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??

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??

Zoya Tamsen

I swatched the rest of the Zoya's on my hands to see which one I would wear today and this one just called to me. Tamsen is described as Medium warm brick red with strong orange tones with an opaque cream finish. Please excuse the dark residue underneath my nails. A full mani is in desperate need.

I am in love with this color! I have been really feelin' reds lately, but I don't have anything like this in my stash. It's not a true red, yet it doesn't pull too orange or brown either. This would look great in the fall. The first pic is more color accurate. I really wish you guys could see the acrobatics I do to take NOTDs. I will make that my next project, haha!

Where do you ladies take your NOTD pictures?

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

Peace & Love

Happy Wednesday! I have been playing with this idea in my head for a while. I TRIED to do a another mani, but I need a whole lot more time for it. I think that will be my weekend project. (Stay tuned for that one). One of my favorite pieces of jewelry ever is a necklace that I have that has a dove (my favorite) and a blinged out peace sign. It's very similar to this one. I combined this idea and my favorite tee and came up with today's mani:

Index:

BM07 stamped with Konad black over MAC Obey Me

Middle:

WnW Black Creme with silver dots from bornpretty. I LOVE that Black Creme is a one coater! My "&" sign came out a bit lopsided :(

(Edit)

Ok, so here is a quick tutorial on how I did the ampersand. Since I had only done one coat of Black Creme, it was pretty much dry by the time I got to my middle finger (I did this finger last). With my dotting tool I scratched on to the nail where my design would be to use it as a guide. I then traced about the length of where 2-3 balls would go at a time (so that it wouldn't dry) and just pasted one little ball at a time. This one nail was actually alot faster than I originally anticipated. I found that when the balls started to dry, they actually dried as a "string". Once I was done with the design, I went back and just lightly repositioned the "strings" to where I wanted them to go (as they were easier to manipulate because they were already stuck together) instead of trying to move them around as I was placing them on the nail. Then I applied 2 coats of SV to "seal" the design in.

Ring:

Dotted heart using Milani Red Sparkle over Zoya Kelly

Pinky:

MAC Obey Me

I'm in a very Beatles mood today :)

Everytime I wear Kelly I remember why I love it so much! It's just sooo pretty.

So....here goes one from the vault:

It was Christmas-time, can you tell???

Thanks for looking!

Nail Art Challenge (Day 12)

Hi everyone. I literally slept half of today. It was AMAZING! Now my daughter is asleep so I finally got around to the challenge. I started off with China Glaze Laser Lime:

Indoor w/flash

Outdoor no flash

Like I've said before, I really like the Tronica line. I picked up two more today (Mega Byte and Digital Dawn). I can't wait to try those on. Laser Lime went on a bit easier than the 2 others that I've tried so far. I applied a bit of thinner to the full bottle just in case the formula was thick like the others. I had no trouble applying it at all. You can also see that I caved in and purchased Nail Armor (yay for free stuff from Sally's. I had a coupon). This stuff really works. I applied 2 coats of NA as a base for my np. I have pretty thin nails, so I can totally tell a difference in how hard my nails feel after applying this. I really hope this has some kind of effect on how hard they get down the line.

I had this whole idea of what I was going to do, but it didnt turn out the way I wanted it to. I used a BM plate with Zoya Shawn and Edyta.

12 of 31

I was really happy with Shawn and Edyta's application. I haven't had the best of luck with stamping with regular nps before (I'm sure it's because of my lack of experience with stamping though). I had planned to use Edyta with the bigger clover on my ring finger with Shawn in the background, but it came out really messy looking. I just applied a solid coat of Edyta instead. It's not one of my favorite manis, but not bad for having just woke up and doing this on a Saturday night. I will TRY and do more St. Patty's inspired manis for the rest of the week, but I have NO idea what I will doing.

Do you ladies have your St. Patty's day manis planned yet?

Nail Art Challenge (Day 4)

Still recovering from a Bella induced cold/flu, so I just spruced up my NOTD (Opi Done out in Deco) with a BM stamp and accent thumb with Zoya Dannii.

4 of 31

I had tried some other random design on my right hand, which came out HORRIBLE! So this is the elusive left hand (flipped cause it looked really weird the right way). I'm going to the Rodeo tomorrow...so I have NO idea what to wear tomorrow. I will keep you updated...



Chocolate Covered Strawberries

Ok, so I meant to post this during the weekend, but I didn't get around to it. So, here's a little extra mani. Can you tell what I was craving?? ;)

I kept this on for all of 10 minutes after this pic was taken. Buuuut.....I just HAD to take a picture to show you. My funky nail shape is alot more apparent with this. WAHHH (-_-) I used Zoya Sarah, and OPI Jade is the New Black and Suzi Loves Cowboys. I absolutely LOVE Sarah. This red is extremely shimmery. It pictures ALOT lighter than it actually is, so I think I will be using this more during the Christmas season. It is however, really good for stamping! The strawberry stem and chocolate were done with Scotch tape, so that allowed less room for errors. I did NOT want to freehand this (because it would've taken way too long and I was not planning on keeping this on for long). Thanks for looking! ^_^