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!

Don't forget to like me on Facebook and follow me on Instagram @theunprofessionalpolisher!

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!

Don't forget you can follow this blog via Bloglovin, and like me on Facebook and Instagram! Have an awesome weekend!!

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? 

You can now follow The Unprofessional Polisher on Facebook and Instagram!

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!

Don't forget to follow me on Bloglovin if you like what you see!!

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!

PSS Don't forget to follow me via Bloglovin!!

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!

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!!