Caught in the Spiderwebs

Ok, it's about time I kick my butt back into gear when it comes to updating this blog. I've been sitting around since my work season ended enjoying the feeling of not having to do a darn thing other than take care of my kids. I have also been enjoying being able to finally do nail art without worrying about having it completely wrecked the next day. Whoohooo! So I've been busy with that and now I need to post what I've been playing around with.

First up I decided to celebrate my freedom by using a neon I bought in the middle of the summer but couldn't wear to work. Orly Hot Shot is a coral neon. It's about halfway between magenta and orange. I used two coats of Hot Shot and one of OTD top coat for the following photos:

I then used one of my frankens, a dark brown with holo glitter called Stage Whisper, to do a funky french and then sketched spiderwebs with white acrylic ink:

 Right hand.

Left hand.

I love how these spiderwebs turned out and I give major kudos to the lovely writer of Nailing This who came up with this technique <3 I've played around with the inks a bit since I discovered this video and will try to post those experiments later, after Halloween. Before then I still have three more Halloween looks to post about so stay tuned!

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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When you can't find the sun . . .

. . . Paint sunshine on your nails! Well, that was the idea anyway. So I got out my bottle of China Glaze Sun Worshiper . . . and three coats later I still had VNL! D: Either this polish is not representative of most neons or I must be spoiled by Zoya's neons which cover to opacity in just two coats. Still, I love the color itself.

So, rather that just continue to layer coats on until it reached opacity I decided to layer something else on top. I chose Sinful Colors Serena & Chloe. Here's two coats over Sun Worshiper:

I loved the contrast of this with my sugar dish from my tea set!

And since I'm still experimenting with all the flakies I got I decided to layer Finger Paints Asylum on top:

Not content with that I decided to try some nail art but I had no idea what to do. This was before my stamper arrived so I couldn't use my plates at this point. I should have known better and just let it be. But no, I couldn't do the smart thing. So I grabbed Zoya Harmonie and managed to totally flub everything.

I know, most of you will probably actually like it, but it just wasn't what I was picturing in my mind. I really should learn to have a concrete plan before going ahead with these things.

Oh, by the by, I have started up a Facebook page for my blog! I haven't figured out how to get a button for it in my sidebar yet though so until then here's the link: Painted Pixies on Facebook. Hope to see you over there!

Bliss-Full

Some polishes are better to wait on buying until you can hold the bottle in your hands and SEE the color right in front of you. I discovered this the hard way with China Glaze Flying Dragon. It is a lovely purplely neon . . . with pink and blue glitter. When I saw it online I thought it was a shimmer but when I held it in my hot little hands I realized it wasn't so. Ce la vie.

After a couple weeks of using other un-trieds I picked up Flying Dragon, said "oh, all right" and applied it. It was a bit streaky (do not use neons on top of Revlon's Calcium Gel Nail Hardener or use a thin coat to start) so I ended up with three coats when all was said and done.

A very nice color but I swiftly grew tired of it. I didn't want to do a completely new mani however so I tried thinking of ways I could embellish it. And then one of my friends at school made a comment about polishes she'd used in high school and I had a sudden flash of inspiration.

So, when I got home I went directly to my oldest polishes, the one's I'd gotten in high school and college. I reached in and snagged my well-loved bottle of Liquid Euphoria Bliss. Yes, you read that correctly. Bliss. That bottle is about ten years old and just as lovely as the day I purchased it.

I put one coat of Bliss over Flying Dragon and hot damn if I didn't fall in love with it all over again. Every time I use it I rejoice that I have rediscovered my love of polish <3

Here you can see the predominating purple with the coppery-red flash.

And here is the green flash with a bit of navy blue undertones.

And now I'm really wanting to wear this again! I need to get some polish thinner so I can use her sister, Euphoric and my old Sally Hansen Prisms!

Glitterbombing: Zoya Paz

So if you've been reading you might know that one of my favorite colors is orange and my favorite polish company is Zoya. Thus it goes without saying that one of my favorite polishes is the lovely neon orange, Paz (which I have previously blogged about here). With the hot weather we were having I decided my nails needed to look even hotter so I got out my bottle and went to town on my nails. Of course, with the hot weather I also got some tiny bubbles but luckily they aren't really visible in my photos.

Look! I match my nasturtiums! Did you know these are edible? They taste just like radishes :D

That week the Monday Mani theme for Polish-aholics Anonymous was "glitterbomb" so I decided to top Paz with Sinful Colors Pinky Glitter and Confetti Ice Ice Baby.

Doesn't it look marvelous? I got so distracted by those nails while driving back and forth to school XD

I've Gone Neon!

Ok, so the other day when my new bottle of Zoya Charisma came in (thank you so much Ron and Zoya CS!) my son wanted me to immediately re-do my pedicure with it. I told him that 9:45pm was much too late for mommy to be starting on her nails (especially since the old stuff still had to come off) but that I would do them the next day. And I did.

Let me tell you, taking all that polish off without taking my manicure off with it was a pain in the neck! I have a sponge-wand but it's rather small and it took about 30 minutes of scrubbing to get all my toes cleaned off. Eventually they were all bare though and then I set about painting them with Charisma.

I had read that neon polishes tended to dry flat if not matte so I was prepared for it. Actually, I rather liked it like that, so I left it that way for a day. Then both kids decided they wanted mommy to paint their nails too so I used Charisma and painted the big toe nails on each of them. Here's my pedi and my daughter, Katje's as well.

The next day I put a topcoat on over Charisma and prepped my fingernails so I could do my manicure after work. Then after work on went Zoya's Paz. I have been itching to use this one ever since I ordered it for the Earth Day Exchange and with all the clouds and rain we've been having I decided I needed a big dose of sun and since I wasn't getting it from the sky I'd just have to put it on my nails!

Here is Charisma with topcoat and Paz without.

Then I decided to add a bit of sparkle so out came Zoya Sienna. I used my french tip guides to get the clean lines. Excuse the bubbling, I was just so excited to get Paz on I didn't wait long enough between each coat ^^;