Queen of Hearts

I am starting this post off by stating just how much I love the Alice in Wonderland directed by Tim Burton. In fact I just got done watching it again <3

For this mani I started off with one of OPI's newest Designer Series polishes, DS Indulgence. I absolutely love the golden sparkle in this polish. It is so unbelievably jewel-like and pictures do not do it any justice whatsoever.

If you are wondering why you cannot see my pinky nail here it is because I stamped on it and then realized that I hadn't taken swatch photos yet. Silly me. Here is a photo of the first layer of stamping on my nails done with Wet'n'Wild Black Creme and Mash plate 12.

I then stamped with Cheeky plate CH3 in Black Creme on my ring finger and my franken Sugar & Spice on my index and middle fingers as well as my thumb. I then used Sugar & Spice and Mash plate 19 on my pinkies and used Sally Hansen XtremeWear White On and a striping brush to put a line delineating the stamped/non-stamped portions of the three nails with partial stamping.

I had the hardest time getting my extra-large stamper to pick up those blasted hearts. I ended up having to go back to my original stamper in order to get the polish to transfer.

Where holo you been all my life?

So you know how I mentioned the Jade holos in my last post? Yeah, well, I kinda went and bought two of them not long after. LOL! I bought Magia Negra and Vermehlo Surreal from the lovely ladies at Ninja Polish and let me tell you, these two polishes are GORGEOUS! Better yet, I'll even SHOW you!

First up is Vermehlo Surreal, two coats with top coat, in full sun:

And with a gradient of OPI DS Extravagance on the tips, also full sun:

And Magia Negra, two coats with top coat, taken indoors in full sun:

Some people have said the Jade holos don't play well with base coat or top coat but I had no issues applying them over my usual base of OPI Nail Envy nor any loss of the holographic effect when I put Out the Door top coat over it.

You might be wondering what I did for my second day wearing Magia Negra since, if you've been reading this blog for any amount of time, you know I can never leave a mani alone for the second day.

I decided to layer the two Jades.

That's right, I layered a coat of Vermehlo Surreal over my existing mani of Magia Negra. Then I stamped a small design with Wet'n'Wild Black Creme. Is it as spectacular as it sounds? I'll let you be the judge ;)

And it even matched the dress I wore that day! What a stroke of luck!

It's been 1 year already!

I can hardly believe it's been one year since I started my little blog here. I admit, when I first started I hadn't meant for this to turn into polish, polish and more polish. I'd meant to post more about my gardening and jam-making but then I started cosmetology school and had hardly any time for anything else, I was lucky to be able to squeeze blog posts in on the weekends and at least I could take photos of my nails at school. So everything else got bumped out of the picture last year, perhaps it'll make a debut this year instead.

But for now I have a nice little giveaway to celebrate the occasion! Yeah, I thought you'd like that ;) The current prizes available are: Sinful Colors Cinderella, Milani Neon Awesome Orange, Rimmel London 60 Seconds Magnetise, Maybelline Express Finish Coral Glaze, Wet n Wild For-Bitten Love, Sally Girl 812112, and Sally Girl 812054.

I will also include a bottle of my newest Pixie Paints franken: Dragonfly. I loved this so much I made two bottles, one to keep for myself and one just for the winner of this giveaway.

All together that's six full-sized bottles of polish and two minis! All of this is going to one lucky winner! Will it be you? Why don't you enter and find out!

Rules: Open to residents of the US 18 years and older. Any information provided by the entrant will only be used to contact them in the case that they are the winner. This giveaway ends 12:01am EST June 1st. Winner will be contacted by email after the giveaway ends and must reply within 48 hours or a new winner will be drawn.


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Berry Sweet

Wow, life sure got busy for a bit there! BUT, I am back and ready for some more posting! I have also realized something that makes me very excited: the OPI Nail Envy I have been using has really been working! What used to be nubbins on my index and middle fingers have now finally grown past my fingertips and beyond! I now promise to do my best to keep all my nails to the same length unless a) I break a nail - I refuse to sacrifice hard won length for an accident, and b) with the exception of my pinky nail which I have always preferred to keep longer than my other nails anyway.

