OPI Shatter the Scales

I am sure by now all of you have seen this polish. But oh well! I loved it the moment I saw it, which is weird because I am not a green fan. But something about it caught my eye. Maybe the glitter? Who knows! Anyways, this shatter applied really well! Sometimes shatters can get on my nerves because I will layer them on too thick by mistake and they won't shatter at all. And then sometimes it gets too thin and the shatter doesn't look like I want it too. I suppose that both of those problems are actually my fault, not the polishes. I guess it takes just the right amount. I really loved the pictures I saw with this shatter layered over a nude color, so that is what I used! The nude I used was by Sally Hansen and called Duchesse Lace, which is part of their Diamond Strength collection. This mani is actually lasting a long time with just minimal tip wear, as I am posting this 3 days after I painted my nails. Enjoy! 

Any thoughts on this shatter?

My first Color Clubs!

A couple weeks ago I bought my first Color Club polishes! I reallllyyyyyyy love these polishes because of the texture they appear to have! I think they would be a foil polish? Is that what they are called? Anyways these colors apply really good, especially over white. I saw this nail art by Chalkboard Nails (my all-time favorite site for inspiration). I thought it was fun, and would be even more fun with bright and vibrant colors. The colors used here are Color Club Daisy Does It and Sparkle and Soar. Also, I recently starred using OPI's Nail Envy to give my nails a little help and I can only change my polish once a week. =[ And let me tell you a week is a longgggg time to wait once my polish starts to chip...I tend to continue to chip it off! So I have been planning new manis a week ahead of time over the last two weeks and I really wanted to move on past these Color Clubs. This mani helped me use two polishes at one time! I've gotten lots of compliments on this!

Here's that foil texture I was talking about. Kinda cool huh?

And heres my mani from last week using Color Club Fly With Me. This color DID NOT LAST LONG! I was so mad! I think part of it had to do with my SV top coat which appeared to make the mani shrink so I had almost immediate tip wear. On the mani above I used a Sally Hansen fast dry top coat and it seems to have lasted a lot longer. But I still wanted to show the pretty green without showing the HIDEOUS tip wear. 

Cirque du Soleil Quidam nails!

Last night I went to see Cirque du Soleil! And OMG was it awesome! Those people truly have an amazing talent! These performers were literally doing things I could never imagine possible, not to mention there strength. After this post I will post some videos of what these amazing performers can do. I was speechless. And of course, I had to do a mani inspired by the show! Here is the picture I was inspired by...

And here is the mani! A LOT of the blogs I have seen lately are featuring gradient nails and I am loving them! They are just so fun to do and there are so many different ways of doing them. You can see that I was inspired by the colors in the background. I kind of wanted to do the buildings but I wasn't feeling all that enthusiastic at the time. BUT, i did use the spiral on the guys outfit; I think he was a clown of some sort?

And then the version of the show was called Quidam, so on my right accent finger I did a big "Q." Sorry that the picture is so blurry, my camera was dying at the time and every time I would try and reboot it, it would just die again. And of course I had to leave asap... but you all can get the picture! 

On top of going to see the show I got some more polish this weekend. I am not the type of person that likes buying an $8 bottle of polish like most of you are. I like to look for deals so that I can get polish for cheaper. So a few nights ago I went into one of the Rite Aids close to me just out of curiosity and found some realllyyyyy good deals! I got 4 Color Club polishes from the Take Wing Collection, one of which I will be showing in my next post. I also got 4 polishes from the Sally Hansen Diamond Strength Jewel Overcoat line. All of these polishes were half off! So I ended up spending $13 for 8 polishes! A pretty good deal I would say! 

neon shatter

I wanted to do something kid of fun and crazy because I think summer is officially here where I live! It's been high 70's for a week straight now =D So I chose to do a bright neon yellow from Orly called Glowstick that I used in this mani here. And over the top of it OPI's Turquoise Shatter. I didn't think about it until after I started to apply the shatter that blue + yellow=green; something that has been drilled into my head since 3rd grade or something like that. So... it didn't come out exactly how I wanted it to but it was still awesome. I've read a few other blogs saying to use white under a neon color to help it look brighter and to also use less coats so I tried that out and what do ya know! It worked! I only had to use one coat of Glowstick versus the 4 that I used before. 

I am really loving neons and I would like to get a few more to add to my collection soon!

a beautiful prismatic and a gradient fail!

This is the second polish I have from the China Glaze prismatic collection! I'm not the biggest green fan as I tend to sway towards purples and blues along with neutrals. But, I thought I would give it a try and I am glad I did! This is a beautifullllll silvery green glitter polish! I would say it is more green in the shade and silver in the sun. My boyfriend said it looked like I punched a glitter fairy haha! I'm loving it! It's even more glittery than it is in the pictures.

