Floral Nail Art All Around!

Hey girlie girls. So every Monday for just over 2 months, my long-time friend Melissa has come over and we do our nails (read, I do her nails). Today I had the bright idea to do nail art on us. I'll show you what I did to her nails later. First, I'll show you my nails. I'm sure you've seen this a million times: pink roses on a pastel green and white striped background. I know it's been done to death but I really wanted to do it and here is what I did:

I think it came out great. I used Essie Mint Candy Apple as a base and some other polishes I don't want to reach into my melmer to find again and some striper polish. I really like these, they are so cute! :D Also, I think I'm better at painting with my left hand than my right...but I'm right handed. Is that a fail or a win? Anyways...

Here's what I did for Mel's nails:

I was inspired by a design by Luvable Nails but I didn't do it exactly as it was on there. She used acrylics and I used polish, and her skill level is MUCH higher than mine. I still like how they turned out though. I didn't get to clean up her nails because she was rushing to leave (hence the smudge on her ring finger) but yeah. I think they're cute.

What do you think? Do you like it? Did I do a good job? Let me know! Thanks for reading! :D 

Essie Marshmallow.

Hey girlies. I'm not sure if I showed this one on my blog yet but here is Essie's Marshmallow, a white jelly. The formula is meh for a jelly, great for a white... that made sense. Keep in mind that it's not supposed to be fully opaque so of course there's some visible nail line. Here's your swatch:

Please excuse my pinky, it refuses to listen to me when I tell it to not look like the oddball. Anyways, three coats, with Seche. I should have left it at 2 coats but eh.

What do you think? Do you like it? Let me know, thanks for reading. :) 

China Glaze Light As Air + Essie Shine of the Times

Hey girly girls. I'm starting to have my love of polish again and it's awesome. My personal life is still up in flames but at least I have nice nails. I've been craving pastels lately so today I have another pastel from China Glaze's Up & Away collection. This time it's a pale purple creme, Light As Air. This was a phenomenal polish formula-wise. It was barely streaky on the first coat and perfect at two. Here is a swatch:

It was great and sorry about the tip wear, I painted them last night and took pictures today. Anyways, I wanted to spruce it up a bit for my second observation tomorrow, so I added a coat of Essie Shine of the Times and magic happened. Shine of the Times is a flakie that shows mostly red/gold/green over dark colors, but over this purple, the flakes were red, gold, green, blue, and purple! It looks awesome. I couldn't just pick one picture so here's two:

Tell me it's not awesome and I'll call you a liar. I love love love this flakie, and I'm not much of a flakie kinda gal. Idk, when they were hard to find they were great but now that they're popping up everywhere, I'm just not that enthused. I'm happy with my Shine of the Times :)

What do you think? Do you like this combo? Are you rocking pastels yet? Let me know, thanks for reading! :) 

China Glaze Re-Fresh Mint Swatch

Hey girlies. I've been very bleh lately, about everything. My personal life sucks and I constantly find myself wishing I were someone/somewhere else. I'm not in a happy place. That is why I've been absent from here lately. I'm sorry for that.

Well, I've been longing for Spring so I painted my nails a very spring-ish color. Below I have two coats of China Glaze Re-Fresh Mint from their Up & Away collection. Man I love that collection. I have the entire collection, and I love every color. Anyways, here's two coats and some Seche:

As the name suggests, it's a nice light mint green. I love mint green. It's very stark and mistakes DO show up very...well. The formula was a little bit of a pain to work with. I do have patience with formulas but because of my shitty mood, this one annoyed me more than usual. If not for the Seche leveling everything out, I would have needed 3 or even 4 coats, rather than my one thin coat + one thick coat + Seche combo.

What do you think? Do you like this shade? Let me know, thanks for reading. :) 

Essie Demure Vixen Swatch

Hi girlies! So tomorrow I have to go to a school and do observations because I haven't changed my major yet. I need to dress 'business casual' and I'm not sure about the school policies on nail polishes or anything so I'm just gonna play it safe and go with very appropriate nails/makeup/clothes. Recently, my boyfriend's brother's girlfriend gifted me Essie Demure Vixen so I figured this would be a great time to wear it. Below is two coats with a coat of Out the Door:

Sorry about the cuticle cream on my index finger -_- anyways, I love this. It's a beige with this really pretty purple flash that's more visible in the bottle than on the nail but it shows up in the right lighting. Coverage was okay. This is two coats but i'm sure that if my nails were still longer, I would have needed a third. Dry time was average.

