Space Junk!

Hello! Well, just a few hours away from the new year here in my neck of the woods and to celebrate I decided to do a super glittery look. I got my inspiration from the 'Space Nails' user Kellie pointed out to me in a comment back in November. If you're interested in seeing the original look, it's here on the Nails by Asami blog:

Space Nails by Asami

No need to say it, I know hers is way prettier! It actually looks like those pictures she got her inspiration from. But I had fun and the best part is my kids love it! They keep grabbing my fingers to see the glitter. It's great!!! I couldn't decide on just a few pictures, so I'll apologize right now for the hundreds of pictures I'm about to post. Plus a video! So without further ado, here is my take on it, which I'm appropriately naming Space Junk :)

Video of it in motion

Pretty fun looking, huh? I'm sorry about my technical issues. My camera was having a bit of trouble focusing on all the glitter every now and then :( Well, alrighty, I have to get off the computer! I hope you guys are doing well. Here's to the end of 2010 and cheers to a great 2011!

Attempted Gradient!

Hey Everyone! Today's offering is an attempt I made at doing a purple glitter gradient with China Glaze Fairy Dust and my Purple Jelly Franken (still officially unnamed). I also added some glow in the dark stickers to try and make it somewhat cute.

In direct sunlight

In the shade

Blurry a bit

Overall, it looked a lot better in real life. But I'm sure you hear that all the time, right? ;) Anyway, I wanted to thank you guys for your patience with me. I've been really heartbroken and busy here at home. Remember I told you guys my kids had a stomach virus? Well, my 2 year old kept getting worse. I mean, a lot worse. So when I took him back to the clinic, the doctor had some suspicions about a different problem and sent us to get an outpatient ultrasound. Sure enough, my baby had an intussusception. That's just a big word to say that a part of his intestine collapsed into itself. Apparently it's not too common. But when it does occur it's usually in babies who have had a stomach virus. Go figure.

They had to perform a procedure on him and he got to stay at the hospital. Which honestly, was only bad at night. He was so homesick and missed his brothers and bed. He didn't understand why He and I stayed but everyone else left. It was so truly heartbreaking. My savior was that the children's ward has a few things for kids to do. One being a video game play area. They had 4 stations set up, which were empty at night. So he got to try to play video games with one hand. He had an IV in the other, so everything he did was one handed. Here he is in his little gown hiding his IV hand:

They also had another room set up with fish tanks, wooden toys and a movie station. Plus, they had art rooms as well. Overall, they had enough to try and keep him busy. He didn't make it easy on anyone! But he's a trooper. He handled the procedure and IV really well. Anyhow, he's still suffering some side effects from that Trauma (he's a bit of a drama king) so I've been super busy giving him and his brothers the attention they need right now. But I do have nail pictures I need to post. Hopefully in the next few days I'll be able to get them up here for you guys!

Until I can visit again, I hope you all are doing well, enjoying the holidays and that you and your families are healthy and happy! Have a goodnight!

Happy Monday everyone!

Well, today is a busy day. I'm such a procrastinator that I haven't even sent off my Christmas cards this year :( I had the photos printed and purchased right after Thanksgiving and thought, wow, I'm ahead of the game this year! Now here we are less than a week before Christmas and they're still sitting on my desk. Sheesh. So I'll be addressing envelopes this afternoon and then dropping them off so they'll hopefully get to family before the weekend.

Anyhow, here is a color that has won my heart! Zoya Zara. It's such a gorgeous color, but even more so with the golden shimmer.


Well, that's it from me for today! I hope you guys are having a not so Manic Monday!

Contagious and miserable the morning after :(

Hey everyone! Well, I just wanted to check in and apologize. Last Friday I was planning on swatching and posting the Ulta exclusive OPIs. But as soon as I walked in the door from dropping my kids off at school, the phone rang. The school! Apparently my middle child vomited in the classroom, so he had to go home.

I picked him up and he, my 2 y.o. and my 7 y.o. have been sick since then. And now that it seems they might be getting better, I'm sick myself. Ew. Stomach viruses are disgusting, aren't they? Well, all are if you think about it. But the stomach ones smell so horrible. Yuck.

