China Glaze swatches

China Glaze 5 Golden Rings. Five coats. While I liked how this looked, I would probably layer this the next time I wore it.

China Glaze In Awe of Amber. Four coats. The formula was a bit runny and thin. 

China Glaze Mummy May I. Three coats. 

China Glaze Sugar Plums. Two coats. I think my bottle evaporated a little so the formula was a little thick, but nothing a little thinner didn't fix. 

American Apparel Supernova over Sugar Plums. One coat. The glitter looks a bit curly in the bottle but is fine on the nail.

Gettin' funky with magnets!

For the past couple of days I've been playing around with China Glaze's Magnetix collection and have had horrid results with the magnet. Finally, I had an idea that made me not hate the magnet so much - a Funky French! 2 in one month?? That's unheard of! But I'm pretty proud of this one. I still can't draw on even and straight lines to save my life. But it doesn't bother me very much.

What I did here is used Essie's Tennis Corset as a base, then layered 1 coat of American Apparel's Meteor Shower on top. Once that was all dry, I drew on the black tips and put China Glaze's Cling On over the black. Well, most of it anyway :p Then used the star design on it. Not very uniform, but I think it came out pretty nicely. What do you guys think?

Quick Video

Also, just in case you're wondering what it looked like with just the black tip, I took a few pictures of it. My hands were wet because I'd just washed my hands, so please excuse the water droplets and lack of moisture around my heinous cuticles.

Well, that's it from me for today! I've modified the magnet and am in the process of learning how to properly use it. It seems so easy, but there's definitely a learning curve, I think. Regardless, thanks for stopping by! I hope you're all doing well and having a wonderful day!

Funky French strikes again!

I felt like a funky french today. I don't really do them a lot, so this is kind of hard for me to get to look decent. Normally, in my head, everything looks a lot better. Lines are crisp and perfect and the colors look a lot better. Of course, translating that onto the nail is a lot harder. So my apologies for the wonky looking tips. But what I did here was use Illamasqua's Load as a base. I needed 3 coats to get rid of any streaks. Then I layered 1 coat of China Glaze's White Cap on top of load and matted them with Essie's Matte About You. Then I attempted to do some black tips. I free handed them, so...yeah. Sorry again about the tips. Other than that though, I think it looks pretty nice. So, today's nail - funky french.

In direct sunlight

In the shade

Quick Video

Well, that's it from me for today! Thanks so much for stopping by. I hope you're all doing well and having a great day so far :D

So I'll be lighting my candle tonight :)

Well today's post is a special one for me. I don't know if any of you are aware, but today is a day for remembering our babies and/or pregnancies lost. As someone who lost a baby in utero a little over 3 years ago, this day is very near and dear to my heart. For the longest time I felt as if not speaking/writing about it would help me to forget it. But the truth is I felt so alone because I didn't share. Once I was finally able to speak about my pain, I saw that there's more people who've gone through the pain of losing a baby and/or pregnancy than I thought. Which, is really sad if you think about it. But it was comforting to know that all my feelings of uselessness, sadness, regret and pain were not feelings I felt alone.

There's actually a website dedicated to the awareness of 'remembering our babies' and if you're interested, you can view it here.

So in honor of the little boy I lost, I am lighting a candle at 7 p.m. and tried to interpret the light blue on my nails. I used OPI What's With The Cattitude? I then decided it needed a ribbon that I wasn't very good at freehanding. But I drew it on with American Apparel's Rose Bowl. Which also sort of backfired, because someone earlier thought this was a breast cancer manicure. Which to be honest, is cool. Not only is that another great thing to be aware of, but I thought it was very breast cancer like myself.

Plus, since I'm not very good at nail art and trying to put a second color on the ribbon would totally screw it up with my unsteady hands, I decided to leave it. I know what it means and that's really what counts, right?

Indoors

Outside in the shade

And here it is with the ribbon.

Also, I have to apologize for the leftover residue of Valerie in my cuticles. I did this lastnight and honestly could not see any leftover polish in my cuticles. Of course today I saw it when cropping my pictures, but by then I was too lazy to retake any pictures :(

I hope you are all doing well. And to anyone who has lost a baby and/or pregnancy, know you're not alone and it does get easier to get through the days :) Have a great weekend everyone and thanks for looking!

It's the most wonderful time of the year!!!

Football season, that is! Yes, the time of the year when you can go enjoy yourself with a great meaty meal and beer at tailgate parties, or go to the store wearing your team's jersey and no one will look at you twice! So in honor of my favorite team playing tonight (Go Chicago Bears!), I decided to show my spirit by matching my makeup to my Jersey. I have a #54 Urlacher jersey that I wear during their games. And this was my interpretation of a Bear's spirit manicure!

