cover girl NOTD; best 1$ mani yet

I am sooo drawn to pink sparkly polishes.  This one is especially pretty and it just jumps off the nail in person!

This is 3 thin, fast drying coats of Cover Girl Nail Slicks in "Very berry".  It's a bright pink/magenta with glass flecks or foil flecks, I still can't figure it out.  This came in one of the two-packs I bought at the dollar tree a few weeks ago.

It's so sparkly!

I decided to add one coat of another sparkly polish I also got for an amazing .50 cents!  It really blows my mind that you can find great polishes with fun colors (in the US, at least) for nearly next to nothing.

This is Maybelline Nail Expert in "Rock out" which I think I will be putting to good use in the near future.  Adds a little something that some polishes really benefit from.

Just look at the sparklies!!  Excluding the topcoat, this mani cost me A DOLLAR! LOVE!

disney on ice; snow white inspired mani

Today I took my sister, old roommate and her 3 year old daughter to Disney on Ice.  We had such a good time and her little girl, Amaya, absolutely looooooooved the Snow White part and went NUTS when the 7 Dwarves came out.  I actually did a mani the night before inspired, somewhat abstractly, by Snow White's iconic dress!

Three coats of China Glaze "Lemon fizz" for four nails and a base color of Funky Fingers "Alice" on the accent nail.  I freehanded the red diamond with Art Club's red nail art polish and that's it!  It was somewhat recognizable, but not an entirely gaudy and obvious reference to the dress itself.  I loved it :D

(These are not my photos, love the Photoshop job on the first one LOL.)

Sadly we were running a bit late so we got there as the first scene was going and we were so enthralled and distracted I took maybe only two pictures of my own!

franken; "candy hearts"

My first few franken attempts ever consisted of mixing together crèmes and seeing what I got.  I started to notice that all of the frankens I did make looked like other polishes I already had, and those frankens didn’t contain the colors that they inevitably ended up looking like so I quickly lost interest.

I made 3 experimental frankens with some eyeshadow pigments and the results are just so different from anything I’ve already got, and I love that!  A few weeks ago I made a yummy springlike peach that I love and don’t have any like, as well as a minty jade that was a unique addition to my collection (=

This franken I am showing you today hits close to a ton of polishes out there but reminds me a little of Good Witch (ChG) sans the chunky glitter.

The only problem I have with this one is I think I added too much pigment, because every few strokes a clump shows up on my nail.  That requires smoothing it out, but it isn't too much of a pain.  I added 2 balls and thinner and it's still a little clumpy.

"Candy hearts"

This was an entire bottle of Sally Hansen "flawless" which was just a clear, colorless polish.  I mixed in 3 different color pigments but the red streaks at the bottom, but not on the nail - so no harm, no foul!

Also, we got lots of snow and I took some pictures!

Frank was exploring on our screened in porch.  The snow blew in from the screen and he left little paw prints all over, too cute!

covergirl NOTD!

Purple purple purple!  I don’t know what has gotten into me but I can’t get enough of the purples lately.  This mani is about 4 or 5 coats of Cover Girl Nail Slicks in “Sheer orchid”.  The polished pooled in some spots of my nails because they’re still so fk’d up from the fakes I used to wear.  They’re growing out, slowly but surely!

Sheer orchid is a dusty kinda purple jelly.  I chipped my pinky shoveling this morning, oops.  Notice my index finger, yea, I "fixed" the problem by adding to it and slapping on a fakie.

Added some delicious sparkles with Cover Girl Boundless Color in.. wow I have no idea.  The label is missing from the bottle.  

Now for some genuine girl bitching. While all of the major aspects in my life are in order, I have a stack of minor irritations slowly adding up that, you guessed, I’m going to vent about!

-I somehow, I guess, broke my father’s camera.  I dropped it a month or so ago. Well it fell off my bed, about two feet, onto the carpet. It wasn’t a drastic fall and it worked fine after up until this morning. It takes one picture, then the lens spazzes out and the camera turns off.  I lost one of his credit cards 3 years ago and I still hear about it so I suppose I won’t be living this one down for a good while.  I tried to make up for it by helping him shovel from about 4am til 6am this morning because we got a foot of snow and he had to go to work.  I’m not mad that he’s upset, and he’s really not that upset, I’m upset with myself for ruining something he trusted me with.

-A totally superficial complaint but my stupid index finger nail that has been a nubbin since it broke a week or so again has finally gotten the best of me.  I was at the vet, my little kitty isn’t behaving right, and I was impatient and nervous and picked at it well below the quick.  It bled for a while and stung, still does, but I applied a fakey to it for now until it starts to grow a bit.  I didn’t push hard so hopefully it doesn’t damage the new growth.

