Fabulous Flutterbys

Usually I wait a respectable amount of time before I borrow *coughstealcough* anyone elses ideas but when I visited Orlica over at Confessions of a Polishaholic and saw her beautiful Butterfly Wings Tutorial I figured imitation in the sincerest form of flattery and had to recreate the look.

I did mine differently in that I used three different colors of holos for my base color and didn't use a lighter shade to highlight because I didn't want to mess with the prettiness of the holo because it reminds me of the iridescence of a real butterfly's wing.

Aren't they pretty!!!
Yeah, a little heavy on the pictures but oh well.


On the business end, I used Orly Ridgefiller as my base, then Sally Hansen Nail Prisms in Blush Diamond for the pink nails, China Glaze L8R G8R and 2NITE for the green and blue nails. I used my black 2 way nail pen for the lines and white acrylic paint for the dots. (Check it out, the paint's named after yours truely!)

I am totally loving these nails. Thanks so much Orlica for the inspiration!!!

Cranberries and Candied Yams Part III

I think that two days of turkey put me in a serious brain dead state because all I wanted to do was come home and do nothing. So I flaked out on my mani...more than just a wee bit.

All I did was take some Holly Good Times by Finger Paints (seriously love this polish!) and layer it over the Rising Star.

Then I said "Meh" and took it off and did this.

Alli's Big Break with Nubar Nail Art Liner in Green Creme with no name 2 way glitter pen.
There was a wee bit of sun today, these were taken as it was coming through a sift of clouds
Thanksgiving is over so bring on Yule!

Cranberries & Candied Yams Part II

We're about to head out for our second Thanksgiving dinner and I thought I better post my part two of my mani. It wasn't what I wanted but it did the trick. I had removed 'Addict from my pointer finger and repainted it with Rising Star to match my ring finger. Then I did a French tip with Rising Star on all my other fingers. I had planned a few more details, but got involved in pie making and never got around to finishing it before we left. Such is life.

Not nail related: Can you believe that there wasn't a single candied yam in sight at yesterdays dinner?!? It was all so good though, I didn't really miss them. Maybe there will be at today's though. There was a delicious chutney of cranberries, pear and ginger that I just adored though, it was a lovely change from the traditional cranberry jelly in a can.
I'm in charge of rolls today we're being lazy and getting them from the store but I made a lovely herbed butter to go with.
As mentioned I did pies yesterday. I tried something new and may I just say, Raspberry Cherry pie is to die for!

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Thanks so much for stopping by and reading. Until next time, ciao!

A Manicure Series in 3 Parts, Cranberries and Candied Yams

With three families to spend the holidays week with (Grandma, and two sets of parents) I know I'm not going to have a lot of time for nails or blog posting.
So I thought I'd come up with three fairly basic mani's that use the same colors that with simple changes could become something new. If this works out I'll be duplicating this for the Yule/Christmas holidays
I've decided to call the series Cranberries and Candied Yams because of the colors I chose. I hope you enjoy

Part I:
Very Basic, here I've used L.A. Girl's Rockstar in Addict which just happens to be a lovely cranberry color with flecks of gold. Perfect for fall. I applied three coats to all but my ring finger. I know I usually use two coats but it needed that third coat.
For the ring finger I applies two coats of OPI Rising Star. I think this may be my favorite from the Burlesque collection. Lovely, just lovely
Overall, a very pretty and very simple mani. I love how Rising Star is almost perfectly mirrored in the gold fleck of Addict. These are two polishes that were meant to be together.

Thanks for following and have a lovely Thanksgiving. Until next time, ciao!

There She Glows

I'm still here, just a behind in my polishing and posting with the gray weather and illness. I managed to summon the energy to go to the glowga dance party Saturday night and have been recovering since. I'm so glad to be feeling better though. Now I can get back in the saddle and get all the stuff that slid last week done. I'm soooo behind on projects and mailings. EEP!

