Mardi Gras!

  Happy Mardi Gras!  While I don't have any fun celebration plans for the day (I mostly plan to go to work, come home, and study), I of course had to plan out a fun Mardi Gras manicure.

Indoors, light box

  For these nails, I used three coats of China Glaze Glitter All The Way, a multi-colored glitter made up of gold, green, purple, and red glitters in a clear base.  As soon as I saw this color in the Holiday Joy collection, I just knew I would be wearing it for Mardi Gras!  On the ring finger, I tried out my very first fishtail pattern using Zoya Ziv, Tru, and Holly.  It was actually a lot easier than I thought it would be and I really love the look!  I will definitely have to use this technique again soon.  Hope you all have a great day!

Indoors, light box

Gorgeous Glitter - I'm Not Lion!

  Today I want to share with you my selection from the China Glaze Safari collection from last fall.  While I really liked quite a few of the polishes from the collection, I really had to limit myself to just one when it came out.  It was a tough choice, but in the end I am super pleased with the one I picked out!

Outdoors, direct sun

  China Glaze I'm Not Lion! is a light gold glitter packed with holographic glitter bits.  I was drawn to this one because the color is neutral enough that when I need a more subtle look for work I can get away with it, but get it in the bright light and it comes to life!  I wore this around the hospital for about a week last fall and got quite a few compliments on it.  Application is fairly smooth, although it does take three coats to build to opacity.  Here is a fuzzy shot for you to really see that holo shine!

Outdoors, direct sun

  In low light the polish it a bit more tamed, but still really pretty.  Enough of the holo still peeks out to give it a glowing look.

  This is a great polish, perfect for any time of the year and just about any occasion.  I'm very glad I chose to add it to my collection!

Sponging with Zoya Blaze and Ziv

  In light of the great 3 free promo that Zoya is having right now, I thought I would take the next couple of posts to highlight a few more Zoya polishes.  Today I'll share with you all a fun sponging manicure I did using two more of the Ornate winter 2012 collection polishes, Zoya Blaze and Zoya Ziv.

Indoors, artificial light

  Zoya Blaze is a cool-toned deep red with holographic glitter.  Like the other holos in the collection, this is a smooth polish, not gritty like some glitters.  The holo in this one is a bit more muted than in Aurora or Storm, but give the polish a really unique depth.  This is one of those polishes that seems to "glow from within," and it is really beautiful.  Two coats for full coverage.

Outdoors, partial sun

  Zoya Ziv is a mid-toned gold metallic foil.  It has a bit more to it than your average gold foil - mixed in are some warmed gold flakes that really give it extra depth.  Applied well in two coats.  For these nails I used Ziv as an accent nail, and then sponged Ziv onto the tips over Blaze.  The two look really nice together!  Here are some shots of the two polishes without sponging.

Outdoors, sun

Indoors, artificial light

Outdoors, shade

  I have been really pleased with the four polishes I got from the Ornate collection - these two as well as Aurora and Storm - and would highly recommend any of them for your promotion choices!  The other two from the collection are gorgeous as well and I am sure you'd be pleased with any of them.

That hits the Sweet Spot!

  Here is another polish from the Deborah Lippmann Fashionista trio that my sister Christy got me for Christmas - Deborah Lippmann Sweet Spot!

Outdoors, shade

  Sweet Spot is a pinkish bronze metallic.  It is really fun in that it is a total chameleon - in certain lighting it looks almost completely chocolatey-bronze, in others almost completely rosy pink.  It applied super smooth and was opaque in two coats.  As with most metallics, there is the faintest hint of brushstrokes if you really look for them, but honestly I felt like it applied smoother than quite a few other metallics I have worn.

Outdoors, indirect sun

Outdoors, direct sun

  For this manicure, I did DL Sweet Spot on all nails but my ring finger, which I painted with Nicole by OPI Not A Gold Bigger.  I then used the alternate color on each nail and Konad plate m85 to add the design.  The gold and the rosy bronze really complimented each other well, and I thought the look was very elegant and classy.  What else would you expect from a "Fashionista" collection?  :)

Tangled Inspired Nails

  I did these nails awhile ago, and I kind of forgot about them - I never got around to taking actual good pictures, so unfortunately all I have for you is a somewhat questionable iPhone pic in bad lighting.  But I thought the nails were fun so I decided to go ahead and share.

  These nails were inspired by the Disney movie Tangled, which has become one of my very favorite Disney movies.  I used the gold and purple colors of the kingdom in the movie as well as the sun motif.  I started off with Sally Hansen Xtreme Golden Child for the goldenrod color, with Zoya Dannii on the ring finger.  I put the (sort-of) sun on my ring finger using Golden Child as well.  For the stamping, I used Color Club Wild at Heart and BM214 for the intricate design on all but the ring finger, and BM01 for the purple sun on the ring finger.  Finally, tips were added using m19.  I thought the BM214 image looked very.. imperial.. perfect for this princess-inspired mani.  I love Tangled!  I want to go watch it again now.  Rapunzel is my new favorite Disney princess.  :)

Go Chiefs!

