Can't Find My Czechbook Striping

I think some of my favorite manis are striping based looks. They are just so clean and classy to me. And I love geometric shapes more than is probably normal so any time I get to make an interesting design using only lines, I'm immediately in love. 

I recently became the proud mother to OPI's Can't Find My Czechbook, which is a fabulous blue from their Euro Centrale Collection. LOOK AT THIS COLOR! unf. 

I love it. It's fabulous. Let's move one. 

As I've mentioned before, I finally bought a new bottle of OPI's My Boyfriend Scales Walls (yet another unhealthy obsession). I decided to whip out my striping tape and put my new bottles to use. 

 Happy Polishing :) 

OPI's Liquid Sand Collection and a battery charger for me!

I have been a bad blogger this week. I've been so worn out this week or busy with other random aspects of my life that I haven't gotten around to posting what I've been working on. I'm changing that now! 

Last Tuesday I got the mini set of Mariah Carey's Liquid Sand Collection! I've been intrigued by these since they were announced and I'm glad I've finally got my hands on them. The mini set came with 4 colors, all matte and in this liquid sand texture. These all applied amazingly easy, though I wasn't used to the drying time they required since I'm usually able to apply a fast dry top coat. I'll have to look into a mattifying fast dry top coat...hmm...

The first is The Impossible, a fuchsia that allegedly has star confetti inside. I think the name of this because it was IMPOSSIBLE for me to get a darn star out of that mini bottle! So, alas, starless, here it is.  

Get Your Number is a lovely blue glitter that I was pleasantly surprised by. I wasn't sure if it would be too bright blue for me, but I think it's so unique and fun :)

Can't Let Go is a fun purple, though of this collection, I think it's the hardest color for me to wear. It's not quite dark enough or not quite light enough a purple for me. Nonetheless though, it's still a lovely color. 

Finally, my absolute favorite of this collection! Stay the Night is a lovely black with red glints mixed in. The texture of these polishes is so fun and I ended up keeping this one on for the next few days because I loved it so much. 

Happy Polishing :)

P.S. I finally got my batter charger so no more cellphone photos for me!!...though that doesn't guarantee an improvement in my photos ;)

OPI's My Boyfriend Scales Walls...again...

Well, I'm officially obsessed with this color. Is it unreasonable to want to wear it every day for the rest of my life? I think that's entirely acceptable. It's just so pretty by itself...or under designs...or in the bottle...

Anyway, I had to use it again and here is the result :) I deviated a bit from my original plan with these, but I still like them. This were quick and simple with the aide of my trusty striping brush. 

Happy Polishing :)

My camera charger is MIA...

Do you know what my cell phone camera and a potato have in common? They both same the same quality photos!...and I'm only slightly exaggerating!

With my move a few months ago I somehow managed to misplace the battery charger for my Canon and I am so sad! I suppose I should be thankful that the two fully charged batteries that I did have lasted as long as they did, but I'm really not looking forward to buying a new charger (especially since the old one will turn up soon after). In the meantime, I'm going to search for a new camera app that will hopefully make better use of the alleged 8 megapixel camera that my phone has. The past few manis I did I've only taken photos with my phone, so bear with me on the quality and lack of pictures. I'm going to throw them all into this post and hopefully I'll have my camera up and running again soon! 

For this first mani, I was lacking a bit of inspiration and ended up making my boyfriend sift through my polishes and find some colors he wanted me to use. After much deliberation, he ended up choosing Butter London's Disco Biscuit and OPI's Gold Shatter. I've used Disco Biscuit before but the Gold Shatter was new to me. My mom actually surprised me with it when I was visiting home over the holidays when she found out that in all my collection, I did not have one shatter polish! She's kind of great :) 

Bryce made sure to check up on me a few times through out my polishing process to make sure I was using the colors he chose. Very important business ;)

My next mani used Zoya's Wednesday. If you're in the market for the perfect turquoise, look no further! This is a muddier turquoise which you can tell a bit easier from the second photo (sunlight makes it seem much brighter). This was just a fun simple mani and used striping tools and dotting tools to make it happen. 

 This is a simple Jelly Sandwich mani that uses China Glaze's It's A Trap-eze and the pink/purple jelly is OPI's Houston, We Have a Purple. I know so many people were raving about It's A Trap-eze when it first came out, but I don't particularly like how this looks by itself on me. That being said, it was the easiest polish I've ever applied. No worrying about streaking in any way. 

Phew! Okay! Last one! This one used China Glaze's Exotic Encounters (the gorgeous green!), Kalahari Kiss (yellow) and I Herd That (golden glitter). I really REALLY love Exotic Encounters! When I showed Bryce and told him the name, he informed me that that wasn't a real name for a polish. So I asked what it should be called...apparently "kinda green with some blues" is a much more appropriate name! Look out China Glaze polish namers, you've got some competition ;)

I added the taped Chevrons and wanted to do this green justice, but I think the Kalahari Kiss ended up looking too mustardy combined with the green. 

