Deco the New Year!

Hi guys! I hope you all have awesome New year's eve plans. I have to wotk, so for the past 10 years I've been ringing in the new year with my co-workers. But every year we have VIP parties with a different theme, and this year is 20's Prohibition style. Give me a theme that I can dress up for, I'm all over it.

Our color scheme is black and gold, so this is what I did. First off, can I say how proud of me I am for planning ahead so that I could successfully tape my accent nail?

I originally had the black nails all taped off to, to show gold underneath but it was banana balls busy. So I went with the glitter instead and I love it!!!

Bonus: I can wear this tomorrow to watch my Hawkeyes beat LSU!   =)

I hope you all have a very happy and safe new year. I am so blessed that in these shorty 3 months I have almost 1500 page views, and I am so tickled that other people care about my little hobby.

See you all in 2014!
April

Happy Merry Christmas!

Hey guys! I can't believe Christmas is here already.  I've got an action filled two days ahead of me,  so I've been taking it easy so far. One thing that I'm uber excited for? I found an app that you can catalog all of your nail polishes! You take a picture,  name the bottle, name the brand and then label the color and polish type. You can then sort later by any of those categories.  Brilliant.  I have an Android,  so the app is Nail Polish, Your Collection and is FREE!!! I'm about halfway through it all.

Here's a screen shot of most of my Essie's.  I tried going by brand at first, but gave up and started logging by color instead.

So, anyways,  here is probably my last Christmas mani to share!! I went simple,  but yet something that would make a statement.

I like water marbling,  but I'm not a fan of an entire hand worth of it... too busy. So why not do just an accent nail of marble?

The red is my new favorite,  Signature by Seche. I then used some random red glitter top coat to make it sparkle. The green is Zoya Hunter, with a Sinful Colors green / gold topper. Both are used in the marble,  with my favorite My Boyfriend Scales Walls by OPI.

I'm really digging the simplicity plus the sparkle.

Let me know what you think!

Merry Christmas my gawkers. Have a wonderful day with your family and friends.
April

Christmas Polka!

Sooo excited my chickadees! !! Today is the last day of work for me until after Christmas.  I need to do some major baking and shopping,  so looking forward to that!

I've got a little something different today.  Definitely more my style.

I've decided to call this midnight snow globe. Base is one coat of Essie Licorice, and then a slew of white dots. Go back over the dots with red and lime green, voila! Accent nailamajig is L'Oreal Sparkalicious. This is great beginner nail art.

Ah, glitter nail, how I have missed you.


I'm sure that I will have a few more Christmas manis before the holiday,  so stay tuned.

5 pm countdown is on!!!!
April

Boughs of Holly

Fa la la la la, la la la la!!!

I can't believe that Christmas is almost here. I have another quick Christmas themed mani to share today.

I have always liked the combo of lime green with red for Christmas,  just to give the traditional a little boost. I free handed the holly on and added the stripes. I'm kind of missing some sparkle here, so I'm not sure how long I'll keep this one on. But I'm definitely looking forward to only working 3 days this week for a long holiday weekend. Which is good, because I haven't done much shopping.  Yikes.

On another note,  I stopped by Ulta on Sunday because I have a coupon for 20% off of the Prestige brands, which hardly ever happens.  I of course wandered to tge polish section and picked up 3 China Glaze,  a clearance Zoya and two Seche Vite polishes. I have never tried Seche Vite lacquers,  only the top and base coats. Um, this stuff is amazeballs. Totally one-coaters. The reds thatbi own are all jellys or crellys, and I didn't have any cremes. The Seche Vite red is so fantastic. I'm totally sold. Plus they were buy one get one free. Boom.

Have a wonderful day!
April

I'm Not a Cotton-Headed Ninny Muggins

Hello and it's Friday! !!!  My birthday week continues and I have a party tonight where we get together and watch the movie Elf. I couldn't pass up on doing a mani to match the festivities.

I've got Jovie, Buddy, Buddy's hat and then two randoms. I totally love the glitter that I found to be the embroidered stitching on Buddy's jacket.

Short and sweet post, so I'm just letting the pictures speak for themselves.

Also I got my first ever Ipsy bag in the mail! Its a subscription service that sends you sample to full size products once a month based on your profile that you fill out. What's a girl got to do to get nail polish?  The cost for this sub is only $10 per month,  and the Mirabella blending brush alone exceeded that amount.  I do not care for eyelashes though,  so that is a waste. The bombshell product is totally a weird color for me, but I'll give it a shot. Plus, you get that super cute makeup bag.

Have a great weekend! 

April

December Babies are the Bestest

Today is my my birthday!!! I am one of those people that love attention,  and one of my favorite sayings is that people should be like me, and think ABOUT me more often.  Lol. I also typically take the entire week of my birthday off, but I didn't this year. In past years I did all of my holiday baking that week, but you know what?  That's just too far away from Christmas and things went stale by then. So I'm celebrating all week instead.

