Swatch: Sinful Colors - Purple Diamond

Several months ago, my friend Maddie gave me, as part of an ITS Senior Farewell, this nail polish. It's so pretty in the bottle that I've been looking forward to using it ever since, but some how never came up with a design that this would work for! So finally I decided: I am going to use this on my birthday. And so I did. :)
Here are three coats:

It did require a bit of a build up to get to this opacity. Here's one coat and two coats:

But three coats is lovely. :)

It's this kind of hard to define polish. Not really metallic, not really a frost, not really a shimmer, but also kind of all of those. I'm sure there's some name I'm not remembering.

I'm enjoying this polish. It's just so purple and shimmery, just what I wanted.

As I've mentioned, I've only gotten to use it in my 19th birthday Rainbow Dotticure. But it makes for a lovely base there. :)

Thanks for looking (and thanks Maddie for the polish)!

01/30/13 - Rainbow Dotticure

Okay, here's how I actually painted my nails to celebrate my 19th birthday. :)
I wanted something purple and sparkly (purple is my favourite colour). While trying to think of ideas, I decided I would also throw rainbows in there, since I love rainbows. I brought out my dotting tools, which I got a while ago, tested out, found them to be a complete fail, and stashed them back away. But this time they worked just fine, which is exciting! Who knows what I could do with dots now? :)

 

See? Everything the doctor ordered. :)

This design went through a couple iterations, but the goal for the final product was a sort of rainbow dot gradient of decreasing sizes over the sparkly purple, which was then covered in sparkles.
It actually kind of matches my pajama pants:

Let's see, a lot of polishes went into this, including two new ones that I haven't added to a stash update yet.. The purple base is Sinful Colors - Purple Diamond. The sparkly is China Glaze - Fairy Dust. And then the rainbow, in ROYGBV order, is Julie G - Cherry on Top, Sally Hansen - Orange Impulse, Brash - Gone Bananas, Kleancolor - Grass Green, CQ - Tropics, and Essence - Break Through. Whew!
It is cloudy and rainy here, so I can't really capture the beautiful sparkles of one of my new additions, Fairy Dust. I did try, though. And if the sun comes out I'll update this post with an image

Lastly, a picture just 'cause I thought it looked cool:

Have a great day, everyone! :)

01/30/13 - It's My Birthday!

So today's my 19th birthday, and I figured that I should paint my nails to match. So I put them in our birthday suit! :D

 I used a nice concoction of keratin for this look. :)
Here's another angle:

And with flash:

Hope you like it! :D

Okay, but in all seriousness, I'll post my actual post in a bit. But I did give my nails a couple hours to breathe, which is the longest they've had in a while!
Also, my right thumbnail is looking pretty dang awful. Shield your eyes, or see the proof:

That rip is too low to even cut down to, even if I wanted to.
So what I've tried is patching up with nail strengthener and tape, and then piling on the normal nail polish over it. Let's hope that holds it until it's long enough to not be painful and to actually get cut.

01/22/13 - Stash Update

My friend Kyla came over on Saturday, and partly because my birthday is coming up on the 30th, she gave me some of her nail polish rejects (and a great scarf). :D She also gave me some striping tape. Thanks so much, Kyla!

Here they are on my wheel:

I've been really thinking about buying Wet 'n' Wild - Blue Wants to Be a Millionaire. Now I don't have to! :) But then I realized it did look pretty similar to something I did end up buying. And so did a couple others. The unlabelled Sally Hansen one, though, is unique to me, and looks gorgeous! But I had to investigate the others.

Hah! See? Not the same! Yay for unique additions!
For the blue polish, we have Milani - Cyberspace next to Wet 'n' Wild - Blue Wants to Be a Millionaire. Blue Wants to Be a Millionaire is more of a scattered holo, whereas Cyberspace is a little more of a linear holo. I think. I'm not sure I understand those terms fully. :p But they're both pretty, and are, in fact, different.
For the red polish, we have JLB - Cherry Pop next to Sinful Colors - Taylor. As you can see, Taylor is a nice, almost mauve-y metallic, not really quite red. Which is unique to me, and pretty!
Finally for the gold-ish polish, we have JLB - Immortal Gold next to Delicious - Scene Stealer. Scene Stealer is almost a champagne-y metallic, which is, again, unique to me and pretty!

Yay! Thanks again Kyla. :)

Also, I counted up my polishes, which I haven't done in a while. And not counting striping polishes, I believe I have 153 now. Wow!

