Tiger's Eye Mani

As I mentioned in my post about China Glaze Pull Me Close, I've been super excited about the China Glaze Magnetix polishes for a while. China Glaze seems to hit the right combination of colors, theme, and price for me more often than most other brands.

 
My second indulgence from the Magnetix collection is You Move Me, and I used the striped pattern from the China Glaze magnet. The way this turned out with all the tones and highlights reminds me of the stone tiger's eye.

Baroque Nude Mani

I picked up Borghese Biscotti Beige on clearance at CVS quite a while ago, and this is exactly what I had in mind for it when I got it. It's the closest thing I've seen to my skin tone, although it dries a little darker than it looks in the bottle.

I did the stamping with Red Angel plate RA-112 using KleanColor Black.

L'oreal Owl's Night

I'm a little late to the party on this one, since it was all over lots of blogs way back last fall, but it's a great polish, and deserves another airing.

This is L'oreal Owl's Night. This pictures isn't great because I had to take it inside due to inclement weather, but hopefully you can still see what a great polish this is. It's all full of lovely copper sparkle.

OPI Warm and Fozzie

This will be a short post, since I just had time for a quick polish change when I did my nails. I haven't picked up many of the OPI Muppets collection because, while I love the theme, most of the polishes didn't blow me away. One exception is OPI Warm and Fozzie.

Warm and Fozzie has a sheer base with large particles of dark gold, bronze, and brown shimmer. The result is a gorgeous warm metallic finish. It applied smoothly, but did take three coats to be completely smooth and get rid of a little patchiness. As much as everyone I know is used to seeing my nails done, this one attracted several compliments.

I know a lot of people have been very excited about the Muppets polishes, so what are your favorites?

Black Friday Mani

The title of this post may be a little misleading, since the manicure in question is neither black nor what I wore on Black Friday. My spouse works at a Banana Republic Factory Store, and they needed extra hands for the Black Friday sale, which actually started at 10 p.m. Thursday night. So, I worked from 9:45 p.m. on Thursday until 6:15 a.m. Friday, and then again from 5 p.m. Friday until 1 a.m. on Saturday. I'd say that's enough retail experience to last me a year! After putting in all those hours, I decided to reward myself with a few bottles of Banana Republic brand nail polish.

The base color for this mani is Banana Republic Pacific Taupe, a creme that I would say is a little warmer than what I usually picture as taupe. It's more brown than grey, which is part of what I like about it. It went on smoothly enough, but I had a lot of patchiness around the base of my nails after two coats. If I were wearing it alone, I would definitely have needed a third to even it out.

Instead, I decided to reverse my original plan and do some sponging around the bottom of my nails instead of the top. For this, I used Banana Republic Razzelberry, which weird spelling aside, is a lovely peachy pink small glitter. I think both colors look a little cooler in my pictures than real life because it was cloudy when I went out to take pictures.

While I like both of these polishes, I have to admit that I probably wouldn't have gotten them at full price. They're regularly $7, which is at the very top end of what I'm generally willing to spend. My polish budget is limited, so I usually only get OPI or other polishes in this price range if I'm really excited about the color or they're on sale.

Thanksgiving Mani

Okay, so Thanksgiving was over a week ago, but the nails I wore for Thanksgiving would work for any time in the fall. In fact, I've been planning this mani for quite a while, but for some reason I kept not getting around to it.

I started with a base of China Glaze Brownstone, a rich reddish-brown creme from the fall Metro collection. This polish had a great consistency and went on perfectly in two medium coats. Given all the shades of red polish available, this one is surprisingly unique. It's really more brown than red and feels very earthy. 

On top of Brownstone, I stamped a pattern of three leaves from Bundle Monster plate BM04 using Sally Hansen Color Quick Gold Chrome, my usual gold stamping polish. For some reason, I didn't realize how large the leaf pattern was, so I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was big enough to cover most of my nail everywhere but my thumb.

I realized that I used this same gold polish to stamp on top of Westside Warrior too. They're so rich and warm, they just seem perfect with gold on top. Do you have any fall back color combinations? Things that always seem just perfect together?

Fissures Fail Mani

I promise there are some non-stereotypically fall colored manicures coming soon, but not this time!
 

Left hand

The base color for this mani is China Glaze Papaya Punch, a very bright, but not neon, orange creme. The color is great. It's slightly more toward the yellow side of orange, but still has cool undertones, which makes it a good fit for my skin tone. This polish came out as part of their summer collection, but I got it late on clearance, which might account for the atrocious texture. It was extremely thick, even after I added thinner, and it was very hard to get it to spread evenly. I've read other reviews that say it was great, so maybe it's just my bottle, but ugh.