So, now that we have that established on to something a bit more fun for the rest of you: nail art! A couple weeks ago BerryPolished had a nail art contest over on her facebook page with a theme of, what else, berries. I had a couple ideas that ended up not working out due to malfunctioning stamping plates but I really like the idea I ended up going with (that I totally cam up with on the fly the day before the end of the contest).

I started with two coats of L'Oreal How Romantic:

I then stamped over that with Zoya Kate using Cheeky plate CH3. And yes, the unfinished look is deliberate . . . mostly.

Then I used L'Oreal Haute Couture Red and Cheeky plate CH13 to add strawberries, and Zoya Yara with CH26 to add a bit of contrast while keeping with the country garden look.

And that is what I was GOING to submit to the contest until the second day of wearing the design. You should know me well enough by now, if you've been following along for a bit, that I can't leave anything alone. Almost any design can be improved upon and this was no exception. Well I went and added a coat of Wet n Wild Hallucinate over top of it all and loved it so much that I just had to submit that version instead.

Isn't it just so cute! I absolutely love how this turned out and I also love that my nails are now long enough to really show off cute designs like this <3

Frankens: Good enough to swap

So in my last post I mentioned two frankens that I made and swapped for two polishes from Amy over at I'm Feeling Nail-Venturous. Well here I am to tell you all about them!

First up is Make a Scene, a bright orange with copper and holo glitter. To make this polish I used Sinful Colors Pinky Glitter, All About You, Serena and Chloe, Pure Ice Hot Tamale, and Supernail glitter in Sunset & Silver Rush. This is actually the first bright orange that I've made. I had been trying to think of a color that was different from all other frankens I had done and realized that orange was not on my list yet. Considering my love for the color I just had to rectify that oversight!

This is two coats of Make a Scene with one coat of OTD top coat.

I just happened to be wearing this when I finally bought OPI A Roll in the Hague and just had to use it. So I did a diagonal tip with Rill in the Hague with a line of Pure Ice Jaguar to delineate the two orange polishes.

And if you think it can't get any better than that wait until you see the next polish! Prestidigitation is a gorgeous (if I do say so myself) purple jelly polish absolutely PACKED with iridescent and holo glitter. I lost count of the number of facebook notifications I got just after posting some of the following photos in one of the Facebook groups I'm in. The following photos show three coats of Prestidigitation and two coats of OTD top coat. Yeah, it's a bit of a hungry glitter and a pain to get off but oh so worth it!

Taken with flash

Close-up 

Full sun

Full sun

You better be clicking those photos to get the full effect because if you don't you are really missing out! To get such a glitter-packed polish I used Sinful Colors Pinky Glitter, SH HD Laser, WnW Blue Wants to be a Millionaire, and China Glaze Flying Dragon (finally, a good use for Flying Dragon!).

Luckily the ingredients for both of these polishes are still readily available so I was able to make a second set to send to Amy and keep the originals for myself ;)

Party Nails

A couple weeks ago I got to do a set of party nails at school on one of my friends (her nails have been featured on this blog before, in the Holiday Nail Art post). Party nails are basically quickie acrylics using nail tips, nail glue, and the acrylic polymer powder.

For the ring fingers I used some tips meant for use with gel nails as an accent and filled the remaining area with the acrylic. The remaining nails got two coats of Milani Ruby Jewels with a coat of Wet n Wild Hallucinate on the ring fingers and thumbs. Also on the thumbs I stamped Wet n Wild Black Creme with Mash plate M-16.

