Zoya Pixie Dust

Happy Halloween! I wasn't much in the Halloween mood so I went with a textured mani instead. I absolutely love the Zoya Pixiedust polishes. They're beautiful, sparkly but matte. I can't remember where I saw my inspiration for this particular look...probably on Pinterest. 

I decided to go with 4 colors, Zoya Destiny, Zoya Liberty, Zoya Chita, and Zoya Carter. I painted on color each on my thumb, index, middle, and pinkie. I put a base of Sinful Colors Gold Medal on my ring finger. 

Here are the individual finger swatches. 

Zoya Carter

Zoya Destiny

Zoya Liberty

Zoya Chita. 

All four of the colors were great, though Chita wins on opacity. It only took one coat compared to two all the others took. 

I didn't get a shot of my ring finger with Gold Medal alone. 

Once I had that piece done, I got out my striping tape and made a patchwork pattern on my ring fingers. I made it into four sections, and then filled one color in per section. Once I carefully peeled the tape off, you could see the gold between the textures and I am quite happy with the way it turned out!

Taping fun

I used another Butter London for the first time today. I went with This Old Bill. Kind of jumped off the shelf at me when I was browsing my polishes. It's a great metallic-y bronze type color. It totally reminds me of brand new pennies. I think this would be a great stamping color. I used two coats, flawless formula as I've come to expect from butter London!

Then 10 hours later, I decided to jazz it up some. I love me some tape manicures... so I pulled out my striping tape and went to town. I taped on two or three stripes in random patterns on my nails, and painted on a coat of Kleancolor Pearl Jungle. Pearl Jungle is a nice green with a borderline metallic-frosty finish. I think it's more metallic than frosty personally.

I thought this played out pretty well all in all:) 

Sinful Colors Leather Loose

I have a love hate relationship with matte nail polish. I love the way it looks, but I despise the way it applies. I have a Zoya Matte green that I cannot for the life of me apply without streaking. So when I found a few of the Sinful Colors Leather Luxe collection at Walgreens, I knew I had to pick them up, but was convinced that the swatches I saw online would not be duplicatable on my own nails.

I was SO pleasantly surprised!!! I've only used one, but it applied absolutely perfectly!!! First coat=streaky, second coat=amazing!!  I give you Sinful Colors Leather Loose. 

It's a dark chocolatey brown, with a golden shimmer. A shimmer in a matte nail polish?? Yes please! It such a great color. I've used matte topcoats over brown before so I knew it had potential, and I was so pleased with how it looks on the nail.

 I wore this all day, and then decided a gold stamp would jazz it up even more.

I stamped on Sinful Colors Gold Medal, using BM plate 318. Gold medal is from the new Decorate Decadently display at Walgreens. 

It's not very often a color makes it on my nails for more than one work day, but this one has managed to wow me enough to stay put. I was even pleasantly surprised that there's only minor tip wear, considering mattes are notorious for chipping and I bang away on a computer all day long.  Good luck finding Leather Loose. The press release for the Leather Luxe collection just came out, but I've only found random bottles scattered at the walgreens I've visited. Wish I had known about this collection before it was so hard to find!

Purple stamping

After my Halloween manicure, I decided I needed a little less "look at me look at me" on my nails. And I kind of love how it turned out:)

I started with a base of Sinful Colors Sweet Tooth. It's a beautiful lilac, and applies effortlessly, and has a lovely shimmer. The shimmer is not visible in the pictures, but is definitely there IRL. It was part of SC Sugar Rush collection this past spring. And it really is a great spring color. But I'm all about using colors that fit my mood, not the season:)

Then I stamped on a nice swirly pattern from BM-314, using OPI Purple with a Purpose. I didn't line things up as perfectly as I should have for the stamp, but I still like how it turned out!

I like the purple on purple stamping look. I'm going to have to try similar looks with different colors. A green on green would be great, or a brown on brown...the possibilities are endless!

Halloween #2

Today I went all out. My husband was gone for the day, so I had plenty of time to do something totally fun. I couldn't decide what would be best, so I went with a skittles look!