What do you think? Do you like it? Is it 'work appropriate' enough? Let me know, thanks for reading! :D 

Sally Hansen Valentine's Day Salon Effects in Cross My Heart

Hey girlies :) So a while ago, I saw the display for the Valentine's Day collection of Sally Hansen Salon Effects Real Nail Polish Strips (try saying THAT 3 times fast!) and I knew I had to have at least one set. I've always wanted to try them and now I have a chance to! I'm planning on doing a wear test with these. Hopefully they'll last 'til Valentine's Day, at least! They claim to last up to 10 days, so we'll see about that. The ones I picked were Cross My Heart, and I love them. Thanks to my boyfriend for buying them for me :b

Application was ... tricky. It took a while to get the hang of it and some of my fingers look HORRIBLE but eh, you live and you learn. It actually took me longer to put these on than it does to paint my nails (that includes prep, painting, and dry time, btw...yeah, it took a while) but less time than doing nail art so I guess it's a fair trade off. I made a mess on my dining room table with these. There's little protective plastic pieces, paper backing, and excess nail polish strips everywhere. I'll clean that after I finish blogging :b Anyways, after I got the hang of it, it was easier but that's how it is with everything. It was worth it though, I love the design on these. Here's how they came out:

Before top coat:

I did take some pictures with the box but i love how this one looks hehe. Here you can see that they are shiny w/o top coat, as these are meant to be used without. I did put top coat on though. I went with Out the Door, because I was scared to put Seche on because I know the horrible things that happen when you put Seche on dry nail polish D: Here they are with top coat:

See how it smoothed out the poor application? Especially on my pinky. I think it's best to use top coat even with perfect application though because you can't really wrap your tips with these and we all know manicures last longer with wrapped tips. Here's my usually ignored right hand:

I will definitely be trying these again, now that I kinda learned how to use them. I'm scared that they're gonna peel off though. I already feel like they're peeling. I went to move some hair put of my face, and my hair got caught on the edge of these. I'm crossing my fingers that they last til Tuesday...get it, crossing my fingers? Ha, I'm sorry for the puns.

What do you think? Do you like this design? How about the nail strips in general? Remember, I'm giving away a set of these nail strips in Prep's Cool in my giveaway! Link in the sidebar. Let me know, thanks for reading! :D 

OPI Do You Lilac It? Swatches and Review

Hey girlie girls. Today I have a swatch of a polish that was a MAJOR lemming for me Before I became a polish hoarder, I still wanted my nails to look nice, and not being able to paint my nails properly lead me to some internet searches. I came across this video on youtube by juicystar07 (I LOVE Blair! OMGHHKP!) just to learn the basics and stuff. I may not agree with the whole water thing, because I think wet manicures are so old school and they really don't help much, but I LOVED the color that she used, which was OPI Do You Lilac It?. I wanted it for...forever? I lie, it was more like a year or so, and I finally got it, wore it once, and it started collecting dust. You know how it goes. Well, here it is again! Pictures first, review later.

This is two coats, nice and smooth, with topcoat. The formula on this is awesome. It was a bit streaky on the first coat but nothing too bad, and it evens out perfectly on the second coat. The drying time is average, and the opacity is great. I barely had any cleanup to do. Beeteedubs, I'm using a new cleanup brush that I heard was good, the Elf Cosmetics concealer brush which can be found at Target for a whopping...$1. It's okay, but thicker and fuller than I'm used to. Anyways, back to the polish. When I was applying it, I kept thinking it looks a lot like butter LONDON Scoundrel, which you've seen before on this blog here. I was wrong though, Scoundrel is dustier and darker. Here's a bottle shot:

I also thought it was close to OPI Planks A Lot, but wrong again, PAL is darker and dustier... hmm, I should have compared Scoundrel and PAL...

I love how this polish looks, I think it makes my fingers look great. Am I weird for that? Meh, I'm weird in general so whatevs.

What do you think? Do YOU Lilac It? (See what I did there? I'm so punny.) Let me know, thanks for reading! And remember to enter my giveaway! :D 

The "I Have No Patience" Giveaway CLOSED.

