The End and New Beginnings

Hello all! Yes, it's been 6 months since I've posted. Yes, I've been super busy. Yes, I will begin having way more free time at the end of this week! My residency will be over!!! *WHEE!!***** I've had quite a lot of projects going on with work and residency definitely eats up the time for nails and blogging! However, I've been posting some manicure I've done on Instagram and Twitter.

Today I'll be showing you a couple pics of another project I'm working on...polish jewelry! There are a lot of other awesome people out there doing this so I thought I'd give it a try.  I think a lot of them turned out really good!

Here are a couple pics...I used a lot of different polishes from my collection and you can see some of them in the picture behind the jewelry.  The whole table was basically covered! I love thoughts and feedback so I'd like to hear what you have to say!

Lotsa glitter and pretties!

My favorite ring with black and white glitter and bright pink background. Super cute.

Thanks for looking! Until next time...

Christmas Presents!

 Hey everyone!  It's been so long since I've posted!  I realized that I was a tad bit ambitious trying the 31-day challenge when I really didn't have the time to devote to it.  Hopefully soon I'll be able to try again! But for now, I'm going to try to post a couple times a week.  

So today I'm starting with some of the lovely polish I received as a present from my brother and sister-in-law for Christmas this year.  My sister-in-law, Mallory, knows that I love Sephora by OPI polish and so that's what I got! So exciting.  She picked out a combo (that I believe was packaged together) with a lovely deep purple and then a silver crackle.  

The crackle is Blasted Silver.  The purple is called Just A Little Dangerous.  And they look heavenly together! This is the first crackle I've tried because I just didn't think I would like them but I do! The effect is so cool.  See!

Please excuse the red and silver flecks on my fingers...I used some of the Sally Hansen
nail strip things earlier  and they were difficult to remove completely.

Zoom on the ring finger

The silver crackles best when the layers are thin.  

I really love the purple by itself too, but I forgot to take pics before I put the crackle over it.   I love it!

I got some other gifts from Sephora including a cuticle stick (good for travel), Bliss sugar lip scrub, and OPI avo juice hand & body lotion in Wild Huckleberry.  I love all of it! Thanks so much Sam and Mallory!

As you all probably have guessed, I've gotten a LOT of polish since I last posted on here.  Gonna post some swatches of the best stuff soon.  Also, I ordered some more Bundle Monster plates yesterday that have already shipped (squee!) and so I'll have more stamping to do!

It's good to be back.  I hope that all of you have had a wonderful holiday season and are looking forward to the new year!  Until next time...

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

As you can tell the 31-day challenge has definitely gone by the wayside. October was a very busy month at work and on into November when I was at work at 0600 and didn't usually leave until well after 1800...everyday.  Yeah, I was tired.  So, while I still painted my nails, I didn't post anything on here which is super sad I know.  However, I will start posting again once I'm back in T-town after Christmas festivities are over.  I hope all of you had a wonderful Christmas and will be having a Happy New Year!!! I will post soon with many new colors and swatches and hopefully that will get me back in to the mood to try new stamping designs! Until then!

Day 16,17,18

Well, as you can see, I've totally failed the 31-day challenge to paint your nails a different way every day...don't get me wrong, I've painted my nails every day, but some of these challenges take up too much time and I've been procrastinating...big time.  Anyway, I am trying to catch up and today I have 3 manis backed up that I can post! I've also done water marbling but since galaxies comes before that I'm going to try to keep them in order [even if I can't keep them on the correct day] when I post.  So here we go...Day 16 - Tribal.  I've seen a lot of these nails and even the people that do a really good job with them, I just don't like tribal print on my finger nails.  However, the challenge was a good opportunity to use my new black striper polish I picked up at Sally the other day [free w/purchase of SV!].

Now, as you can see, I did not do the best job in the world on this.  Probably because I knew I wasn't going to wear it long, but still.  It ended up kind of crappy.  The striping was difficult [haven't mastered that yet] and the white dots take over because they gooped up.  

