King Tut- Inspired Fishtail Nails

Hello Lovelies!

Back again today with a new favorite kind of nail art... fishtail braid nails! I have been seeing tutorials for these these pop up  lot lately and have been loving coming up with new and exciting color combos. Today's colors were inspired by my ipod shuffling and coming up with this:

Which of course, led me to this gorgeous color combo:

Which quickly became this:

This super shiny look was made using 2 coats of OPI Goldeneye on all nails, with Orly Sweet Peacock and Wet N Wild Black Creme free-handed to make the fishtail braid pattern on the ring finger and thumb. As you can see in the above pictures, Goldeneye is an incredibly reflective gold fleck that gives a great foil appearance. Sweet Peacock is an equally bright cerulean blue foil which shines so beautifully against the gold and black.

Until next time,

HeatherS

OPI Designer Series: Glamour

Hello Lovelies!

Alright, today I have my absolute FAVORITE of the OPI Designer Series... Glamour. My amazing mother got me this polish for my birthday 2 years ago and I've been head over heals with it ever since.

*swoon*

It shouldn't really come as a surprise that I love this color so much, its a rich royal blue holographic polish that appears a bit indigo in low lights and applies like a dream in 2 coats. This is definitely high on my list of favorite blues, and it would probably make the list for favorite polishes.

Until next time,

HeatherS

Sunset Hounds-tooth Gradient

Hello Lovlies.

Today I have another bright nail design that would probably be more appropriate for summer. I decided on a color scheme that reminded me of the sky at sunset, and I think the results turned out really pretty. I'm still sort of getting used to gradient manicures, so until I'm really comfortable I think I prefer to stamp over them.

This is a combination of Wet & Wild Megalast in Club Havana, a bright sorbet orange, China Glaze Surreal Appeal a pretty coral leaning pink, and Wet & Wild Megalast On A Trip, a super saturated lilac purple stamped using Konad plate m63 and Wet & Wild Root of All Evil, an ultra-saturated royal blue with beautiful shimmer. The second photo is the most color accurate, the first makes Club Havana look too dark orange. 

Until next time,

HeatherS

Gothic Lolita + DV8

Hello Lovelies!

I hope everyone had an enjoyable holiday season, whatever you may celebrate.

Now that the obligatory Holiday nails are done with I wanted to bring you some out of season brightness. For some odd reason I always tend to gravitate towards nail colors that are the opposite of the season, i.e. vampy colors in summer, neons and brights in winter. It's an odd quirk, but it leads to some pretty combinations like today's.

This is China Glaze Gothic Lolita stamped using China Glaze DV8 on Cheeky XL plate C. In low light the design is really subtle, but I love the combo in the sun. Gothic Lolita is a pretty hyacinth purple with a lovely blue shimmer, and DV8 is a super linear holographic teal that works so wonderfully for stamping.

Until next time!

HeatherS

March of the Penguins

Hello Lovelies!

Today I have a cute little design for winter. If I'm being honest, I really don't like Christmas that much. I have some strange aversion to red and green together, I never know what to get people, and I hate Christmas music. That being said, this year I have been trying to be more festive, so I came up with this cute design for winter.

This mani consisted of Essie One Day Without Blues (aka Coat Azure), Wet 'N' Wild White French Creme for the snowflake stamping (using a Shany plate if I recall correctly), with Color Club Lumin-Icent dotted in the center of each snowflake. For my little penguin accent nails I used Wet 'N' Wild French White Creme and Wet 'N' Wild Black Creme for the body, Essie's Vermillionaire for the beak and feet, and Essie One Day Without Shoes for the scarf.

Overall I was really pleased with this design. Free-handing the penguins was not as difficult as I expected it to be when I thought up these.  I am also finding I really like the wear time of Essie polishes (the above was after 4 days with only a little tip wear).

Until next time,

HeatherS

I'm Back!

Hello All,

It has been a crazy year for me. Between opening and subsequently having to close a business, family issues, and a vast array health issues it's not surprising that I haven't been able to keep up with my blogging. I am very happy to return to it though, and I have lots of lovely new manicures planned to show everyone!

Today I have a pretty combination of two of my favorite OPI's... What's With The Cattitude from the Shrek Collection and  You Don't Know Jacques.  WWTC is a beautiful bright sky blue that covers in 3 coats, and YDKJ is a rich chocolate-y taupe that's perfect in two. To get the design I used the Cheeky XL Jumbo Plate C which I got in a 3 pack available on Amazon. I have had the XL plates for less than a week and I'm already so in love with them... I've become very addicted to full nail images, and these have so many different patterns, and I never have to double stamp because the images are considerably bigger than Konad or Bundle Monster.

Are you a fan of nail stamping? If so, do you prefer subtler combinations or in-you-face contrast?

