Gifts from Polish Art Addiction

I don't have nails to post today, although I did paint them. You'll have to wait a few weeks to see them though, as they're for a guest post on someone else's blog.

In the meantime, I wanted to share the really generous and unsuspected gifts that Leslie from Polish Art Addiction gave me. I helped her make a graphic for her blog, and she was so thankful she sent me a manicure care package. I'll admit, I got a little teary when she reminded me how thoughtful and gracious people an be. Thank you Leslie, you really shouldn't have.

In the top row, starting on the left, is Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Crushed, Leslie's own franken (my personal favorite of the lot), and an L.A. Colors purple fuchsia glitter.

In the bottom row, from left to right, is Love & Beauty (a Forever 21 brand) Baby Blue glow in the dark, Pure Ice Celestial, Oh Baby!, and Platinum. I'm really excited about the two lighter Pure Ice colors especially. Oh Baby! seems like it may be a dupe for CND's Sapphire, and the stunning Platinum next to it is so freakin' shiny! I hope it lays well.

She also included a very pretty nail file and a bottle of Seche Vite. I'm set for life now!

Seriously Leslie, you're so kind for sending these gifts! I can't wait to try them all, especially your franken. It'll be perfect for Valentine's Day just around the corner.

Dotting Tools...Nailed It.

I'm not sure if you're aware or not, but apparently, I am utterly unoriginal in naming my blog. I really should've done my research before deciding to use "Nailed It." as my blog's title. Let's take a look at the other blogs, also called Nailed It in some form or another. Interestingly, none of us were lucky enough to snag the URL "nailedit.blogspot.com". That goes to someone with a nerdy grudge. Instead, we nail bloggers were forced to choose a less obvious username to accompany our URLs. Here's just a few I've found:

• NAILED IT! - A woman from Washington
• Nailed It - Lisa in Florida
• You nailed it! - Renee in the Netherlands
• Totally NAILed It! - Sayra

Not to mention the countless other Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr accounts using this popular meme phrase as their own nail tag line.

So, to those of you who happened to weed through everyone and at least find me, congrats! Though my blog's title may actually be slightly uninspired, I try not to let my nails and designs be.

Luckily, the internet is chock-full of inspiration, which I'm happy to draw from. Using my spiffy new dotting tools, I made this beautiful pattern my muse.

Gorgeous right? And just dying to be dotted out. This being my first time using the dotting tool, I was unsure how big the dots would wind up being, so in the end, adding the stitching would've made the art a little too busy. I also swapped out the burnt orange color for a hot pink. This is the final result.

I'm pleased as punch with this cute design, and beyond excited to use more dotting tools. It also feels really good to have a complete manicure that matches on all 10 fingers again. With vacation, busy weekends and swatching, my nails haven't matched since...well I think since New Year's Eve! The glimpses you've caught in swatching wasn't consistent across both hands. Take it from a Capricorn...it feels good to have everything in its place.

I used China Glaze's Electric Pineapple and Flip Flop Fantasy for some of the dots, and OPI's Mermaid's Tears for the rest. The base is Movie Star from Essence. I really love Movie Star, but I wish the bottle I had were bigger. It's a shrimpy little 0.16 fluid ounce bottle. Is this how all Essence polishes are?

Everything's topped off with my new Seche Vite, which I honestly don't understand the rage about. It dries quickly, but not too much quicker than China Glaze's Fast Forward top coat, and it smells downright toxic. Fast Forward doesn't give me the same "If I inhale much more of this I'll wind up on A&E's Intervention" feeling that Seche Vite did. It did dry in record time though, so maybe I'll have to do a side-by-side of the two to really get the full benefit of it.

Either way, the nails are dry, protected, and shiny. Not bad for a first timer eh?

UPDATE (1/22/12):

Allie-Bee asked for this tutorial. Enjoy!

Birthday, Christmas and New Year Haul

The end of the year is always full of some serious celebration for me. With a birthday right before Christmas, Christmas itself, and all the celebration and hangovers that accompany New Year's Eve, there's a lot to be happy about. In addition, I have gifts and presents to celebrate over that I know you all will also appreciate. Of course, I recieved some lovely non-nail gifts and love from my family and friends that are also reason to celebrate, but since this is a nail blog, I'll just share those with you today.