So the party was a blast. We boogied for three hours and I ended up worn out but in good spirits. It's always good to be around friends and family (it was a b-day party).

I had to rethink my full body Na'vi look due to the limited supplies. There were tons of tubes of the washable glow paint, then two pallets (6 colors) of neon glow paint and two cakes of white glow paint. I decided to see what I could manage with the purple neon. It came out looking more like tribal face tattoos (scary) than Na'vi but the effect was pretty cool (especially compared to other peoples masks, hand prints, dots and whatnot.

It was even more impressive once they turned off all the lights.

As for the polish. ...Yeeeah, not so much. I had purchased the L.A. Girl Disco Brites since they say right on the front of the bottle "Black Light Nail Polish" I did a white base with purple 'stripes', I use the term loosly because I waited to the last minute and instead of doing a pretty job with a detail brush I just used the bottle brush to try and make stripes...and some green splotches.

Here is what they looked like under an Ott lamp (no clean up, like I said, all last minute.)

Here it is under a black light.

Yeah, not so much. The white (of course) and green was fine but I am really not impressed at all with the purple. As you can see my nails are right next to the light. They had to be to get any amount of glow off the purple.
My daughter was wearing Mood Struck color change polish in L.Green to Light Yellow and Hoooooboy did they glow (she couldn't be bothered with pictures as she was too busy running around with her friend.) I was so jealous!
So my experience/opinion. Don't bother with the Disco brights colors . Yeah they're only 3USD but it's really not worth it, you can accomplish the same thing with a cheap (read 1USD) white nail polish and most likely the same on a neon green/yellow.

I hope you enjoyed hearing about my little event. I know I enjoyed going. I leave you with my full ensemble. Until next time, ciao!

Glow On!!
(I gots me lightbulb feet, we know my socks are clean.)

Gold n' Bamboo the evolution of a mani

It all began when I took my last polish off and found myself in a bit of a rut. I figured I should at least get a bit of color on so I applied two coats of Orly Winter Wonderland. It was lovely, gleaming like new snow. But the more I looked at it the more I wanted something more...

So I took Color Club's Wild and Willing and free handed myself a French tip (I like a deeper 'c' curve then the guides give).
Wild and Willing is a duo-chrome that makes me think of new pennies. It's copper with a hint of pink. In the bottle you see gleams of yellow and just a hint of verdigris. It's also very sheer. It took about four coats to make it smooth and pretty.
I liked this, it made me think of fall leaves in an early snow. Maybe a little more though...

Here we are, a deeper copper line done with my Color Club nail stripper in Russet . I thought I was done but all the sudden a little voice in my head said...

Bamboo!!

And so I made my first attempt at bamboo using acrylic paints.
I haven't yet decided if I should have stopped with the stripe, but it is rather fun. Thanks for coming with me on my little journey through my mani evolution. I hope you have a lovely day. Until next time, ciao!

LA Colors 'Atomic"

Here is a pretty cool color. LA Color's Atomic. These pictures are not color accurate. Even though I played with the settings they came out a lot more green than the actual polish which is undeniably an aqua blue. It's still pretty though.
I mentioned in my last post that I got a bunch of LA Colors for a dollar and I am so glad I did. This is the second polish of the brand that I've tried and I love the formula. It's not too thick or too thin, is super smooth going on and just overall a great polish experience. I'm sold.
This is two coats and I actually was feeling rather lazy...and sick, so rather than removing Mega Watt I just applied Atomic over it. I guess technically that means I have 6 layers of polish on here. A base coat, three of Mega Watt and two of Atomic. o_O This has got to be a record for me. Of course the laziness carried over to my cleanup which I didn't bother doing so sorry it's a rather ragged mess.

Ug, so I mentioned I'm getting sick, I started feeling it coming on this morning and it's actually really getting me down because I have a glowga party (in this case, a party where you decorate yourself with glow paint and dance under black lights) this Saturday that I've been looking forward to going to for almost two months now.