Swatch: Jordana - Boy Oh Boy

This is a recently purchased polish in a brand I haven't tried before. It's Jordana - Boy Oh Boy, a polish I purchased because I wanted a creme teal. It's not a perfect teal, in that it leans more towards blue than I wish it did, and it photographed a lot more blue than it is in reality. But the formula was surprisingly great.

I only used one coat. I could have gone for two, I suppose, but you can see it doesn't really need it.

If you go back to my Pencil Pouch nails, you'll see some slightly more colour accurate pictures with this polish in it.

But overall, I'm impressed by this polish. I think it was only $2, sold at K-Mart or Walmart or something.

I may have to try some of their other polishes, now that I've seen how well this one applied. :)

01/19/13 - Pencil Pouch Nails

Another uncreative title, eh? xP
But I am rather proud of how the nail design itself came out. I was looking around desperate to be inspired, and hoping that I could find something to inspire me that wouldn't be a copy of some one else's nails. And as I was packing up my stuff after calculus class, I saw it! My pencil pouch. I got really excited, but then I realized I didn't have the right colours and was rather sad. And then I decided - screw the right colours! This is something inspired by, no one has to know it's not the same colours.

Here's a picture with the pencil pouch:

It was really, really hard to get colour accurate picture of this design. Don't know why. In reality, Jordana - Boy Oh Boy is a nice teal, leaning towards the blue side (even after editing, all these pictures show it as more blue than it is). Lime Crime - Parfait Day is more of a Pepto Bismol pink, but it's showing up more pastelish than it really is. Lime Crime - Pastelchio is fairly accurate, though. (And yes, I still can't give up using those Lime Crime polishes. :p)
Here's a picture a little bit closer to colour accurate (but still not really):

I really like how the tree came out. I was worried I wouldn't be able to pull that part off. But I like the end result.

As you can see, this was also my first attempt at framed nails. I think I like it. But I really like that tree. :)

Swatch Tab!

Hi all! You may have noticed that I've added a new page/tab - for swatches!
I'm pretty excited. I've been wanting to do this for a while, but I honestly couldn't figure out how to make a tab up there. Well, I finally Googled it (duh!) and now I know!
Now if you click that tab, you can see the name and a small picture of each polish that I have swatched, sorted by colour. I did debate just using text, so you could ctrl + f to find a particular polish, but I am such a visual person I knew I'd want to see pictures, and it's a lot easier to format with just pictures than with pictures and text.
Speaking of formatting, for whatever reason, some of the pictures don't want to be spaced the way I want them spaced. So sorry the spacing isn't consistent. I don't know what to do about that.

But yup! Go check it out! I've swatched 21 polishes so far, and may there be many more! :)

Storage Thoughts

So I've been thinking the last couple days about ways to revamp my nail polish storage. When I came back from break with the new nail polishes I had gotten, I discovered, to my surprise, that my drawers area now almost full. So what next?

Here's the post where I described updating my storage the last time I did. At the time, I wasn't sure of exactly what kind of living situation I would be in. Would the windows open? Would my roommate be allergic to the smell of nail polish? Would I be on the first floor next to an expanse of green grass? Would I be able to bring my whole stash back and forth with me for breaks? So I wanted something that could be easily portable.
Now, I know the answer to those questions for the foreseeable future, and have discovered that my stash is too heavy to actually carry around. I'll admit, I like the handle - when I was vacuuming, I just moved it aside a bit to get the floor around it. But other than that, it's stayed where it is. So I feel fairly confident that I could use a more serious bit of furniture.

I was at Pier 1 a few weeks ago, and realized that a jewellery armoire might work. A good number of them have two fairly shallow drawers on top, sometimes compartmentalized with things like the ring section and such. But then the rest of the drawers, depending on the size of the armoire, would be deep enough to accommodate nail polish. So I figured the top drawers could actually be used for jewellery, as well as the necklace wings, if the armoire should have them.
So the other day I set to Googling for ideas to keep in mind. I'd probably wait until next fall, and get such a thing when moving into my apartment, when I'm getting a bunch of other furniture. But here are some things I wanted to keep in mind.

This one from Pier 1 is so pretty. I like how the top two drawers are visually slightly separated, but all the drawers appear to be about the same size. This one is also pretty, but there isn't a lot of information on it. But again, the drawers are all the same size. I like this one a lot. It's not super pretty, but it's sleek and I feel like it has a really nice layout to it. I wish it had one or two more drawers, though.
The bottom/nail polish drawers need to be at least 4 inches deep. But I think I'd prefer them to not be any deeper than 5 or 6 inches, just to maximize the space available. My tallest nail polish is like 4.2 inches or something like that. So 4.5" would probably be perfect. I could probably do well with 4".

