"Playful" Pedicure

Well I know that some people might not be huge fans of feet so if that is the case...sorry! I just couldn't resist posting some pictures of this one though because it is too awesome not to share! You might have guessed by now that I love glitter and anything sparkly. Well when it comes to my pedicures my philosophy is the shinier and more glitterous the better! I also tend to stick with purples, pinks and blues on my toes since I can't really do green without thinking fungus and I won't do pale shades because then what's the point? So when I found Essie's "Play Date" I knew it was MEANT for my little toes! So I started with two coats of "Play Date" after I cleaned up my cuticles and trimmed and shaped my nails up. (I tried to keep the pictures to mostly nails only)

In general I think this color is going to be one of my summer time staples because it is too pretty for words! I love it with my skin tone and it applied really nice and evenly with just two coats. Although, I loved this color and maybe one day if I get tired of glitter (gasp!) I would totally choose this color to do on it's own, it just wasn't enough of course. :-) So I went ahead and topped it off with two coats of "One Less Lonely Glitter" by Nicole by OPI. Despite the fact that this came from the Justin Bieber collection I do in fact love it since it is a pretty purple glitter with both small and medium glitter pieces and I really LOVE the end result of these two polishes combined!!! :-D So much sparkle and such a pretty purple! :-D

Sorry if feet gross you out. I tried to pretty mine up as much as possible for ya and keep it to just nails really, but if it still was too much for you then oh well...sorry again. Next time will be fingers I promise. ;-)

Pink Strobe Light Sparkle Wednesday!

Hi everyone! Well happy Pink Wednesday! Before I get into what I currently have on my nails I have to talk really quick about how I removed my previous manicure. (seen here) I know that I love glitter nail polish, but I also know that sometimes it almost isn't worth the beauty for the pain that is the removal. Well let me tell you about what I did last night because it was a breeze! I have read all different methods of how to easily remove glitter polish and honestly I am sure someone else has done this, but I just figured I would put it out there again. I have read a lot about the foil method, which always sounded like a royal pain to me, but if it works then it is less of a pain than just trying to scrub. I also read somewhere about using felt instead of cotton balls and that seemed like an easy idea so I went to the craft store and bought some felt for about 19 cents. I usually use straight acetone when trying to remove glitter anyways so what I did was combine all these methods together and voila! So I cut small strips of felt, dipped them in a bit of acetone, placed them on my nails and wrapped my finger tips with strips of the cheapest aluminum foil I could find. By the time I had wrapped all my fingers I went back to the first one and pulled the aluminum off (I saved mine to use on the next hand) and almost all the glitter was gone already! All I had to do was wiggle the felt around for a couple seconds to get the last bit of glitter off my nails. It was really super easy and since I just used small pieces of felt that were basically the size of my nails I didn't destroy my skin with the acetone. The only downside is that I was slightly covered in loose sparkles afterwards, but I don't know that there is really any way to avoid that.

So now, onto the manicure! To start off I did two coats of Avon Speed Dry in "Fusion". I really like this color because it has some sparkle of its own built in. Even though this is an older shade it is one of those nude/pink shades that are very popular right now so it just goes to show that certain things never really go out of style. :-) The formula was pretty good on this and even though it is a slightly frosty shade the brush strokes don't really show up. It starts off fairly sheer, but easily builds up to full opacity with either two slightly thicker coats or three really thin coats.

Of course though this didn't have quite enough sparkle for me so I had to go ahead and top it off with some more. :-) I am totally in love with Sally Hansen's "Strobe Light" so I thought that these would be a perfect pair and I have to say I think I was right! :-)

The sparkles in "Strobe Light" really catch the light beautifully and look like rainbows! This is an even more impressive polish because when you aren't in strong direct light it actually is very subtle and barely even shows except for a glimmer here and there. I really love this combination and I think it is great for Summer/Spring...now if only the weather would actually act like it is Spring! Well I hope you all enjoyed and check back soon for more! :-)

Ring a Ding Fozzie

Hello to everyone on this dreary Monday morning here in NY. :-( What happened to the beautiful Spring weather we were having? Well now its cold and rainy out so since it feels more like Autumn than Spring here is a more Autumn ish manicure. I have been dying to try OPI's "Warm and Fozzie" from their infamous Muppets collection so I decided to go for it yesterday when I was all curled up inside because it was so nasty outside. I actually didn't take any pictures of just Fozzie, but there are a million other places you can find pictures of it. I did 3 coats just to cover up the couple of bald spots here and there. I then decided I needed some sparkle to give it a bit more life and I recently found Sally Hansen's new Jewel Coat "Ring a Ding" so I thought that would pair very nicely with the bronzey color of Fozzie. So without further ado...picture time!