I used Sinful Colors Black on Black, Clementine, and Black Magic, OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls, and a red NYC polish. My sister brought the NYC and I forgot to look at the label. As you can see I went with plain Black on Black for my pinkie, Clementine stamped with Black on Black for my ring finger. On my middle finger I tried a technique I've never done before, saran wrap. I started with a base of OPI, then dotted on BoB and Clementine and then used a scrunched up piece of saran to dab it all together. 

My pointer was SC Black Magic, which I love. I may be doing just that on my nails before Halloween. It's a fun black micro glitter with orange small hexagons.

My sister actually gets credit for my thumb..my hands not steady enough to do any kind of free hand, even something as simple as that. 

I really need to get a different camera. My iPhone 4S just doesn't capture some of the details I wish I could show. Especially on Black Magic. 

Sinful Colors French mani

Yay for Fridays!! Week of work is over, getting ready to spend some time with friends tonight, and have freshly painted nails. It's going to be a good night. 

I started with two coats of Sinful Colors Cool Gray. It's a lovely elephant gray, that is super easy to apply. This is probably the favorite gray in my collection. I didn't take a picture of this on its own. Darn it. 

Here's a bottle shot though:

Then I took my striping tape, and used Sinful Colors Over It to give my nails some lovely pink tips. Pink and gray is one of my favorite color combinations. 

I think this turned out super cute!  I used INM Out the Door to finish it off. 

Enjoy the weekend!!!

OPI Definite Moust Have and Minnie Style

Happy Thursday. Took some time away from the dark Halloweeny looks, and went with a standard for me...pink!

These two polishes were from the OPI Couture de Minnie collection. I am a Disney fanatic, so you can bet I was all over this collection! Sadly, while I bought the whole set, I'm now short the liquid sand polish - which was totally a favorite from this collection. The story of how I lost that polish is tragic, and rather funny. Let's just say - I wouldn't recommend cramming a foam board nail polish rack full of polish if you have it hung on the wall in your bedroom. Unless you want to scare the bejesus out of yourself, your husband  and your dog at 3am, when said overflowing polish rack loses the battle to gravity and crashes to the floor. 

Enough sadness. Let's see the pretties. I started with two coats of A Definite Moust-Have. This polish is phenomenal. It's a corally fuschia/pink. I love it. There's a shimmer throughout that is only visible in the sunlight. Super creamy and opaque. 

Never one to leave a phenomenal polish alone, I had to add the glitter from the same collection: Minnie Style. It's got white and fuschia hexagonal glitter, an white square glitter. After looking up other swatches online, I realized it's not supposed to have the white squares. I don't know if I just got a mistake, or what's going on, but I'm kind of excited about it. I love both, but I'm partial to the uniqueness that the white squares add to this polish. 

The white squares, for me at least are a bit of a pain to get on the nail. Which is why they're only on my index and ring. I did my nails at work, so I didn't want to spend too much time fishing glitters, in case people walked into my office;) This is only one coat of Minnie Style. I think next time I'll use two, to see if I can't get more of the white square glitter on there. 

Halloween #1

One year ago this month, my obsession with nail polish and nail art started. It's gone from something my husband knew about, to something most of my family and friends knew about. Whih everyone finds hilarious...because if you know me, I'm about as low maintenance as you get. My beauty routine is wash, tone, moisturizer. That's it. Seriously. And now, there's the polish. Which for me, is like therapy..a way to decompress, and do something that brings some prettiness in my life. 

After finding my perfect Halloween orange in my stash, I decided to go pretty simple for my first Halloween themed mani. And to make it more poignant, almost this exact manicure was the start of all the fun last October. Aside from the fact that I had to borrow orange polish. 

Nothing says Halloween like some black and orange. Crackle polish is definitely not "in" anymore, but I do love the look. It's fun, different, and most importantly easy!!  I love that you can create different crackle patterns depending on how thick or thin you spread the polish. I used OPI Black Shatter over Sinful Colors Clementine for the pictures above. 

Sinful Colors Clementine

In the spirit of Halloween I decided I needed to get some orange on my nails. I have several Halloween manis planned for the month, and a good orange will be key to said plans. I had a few in mind, but once I put this guy on, I knew I need look no further!!! This is the perfect Halloween orange!

I did zero cleanup on this so sorry for the messiness.  It was late, and I was ready for bed once I got it on.  