Anyone else up for a set? :)

My product/polish haul for the week-ish

First off, many apologies for the lack of posts recently! It seems that every time I turn around there's something new that has to be done and things like updating my blog end up taking a backseat. So to catch up a bit I'm doing this quick post while trying to get my daughter back to sleep >.>

This is basically a "Huzzah for tax returns!" post. My husband got some fancy electronics to use for theater gigs, I splurged on beauty products and clothes. I have to wear solid black and/or white during the week at school so most of the clothes I got are black. How ironic that I've spent the last five years trying to get rid of some black and get more color in my wardrobe :P

On to the polish! These are all the polishes I've bought over the last just-over-a-week. Top row: Sally Hansen Fairy Teal; Essie Mod Square, It's Genius, Power Clutch, Raise Awareness, Tea & Crumpets; Revlon Matte Suede Powder Puff; OPI mini NLP1311056 (no idea on color name, mayhaps Skull & Glossbones? ). Bottom row: Nutra Nail smudge repair, OPI A Roll in the Hague, Sinful Colors Cinderella, L'Oreal L'orange, Savvy FC Totally Teal, Rimmel London Burgundy Flirt. And the cloth is my new scarf.

A couple of the Essies have been on my wishlist since early last year (It's Genius and Tea & Crumpets) and I am so happy to finally have them in my hot little hands along with A Roll in the Hague! I also got some nail mail today in the form of Rustic Remains and Man-maid Dreams from Amy at I'm Feeling Nail-Venturous! 

 And of course I had to get more than just polish, my hair and skin need some pampering too. Top row: Rockaholic texturizing spray, Kenzia argan oil, Soraya makeup removing cleansing milk. Bottom row: orange blossom hand soap, StraightSexy flat iron spray (freebie from Cosmoprof), WnW lipsticks in Mocha-licious and Vamp it Up, concealer stick, Rusk strong hold hairspray.

  And yes, I chose the hand soap mostly on the merits of the label.

So much for a quick post! LOL! My daughter is long since back in bed asleep and I should be too! I look forward to showing you more photos of the polishes in future posts!

Belated Holiday Nail Art

I was just now looking through my unposted photo stash and realized that I never posted my Christmas or New Year manis! Shame on me! So I'm posting them now. Better late than never . . . right?

First up is a mani I did for a friend at school. I used Milani Ruby Jewels and Pure Ice Peach Sorbet:

Next is the mani I did the week before Christmas. The base is Zoya Sooki with a coat of Milani Ruby Jewels. The stripes are China Glaze It's Alive and Sinful Colors This is It and the "snowflakes" are NYC French Tip White. I think the glitter on top is Wet n Wild Hallucinate.

And last but not least, my New Year mani. The base color is Borghese Stellare Notte with one coat of Finger Paints Motley, Wet n Wild Blue Wants to be a Millionaire sponged on the tips, and a second layer of Motley on top.

City Color Purple

Back just before Halloween I found a couple different displays of polishes from a company called City Color. One display had miniature bottles and there were about five or six colors, the other display had three colors in full sized bottles with square caps. I picked up a maroon glitter in the mini bottle and a medium purple in the larger bottle, this post is about the purple.

One strange thing about this company, they don't name the polishes. Really! The back label has nothing more than the color (ie purple, blue, reddish-purple, etc) and ingredients. No fancy name or even not-so-fancy name. I suppose I could name them myself . . . if I did I'd call this one Sheerly Purple. I put three coats of this polish on and still had visible nail line! Blech!

Artificial light

Full sun

This pic shows the VNL 

This makes me very sad. I love purple, it's one of my favorite colors, but I continuously have bad luck with this particular shade of it. It does look very nice over black though! I did a manicure for one of my classmates and used it over Sinful Colors Black on Black and sponged Wet 'n' Wild Hana Pinktana on the tips for a bit of sparkle.

