Happy Pink Wednesday!

Happy Pink Wednesday everyone! So I was so overwhelmed last week that I forgot to join in on all the Hunger Games fanaticism! A group of my friends and I actually went to the midnight opening show in Manhattan (which could account partly for why I had such a crazy week) and in honor of the movie I had been trying my hardest to get my hands on "Dress Me Up" from the China Glaze collection, but alas I was unable to find it in stock anywhere around me. I was able to find "Luxe and Lush" so I got that and to try and mimic the dusty rose color that "Dress Me Up" was supposed to be I bought "Artificial Sweetener" from Orly's new Cool Romance collection. I kept picking this color up and putting it down thinking I must have something already in my collection that would be considered a dupe, but I decided to get it anyways since it kept calling to me. After using it once I am really glad I did buy it! I love this color so much! It has a great formula and is easily opaque in two coats and it has a surprising amount of shimmer on the nail considering how subtle the shimmer looks in the bottle. 

After two glorious coats of "Artificial Sweetener" I used one coat of "Luxe and Lush" just to give it something from The Capitol. I have to say I am a totally flake-a-holic, but this one didn't quite do it for me. This isn't a flakie in the "traditional" sense, but more chunks of foil suspended in a thick clear base. The base was REALLY thick and sort of difficult to manage, hence the uneven distribution of flakies. I did love the overall effect, but I don't know if "Luxe and Lush" will make it in my stash or if it might fall by the wayside a bit. I also had to do two thick coats of my clear topcoat because the foil pieces are rough and not all of them  wanted to stay flat on my nail. Even with the extra layers I was able to peel off a piece of foil here and there, which didn't make me happy.

Anyways, I hope all of you who saw the movie enjoyed it more than I did since, honestly, I didn't really love it for all the hype it got I thought they could have done a lot more with it. I am sure it is worth seeing it in the theater, but it was certainly not worth it for me to see it at midnight, which meant I got two hours of sleep before work the next day.

Oh well! I hope you all have a great Wednesday! :-)

Matte + French + Polka Dots = :-)

Hi everyone! Sorry it has been a bit since my last post. I had a super busy week last week so I asked off for Saturday so I could spend the weekend visiting with my sister. It was so great that I got to go visit her and have a mini vacation I had an awesome time relaxing and playing with  polishes! I have really been wanting to test out the new NYC colors matte top coat that I recently found at my local Target so that's where this mani came from. :-) I started with "OPI Ink" by OPI, which is a deep purple with a subtle pink shimmer to it and then topped it with the matte top coat.

It looked pretty neat as a matte color since it made the shimmer more noticeable, but I refuse to wear a matte nail polish as is because they wear so poorly. Whenever I have worn matte colors in the past they are chipped beyond belief within 24 hours. So I went ahead and did tips with clear just so it would protect them from chipping a bit.

After adding the glossy tips I really did like the look, but it just wasn't quite dramatic enough for me so I decided to add some polka dots just to make it a bit more fun and textured. 

The end result was a really cute, fun and funky pseudo french. I really love that I can now play around with textures even more just by using this really easy and cheap matte top coat! :-) Well I hope you all enjoy and tune in for Pink Wednesday this week! :-)

Pink Wednesday Take 2

Well I knew it was going to be hard for me to keep up with this whole "Pink Wednesday" thing just because sometimes I forget what day of the week it is! Working 6 days a week and hardly ever leaving the house for anything makes it a little hard for me to keep track. This week however, I did have some pink polish with me and I was in need of a new mani last night so here ya go! I used three coats of the ever so popular "Popular" by Revlon. (hehe) With three coats it is still not completely opaque since there is a small bit of visible nail line leftover, but it isn't bad and next time I know to use a pink base underneath for full opacity. I also topped it off with one light coat of "Glisten to Me" by Brucci, which added just a hint of blue sparkle at certain angles.

Also, I love this light pale pink now that it is officially Spring it just fits! Well, I hope you all enjoy!  :-)

Belated St. Patty's Day Manicure

Happy Belated St. Patty's Day everyone!! Unfortunately I spent most of my St. Patty's Day yesterday at work dealing with a sick baby so I didn't really feel up to painting my nails or really doing much of anything after I left work. So here is my slightly belated St. Patty inspired manicure! I was going to go for the four leaf clovers on all my nails, but then I realized while I was practicing on my nail wheel that I would have a LOT of trouble doing them on my actual nails. So instead I decided to just try my best to make it work for one accent nail, which I think I didn't do too badly with. On my other nails I decided to go with a more pot o' gold at the end of the rainbow on some green kinda feel. So I used Orly's "Wandering Vine" for the green (including the clovers) and this is one of my favorite greens especially since the formula is so fantastic! The first coat was streaky, but the second coat went on like butter and covered flawlessly. Then I topped that with one coat of Wet n Wild Fastdry "The Gold & the Beautiful" just to give it some sparkle and some of that lucky golden St. Patty's day feel. :-) On my accent nail I used Sally Hansen Hard as Nails "Green with Envy", which is a great spring/summer green that is just bright and beautiful. Then as I mentioned I used "Wandering Vine" for the clover, which I did (not entirely successfully) by using my dotting tool to make small dots and dragging them down to connect them in a heart shape for each petal. After that I topped it all of with my favorite quick dry top coat Orly's "Sec N Dry" and that was all she wrote! :-) Hope everyone enjoyed their St. Patty's day festivities! (safely of course)

Here is a picture of my more successful clover on my nail wheel just to show I can do it, but not so much on my own fingers and definitely not so much using my left hand...oh well! :-) Have a great night everyone!

