Halloween Dotticure

Some of my favorite holiday inspired manicures have more to do with color themes than more literal designs.  I love colors and I love playing with colors, so I decided to make somewhat of a Halloween dotticure for the occasion.

It's not deliberate in your face Halloween, but I think the colors give a nice nod to the holiday!  I started out with two coats of Revlon Royal Cloak. Such a pretty color, I really do think it could place in my Top 20.

Two coats of Royal Cloak, OTD TC.

I wore RC for a day before I added the dots, so there is a bit of tipwear.

For the white pattern, I used BM209 with Konad Special White.  After it dried, I used 3 additional colors and covered up some of the white dots.  I used Orly Green Apple, Orly Liquid Vinyl and OPI A Good Man-darin is Hard to Find for the dots.  Then I added another coat of OTD TC. I love my dotting tools. So much.

AveYou Haul + Essie + Magnetic Nail Polish

First we'll start with my aveyou haul!  Their warehouse (?) is about an hour from where I live, so I got it the next day! THAT WAS EXCITING. I used my kgb gift certificate code thing and after all the math is done, I spent around $40 on $80 worth of stuff! WHOOO!  Aveyou.com still has a code you can use, "GiveMe15", without the quotes, and you'll get $15 off a purchase of $75 or more.  The code is good until January 2012.

On to my pretties!

Warm & Fozzie - Excuse Moi - Ski Teal We Drop - Teenage Dream

Da Bush - School of Hard Rocks - Changing Lilac - Turquoise Wave

I have two from that haul to show you now.  The first is Essie School of Hard Rocks.

3 Coats. Easy!

Then I got bored and decided to put Turquoise Wave over it.  This was my first time using the magnetic polish so it's not perfect, but I like how it came out!

It's so cool in real life! Ohmigod it looks 3D.  When you move your nails back and forth and stuff, it looks like you're looking at something with those dorky glasses. Love it! Easy application, easy to figure out, my pinky was the first shot - can't you tell?  I love how it looks.  These were $15.50 each so I will not be buying anymore, probably ever. But I'm glad I got two pretties to play around with now.

What do you think of the magnetic nail polish trend?

Revlon Facets of Fucshia and a FAIL

This manicure started of so unsuspecting!  It was pretty and had depth, it was fun to look at. Sometimes my creative juices get flowing in the wrong direction.  I have a wonderfully fabulous "WTFAIL" manicure for you a little further down.

Three Coats of FoF

I'm pretty sure it's three coats, at least!  If it's not three, its two.  I cant remember as I did it about a week ago.  I need to take notes when doing them, because I never remember )=

Lovely!

It's a much less obvious Halloween polish.  Black and purple certainly can create an eerie feel.  I didn't like this one and had passed on it a ton.  Finally I saw it and just couldn't resist.  I've seen hundreds of wonderful swatches and I caved. They're all enablers. YOU HEAR THAT? YOU'RE AN ENABLER.

It only cost me $3.59 at Harmon so, I didn't pay full drugstore price (around $6) for it. Application was surprisingly easy.  Love this one, definitely recommend.  This one is from the same collection as Starry Pink.  They're both in the Expressionist Collection.  There is one more I need to wear, Blue Mosaic. Oh its gorgeous, too.

ANYWAYS.. ONTO THE ANOMALY.

What's that kitty? You sense fail? OH NOOOOO.

Let me start by explaining what I wanted to do, what my vision was.  I wanted to make a jelly sandwich sorta. I wanted FoF to be on the bottom, and then use a different jelly over top. But I wanted to sanwich some konading in between the layers. Well, it didn't work so well. And it didn't look so hot. But here it is:

Started off by stamping.

Then I put 2 coats of a blue franken jelly. And one coat of
a GitD Pumpkin glitter polish. It got ugly fast, didn't it?

Blarghork.

Happy Halloween time!

Scrapbook Punch Out Thingy Tape Manicure

Hey gurlfran! I've been so sick this week.  I thought I'd kind of "walk it off" but I really didn't.  I waited too long to go to the doctor which prolonged my misery.  I went on Friday, finally, got some medication and I'm getting much better now, yay!  I literally did NOTHING this week. Seven straight days of pure crap.  Anyways, when I wasn't curled up sleeping, I had some energy to play with my nail polish. I revisited an old idea.