Now, first let me apologize for the obvious booboos. Please keep in mind I did a very hasty job on this because I was in a terrible rush. Not only did I put the top coat on a bit thick (you can see the bubbles) but I dinged my nail with the camera lens and they're not dry yet! ARGH! I didn't invest the time to try and fix it or change it though because it's only going to be on for today. I think considering I'll be wearing orange eyeshadow with blue liner and orange and blue nails with my orange and blue jersey, that the bears will get my good vibes all the way at Soldier Field and won't mind one bit :p Of course we know, if they lose, it'll all be my fault for being such a jerk :( I do hope the Bears win tonight. Go Hester, Go Urlacher, Go, Go, Go Bears! :p

Direct Sunlight

Indoors light without flash

Here's a short video showing how shiny they look!

I used American Apparel's Mount Royal as the base blue, then I did a stripe of orange with OPI's Hot & Spicy and put a thin coat of OPI DS Treasure on top of that. Then the shimmery blue stripe is Orly's Lunar Eclipse and the dots of course are also OPI DS Treasure. That's it from me for today. Thanks for looking and hope you guys are enjoying football season as much as I am! :D

Back in Black.....not really :p

Purple is close to black, isn't it? Ok maybe not really. But I have that song stuck in my head! I was out of state for a couple of weeks and just got back in a few days ago. So I can procrastinate no longer. Here I bring to you 2 1/2 nail looks. I say 2 1/2 because one is just a polish layered over another. So it doesn't count as a completely different look, right? Atleast I don't count it as a different look. So without further ado, here is MAC's So Rich, So Pretty indoors without flash.


This one was pretty hard to capture. It has sort of a blue reflect to it that got lost somewhere in my pictures. But it's a gorgeous purple. Really hard to describe because at some angles I could swear it's more red based and flashes pink? But maybe that's just my mind playing tricks on me :p

Well, to spice it up a bit I added 1 coat of one of my purple frankens. I used Sally Hansen's Purple Pizzazz and mixed it with Urban Decay's ID. The result was a crazy multi color reflecting jelly. Here it is over So Rich, So Pretty.

Indoors without flash

Outdoors in direct sunlight without flash

Here's a video of it since I couldn't quite capture it's shimmery goodness in photos that well.

And lastly, my 9/11 mani. I did just take the pictures today so please excuse the tip wear and over all raggedy look of it. It is now 6 days old. It's coming off tonight so I should have a fresh look to share in a couple of days with y'all! :D But for this I used American Apparel's Factory Grey and for the flag I used Orly's White Tips (from the french tip set), BB Couture's Vampire Bite for the red stripes and my Starry Starry Night dupe over OPI's Ogre The Top Blue for the blue and stars.



That's about it from me. Hope you guys enjoyed and have a great night! :D

American Apparel L'Esprit

So, yesterday I got part of my American Apparel nail polish haul. Most of it was out of stock sadly. But here's what UPS brought yesterday:

I have to say, I love the bottles more than anything! I was a bit confused by one box though. It said Massini on it! I know Massini is also a nail polish brand...maybe they share bottle manufacturers? I don't know. I don't own any Massini polishes (not available to me) so I can't compare them side by side.

So, I was tempted to try out Malibu Green first. But I let my middle child choose a color and he chose L'Esprit. This is my first time using an American Apparel polish and I have to agree with every other review I've read on these polishes, it's AWESOME! It wasn't thick, goopy or runny and it was completely opaque in one coat! If I were more careful I would have left it at one, but I"m very messy when I put np on. So I had to do a second coat to make it look somewhat presentable. Here's two thin coats with SV on top.


My only complaint with these polishes would be the brush. Well, not really the brush, but the stick on the brush. It's super long. Which makes sense if you think of the bottle shape. But I found it hard to take the excess polish of the stick without dipping the brush into more polish. Perhaps I'm just physically disabled this way. But I'm sure it'll get easier with practice :) That's it from me for now. Thanks for looking and hope you guys are all ready for the weekend!

Care Package!!

Look at what I found in my mailbox! This sucker was pretty heavy too as I trudged back to our third story apartment. As soon as I opened it my eyes honed in on the Hi-Chews and I savagely ripped it open and started to munch on them, while unpacking the rest of the goodies. Oh Jen, I love you...

Why yes, that is a half eaten bag of Hi-Chews you see...

LUSH Snow fairy smells amazing! I just want to eat it, literally. Jen got me a bunch of WnW polishes so I could franken with them (Woot woot!). Also two American Apparel nail polishes, although I'm sad that they've recalled all their polishes due to mislabeling or something of the sort. It makes me a bit disappointed because I was planning on hauling a bunch of them when I am in SF next month. I really hope they don't change the bottles because I heart the square bottles.

Below are some pigments from TKB trading and I think I am going to try these out in frankens! Hopefully it turns out well.

That's all folks! I hope you enjoyed and now it's time for me to go play. :)