Okay! That's all my ramblings for now. :)

01/12/13 - Stash Update

The importing of nail polish into my stash is definitely slowing. Buuut it's not stopped, and there's not exporting yet. xD

First, I found this at the bottom of a box when my wonderful boyfriend was cleaning my bathroom. It was probably originally my sister's, but she claimed nothing in the bathroom was hers, so I have no qualms in adding it to my stash. :)

Then, I went to Fred Meyer's today and got pretty excited in their nail polish section. I swear, they just have more/different brands than what I have at home! (By the way, I'm back at college now. I think I forgot to say that earlier.)
These were all pretty cheap, and I just couldn't pass them up.

They had two of that snowman one in their clearance section:

But I went with the red sparkles. Not that I needed either, but the snowman was just way too cute. I mean, the top is a top hat! Adorable!

Here's a bottle comparison of Wet 'n' Wild - The Star of the Show, and another polish I have that has stars, Santee - Moonlight Glitter.

The stars in Star of the Show are silver/holographic, and there's a little bit of short bar glitter. Meanwhile, Moonlight Glitter has purble and blue stars and silver/holographic round glitter. There! I justified the purchase for myself. xD

I was pretty excited to see the Essence section. I haven't seen that sold in California. It probably is, just not in places I shop, I guess. But there was a nice section in Fred Meyer, and there was so much prettiness. :D But I only bought Essence - Holo Topping, Please! It claims to be a holographic topper that you can apply over any polish, and it only costs $2.49. I have to admit, I'm skeptical of its use over any polish - it seems pretty pigmented on it's own. But I love holographic stuff, so I wasn't going to pass it up! First I confirmed to myself that it is holographic:

Yup! So we'll see how it goes as a topper (or perhaps on its own?) later on. :)
Lastly, I'm almost out of my nail strengthener. I usually (but not always), apply a thin layer of nail strengthener just along the tips (like a messy French) or over any places that look like they might break or something. I find this helps prevent tip breakage. So I've been keeping an eye out for something inexpensive and that looks promising. I saw this and thought I'd try it:

It has good reviews online, I've now confirmed. We'll see how it goes! Also, I didn't know it at the time, but it's the same brand as the one I have been using.

One on the left is the one I'm almost out of.

And that's all! Happy days, everyone. :)

01/10/12 - KISS Swirls

I most often struggle with titles. This particular title has a double meaning. KISS makes me think of chocolate kisses, which is fitting for the adorably edible names that Lime Crime gives their polishes. But KISS really means the phrase "Keep It Simple, Stupid." Which I should probably follow more often. So for this manicure, I decided to keep it simple, while playing with my new Lime Crime polishes.

Pretty and simple, no?
All the polishes used can be seen in the base colours:

This is two coats of each with no top coat, with flash. We have Pure Ice - Superstar, Lime Crime - Lavendairy, Lime Crime - Once In A Blue Mousse, and Lime Crime - Pastelchio.
Here's some close ups of the Lime Crimes on the non-accent nails, with top coat:

 

Then I went in and attempted the swirl design that has been popular lately:

So simple, but still very pretty. I'm enjoying it quite a bit. :)

12/31/12 - Rainbow Magic Toes

When I redid my fingernails for NYE, I also redid my toes. I just couldn't resist using my new Lime Crime set, so all of the polishes but Milky Ways (meaning: Lime Crime - Parfait Day, Peaches <3 Cream, Crema de Limon, Pastelchio, Once in a Blue Mousse, and Lavendairy) are used here, along with Wet 'n' Wild - Ebony Hates Chris. I then topped it with ORLY - Twighlight, and Glitter Gal - Silver 3D Holo. And of course, a confetti star for an accent.

I feel like this nail art is made up of all sorts of amazing magical stuff. The Lime Crime set? That is sure to become a favourite of mine. It pretty much already is. Holographic polish? Oh, you know how much I love holos! Rainbow? Love it!
Here's a picture of before any glitter was added:

It definitely would have been good enough to stop there. You can see how beautiful those Lime Crime polishes are, and I love the pastels with the black. But I wanted rainbow magic, so onward I trekked. :)

And I'll conclude with trying to show off the magic that is holographicness:

:)

ETA: After a couple days the stars fell off, but they left a perfect imprint of where the star was in the top coat. So I went back in with the remaining Lime Crime polish (Milky Ways) and filled it in. :)