Snow White Mani

Today Bella has her Halloween/Fall Dress-up Day and Festival at school. I'm pretty bummed I don't get to see her until the afternoon :( They asked all the kids to dress up as their favorite book character, so she wanted to be Snow White. That worked out PERFECT for me because we just recycled her costume from last year and I still get to see her in this year's costume on Halloween :) This is our first actual school function, so I decided to do a Snow White mani to show my support, haha!!


I decided to do an apple accent on my ring finger and a crown (to represent the Evil Queen) on my thumb.


Here are the colors I used:
-Thumb: 10 Pinky Promise w/OPI Glitzerland & ChG Medallion accent
-Index: Zoya Sooki (2 coats)
-Middle: MAC Spirit of Truth (2 coats)
-Ring: SH Red Carpet, OPI YDKJ & Green-wich Village
-Pinky: OPI The "It" Color (3 coats)

I rarely show my right hand since I have a hard time drawing decent accents with my left. But here is my left hand...it just had to get into the action :)


I did an apple accent on my right thumb and WnW Black Creme with a bow Konaded (is that even a word??) with BL Knees Up (I can't wait to do a full mani with this!!) to represent Snow White's hair/bow.

Bells loved this mani so I did her nails too!!

I LOVE these fat little fingers SOOO much!!!

This was Bells last year. Hopefully I can get a good picture of her today :)

She even had a matching apple candy bag

These little felt candy bags are super easy to make. I made her one for her costume this year. Check out my tutorial HERE if you want to learn how to make these :)

Gemma was a Fairytale

In keeping with the fall green trend, I took out another one of my unuseds. This isn't technically a very "fallish" color. Actually, I think this would be more appropriate for Spring. Zoya Gemma (http://www.zoya.com/) is from the Intimate Collection. It is described as a "light muted olive green with an overlay of blue and violet duochrome shimmer." It kind of reminds me of those clay masks you put on at spas....ahhh those things feel amazing!! This is 2 coats.

I also picked up DL Today Was a Fairytale (which I won't go into great detail about because I want to try and do an ombre mani with this...so stay tuned!!) But the blue base in this complemented Gemma's blue shimmer pretty nicely

DL, you are my guilty pleasure!!!! What's your favorite nail indulgence??

Monster Mash...

Hi everyone! As I'm typing this, the length on my nails is really irking me :| I'm a pretty loud typer, so I feel like I'm slamming down on the keys (I have a very quiet office). I was really planning on growing my nails out a bit more because I want to try and make them super-squared....let's just hope I don't have any chips/breaks.


For this mani I used:
-Thumb: Revlon Tangerine and WnW Black Creme
-Index: OPI Funkey Dunkey (I LOVE this purple)
-Middle: OPI Green-wich Village
-Ring: WnW Black Creme and OPI FD


I did 3 coats of Tangerine and Green-wich Village and just 2 of FD. Tangering was a bit thin, so in order for me to get full coverage I went with 3 coats. For my thumb I started with orange first then just brushed the black on. For the ring finger, I did the opposite; started with black then added the purple. This was one of the easiest manis I've done in a while since the "hair" didn't have to be perfect.

Bells really liked this mani, she wanted me to try and do it on her...but she won't stay still!!


Speaking of Bells...here she is a few weeks ago when I took her to the pumpkin patch.

Emerald Feather...

This past weekend I was going through my junk drawer and I found a couple of loose feathers from a necklace I took apart to make some earrings. I totally forgot I swapped for Brucci Black Emerald just for the mani Erika posted. I have no idea where to even find Brucci, I'd never seen one before. I saw this mani a while back on Chloe's Nails and I always told myself I would recreate this one day. (She also has a great tutorial on how to do this if you want to check it out).

Ahhh...Black Emerald, you are beautiful. It's a black based green/brown duochrome shimmer. Wow! It's a whole lot of things rolled into one. The formula in this is great. 2 coats and it was completely opaque. These pics do not do it justice...AT ALL!!!