  A few weeks ago I went with my Mom to a Kansas City Chiefs game.  I haven't been to one in quite awhile, and it was a lot of fun, even though it was kind of a terrible game.  I am not very into NFL football (I really only care about my KSU Wildcats, sports-wise), but of course I had to mark the occasion with some special Chiefs nails!

Outdoors, shade

  These nails were done using two of the glitters from the Nicole by OPI Holiday Glitters collection - which I promise I will have reviews of soon for you!  Also, if you want a bit of a heads up.... all four of those glitters will be a prize in an upcoming giveaway, so I hope you like them!  :)  I started off with Orna-ment For Each Other, the red glitter with some gold mixed in, on all nails but the ring finger.  On the ring finger I went with Glitter In My Stocking, a gold glitter with a bit of red glitter mixed throughout.  I then sponged the opposite color onto the tips of each nail.  Since the sponging came on a bit strong, I sponged just a tiny bit of the original color at the top, overlapping the line between the two, to get more of a gradient effect.  We may have played awfully and lost horribly, but at least I had pretty red and gold nails for the team!  :)

Channelesque and Holo Swirls

  When everybody started talking about how similar China Glaze Below Deck was to a previous polish of theirs, Channelesque, I looked at the pictures and thought to myself "didn't I just win that polish is a giveaway...?" and sure enough I was right!  I of course had to wear it immediately.

Indoors, artificial light, no flash

  This is two coats of China Glaze Channelesque, a purple/taupe color with a deliciously smooth creme finish.  It applied wonderfully, and needed two coats for full coverage.  I really love the kind of muted effect of this color, it is really a pretty one!

Outdoors, natural shade, no flash

  I added holographic swirls using China Glaze OMG and Konad plate m63, topping it off with a coat of Deborah Lippmann Addicted to Speed.  I am so happy to have this color in my collection - thanks to Kris from My Lucid Bubble for this and all of the other awesome polishes in my giveaway prize! :)

Sparkle-icious!

  Hope you all had a fabulous Christmas and are getting ready for a wonderful New Year!  Sorry I have been a little absent lately, but we have out of town guests (including my adorable niece!!) and I have just been super busy spending time with family!  But don't worry, I haven't forgotten about you all! :)

Outdoors, shade

  I wanted to share with you a manicure I wore before Christmas, OPI Sparkle-icious.  This is an amazing glitter, it looks like Mardi Gras on your nails!  One of the super chunky glitters from the Burlesque collection, this is full of equal parts blue, magenta and gold glitter.  It is bling-tastic, haha.  This was four coats - I think it was fairly decent in three, but it seems like lately I have always been erring on the side of one extra coat.... so four it was!  Application was great, for a glitter - just make sure you give it a bit of time to dry in between coats, which honestly isn't that hard since it dries pretty quick.  Removal is a pain as always for these chunky glitters, so be prepared to bust out some foil!

Outdoors, full sun

  While it was hard to capture a picture of just how sparkly this one is, the picture above does it a little bit of justice.  Definitely a keeper.  I love this collection!

  Only 10 more followers until I hit 300!  I have started coming up with some great ideas for the prizes of the 300 follower giveaway, so be sure to stay tuned for that.. :)

Christmas French Manicure

  One of the suggestions I got from the giveaway was to do a holiday french manicure, using bright colors.  I thought this sounded like a really fun idea!

Outdoors, shade, no flash

  For these nails, I started off with one thin coat of OPI Glitzerland, just to give a nice touchof that sparkly champagne color to the nail.  After letting that dry, I applied tip liner stickers and used alternating red (OPI Affair in Red Square) and green (China Glaze Paper Chasing) to apply the tip colors.  I used two coats of each of these to get full coverage.  Finally, to give it a final Christmas look, I added holly bundles from bundle monster plate BM14.  I topped it all off with a coat of Seche Vite!

 For the most part I really liked this mani, although I kind of wonder if it was maybe... too much?  It is definitely very festive, but I am not sure whether it crosses the line or not.  I would say about 90% of the time wearing it I really liked it, the rest of the time I was not so sure.  What do you think - bright holiday tips, a french do or don't?  :)

Thanksgiving Day Nails

  I had really meant to get these posted yesterday, but my day was crazy!  In a good way, though. :)  We started off by visiting my paternal grandparents for a morning brunch, and after visiting with them went to my aunt's for a huge family get-together of my mom's side of the family, with Thanksgiving lunch.  Then we drove over to Dan's parent's house for dinner with his family.  That is three Thanksgiving dinners.  I think perhaps I am still stuffed?  It was a really great day though, I love that I got to visit with everyone!

