Ulta Eye Popping Poppy with Silver Gradient Design

I whipped out the striping tape to make this little design, which I originally wanted to do on all my nails but realized it was too time consuming.  Whenever I do venture to do any sort of designs or nail art, I start on my ring finger so if I find it too time consuming, it becomes an "accent" nail instead. Clever, I know, haha.

Eye Popping Poppy is super hard to describe.  I could've sworn I reviewed this polish before but I wasn't able to find it on the blog so I wasn't able to reference my previous description, oops.  It's a creme like jelly, it's not 100% either creme or jelly - there's a decent amount of sheerness.  It also lean coral/pink/orange depending on the lighting.  It's BRIGHT too, definitely has neon attributes!  Shown is 3 coats.

I used L.A. Colors Wire for the silver and mapped it out with striping tape, and them used a makeup sponge to dab it on to create the gradient effect. Super easy, just a bit tedious to cut up the thin tape.  Sealed with on coat of OTD and over NailTek II Foundation basecoat.

Oopsie Daisies Apple Picking Jelly Sandwich

The thought hit me to turn Apple Picking into a jelly sandwich when I woke up this morning, so that's what I did!

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This manicure consisted of to coats OPI Y'all Come Back Now Ya Hear?, two coats of Oopise Daisies Apple Picking, and one more coat of OPI. I'm not sure if it was because I used my Barielle base coat which isn't really a base coat, or what, but the OPI jelly stained a bit. I used one coat of the Barielle Pro Advanced and one coat of OTD for this mani.

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Then I added some stamping.  I used bornpretty's black stamping polish and BM plates 211, 314 and 305 for the images.  The stamping polish worked well, better than WnW Black Creme, which was transferring too sheer. The brush for the stamping polish was flared and had strays which made it a little messy to work with, but the opacity was nice which made up for it.  The stamping polishes are available HERE for $6.93 and free shipping.  Also, you can use coupon code "CA10L91" for 10% as well!

Apple Picking and many others now available at my Etsy store!

Oopsie Daisies Nail Polish 

Black stamping was provided for review.

Sephora by OPI Why Yellow There... The Perfect Yellow!!

I finally found the perfect yellow (for me)! I've been searching for quite some time and I am absolutely blown away by this one.  It's my first Sephora by OPI polish but this is easily in my Top Five polishes now, easily! I did a summery citrus manicure with it!

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Here are swatches without the designs.  What makes a perfect yellow for me? Well no lobster hands are an important factor but this.. this polish only needed TWO COATS! Finding my perfect yellow is like finding your HG base coat. I'm so incredibly happy with this.

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For the stamping I used plate BM308. I used Konad Special White for the white stamping and Klean Color Mango for the orange stamping.  I glued on some fimo fruits and added polka dots for a finishing touch!

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Thanks for reading!  I still have some polishes in stock at my Etsy store. The store will be closing for a week on August 24th, this Friday.  It will reopen on Saturday, August 31st.  Get your orders in now (=

Oopsie Daisies Nail Polish Shop 

Sonoma Nail Art Sonoma County Gazette

My friend on one of my forums sent me this pretty as a Random Act of Kindness. I had previously never heard of Sonoma Nail Art but after some quick searching I found they sell other polishes as well, if you're interested in learning more about them, their blog is HERE.

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Sonoma County Gazette is "black and white and red (read) all over", cute! It's PACKED with various shapes and sizes of black, white and red glitter in a clear suspension base. And I do mean packed, all swatches here are one coat.

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I've never been a huge fan of bar glitter, and this polish really doesn't change my stance on it.  There were some pieces that didn't lay flat on their own.  If you love the look then you probably don't mind coaxing the bars to behave but I've always found them to be more trouble than they're worth.

Macro Bottle Shot

I liked that the large white hexes were very prevalent.  I didn't have to fish for them at all, they came out on their own, and in multiples.

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Sonoma County Gazette is seen layered over Revlon Nail Art High Voltage that I blogged about yesterday.  As stated before, this is one coat of SCG and one coat of Pro-FX top coat.

Revlon Nail Art Neon High Voltage Swatch & Review

I saw this at my local Harmon and I was intrigued by them.  I picked this up for $6.29 but was able to use my sister's employee discount, yay!  Anyways, onto the polish..

I choose the one that stood out to me, the bright sunny orange, High Voltage.  Each bottle has two bottles, similar to the French Mix ones that I blogged about previously.  See below;

They look like this.  These are a bit pricey considering the label says you get only .26 fl oz of polish.

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You're supposed paint your nails with the white.  Layering any neon polish over white makes it really POP and brings out the neon a lot better.  So that's the implied method of polishing here.  I used two coats of the white over Orly Bonder and then I used 3 thin coats of High Voltage and sealed with the Pro-FX top coat (available at Walmart in a big 2 fl oz bottle for like $5 or $6).

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The orange needed 3 coats, it was streaky without it.  But this color is super bright, its really florescent looking and made my hands so tan looking too!  The white polish was decent, too.  I'd recommend 2 coats, but to wait until the first coat is really dry so you don't get streaks.

Zoya Arizona and Wet 'n' Wild Sunny Side Up Comparison

I kept hearing that Zoya Arizona was a dupe for Wet 'n' Wild Sunny Side up, and since I own both I decided to do a swatch comparison.We appear to have what seems to be a dead on dupe!

My bottle of Sunny Side Up is a bit worm but you can see the color similarity in the bottles alone.

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This is three coats of each over Orly bonder and sealed with Brucci Nail Dryer.  You really can't tell the difference, can you?