And here is my gradient semi fail/semi win. I loved the two polishes together, I used Love & Beauty Baby Blue and Mauve. The Mauve translates to a icky brownish purple in the picture. I was really digging this polish until I started taking pictures, which happened to all be blurry because I did it in crappy light, and I noticed the tips had already started to wear. WHAT! I tried taking these pictures about 10-15 minutes after I had done this mani! I was so pissed that I took like 2 pictures and gave up. I don't know what happened but I will definitely try this again at some point. 

I think I may have found the polish that was meant for me!

Today i have an Orly polish called Royal Velvet and i think that i have found my favorite polish. It isn't anything sparkly or breathtakingly awesome but it is my two favorite colors in one polish! I don't have anything like this at all and i am so glad i bought this. It went on fairly smooth and needed about 3 coats to be fully opaque. So here it is!

This polish is amazing. I love the duochromeness (i know thats not a word but i am sure going to use it!) I love blue and purple and this polish brings them together wonderfully. I took these pictures outside so these are all with a cloudy day sunlight. You can see the nice green grass in the background meaning summer is almost here! Hopefully this polish will last me at least 24 hours. It is starting to make me mad that my polishes aren't lasting seeing as how i don't have time to redo them everyday! grrr... anyways, enjoy!

My first Zoya polish

Here i have my first Zoya polish! This is such a beautiful color! It's like a black bronzy color called Edyta. The application was really smooth even though the polish almost has a grittiness to it? Towards my cuticles where i can see just the one coat its a real bronze color. When i bought this polish, i was kind of iffy about it because i wasn't sure how i would like it. But, its amazing! The only problem i have with it is the tip wear. I'm not sure if it's the polish itself or my topcoat or something I am doing, but lately i haven't been having any luck with keeping my polish chip-less for at least 24 hours. I don't know whats going on! 

finally done with school!

So thursday was my last day of school for the semester. It has been a busy week for me. I had 3 large finals to study for and working 30 some odd hours on top of it. I have been really stressed so, therefore, no posting. I had a couple manis within the week that I did though! BUT, one i forgot to photograph and the other I did but can't find my cord - i forgot to use my SD card! So, here is the mani i did today quick before work. Kind of mad i had to touch the tips up 5 hours later but i LOVE this polish so i'll ignore it. I told you guys in my last post that an Ulta opened up close to me and i had gotten some gift cards to spend. Both of these polishes i used i bought with those gift cards. The base coat is Ulta Maine Attraction, which is a really pretty darker sky blue i guess you could say? The other is China Glaze Optical Illusion, which is a GORGEOUS blue glitter with lots of different color glitter pieces inside. If i can make this polish hit the right light it has a purple to it also! Sadly i couldn't reflect this in the pictures i took =[ But anyways, here you go!

 this was in the shadow. you can see the different color glitters in this

the purple shows a little bit in this one on some of the nails

I'm back!

I'm so sorry guys that its been so long. When i stopped posting i was to that point where i wasn't enjoying it anymore. I was no longer painting my nails for myself and i had no desire to post anymore. I went a long time without painting my nails or if I did paint them i let them chip like there was no tomorrow. Truthfully, i didn't care anymore. Well about a month or two ago i started to get back into it. It became fun again! I didn't want to start posting right away because i wanted to make sure i was coming back for the right reason. I know my blog is not even that big or if a lot of people even look at it, but i would like to think that some of you do. Also, my nails over the span of not posting kept breaking. I went through so many breaks where the break was so close to my nail bed. So right now i am starting new with nubs. So sad! And on top of all that life took over with school and jobs. It has been pretty hectic. I am finally in finals week at school and could not be any more excited. Also, last week an Ulta opened near me! Each day the first 100 customers received a gift certificate worth anywhere from $5-100!  So, of course i went each day! I got a lot of polish and makeup. =]

But, as for my latest mani, here it is!

It is a ("Caviar," "Kaviar") or however it is being referred to. In my spare time of not posing and just painting for me, I have been trying to master the polish not going all the way to my cuticles, i think people call it the "gap"? I actually like it a lot better because i was one that cuticle flooded like there was no tomorrow and then i would pick at it because it would drive me nuts. Anyways, i kinda like these microbeads on it! My nails are painted Orly Glowstick, which is an AWESOME neon yellow. I absolutely love this color. Only downfall is that it took 4 coats to completely cover my nail, which sucked because it then took forever to dry. I also added a coat of Wet N Wild Tipsy of Bubbly because there were a few spots that were still thinner than others! So frustrating!
I have seen some of the posts other bloggers have done where they said these beads only lasted a day or so on them. It has been 3 days for me and i have only lost a few towards the tips. I think it is because no one used a top coat, and i can kind of see why. You can see in the closer up pictures that it take a bit of the color from the bead and the blue then kind of melts onto the nail so that in-between the beads it looks green. But without the top coat i don't think they would have lasted this long. I wish i would have gotten the beads a bit closer to the edge though, and i know for next time to paint my nail the same color as the beads! But this was only the first try so i think it went pretty well.

