Happy New Year! Mani

Happy 2012 everyone! Honestly, 2011 was a little rough for me, so I'm hoping that 2012 will be a good year. I'll be turning 33 in just a few days, and I'm wishing for the magic of fairytale numbers to bring me good things. If last night is any indication, it's already working!

My New Year's Eve outfit was built around a vintage duster-style dress that a friend gifted to me earlier this year. Naturally, I had to do a mani to match!

I was originally thinking about sponging the multicolored background, but finally just decided to brush it on in patches. Working free-hand, I placed the colors in similar locations on each nail to give it some consistency. The four background colors are KleanColor Neon Yellow, KleanColor Neon Purple, Color Zone Magenta, and Color Zone Traffic Cone Orange. On top, I stamped a full nail design from Bundle Monster plate BM20 using KleanColor Black. I stamped it twice on my thumb for width.

Here it is with the fabric that inspired the look as a background. I basically don't believe that you can be too matchy, so I'm super happy with how close the colors are.

As an added New Year's bonus, here's a picture of the rare occurance of me wearing eye makeup.

A friend gave me a set of the Paperself Deer and Butterfly Eyelashes for Christmas, which I added to my look for last night. Each full lash is made up of three smaller designs, so I decided to snip out the designs and use them separately, as the full lash seemed like it might be too much. These were a lot of fun to wear, and despite what the packaging says, I think they can be reused. They're currently on sale at Sephora, and I'm totally coveting the Peacock and Under the Sea designs.

Happy New Year!

Halloween Mani Fail

Happy Thanksgiving to my US readers! I'll celebrate this holiday with a post about one that took place a month ago. Due to my previously mentioned second job travails, this is obviously way late, but I'mma post it anyway because the people have a right to know. About the worst. nail stickers. ever.

It looks fine from here.

Now you're starting to see the problem.

DUDE, what is on my nails?!

I picked up these Hedy's Body Shop Gel Nail Art stickers at Rite-Aid on sale a few days before Halloween. They have such a cute design and the moon and stars glow in the dark, so I was really excited. Sadly, there was nothing I could do to get them to lay down flat and stick. These pictures are after several layers of top coat. I ended up picking them off at a Halloween gathering later in the day after taking these pictures.

On the other hand, the base color, Confetti Conga Line, is great. It's a nice bright, balanced orange shimmer, which was very easy to apply. It did take three coats to be fully opaque, but I think that's reasonable in such an inexpensive brand.

Halloween Mani I

I love Halloween, which seems to be a pretty common "affliction" among beauty bloggers. Speaking for myself (and I suspect more than a few others), it gives me a chance to dress up in the kind of over the top stuff that get's you funny looks the rest of the year. Plus, as I've already mentioned, fall is my favorite season, so a super fun holiday in the middle of fall?! Love it! I haven't had time to do quite as many Halloween manis as I'd like, but I do have a few that I'll be showing y'all over the rest of this week.

As an opener, I have this simple accent nail mani using a fun Halloween polish. Fantasy Makers Creepy Pumpkin is an orange jelly base packed with fine orange and yellow glitter (mostly orange). It went on easily and had a medium dry time with Out the Door on top. It's pretty sheer, as I used three coats here and you can still see through it a little. I think I'll use a similarly colored base next time. For my accent nail, I used three coats of Creepy Pumpkin over one coat of Wet 'n' Wild Black Creme.

Creepy Pumpkin and Night Glow are the only Fantasy Makers polishes I picked up, as the others seemed to be just plain dark colors or glitter in black. Am I missing anything? Were there others that you loved that I'm over looking?

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?

Citrus Mani

Despite the heat (today's high was around 95), it's starting to look like fall. I'm starting to look forward to fall colors and clothes, but for the moment, I have to face the fact that summer is going to be with us a while longer. At least that means more colorful, summer nails. Not that cooler weather will hold me back from wearing bright colors when I feel like it! Today, I have a juicy, summery mani to show off.