-My little bitty kitty has some kind of infection or something, there is blood in her urine and I’m not to happy about it.  She’s being treated now but as of recently she started peeing on everything and acting erratically.  She is in heat but there’s a defined difference between being in heat and being sick.  I’ve seen cats in heat before, they howl and meow and rub all over things and stick their asses in the air and are super affectionate and annoying, but peeing over everything isn’t typical, especially of her.  We just got her from my brother a few months ago and I’m just worried she still hasn’t adjusted.

This is my little princess (=  She's so tiny! Only 6 pounds!  My brother had named her Artemis but the name doesn't roll off the tongue well.  As far as anyone in my house is concerned, this is Squidget.  Or Squidge, or Squidgee.  She's so petite and cute and such a sweet little girl.  Loves cuddling and nuzzling, omg I just wanna squeeze her head off sometimes LOL.

i shouldn't even make this public LOL

How did we come to this atrocity you wonder?

Read on my lovely, into the story you'll plunder!

Here goes nothing;

It started out with a pinkish pink

The pinkiest pink that you ever did think

A bright neon pink, so hard to capture!

But a beautiful pink, oh joy, OH RAPTURE!

She thought and she thunk and she thought some more

What could she do to spice up this bore?

She looked and she saw a bottle of glitter

“Pour it on the tips!” she thought, her heart went a twitter!

So she dumped that bright glitter all over her tips

And she poked and prodded, it dried in a zip.

But once more, there was more to be done

“I need to add PIZZAZ and make this more fun!”

So she picked up some polished and went to town

She stripped with pink and white, all up and all down

Then she looked and she thought, and she came to deduce

This looks just like something from the dear Dr. Seuss!

An original whack job poem by yours truly (=

fail of the week; water marbling

LOL.  These pics made me laugh so hard.  It was an honest effort but an evident fail.  You don't get better without practice so I don't consider this a total waste.  I'll get there (=

base: two coats of ChG "Lemon fizz"
marbles: some random purple unlabeled L.A. Colors Color Craze and "Static electricity" by L.A. Colors Color Craze

I tried having a talk with my nails.  Went great. Really.


Me: hey thumb, I'm going to clean you up now.
Thumb: no, no you're not. i'm gonna give you hell, kid.
Me: hey ring finger, what are you doing?
Ring finger: raging against the machine cathryn, raging against the machine
Me: pinky, you ok?  what happened?
Pinky: herpaderp
Me: oh btw, index finger, what's with that weird glare you got there, you know the one not caused by light?
Index finger: black magic.

LOL OH WELL!

lets do it, LETS FALL IN LOVE!

Birds do it, bees do it
Even educated fleas do it
Let's do it, let's fall in love!

Valentine's Day is just a few weeks away so perfect timing to get some v-day manis in order!  I have on here I did and hated at first, but as I added each element I started to embrace it.

Started with a base color of Essie's "Knockout pout".  Ok, not joking on this one, FIVE COATS and still some bald spots!  I will not be using this polish again, most likely.  What are we paying 8$ for?  If I wanted full coverage it would've required SIX coats! LUDICROUS!

So yea, five coats.  Bright baby pink creme.  Super cute though.

 This was the final product after about an hour of decisions lol.

left to right;

-nailtekII as basecoat
-art club in white and shimmery purple (tips)
-essie's "knockout pout" (base color)
-opi by nicole "step to the beat of my <3" (heart glitter on middle nail)
-pure ice "dont you wish?" (glitter over the tips and middle finger)
-sally hansen insta-dri topcoat as topcoat
-used BM02 plate for the lips
-used BM11 for the tips
-used art club for the stamping

 What do you think?! Even lazy jellyfish do it!

hot blooded by L.A. Colors

I bought "Hot blooded" by L.A. Colors Color Craze line at the Dollar Tree last week for, you guessed it, a dollar.  "Hot blooded" is a deep red jelly based polish that REFUSES to photograph as such.  For a more accurate description, think of the last time you were bleeding and how it changes from deep purple, to dark red to bright red (as it oxidizes).  Basically, "Hot blooded" is the middle stage of the color transformation.  Not purple, but not the bright red everyone associates with blood.

Now, you're all going to think I'm nuts because this is bright freakin' ketchup red.  Regardless of sunlight, flash, no flash and shade this color photographs as BRIGHT RED.  And it's not!  Not in the bottle and not on the nails! 

Color sample from the website.

 

 I actually really like how it's not bright red but unfortunately it's nearly impossible for me to capture, so I tried my hand at color correcting it in Photoshop.

This is what I came up with, lol.  It's more accurate than any picture I could take.  But not exactly what it looks like in actuality.  I google image searched the color and all of the swatches I saw looked bright red, too.  C'est la vie!

bourbon street on voodoo

I decided (as I do most of the time) to spice up my NOTD and added a blingy little tip to "voodoo" which was shown a post prior.

Its called "Bourbon St." by Funky fingers and I forgot I had it!  My dad uses some of my polishes to make his fishing lures and when hes tying flies and I found it in his stuff today.  Lightbulb went off and I added this little touch.