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Flash

As one might expect, Zoya had a much better formula.  It should also be mentioned though that my Zoya was brand new while my Wet 'n' Wild is not.  It was a bit goopier which could've been from air exposure, use, etc.  Aside from that though, Zoya was more opaque which I'm not really sure is affected by use.

Zoya Arizona & Stamping

I own very few orange polishes so this was a nice addition to the stash! I'm also quite surprised that oranges (at least this one) aren't absolutely putrid looking on me either, so maybe I should get more.

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This is 3 coats of Arizona, some nails are 4 though. It has a really nice formula but it is a bit on the sheer side. I tried swatching it again and I was able to get 3 coats for each nail, so I may have been a bit too stingy the first time.

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This is over Orly Bonder and sealed with Out the Door. I used BM-224, which is one of my favorite plates. Even though the design is a "full nail" design, and I have a lot of trouble with them, this one is pretty forgiving.  I used Konad Special White polish for the stamping and added a little rhinestone for sparkle.

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I wore this all day at work with only one little chip on my thumb.

KleanColor Mango

My dollar store has a KleanColor display! And it's a real dollar store, so they're only a dollar.  This encouraged me to pick up some new types I'd normally pass on.

KleanColor Mango is an almost neon creme of sorts.  It's a strange polish but very bright.

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This is three coats over Orly Bonder sealed with OTD.  It wore really well but KleanColor's take a little bit longer to dry.

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You could easily do only 2 coats, I did on my right hand.

Flash

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It was so fun to wear this, my hands were distracting me.  Definitely a summer color, not so much early spring, but that's OK.  If you can get your hands on this one, do it!

Ulta Aim to Squeeze & KleanColor Chunky Holo Candy Jelly Sandwich

The Ulta Aim to Squeeze polish came in a set of minis comparable to the OPI Texas Sorbets.  I used the orange one from the Ulta mini set and put 3 coats, one coat of KC Chunky Holo Candy and then one more of Aim to Squeeze, a fun orange jelly.

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This is over CND Stickey and sealed with OTD, of course.  The three coats of AtS on their own were.. quite ugly.  It's a fun polish to sandwich with but in my humble opinion, fugly on its own.

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Its just not my style and there was some bare spots (my fault) on the tips, but they were covered by the rest of the layers.

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Definitely click to enlarge to see the detail. Candy is INCREDIBLY subtle buried in the jelly.

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Thanks for reading! (=

Halloween Shatter

Black Shatter is such a harsh looking finish; I really think it only works for Halloween.  I like my pink shatter, the rest I could do without.  I wanted to create a Halloween color scheme for this mani so I used Orly Green Apple and Orly Life's A Peach with OPI Black Shatter.  Topped with a coat of OTD TC, and this was a simple and quick manicure!

I used 3 coats of both Orlys to obtain opacity.

The green and black look inherently Frankenstein-y.  I removed this after about 12 hours of wear; I have a hard time loving the Black Shatter, really. Blarghork.

First Halloween Mani of the Season!

Yay! It's that time of year now, finally! I love the autumn air so so so much. I'm also singing into my brush Beyonce's "Best Thing I Never Had" feeling all these womanly empowerment feelings.  Some of you may know I am going through the break up from hell, more of you may not. I'm healing.  Still hurt, but healing.  Ok I need to stop singing so I can type easier.

FIRST HALLOWEEN MANI OF THE SEASON! YAY!

I'll explain how I got to that picture above now, it was quite fun wearing it.  I wore FOUR coats of WnW Sunny Side Up. Holy hell, that was a pain to apply. It needed four coats. Streaky streaky.  I couldn't reach opacity until I did the fourth coat.  Once I did though, it was smooth and pretty.

Four coats. OTD TC.

Sunny Side Up aka Bic Lighter Orange

Such a happy color!

I'm glad this polish evened out.  I was about to through it across the room because I didn't think there was much hope for it.  This is four coats over Nailtek II Foundation with Out the Door topcoat. And now the fun happens:

Two coats pumpkin polish + one coat WnW Tangled in my Web

The pumpkin polish I got at Rite Aid for $1.99 - it has black and coppery-orange bar glitter.  I put WnW Tangled in my Web over that. Click to see the details of the glitters.

Ah! My right hand!

I never use my right hand as my swatch hand for obvious reasons but I had to this time around.  I destroyed my left hand's mani with some bad ideas and streaking from a bright idea I had.  The photos are strange, weird angles, poor lighting.. I couldn't photograph these nicely with my left hand, at all. I tried my best though!

And now some completely unrelated girl-getting-over-her-ex-lyrics-that-hopefully-help-because-they're-somewhat-relatable!

Beyonce:
Thank god you blew it
Thank god I dodged the bullet

 Pia Toscano:
This time, this time I'm gonna do it my away
This time, I'm finding out the hard away
This time, I'm gonna go back to the girl I was on the night you found me

Don't worry girls, I got this. I think..

funky fingers "Kingston" neon nail polish

Considering I am not crazy about oranges or neons really, I enjoyed this nail polish!  Under the fluorescent lighting at Five Below, it looked a little pink (like, deep pink) but it really isn't. Anyways, look!

2 coats of Funky Fingers "Kingston" over 3 coats
of some random white polish.

Excuse the tipwear.  This was after a day and a half of wear and a full day of work.  I also didn't wrap them at all.  Also, as you can see, I messed up my index finger when cleaning up the edges and didn't have the energy to fix all those layers so I left it as is.  Looks a little wonky but you should get the idea.

In the shade.

In the sun. Looks like tomato color here (=

Completely unaltered!

I can't believe how much it glows.  None of these pictures are edited in any way.  Well  I cropped them, but that doesn't count.  This is the first time I've used white underneath, and the results were stunning!  I bought this at Five Below with two other polishes which came out to 3 for 5$.