Let me know!

Until next time,

Heather.

Geek Meets Gleek

Hello!

Ever had a polish that the name just brings something to mind that makes you happy for some geeky reason? For me that polish is Jesse's Girl "Firefly". Every time I think of it, I immediately picture Nathan Fillion in tight pants and suspenders aimin' to misbehave, and I love that. You may or may not remember this polish from my photo-fail day. Today I was super feeling wearing Firefly and giving it another shot to do well in photos, but the problem is that it's not even remotely opaque, so I searched my stash and came up with a gorgeous combo.

This is 2 coats Sephora for OPI "Slushied" from the Glee collection with 1 coat Jesse's Girl "Firefly"

So far this has been my favorite combo for layering "Firefly". It's bright and shimmery and awesome.

Is there a polish that brings out your inner geek?

Until next time.

Why I'm Blue About One Day Without Blues

Hello all!

So a couple of weeks ago there was news around the nail blogs about Toms Shoes and Essie teaming up to give away 5000 bottles of a "special" color called One Day Without Blues, a tribute to Toms Shoes annual One Day Without Shoes in support of impoverished children. The deal was go on Toms facebook page, like them, potentially win a bottle of this super special polish. Well I did win one, but when it arrived today I instantly thought it looked familiar, and upon comparison, my suspicion was confirmed that One Day Without Blues is indeed Coat Azure. Don't believe me? Here are the pics.

Thumb, middle, and pinkie: One Day Without Blues
Index and ring: Coat Azure

Index and ring: Coat Azure
Middle and pinkie: One Day Without Blues

Now, that being said, I still love and adore this color... it's a beautiful shimmery blue that applies wonderfully, I was just disappointed that it's a re-release under a new name. Granted, that means if you didn't win the promotion  it's not like you can't get your hands on this color if you don't have it already, which is good.

As always, until next time!

Bad Blogger, No Cookie.

Hey There!

Yes, I know I am a very bad blogger, but unfortunately (and fortunately I guess) I've been working crazy crazy mad hours this month since a girl at my work quit and I've been covering everyones' shifts...  I'm planning on getting on a blogging schedule as soon as the month is over and my hours normalize again, so bear with me... In the meantime, I have a couple of different manis to show you today... one of my photogenically fail mani from this morning (that in person was STUNNING... stupid photo fail), and one of the current shiny non-photo fail mani... so here we go...

This was Sephora by OPI (SOPI)'s Who Let The Dorks Out from the new Glee collection, a super gorgeous metallic teal with a slight purple duo-chrome, topped with Jesse's Girl High Intensity nail polish in Firefly, a slightly milky whitish jelly base with gold/green/blue glass flecks... In reality it had this light underlying purple flash and depending on the light those gorgeous little gold flecks looked spring green, but alas this was the only photo I could get of it that was even half way decent so I took it off this morning. 

Now on to current events... OPI's Show It & Glow It from the Burlesque Collection

This is a super pretty mostly purple and silver glitter polish with bits of orange, blue, yellow, and a teensy bit of green thrown in. Two coats to be completely opaque, dries in a flash, miserable to remove, needs thick topcoat to be smooth, but is so very very pretty.

Cry Me A Riva

Hello,

Firstly, be warned... I lost a fight with a mop at work two nights ago and came out with three nails broken down to the very nubbiny-ist of nubbins... it's not pretty, but they will grow out, and I actually think it's kind of cute with today's color choice, which leads me to...

A nice franken (that is to say, a homemade mix) of the much hyped, much overpriced Chanel Riva. I personally have no problem paying some steep prices for polishes (I'm looking at you, Rescue Beauty Lounge)... but I draw the line at Chanel's normal $23 a bottle... needless to say I wasn't gonna cough up $30 for something I could make on my own for $4 with polishes I bought at Target.

Anywho, here's my (from what I can tell based on swatches of the real thing) very good dupe of Chanel's Riva.

^ Direct Sunlight ^ 

^ Shade ^

^ Indoors, Indirect Sun ^

The first and last photos show that lovely in-the-bottle shimmer that Riva has, but the second I think is slightly more accurate to the color. This franken has a bit of the squishy look that Riva seems to get when built to full opacity, but the difference is that this is opaque in two light coats.

My Recipe for it is as follows:
1/2 Wet and Wild in French White Creme
1/3 New York Color in Cashmere Creme  
1/6 Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Blue Me Away

I also added a few drops of Revlon's Powder Puff because it was initially not light enough but I had run out of the W&W... but I don't think it changes the outcome too much.

All in all I'm quite happy about this color... is it entirely new and unique like Jade or Paradoxal was? No, no it's not. Is it a pretty pretty light blue that makes me happy? Yes, yes it is