Right hand

Next, I added KleanColor Brown Crackle. I'm normally quite impressed with the quality of KleanColor polishes, given their bargain price, but this is absolutely the exception. I'd already been told that, unlike most of the recent crackles, this should be applied over wet polish. So, I worked one nail at a time, adding my second coat of Papaya Punch followed immediately by Brown Crackle. As you can see, it still didn't crack very well. As usual, I did my right hand first, and learned that thick coats don't work well at all, so the left's a little better. Furthermore, the crackle started chipping off after only about 24 hours, despite the Out the Door topcoat over it. Boo!

I'm really disappointed, because I can think of lots of lovely uses for a nice brown crackle. I think Papaya Punch may still be salvageable with the addition of much more thinner, but overall, this was a really frustrating manicure. Have you tried Papaya Punch? What was your experience with it?

Fall Flakies Mani

Sorry for the extended silence, but getting up to speed at my new second job is kicking me in the posterior.  Typing for several hours isn't really the best precursor to coming home and typing up blog posts. I'm building up my stamina though!

I'm having to fight the urge to title all of my posts Fall Something because that's pretty much all I'm interested in right now. We've had some gorgeous fall weather for the last couple of weeks. Today's all grey and rainy, but I'm hoping we'll get back to blue skies and crispy air soon. This mani was inspired by the drifting fall leaves!

The base color is Maybelline Coloroma Cocoa Motion, which is a purplish-reddish-brown shimmer. It wasn't impressive in the bottle, but on the nail, I almost didn't want to put anything over it. The formula was a little thin and wanted to run away, but it was opaque in two coats and looked great.

Over Cocoa Motion, I'm wearing Maybelline Coloroma Sonic Sunset. This polish has a very sheer orange base with flakes that shift colors from red and orange to yellow and green. The base is sheer enough that it didn't have a lot of impact on this dark base color. I've long had my eye on some of the harder to get and more expensive flakies, and while there are some of those I'd still love to get my hands on, for $0.33 this is a great substitute.

Fall Water Marble

I will admit to being intimidated by water marbling. I've loved the look since I first started reading nail blogs and became aware of it. It just seemed like it would be too difficult and messy. However, Colette of My Simple Little Pleasures helped me get over my fear with her fantastic series of tutorial videos. I started with her Blues and Purples water marble tutorial, which illustrates the basic technique and dipping several fingers at a time. She has some more advanced designs on her Youtube channel that are beautiful, but I'm not quite ready for those. So, without further ado, my first water marble.

For this pattern, I used one coat of OPI Bling Dynasty, a brownish gold shimmer as a base. Then I used Bling Dynasty, CND Cedar,  a really old reddish brown I have hanging around (hence the old fashioned bottle in the picture), and Revlon Hot for Chocolate, a dark brown creme, for the water marble.


There are some flaws in the pattern that resulted from my inexperience with the technique, but I loved it anyway. In these fall colors, it reminds me a little of the marbled endpapers in the front of old books. I also learned a few valuable lessons:

1. Use a cup deep enough that your fingers won't easily hit the bottom of the cup and mess up your tips.
2. Nail polish melts styrofoam. I can't say for sure that it impacted the outcome of this manicure, but I have my suspicions. Paper cups will be used in future.
3. Now I know why Collette has tape around her fingers in all her tutorials. I mean intellectually, I understood why before, but now I know. Along with paper cups, tape will be used in future.

Turquoise Stone Mani

This manicure is based on one done by Michelle of All Lacquered Up. You can see her original version here. I love turquoise, both the stone and the color, so since I'm also into crackles, this was right up my alley. Michelle used Models Own Moody Grey, which she described as "a green-based, wet cement type grey creme." I decided to go for a browner tone, and ended up with Sally Hansen  Xtreme Wear Grey Area. This polish is a muddy, dark taupe. It went on smoothly and was very easy to control. The brush isn't very flexible, but the polish flowed easily enough that it wasn't really a problem. Alone, the color of Grey Area was a good balance of warm brown tones and cool greys.

On top of Grey Area, I added a layer of China Glaze Crushed Candy. I tried to use the same technique that Michelle describes in her post: I applied Crushed Candy in short strokes from the edge toward the middle working in a circle around my nail. Crushed Candy didn't dry quite as quickly as CG Fault Line; in that respect it was more similar to Broken Hearted and Cracked Concrete. I still needed to work quickly, and it was gooey enough that it was inclined to lay down in a thick coat.

The cracks are a little thicker than the veins in turquoise, but it's still a pretty nice approximation. It was harder to apply the polish consistently on my left hand (I'm left handed), so the cracks are more random and thinner. I think this looks even more like turquoise.

Once Crushed Candy was added, Grey Area looked a lot warmer. I really like the idea of using crackles to mimic textures and patterns from nature. For example, I'm thinking of putting a green crackle over another green to make leaves (I'm still thinking about how to create the pattern). Anybody have any other ideas?