Candy on my fingers!

I'm super excited for how tonight's look turned out! About a month ago I bought Gloss n' Sparkle's Unicorn Spawn from the amazing people over at Llarowe and never got the chance to use it. Well, I'm kicking myself now for waiting so long! I LOVE this polish. It's so fabulous and such a fun color for spring...or any time! 

How fabulous is that!?! Fabulously fabulous, that's how much.

 I ended up creating some nail art for these to enter into a contest for a nail polish group I'm apart of with the theme being "feel good nails" or nails that make you happy. My go to feel good nail art is definitely a striping mani. I love the process of this and while it may be monotonous to some, it's incredibly therapeutic and relaxing for me. I had originally intended to do vertical stripes using China Glaze's Escaping Reality, Hanging in the Balance and Def Defying on every nail, but after doing two of them in that fashion I realize I did not like that at all. I chose to switch it up and do the stripes horizontally, and this is what I ended up with! I feel like I've got candy on my fingers!

Happy Polishing! :)

GLITTER Stripes

Part of my Valentine's Day Haul from the Boyfriend included the China Glaze Cirque du Soleil collection (I also got a BUNCH of nail art pens that I am so excited to get to using!) and I decided to use two of the polishes from that, as well as one of my recent acquisitions from my trip to Sally's Beauty. This by far one of the sparkliest manis to day but I like it so much more than I was expecting to! I used China Glaze's Water You Waiting For and Running in Circles and Orly's Bubbly Bombshell and made super simple stripes. Easy peezy, lemon squeezy!

 Don't forget to check out the GFC Collective Blog Hop and find some other awesome bloggers! 

Happy Polishing! :)

China Glaze Creative Fantasy Swatches

After I finished my smooch mani tonight, the boyfriend disappeared again into the depths of the garage, only to reappear holding what is apparently another part of my Valentine's gift. Can it be the 14th yet so I can see whatever else he has hiding back there!?! He was pretty excited to give me China Glaze's Creative Fantasy and I was even more excited to receive it! It is such an incredible royal purple that has a very unique formula. I was going to try and hold off on swatching this since I JUST did my previous mani, but I honestly couldn't wait to try this out. It took me 3-ish coats to get to this opacity, and though in the pictures it still looks a bit sheer, in person it's hard to tell. This is definitely more jelly than opaque. I added a top coat to this because I'm impatient, but it has a really neat rubbery finish that is very unique. I'm just incredibly excited about this purple!! :D

Happy Polishing!! :D

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! 

Sparkle Gradient with BL, CG and SOPI

Today's nail art challenge is Sparkles! I'm really loving this look and it's super simple to create. The base color is Butter LONDON's Royal Navy and the gradient is made with China Glaze's I Herd that and the chunky glitter is Sephora by OPI's Only Gold for Me top coat.

I'm off to dinner. Happy Polishing :) 

China Glaze's I Herd That Chevrons with Purr-fect Plum

Happy New Year's Eve!! Well, it's still the 31st here in California so Happy New Year to anyone 9 hours ahead of me! ;) 

To celebrate, I put together this sparkly fun mani to ring in the new year :) I busted out the striping tape and got started. 

 

I used China Glaze's Purr-fect Plum (left) and I Herd That (right) for this mani and I really like how it turned out. I tried to make it look like the Chevron on my middle finger extends along the rest of the fingers. 

 

  

 

This is a pretty straight forward mani that anyone can put together. I cut thin strips of painters tape and apply it once my base color is completely dry. Make sure when you're taping to remove the tape very soon after applying the new color (in my case the glitter). If the glitter dries and then you remove the tape, your line will not be as clean as you'd like. 

 

As a bonus for today, here is my current support group while I'm slaving away over my manis ;) 

Fonzi

Fonzi and Maxwell

Cecil, the 24 pound cat! He's great :)

Feel free to share your New Years Manis! Happy Polishing 

Deborah Lippmann - Across the Universe

I was so spoiled this Christmas. Not only did I get to spend 10 days in Costa Rica, my boyfriend bought me enough polishes to keep me busy for a LONG time! Yay! He ended up getting me the entire On Safari collection from China Glaze which I fell in love with from the first moment I saw it. It's a Trap-eze! from their Cirque du Soleil collection was also included. If that wasn't enough, I got 3 new ButterLONDON's AND my very first Deborah Lippmann!!! To top it all off, I got a new Shany image stamping plate that I absolutely love. I can see myself using every single one of these stamps. I am so excited about all of them and feeling so fortunate for everything I have right now :)

I fell so hard for the Deborah Lippmann that I had to put in on immediately. I went with something simple and ended up using two of my new China Glaze's as well, Man Hunt (blue) and Exotic Encounters (green). And of course, I couldn't leave well enough alone so I added a stamp using my new plates! I really love this look...possibly because I am back to my favorite colors ;)

Happy Polishing :)