Multi polish manicure w/ nail stamping featuring Pretty and Polished - Priivate School

Okay so this one was a multi-step mani!  But it came out awesome!!

I had gotten a mini of Pretty & Polished's Private School and I have been dying to try it out!  I felt it needed a base color though so I didn't have to put on too many coats.  I chose China Glaze's Hook and Like from the Capitol Colors Collection inspired by The Hunger Games.

So here is today's line up...

 

I chose to do the little wine glass stamp on my ring finger.  Here is a close up of the stamp design.

Here is a close up of the Hook and Line by China Glaze...since I was only needed a slight base color I only did one coat.  It's really pretty.  :)

On to the Private School by Pretty & Polished.  This polish is amazing!  It's described as a gray creme with black and white hex glitters surrounded in a sea of sparkly red micro glitter.  I bought this at her Etsy store.  I think it was the red micro glitter that got me.  Here comes the photo bomb!!!

The back of the mini bottle so you can see the details.

 

One coat - no flash

 

One coat - with flash - see the red glitter???

 

Two coats - no flash

 

Two coats - with flash!

 

 

Then I added my wine glass - which was subtle since there was white hex - but I knew it was there and I loved it!!

 

All in all I loved this glitter polish.  I had good coverage.  I didn't need to place anything, it all fell in the right places.  :)



 

 

 

 

Labor Day Manicure

In honor of the holiday, I have tried to get a little creative with my manicure this weekend. I did not take pics as I went (oops!) but it was a really easy manicure, and you can figure it out by what I used.

The glitter nail is Different Dimension Purple People Eater. I won this polish in a giveaway. When I was looking at the bottle, it reminded me of fireworks, so I put that on my ring finger. It has tons of purple, green and orange hexes, black fine glitter, and color shifting glitter. I love it!

I got my Zoya polish in the mail, so I chose Carmen, which is a nice true red. 2 coats and I was ready to rock.

For the blue, I dug through my polish box and found a bottle of L'Oreal Jet-Set in Orbit. This polish is probably 12 years old and I bought it for $1.00 at Eckerd Pharmacy in Florida. The price tag was still on it. All I had to do was shake it and it was prefect!

For the white, I chose Spoiled Correction Tape.

I used blue painters tape to make the blue triangles, and a pointed q-tip for the dots.

As you can see, really simple to do, and I think it looks pretty good for one of my first times :)

Have a safe and happy holiday!

A Magnetic Attraction

So I have to share a fantastic deal I got at Ulta.com the other day.  I have been DYING to trying magnetic nail polish.  The Sally Hansen stuff is like $9 a bottle at Target!  So I found on Ulta.com a set of four minis with magnet for $4.99.  You can order it here.

So I used our Mom as a guinea pig until I figured out how it worked.  I had read some reviews about making sure you put it on thick and holding the magnet there for a while to get the most dramatic effects.

I used the blue color called Polar Opposites on Mom's nails.

The first coat I did was too light...so after the second coat I held the magnet over the nail and...voila!!!

You can see some subtle striping to the paint.  I was stoked!!  I found the best placement for the magnet was on my ring finger.  This was so I could use my finger to stabilize the magnet so I could hover right over the nail and not touch  it.

See?

By the time I finished her nails they looked like this!!!

I love having her to try new things on.  :)

I felt confident that I could do this on my own nails and I decided to use the silver color called Put A Ring On It.

At first I thought the color was too light but after I did them all I fell in love!!!

Swoon...sigh...ahh.........

I love the lines, I love the sparkle...it's so much fun!!!

So my recommendation is that for $4.99 it is TOTALLY worth trying it.  It's an inexpensive investment and it works really well!!  I can't wait to try the other two colors in the kit!!!

Something Dark and Stormy

I am almost ready to move into fall colors on my nails.  I love dark polish.  I even like black polish.  While this manicure was originally going to be black with white stamping I found this while going through my nail stash.

This is called Metal Madness by E.L.F.  It's a steel grey with glitter in it.  

Very cool looking.  Very metal.

I figured I should stick with my original plan of adding white stamping to the manicure so I picked out a design.  I chose this one...

I had an important business meeting the following morning so I didn't want to do anything too crazy so I think I did okay.

Here is what Metal Madness looks like on.  It's pretty cool looking and I am happy with the coverage.  This is two coats.

And here is the finished manicure with the stamping.  I chose the pinky because it's a whole nail stamp design and I wanted to make sure it was going to fit.

Subtle with a touch of funky.  :)  Personally I love it and I really love E.L.F. nail polish.  It had great coverage, dries fast and is inexpensive.  $1.00 or $2.00 a bottle!  Can't beat that!!  :)

New Olympic Inspired Manicure...Kinda Sorta...

