Spiderweb French

I think I might like creating spiderwebs a bit too much! LOL! I got the idea for this mani from a post on Mini Nail Blog. My nails aren't as long as hers but they are nearly the same shape so I thought I'd give it a try. I started with two coats of Sally Hansen InstaDry Orange Splash.

I then used Cult nails Deal With It to create an uneven french tip.

And with a striper brush I used China Glaze Urban Night to create the spider webs.

 Right hand.

Left hand.

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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Graduation Nails

Whooohoooooooo! I did it! I made it through cosmetology school! And what better way to celebrate than with some awesome nails? And what is more awesome than a super bright and sparkly ORANGE polish? And if you didn't see that one coming you should stop right here and go read the rest of my blog LOL!

So what awesome orange polish did I choose? Well, I wanted to check something off my untried list as well so I grabbed Color Club Sparkle and Soar from the new Take Wing Collection. I love this polish, it's bright and sparkly and best of all it's orange <3 The picture below was taken with two coats of polish and one of OTD top coat.

Of course I had to put this on earlier in the week knowing I'd have no time later for a full manicure change before my graduation day so I had planned out my layering in advance. The next day I added a coat of Nail-Venturous Lacquers Humble Bee and another of OTD. I absolutely love this combo:

For the actual day of my graduation I decided to add just a touch more shimmer and layered another Nail-Venturous polish on top, my beloved Rustic Remains:

Beeeeee-eautiful, if I do say so myself!

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 ;)

Comparison: OPI A Roll in the Hague vs L'Oreal L'Orange

I love orange. Ok, that's not entirely accurate. I absolutely LOVE and ADORE orange to the point where I lose all self control when I find an orange nail polish and ABSOLUTELY MUST BUY IT NOW. When I saw online swatches of OPI's Holland Collection A Roll in the Hague was immediately added to my OMGOSH MUST HAVE list. And then my favorite supply store put out a Holland Collection display under a glass case in JANUARY, almost as if to taunt me. And then, just a couple weeks before the official sale date for the Holland Collection, L'Oreal came out with their new Color Riche line. Of course the first thing that caught my attention was the lovely, bright bottle of L'Orange.

Now, I knew both L'Orange and A Roll in the Hague had to be VERY close in color so I didn't want to get L'Orange right off because I knew, no matter what, that I would be getting A Roll in the Hague in just a couple weeks. I managed to hold off for a whole week before caving and buying L'Orange ^^; And yes, I bought A Roll in the Hague the day after it officially went on sale too.

See how close they are in color? Well I figured I'd go ahead and do a comparison swatch since I had both. I used OPI A Roll in the Hague on my index finger and L'Oreal, L'Orange on my middle finger and used two coats of each, no top coat.

As you can see they are really really really close in color on the nail, A Roll in the Hague is slightly more red than L'Orange. The biggest differences were in the application. L'Orange is a lot thinner and you can totally see VNL while A Roll in the Hague definitely had a thicker consistency and more pigmentation.

So, if you don't mind using three coats or just can't afford the OPI, L'Oreal L'Orange is a good alternative. I think I'll be putting my bottle of L'Orange in my manicure bag to use at school and saving A Roll in the Hague for my exclusive use.

What polish color is your personal MUST HAVE?

Franken Time and Zoya Charity

If any of you follow Zoya on Facebook (and if you don't you totally should!) you would have heard about the buy two, pay only shipping promo they had a few weeks ago. I was lucky enough to be able to take advantage of the promo and let me tell you, it was VERY difficult picking just two! In the end I decided on Yara and Charity (Dakota, you will be mine someday) and I'm very happy with my choices. Of course, when they finally arrived I had to use one right away! I decided to use Charity first since Yara has been big in the blog scene more recently and let me tell you, this polish is GORGEOUS! I've been looking around for nice dusty mauve and this certainly fits the bill but there's also a delicious copper/gold shimmer that just makes me want to stare at my nails all day long. I'm such a sucker for copper and gold shimmers XD

Two coats and top coat, taken in full sun

I've got to tell you, most online swatches don't begin to do justice to this polish but I've done my best. I definitely recommend clicking the photo to see the full sized image!

After a day or so I decided to add a bit of bling so I grabbed one of my newest frankens, Rust and Rhinestones, a dark orange-red packed with copper, orange, and holo glitter (ingredients: Rimmel Hit the Street, Rimmel Torrid, SuperNail glitters in Sunset and Silver Rush) and sponged a gradient on my nails.

Swatched on its own, two coats and top coat, full sun

I really love frankening and making my own colors. I think I need to start pricing out all the stuff I need to make my own polishes. I'm going to make it my goal to have my own indie line of polishes by the end of the year!

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!

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 ^^;