I even picked up some new LA Girl Disco nail colors for the event. It's supposed to glow under black light so it would be perfect. I was thinking I'd do my face & body paint as a stylized Na'vi (Avatar). So would do my nails as a zebra stripe on a glow base. In my head the whole look is pretty cool so needless to say, I'm going to be beyond disappointed if I can't go because I'm sick.

So a rather short entry today, I'm feeling rather pathetic so I'm going to go take a hot bath with eucalyptus salts, make myself a pot of tea and then climb into bed under my heating blanket and think positive thoughts for health by Saturday. Wish me luck.

Thanks for reading (me whine), until next time, Ciao!

LA Colors Mega Watt

As of late it's been mostly overcast and I've found myself painting my nails in the evening so not a lot of sunlight. I get the feeling that a lot of my forthcoming pictures will be taken by Ott light.

The other day I stopped off at my local Dollar Tree (two of them actually) and found some polishes to add to my collection.

Pardon the dings and the icky cuticles that I only seem to notice after pictures are taken.

This if LA Color Mega Watt. I don't usually do sheers, and in the bottle, it looked like it would come out more opaque but I think it's actually rather pretty and would be great with a french tip.
For a dollar nail polish I was really impressed with the application. I had my usual sheer issue of getting consistent coverage, but the formula was nice and smooth with no drag. I've got three coats on here so I really don't think you could ever get it opaque.
This is a nice nude color and although you can't see it very well (at all) in the pics it has a pretty pink pearlescent shimmer to it.

This is my first LA Color polish but I'm kinda excited to see how the others work out. Any of my readers that are fans of this polish? Is it a good one?

Thanks for reading, until next time. Ciao!

A Touch of Fall Nails

I've started this post umpteenmillion times and keep getting side tracked. Which is silly because since I worked this weekend/today I'm using an archived pic and don't have a lot to say.
These nails actually started out as something I was going to post at Halloween, but the more I looked at them the more I wanted to wait until we were away from that and settled into fall. After the fact I see some things I'd refine (like the veins), but overall I'm really pleased with how they came out.
I'll edit this post with all the polish names later, right now it's after midnight and I'm in bed under my heating blanket so the last thing I want to do is get up to go look for polishes. Yes yes, I'm lazy. That's my excuse if this post rambles a bit. I'm tired.

I do know it's a Color Club rust base on all the nails with Finger Paint gold sponged over on all with a touch of Finger Paints Guggen I'm Lime Green (the only name I remember) The leaf I did by creating a stencil with painters tape and a decorative punch and sponging with several fall colored polishes I really just can't recall and outlining/drawing veins with acrylic paint before applying my top coat.

I hope you enjoy my touch of fall mani, thanks for stopping by and take care until next time. Ciao!

Please haaalp

Photo courtesy of Google

I don't know how many of you have seen The Fifth Element but it's an all time favorite in our house. When the heroine (Milla Jovovich) meets the hero (Bruce Willis) she wins him over with those two words...Then goes on to kick serious boo-tay and save the world. What's not to like?

Hopefully those two words work for me too. :)

Here's the sitch. I was at Ross and saw this great collection of Color Club polishes, none of which I had for $7.99. So I think to myself, "Self, 7 full size polishes for $8...Um yeah, you are so not going to find a deal like that at a beauty supply." So I grabbed it and clutched it to my chest all the way to the registers.
So I get home and go sit down at the table and with all the grace of a kid at Christmas tear into the box, only to discover...(GASP) None of the bottles have name lables!!!!!! Nooooooooooooooo!!

How could they not lable the pretty colors and leave them with no names? Not on the container, not on the cardboard holder/insert, not on the bottles. I went onto the Color Club website. but half the swatches they provide look exactly the same and this "collection" isn't listed. I think the blue may be Trippy Hippy but not sure on it.
Here's where I'm hoping my wonderful readers can help me. Have any of you run into this collection and already chased down the colors? Or do any of these jump out at you screaming "I'm such and such color!"
Any assistance offered would be super much appreciated. I'll even put you on my Christmas card list!