Anyhow, I haven't had time or to be honest, the energy to change my nails. But a few weeks ago I stashed some NOTD pictures just in case something like this ever happened! So not to leave you without any pretty thing to look at, here is MAC's Morning After nail polish from the Alice + Olivia Collection.

This one is so hard to photograph accurately. It's more green than it shows up in most pictures. Which is why in the last pic, I have a blue can underneath my fingers. To show you how green it is. This is a gorgeous teal color! Wonderful! Too bad MAC polishes chip within hours on me :( Oh well, it was pretty while it lasted!

Anyhow, hopefully this weekend will bring better health for all of us and I can be back and running on Monday. Have a wonderful and safe weekend!

Mistletoe Mischief's Jelly Goodness and Elle's Spell Swatches!!

Good Morning! I'm on earlier than usual today :) Unfortunately my afternoon will be pretty busy so if I don't post now, it won't get done :(

First off will be the 3rd and final Finger Paints polish I got from their Holiday Collection this year. Mistletoe Mischief. This polish is AMAZING! Seriously, it's such a beautiful dark green jelly, has tons of glitter and my favorite thing.......it doesn't look black indoors! You can really tell it's green and I love that about it :) Here are a few pictures to show you what I'm talkin' about!

In the shade

In direct sunlight

Then of course, I really couldn't wait to use Elle's Spell as I did my nails lastnight. So I had to try it out. I wanted to see what it would look like by itself and over other colors. So here are swatches of it. On my pinky is 4 coats of just Elle's Spell, my ring finger is 2 coats over black, my middle finger is 2 coats over red and my index finger is 2 coats over a dark purple.

In the shade

In direct sunlight

Here's a video showing both Mistletoe Mischief and the Elle's Spell swatches.

My opinion? I love it for layering! It's not as red as it is in the bottle unless you do 4 or more coats. But over a red or darker colors it looks so beautiful! I definitely hope everyone gets their hands on a bottle of this!

Also! Before I forget (again!). I did swatches of One Less Lonely Glitter and Bring on the Tinsel over black yesterday, but fogot to post them! Here are close ups of them. Each are one coat of the glitter over black.

One Less Lonely Glitter

Bring On The Tinsel

I don't know if I ever mentioned this, but the brushes on the Justin Bieber Nicoles is like the brush in the Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure polishes. I'm not a big fan to be honest. It's wider than the OPI Pro Wide and in my opinion, harder to work with. Mainly because of the way the bristles are shaped. But I know some people who prefer that brush type. Just thought I'd mention it! :)

Well, that's it from me for today. Over the next couple of days I'll probably be using the OPI Holi-Daze colors and compare them to last year's colors. Until then, I hope you guys are having a great day and see you soon!!!

Finger Paints Merry Mittens, Romanticism Ruby and some Ulta fun :)

Ha, no cheesy title today! All I could think of was Kitten Mittens, but that's overplayed. So, here is my part 2! of the holiday Finger Paints I was able to acquire. Merry Mittens.

In the shade

In direct sunlight

This color is a pretty glowy, coppery red with gold glittery. I thought the gold is what would make me like this more than the average red. But to be honest, it's so far my least favorite of the bunch. I needed 2 layers of top coat to keep it from looking gritty. Once shiny, you'll notice it would have been a pretty red without the gold glitter. I think they added it to set it apart from being just another holiday red. Well, it worked Finger Paints! Cause you suckered me into buying it. It's also a lot more coppery/brown than I'd like it to be. Indoors it takes on an almost 'not recognizable as red right away' tone.

In sunlight it's totally glowy and pretty though. But if I had to choose again, I'd probably have skipped on this one altogether. Formula was ok. A bit thick and the brush on mine was wonky with some splayed bristles! But it was almost a one coater. I think those of you who can polish yourselves very neatly can pull off one coat. I polish extremely unevenly and sloppily, so one coaters are almost never that on me.

