Colores de Carol Jupiter's Twin (Polish Pick Up April 2018 Exclusive)

*press sample

Hello lovelies! Here I am with another shade for April's Polish Pick Up! Going along with the theme "Across the Universe: Planets and Galaxies", Carolina was inspired by this photo shown above. This polish may have been inspired by a distant planet, but it's totally wearable and perfect for Spring!

31DC2016 Day 4: Green 'N Bling

Are you ready for another week of the 31 Day Challenge? I am! Well, not ready as in prepared, because sadly I'm not. Oh well, bring it anyway! I'm excited that this challenge has given me the opportunity to go through my "to try" folder and inspiration boards, and revisit designs I've wanted to recreate. This mani was inspired by these nails by the talented @justagirlandhernails. They are simple and understated but totally beautiful, in my opinion.  

40 Great Nail Art Ideas: Three Shades Of Green + Ikat

Green-tings everyone! Hehe. As you can see from the post title, this week's prompt for the 40 Great Nail Art Ideas is three shades of green  and I was assigned the additional prompt of Ikat. This is only my second time around trying an Ikat design, you can see my first here. 

40 Great Nail Art Ideas: Food

Hello lovelies! It's been a couple of weeks since I've done the GNAI challenge so i thought it was time to jump back in. I had this idea to do a strawberry design with the dry marble technique, and today's food prompt gave me the perfect opportunity!

Girly Bits Sprout And About (A Box, Indied: March- Spring Theory Exclusive)

Hello my wonderful Society sisters! Today I am sharing with you a special polish, one that I named! The amazing Pam, creator of Girly Bits, held a contest to come up with a name for this shade. (Pam is so good at interacting with her fans and her involvement makes me an even bigger fan!) If you know me, you know I never shy away from a polish naming contest, so I jumped right in. There were lots of super ideas thrown in the ring and in the end my name of Sprout and About was the winner! Not only do I get bragging rights (which I use freely), but Pam also generously sent me two bottles of the polish!

Colores de Carol Gilded Shamrock March Exclusive

Today I have another green for you, one that for me is very wearable as greens go. Starting this month Colores de Carol will be releasing "color of the month" polishes, that are only available the month of their release. This is the first one for March, very appropriate for St. Patrick's Day. 

Feeling Irish For A Day With Zoya Staasi

Hey everyone! I feel like it's been so long since I've posted! I have been going through a kitchen remodel and it has made life more complicated than usual. It's coming along well though, and I'm so excited for a new kitchen! With the tiny bit of extra energy that I've had, I did some simple nail art. 

31DC2014 Day 30: Inspired by Lucy's Stash's One Stroke Abstract Petals

The penultimate day of the 31 Day Challenge! I'm telling you, I am completely exhausted. I think I've been staring at the screen for about 20 minutes now without writing a thing, because my brain just wants to sleep. So I'll be succinct.
For today's Inspired by a Tutorial prompt I tried to follow this tutorial by Lucy's Stash. She is absolutely amazing with her one-stroke method manis. I have never tried the one-stroke method before and still felt a little lost after watching the video. Watching it a second time would have helped a ton, but by the time I got started with my mani the computer was occupied. So I kind of just went for it and created some random flower-like shapes.

31DC2014 Day 20: Green Distressed Water Marble

Once again for this year I chose to do a green water marble. Actually, sometimes the nail polish chooses YOU. Haha, kidding, I chose it. This year I added a little twist by doing my distressed water marble technique, which I made a tutorial for here. I love this technique because it's so unpredictable. Every mani turns out truly unique. 

31DC2014 Day 04: Green Bling

Okay I've just got to get this post out there so I can be caught up! Hope you like it. :)

Sinful Colors Curry Up

Hello beautiful people! Last month was pretty full of nail art, which I loved. It's about time though to pull some of my swatch posts out of my draft folder. So that's what I have for you today! I will be showing many more swatches this month. Don't worry though, there will still be a good balance of nail art posts.

Colores de Carol Swatches and Review

*Products were provided to me for review

Hello everyone! Today I have a review of two Colores de Carol polishes from the new collection, which are all jewel toned. Colores de Carol is an indie brand that I've been curious about for quite a long time, so I was really looking forward to trying these out!

Colores de Carol polishes are all 5-free (meaning no Formaldehyde, Toluene, DBP, Formaldehyde Resin, Camphor). Both brushes were medium sized, with flexible and even brushes. 

Both polishes are linear holographics which I don't have much experience with. I actually only have one other (it's a China Glaze) that is quite difficult to apply, so that's all I have to compare to. The consistency of both are jelly-like, what I think of as "syrupy". At first I was afraid that this would make application difficult but didn't find that to be the case. I applied them avoiding going over the same spots more than once or twice. In two coats I had even coverage with both shades.