Get ready...it's picture heavy!

First up, these are the gifts my sister gave me. She understands nail polish more than anyone I personally know, so you can only imagine my joy opening her gifts. She gave me tools:

...dotting tools

...striping brushes

...and a glass nail file.

She gave me the Butter London Dressing Table duo, Black Knight and Tart with a Heart. Unfortunately, the dressing table suffered a fatility during the 17-hour car ride, so it won't be making an appearance in today's shots.

She gave me some amazing nail art brushes I've never heard of, but definitely want more of. The formula on all of these is great, and only requires one coat. That's practically unheard of with brighter striping shades. All of these are from a company called Color Madric. They're all sort of metallic, not matte as their bottles seem to indicate.

Shown here is Design Yellow, Green, Ocean Blue, and Hologram Glitter.

Hologram Glitter really is holographic, as I tried to capture here.

Shown here are the metallics from the Metal-licious collection of Color Madric brushes. These colors are Am-Ore, Platinum Rush, Lead to Riches, Metal-Licious, Iron I Lovely, and Gold Digger.

These all appear metallic, as their collection's name suggests.

She gave me part of L.A. Girl Glitter Addict collection, including the elusive Uninhibited I've been craving since I saw Rie from Nails and Noms use it.

Shown here are Uninhibited, Jostle, Animate, and Celebrate.

A few days after getting these, we stopped by a random Rite Aid to get Andy some contact solution, and I saw a glittering display of five more colors from the collection!

I added Eutopia, Nostalgic, Purge (a new nail polish name favorite in my book), Synergy, and Provocative to my infant collection.

Now it's a glittering grand collection!

She gave me some polishes we had talked about over the phone. These are randoms I mentioned liking that she had cheap access to out there in So-Cal.

Shown here is Sea Gurl from ORLY, Good Witch? from China Glaze, Cleopatra also from China Glaze, Glass Slipper from Sally Hansen Diamond Strength (one I actually snagged for myself), Lady Luck from Sally Hansen Gem Crush and January from Julep. She didn't like that color on her, so I took it off her hands. To top this load of polishes off is the amazing Load from Illamasqua. Look at it back there. Beautifully raunchy.

Rounding out my sister's amazing gifts is my first bottle...or bottles rather...of Seche Vite.

Look at this monstrosity! It's so much top coat, I don't even know what to do with it! 4 ounces!

So that's it from her...but fear not, my haul has not ended! She did an unbelievable job of making my Christmas gifts a thrill to open. Thanks Sisser, I love you!

I mentioned in Sapphire that Andy's mom's trainer, Robbie really hooked me up with some amazing CND products. Here they are!

She included in my bag of goodies some nail care items including some tasty CND Solar Oil (a cuticle conditioner), Scentsations lotion minis in Sparkling Champagne and Clementine & Mistletoe. They smell awesome! There are also several samples of CND's Spamanicure hand lotions, in Citrus Soothing Creme and Almond Hydrating Lotion. I absolutely love the smell of the almond lotion. Finally, there are a few nail buffers, showing their support for breast cancer research with the words "Nail Community Cares" written on them.

She also included some amazing colors, including Smoochie (#518), Sapphire Sparkle (#561), Plum Truffle Sparkle Effect (#586), and Plum Truffle Colour (#585).  You've seen Sapphire Sparkle already in Sapphire.

Thank you again Robbie, I love everything!

Last but not least! We have the polishes I bought myself.

You've already seen the Urban Outfitters collection I picked up here, but here's a few more shots of those beautiful bottles.

I also snagged the entire Finger Paints Special Effects collection today at Sally's!

 Not much to look at when they're in the bottles, but I'm sure you've seen them used by other ladies. My favorite shots are from Jen at The PolishAholic, from this post showing each on its own, and this post showing them all layered together. Oh many these are going to be fun to play with!

So that's it. Can you feel my excitement through the screen? It's radiating!