Hey girlies! Sorry for my lack of posts lately, I've been caught up making bracelets.

Sooo for the longest, I've wanted to do a giveaway and I haven't had the followers to do so. I told myself that I'd wait until I got 100 followers but I have no patience for that soooo I'm doing a giveaway now! The prizes are as follows:

 L to R: Spectraflair topcoat, Milani Totally Cool, Sinful Colors Cinderella, Sally Hansen Salon Effects Strips in Prep's Cool, Color Club Fashion Addict, Milani Orange Burst, Milani Raspberry Fusion.
Bottom: Two sets of fimo decals :)

Closeups:

Phew :) Now how do you get to win these goodies? Fill out the form below:

(no form because it's closed, sorry.)

You MUST be following my blog to enter! The giveaway is open until March 1, 2012, at 11:59 PM EST. It is only open to US residents 18 years of age or older. Sorry international followers ): New followers are welcome! 

In case the form causes confusion, just following will give you one entry, having me on your blogroll is an additional 2 entries, and blogging about this giveaway or putting the button below in your sidebar gives you 4 additional entries! That's a chance to have 7 entries in total. Here's the button:

Be sure to link to THIS BLOG POST, not just my blog or else it won't count! Leave a comment if you don't know how to put a button up and I'll include it in the post, I just don't want to put up unnecessary info on here :)

Good luck and thanks for following! :D 

Sinful Colors Cinderella Swatches

Hey girlies... so some awesome ladies talked me into continuing my blog and here I am. Today I have polish that I picked up solely due to its name. It could have been the most grotesque, hideous polish ever made, but I would have bought it because of its name. I'm talking about Sinful Colors Cinderella. I was OBSESSED with the movie as a child. I could recite it to you backwards. I would not go to sleep without watching it, every night. It was serious. I was in love with that movie. I still am very fond of anything having to do with Cinderella so of course I picked up this polish. The fact that it was gorgeous made it even better. It's a baby blue jelly with pink/gold duochrome glass flecks. It really does look very Cinderella-esque. It was very sheer. I swatched it on its own and after 4 coats it was still not to my liking so I swatched it over Color Club Take Me to Your Chateau, my new favorite go-to baby blue. It was opaque and perfect in two coats, almost a one-coater. Yup, a pastel blue almost a one-coater... Anyways, I put one coat of Cinderella on top and it was magical. Too bad it was incredibly difficult to capture. Here's my first failed attempt:

The flash totally washed out the glass flecks on my nails! So then I did some voodoo and I was able to capture the flecks:

This picture does not do Cinderella justice AT ALL but you can see both gold and pink here so it works. Also, I left these pictures HUGE so feel free to click and see them really close. Ignore the nail polish under my pointer finger when you do though. This polish looks even better up close.

Sidenote: the Sinful Colors brush is REALLY wonky... the bristles aren't even straight and soo long, it's like painting on polish with those cheap paint brushes we used to use in art class in elementary school... elgh. Just thought I'd warn you guys.

What do you think? Do you like it? I bought two of these because I'm including it in a giveaway I plan on doing soon. Let me know what you think. Thanks for reading! :) 

A Question

Hey girlies... So I've been thinking and maybe it's the depression speaking but I kind of want to give up this whole nail polish thing.. I mean, I feel like... what's the point in having so much nail polish? My boyfriend tried to talk me out of it, saying that it's my hobby and that I shouldn't give it up because it makes me happy but... I don't know, I feel like there's no point because I know that I'll never use all of these bottles up.. I don't know. I feel... weird. Like I said, maybe I'm just depressed but have any of you ever felt like this? I'm questioning my sanity over here, questioning why I've been collecting all of these bottles if I know that I'm never gonna use them all ever. I'm not sure... What I'm asking here is... has anyone ever felt like this? Does this feeling mark the end of my nail polish days? Is this the first sign that I am no longer worthy of having a nail polish blog? Was my obsession merely a phase? I guess it boils down to: is this feeling normal? I know you won't all have the answers but I hope you'll share your experiences with me to help me figure out if I'm just in a funk or if this feeling will never go away. Thanks so much for reading and commenting, I truly do appreciate it.