Before & After: Holographic half-moon

Hello everyone!

This week's challenge in the Kimber's Amazing Challenge Ladies group 'holographic', a theme I think most everyone can love! I decided to make it twice as nice by showing some holo-on-holo action...And show you one of my favorite tricks for using French-nail stamping images. :)

I started with Mentality Tenderness, a red-based purple bastion of holographic goodness:

Mentality Tenderness, 2 coats, indirect light

 

Isn't she a beauty? Last time I showed you Julep Reese, and this is the stunning redder younger sister of Reese. This is two coats of excellent formula and application; and if you haven't checked out Mentality before, they have great prices and even better sales. :)

I decided to make a half-moon using a French nail stamping image; to do this, you just stamp across the bottom of the nail, making sure not to leave a gap at the bottom of the cuticle. For this one, I stamped using Nfu-Oh and one of the French nail images on Mash-72:

I love that delicate flower pattern. :)

I love this technique because it's easy, it's very pretty, and it makes use of those French nail images that I often don't know what to do with...

Don't forget to take a look at all of the other holo gorgeousness below. :) Hugs,
M.

Before & After: Dia De Los Muertos

(The nail wraps in this post were provided for my honest review.)

Hey there!

After finishing with the trick-or-treating and taking down the decorations and stuff last night, it was LATE. And, I had to get up ridonculously early today. That left me with no time to do my nails, but I desperately have wanted to use that cool skeleton on Bunny Nails HD-C for a Dia De Los Muertos manicure.

And then I remembered my Incoco wraps; Incoco sent me two selections from their Fall collection, one of which is an khaki-green army sort of gray, just the color I wanted to use as a base; this is Military Cut:

Incoco Military Cut

I threw these on crazy fast, so I had a little wrinkle, but it smoothed out and was no big deal. Then I used it as a base for the manicure. First I did a super quick saran-wrap background with Wet n Wild Black Creme, and then stamped over that with HD-C and Nfu-Oh 61:

He's so awesome that if he were...

...a detective, he'd be Sherlock Bones...

...French, he'd be Napoleon Bone-apart

...a musician, he'd play the trom-Bone

The wraps were a life-saver today, they saved me at least half an hour. I'm definitely going to be keeping a set or two around for situations like this.

So what do you think of my skeleton guy? Totally cool? I sort of jacked up the hands on the thumb, but oh well. And next time I'd probably do him in white, but I like the holographic version too. :)

Hugs and love,
M.

(The nail wraps in this post were provided for my honest review.)

My entries to the Barielle Halloween Manicure Contest

Hello there!

If you don't already know, Barielle is currently running a Halloween contest, open to anyone:

You can check it out by clicking here. I put together two manicures to enter and thought I'd also share them here. :)

For the first, I started out with a gradient of Barielle Green Apple and Barielle Green Opal. Then I stamped over it with Nfu-Oh 61 using HD-C for the webs, and Barielle Edgy for the spiders (same plate):

Da itsy-bitsy spiders...

The second is a skittle-based manicure, using Barielle Orange Parfait and Green Apple as the base; I stamped over the index and pinkie with Konad white using Bundle Monster BMH07; for the middle and ring fingers I used Konad White and Barielle Edgy to stamp with Bunny Nails plate HD-D:

What do you think? Do you have a favorite? Do you like either one?

No matter what, head on over to Barielle's Facebook page and consider entering the contest. Even if you don't want to enter, take a look at the entries and 'like' your favorites. If they happen to be mine, well, hey, so be it! :)

Halloween hugs,
M.

Dupe Or No Dupe: Color Club The Uptown vs. Nfu-Oh 51

Hello!

I recently showed you my picks from the new Color Club Girl About Town fall 2013 collection (which you can see here) and I mentioned that The Uptown reminded me a bit of Nfu-Oh 51...so of course I had to do a Dupe Or No Dupe to see just how close they are. :)

Here they are in the bottle; seriously now:

Nfu-Oh 51 vs. Color Club The Uptown

Pretty darn similar. The color, the rainbow around the edge, the flakiness...Yeah. But...the true test is how they look on the nail...