I have always disliked having a December birthday.  My family members gave me the shaft and did the whole "I just combined your birthday and Christmas gifts together" thing. Yeah, no you didn't,  and gee whiz, a sweater?  Thanks. (Said from my 8 year old self) So it's sort of my mission to make December birthdays awesome.  Fail. It also tends to be severe weather on my birthday. When I turned 21? Two feet of snow. The follow up date a week later? More snow. One more week? Ice. Screw you, I didn't want to go out anyways!  Same for my 30th. Ice. It was supposed to snow last night a few inches, but it looks like we got missed.. I'm shocked because I swear there is a curse, which is December 11th.

Well regardless,  I needed to change my polish and whip up a birthday / holiday look. I've got consecutive holiday parties starting Thursday and going through Saturday,  so the less that I have to change it out, the better for this week.

I wanted sparkly and a cupcake.  Because who doesn't love cupcakes?

I typically try to disassociate my day with Christmas,  but with all the festivities this week, that wasn't an option.  Plus I can remind people that its my birthday week until I change it. Ha!

So,  nothing totally special,  but it's a nice look.

On another note,  my broken nail is growing quite nicely.  Hopefully by the end of the month I should have it back to a decent length.  Does anyone else have horrible issues in the winter with their nails just wanting to snap off and chip?  I mean, I have that issue all the time with  my pointer fingers, (you'll notice that they are always shorter than my other nails) but I'm sure that the dry winter weather isn't helpingmy nails. Tips are appreciated to get me through! !!

So cheers... and remember that December babies need a little extra love.
April

Let it Snow!

If you read my post from yesterday,  you know we we finally got some snow. People are driving like they've never seen snow before,  and the grocery store was insane. I mean, come on... it's Iowa. This happens every year. At least with the the snow,  it provides some fun inspiration.


The fabulous Wintermint polish I bought was just screaming to be the base for this snowy scape. I then sponged some white polish on the tips and then topped it off with that lovely Blue Bells Ring polish for snowflakes.

I missed to mention yesterday that my nail that was broken and then repaired snapped off on Friday.  I think it was just too far far broken. It thankfully didn't hurt. It looks all kinds of ridiculous though. It reminds me of when I used to bite my nails. And I'm not gonna lie,  a little part of me, that old nailbiter, wanted to chomp on that bad boy. Gross!  Ha!


Let me know what you think!
April

Sunday Spew

What a lazy day it is today!  We are in the process of of getting our first decent snowstorm and so I ran out before it got icky. I was supposed to meet my dad for dinner to celebrate an early birthday for me, but this dang snow has shut down bridges and roadways.  I don't want my daddy out there in this!!!


I've got what I am affectionately calling a Sunday Spew today. When I wasnt feeling too much like I wanted to blog, I still took pictures of what I was doing to share.

First up are some fall looks that I did for November.  Have you checked out the blog, Chalkboard Nails? She came up with this distressed look that I wanted to try, but I wanted it to be more fallish. You do this look by scraping off almost all of the polish off of the brush, and then dry brush it onto the base color. I added a gold flakie, because every girl needs a little glitter in her life.

Next is what I did for Thanksgiving. I believe this is based off of a tutorial from Polish and Pearls. I just saw this on Pinterest and I needed something quick and easy to do.  Since im not a huge fan of a lot of white, I went to my good ole standby, My Vampire is Buff. Then just freehanded the feathers and turkey lurkey. I kind of like his wonky eye. Lol

Now I've got the polishes from a subscription box, the I.N.N. Box by Inzuri. This is an interesting subscription,  because there are 3 collections monthly and you select which one you want. You also receive a beauty product. It's $19.95 per month,  which ends up being around $25 with tax and shipping.

I received two China Glaze polishes, and one Orly.

First, the Orly. This is Masked Ceremony which is a dark charcoal with silver shimmer, magenta glitter and silver square glitter.  I liked this in the bottle, and I love the square glitter.  I hate how it looked on me. Definitely not a favorite. The formula was fine, I had no issues.  Maybe at a different time of year I would give this another shot.

Next, China Glaze Bizzare Blurple. I was really excited about this one, since I love purple polish. It was a great color. Great formula.  I used two coats for these pictures.

Finally is China Glaze Blue Bells Ring.  This was probably the one I was looking the least forward to because I use blues for accents,  not typically a solid nail color. When I saw the bottle,  it was really frosty looking, and I psh-shawed it immediately.  I'm kind of a spaz and I swatch out all of my polishes on a swatch wheel, by brand, number the wheel and then number the bottle. I apologize to China Glaze for dismissing this color. It's stunning. I was shocked when I swatched it. This could easily be a one-coater too. I used two though just to be safe.

And then the last for this post is a little gem I found at Walgreens the other day. I went in for some cough drops and I just had to swing past the polish. After digging around the tacky perfume value sets, I saw the perfumery display from Revlon. Not a fan of scented polish. Ive had a few in the past, but nothing special.  So just looking through this half-heartedly,  I almost screamed.  This is so close to Deborah Lippmann's Mermaid Dream, and I only paid $4.99 for it. The DL version retails for $19. And then it smells like mint? Extra bonus.  These are two coats of this little beauty.