I started this one with a base of Color Club I Always Get My Mandarin from their Wicked Sweet collection of scented polishes. It's a slightly yellow medium orange with green and blue shimmer sufficient to give it a slight duochrome effect. The formula of this polish was quite thin in both consistency and pigmentation. It tended to want to run and pool around my cuticles, and after three coats, you can still see a bit of nail line. That said, it looks good sheer, so I was really fine with that aspect. It also has a nice, light orange scent, which I could still smell even after stamping and top coat.

On top, I stamped the citrus shapes from Bundle Monster plate BM04 with Revlon Top Speed Emerald. I originally wanted to do the stamping in a darker orange, but I couldn't get any of the oranges I have to work. So, I went to my go to green stamping polish and made them limes instead.

The shimmer in this polish was very hard to photograph, and I really didn't get a good picture of it. However, this shade picture shows how it can look greener in some lights.

When I got this polish, I found it in the kids section of TJ Maxx. Apparently, they thought only kids would want scented polish. Silly TJ Maxx.

Sunny Petals Mani

I'm currently running behind on blogging because of getting ready for, going on, and recovering from a cross country business trip. It was a great experience, but all phases of it ate up a lot more time and energy than I expected. So, I'm going to be posting more frequently over the next few days to get caught up.

This first catch up post features some Super Nail brand flowers that I got at Sally's toward the beginning of the summer. I'd had my eye on them for a while, but once I had them, it was hard to decide exactly how to use them. They're real dried flowers (although I think they're dyed to give them consistent color). In the end, I decided to go with something simple, to keep the focus on their delicate prettiness.

I started with a base of Finger Paints Tangerine Tint. This polish is a medium orange creme with just a little pink. While it's nowhere near a coral, that little hint of pink keeps this shade looking spring/summery instead of creeping into fall or Halloween territory. I had no complaints with the application or pigmentation. The texture of the polish was a little thick and gooey, but despite that, it flowed on very smoothly and was opaque in two medium coats. The dry time on it's own seemed to promise to be very slow. I had no trouble at all doing all my painting, then applying the flowers and pressing them into plenty wet polish. However, once I added a layer of Out the Door, it dried and set in a reasonable 30 minutes or so.

Unfortunately, I don't think Tangerine Tint is really a very flattering color on me. It's beautiful in it's own right, but it brings out the wrong elements of my skin tone. Ultimately, I'm going to be looking for an orange creme with a cooler or browner base. Any suggestions?

Nail Night Mani - Summer Sun

This past Thursday was Nail Night, and several of us gathered with polish in tow to come up with fabulous nail creations. Here's what the table looked like.

I've had an idea for a while of doing a summer manicure using the sun pattern from my Bundle Monster stamping plates. I started with China Glaze Aztec Orange. Despite how it looks in the bottle, the texture of this polish is more like a jelly than a creme. It's a bright reddish-orange, almost exactly between the two, and really doesn't lean toward yellow or blue. It's well pigmented and gave smooth, opaque coverage in two coats. It was squishy enough to be a little difficult to control, so I did have to spend a little extra time on clean up. It came off pretty easily under scrubbing in the shower, so I was happy with it over all.

This picture show a little wear because I misplaced my camera for a couple of days. On top of Aztec Orange, I stamped suns on each nail using Sally Hansen Color Quick Gold Chrome. This polish comes in a pen-style tube with a built in brush. When I swatched this polish on my nail wheels, it was thick enough to be a little difficult to spread, so I thought it would be perfect for stamping. I was definitely right! It stamped very well, although I had to work quickly because it dried fast. Given my disappointment with the Konad Special Stamping Polish Gold, I'm very pleased to find this. Here's a picture taken the day after I did these with a phone camera. The color isn't as accurate, but you can see the stamped patterns really well.

Finally, to demonstrate the heat that made me think of this pattern, here's what happened when I went outside to take pictures.

It's so hot and humid, that my camera lens fogged up!