Happy Polishing! 

OPI's My Boyfriend Scales Walls

My Boyfriend Scales Walls is a color I would in fact scale walls for. It's from OPI's Spiderman collection and I've been lusting after it for awhile because it's the perfect off-white that has a touch of grey in it. Just stunning. Here's a quick swatch of it! :)

I had to use 3 coats to get the opaqueness I wanted and there was a little bit of an issue with streaking, but those were both easily managed. I find the longer I wait between each coat the better but for this mani, inspiration struck at about 12:30 am...so naturally I rushed through each top coat...only to have o take more time to fix some goopiness. I need to remember to take my time and do it right the first time. 

Anywho, I ended up paring this lovely color with Sephora by OPI's Caught With My Khakis Down, which, lets face it, I would have bought for the name alone. The fact that it's a beautiful green (my favorite!) only adds to this polish. Here's the look. I used a striping brush 

And! I do have a right hand! I was really tired so I decided to change things up for my dominant hand. This took me all of 5 minutes so I was in bed soon after! :)

Happy Polishing :)

Snowflakes for December!

I'm going to talk about winter again because, well, it's winter! But also because I'm going to be going to Costa Rica for 10 days starting on the 13th so I will be missing half of my favorite time of year being away! I found this nail art challenge on Instagram for the month of December and thought I would give it a go! 

Day 1 is snow and since snow is made up of snowflakes, I made snowflakes! I recently purchased China Glaze's First Mate and then found this awesome wrapping paper that completely inspired me. 

I used several brushes from this brush set and I'm sort of really in love with how they turned out. I think the whole thing probably took an hour and half and once I finished the first few nails the whole process went pretty quick. Considering this is only my second time using striping brushes, I think I did alright. Prepare for too many pictures! Muhahaha!

To start, here are the polishes in question. 

From the Left:

OPI's I've Have a Herring Problem

Ulta's Cream of the Crop

Milani's White on the Spot 

China Glaze's First Mate

Essie's Snap Happy

I love China Glaze's First Mate so much so here is a swatch of just that alone. I'm so in love with it. It's an amazing navy blue with some purple undertones and it's just fabulous. 

Happy Polishing!

Is it too early for a Christmas mani?

Autumn and Winter are by far my favorite time of the year. I love being able to bundle up on the couch next to the fire with my hot cocoa and a great book. Reading and nail painting are essentially tied for favorite things to do so don't make me choose! (Maybe I'll do some book reviews on here occasionally...hmm). Anyway! The past few days have finally begun to be gloomy and cold (only took to the end of November!..but that's what you get in California) and driving home after work with the sun already down and all the Christmas lights up really solidified the feeling that it is in fact winter! My favorite! 

I was feeling inspired by the time of year and landed on PRESENTS! Everyone loves to give and/or receive gifts and I've been slowly finding presents to give to friends and family so it seemed fitting. 

I used, YET AGAIN (sorry!) Sephora by OPI's Mr. Right Now because it is my all time favorite red and I am going to have to go buy more soon. My striping accents (you have no idea how many times I checked to make sure that didn't say stripping accents...) are Ulta's Concrete Evidence and a mini Sephora by OPI called Already Famous that came as part of their winter Tinsel Town Collection. 

Here's my Christmas Present-esque look all together. I ended up using striping brushes that I got off of Amazon. They can be found here. 

When I use nail brushes, I like to make sure that I'm working on a flat surface (table, desk, closed laptop with a towel over it?) and have both hands resting on the table so that I eliminate any shakiness. There are a two basic methods to ensure a straight-ish line. The first is to have the brush do the moving while your nail remains stationary. This one can be a little bit tricky if your brush hand isn't as steady. This method might work best for when your dominant hand has the brush. When you're painting your dominant hand (brush in your non-dominant hand), holding the brush stationary and moving your nail beneath the brush removes the battle of creating a straight line with your non-dominant hand. Through all of this, I make sure my hands are resting on the table to eliminate additional movement. 

 Happy Polishing :)

Let sleeping nails lie? Pfft!

I am incapable of just letting things be. I like to tinker. I will change my phone background every few days because I'm bored with the current one. My blog background, style and layout will no doubt change several times in the coming months. The same happened with my nails tonight. It's a wonder I've been with the same guy for 7 years ;) 

Tonight, I was especially jonesing to paint my nails but I was still completely in love with my mani from last night. So I started browsing patterns online that I could possibly make work with what I already had going on. About 3 pages in and I came upon this one: 

Source: http://www.etsy.com/search_results.php?search_type=all&includes%5B0%5D=tags&search_query=navy+blue+pillows&page=1

I could have gone with a free hand attempt at this, but I wasn't really in the mood for the potential screwup that could occur and the fallout afterwards. So I went with taping instead. Still a pretty terrible idea! 

I ALMOST gave up on this pattern and had to get pretty innovative in order to make it happen, but here is the result. 

I even managed to get both thumbs!

Happy Polishing.