Manis from the Week

Here are the manis from this week.

First up is OPI- Teenage Dream. This was released in the January 2011 Katy Perry collection.

Teenage dream is a light pink shimmery base filled with prismatic glitter. It is quite sheer and needed three coats in order to be opaque.

Here is a picture I took in the car.

I took a blurred picture to show the spectrum of color. It's gorgeous!

Next is a combination of Sinful Colors- Bikini topped off with All That Glitters- Hole Hearted. This is definitely an early Valentine's day mani!

Hole Hearted is filled with different sizes of matte black hex glitter and white hearts. I just dispersed the glitter in a random pattern, and it just required one coat dabbed around. I had no problem getting the white hearts out of the bottle. I had the bottle upside-down beforehand. All That Glitters recently released a limited edition collection for this Valentine's Day, so don't forget to check out the Etsy shop! Polishes retail for $8.00

Here's a picture of Sinful Colors- Bikini before I added Hole Hearted. This is a bright pink neon shimmer. I needed two coats of this in order to be solid, and it tried to a satin-like finish due to the neon.

Here it is with the flash. It's bright! I don't know much about Sinful Colors collections, but I believe that this shade is older because the label is different than the recent Sinful Colors shades I have purchased.

Next is a green layering combo. This is OPI- Call My Cell-ery layered over OPI- Fiercely Fiona. I have never eaten pea soup, but this combination reminds me of it.

Call My Cell-ery is an older "black label" shade and it was from the summer 2006 Brights collection. This polish is so sheer, that I would not recommend wearing it alone. It added an extra bit of green shimmer to Fiercely Fiona. I only am wearing one coat of it.

Before layering, this is Fiercely Fiona alone. It was released in the Summer 2010 Shrek collection. It is a yellow green creme. This picture was taken indoors without the flash. I had some formula issues with this one. It was very streaky and took three coats in order to be completely opaque. It took a while for it to dry completely also.

This looks more green with the flash. This shade is very similar to China Glaze- Electric Pineapple.

Last is OPI- You Don't Know Jacques Suede. The suedes were released in fall of 2009. You Don't Know Jacques is a medium brown shimmer, that dries to a suede finish. A suede is pretty much a shimmery matte, but I have found that these wear much better than the OPI Mattes.

This applied pretty smoothly, since matte/suede-finishes are fast-drying and require quick application. It only required two coats, and the finish wasn't bumpy at all. This polish chipped after a day, but that is characteristic of these finishes. 

This picture was taken in artificial lighting without the flash. 

Light Blue Gradient

I have a special mani to show everyone today. This is a gradient mani using only Wet n Wild- Blue Wants to be a Millionaire. I got many compliments on this, and was asked frequently where I got my nails done; but I did these myself and it was fairly easy! Blue Wants to be a Millionaire is a sheer blue jelly with micro prismatic glitter particles. It builds up very nicely and is opaque in three coats. Although it looks like the finish of this would be rough due to the glitter, it was so smooth that it felt like I was wearing a creme. I topped it off with one coat of Gelous followed by one coat of Seche Vite.

I did not use a sponge of any sort with this gradient, just the polish brush. First I painted my entire nail with one coat of Blue Wants to be a Millionaire. I then painted about 2/3 up my nail with a second coat. Lastly, I painted a third coat on the top third (the tips) of my nails. This turned out amazing and this polish works so well for gradients!

The formula on Blue Wants to be a Millionaire is INCREDIBLE! I had this mani on for over three days with no chips whatsoever! I didn't want to remove it, but I have plenty of untrieds to get through. This polish can be found fairly inexpensive at Rite Aid, CVS, and Walgreen's. It usually retails for $1.99, but Wet n Wild usually has good deals and I've seen it for $1. The pink sister polish to this (in the same collection) is Hannah Pinktana. I did a gradient using it last Valentine's Day.

I have been slacking on regularly updating my hauls, so here are some goodies for your viewing pleasure!

Wicked Polish! The names of these sold me. Plus they're very unique! 

F4 Polish- Drunken Zombie and Candy Lacquer- O Christmas Tree

Loreal- Amazon's Flash, Julep- O Canada!, ULTA- Hide and Go Sequins mini (Deborah Lippmann- Across the Universe dupe), Blue Cross Halloween pumpkin, Disney Villains unamed bronze shimmer

All that Glitters- Horror Business and Night Fright and Illamasqua- holiday duo with Glitterati and Viridian (my first Illamasquas!)