Well, I had some big plans with this new manicure. I had bought a bunch of Sinful Colors (before the issues of them using other people's artwork for their advertising) and had bought some awesome colors. So, I chose some lacquer from these to work on my next Olympic manicure. It kinda sorta worked, but not really.

Base coat is Sugar Sugar. The is a nice deep sparkly red. Only used 2 coats. Went on smooth and covered very well.

I had chosen a glitter polish called Hottie, and I planned to paint the top half of my nail with this color, and it was blue in the bottle, so I expected blue. Well...

You can see my confusion. There is blue in there, but it is not a predominant as the bottle would lead you to believe. This is 3 coats. The glitter is multi colored.

I like the look, but it is not the red/blue combo I was looking for, but still looks pretty kick ass :)

Can't wait to get my Indie polish this week. I am super excited to get my toes wet...or my fingers painted :)

Final Manicure Update!

I love to extend my manicure into a few days by doing something different to it to save time but to change it up. I have been playing with the same e.l.f. Cranberry and Dark Navy Manicure. You can check back a few posts and see where it started.

I decided today to add some alternating colored tips to complete the look.

I really loved how this turned out!

Ring Finger Art - Manicure Update

So, as I said last night, I wanted to add something to my Olympic inspired manicure. Well, I played around with some tape and crafting scissors and did some additional detail to my ring fingers. Not bad for a first try:

Ignore the dry cuticles...they are still recovering from the glitter removal from yesterday. I did the striping with scotch tape. I used a pair of scrapbooking shears to cut a pattern into the bottom one.

I like the look, it's subtle and ties in the 2 colors.

Go Team USA!!

I was watching the women's swimming qualifications this morning on the 2012 London Olympics.  If you didn't know the Olympics are on you must be living under a rock.  If you live under a rock you probably don't have a computer or Internet, so you probably aren't reading this...so nevermind!!  :)

I noticed that many of the swimmers had their nails painted and some with some very patriotic nail art!  So that inspired me to show my patriotic side.

I started to rifle through my box of nail polish to see what I had for colors.  I found a blue by SinfulColors called Love Nails and a red by ELF called Red Velvet.  Not the exact shades I wanted but they will have to do!

So here's today's line up...

My base and top coat by Seche, my blue, my red and my stamping white.

Now it's on to find my stamping inspiration...

In the middle is a French manicure tip with little stars...I'll put this over the blue.

In the middle on the bottom are some diagonal stripes.  This will go over the red.

So I decide to do the ever popular accent nail on my ring fingers.  So I paint all my nails red except for the ring fingers.  I do those in blue.

See?

So the nail stamping itself proved to be very challenging.  I had redo several nails...it was quite frustrating.

My cotton ball was looking patriotic but my nails didn't...

But I kept with it, like a true US Olympian would and got this!!

It's not perfect but I think it looks great!!

Just goes to show if your nails don't turn out the way you want the first time around just stick with it and it will get better!!!!

GO TEAM USA!!

My very first post!!

I am Michelle and I love painting my nails. For years, I bit my nails. Very recently, I wanted to have cute, pretty nails like everyone else. So, I figured if I can paint my nails on a regular basis, it will help me not nibble away. So, I started to explore the world of nail polish. I never knew there was so much. Crackle and glitter quickly became my new best friends. I think right now I have over 100 bottles of various polishes. Some were super cheap, some were not. All were chosen with love and awesomeness.


So, now I paint my nails every few days. There is no rhyme or reason...its whatever I feel at that moment.

My very first post is crackle. I scored a great deal at CVS a few months ago and got 4 bottles of Sally Hansen crackle for 75% off. Score!!

My first step in painting is base coat. Right now, I am using Orly Bonder. It is a rubberized formula that states it helps bond polish to your nail. I still get chips after a few days, so I can't say that it bonds, but I like it, and I own it...so I will use it.

I used a white base called White On The Spot (Milani Nail Laquer High Speed Fast Dry). They advertise as a 1 coat polish, but we all know that isn't the case...I used 2. This is a reasonably priced polish (under $5.00) and works pretty well. They have some hot neon colors too that I will be getting in the near future.

For the crackle, I chose the Sally Hansen Vintage Violet. Kind of a purple with a metallic hint. At least it looks that way in the bottle. It just looks purple on. But, still cool and cost me almost nothing, so what is not to love.

Finally,  always use a top coat. I am using Orly In a Snap. It doesn't dry that fast, and your nails will stay tacky for a while. But, I own it...therefore I will use it.

Nails are a hit or miss art. You can't tell if the polish will be good or bad until you try it.