Thank you all and until next time take care. Ciao!

And the Winner Is!!

With the help of my lovely assistant daughter and slips of paper (yes, the old fashioned way) a winner for my Teensy Weensy give away was chosen. Drum roll please!

SayAnythingBrooke, Congratulations! I will be contacting you via email to get your address so I can send off your Color Club With Abandon and Mystery Item.

To everyone that entered, thank you for being my awesome followers, I really appreciate you and your comments.

Until next time, thanks for reading, ciao!

Give Away Count Down

Just a quick reminder, my teeny tiny give away ends at midnight tonight. So if you haven't entered yet there's still time.

Much Needed Maintanance and Mulberry Madness

For the last week my feet and hands have been sadly neglected and abused. My poor feet have been stuffed into combat boots for 14+ hours a day with no further consideration and I told you about my poor abused hands already.
With today being cold, gray and rainy I figured it would be a great time to rectify the neglect. After I took off my old polish I hopped in a nice warm shower for a long soak and at the very end when everything was softened up I grabbed my Mr Pumice bar and took it to the soles of my feet, sloughing off all the built up nastiness. I love the way my feet feel so soft and smooth when I'm done, I swear by my Mr. Pumice (available at Sally's).
Next I took cuticle oil (by No Lift Nails with Avocado, Almond & 'E') to my fingers and toes and let it sit for a few minutes before using an orange stick to gently push back my cuticles and scrap the nail around the cuticle areas and under the nail as well. after that I used cuticle nippers to cut off any skin snags from my torn up cuticles and the cuts I sustained during the week. It was a hot mess!
Then it was time for lotion, Curel Intensive is my go to of choice and m poor hands were so dry that I actually had to do this a couple of times for my hands to feel right again.
Lastly, I rubbed in some Burt's Bees Lemon Butter Cuticle Creme. Yummy! Don't you just wish that you could find a pastry that tastes like this stuff smells?
After letting that settle it was polish time, I used a q-tip and acetone (so as not to dry out my newly moisturized skin to clean the nail and applied my new Orly Ridge Filler, let that dry and applied two coats of Finger Paints Mulberry Madness followed by two coats of Seche.
You'll have to forgive the pictures, as said, it's a gray day, not a smidgen of sun to be seen so these pictures are taken under my Ott lamp.
Any unhappiness I had with Mulberry Maddness' lack of shine is resolved by the two coats of Seche. There is still a little texture from the glitter but other than that...I wish you could see this in real life. It just glows. Sooooo pretty and sparkly! It's my second favorite after Holly Good Times. It's drying out way too fast though, I've had the bottle open three times and it's getting kinda goopy and in need of some thinner.
Ahhhhh, I feel human again!

Thanks for reading and if you haven't already entered my little give away you only have until tomorrow to do so. The winner is announced on the 11th. Until next time, ciao!

Catching Up

OhMyGosh, Thank god it's Sunday and my 8 day work week with 12 hour shifts if finally over! I was getting up at 2 in the morning to be to work by 4, talk about tired.
My poor hands haven't looked this bad in ages. Between the charcoal from chem suits, physically inspecting gas masks and airmans manuals and just the overall grit and grime my hands were a mess, my cuticles got so torn up that I was applying nu-skin every other hour or so.
The whole week was absolute hell. It was a huge inspection so everyone was freaking out and over reacting. I got yelled at for doodling in a notebook, Locked my keys in my car, had to get shots, one of which was tetnus which left my arm really sore for a couple of days...Just one of those weeks where one thing after another hits you.
Thursday I called my boyfriend and asked if I could buy myself some nail polish to cheer myself up. He laughed and said I don't have to ask permission (which I don't, but if he says yes, which he always does, I don't feel guilty about spending money on polish) and that if it made me happy to go for it. Wheeeee! Love my guy! Here's what I got.