I most likely won't be posting everyday. I don't have that much time nor do i paint my nails that much. But, i am going to try to post semi-regularly. I plan on painting my nails again today, so hopefully that post will be up soon. =]

christmas mani!

i first saw this design on cutepolish's youtube channel and i loveeeddddd it! i think its so christmasy and festive without using really any red and green. i love a french tip anyways so this just makes it that much better!

i used OPI Alpine Snow, Sinful Colors Time Off, Sinful Colors Paradise, Sinful Colors Innocent, Sally Hansen Sun Kissed, Sally Hansen Mellow Yellow, and my random OPI that i don't have a name for (red)

i got so many comments on this mani. everyone loved it! my manager at work thought it was a dolphin???? i don't know where he got that from but its all good haha

merry christmas part 1!

first matter of business is my new polish home =D i love this thing so much and already added some early christmas polishes to it giving me hardly any room left! i ordered it from amazon for $40 something and i think I'm going to have to get another if i get too many more polishes. but i love this!

and secondly my first christmas mani! i did this one a week or so ago and I've had ZERO time to blog it. but I've got a few minutes now before christmas eve dinner and present opening to blog about two different manis. i really wanted to do a santa one and a reindeer buttttt calculating the time till xmas i didn't have time for that many manis. sooo i combined the two! i mean santa is always known with this reindeer so it fits right? i think they are both too cute.

i used Maybelline Bordeaux, Sinful Colors Nirvana, Sinful Colors Snow Me White, Sally Hansen Black Out , and the red sparkle snowman polish!

so jolly! he makes me happy =D haha

and you can't forget rudolph! its not christmas without him!

peppermints!

I'm done with finals so to celebrate heres a fun peppermint mani! theres the red peppermints and the green spearmints. =D i absolutely love this! i think its adorable and fun! and having the glitter on top makes it even better. this hand didn't turn out too bad stripe wise but my right hand....oh man. looks like i sneezed a few times haha. sorry for the flash on my nails. i had to take this when its dark out when i normally do it when its light.

i love this!

at first i thought the green would be a little too bright, but i think its perfect now.

i used Maybelline Bordeaux, Sinful Colors Happy Ending, Sinful Colors Bad Chick for the white stripe, and Wet N Wild Tipsy on Bubbly for the sparkle

heres the red and the green together. makes me want a mint =D i think the next mani will be something with animals

wintery mani

its time for the wintery manis to come. the first snow has fallen here and its cold. as. hell. sooo here it is! i don't know how i feel about the "dripping" look. it didn't really happen like i wanted it to. so i kinda had to drag the drips down. on the closer pictures you can see the different layers on some of my nails. but i absolutely love the dark blue that i used. gorgeous. and i love the light blue on top of the dark blue on the 2 nails. overall i think that this mani worked out really well.

i think this looks a lot better in person than it does in the picture.

i like it =] looks like snow falling off a rooftop or something!

that light blue that i used was almost a jelly? i think thats what it would be called. i dunno but i really like the look. one of these days i want to paint all my nails the dark blue and put the jelly blue over it.

its almost a multi-colored glitter over the blue. i did it on the nail first and wasn't really feeling it butttt i wasn't about to take the polish off and redo it so i just did it on the snowflake nails.

=]

you can see the 2 blue nails together.

and the drippy nail and snowflake nail together

bucket list - striping tape

this was a mini disaster... ugh its coming off my nails today! such a grand idea! presents! i absolutely loved the colors i used. they were very christmasy =] and then the striping tape seemed just perfect. but nooooooo! that stuff is so crappy. well maybe it wouldn't have been if the edge hadn't been on the end of my nail. i think thats what ruined it. because most of the other sides stayed on. i think they look like cute presents =]

this was 2 coats of Alpine Snow, 2 coats of Sinful Colors Envy (green), and Maybelline Bordeaux (red)

i didn't even want to show my thumb nail again. that looked the worst. you can see the white on the red looks like crap too. for some reason i never have any luck with Alpine Snow. i dunno if its the brush or if its me? i think its a little bit of both. so much comes off the brush no matter how much i wipe off. so you can see by my cuticle its all crappy looking.

this is my favorite nail =] i love the red on the green! it got kinda clumpy towards my cuticle... something I'm working on getting better at