Outdoors, shade, no flash

  For my Thanksgiving nails, I decided to go with a beautiful fall orange and gold.  I started off with two coats of OPI Take The Stage, which is a polish I originally had not picked up from Burlesque, but looking at it the other day at Ulta I decided it was a really great fall orange and needed it in my collection - up until this point I only had two oranges, and they were both neon bright, medium-toned oranges.  This gorgeous burnt orange with sparkly foil-like finish had great application as well.

Indoors, artificial light

  On top of this, I used one of my new Christmas presents, Deborah Lippmann Boom Boom Pow.  This is a really gorgeous gold glitter in a super-sheer gold shimmery base, with both large hex and smaller gold glitter.  I used a gradient effect on these, with one coat on the whole nail, a second coat on about half, and then a final coat on just the tips.  I think it gave these nails a really nice look.  I got several compliments from family members, including one from my two-year-old cousin, which was really sweet.

  Hope you all had a fabulous Thanksgiving (if you are here in the USA, of course), and are having a great holiday season!  Expect my holiday giveaway up sometime tomorrow... ;)

Classic Gold and Black - For Nail Art Contest!

  I was challenged to THE DUEL by Amy over at Starving Nail Addict - which is a really great new blog, you should definitely check it out!  The challenge was to come up with any manicure using gold.  I love gold as a fall color, and decided I wanted to go with something really classic - and classy!

Outdoors, last-bits-of-light shade, no flash

  For these nails, I decided to combine several elements, including marbling, stamping, and the use of some tip guides.  After two coats of Seche Recondition (which is what I have been using the past few manicures as a base coat), I started off with two coats of OPI Glitzerland, which is a gorgeous champagne-gold from the fall Swiss collection.  I then did water marbling with OPI Glitzerland and Sally Hansen Xtreme Black Out.

Indoors, artificial light

  I added a coat of Seche Vite in between at this point for fast drying, and then added black tips using SH Black Out and Orly tip guides, which I really enjoyed using for tips!  As the final touch, I used Konad plate m80 to add an intricate tip design with.  I topped it all off with another coat of Seche Vite!

Outdoors, last-bit-of-light shade, and flash

  I really like the way this turned out.  Black and gold is such a gorgeous combination that it was the first thing that came to mind when I read that the challenge was any manicure involving gold in the design.  I feel like this is so classy, yet also very fun with the whimsical water marbling pattern and the lacy tips!

Close-up in artificial light

  Now here comes the part where I ask you...

Please vote for me!

You may either vote here in my comments, or on STARVING NAIL ADDICT.  The rules for voting are simple: list the designs from your most favorite first!  Here are the other entries:

 Little Grean Heart

Swaafie

 

Starving Nail Addict

 

  

  Here is the official description on how to vote:

   And here's how you vote: Make a list of the designs, starting with your favorite one first. Make sense? List your favorite design first, then your second favorite, and so on and so forth. (I'm giving out points based on the ranking of the designs, but if you are torn between designs, then go ahead and clarify which ones tie for what place).

   Voting is open from now until about the end of the week (so ladies, get as many people to vote as you can!). Just put your votes in the comment box. Oh, and I don't care whose blog you vote on, I will be checking and double checking all of them.

  I would really appreciate any votes for my design you guys think it deserves!  Remember, you can vote here or on her blog, either will do.  Thanks so much, hope you like my classic black and gold mani! :D

Leo(pard) Print Manicure

  Last week I received my package from Magic Maid's blog sale.  Included in the package was a Konad plate I have been wanting for quite awhile, m57.  I just had to take a break from Halloween nails and use it!

Outdoors, full sun

   I have had the idea for this mani for quite awhile now.  I actually picked up the two polishes I used with the specific intent of doing this exact manicure!  For the base, I used Wet n Wild Craze Goldmine, a gorgeous golden shimmery polish.  It was very sheer, taking four thin coats to reach full opacity, but the dry time was great and the final effect was gorgeous!  Three coats left just a touch of VNL, which is why I sprang for the fourth coat.

Shade, left hand - the nubbins are finally starting to get there!

   On top of the golden color, I used Konad plate m57 with Konad Special Black to add leopard print spots to the nails.  Then I used Wet n Wild Craze Rustic to dab a bit of a darker brown, shimmery color into the middle of some of the open spots.  I topped it all off with a coat of Seche Vite and was good to go!

Outdoors, shade

  Sorry for the slightly messy cuticles here, I had no time before the sun went down so I did a super speedy clean-up just to get a couple of larger messes, and didn't really get a chance to clean up the rest of the cuticles.  Overall this mani was really fun, wore well and I loved the colors.  I am so glad I finally got a chance to do this mani.  I had some awesome inspiration!