I did two coats of "Ring a Ding" just to get more even coverage with the glitter. I really like this one because it is in a clear base so it won't alter the color of whatever you are topping. I really loved how this makes my nails look super shiny and coppery. I topped it with a generous amount of my favorite Orly top coat "Sec n Dry" and it is pretty smooth except for the occasional piece of glitter here or there. Overall this is definitely something I will be repeating when it is actually the Fall and I hope this might help brighten your day if the weather is even remotely as blah as it is here. :-)

A "Whimsical" Spring Manicure

Hi there everyone! Well today I actually have an older mani that I forgot to post. I had this wonderfully light and springy combo on over Easter/Passover weekend. So for this one I used two coats of "Vintage Blue" from Avon, which I bought last year when it was on sale for about $1 and I love it! It is a great solid cream that is a very pale almost white blue. It is super solid and if I had been more careful I definitely could have gotten away with one coat, but since I was actually doing this at about midnight careful kinda wasn't an option. Oh and for some reason the only problem I have had with all of the Avon polishes I own is that the black caps have all cracked and come off, but since the brush still works and the bottle still closes it doesn't really faze me.

On top of that I did about 2 ish coats of Revlon's "Whimsical". I love this polish, but I definitely had to go "fishing" for glitter hence the 2 ish coats. I also chose to layer this over a solid color just because I am not a huge fan of VNL and I don't have the patience to do about 18 million layers to get this color opaque enough. :-P I totally loved the end result though since it was super cute and springy and not all that difficult in the end. :-) 

I think that I might just have to repeat this combo again when the weather gets back to being super nice since it just feels so summer/springy! I love it! :-) Just looking at the pictures seems to put me in a better mood. Hope you all enjoy it too! :-D

Happy "Sinful" Pink Wednesday! *EDIT*

Today's Pink Wednesday is Sinful Colors "Cream Pink". This is one of those colors that just looks so amazing in the bottle and doesn't quite follow through on the nail. In the bottle this color appears to be a super cute bright pink with really noticeable golden shimmer to it. On the nail it is a super pretty and bright pink, but that extra cool shimmer kind of falls flat. If you look really closely at the nail you can see a VERY subtle shimmer to it, but in general the color just looks like a very pretty and summery bright pink. Now, don't get me wrong, I still love this color since it is so bright and summery it feels like an easy pick me up, but I was looking forward to that slightly different look of a golden shimmer.

This picture here was taken in sunlight and you can really see how bright and fun the color is.

Here it is indoors and you can see it looks a bit more subdued indoors, but still a really fun color. :-)

At this angle you can actually see some of the shimmer I was talking about and I think it just makes the color look so pretty and unique.

Now I have to confess that I had a lot more planned for this manicure, but as usual life gets in the way with plans so I might be updating this later if I find time/energy to do so. :-) Anyways, hope you all enjoy and have a great rest of the week! :-)


**EDIT**

Just in case anyone who read my original post was curious about my talk of "plans" for this manicure here ya go! So I was messing around with the idea of another tape manicure, but using different finishes as well. So I was testing some stuff out on my nail wheels and honestly...I don't think this was a great one for me so I will show my testers, but know that I am calling this one a fail. :-)

This started off alright adding some of Wet n Wild's "Through the Grapevine", which is the darker berry color. Then I had to go and add to it some more with the second stripe type design in Essie "Ballet Slippers". I was all excited to try a sheer jelly on top to see if it would create some cool color or something, but it didn't.

Myself being well...me. I thought "Oh just add some glitter and it will be fine!". No. It wasn't. Sorry inner four year old who believes that sparkles make the world go round. I have to call this one like I see it and I am not seeing pretty. So there you have it. Sometimes plans don't work out because they aren't meant to. :-)

OPI I Think I have a Herring Problem

OMG! I am in love. Period. End of story. I am utterly head over heels in loooooooove with this nail polish! It is sooooooo pretty!!! I had heard a million and a half things about the whole OPI Holland Collection and at first I thought I wanted every single one of them. They all looked so springy and pretty, but after really looking at them I realized they weren't all that amazing and I wasn't really too totally in love with any of them so I thought I would pass. Then I kept seeing "I Have a Herring Problem" swatched all over various nail blogs and every time I saw it I thought about it more and more and so I finally caved and bought it. Then I had a bit of buyers remorse and left it sitting on my shelf for a while. Suddenly last night I decided it was time to finally test this sucker out and wow! It is so pretty! I love that slightly dusty blue color and the shimmer really pops so wonderfully! I did have to do three coats, but if you were super careful and didn't mind the slightest hint of a bald patch here and there you could totally get away with two coats.

