My own corner of the web where I can show off the things I do with my nails.

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

A great idea FAILED!!!!

I saw an amazing example of nail art at The Daily Nail that I thought I could do. Sadly, I failed at it. However, I still like it and think I will try again at some point, learn from my mistakes. Here's a crappy cell phone pic of my fail!







Loves!

Friday, August 26, 2011

My First Franken

Last night I was perusing my usual nail blogs and came across Cristina's franken of Deborah Lippman's Candy Shop. Her franken was pretty, and I've been looking at other swatches of the trio of glitters that come in the Get This Party Started pack. However, I cannot justify the cost of the trio, $42!!!! WTF? Who can afford those prices? Deborah Lippmann has some seriously beautiful glitters and polishes but I have one and cannot see myself buying another on my budget.

So what's a girl to do? Make her own, of course! Here's what I used:






Wet 'n' Wild: Dreamy Poppy, a medium pink cream
Milani: Gems, a known dupe of Happy Birthday minus some of the tinier square glitter DL has (and honestly in swatches I can't tell the difference)
OPI: Alpine Snow

And here's my technique:
I added a few drops of pink to the bottle of Gems and shook. I thought I was satisfied and was almost content to let it be. However, after wearing it for 10 hours I decided the base wasn't milky enough so two drops of white were added and voila! my franken was complete!

Here it is! I used a base of China Glaze Strong Adhesion Base Coat, two coats of my franken followed by two coats of Seche Vite to cover the texture of the glitter. I love how the glitter seems to float in the pink. 

 
 

I also made the black from this collection, I'll properly swatch it at a laer date. Here's what I used for that though:
And finally, for fun, a quick picture of my skittle mani from swatching. My thumb has just Gems over it, pointer is Silver Lining, middle is my pink franken, ring is my accent nail from my last mani, and pinky is the black version.


I'm thinking of calling this Dulceria. So, what do you think of my first franken? Have you ever made a franken before?

REMOVAL EDIT: Well, it's glitter. It's a pain. I used the foil method and still ended up with glitter everywhere. I would not recommend removing this by swiping with remover and a cotton pad over and over. You will lose your mind trying to get it all off. I ended up scraping some of it off with my fingernail. Not sure if the prettiness is worth the PITA-ness. Wait, I'm sure, it is.

Loves!

My Julep Maven Box

Hola!
I wanted to share with you all the contents of my Julep Maven box. Julep is a salon brand polish that now sends out monthly subscriotion boxes of polish and other hand related items. It's simple to join, you just go to www.julep.com, click on the Maven link at the top and take the quiz. OR, if you really love me, you can go to this link and I get $15 to spend at Julep. What a nice referral program! Anyway, let's get on to the picture spam of what I got!


This is the lovely bag it came in! What a cute ribbon. It also came with a personalized and hand-signed welcome letter. I thought that was a nice touch!


Here's what was in the bag. There's a full size GLycolic hand cream, a sample glycolic hand cream, and sample hand lotion, and three polishes. One is Cameron, a bright pink, there's Alfre, a greyish purple, and a strengtrehning treatment. These are all full size for Julep, which is .14 oz. This is about half the size of most regular polishes though.
Here is a really awful picture of the three polishes. Wow, I'm ashamed to even post this. At least my background is in focus.

Overall I'm please with my $9.99 I spent. I haven't tried the polishes yet so I can't say how they perform but I got at least $40 worth of product for that $10, not too shabby.

Loves!

Thursday, August 25, 2011

Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure- Silver Lining

I have tons of untrieds. I decided that until I've worn them all I will try not to buy any new polish. (Caveat: if Zoya has a sale I will buy. Also if I find the Halloween Sally Hanson nail strips)

Today I bring you Silver Lining. This was something I came across on eBay while looking for Problem Child and Barracuda. For some reason I can't find the special collections in my area. Luckily I can usually find them for less than retail on eBay, including shipping.

This color is a lovely silver foil with blue flashes. Actually, I'm not sure if it's a foil or a microglitter, but it's purdy. When I went outside I seriously needed sunglasses this stuff is so reflective. I also had a very hard time capturing the blue flash in this polish. It's almost turquoise, very pretty and subtle. This is three coats and the visible nail line is much less obvious in person although still there. There was no dragging or bald spots until I used a top coat, which was an old Revlon with a funky smell and texture, almost oily.

One thing I will add, and it's not the fault of the polish per se, is that the clean up of the bit I got on my cuticles was a beeyotch! It didn't really clean up so much as just get spread thinner. You can see this in my pictures. With better technique this can be avoided.


I decided to add an accent finger the next day. I used OPI colors: I'm Not Really a Waitress, Need Sunglasses?, Who the Shrek Are You?, and Blue My Mind

Something I want to do that I don't see other bloggers do is comment on removal. I'll have to either edit posts or comment on the removal in the next post. What do you think I should do?

REMOVAL EDIT: Removal was not bad on this, it was a bit gritty. Interestingly though, I thought I'd been seeing flashes of purple in this polish but couldn't capture it and no one else saw it. However, on removal the purple flashes really showed through!

Loves!

Saturday, August 20, 2011

How it all got started

Let's begin at the beginning (I have always hated this, where else would you begin?). As a little girl I sometimes painted my nails. In high school in the mid 90s I found some unusual colors at Claire's. I'm talking a lavender, dark green, navy blue. I had only once seen colors out of the pink/red/nude spectrum before and that was on my older neighbor in the 80's. I grabbed these new colors up and proudly sported my crazy nails. They got tons of comments, especially the green. Then on a college scouting road trip my dad slammed the trunk of the car and shattered two of my bottles. It was devastating.
Flash forward about 12 years. My polish collection was minimal but I still was mostly keen on the non-traditional colors. I was a bridesmaid in my best friends wedding and she paid for the bridesmaids to get manis and pedis. The salon had an OPI the likes of which I'd never seen before. It was a light lavender with a holographic sparkle. I fell in love and scoured eBay for it. Of course I didn't think to write down the name so I ended up buying about 10 bottles of different shades of lavender violet and purple from eBay until the ONE, the precious, showed up in my mailbox. It was Sand-erella and it quickly became my favorite polish.
About January 2010 I discovered Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure polishes and loved them! They actually stayed put on my nails! I have about 30 of these now and they are amazing!
The downfall of my habit was when I discovered nail polish blogs! What? Are you kidding me that people actually get lacquers to review from the companies? And there are so many brands I didn't know about but suddenly needed? How do I get in on this? Well, here I am.
I need to find a good spot and time to snap photos of my nails, I redo them every three days or so. Part of the problem is I work graveyard so I tend to sleep through most of the sunlight daily. I promise to start posting more pics soon. Until then, make do with today's nails, Zoya Venus topped with Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Strobe Light. As you can see, I'm still fascinated with the holographic glitter! (please excuse the cell phone pic!)
Loves!