fauxnad!!

so as im sitting here eating my dinner (at 1 AM mind you..), a true food of the gods: cup-o-noodles (in chicken flavor!) i notice a small mail package sitting above my keyboard. !! thats why my dad was trying to wake me up earlier while i was napping. (i still have a lot of pain from my wisdom teeth being removed.. i havent been sleeping more than 3 hours at a shot) my package has come.. my FAUXNADS ARE HERE!

chicken flavor cup-o-noodles has to wait, my fauxnads have top priority. i opened them like ralphie opened his red ryder bb gun in a christmas story. no, really. anyways since i was swatching earlier today, after i finished i did a cute french mani on my right hand and im not ready to part with it yet. most of the time i have two different colored hands lol. my right hand (im right handed) is my test hand and my left hand is the hand you see photographed lol, well my right had polish on it from my china glaze haul i wanted to try out my fauxnads asap so i broke out the konad supplies and got to work..

i flipped. they werent WORKING. at all. wtf. then i realized i has having a true blonde moment when i discovered an almost invisible piece of plastic on top of every single plate. oops? lol. anyways i tried a few on my right hand and they work, beautifully. im so exciteeeed. there arent any full nail images which i knew buying them, but the confirmation still made me a little sad. i suppose i can splurge the $6 for the real plates for full images. in these times, a girl has to be frugal. i got 21 plates for $18 off of ebay. if i had bought 21 plates from konad it wouldve come to $126 before shipping. i call that a steal (=




most of the plates were individually packaged, but put of the wrappers had the majority of the plates in them. theyre mostly tiny flower themed looking images with intricate dots and added cutesy. im excited!

BONUS FOR YOU!



my little prince (=

french mani; notd

love love love the look of a french manicure. my toenails are 90% of the time done in french manicure style, since its so much easier for me to paint a straight line on my toes compared to my right hand. i have konad plates that are tips and of the french style but i havent been able to get them down.

anyways i was jonesing for one and decided to try taping off my nail to get a straight line. it worked mostly. i had to re-do a couple of them but i dont consider that too bad since this was my first time trying it. i used regular scotch tape. but i think that blue painters tape i used to use to tape off my canvas would work even better. here are the little soldiers i used:



left to right; (and conveniently in the order i used them)
sally hansen insta-grip basecoat
orly french manicure "pink nude" (sounds dirty)
L.A. girl nail lacquer "french white"
art club fine silver glitter
orly french manicure "bare rose"
sally hansen insta-dri topcoat

if i could redo this, i would have put "bare rose" BEFORE "french white" because it actually tinted the french tip part of a my nail a little which i hadnt thought of until i was almost finished. my bad.



i love how it came out. i was happy with the results.. i think next time ill put the tape a bit lower and paint the silver with the help of the tape instead of free hand.

china glaze haul

out of all of the brands of nail polish ive used thus far, china glaze is my favorite (=

is it still considered a haul if its from the internet? im not even sure if 6 polishes is considered a haul. i dont think it is, since i didnt have shoppers guilt after buying them LOL

the wonderful nihrida recommended a site for affordable polish, http://head2toebeauty.com/ . let me just say i love this site now, i placed my order on sunday evening and received it by early wednesday! i really had to control myself because there are so many amazing colors out there, i eventually picked out six.



from left to right;
he's going in circles - kaleidoscope collection
good witch? - wizard of ahz collection
dorothy who? - wizard of ahz collection
cowgirl up - rodeo collection
DV8 - holo collection
LOL - holo collection

im absolutely crazy about dorothy who? i dont had a distinct fondness for blues OR glitters but i cannot wait to wear this one as a full mani. i was most excited about good witch? but its sooooo light against my skin )= i still love it though, and will wear it often. the rest of them were ones i saw swatches for and thought were pretty. im most disappointed with cowgirl up. i saw an amazing swatch (dont remember where) and it had all kinda of hues and dimensions to it, but when i put it on and looked at it under regular lighting and fluorescent lighting and daylight.. it was a freaking dark magenta-purple. im a pastel girl. i love bright and light cremes and colors. this isnt my bag, at all. i went out on the limb with it because i was sold by the swatch, but even with multiple coats it still fell short of my expectations - oh well.

they were $3 each, which is a deal in my book. shipping for 1 bottle is $9. shipping for 6$ bottles is 11. my total came to about $27 and some change - which $9 cheaper than if i had purchased them from a beauty supply store. i was excited with the saved money and the new colors and the additions to my collection, so really.. i cant complain!!



