Back from Vacation! !!

Hey everyone!

I've finally recouped from vacation and back in action.  I did get a gel manicure,  and I was so disappointed! The polish started to lift the next day.  Since I was hopping on a plane, I couldn't have her fix it. You can kind of see here where the polish didn't stick. I was mega bummed. The pattern was super cute though.  I will definitely re-do this on my own with regular polish soon.

So when I got back, I removed whatever was left still on. (Yes, it was only on for a week, and I had significant chipping as well as two nails that had large chunks that just popped off!) One of the polish groups I belong to, we do a weekly theme for Mani Mondays.  We were doing the alphabet,  but we ran out of letters!  So, then we just started to list other themes and ideas, so this week's theme is Emerald,  which was the color of the year last year. This is what I did:

This is Zoya Ivanka and my new Different Dimension Money polish as the accent nail. These were really pretty together.  Why do I love accent nails so much?? Oye.


Well I've mentioned before that I'm a polish picker. I can't help it!  I think it's from the millions of years that I was a nail biter. So I started picking at this last night, and had to replace it.  My last swap I received some super lovely Different Dimension polishes that were on my wish list,  (which is where Money came from) and this was another one I received. First two are in full on sunlight,  second two are in the shade.

This is Tulips Are Better Than One.  How pretty is this??? I fell in love with this polish when I saw a swatch posted, I cannot recall who it was from, but it was so stunning.  This polish is a super shimmery duo chrome shifter from violet to aqua to indigo. I've caught some dark pink / purple colors here too, but that's on some odd angles and on the far edges. And look! No accent nail. Well, yet. I wanted to swatch this in it's pure form before I do that.  =)


So that's all for today,  hopefully I will get back to posting twice a week now that I'm back and not freaking out about flying.

Have a wonderful holiday weekend,  and see ya soon
April

Day 8, Favorite

Hello! I very rarely post on a Tuesday,  so this is weird, ha!

I picked up the April challenge this month,  I figured why not? It had more interesting prompts than March, so I'm doing it!!!

Today's prompt is Favorite. I at first was just going to swatch my favorite polish. Well how on earth do you pick a favorite? ?? I have too many!!

So instead,  I started to think about my favorite things.  Coconut. Tickles. Herbal tea. Raw honey. (Yeah, that would be cute- a raw honey mani) I moved on to things that would translate well in polish.  Flowers. Yes.

My favorite flower is the Stargazer Lily. They were my wedding flower, I grow them, I love them. I free handed some splotchy green patches on my nails and then went in with a million different colors of polish and painted the lily. (Side note, I use all polish for my painting... no acrylic paint here).

I love, love, love this. Might be one of my new favorites. So that's two favorites in one post. Lovely.


Enjoy the day!!
April

P.S,  here are some of my favorite polishes:
-Essie No More Film
-Zoya Darcy
-Essie The More the Merrier
-Essie In the Cab - ana
-OPI Do you Lilac It?
-OPI Pamplona Purple
-OPI My Vampire is Buff
-OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls

Texture the Week Away

So I totally hate the first week of the month.  I am very active in several committees and boards,  and they all meet the first week. I'm exhausted.  I did this mani earlier in the week, but then didn't have time to blog about it.  I changed my polish because I have the worst habit of if my polish chips, then I tend to bite or peel the rest of it off.  Especially if it's a glitter,  I totally bite it rather than remove it.  I'm terrible.  *PSA... Kids, do not try this at home!*

Anyways,  I stopped by Walgreens to pick the DH up some cold meds, and I had to wander by the beauty section.  Have you seen L'Oreal Gold Coast collection??? I think I fangirl squealed a little when I saw these. They are textured polishes,  and also have some chunky glitter in them. I spent almost 30 minutes trying to decide on which ones to purchase.  I'm not a huge fan of texture polishes,  so I hem-hawed over these forever.  One of my favorite texture polishes is OPI'S Alcatraz... Rocks! And it's a dark purple with major shimmer in it. Its beautiful,  and I thought, geez April.  These are kind of close to that beaut. Well dammit, I bought 3. This one is Sexy in Sequins.

This is only 2 coats, but I probably could have gotten away with one. I used a super ugly but pretty China Glaze green, Budding Romance for my accent nail and topped it with a gold stud.

Now I got super frustrated that my camera wouldn't pick up the duo chrome amazeballs shimmer this, so I took it inside.  You can see it in the bottle what it looked like on the nail. Stupid camera.  Why couldn't you photograph like that???

I snagged up two other colors, and Too Dimensional is one of the prettiest shades I have ever seen. It also is a one coater. Hidden Gems was ok. This is the one I argued with myself over forever and I ended up purchasing.  Its weak sauce on the first coat,  but full opacity on the second.

Here's another shot at a drugstore brand of a texture polish.  Will you try it out or pass it up?

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

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

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

Day 21, Inspired by a Color

Today starts the last section of the 31 Day Nail Polish Challenge, and they are mostly "inspired by" prompts.  The first inspiration is a color.

I love color. I love almost all colors, and I like to miss-match them in my wardrobe.  I also color code EVERYTHING. My coworkers laugh at my OCC with color coding my days of notes. I use a different color every day (going in rainbow order, of course) and then I can look back and say, oh yes. That was the orange day, September 17th.

My niece,  Pickle, used to make it a goal to know what all of our favorite colors were. I didn't have the heart to tell her that I changed about 5 years ago from pink to green. And I recently purchased a new green polish.

I pulled out all my other green polishes and of course, wanted to go dark and light.  Inspiration struck to do a saran wrap mani. (Please forgive the pictures as it was cloudy outside this morning and my pics reflected everything! )

My base coat is Zoya Hunter, and the light color is Essie's The More the Merrier. After the base coat is dry, you swipe on the top color and while it's still wet, tap it off with scrunched up saran wrap.

I have to admit it... I'm in love with this. It looks like a mix between tie dye, algae and marbling.  And throw in some Jackson Pollock splatter art. I just adore this.

I cant wait to try this with other colors.

If you had to choose one color to wear the rest of your life, what would it be?

Cheers!
April

On the 12th day, stripes!

You know, for someone that doesn't care for white nails, I am sure doing that a lot during this challenge.

Day 12 is stripes. I had seen a technique similar to this not too long ago, but wanted to make it fresh. I free hand painted horizontal stripes using 4 different colors that were bright and fun. Wait for that to fully dry, and then added striping tape in various patterns.  I then topped it off with a coat of white.

So bright and sunny! 

Here's what I liked about this one... it was fresh, bright,  perfect for a fun warm day. The bad? There are two coats of white polish on here, and the green color peeked through.  Yuck. Maybe white was a bad choice.  This would have looked great with black as the top color, but then it would have looked like the example I saw so long ago. And no one likes a copycat. 

I definitely need some more practice with striping tape.  It's best to remove the tape quickly after applying the overcoat, but with using white I needed two coats. And that's why you see some wobbly parts. 

Whatcha think? Are you an expert striper? 

April