On my index and ring fingers I have The Uptown (two coats), and on the middle and pinkie I have 51 (three coats):

Color Club The Uptown vs. Nfu-Oh 51

Okay, so pretty clearly we have a case of NO DUPE. Let's break it down:

• The Uptown has a much higher density of flakies. You could possibly get a dupe of this look with Nfu-Oh, but it would take 5-6 coats, minimum--ain't nobody got time for that. Plus, if you're using them as a topper over another color, you'd completely lose your base color if you put on that many coats.

• The purple seems to be a bit darker (and maybe more blue-based?) in the The Uptown than in 51.

• The look is a more delicate with the Nfu-Oh, so possibly better for glitter sammichs or the like.

• The Uptown covers completely with two coats, but you'd need three for the Nfu-Oh to be fully opaque with no VNL. 

So, you could certainly justify owning both. But there is a possibly more interesting question here, since 51 has been discontinued. Is it worth hunting down one of the few remaining bottles of this flakie? If you prefer the less-dense effect and are willing to pay $12 a bottle for it (or more, since you may have to work to find it now), then, yes. But if you're okay with, or even prefer, the larger density of flakies, you can get The Uptown for about $3.00 through outlets like Head2Toe Beauty. And if you were in love with Nfu-Oh 51 and were depressed about the possibility that you might not be able to get it anymore, well, this is certainly a workable alternative. :)

Thanks for taking a look--hope this was helpful! Hugs and love,

M.

Before & After: Nfu-Oh 51

Hello!!

A while back I pulled out my Nfu-Oh 51 and played around with it a bit. For those of you who don't know, Nfu-Oh 51 is amazing and makes my heart dance with joy...it's a purple jelly with a rainbow of flakies that predominantly show a red-orange-copper sort of color:

Nfu-Oh 51 in artificial light

I was feeling the copper aspect of the flakies and wanted to accent them with some copper gleekuins (I am choosing to spell it that way in honor of the fact that Glee has managed to bring back the life into their show, and as a fan of the show, I am a Gleek!).

For this manicure, I used the dotting tool method to apply my gleekuins:
1) Apply a dot of clear topcoat to your nail where you want the gleekuin to be with your dotting tool.
2) Without applying more topcoat to the dotting tool, touch it to the top of the gleekuin you want to pick up.
3) Place the gleekuin on top of dot of topcoat on your nail.
4) Repeat 1-3 until you are done applying all of your gleekuins.
5) Cover the nail with a coat of the same topcoat.

I was also in a triangle-pyramid sort of place, but wanted to do something different with the shape, so I had them come out of the side of the nail:

What do you think? I think it's blingy without being over the top. I really loved how it came out and didn't want to take it off. :)

Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend!

Love,
M.

Oldie but Goodie: In the beginning...

Tonight's post is going to be a little bit different as I'm not going to do a review.  Instead, I thought I'd show you guys my transformation as a swatcher, photographer, polisher, and blogger.  These photos are technically part of the Oldie but Goodie series I used to do, but I'm running low on pictures to dedicate a whole post to each polish.  Therefore, I've decided I would just put them all in one post!  Get ready for some heavy picture spam!

Here's a little bit of history to go with these old pictures.  I was always a polish fiend, but I strayed away when I went to law school.  I didn't have time to do them myself, and I certainly didn't have the money to spend on getting manicures.  When I was little, I would go over to my Grannie's house all the time, and every time, we would do our nails.  She had this amazing selection of all different colors mostly from Wet 'n Wild, but including Nina, Sinful, Revlon Street Wear, and some Sally Hansen.  We would always have festive manis (and pedis for me) during each holiday.  Those are times I sincerely cherish since my grandmother has since passed away.  She's who got me started on my road to polish ridiculousness when I was just a young girl.  Even through school, I always had a pretty decently sized stash for a teenager - especially for a teenager during the non-polish mania years.  My nails were horrible, though, and still are to a certain degree, because of all of all of my health issues (Hashimotos thyroid disease, hypoglycemia, and intolerance to several different foods that I didn't know about until recently).  I peeled them.  Not bit them, but peeled them off.  They flaked, they wouldn't grow, and I had ridges.  But I'll be damned if I didn't have paint on them all the time!  Now, I try to have polish on my nails every day.  I typically do a mani every or every other night unless I'm doing a wear test, simply because I went crazy buying last year and am still trying to catch up on wearing them all.  Still nowhere close, though.  Hah!

