Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Excuse my blue french!

We've established I'm somewhat of a nerd who loves punny titles...this one just sprang to mind for this post and, well, I had to use it!

I bought more polish...after I said I was not buying any more. Of course I bought 4 bottles. Sheesh. I've lost count now of how many I have, but it's somewhere around 130. :-)

Two of the polishes I bought were these two. I have been dying to get my hands on the OPI Sheer Tints, and with my no polish buying of 4 bottles, I bought two!! And I needed some neons. NEEDED THEM. So I bought two of those as well ;-). One I featured last Friday, the other you see here. Not very well, but it's there. Trust me when I say I'll be using it again for sure!

I also have a confession to make. And it's hard to do. I have two favorite colors. Red and....ugh....blue. I LOVE BLUE! This is hard for me to confess because I am a Cardinals fan and our two most hated rivals wear blue. So I should hate it right? But I can't. I love it. Every shade, every shimmer, every glitter. I love blue. I also love the water, and anything beachy or tropical, and that's what inspired these nails!

I decided to use OPI Sheer Tint I Can Teal You Like Me for the whole nail, then China Glaze Towel Boy Toy for the tips. What happened was a squishy, oceany, lovely take on a french manicure. Hope you love them as much as I did!! I ended up wearing them for 3 days!!





Monday, April 28, 2014

Pink and brown dotticure

I seem to be doing a lot of dotticures lately, and I'm sorry for that, but I just keep finding more and more dotticures I want to do!! :-)

Today I have one for you with one of my favorite color combinations, pink and brown. I'm not sure why I like this combo so much, but I do!! For this mani, I used Zoya Normani, a hot cocoa brown cream, for the base. Then using a large dotting tool and Orly Fabulous Flamingos and ellagee Forgetful Lucy, I made large dots in random spots all over my nails. Then I went back with a medium dotting tool and dotted Lucy on Flamngos and Flamingos on Lucy. I then used a small dotting tool with Zoya Chantal to make smaller dots in random spots.

I got a lot of compliments on these nails, and I wore them with a pink polo shirt and jeans to work!! Definitely one of my favorites I've done lately!






Friday, April 25, 2014

China Glaze Pink Voltage

Today I have for you all an awesome polish that may have catapulted itself to my favorite pink:

CHINA GLAZE PINK VOLTAGE!!

This polish is a matte neon pink that has a slight light blue shimmer under some lighting. It's bright, it's summery, it's PINK! I absolutely loved it, both matte and glossy. And, I took pics both ways this time! The only complaint I have about this polish is it was a tad streaky; I had to do three coats for complete, non-streaked opacity. Other than that, it's awesome!

Here are the matte photos:



And here are the glossy photos. I used ellagee Glass for my topcoat...Ladies, if you haven't tried this topcoat, YOU ARE MISSING OUT!!! Fast drying, non-smelly, 3-free, cheaper than less effective brands...it is amazing!!! Also, it'll turn a matte polish into a gloss like noone's business!



These pictures really don't show the bright neon of this polish color, nor the high gloss of Glass...but you get some idea of it!! This is a really fun color for spring and summer, and I have a feeling it'll be on my toes soon :-)

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Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Twin Nail Tuesday!!

Ah twins! I love them. Of course, I have twins...two boys...who are 13 and NO help when it comes to polishing or anything girly. Sigh. Oh well, I always say the only reason they're still alive is they aren't girls!!

Anyway, Heather at I Feel Polished, who is so awesome, so amazing, and so supportive of my blogging and nail art attempts, asked me if I wanted to do a twin nail post with her.

Uh, YES!!!!!!!!

I came up with an idea and Heather said, "Ok, you do it, send me pictures, and I'll recreate it." Except I had issues creating it in the first place, much less getting it good enough to put pictures up for the whole wide world (in theory) to see. So Heather came up with an idea and took pictures and I said, "Oooooh, I can do that!!" So here they are, in all their glory, Heather and I's holo twin nails!

For these we used ellagee Countdown to 2014 (a LE silver holo that I once told everyone on ellagee's fan page I loved so much I would marry it...), Hear Me Roar (a hot pink holo), and Moonlit (a dark blue crelly-like polish with dark blue very small glitter). Heather and I are both HUGE ellagee fans, so what better way to show that off?

Funny story about this too...for the second time Heather and I did the exact same thing, at different times, 670 miles from each other. I put the pictures she sent me in an order I thought matched with the ones I had taken and posted them...she did the very bottom photo mashup then e-mailed it to me. If you look, you'll see she grouped her pics exactly like I did!!!