i took over 40 pictures of the sample above and i could not, by any means get a good shot. this is the pick of the crop which just emphasizes how sad my selection was lol. this photo doesnt do the colors justice. except cowgirl up, thats pretty much how it looks..

new haul, new technique, new notd!

i went shopping! i went to the dollar tree and walgreens. i got 5 polishes and 5 nail art polishes from the dollar tree and 3 sparkly topcoats from walgreens on sale for $1.09 each! how exciting! my haul;



the three polishes i got from walgreens were absolutely stunning. theyre from the covergirl "boundless color" collection which i had never heard of, and were the last 3 left on the rack. im sure i wouldve bought one of each color given the opportunity. i really like the bottles and brushes too.



from right to left;
-pink twinkle. there is irregular flecks of foil inside this one.
-city lights. a holo topcoat (the little bits of holographic glitter are sparse compared to a typical holo polish)
-amethyst mist. a purple jelly base with hexagon multicolor glitter & teeny tiny bits of glitter as well.

theyre so beautiful and the application is wonderful. i dont have _that_ many drugstore polishes that i actually use but i will definitely be employing these 3 lovelies (=

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in other news, i tried my first marbling last night! i cant say i was too happy with the outcome. in fact, i removed it right after taking the pictures. here is a few things i learned;
-petroleum jelly moves when you insert your finger in the water and often times ended up under polish resulting in a re-do
-aside from a base coat, a base color is needed to bring out the vibrancy of the marbled colors
-scotch tape works relatively well. i used one long piece for the sides and top of my nail, and then secured that piece with another piece of tape around the whole finger and that piece edged off the bottom of the nail.
-for some reason, i could not get 2 different holos to work together, but that just could be me.
-i cannot figure out how to avoid a large gap on my thumb; i retried over 5 times and had a large gap, in the same place, of uncolored nail each time - any advice?



like i said before, i think a white underneath wouldve really made these colors pop. i used orly "liquid vinyl" and funky fingers "punch". the black came out mostly gray.. i wonder if it just isnt marbling compatible or it wouldve been brighter with white underneath. not TOO bad for my first attempt!

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my NOTD has got to be one of my new favorites. i used my new colors for this;
-sally hansen insta-grip base coat
-maybelline wet shine "pink splash"
-covergirl boundless color "pink twinkle"
-seche vite topcoat

the golden/pink flecks look so much cuter irl. i had a hard time capturing the color of the flecks and i tried all 20 different camera settings with different flashes.. the best ive found so far is the flower/soft flash option. i had some luck with the food/soft flash too. i think its because these are both meant to capture fine detail. without a doubt the worst setting was one for text, DARK, blurry and spotty. anyways, here it is;

wonderland fun

i bought this at walgreens for a mere $2 and i am in love with this color. its sinful colors "feeling great" i love the formula and it applies so nicely. one coat would suffice if you were in a rush but i always go with two anyways. its such a vibrant color!




i did some damage at five below today and picked up 3 new colors along with tons of polish remover. one of the colors i picked up is funky fingers "wonderland". its a highly mirror-esque glitter. it smooths out VERY nicely with a topcoat of seche vite (and the topcoat doesnt seem to affect its shine at all) but it is a pain to remove. i always said glitter will survive the apocalypse and i still stand by that statement. after removing it traditionally, it was all over my fingers and i had to use more cotton rounds than id like to admit.



regardless, "wonderland" is a very fun, funky "going out for the night" polish. after 3 coats you could still see my nail underneath depending on the lighting. it draws a lot of attention to your nails. my dad saw it on me and told me he neede sunglasses just to look at it. its also a relatively difficult polish to capture on film but i did my best.



i wanted to see how "wonderland" would look as a topcoat on three bold colors so i used sinful colors "feeling great" on my ring finger, orly "liquid vinyl" on my middle, and funky fingers "jester" on my index finger. i wasnt really crazy with the turnout to be quite honest! i had never used "jester" before and i cant wait to swatch it next because its beautiful! it looks ok on black and only so-so on the pink. i did three coats on top of the base color coats as well.

a bit of insight..

i know a lot of popular blogs have swatches with natural, indoor, outdoor and light-box lights.. i dont the patience for that type of dedication. i take multiples shots of my nails in florescent and my poorly lit bedroom and try to find the most true-to-life capture. if i absolutely cannot get close to the real life shade, ill try color correcting it on photoshop. figured that info was slightly useful at least! (=