Sometime early this year, I used a scrapbooking punchout thingy with scotch tape, tutorial seen here.  This time I used different colors;

I started out with two coats of Ulta Tutu Cute.  Perfect formula and application, really.  I couldn't have asked for a better application.

IT'S SO PRETTY RIGHT? I love purple (=

I used China Glaze Four Leaf Clover for the green and blue painter's tape.  It's much easier to work with than scotch tape as it doesn't peel and shred as easily when removing it from the punchout thing.

Sealed with a coat of Out the Door TC and done! Groovy, baby!

Breast Cancer Awareness Manicure

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month!  It's been four years since my dad was diagnosed with male breast cancer.  Luckily, it was caught in time and he is doing just fine now.  I always try to buy the things that have pink ribbons on them, the packaging that says it donates to this or that breast cancer foundation.  I've never made a direct monetary donation but over the years I'm sure I've accumulated quite a bit in donations.  So many things I own have the pink ribbon on them. Every little bit helps.  I do have it tattooed on my foot too; that's more about awareness though, and in honor of my father.  I did a manicure for breast cancer awareness this week.

This is 3 coats of China Glaze Strawberry Fields with one coat of OPI I Lily Love You and I used a pink striper for the ribbon.

Stay safe and stay healthy.  Check your boobies. Have your doctor check them, too.  Early detection is key! Ladies, be sneaky and try to check your husband's boobies, too.  Men get breast cancer.  Breast tissue is breast tissue.  Most men dismiss any lumps; be sure to take them seriously. Don't check any stranger's boobies though. That's assault!

New Funky Fingers Foil Collection Swatches

Oooh these are excitingly beautiful!  As many of you know, Funky Fingers and Color Club share the same mother company, Forsythe Cosmetics Group.  These are dupes of the Color Club Foiled collection.  The only differences I've spotted so far is that the light pink in the Color Club collection ("Foil Me Once") is actually an older Funky Fingers polish named "Favorite Girl" (I think); additionally, "Power Chord" is not in the Color Club set.

At my Five Below, "Favorite Girl" was plunked right next to all of the other new foils.  It's not a new release, however and doesn't have a name change.  Another fun yet confusing fact to throw into this mix is "Platinum Record" seems to be a renamed re-release of "Down To Earth". If this is the case, than FF is releasing old colors with new names.  I'll do a comp eventually.

Among the foils there was a chunky silver hex glitter, Stage Dive, which is swatched on some nails.

Anyways, onto the beauties!

Monster Ballad:

This is only one coat!  Monster Ballad applied so nicely, a lovely magenta foil.  This one stood out among the crowd, it's so bold.

Sold Out Arena:

One Coat of Stage Dive

This is two coats. I wore this for like, a solid two days and loved it. I'm sure its not the first minty foil but its my only as of now.  This was two coats. Somewhat runny formula but workable.

Power Chord:

One Coat of Stage Dive

I had some trouble capturing this color really well.  It's a dark plummy kind of purple but it catches gold on camera.  This was two coats, could've used a third for sure.  This was the runniest of them all, too.  Very pretty though.

Sound Check:

GORGEOUS vibrant blue.  This one is really super pigmented, like Monster Ballad, and could be done with one decent coat.  This is one splotchy coat but I do believe you could get away with one coat if you paid attention.

Guitar Solo:

One Coat of Stage Dive

An icy icy blue foil.  This one was easy to apply, the formula ran so inconsistently in this collection.

Platinum Record

One Coat of Stage Dive

A gold foil, seen it 100 times. Nothing too 'stand out' about this color, it washes me out, too.

So this whole collection is kind of confusing.  Two colors look like previous FF colors, one has a name change and one doesn't.  It's hard enough keeping it straight between FF and CC, but if they're really releasing the same things with different names, then my head will explode. I'm looking at the bottles now, and the one seems to be a bit grittier than the other; so hopefully they are different.

Additionally, the formula is somewhat all over the place.  Some are super pigmented and a nice consistency, while some are runny and need multiple coats.  Maybe that has more to do with them being foils and less about their maker, I'm not sure.  I do love the color range of this though, so many to choose from.  I bought this entire collection for $12 at Five Below so I can't complain too much. Which is your favorite?