HURRY UP AND ENTER THE THANKSGIVING MULTI-BLOGGER GIVEAWAY! LESS THAN TWO DAYS LEFT :)

Gray and Black Glitter

I have a gray and black glitter combination today. As a base I used NOX Twilight and then I topped it off with All That Glitters- The Gold Rush

The Gold Rush is absolutely amazing! It is composed of medium black hexes, small piceces of silver and black glitter, sparse pieces of black bar glitter and giant prismatic gold hexes. All of the glitter particles are suspended in a sheer black jelly base. The giant prismatic gold hexes were my favorite part about this polish. Look how they reflect rainbows in the sunlight!

Here is another angle of this. The Gold Rush was loaded with glitter and it only needed one coat over the light gray. If I was going to wear this alone, it would probably need about three coats.

All That Glitters nail polish can be purchased from the Etsy Store  for $8 a bottle. There are many awesome shades to choose from.

Here is NOX-Twilight in artificial light without the flash.  I am not certain if NOX Twilight is the name of this line of polish, but NOX Twilight was all that it said on the bottle, so I just assumed that this shade was named Twilight (it's quite festive for the movie release isn't it?) This was a pale sheer gray creme. I am only wearing two coats of it because I topped it off with The Gold Rush. This would probably need three coats to be worn alone because it was a little bit runny.

Here is a picture with the flash. I enjoy the packaging of these bottles. The Cullen seal is pretty neat. Twilight is one of my guilty pleasures! This is the only NOX shade that I own so far.

Don't forget to enter the Thanksgiving Multi-Blogger Giveaway! It will be closing in a few days. Click the image on the right sidebar. Good luck everyone :)

Purple Glitter Combo

I have a combination today. This is two coats of Sparitual- Chill topped off with one coat of All That Glitters- Plum and Plummer. At first I was a little iffy about how both of these shades would look layered, but I was extremely pleased with the results! Chill was more blue-toned, and Plum and Plummer made it look more purple.

All that Glitters is one of my favorite indie brands. The polishes wear so well on me. I'm sure I could have worn this for another few days without chipping.  Remember Very Peacockish? The pictures were taken after two days of wear. Plum and Plummer has small pieces of purple glitter, medium purple and black hexes, and jumbo-sized silver hexes. The application was pretty smooth. In order to get the large silver hexes, I had to fish around a little bit. 

 Here's a picture of Chill before I layered Plum and Plummer over it. It's in a little mini bottle. It's a violet toned blue creme, that's almost greyed in some sense- I guess you can call that Periwinkle.

Some nail mail arrived also!!!

I had a $5 gift card to Sephora, so I purchased Sephora by OPI- It's My Pink! I LOVE Betsey Johnson, and it's such a shame that she recently declared bankruptcy and everything is being discontinued. I really wanted this for my collection. Plus, I don't own that many hot pinks, and it's scented! I got Pretty & Polished- Bayou Blitz. This was an impulse buy. I have the mini, but I really wanted a full-size so I'll keep the mini aside to swap/sell at some point. My friend Heather had a really old OPI- DS Elegance. The bottle is halfway empty, and the cap used to be silver, but it was heavily used. She gave this to me!! She said she didn't really use it that much anymore and she knew how passionate I was about my collection. I felt guilty accepting it because the old OPI DS shades are highly sought after, but she insisted that I take it! 

I managed to catch Llarowe's flash sale of Lynnderellas last week and this is what I got: 

I also bought three more bottles from Traci from The TraceFace Philes after certain events have transpired which I'm not going to go into on here. They should be arriving soon in the mail though. I ordered Boy-Girl Party, She Lived in a Swamp, and Love, Lace and Lilacs. I'll just say that as more things unfold, the less I even want Lynnderellas in my collection. I probably will keep them for a while and then consider selling them off in the future.

First Time Stamping

I figured that I would try out my Salon Express and jump on the stamping bandwagon. Here I'm wearing three coats of Icing- Tiger's Blood (which I love). It's prismatic glitter suspended in a red jelly. It needed three coats to achieve opacity. This picture is without the flash. I then used CQ- Night, a basic black creme for the stamping.

Here it is with the flash- you can see the stamps better. I definitely wasn't perfect! The designs kept smudging when I transferred them from the plate to the stamper. Some of them applied partially. Some got double stamped (more so on my right hand, which isn't photographed). Needless to say, I need a ton of practice!! I'm open to all tips/suggestions. I also need to experiment to see which shades work best with stamping. With this many, I kind of just automatically went for these two colors without trying any other options. I'm excited to try out different stamps and color combos!

I got some nail mail today. I purchased more polishes from No Holos blog sale. Heres Pretty & Polished- Bayou Blitz mini, NYX Frizzy Spots, and All That Glitters- Hole-Hearted. I love indies!!! I would like a full size of Bayou Blitz, but it's more difficult to get, so I'm happy with the mini. Plus with how much polish I have, it's probably more realistic to have a mini.