These photos are from around this time last year when I first started getting back into polish.  Some are before I started the blog and was posting photos on Facebook and another polish forum.  Some are from after I started the blog last summer but before I was very good about moisturizing or using my camera.  At the end, I'll add a photo from a few weeks ago so you can see how I've transformed through this process!  Let's get started!! 

Zoya Minka - hated this polish!  It went on horribly and just wouldn't dry.

Gelish French marble with Tiki Tiki Laranga, Shake it til You Samba,  Stand Out, and Light Elegant.  This photo is taken with the vivid color mode on my camera, but it's pretty close to accurate for the color on my tips.

Playing with my new stamps using regular polishes including NOPI, OPI, and WnW.

More stamping practice pre-cleanup.  I actually attempted a two-tone stamp that came out pretty decently!

Gelish Jet Set.  One of my all time favorite Gelish colors.  Also, one of the few polishes my hubby bought for me.

More stamping.  I'm unsure what the base is (maybe CC Puccilicious?) topped with NOPI Pink Flower Power.  I really like this combo.

Nails by Laura (now Joyful Noise Cosmetics) Bedazzleberry White.  The glitters in this one sank, but they were fine in the regular Beddazleberry.

OPI If you Moust you Moust topped with Dandy Nails Wonderwall.  Not a fantastic combo, but I wanted to give it a shot.  Wonderwall is a bit hard to apply, as you can tell, and the glitters didn't spread very well.  I'll bet it would look awesome over a pale blue like Elevation Alphubel.

Dollish Gym Tan Laundry.  I wasn't sure if I'd like this one when I bought it, but I really really love it.  Good impulse buy!

Rainbow Honey Celestia topped with Sonnetarium Snowfall.  I <3 Sonnetarium.  'Nuff said.

My first water marble.  Not exactly a rousing success, lol.

My second water marble attemp; OPI DS Sapphire topped with Dollish It's a me Mario, and Girly Bits Star Spangled.  There are so many things wrong with this picture...

Rainbow Hone Celestia.  I'm looking forward to trying this again once I've thinned it...

Dollish Sweet Dreams are Made of Glitter.  Mint greens aren't my fave.

Rainbow Honey Pinkie Promise.  Pretty color.  Wore this at Disney World.

Candeo Glacier.  Such a pretty color and the glitters haven't sunk or turned to sludge.  Yay!

Nails by Laura (now Joyful Noise Cosmetics) Alice Who?  Pretty close dupe to Absolutely Alice.

Pretty and Polished Cancer Moon.  Discontinued, but not really my kind of polish.

Wet 'n Wild Diamond in the Rough.  Very gritty, even with two coats of topcoat.

Pretty & Polished Peace Camp.  Applied easily without clumping or pooling.

OPI Thanks a Windmillion topped with China Glaze Fairy Dust and stamped with Nfu Oh 61.  One of my all time favorite manis despite the ridiculous SV shrinkage.

Now, let's take a look at a more recent shot: Zoya Pixie Dust Nyx.  I'll have a wear test of this beauty sometime in the near future!

So there you have it!  I think I've come a long way, and if I can do it, so can you!  Just keep moisturizing, figure out the best way for you to handle your cuticles (I love my SH Cuticle Remover Gel), and keep your nails at a manageable length, and you'll be good to go!

How did you get into nail polish?  What's your story?