Golden Owls

I realize my title sounds like a fantastical adventure starring animated, talking, anthropomorphized owls, but it's supposed to be a clever way of combining the two colors I used for this manicure. Clever, I know.

You're looking at L'Oreal Paris's Owl's Night with a half moon at the base using Flower Girl from Sinful Colors. I used that color last night on my friend Chloe's nails and didn't have the heart to stuff it back into a drawer quite yet.

Here's to you Flower Girl.

Girls' Nails

Frozen fingers is not fun. Repeat. Frozen fingers is not fun. Knowing how cold everyones' toes and fingers were getting yesterday and today, I invited my friends Chloe and Bree over for some R&R and manicures. I've never really done other girls' nails before, but it was fun! And their right hands looked much better than mine ever do.

I let both girls rummage through my stash of nail polish, and offered advice on what went well together and what might look a little strange. In the end, they both chose darker colored bases with shiny accents. (See...all girls do like sparkles!)

Here on Bree's hands is China Glaze's First Mate with a shiny layer of Snow Globe on top. For her moon thumb, I painted Sally Hansen's Insta-Dri Lightening using the smallest paint brush I could find. (I really need to invest in some real nail polish brushes for this sort of detail.) We went with the moon because I had at least two major brain farts last night. I painted all of Bree's nails, except for her thumb, for some unknown reason. So we decided to paint it differently, since it clearly wanted to be different anyway.

Next up are Chloe's nails.

Chloe opted for Sally Hansen's Insta-Dri Mochachino, with a stripe of Sinful Color's Flower Girl (a smaller nail art brush). We varied the position of the stripes to spice it up a little. I loved this color combination she picked, and actually got a little inspired by it for my own manicure.

Stealing Chloe's idea, I did a french with a twist. Well...I guess a french with a stripe. The stripe and tips were done using Sinful Color's Bad Chick (white) and Essie's Sand Tropez. I absolutely love Sand Tropez. It's subtle and sort of matches a natural nail color, but it's also a two-coater. Some french bases I've seen are too pink and shimmery. I definitely prefer this solid creme you're seeing. Cremes are hands down more my style than anything with shimmer, like Chloe's Mochachino. That's why I recently ordered the OPI Pirates of the Caribbean collection on Amazon, and am on the lookout for Illamasqua's Load (see a swatch of this at Kayla's blog). Gorgeous huh?

Now that you're in love with Load, take a moment to connect that word to that color. What does it mean? It's a lit....OH! OH MY! OH YEAH!

Kinky Illamasqua. Kinky.

Believe Me, It's Real Snow

Good morning! One of the best things about where I live is the weather. It can be 70 degrees one day, then freeze over and snow the next. And snow it did. Welcome to my winter wonderland.

We've gotten about 6 inches or so, judging by the piled up snow on the railings of that fence you see there. It's beautiful.

So to match this chilly day, I painted some chilly nails. Blue means cool, and sparkly mimics the snow flakes, so take a look at Wet n' Wild's Believe Me, It's Real over OPI's Swimsuit...Nailed it!.

Camera shake due to freezing temperatures.

One thing I noticed about Wet n Wild's new Ice Baby Collection is how much the glitter eats away at the top coat. What you see there is two layers of top coat, and I still don't get that smoothed out top coat look we all know and love. Sucks, but the sparkle makes up for it. I managed to hit up a Walgreen's that had every single color from the collection. That was one of the only collections I was dying for, so imagine my excitement.

Speaking of excitement, check out Riley in her element. She adores snow apparently, even though this is only her second one.

The chicken wire on the picket fence was to keep a certain tiny puppy in the yard when she was small.

I'm thinking about running back out to Walgreen's and getting another set of the collection. I have a feeling this limited edition collection will be on girls' lemming lists once it's sold out. We'll see!