Hope you love these as much as I do, and don't forget to follow the blog via Bloglovin, like me on Facebook, and follow me on Instagram!!









Monday, April 21, 2014

The regularly scheduled post could not be made today...

Hehehe! For those of you that have been paying attention, I normally post some nail art on Mondays. However, this week we're changing things up a bit! Since I posted my Easter nails yesterday and have a surprise for tomorrow, there won't be a nail art post today.

Check back here tomorrow for a twins nail post by yours truly and the super fantabulous ever amazing Heather from I Feel Polished! You won't be disappointed!

Sunday, April 20, 2014

Happy Easter Chicks!

Everyone who knows me knows I love nail polish and nail art. A coworker of mine found these nails on the internet and I thought they were absolutely adorable! I recreated them for Easter and I hope you think they're as adorable as I do :-)

Credit to sugarmitten.wordpress.com for the original picture.



PS...pardon the flaky skin...aftermath of my psoriasis flare. I'll just have to live with it for a few more weeks before it's completely gone :-(

Friday, April 18, 2014

Blinging up the Alexa!

Well, I was going to swatch Alexa for you today...Zoya Alexa. She's a gorgeous medium to emerald green cream.

And I did swatch her. But all that plain green creaminess was just not doing it for me. ;-)

Sooooo, me being me, I added some bling. Not too much, just a little of a matte glitter topcoat by Salon Perfect called Kaboom! It has blue, green, and yellow matte glitter, which I thought was a perfect topper to this polish. I may or may not have been right, but it made me feel better anyway!! What do you think?




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Wednesday, April 16, 2014

Have a ROARIN' Wednesday!

Sorry, I'm a nerd. And we nerds like our puns. Haha!

The polish I have for you today is Hear Me Roar by ellagee! It is an absolutely amazing hot pink holo inspired by Heather at I Feel Polished. As with ALL ellagee holos, this polish is the bomb! I tried to get amazing pictures in the sunlight to show you the true awesomeness of this holo.

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Had my head not been in the way, this would have been a much better shot! :oP


Monday, April 14, 2014

Half-framing Dotticure

Good morning! It's Monday. It's April. And it's SNOWING!!! Two days ago, it was 80 degrees and I had to turn the A/C on. I love living in the Midwest! It's AWESOME! (that was a tad sarcastic in case that didn't come through there...)

Today I have a half-framing dotticure in spring-like colors for you all, which almost makes up for the fact that it's not very spring-like today. For this one, I used Zoya Cole and Zoya Edie. Cole is a peach cream and Edie is a medium blue cream. I first polished two coats of Cole, then using large, medium, and small dotting tools half framed my nails using Edie. I like this manicure a lot! It's not too much bling but not too much plain open cream polish either!

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Friday, April 11, 2014

Square Hue P.C. Hooftstraat swatch and review

Hey everyone! TGIF!!! Again! It's been another long week for me and I'm so ready for some rest and relaxation!

Today I have the third polish in the 04.14 Amsterdam collection from Square Hue, P.C. Hooftstraat. On Monday I posted a dotticure I did with the other two colors from this collection. This one gets a post all its own!

P.C. Hooftstraat is a purple duochrome that shifts to blue and magenta under different lighting. It's a really, really gorgeous polish, but I found the formula to be kind of thin. What you see in the pics is 4 coats!! And even then, you can see the tiniest bit on the tips of my nails that is still not completely covered. Part of that could be me and my inexperience with duochromes; this is the first one I've ever owned to my knowledge. But, for the gorgeous color I'll be completely ok with 4 coating this one!

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Wednesday, April 9, 2014

The Forgotten Swatch

Have any of you ever polished your nails, took pictures, then forgot to post them to your blog?

Yeah, me neither :-)

I was shopping with my sister-in-law a couple of months ago and found this polish. When I saw the name (remember my thing with polish names?) I HAD to buy it. I had an art teacher in high school who turned me onto Van Gogh. I love his artwork. The Bedroom at Arles and Starry Night are my two favorite works by him. I even have Starry Night knee socks. Anyway, when I saw this polish's name was Starry Night, it was a forgone conclusion it was coming home with me!!

Starry Night by Sinful Colors is a black base with multicolored fine glitter and gold glitter shreds. I absolutely love the depth of this polish! It went on smooth and I had no trouble at all with the shreds. Such a gorgeous polish! I actually did this swatch about a month ago, and then forgot to post it!! Oh well, better late than never right? 


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Monday, April 7, 2014

Square Hue Interlocking Dotticure

Happy Monday! I have what I think is a very cute manicure for you all today. I have been anxiously awaiting my first Square Hue subscription box since like March 27! I couldn't wait to see what colors were in there! The suspense was killing me! Finally it arrived on Friday and I spent all weekend oooohing and aaaaahing and trying to figure out what I was going to do with them!