Looks like a NYE mani, not a random Sunday in Janurary mani.  I ended up taking it off right away.  Oh well, still cute to me! Thanks for reading (= !!

funky fingers "voodoo"

Ohhh I love it!  I normally don't go for any type of dark colors.  I love bright happy pastels and such, but this one weaseled a way into my heart!

"Voodoo" is a black jelly base with teeny tiny little copper.. glitter?  Is that glitter?  I'm still trying to learn how to identify all elements to a polish but these little shiny pieces seem smaller than normal glitter.  Whatever they are, they're copper.  And pretty (=

This was taken outdoors.  You can see the sparkles better.  Click to enlarge this one for sure because it really is a stunning yet subtle added element to the polish!
 

Anyways,  what exactly is the sparkly element of this polish actually called?  Thanks!!

franken; "jaded"

My sister showed me these eyeshadows at Five Below.  They're basically just pigments in little tiny jars and I thought I'd give them a try with some clear polishes I had lying around.

This is what I came up with!  It was about 3/4 full of NYC Nail Strengthener that actually had a slight pink tint to it, but it didn't affect the outcome.  I added 4 different color pigments and some of Funky Fingers "Mint montauk".  I don't know any of the exact measurements because this was like my 5th franken ever and I wasn't sure what I was dealing with, it was also my first time using pigments rather than mixing existing polishes.

I used a white pigment shimmer powder, gold, blue and teal! 

I think I'll name this one "Jaded", for obvious reasons!  Cute, I will def be wearing this (=  What do you think, would you wear it?

e.l.f "fluorescent pink"

I bought this baby at the Dollar Tree quite a while back but never used it.  I ended up wearing this to my second day of school and loved it!  It is bright but definitely not any form of "fluorescent".  

Much more of a coral shimmer, don't you think?  There are hints of gold silver in here, too.  But they go unnoticed unless in the sun or with flash. This polish really made me feel like a lady when wearing it!  Very feminine. 

Went on surprisingly smooth and opaque.  This was 3 somewhat thin coats.

the tale of two purples

Purple Pamploma is my first ever OPI so I was very excited to add it to my collection.  I had dinner plans with the boy (well.. he’s not a boy.. actually 5 years older than me, but you get the idea) and had to hurry up the process because I still had to wash my hair.

 The culprits!

Learned a few lessons this week.. such as showering 25 minutes after doing your nails equates to the optical illusion (so-to-speak) of 10 days of tipwear, instantly!  Talk about being royally pissed.  I had top-coated and painstakingly removed ALL excess polish during the clean up and did the impression test and they seemed OK.  Yea, not really at all.  Luck for all of us, I took pictures before I destroyed them (=

A purple creme (= perfect! Totally into purples lately!  Purple Pamploma, according to Wikipedia, looks much like "Byzantium" in the bottle, photographs more like "Fandango".  The flash definitely lightens the color as a whole but it isn't far from the true color.  The sunlight has a similar effect.  Very pretty regardless!
 

Sooooooooooooo after my disastrous shower and dinner date, I came home and redid my mani.  Chose another purple, surprise, and I am a little bit surprised how similar they appear in pictures!

Don't get my wrong, L.A Colors "Nuclear Energy" (I believe, according to their site.  The bottles have no labels and I have long since discarded the packaging!) and PP are completely different.  Nuclear energy is a jelly and PP is a creme.  They also have different a different hue and saturation.  They appear remarkably different in the bottle, but not so remarkably different on the nail.

Caution: slight gore ahead!

 This is another shot of Nuclear energy on my right hand.  I am soooo tired of looking at my nubblette index nail on my left!  Anyways after uploading the pictures I realized what a hackjob my hand looks like O.O

Note the numerical labels;
1. ouch.

2. OUCH.  (You better believe acetone was fun!  AAUUUUEEEEGHH!! Stung like a B*$@! - only inflamed the wound)

3.  That dent is not visible to the naked eye.. really, I can't even see it.  Yet "macro" makes it so apparent.  Thanks, technology!

I've NEVER been a nail biter. But I've always been a nail picker.  I'll pick pick pick and not even realize it until I draw blood.  I think I did this on the way home from my boyfriend's house.  I'm not sure.  I don't even realize that I do it. Luckily, I don't pick my nails when I have polish on them, its some kind of subconscious deterent and that's fine, great actually.  They're usually bloody stumps when I am not up-to-date on my blog, which is why I will continue to blog as long as I have it in me.  However, not so lucky for my cuticles and the skin surrounding my cuticles.  I unintentionally tear it to shreds and the anti-bite nail polish serves no purpose here.  I don't have to be nervous, anxious, upset or angry.. I just habitually pick at my nails.

Mentioned as my two nail related new year's resolutions were better cuticle care and perfecting "the gap".  I think I've done a decent job on the gap part.. still more work to do..

Any advice on how to shed this habit?