Manicure inspiration

  I know what you are thinking.  "Oh, what an absolutely gorgeous and fabulous leopard print, where did you find such stunning beauty?!"  Or something along those lines. ;)

Leo!

  On Leo, of course!  Not only is he like the sweetest kitty cat ever (even if he is super shy around strangers, unlike Luna who thinks that she is a dog, or perhaps "a people" as Dan and I say), he is also in my opinion the most gorgeous cat I have ever seen!  So it is no wonder that he would be inspiration for art - nail art or otherwise!

  I wanted to get a picture of my nails on Leo, but he is not such a fan of cameras.  Even when they are not on, he does not seem to like it so much.  I think the photo shoot I put him through last spring traumatized him.  So that is the only picture I was able to get.  I think the nails were a pretty decent representation of Leo's coat.

  What do you think of my Leo print mani?  Have you ever done nails inspired by your pets?

Zoya Cheryl vs OPI DS Jewel

  When I first received my Zoya Cheryl in the mail, Becky was over here and she was wearing DS Jewel.  Instantly we noticed that the two seemed very similar.  I looked for a comparison between the two and didn't find one, so I decided to go ahead and do one for you all!

  You can see that in the bottle, the colors do seem to look quite similar.  Even here you can tell that DS Jewel looks just a touch more pink, but it is really hard to tell if there is much of a noticeable difference or not.

Outdoors, sun

  On the nail, there is definitely a huge difference.  Cheryl is a much darker color, with Jewel being lighter and again, pinker.  Another huge difference was opacity - Cheryl took only two coats, while Jewel took four coats to achieve full opacity.  However the drying time on Jewel is decent, so the extra coats didn't bother me that much.  Cheryl did have a small amount of bumpiness going on that I wasn't really expecting (which you can see a bit in the close-ups, especially around the shade-to-light zone), while DS Jewel was totally smooth.  However Zoya definitely wins on application between these two with its high pigmentation and two coats.

Zoya Cheryl

OPI DS Jewel

  In the close-up photos above the differences are very apparent.  In addition to having the overall more burgundy-brown look, DS Jewel also has rosy pink microglitter, as well as some gold that is hard to capture.  Cheryl instead has coppery, metallic glitter.

Indoors, artificial lighting

  So as it turns out, these are very different.  Both are fabulous fall (or winter) shades, and I really like them both a lot.  Zoya Cheryl belongs to me, and OPI DS Jewel belongs to my sister Becky, so I will definitely be borrowing DS Jewel again at some point for a full mani using it.  I love both the more bull brown/coppery look of Zoya and the rosy effect of the OPI DS.  Which is your favorite?

Multicolor Konad on Zoya Cheryl

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  When I first saw swatches for Zoya's Wicked and Wonderful collections, I knew that I needed Cheryl.  First off because it is completely gorgeous, and second because it is my Mommy's name!  I was thrilled when I got it in the mail last week and even more so to try it out.  I also tried something a bit different with Konad this time - I used two colors on one stamp pattern, and I think it turned out very pretty.

Outdoors, partial sun, no flash

  For these nails, I started off (after base coat) with two coats of Zoya Cheryl, which is a gorgeous chocolate-bronze polish with a sparkly almost metallic finish in the sun.  It is simply stunning, and coverage was great - one coat was almost opaque but I needed the second for just a touch of bare spots here and there.  Application was fairly smooth, dry time decent and it is beautiful!  I have included some pictures of Cheryl by itself near the end of the post.

Materials Used

  I decided to try something a bit new with Konad as well this time.  Using plate m54, as well as Konad Special White and Ulta Lilac Chrome, I stamped a multi-colored tulip pattern onto the nails.  I was a bit worried whether I would be able to pull it off or not at first, but it worked out really well.

  With the Konad polish is so thick I was able to apply it only where I wanted it on the plate, even though the lilac expanded where it wanted to go when I placed it on the main tulip. This was a fun technique and I will definitely be trying it more in the future!  I did have a bit of a problem picking up the full design on several of these, and I am not sure why.  It may in part be because the design is so delicate and thin?  I have seemed to have the most issues with those in the past.  Whatever the reason, it still looks fairly good I think, even if I did manage to smudge it a bit again when I applied top coat of Seche Vite.  You cannot really see these smudges in reality, just on these pictures, so that is good.  Even with these few errors, I am very pleased with how these nails turned out!  :)



  Here are a couple of pictures of Zoya Cheryl by itself.  This is a seriously beautiful color!

  Have you ever done multi-color Konad designs?  If so, I would love to see them!  Post a link in the comments below if you'd like to share! Also, I will be starting up a new giveaway very soon, so be on the lookout.  Hope you have a happy Monday.