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 

Sparkles and Glitter and Gold, Oh My!

Polish makes everything better. Adorably cute mini Essie Fall Collection polishes are even better. And  it just so happened that these lovlies appeared on my desk yesterday!  

Not to be too melodramatic, but I LOVE these colors!

I of course had to use them immediately and went with the dark green Stylenomics as my first color. It's such a stunningly deep green that almost looks black in certain light. I love these greyed out colors. Totally fall/winter feeling to me. 

I also wanted to try another entry into the December Nail Art Challenge I previously participated in. I didn't end up doing a plaid pattern, but the next theme up was SPARKLES!!! Yee!!! I immediately pulled out all my bottles of glitter and sparkles and got to thinking. I ended up doing some taping on my thumb, and a little freehand sparkly star on my middle finger. I wish that the green of this polish showed better and that the golds showed as gold and lovely as they are in real life! First world lacquerista problems, right here. 

(Indoor lighting)

(Sunlight)

For this look, I used the following (with my favorite base and top coat of course):

Essie Stylenomics

Essie Beyond Cozy

Sephora by OPI Only Gold for Me which I purchased with their Tinsel Town Collection

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!