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.

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??

Cult Nails In a Trance

Fall is definitely when the best colors come out! Especially colors that favor my skin complexion....not too dark like winter/vampy colors and not too light like spring/bright colors. Just perfect!!

Last month, All Lacquered Up posted that one of this fall's trends would be military greens...SCORE for me!! I love olive/military greens. They're so versatile that you can get away with wearing them with just about anything. From her post, the one that caught my attention the most was Cult Nails (CultNails.com) In a Trance. It's a brownish olive green with gold (and if you look very closely, pink and green) shimmer. I absolutely love EVERYTHING about this polish. The bottle is great, the brush was easy to work with. The formula was nice and creamy. The application was flawless, 2 coats and it was completely opaque. I am in LOVE!

What's your favorite fall color???

Happy Belated Easter!

Happy Belated Easter everyone! I looked literally for an hour for my cables last night to upload these after we got home from all the Easter festivities, but they were nowhere to be found! I finally found them this morning in Bella's bag. Anywho, I had a more elaborate mani planned for Easter, but I'm glad that I went with something more simple. This is Sally Hansen Jade Jump. It's a part of their Spring 2011 line. This is the only one that I got from the collection (The others seemed dupeable. The only one I kind of regret not getting is Chartreuse Chase).

Ok, so I know most Insta-Dris are one coaters, and I'm sure this one would have been too...but it wasn't. I'm not sure if it was because a ton would come off the brush (I kept moving it off the brush so it applied very streaky) or the fact that I applied it too thin/thick (because of the brush problem). It looked fine after 2 coats though :) A while back I saw this on Chloe's Nails and decided to try it. I used craft scissors and cut a piece of Scotch tape and lined up the two strips to make the zig-zag pattern. I applied one coat of Lively Lilac..and voila! I accented the egg with pink rhinestones (I'm running low on them so I will soon have to invest in more). I did an thumb accent, but I ended up not liking it too much. Here is goes:



This is the one downside to working with rhinestones. I didn't get a decent pic of my thumb, but it was full of bubbles. It really irks me that the surface is not smooth. :( I ended up taking it off and just painting it JJ.

Bella had a great time. She got 4 Easter baskets (one of the perks of being an only child/only granddaughter on both sides). She ended up dumping one out and shoveling dirt in it, lol

What did you for Easter??

Happy Earth Day!

Happy Earth Day everyone! I have been dying to try Emerald Sparkle and today is the perfect day for it.
In my head this was really gonna look cool, but it's a total fail:

The stones are way too big for what I was going for, so you can't really tell that it's supposed to be Earth :( I think maybe if I would've used the little multicolored balls the overall look would have been much better. Oh well! At least the color is gorgeous. Here are a couple of shots of Emerald Sparkle by itself.

I'm off from work today so I'm spending all day with Bella watching Spongebob. We planted a few little palm trees a couple of weeks ago and we're gonna go clean up the few plants we have in our backyard. Those are my Earth Day plans. What are you planning to do??

China Glaze Wagon Trail

I first got into nail polish maybe about a year ago. I had always enjoyed doing my nails but I would only get acrylics. I was incapable of letting my nails grow. I started lurking on the NB and this was my first ever lemming. I searched for it everywhere, but since this line was released in the fall of 2008 it wasn't at any stores. I finally caved it and got it online and it had been sitting in my untrieds for weeks now. My nails are still a bit stained from the Chuck mani so I needed something dark while the staining goes away.

Anywho...here is Wagon Trail. I LOVE this color so much! From far off it looks black but up close it's way more than that. I would say its more of a olive mustardy gold shimmer. I took pictures of it only under my usual restroom light because I think this is when you can see just why I love this so much.



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I also have SH Sequin Scandal (another long time lemming coming my way). I wonder how close it is to Wagon Trail?

An Apple a Day...

Zoya is awesome aren't they? I got these during the latest promotion of BOGO on their 3 new summer lines. I got Tanzy, Kimmy, Rica, and Apple from the Sunshine and Tamsen and Sooki from the Summertime collections. This is Apple:

Apple is described as a luminous yellow-toned apple green packed with gold metallic sparkle. At first glance I thought this was a really sheer jelly. I figured that it would take about 3 coats to get completely opaque. After the second coat, I was happy with the outcome. I thought the gold sparkle would not be as apparent, but it really is. This is not one of my favorite colors (on me, at least). So, what better accent than an apple :)

The green on the apple is Nina Ultra Pro Leaf Me Alone and the stem is OPI Suzi Loves Cowboys.

Happy Sunday everyone :) Thanks for looking