Gold and Ready!

Happy Daylight Savings time to all who have to deal with it! I always hate the first morning after you "spring forward" and lose an hour of sleep. So to make myself feel a little better I made sure my nails looked really cool for today. I wanted something a little more sedate since I have a meeting to go to at my new school. So I started with Essie's "Armed and Ready", which is a color that I fell in love with when looking at swatches online and boy does it live up to the hype! Here is a picture of just two coats of that.

I had difficulty capturing the true awesomeness of this color since it is a more olive toned brown base with a ton of gold-bronze shimmer to it. It really looks just as amazing on the nail as it does in the bottle, which is not normally the case. Also I was shocked and amazed by the formula of this color. Typically I have a problem with Essie polishes because their formulas are so thin they take minimum three coats. This polish however was just about perfection in two coats! After I got two solid coats of this color on I really wanted to step it up and add a bit more gold tone to it by topping it off with one coat of Essie's "As Gold As it Gets", which is an amazing gold flake type top coat. So here is the final product!

I am mesmerized by the final look of these two polishes. I love each of them separately, but together they are even more amazing! Anyways, I hope everyone who is dealing with the Daylight Savings time switch has a great day and keep the coffee going! :-)

My first Pink Wednesday!

Hi there everyone! Well I know a lot of nail bloggers do a special "Pink Wednesday" manicure every week and I think I am going to try and join them. I won't promise that I will be able to post a new pink manicure every week, but I will try. So here is my first attempt! A while back I read here that Claire's had a dupe for Deborah Lippmann's famous candy shop polish. I would love to own a bottle of Deborah Lippmann's Candy Shop so I could tell you if this is true or not, but I don't. So I figured I might as well go out and buy Claire's Candy Shop anyways. So here it is for your viewing pleasure. Claire's "Candy Shop".

I actually used one coat of Sinful Colors "Soulmate" and then did one coat of "Candy Shop" because I wasn't crazy about how it looked with two coats of "Candy Shop". When I did two coats the glitter pieces clumped together a bit and it was too much of a hassle for me to spread it out. Since "Candy Shop" is a nice pink polish packed with glitter two coats would have been just about as opaque, but the glitter was being a bit of a pain. I did like the formula though with one coat since I didn't have to dab or do anything much to get an even coverage of glitter. Maybe if I had let it dry completely between coats the glitter might not have clumped as much...I might have to try this again just to see. Anyways, from what I have seen of Deborah Lippmann's version it seems that Claire's "Candy Shop" is a dead on dupe. :-)

I hope you all enjoyed my first Pink Wednesday!

Twisted + Club Prive

Good day everyone! Well I had a fantastic nail polish fun filled weekend! My sister came down for the weekend and she brought her own stash with her so we did some swapping and some swatching! So here are some pictures of the manicure I ended up doing using some of her nail polish. I used Loreal "Club Prive" and then added a layer of Finger Paints "Twisted" on top just to give it a little extra something special. So here are the pictures!

Club Prive is a dusty teal sort of color that I love. It is a more adult and toned down version of most of the teals or mint greens I have seen. The formula was a little on the thin side, but not entirely unmanageable, I did three coats for full opacity. Although Loreal claims this polish is a long wear polish that gives you up to 10 days wear you can already see some slight tip wear and I only did this manicure yesterday. I used my normal  Orly base coat, but I actually tried Seche Vite's top coat for the first time so I am not sure if it is the nail color or the top coat that has caused the premature wearing. Overall I love this color combination, I was not too impressed with Loreal's formula and I am slightly disappointed by the wear time as well, but again I am not sure where the blame lays for that. Anyways, check back on Wednesday for my first ever Pink Wednesday post and have a great day everyone!

Purple feather mani

Happy Thursday everyone! Well a couple nights ago I went to Michael's craft store. This is one of the many stores that I hardly ever allow myself to enter because they are just too dangerous for my wallet. I went with a specific shopping list in mind so it wouldn't turn out too badly for my wallet and I was actually fairly successful! So I was able to find a bag of bright colored feathers, which is something I have been looking for recently.

I have seen tons of pictures online of manicures with feathers on an accent nail or even full manicures covered in feathers and I love them! I think they are unique and beautiful so I have been dying to test it out myself. So last night I decided to go for it. So I started with two coats of Sinful Colors "Amethyst", which is a very pretty deep purple. Then I decided to go with a purple feather on my middle finger as an accent nail. So all I did was paint a coat of Amethyst and immediately after I placed the feather on the nail while the polish was still wet. I then just lightly pushed the feather down with my finger and waited for it to dry. After it was dry I trimmed whatever excess was hanging over my nail and used two layers of topcoat. It was actually really simple to do so here is the picture.

As you can see the end result is actually really subtle here because the feather blends into the background color almost too perfectly. I definitely think that this is something I will be doing again although next time I think I will be choosing different colors. Until next time then have a great day!