Butter London Wallis

I wanted to LOVE this so bad.....

I tried this on and I really like it, but I'm afraid I'm the only one who does. My friends are usually the ones who can tell me if a color "works" for me, Wallis unfortunately got the boot....

It's described as "A tarnished, metallic olive gold". I have the worst luck with BL...they're all so thick and goopy (well at least IMO). I had to apply a few drops of thinner before I even started because it was so thick. I think it just doesn't work too well on my skin tone. The color itself is gorgeous though!!! This is 2 coats.

Nothing Says Fall Like Browns....

And OPI Holiday Glow is GORGEOUS! I was recommended this color by a friend who said I just HAD to have this color. So I bought this on Amazon and hoped for the best. I had seen some mixed reviews, so I wasn't expecting too much. I got this in the mail pretty quick (less than a week) and off the bat I knew:

1. It was gonna be hard to work with
2. It was gonna be watery
3. I would need at least 3 coats

Well....yeah...that about summed it up. BUUUUT....I also forgot to mention that:

1. The color is gorgeous
2. It has so much depth
3. The work is totally worth it.

This is in fact 3 coats of Holiday Glow because it was really watery and streaky. It's a medium chocolaty brown with tiny silver and gold glitter. I tried my best to capture it properly, but thse pictures do not do it justice. (This explains the picture overload, sorry!!)

My nail polish starts chipping pretty fast when I apply too many coats, so I wonder how long I could wear this before it starts chipping...

Thanks for looking!!

PS....Have you entered my giveaway?? The drawing will be held on November 1st, so HURRY!!

Another Halloween Mani...

I'm running out of days to do Halloween manis! 2 ideas for manis have been floating around in my head for a few days now, so combined the two and hoped for the best :) I was already wearing THIS color, and although I LOVE it, my index finger unfortunately had already started to chip. I type pretty hard, so I'm sure that doesn't help any.


I've wanted to do a Frankenstein mani since last year, but I didn't have any greens that I really liked until earlier this year when I found Orly It's Not Rocket Science. I remember looking at every Sally's for Zombie Zest after last Halloween in the clearance bins, but I never found it. This past summer I found the whole Cosmic FX Collection at an Ulta about an hour away from my house, and this had been sitting in my untrieds since then. What a perfect color for Frankie's head. This is 3 coats on my index and thumb.

'Sup??

I also got 2 glow in the dark polishes a RAOK a few months ago and I just had to try this out. The inspiration for my little ghost is the ghost from "Ghostbusters". I wanted it to glow in the dark, so after two coats of SH Whirlwind White, I applied 2 more coats of Dada Glow in the Dark and painted the little face (and Frankie's face) with WnW Black Creme.


Here it is in the dark:

I know I want to have a bumblebee (to match Bells' costume) mani for Halloween, but I'm not sure how to make it more Halloween'y, any ideas??

The Color That Started it All...

Do you remember what the first color you thought "I HAVE to have that!!" was? For me it was Lincoln Park After Dark.

I remember sitting in my local nail salon waiting an hour to get my acrylics (ahhh!!) and seeing this in a magazine and thinking, "I NEED that color!!" I asked the lady doing my nails if she had it, which she did (a half used bottle) and I remember paying FULL price for it! I used it on my toes that whole fall/winter until my nails were all stained. LPAD was released in the Fall/Winter 2005 Chicago Collection. It is perfect!

The application is great, 2 coats and you're ready to go. No streaks!! I love this color for winter, it's edgy enough to look really chic without looking completely black and goth. The wear is great on this too, I can go a good 4-5 with no chips. Even without a TC, it's really shiny, reminds me of an oil spill. It's a plum-black. The cleanup is really easy as it doesn't "bleed" as much in cleanup like most blacks do. This is definitely a staple color for any nail polish lover and will always be my HG of vamps :D

What's your HG of colors??