I've been using OPI Ridge Filler and love it but want to see how this works. And I'm constantly in search of a perfectly awesome quick dry top coat.

I'm sure the Orly Holiday Collection polishes need no introduction, I used Winter Wonderland and Meet Me Under the Mistletoe to create a French on my daughter. Looove love Winter Wonderland but was kind of disappointed by MMUtM, the green isn't quite what I was expecting from all the pics and it's goes on pretty sheer.
I'm not sure how familiar people are with Velvet Rope. I understand that it's from the Hot Stuff Collection but other than that I've no clue. It's a lovely purple with silver glitter though.

My absolute FAVORITE polishes for the season here!!!
There's nothing terribly exceptional about the Sparkle Top Coat, It's exactly what the name implies and doesn't bother going any extra distance.
Holly Good Times on the other hand is my all time personal fave and I think the star of this little show with it's red and gold glitter.
Mulberry Madness is pretty in bottle but in a quick test, appears to dry to a satin finish which I think detracts from the effect. Maybe some people like sparkles in an un-shiny polish (think CG Flying Dragon) but I'm just bummed because I was expecting two things from the holiday collection, glitter and shine and that just doesn't translate onto the nail even with a clear top coat.
Where Holly Good Times is Holiday Barbie, Winter Wishes is Skipper, (you know, the cute one.) It reminds me of the cardamom & sugar mixture that I make to sprinkle on toast. It's a nice neutral sparkle.

Last but not least, some Color Club & Savvy. I'm just going to say it...Coverd in Diamonds (my bottle at least) is for lack of a better word, craptastic. The formula is painfully thick and doesn't apply well at all, the bottle I purchased has a frayed brush and the flakes don't lay down well at all. I was left with ragged edges and pokey parts.
Wild and Willing is gorgeous! A lovely copper duo-chrome, it shifts in bottle through shades of pink, green, yellow and copper. Pretty pretty!
Savvy's Mango is a pretty cream that I'm currently wearing. I'm debating taking pictures because of the state my hands are in but we'll see.

Stay tuned, swatches to come and if you haven't already, join my give away!

Thanks for stopping by and until next time, ciao!

A Teensy Weensy Giveaway (Closed)

Hey, I have a bottle of Color Club 'With Abandon' and a mystery item to give away to one of my wonderful followers. Since it's so weensy I'm just going to run it for a week for followers only and it is open internationally. And to keep it simple, just one entry per follower. Just leave me a message with your info and I'll let you know who gets it sometime on the 11th.

Until next time keep your head up!
Ciao!

Color Club 'With Abandon' (Giveaway?)

Pardon my pictures, they were done in late afternoon sunlight. I'd finished painting them late in the day and knew I had to take pictures while they were still pretty or they'd be hammered by the next day. I don't know what I do, but my mani's never stay pretty past the first hour or so.

A rather quick post today. I may have mentioned that I have military duty this week so my nails are being neglected. I was proud of myself for managing to rub some Burt's Bees cuticle cream in this afternoon while I was standing around. They really needed is, I've had to trim off three hangnails in the last couple of days. Since I'm not polished I pulled this out of my un-posted archives that I keep just for such occasions. So, on with the show.

I just wanted to bring your attention to a lovely fall color. With Abandon is a black jellee with tons of brown/copper/gold micro-glitter. This is actually one of the polishes that I got for giving away because I liked mine so much I had to get some lucky reader their own bottle. Aren't I just a sweety?

Application was quite easy and although the first coat was a wee bit streaky, it all balanced out though and looks just lovely if you ask me.
I hope you enjoy this polish, if you don't already have it, stick around and you'll have a chance to win it...

Hmm, Since I probably won't be able to post to much this week shall we have a teeny tiny give away this week?...say for this polish and a surprise item? What do my readers say?

Until next time have a great day! Ciao!