A little further away from the mani and the imperfections start to hide...

Here you can't even tell the purple tip has any striping on it...probably should have chosen a different color if I wanted it to show up better.

So there is my tribal manicure.  What colors did I use you may ask? Well, I can't remember actually.  I know I used a black Stride striping polish and a white striping polish [from Wal-Mart] but the other colors I can't remember right off and will have to compare the pics to my bottles and get back to you.  So what do you think? Have you seen tribal nails before? Do you like them when they're done right?

On to Day 17 - Glitter!  I was happy that this was a fairly easy day to pull off.  [Galaxies is going to be time-consuming but I'm excited]. This glitter polish I picked up at Ulta the other day.  It's by Revlon and called Facets of Fuschia.  I picked up their 3 newest glitter polishes [blue mosaic, facets, and starry pink] that day because it was buy 2 get 1 free.  Couldn't pass that up! So I used this really beautiful purple glitter polish that is opaque in 2 coats.  Gorgeous!

I love the different size glitter pieces in this.  I think this purple is so lovely.

In the sunlight.

Up close thumb...please excuse the black on the cuticles...that Konad special black polish stains to the point even acetone won't remove it.

After I painted the glitter [with 1 coat of SV on top] I decided to do a matte over the whole shebang.  I love matte on top of glitters.  It subdues them but still makes them beautiful.

Already a little edge wear on the bird and ring fingers there.  I'll need to make sure in the future to fully cover the ends of my nails too.

The matte is truly stunning over glitter.  The flash doesn't really do it justice.  My only problem with matte over glitter is the fact that the polish is really thick [2 coats of glitter, 1 of SV, then 1 of matte].  It can get goopy real quick.

Fabulous! So what do you think? Do you like the glitter I chose? What are your feelings about matte over glitter?

Now to Day 18! Half Moons!  Since I was trying to do a couple manis at once to try and get caught up I just used the base purple matted glitter mani to start this one.  I've seen on some other blogs about how to get a good half-moon by using paper reinforcements (you know, the things you put around the holes on your paper when they're ripped out of your binder so the paper will stay in there?).  So while I was at Office Depot the other day, I purchased some reinforcements.  [Btw, looked all over that dang store twice before I found them...and even then that was only after I'd asked someone, sheesh].

So like I said, started with the base purple glitter mani. Then put the reinforcements on top, like so.

There is one caveat to doing this though. The paper hole things aren't as sticky as I would have liked so I had some problems getting them to stick, especially around my cuticles where my nail meets...my fingers are chunky and I have deep grooves there.  Anywho, I worked it the best I could and it resulted in this...

...which was even more goopy than before! Too much polish! One layer of another of the Revlon glitters that I bought called Blue Mosaic, then SV on top.  I thought it would be cute but it's just too much.  I didn't want to leave the half-moon a flop so I re-did it with this set of polish...

The Garden of Good and Evil collection by Sephora by OPI.  I will have to say that I love every polish in this set and really want the large bottles of all of them.  So I used the gray [Frankly, I don't give A-dam] and the purple [Eve-y on the Eyes] and came out with this...

Much better!  I did put the reinforcements a little too far up on the nail so it's not a true half-moon [more of a really thick french tip] but I liked it so I left it.

You can kind of see on the pointer and bird fingers where the polish seeped under the reinforcements on the side...those things just aren't sticky.

Anyway, the finished product turned out great! One coat of SV to cover it all and it was super shiny and I loved it!

So what do you think about these 3 days worth? More are coming...until tomorrow!

Day 15 - Delicate Print

Hi all! I'm still trying to catch up with the challenge [that has seriously gotten the better of me].  I'm glad tomorrow is Friday! I'll be working on a pharmacy presentation all weekend but will at least have a little more time to paint my nails and swatch some more of my new colors!  Can't wait!