Amethyst is described as a "linear holographic medium purple with blue shimmer". In direct sunlight the blue shimmer isn't very noticeable amid the holo sparkle, but is a little more visible in the shade. This is two thin coats, plus topcoat.

Renaissance Custom Lacquer Emerald Envy Swatches and Review

As soon as I saw swatches of Emerald Envy, I needed it. Most of the time when I see a polish that I just have to have, it goes on my wishlist. Then it usually stays there for way too long. This time I didn't hesitate. I went straight to the Renaissance Cosmetics website and bought that sucker!

Luck O' The Irish Water Marble

Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone! This isn't a big holiday for me. Growing up we never did anything to celebrate except to wear something green to school. Even that was done without enthusiasm, I just wanted to make sure I didn't get pinched. Green is my least favorite color. Also, if I have Irish in me, it's marginal. I don't drink, and corn beef and cabbage has never sounded appealing enough to try to make. So there are my reasons for not doing anything special to celebrate. All the same, that doesn't exclude me from trying out some nail art for the occasion!

This mani is a little crazier than my recent St. Patrick's Day nails. In this mani I wanted to include some Leprechauns' gold too. I love how it sparkles! Don't you feel lucky just by looking at it?

I have yet to do a water marble with a consistent design. I basically can never get the polish to do what I want. So I just try to find a part that looks cool and go with it. My water marbling skills haven't changed since my first try, but I still have fun with it. I kind of like to be surprised by how each nail turns out.

What I used:

China Glaze Lighthouse- yellow gold glass fleck
Wet n Wild Fergie Glowstick- day-glo green
Sephora by OPI I Come in Peas- deep green
Seche Vite top coat

What do you think of the design? What do you do to celebrate St. Patrick's day? I love to hear your comments!

St. Patrick's Day Half Moons With Zoya Hunter and Opal

I have a quick St. Patrick's Day mani for you today. The star of the show here is Zoya Opal, a polish I bought months ago and can't believe I'm just now showing off! What better time to do it than for the upcoming holiday? I have another St. Patty's theme mani I hope to have for you on Monday, so don't forget to tune in!

Artificial lighting:

To create this manicure I applied two coats Zoya Hunter, then applied fast dry top coat. After they were nice and dry I placed reinforcement labels over my cuticles. Then I painted on one coat of Zoya Opal, then a matte top coat before removing the labels.

Outdoor lighting:

What I used:
Zoya Hunter
Zoya Opal
China Glaze Matte Magic
Sally Hansen Dries Instantly
Reinforcement labels

Hope you enjoyed! Let me know what you think in the comments. :)

butter LONDON Wallis + Blogger "Auto Enhance" Photo Issues

Today's post is featuring a newly acquired polish, butter LONDON Wallis. This shade is from their Fall 2011 collection I believe. I don't own many butter LONDON polishes because they are expensive (purchased at Nordstrom for $15), and it is easier for me to justify buying more when it's doesn't cost so much. The other ones I have I bought on clearance for about $10 or $12. I decided to "splurge" because I had a Nordstrom gift card specifically purposed for nail polish. I stood at the nail bar for some time trying to narrow down my choices. I finally went with Wallis because I knew I didn't have anything like it. It was a necessary addition my my collection.

Shown here is two coats plus top coat. The formula is really smooth and was easy to apply. butter LONDON describes Wallis as a "tarnished, olive gold". The description is so spot on, but it's hard to see in my photos! I tried to boost the color level as much as I could to get the color more accurate, but this was the closest I could figure out. Here, it looks more solidly green, with a gold tint. In person though, the tarnished gold is so much stronger.

(The following is for Blogger users)
It was already frustrating not being able to get the photos as color accurate as I wanted. You can imagine how much more frustrated I was when Blogger was auto-enhancing my photos once I uploaded them! You can compare the difference here with the photo above being the original, and the photo below is the one that was auto-enhanced. Pretty big difference, right?

I wasn't even aware that that was an option until I saw someone write a post about it a few months ago. It's mostly hard to know this is part of your settings because it can only be changed through Google+. So when I read the post, I promptly found my photo settings and turned the option OFF. I guess because I took two months off from blogging, Google+ decided that I wanted it back on and changed it back for me. Arg. I'm glad I at least figured it out. I honestly thought that I was losing my mind and/or I needed glasses. 

If you have a Blogger account that is connected to your Google+ account and want to turn the auto-enhance option off:

1. Go to your Google+ page

2. Go to Settings

3. Scroll down to Auto Enhance, and select "Off". It will automatically save your change. Although in my case, it changed it back a few months later. It might be something you'll want to check periodically.

About the polish again: I don't know how much this color compliments my skin tone, but I don't really care because it's so beautiful on its own and I can't stop staring at it!