Originally I was going to swatch them all and give you all a review on each individual color. However, fate decided otherwise. I had a perfectly done swatch of one color on, and stepped outside on my porch to admire them. At that moment, one of my boys came outside to play basketball with the other 4 14 year old boys I had at the house and slammed the front door. It was locked. And no one with opposable thumbs was inside the house.

Grr.

So in the process of breaking into my own house, I smudged four nails. Rather than redo them, I came up with this rescue mani and I think it turned out well! My boys thought they were strawberries, but they don't know anything about nails anyway lol!

First, I painted two coats of Beethovenstraat with a coat of top coat. I liken this color to a mix between olive green and lime green. It's not quite bright enough to be lime, it's not dark enough to be olive. It's a fun color for summer for sure! Then, using striping tape, I taped off half my nail and used Kalverstraat to paint on one side of the tape. Kalverstraat is a difficult color to describe. In the bottle, it looks bright pink. Over Beethovenstraat, it looks tomato red. Coming off on the cotton ball with remover, it looks orange. Square Hue's website shows it as pink, so we'll go with it's a bright pink high gloss creme! I then used Beethovenstraat and Kalverstraat to dot along the taped line alternating colors. When I was done with that I put Beethovenstraat dots on the Kalverstraat side and vice versa!

I've been trying to do this dotticure ever since Heather did it on I Feel Polished some time back. I have ALWAYS messed it up! So you can imagine my excitement when this one turned out!





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Friday, April 4, 2014

Blazing Friday!

First of all I must say, HAPPY FRIDAY!!! TGIF!!! It's been a really rough week work-wise for me and I'm so glad it's over!!

I was thinking last night as I was polishing this color on my nails how much I loved it! Then I stopped to think for a minute and realized there aren't very many polishes I've gotten that I don't absolutely love!! But this one catapulted to my favorite red of all time which got me thinking about another blog post. Be looking in the next few days for a post on my favorite polishes and let me know what yours are...you might change mine!!

This is Blaze by Zoya, a beautiful, vampy, holographic red! Totally not a spring color, but eh, who cares! With a red as gorgeous as this, I would wear it every season! In my kitchen it was more of a true red with holographic shimmer. Under the fluorescent lights at work, it's more of a dark raspberry red with holographic shimmer. It's one of those reds that look truly amazing with my skin tone (I'm pretty pale with cool undertones), and I am absolutely in love with it! I took one picture with flash and one without to try to show you all the depth of the polish. I haven't been able to stop looking at my nails since last night :-)

PS, that's not a freckle on my hand, that's a tiny dot of nail polish. How it got there and why it looks like a freckle, I have no idea haha! I didn't even see it until I posted the pics!

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Thursday, April 3, 2014

Dreaming of green!

With all the hype about the ellagee/You Polish collaboration, I've been going crazy trying to figure out what they're coming up with! So crazy, in fact, that I'm now dreaming of ellagee polish!! I actually dreamed up the design for these nails, and while they're pretty simple, they turned out really cute and very springy!

First, I polished two coats of ellagee You Just Kissed Yourself a Princess. It's a light, slightly minty green crelly with darker green, white, and iridescent glitter. I love the iridescent glitter because it seems to give a whole new dimension to this polish! Then, after that was dry (or one episode of Covert Affairs later--I'm trying to learn patience while doing nail art), I taped off the end of my nails using striping tape and used Bashful Sadie, a darker green cream from ellagee's new spring creams, to polish my tips. I love how these turned out, and why I dreamed them up I have no idea, but it was a good thing!

PS The boo-boo on my middle finger is almost healed. Yay for that!

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Cheer!!

I have the most awesome spring crelly today! It's called Cheer and it's by ellagee! Believe me, yesterday was a good day to cheer, my Cardinals won their season opener, I got nail mail, and it was 78 degrees and sunny!! All reasons to cheer after this horribly long, cold winter! Onto the polish...

Cheer is a white crelly with different colored glitters. My eyes aren't fabulous, but I see aqua, purple, and orange small hexes and large aqua and orange circles. It's the perfect spring polish!! I even included pictures of my nubs (the two nails I broke shampooing the carpet) because my index finger nub got the only large orange circle! This polish makes me so happy, and last night after I polished I stood there just staring at my nails. I have to admit, I'm in love with the aqua circles :-) I used three thin coats for opacity but you could definitely use two thicker coats and be just fine. I have three more new ellagee polishes and I can't wait to use them, so be looking for them this week!!