Apple Bottoms- Red Delicious

Sorry for the lack of updates this week. I'm not dead. I've been working a lot, plus my peacock mani lasted for 5 days without chipping, so I couldn't bear to remove it. It still didn't have any chips in it when I decided to remove it, but I was ready for a change.

I chose Apple Bottoms- Red Delicious. This came in a set of 6 mini bottles. I purchased it from Ross probably about a year ago. I knew Apple Bottoms made clothing, but not nail polish. Red Delicious is a  jelly packed with tiny prismatic glitter particles (think China Glaze Fairy Dust or Out the Door Northern Lights hologram top coat). The pictures don't really do this polish justice. There is so much more visible glitter in person.The red jelly reminds me of a candy apple.

In this picture, you can see the prismatic glitter better. In the bottle, it almost looks like it has red glitter particles. This is definitely a unique gem in my collection- among all the reds I own. I love how it looks on my nails, but application was rather difficult. For some reason, the brush in this bottle was very warped and it was difficult to apply the polish neatly. The other five polishes that came in the set didn't have this problem. The consistency of the jelly was also very thick, goopy, and gel-like, but I was afraid that if I put thinner in it, it would become too watery. There is a little bit of tip wear, but that's standard for polishes with jelly finishes.

Here is my peacock mani after 5 days of wear!!! (2 coats Wet n Wild- Sagreena the Teenage Witch topped with 2 coats of All that Glitters- Very Peacocky) I never had a polish last this long EVER! I'm also notorious for picking my nail polish. There is very slight tipwear on my pointer finger. Also, the black glitter previously had some shimmer over it, and that wore off. I actually like it this way better, because the black glitter is more prominent. Removal was very difficult because I didn't think I would have to use the aluminum foil and acetone method. Next time I will for polishes like this! 

Peacock Nails!

This may be one of my favorite layering combinations so far! I couldn't wait to try All that Glitters- Very Peacockish. I put two coats of Very Peacockish over two coats of Wet n Wild- Sagreena the Teenage Witch. This looks just like a peacock!

Very Peacockish is filled with many types of multi-colored glitter! It has a sheer shimmery blue base with small and medium hex particles of teal glitter, silver and blue bar glitter, large black hex glitter, and GIANT prismatic silver hexes. I may have even missed a few types of glitter, because every time I look at it, I see a new one. This can be purchased from the All that Glitters Etsy shop for $8. All that Glitters polishes are meant to build up to be opaque, and this shade could easily be worn alone with 3 coats. I just wanted to see what it would look like over green.

Here's how it looks with a little more lighting. I didn't get a picture of Wet n Wild-Sagreena the Teenage Witch by itself because I was too excited to layer Very Peacockish. I wasn't too impressed with the Wet n Wild formula for this one. The emerald green shimmer was gorgeous, but it was just really watery. There were some bare spots before I started layering. If I were to wear this alone, I would probably need three coats. Sagreena the Teenage Witch is kind of similar to Zoya- Holly, and I definitely prefer Holly.

Pink with Holo Polka Dots!

I thought I would try to do a mani with dots, since my dotting tools from eBay arrived recently. I used Nicole by OPI- In the Nic of Time (2 coats) and dotted it with Color Club- Worth the Risque. This picture is without the flash.

Here it is with the flash. In the Nic of Time is part of the Nic's Sticks line. It's pretty much nail polish in a pen. It's a shimmery pink coral. Color Club- Worth the Risque is a beautiful silver holo. It kind of reminds me of OPI DS Coronation but it looks much more holo. I have yet to wear it on its own. I love the look of holo polka dots. This combo kind of reminds me of Minnie Mouse.

Here is In the Nic of Time before applying the dots (pre clean-up). I believe the Nic's Sticks have been discontinued, but I picked up a few at Trade Secret a while ago on clearance for $1 each. I really like how convenient these are, but I would never pay full price for one. ( I think originally it was $7). There is only .135oz of polish in these. You would probably run of the polish in these after a couple uses. The color of this one wasn't terribly unique, it reminded me of OPI- Come to Poppy. It also applied slightly streaky because the brush constantly has to replenish with polish. 

I ordered from All that Glitters a couple weeks ago, and my package finally arrived! The colors are Very Peacockish, Plum and Plummer, and The Gold Rush. I originally ordered Very Peacockish and The Gold Rush, but Kirsten was still waiting on a shipment of bottles from her supplier, so she threw in Plum and Plummer because it took some time to fill the order. This was awesome! I did not mind the delay at all. I believe she has all of them in stock at the moment, so get them while you can! They're very reasonably priced. It's $8 for a .5 oz bottle!

Very Peacockish is gorgeous! I can't wait to try it!