You Don't Know Extra-Va-Vaganza

Hey everyone!! Today I'm going for a more subtle "Halloween" mani. Ok..this is more of a fall mani :) This is OPI You Don't Know Jacques. YDKJ is a taupe-y brown (not gray based like alot of other taupes) creme. This kind of reminds me of a mix between Essie Mink Muffs and Hard Candy Mushroom. It's not as red as MM, but not as brown as Mushroom; good combination. I actually hard to use 3 coats, I had alot of "bald spots" with 2 coats for some reason.

The accent nail is Extra-Va-Vanganza from the Burlesque collection. The whole glitter line from this is pure genious. I love them all!! It's mosly a silver and orange glitter in a clear base, but if you look really closely...there is pink and green glitter too. 3 coats of this (and a few more on TC...it ate it up like crazy!). This is a nice way to spice up a "mom mani"

When I don't know what to wear, a combination like this is alway my go-to choice. I feel like I can't go wrong with something like this.

What's your "safest" color combo??

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 :)

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??

OPI Russian Navy Suede

Having an olive skin complexion can be kind of tricky when it comes to alot of colors....there are some you can't pull off AT ALL. Buuuut...there are others than you can absolutely wear and get away with, one of those is blue. Blues is my friend! Last year I was so into China Glaze Little Drummer Boy and had been looking for another blue in the same family to use as my go-to color this upcoming winter. I found it!! OPI Russian Navy Suede is just so pretty.


It's a matte navy blue with silver and purple flecks. I saw it a while back and picked it up at Ulta a few months back. I'm in serious purging mode and after shaking it for a good 10 minutes it was good to go.

Artificial Light/No Flash



Artificial Light/Flash

 As much as I love this color, I'm just not a huge fan of mattes. I HAD to add some shine!!

It's sooo pretty....ahh I love those blues!

What's your favorite nail color family??

Purple Rain

Happy Hump Day everyone! I'm home sick and just woke up from a 12 hour nap...I'm trying to sleep this cold off...so far so good :) I've been meaning to post this since Monday, but with this cold I haven't had the energy to do much. Remember a while back when I posted my franken, Black Rainbow? Well, if you remember the recipe, I used up 3/4 of a bottle of DS Sapphire. I had an unused fourth of Sapphire and it just sat there for a while.  I was looking for my A-England Lady of the Lake one day and for the life of me, couldn't find it. I have literally looked EVERYWHERE for it...still NOTHING :( While I find it, I decided to make my own, so I used the 1/4 of Sapphire and mixed it with maybe about 1/3 of Zoya Pinta and I came up with Purple Rain (ha! Cheesy, I know)

The holo on this is alot more noticeable than the one in Black Rainbow, I wonder why? Maybe because there was no black added to this (as the WnW Black that I added to BR). I love everything about this color. The base is nice and rich and the application was great, just two coats and it was opaque.

I really need to pick up a few more bottles of Sapphire to see what else I can cook up. What colors do you think would look great with a little holo added??

May the Fourth Be With You...(womp womp womp)

Okay so as I have mentioned before, I'm a big Star Wars fan. So today being May 4th/Star Wars Day, I did another SW inspired mani. I mean come ooonn...who doesn't love Star Wars?!? (Please, don't answer, haha!)

I was originally going to just do R2D2 on my middle finger, but once I did...it was too plain. I think I might have gone a bit crazy with it in the end. I hate when that happens!! :(

Here are the colors I used: SH Celeb City, WnW Black Creme, WnW Blue Wants to be a Millionaire, OPI Fiercely Fiona, and Cover Girl Disco Dazzle.

Thumb:

I went for light sabers for this. I taped off the lines to make the actual beams of the light sabers. I then dotted where the handles would go.

Index:

This was Jango Fett from Attack of the Clones.

Middle: R2D2. I freehanded the lines and just cleaned them up with a thin brush. There were way too many lines to try and tape this off. This was the first time I actually did this, and it worked really good. I considered doing a tutorial on how I did it, but since I wasn't sure if it would even work (and not smear the silver), I decided against it. I will do a tutorial one day (put that on my to-do list).

I left my ring finger alone because this was at the point where I realized my mani was wayyy too busy. Otherwise I was going to try and recreate the Death Star on this nail. My pinky was supposed to be the "stars". I'm still mehh about this one.

I found this online, how cute is he?!?

Overall I like the mani, I seriously can't get enough of the silver/blue combo. I feel like a superhero when I wear it, lol.

Anywho....happy Star Wars Day! It's my not-so-secret guilty please and I don't care who knows it!! Haha :)

What's your secret guilty pleasure?



You've Got a Friend in Me...

So, I'm taking Bella to see Toy Story 3 on Ice tomorrow. It is one of her (and my) favorite movies and I am so stoked to see her reaction tomorrow. I Googled some ideas and I came across something that looked similiar to this and it was PERFECT for what I wanted to do for tomorrow. Here is what I came up with:

Here are the colors I used-

Thumb: OPI Suzi Loves Cowboys with ANDY freehanded with WnW Black Creme.

Index: M79 stamped with Konad White

Ring: SH Lickety Spit Lime for the face. His outfit is China Glaze Blue Paradise and the collar is OPI Funkey Dunkey. I used the French tip guides to tape off the blue then freehanded the collar. With my dotting tool I made the eyes with WnW French White Creme and with a toothpick I used WnW Black Creme to make the eyes.

I can't wait for tomorrow. I'm sure I'm more excited than she is. But then again, who doesn't love Toy Story?!?!

Have a great weekend everyone!!!

:::EDIT:::

Here is a picture of Bella after the show. They have this mini fountain park outside the stadium and we hung out there after the show for a bit