There was only one small problem I had with this polish. The brush was a smidge too wide for my pinky nail so I ended up making a total mess of my finger in the process. Other than that the formula really was pretty good. The first coat was very sheer and streaky, but since I had no delusions that this would be a one coater that was no problem. The second coat definitely evened things out almost completely except I did have a few barely visible thinner patches. The third coat evened everything out completely and topped with a coat of my wonderful Orly top coat I was done! I typically gravitate towards teals and blues everywhere so this color is right up my alley. :-) Hope you enjoyed the pics and Happy Monday!

Happy Pink (and sparkly) Wednesday!

Happy Pink Wednesday! I have been sick fighting off a nasty sinus infection the past two weeks so no posts for me! I am finally starting to feel like myself again so I thought I would do something a bit special for this week. I started off doing 4 nails per hand in "French White Creme" by Wet n Wild and I had to do 3 coats to get it at all even, but there were still some uneven patches. On each index finger I did one wonderful coat of "Bubblegum Pink" by Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Xtreme Wear.

After that I used "Bubblegum Pink", "Tickled Pink" by Wet n Wild and "Sparked" by Wet n Wild to add some dots to all the white nails. At first I thought I would leave my index finger as it was, but it seemed a little out of place so I thought it could use a little sparkle to liven it up a bit. So I then did two coats of "Sparked" on my index fingers and Voila!

Overall I think it is a super fun and springy look with of course a bit of sparkle. ;-) Oh and I have to mention of course my amazing Orly "Sec n Dry" top coat that makes it all look even super shinier and oh so smooth! Well I hope you all enjoyed this and have a great rest of the week!

Happy Pink Wednesday!

I actually remembered what day of the week it was this time! Well this one is actually an older manicure that I sort of saved for a Pink Wednesday when I wasn't due for a new mani. (See previous post for why I am not ready to take off my current mani!) Now some may say that it isn't really that pink, but it had a pink undertone and it is just too pretty not to share :-) For this mani I kind of went a bit crazy layering. I started with a pale light pink from Ulta then I added one coat of a frosty white from Cover Girl's 3 in 1 line and finally to top it all off I added one coat of "Glass Slipper" by Sally Hansen. The end result was very understated, but truly breathtaking. It caught my eye constantly throughout the day and I really just loved the overall effect. 

Sorry I don't know all the names of the polishes, but the two I don't know names for are both older polishes that aren't in stores anymore and they are both easily duped.

Happy Passover and Happy Easter to everyone celebrating either/both of them! I know I will be a bit busy helping my mother prep the house and food for our Passover Seders so it might take a little while for me to be able to post again. See you as soon as I can though! :-)

Essie + Toms Barefoot in Blue

Hi everyone! I have to say I am going to be really really sad to take off this manicure because it is really amazing. A while back Essie and Toms Shoes did a promotion on Facebook where if you "liked" both companies then they would send you a special edition Essie polish called "Barefoot in Blue". Well the other day I received a package from Toms Shoes and inside was this amazingly gorgeous Essie color that to me looks like a dusty periwinkle. I did three coats of it to get it to be fully opaque and even. I also wanted to add a bit of sparkle of course so I did one coat of Essie's "Set in Stones" (one of my favorite sparkles!) and one coat of Revlon's "Stunning", which just added a bit more dimension to the sparkle. You can see some hints of multicolor sparkle in some of the pictures below. The formula on this polish was good, but as with many Essie colors it started off streaky and sheer, but it built up very easily. I personally love blues and this color is so light and springy to me that I am totally in love with it! I have gotten tons of compliments on it too since it is sort of a unique color and my little sparkle accent doesn't cover it up too much. 

On a side note, I am now completely in love with Sally Hansen's "Instant Cuticle Remover". It is a bright blue gel that you squeeze on your cuticles, leave it there for about 15 seconds (about as long as it takes you to do a second hand) then you rub it around a bit and scrape away your cuticles easy peezy and just rinse it all away! I decided to give myself a real manicure and go ahead and trim and shape my nails and take care of my cuticles too and the end result I think was fabulous. I can't wait to see how the cuticle remover does on my toes since they are in desperate need of some help. Anyways, I will be back tomorrow with another Pink Wednesday! :-)