The color is fantastic, reminding me of a tangerine. Nice and bright. Formula...something to be desired. Had problems with streaking and pulling, and had to be careful to avoid bald spots. It still wasn't perfect no matter how careful I was. It was fairly thick, borderline goopy. Put a couple drops of thinner in to see if that would help for my future plans. Fingers crossed!! This was one thin coat, topped by one fairly thick. 

Bottle shot:

Even if I didn't like the formula, I absolutely love this color and am looking forward to getting my Halloween on:)

Sinful Colors Berry Charm

Anyone else love fall??  I've been looking forward to wearing this color for a few weeks, because it just felt so fall-ish.  Finally got around to it!  This is Berry Charm by Sinful Colors.  Sinful Colors is probably one of my favorite brands - and definitely the one I have the most of, thanks to all the wonderful Walgreen 99 cent sales! 

Berry Charm is just what it says - a beautiful berry-ish creme shade.  It reminds me of what my fingers look like after eating mulberries from the trees on my parents land!  I decided not to a straight manicure with this one, and went with a random tape pattern.  Butter London Trustfarian is the color underneath on the on the accent nail.

 Berry Charm flowed quite nicely onto the nail.  I did just one thick coat here since it was over a tape mani, and I didn't want to risk pulling the polish off with the tape.  If I were doing it on its own, I'd probably do two thinner coats, cause I'm kind of OCD about two coats (unless they're amazingly opaque).





I know an "accent" nail, when all the other nails are taped may seem a bit much  to be going on in a single manicure . . . but I needed a nail where I could stare at the rainbow happiness for a while.  Here's a quick pic of the beautifulness that is Trustfarian. 

This is my first truly holographic nail polish, and I'm totally in love.  I was over at my parents, and after I finished my nails, I ran outside, and drug my parents with me to show off the gloriousness.  They at least pretended to be impressed :)  Two coats, and no top coat, were used for the above pic.

Butter London, Alcopop

This is the second Butter London polish I tried. I probably could have gotten by with one coat, but I decided to go with two. My accent nail has Butter London's Tart With a Heart on top of the Alcopop. Love this color!

Butter London, Keks

This is the first Butter London color I tried. I am in love with it.. It's easily my favorite blue! It only took one coat to get it this opaque. The accent nail is Butter London's Scallywag. 

Butter London Disco Biscuit

Its been a busy couple of days!  I actually had these nails done on Friday, but just haven't had a chance to sit down and get them posted.  I used another Butter London color, called Disco Biscuit.  Its a bright pink jelly, with really pretty iridescent blue shimmer.Its super pretty in the bottle . . . unfortunately, I don't think it translated too well at least onto my nails.  I did 3 (or 4, I can't remember exactly) coats for this manicure.  The first picture was without a top coat . . . dried pretty matte, and didn't come close to the bottle color.

 

This is with a top coat of Seche Vite - much prettier, but some visible nail line. I loved the concept of the color, but the jelliness of this polish probably will lead me to layer it over another bright pink the next time I wear it. 

I apologize for my picture taking skills.  I obviously need some more practice . . or a different camera . . . or different lighting . . . or something.  Its pretty close to real life, but while you can see the shimmer, you can't really tell that its honestly a blue shimmer.  The formula on this one wasn't as good, I didn't think, as the formula on Tea and Toast - it wasn't terrible, just didn't flow onto the nail nearly as smoothly.  It probably has something to do with the amount of shimmer in the bottle - there's a ton.  I will say, if I can find the right layering pink for this, this will be STUNNING in the sunlight. 

Butter London Tea & Toast

And so it starts.  Actually, so it becomes public knowledge.  The nail polish obsession "started" a while ago, but us two cousins decided that it was probably time that we put all of our swatches, manicures, and ideas in a single spot.  And so a blog is born.

Today Jasmine and I finally split up the Butter London polishes we received from the Zulily sale a few weeks ago.  So of course, I had to use one of them right?

Butter London Tea and Toast
This color is fantastic.  Beautiful caramel, flowed onto the nail so smoothly, and was totally opaque in one coat.  One coaters are my favorite, seriously!

But me, being me, I couldn't leave well enough alone.  So I stamped on some animal print using Sinful Colors Black on Black.

Can't wait to try more of the Butter London polishes that came in the Zulily Diva Set!!