Anyway, on to the challenge for Day 15...delicate print.  I've seen this done lots of ways and actually thought about using this stamp combo but I've already used it in this challenge so I went with something new and here it is!

I used Borrowed and Blue by Essie as the base and then used one of my Konad plates and special Konad white polish for the stamp.  All covered with a coat of Seche Vite.  

I just love the cute little bows! 

Close up of pointer

I thought that this made a perfect delicate print.  It's very subtle and if you're not looking for it, you can hardly notice the white polish and bows. 

Very feminine and pretty.

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I think one of the main reasons that I like this combination is because of how much it reminds me of Tiffany & Co. blue boxes with white ribbon.  Tiffany blue is a little bit deeper though I think.

Here's the blue box...see the blue has a smidge more green in it.  Beautiful! 

So, what do you think? I think that I definitely love my mani and Tiffany & Co.!   One of these days I might just buy myself a little something pretty that comes in one of these lovely blue boxes... 

Until tomorrow!

Day 14 - Flowers

Hi again! I'm pretty excited with how this day's mani turned out...I used a YouTube tutorial [which I saw a few weeks ago and now can't find the link for the life of me] on how to paint flowers.  I thought it was a super cute idea so I tried it and I am super stoked with the results!

I told you it was cute!

Sorry for the blur...the flash is supposed to stabilize and take care of that...the battery must need charging in my camera.

I chose to do 2 accent nails rather than paint little flowers on all of them.  I thought that for my first time with this technique that I did a bang up job! The thumb is my favorite...it looks the cleanest.

Thumb up close.

The colors I used are: 

Envy by Ulta [green base color] - 2 coats (even though it really did cover in one)

SV coat

Re-fresh Mint by China Glaze [flower petals]

Strawberry Fields by China Glaze [center of flowers]

I used my new MASH nail art brush kit [btw, I freaking love this kit. I bought it from Amazon and it has a few different sizes of striping brushes, fan brushes, small brushes...amazing.] and used a striping brush for the petals and a dotting tool for the center of the flowers.  Covered it all with one final coat of SV and voila! Flower mani!

What do you think?  Hope you all have a blessed day!  Until tomorrow!

Day 13 - Animal Print

I'm back! I've actually got a few days worth of designs finished and will try to post all of them sometime today.  I had a huge presentation yesterday [that I'm very glad is in my rearview] so I've been prepping for that these past couple nights.  I haven't forgotten about the challenge...but I have changed the timeline a little.  We're going to pick back up with one of my least favorite challenges...animal print.  You guys. I did not enjoy this challenge.  I feel like when I have to use nail art brushes I just goop too much polish on and then the nail looks gunky and gross.  However, I tried this a couple ways and I failed so hard on one that the pics aren't even worth posting.  So here is the attempt I felt good about...

And it's not even that great.  I do love the colors though.  I used Fowl Play by Orly as the base.  It's a deep purple with flecks of orange glitter.  It's from Orly's Birds of a  Feather collection. Very cute.  Then the tiger stripes [yep, that's what they're supposed to be] are Luxe by Orly.  It's a gold foil.  I used a matte top coat over the glitter base before adding the stripes.  Matted glitter polish is awesome.  I just love it.

So how do you like it? Are my tiger stripes realistic?  I kind of think they just look like gold waves.  I also tried stamping using a BM plate I have but it just wasn't dark enough on the base color I was using. 

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Pinkie

I will definitely have to swatch Fowl Play by itself and take pics in the sunlight.  The flash and indoor lighting just don't show off how gorgeous it is.

I painted these while watching one of my new fave shows...Hart of Dixie.  Anybody seen it? It's on the CW on Monday nights.  It's about a girl that moves to Alabama from NY after her father passes away to inherit his medical practice.  She's a surgeon.  Anyway, the medical stuff is pretty hokey but otherwise the show is cute.  You have to forgive all of the stereotypes they make though.  I would love to hear your thoughts about the polish or the show! Until tomorrow...or later today!