
The next challenge is one I found to be a little morbid, "a color that you would wear to your funeral". I ended up pairing Max Factor's Fantasy Fire with OPI's Blue my Mind and liked how it turned out.
The next challenge was prolly, by far, the easiest one for me to decide on, "a color that is hard to apply". Hands down, that would have to be Lemon Fizz from China Glaze. I love the color, but I absolutely hate the formula. I think for this mani I used 3 coats of Lemon Fizz under White Lightning, also from China Glaze (Crackle Glaze), and then made it all matte with Matte-ly in Love from Hard Candy. Needless to say, I was a little disappointed when I got a huge ass chip the next at work xD
Ok, on to "a color you think is sexy"! In my opinion, red polish in general is sexy. Anyone can wear red, it's just a matter of finding the right shade. This was a hard one to pick for, because I have a lot of red polish. When it came down to it, though, I picked something that fit with the warm, summerlike weather we've been having here in Florida: Zoya Sooki. I admit, I really did buy this color just for the name, but I am glad it does look good on me :P I topped Sooki with Nubar 2010. Honestly, this mani wasn't as orange my camera seemed to want it to be.
A few more to go!!! This challenge called for a color that is new. Well.......... that's a pretty wide range right now, because I had gotten alot of new polishes last month. I picked one that I got on my first trip to Ulta last month, though; it was kind of an impulse buy, but I didn't regret getting it. "It" is Grape Juice from China Glaze.
Glittering Garland from China Glaze fit the bill for "a color you didn't think you could pull off". Alot of greens have too much yellow in them to look good with my skintone. GG almost does but not quite. I pleasantly surprised at how nice it looks on me. Also, it stamps well!
Last, but not least, is "a color that matches your favorite outfit". My favorite outfit consists of a geometic blue, white, and grey skirt with a blue top. The color I picked also ties with Autism Awareness Month, which is the month of April. So, to start that off, I used Color Club's Blue-topia and stamped over it using Red Angel plate 108. I know the stamping looks a little messy, but that's not something I screwed up. I had a hard time picking up the image off the plate; it always looked like I overflowed it or something.
Sorry for the blurriness in that last one!
So there you have it! Now, I'm gonna try to do the majority of April in blues for Autism Awareness, but I will mix it up a little. I should also be able to post more often now as well. Thanks for reading!