Whew! That was a lot of posting, so I hope something looked appealing in there for ya! Stay warm my friends.  I will have a winter look to share and also a birthday manicure for you all to check out. Until then, have a wonderful day

April

Christmas Plaid

Hello and happy Friday!!! Apologies for my absence in fall. Not sure why I didn't create posts... I still of course did my nails and took pictures,  so I will probably do a SPAM post of a ton of older pics.


Today I want to share my first Christmas mani. I was inspired by the Polishaholic,  which is the first nail blog I ever followed and still look up her swatches when I think about purchasing a color. I was thumbing through Instagram and saw a snippet of a red plaid thumbnail- she was actually posting a pic of a trio of mini polishes from Zoya,  but I was blinded by the plaid.  I say to myself, self- I think this is fantastic and you need to do it.


So then I had to figure out how to get a layered look with the plaid stripes. I tested it out, and this is what I came up with.

I die. I love this so frigging much that I might cry when it chips or when I take it off. All of the nails feature a base of OPI MY Boyfriend Scales Walls,  and the ones that are still that grey-white have a top voat of Essie's Pure Pearlfection . Now for the plaid.



Base is the same white, and then I used a tan color for the medium toned stripes, dark green for the darker ones, and a red on the green nail. Then taking a jelly-ish red and a jelly green, swiped that on top over the stripes. I finished them off with a thin white stripe on top.

I'm officially obsessed.  I'm so pleased how well these turned out. I can't wait to do more.

Also, I almost completely snapped off a nail the other day (thankfully on my non-swatching hand). It was bad. Prepare yourself for this pic.

I used the tea bag method to repair it. Glue the nail back in place, cut a piece of the bag to fit the break, glue that on. Buff, glue, repeat.  Add clear coat,  buff. Repeat.  I basically made a fiberglass patch. Its still hanging in there and seems pretty sturdy!  I can't believe it worked. Here's the after:

Be back soon with the spam I promised.   =)
April

Fall Leaves

Ever since I saw the Nimbus nail tutorial on the Nailasaurus' blog,  I've wanted to give it a try. It's a technique where you soak a q-tip in acetone and then thin out polish and dab it on. You can view her tutorial here.


I haven't done any fall seasonal looks yet,  so here was my grand opportunity. I used a butt ton of colors here.  Base is OPI My Vampire Is Buff. The leaves are Essie A-list,  Zoya Flynn, Zoya Darcy, and Sinful Colors Clementine. Since it was so fall-ish, I added a tree!

And of course, it was pretty windy and all of the beautiful leaves that we had are now on the ground and the trees look all haunted house-y. I typically love fall, but this year the seasons were all jacked up and fall was super short. We went from beautiful weather to snow and in the teens. Gotta love it in Iowa.

Whatcha think of my little tree?

April

It's Very Purpley

I totally fail. I have an excuse though.  My Hawkeyes won on Saturday so now we are bowl eligible! I may or may not have drank for 13 hours straight that day.  Hmm.

Anyways,  you all know I have a thing for purple polish.  I'm not sure what inspired me to mix it with gold,  but I LOVE it!

I've got so many purples here that it's probably better for me to start with the gold.  It's Maybelline Bold Gold... I saw someone else using this as their preferred stamping gold,  so I picked it up. I agree.  It's a great stamper.  Get it.

My middle finger has Pueen plate #42 with a base of OPI Do You Vant to Bite My Neck.  Vant to Bite is also the base for my pinkie finger. The gold glitter on the pinkie is Zoya Maria-Louisa.

For the ring finger,  that is OPI I'm Feeling Sashy and then I cut scotch tape with chevron scissors and it's colored in with Bold Gold.

On my pointer and my thumb (even though it's not pictured) is OPI Pamplona Purple... Which has turned into one of my new favorites. The glitter on top is an old Sephora by OPI that I got when they closed out the collection.

I'm such a nerd.  I wore a purple sequined top today that matched my pointer fingers perfectly.

Thoughts?  I think I'm getting better at stamping,  but still need some  practice.
Did I mention we got snow today? Snow. Ugh.  So it begins...

April

Ahoy, it's Dark Outside!

Boo.  Thank you Daylight Savings Time,  I now feel like I need to stay home every night and bake millions of cookies.  It's time for hibernation and hot chocolate. I'm not quite ready for this yet,  so I wanted to reminisce about the days of sunshine and sailboats.


I love nautical looks.  I'll say that again.  I love nautical!  I wanted to do a slightly different color scheme than your typical red white and blue. Navy and lime green,  ok!

You have to have an anchor and stripes.  Anything else I think is free game.  I wanted to do some polka dots but meh,  I'm OK without them.

Here's a close up of the anchor

Alas,  as I write this my damn cat is curled up on me,  I have on my warm pj's, and my fingers are frozen. How much longer until spring?

April