For the Love of Creme and Holo

I have developed a love for Sinful Colors creme-finish polishes.  There, I've finally put it into writing. Sure it's a drugstore brand but the quality is no less for all that and it is definitely affordable! That said I've decided to dedicate this post to a couple SC cremes . . . and the extra bling I added to a couple by adding a holo over the top >.>

Ok, first up I have SC Starfish. I found this at one Walgreens at the beginiing of summer, decided to wait, came back later and it was gone! I was kind of upset and proceeded to search every Walgreens and Rite Aid in the area to find it. Eventually I did and I immediately snatched it up. I'd learned my lesson! No more wishy-washies when it comes to Limited Edition polishes!

I just love that dusty rose-pink <3 After a bit of wear I spiced it up with the gLORIous top coat:

Go ahead and click it. I know you want to ogle that lovely rainbow closer up ;)


Next up I have a very fall appropriate color, SC Vacation Time. It reminds me of a terracotta pot but a bit more pink than orange. This was a color I picked up just because it caught my eye at the time and I'm very glad I did.

And then I topped it with two coats of Wet 'n' Wild Hannah Pinktana:

Blurred to show the sparkle.

And last but not least here is SC Innocent, a lovely spring green. I loved this color so much I couldn't bring myself to put anything over it. I did wear it when we went apple picking a few weeks ago however ;)

My Birthday Haul and Mani (plus other goodies)

That's right, yesterday was my birthday! I had such a great day, lots of well wishes from friends and family and quite a few polish discoveries, some of which I took advantage of ;)

Before we get to all that though I want to start with my mani! A couple weeks ago I ordered Zoya Valerie in celebration of passing my final pre-salon test at school and I was quite happy at how fast it arrived. I ordered it thursday and got it saturday! And since I just happened to check the mail after I'd taken off my previous polish I wasted no time in putting her on!

 two coats with flash

natural light

Isn't she gorgeous? I wore this on it's own through wednesday and then decided to spice it up a bit for thursday. I did a gradient with Sally Hansen Nail Prisms Amber Ruby and Sinful Colors All About You.

Then thursday night I decided it needed a bit more spice so I added Revlon Scented Orange Fizz on the tips and on each ring finger I did an autumn leaf design. The polishes used for the leaves were Nina Ultra Pro Evening Sun, Sinful Colors Sugar Sugar, and Revlon Scented Beach.

Now onto the other goodies! I decided to stop at a Walgreens on my way to school friday morning since I had a bit of cash to spend thanks to getting tips from some wonderful clients when I was on the salon floor monday and tuesday. Boy did I ever hit the jackpot! I finally found four of the Wet 'n' Wild Halloween polishes with the gravestone caps! I picked out two and a purple liquid eyeliner with holographic glitter. I also found the new L'Oreal colors! Of COURSE I grabbed Owl's Night for myself ;) And then I found something else . . .

There was also a black polish but that was a plain creme finish. THESE little lovelies all had holographic glitter! They were only $1.99 but I decided to wait on getting them.

After school I was going to get a Fribble from Friendly's since I heard they were filing for bankruptcy and I wouldn't likely get another chance . . . unfortunately the local branch restaurant had already closed :( Since I couldn't get the milkshake I drove across the street to Rite Aid for a bit more polish therapy. So glad I did!

I found more of the L'Oreal polishes along with the new Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure colors, the Sally Hansen Salon Effects Halloween strips and some polishes from a brand I'd never heard of before, City Color.

Aren't those bottles adorable?

So I'm sure you're wondering what else I got huh? Ok, here's my final haul pic (minus giftcards and the eyeliner I mentioned earlier)

Top row: Artisan flowering jasmine green tea from Bar Harbor Tea Co. (I love their Wild Blueberry <3), Essie Sexy Divide, Sole Mate, In Stitches, Merino Cool.
Bottom row: Fantasy Makers by Wet 'n' Wild Creepy Pumpkin, Black Magic, L'Oreal Owl's Night, Sinful Colors Serena and Chloe, City Colors Reddish Purple

Overall I had a marvelous day (plus homemade chili and cake when I got home that night)!