Well, next up is Romanticism Ruby! It's also my first time using this since purchasing it (a while ago). This one is also gorgeous! But after the multi dimensional look of Mulberry Madness, I'm kind of underwhelmed. Still beautiful, though! It's a dark red jelly with lots of red glitter. I probably should have worn this one before Mulberry Madness and I'd be more smitten. But I screwed up. As you can see, it's beautiful! Just sort of flat when you compare it, you know?

In the shade

In direct sunlight

Surprisingly, this one only required one layer of top coat to be super shiny smooth! Formula was nice and smooth. Well pigmented and the brush was perfect in this bottle! Indoors the glitter is less obvious and it looks like a vampy jelly color. Still very nice in my opinion.

Here's a quick video showing bottles and nails of Merry Mittens, Romanticism Ruby and a bottle image of the Holiday Sparkle Top Coat I was telling you guys about.

And last but certainly not least for today! I took advantage of Ulta's early holiday hours this morning and stopped by as soon as they opened to pick up the exclusive OPIs from this year's Holi-Daze Collection. As far as I can tell they're not exact dupes to last years Visions of Sugarplum, Dazzled by Gold and Dreaming of Red. But stay tuned later on this week for comparisons of them. I'd like to finish the Finger Paints swatches before moving on to the OPIs. I'm so close, just one more! In the meantime here's a teaser video with what I got from Ulta. Not much, just the bottles of the 3 OPIs and Barielle's Elle's Spell.

Oh and also, I forgot to mention that right now the OPIs are buy any 2 (or $17 of OPI products) and get 1 of the Ulta exclusive holiday polishes for free. My Ulta had the Holi-Daze display up at the front counter with the registers so that the customers can choose the one they wanted for free right there. The display was pretty empty. So I'd say if you're planning on going to get them, you might want to go soon in case they don't restock! I hope they do restock though since I'll probably want a backup or two once I've tried them on.

Well, that's it from me for today! Thanks for stopping by, hopefully you weren't bored to death! But ya'll have a nice evening and I'll see you guys soon!

It's Madness I tell ya! MADNESS!!!

What is? How gorgeous this color is, that's what! It's Finger Paints Mulberry Madness. One of the few I was able to find at my Sally's from the Holiday Collection. In all I was able to find this one, Mistletoe Mischief and Merry Mittens. Plus I was able to snag a Holiday Top Coat. I really hoped to find Holly Good Times, but that one was all gone :(

Overall I'm happy with these finds though. I got them a few weeks ago and thought it was time to finally try them on! So here is Mulberry Madness.

In the shade

In direct sunlight

Video showing it in the shade and in direct sunlight

I don't have many Finger Paints colors, mainly because it's only available at Sally's and I don't go there a lot. But I have to say that I'm happy with the few I do own. This one does not disappoint! It's a deep red color with tiny red, pink and silver glitter. The red glitter is the most dominant and the pink and silver are only obvious at certain angles. But altogether, this is a mad sparkly beauty!

Like most glitter dominant colors, it dried a bit gritty in look/texture. Even with topcoat it was a bit bumpy. But another layer of topcoat on top and it was all smooth and sparkly! The formula was a bit thick and the color darkened more with each coat. But it's gorgeous and appropriate for more than just the holidays in my opinion. :)

Well that's it from me for today! I'll probably be wearing Merry Mittens for you guys next. I hope you guys had a great Monday!

Hey! Get In Lime!

Today I'm sporting one of my old favorites. I hate it, yet I love it. It's one of those that has such a craptastic formula that it makes me want to throw it out the window sometimes! But once it's on, dried and all pretty looking I can't bear the thought of getting rid of it. Although I have been told it gives me a case of the lobster hands....but who cares, right?

So, here is OPI's Hey! Get In Lime! 4 coats of it. Makes me sick just thinking of it :p

One of the main reasons I can't get rid of it is because despite the other minty greens out on the market today, this one has more blue in it and that sets it apart enough for me to keep it. Of course I'm sure one of these days a similar enough color will come out with a better formula and then I'll have no choice but to ditch this one. But until then, I'll keep loving and hating this one.

That's it from me for today. Thanks for stopping by! I hope you all have a fun, safe and wonderful weekend! I'll see you guys on Monday :D