31DC2013 Day 21: Inspired by a Color

If there were one vague prompt in the 31 Day Challenge, this would be it. What does inspired by a color mean? Whatever the heck you want it to, apparently. Some people do manicures based around a color. I've seen Sarah from Chalkboard Nails draw inspiration from the name of a polish, and that's where I ended up. Originally I was thinking of just focusing on a favorite color. But when I was going through my polishes I came across Sephora by OPI It's Totally Karma, and I knew I had it.

I originally wanted to make it very colorful but then decided it would make the design less readable. So I ended up with a very green manicure (so unlike me!). I do like how bold it is.

I feel like some imaginary person has been twisting my arm, forcing me to try things that are beyond my capabilities. Obviously, there is no such person. It's just that this challenge makes me come up with these ideas that I don't want to let go of. So I try something ridiculous that I've never tried before. I have to tell you though, I had fun wearing these. It's like I felt they would help good things come to me :)

What I used:
Sephora by OPI It's Totally Karma
It's So Easy Stripe Rite in black
Seche Vite top coat

Did you feel the good vibes from this post?

I won't be posting Sunday, so I will have Day 22 and 23 for you on Monday!

31DC2013 Day 20: Water Marble

Today is the dreaded water marble day. Ug. I think these colors look fantastic. The rest.. didn't turn out so well. I have a number of complaints here. Before we get into that, let's just look at the pretty colors. Oooooo..

Once again, this is another first for me. Typically when I have been trying new techniques, I sort of just jump right in. This time I knew I had to depend on a tutorial to help me out. To prepare, I watched a couple of videos from the Queen of water marbling. Apparently I did not watch enough videos to have a good idea of how to do it.

Once I choose my colors I was pretty dead set on using them together. After not being able to get them to expand well in the water, I just decided to work with them best I could. It was too late at night to be changing the game plan. Some polishes started drying faster than the others. So I have broken gaps especially noticeable on my ring finger.

I'm not happy with how this turned out, but I'm not discouraged. There are way too many successful water marbles out there for me to give up. I want to try again! I need to figure out what polishes work well, and a few other questions I had.
 Even with how sloppy and broken this is, I love that water marbles still always look unique. No one else has one that looks just like this! Want to know my favorite part about this? It was the quickest manicure I've done this whole Challenge!

What I used:
OPI Live and Let Die-deep green
Zoya Bevin- sage
A England Holy Grail-gold

Have you done successful water marbling? What polishes have worked for you?

31DC2013 Day 04: Green Nails

Green nails... teal... whatever. Who are you, the color police? No, you're cooler than that, I know. I'd call it an emerald teal because it definitely leans toward the green side.

Okay, I have been dreading this post because I'm so annoyed with the photos. My camera HATES teal and refuses to capture it properly. So I'm just going to throw in a bunch of them, in the hopes that as a whole it will give you an idea of what they looked like.

The base color and the glitter are such pretty "mermaid" colors, I wanted to do some scales to go with it. I've never attempted the look before, so I was learning as I went. I used a dotting tool, alternating the colors by row. I want to try to do scales again because I know it can look cool. I think next time I will look for a tutorial first. I have this thing where I like to try things by myself first, screw up, and then ask for help. I'm sure I'm not alone in this.

Well, there it is. I was really digging the manicure when I wore it. I think it was super pretty. It's just the photos that I'm frustrated with. Oh well, moving on... I know tomorrow's blue will be much easier to photograph. Yay!


What I used:
Sephora by OPI Mermaid To Order- teal base color
Jenna Hipp Look Hot Feel Cool- medium green on ring finger
OPI Live and Let Die- dark green on ring finger
Sephora by OPI Not Your Average Turquoise-  hex glitter
Ulta Love Fern- darker round and micro glitter

Better Contact OSHA

I had an unpleasant start to my morning. Whilst I was still lying in bed my daughter comes near, grabs two polish bottles from the dresser and starts clinking them together. Then a chunk of glass breaks off one and flies INTO MY EYEBALL! Seriously, what are the chances? I was able to get it out right away, my daughter was unharmed. We'll see how my eyesight is doing in a couple of days... sheesh. This is a hazardous hobby people! Needless to say I will be doing all future manis wearing safety goggles and a hard hat.

Here's a simple manicure that I did to test out my new Essie Naughty Nautical. When this color came out I really didn't think I'd buy it. I generally shy away from green. But the more I saw it in the ads and at the store, the more I heard its siren song. For someone who is not a fan of green, I kinda have a thing for this color. 

The flaky top coat that's on my ring finger is  Nichole by OPI in Heavenly Angel. This is my first experience with a flaky and it's going to take some practice to get the hang of it I know. There were a couple of flakes that just didn't want to cooperate with me. Still, I love the dimension it added!