Sunday, January 30, 2011

Poll and Award

Hi lovely ladies! I just noticed I was tagged for an award today, but first - I wanted to say hi to my ten followers! Almost a dozen people care enough about what I think to follow my blog and I'm so thankful! I hope it keeps growing, but I want to do a giveaway so I'm posting a poll at the top of my blog on the right. Please let me know your opinion and if you're following me, please say hi! I reply to every comment I get and I love to answer questions so don't be shy! :)

On to the award... the Blog with Substance Award! I was tagged by Danielle at Polish Obsessed, and if you don't already read her blog, I highly recommend you do so! She's thoughtful, honest, and thrifty, so she's a great lady to follow! Thanks for the tag, Danielle!

So on to the rules:

1. Link back to the giver - Danielle!

2. List five words to sum up my blogging philosophy: honest, fun, entertaining, interesting, and thoughtful.

3. Tag other bloggers with substance.
Obviously, there are many more but I'm working 9-7 tomorrow, I didn't do any of my homework today, and I accidentally took an hour and a half detour with my best friend (hi Lindsey, if you're reading this!) in lieu of doing anything productive, so I have to go get some things done. Once again, thank you for reading, leave me a comment, and please vote in my poll! I have some other polls I'm planning to use after this one's over, so keep checking the poll section out.

xoxo,
Amanda

Three eh NOTDs

Hi ladies! Sorry for my three-day hiatus. I'm back in school now (last semester of grad school! woohoo!) but that means my time has been severely limited. I'll post as much as I can, but my goal is 2-3 posts per week at the moment. However, I'll try to have several NOTDs/hauls for each week, and crunch them into those 2-3 posts. So hopefully you won't lose quality, just quantity...

Anyway, these are three of my NOTDs for last week. The first up is Misa, Glitz, Glamour, Smile for the Camera.





This was my favorite of the three. I applied it in a bit of a hurry, but the color was pretty: a deep, royal purple with some shimmer in it to make it interesting. I really love Misa polishes! This is about 2 coats I believe plus top coat.

Next I decided to do Zoya Veruschka, with Seche Vite on top to de-mattefy. This color is gorgeous and I loved it, but for Zoya saying they're the "longest lasting" polish out there, I was surprised how quickly I chipped. This flaked off in entire strips, much like glitter usually does for me. Next time, maybe I need to try it with a sticky base coat. Still beautiful though!

Meant to show the shimmeryness, but instead also showcases my bad clean up job... yikes.


Finally, we have Revlon Rock, a $1 polish I found at Big Lots. I had high hopes for this purple but was sadly disappointed. Let me give you the pros and cons. Pros: it looked like a pretty color in the bottle, it was $1. Cons: watery, runny formula; pooled at my cuticles; weird color on the nail - looked black and gray half the time; terrible application, bald spots even after 3 or 4 coats; not only chipped easily, but entire pieces in the middle of my nail scraped off. (That's the reason you're getting a rare, elusive look at my right hand - the left hand was in bad shape after less than 24 hours of wear!)



What do you think? Do you own any of these colors? Any you think I should give a second chance before they go in my swap pile?

xoxo,
Amanda

Thursday, January 27, 2011

Konad-licious Nail Giveaway!

Hi ladies! Quick post this morning (I may post my NOTD later!) about an amazing giveaway over at Konad-licious! Over $300 worth of nail goodies and chocolate could be yours!


So click here to enter or copy and paste this link: http://konadlicious.blogspot.com/2011/01/konadlicious-huge-1000-follower.html

Happy giveaway hunting! (Wish me luck though, because seriously, I need it. I'm having an awful week!)

xoxo,
Amanda

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Black Shatter = Nail Polish Rescuer

Hey all! Today I have two manis I wore recently, both with Black Shatter over the top. The first is China Glaze's Fiji Fling, from one of their old summer collections.

My boyfriend actually picked this color for me to wear, but I must say I wasn't overly impressed. It was sheer (sigh, we all know how I feel about sheers) and therefore, I thought I might take it off immediately after he left (don't want to hurt his nail-polish-picking pride!). But I decided to try black shatter over it and I loved it! It really rescues any polish! Unfortunately, you can see my carelessness applying Fiji Fling underneath and I took the whole sloppy mess off after about a day.


Next, I decided to try Black Shatter over a glitter polish. OPI's Simmer and Shimmer was my victim, and the results were amazing! The glitter shows through, but the Black Shatter gives just enough intrigue to it to make it interesting. (Sorry for the random flecks of glitter on my cuticles, it's a real pain to clean up glitter!)


My original intention was that thick glitter like this tends to peel right off my nail, and it drives me nuts. I thought Black Shatter + topcoat would stop this... and it did, until it came about time to do this post and a small chunk (a piece of free edge with just glitter, where Black Shatter left empty), came right up! I use Nail Life Gripper as my base coat, but nothing seems to help grip glitter to my nails! Do you have any suggestions?

xoxo,
Amanda

Friday, January 21, 2011

Katy Perry and Black Shatter Swatches!

Hey ladies! As promised, here are the Katy Perry and Black Shatter swatches.

The One That Got Away, Teenage Dream, Black Shatter, Not Like The Movies, Last Friday Night

Last Friday Night, Not Like The Movies, The One That Got Away, Teenage Dream

I must say, I'm not too impressed with these colors. This was three coats of each, and three out of the four are barely built up, if at all. LFN and TD are more suited to be layered, if you ask me (and I hate layering polishes!). NLTM makes my fingernail look diseased here! If I had been patient enough to do more coats, they may have built to opacity better, but I think for 3 coats, they should be better than this! Maybe it's because my bottles are mini? I'm not sure. The colors are nice, but not by any means "must haves" or even that unique. My favorite is The One That Got Away, which is unusual since I'm not usually a red/deep pink person, but it is really pretty. What do you think?


Black shatter to the rescue! These look much improved to me with the shatter over them to give them depth and interest. To experiment with the design of the shatter, I used different techniques. The leftmost finger (my pointer, with LFN) I used a very thin coat and actually dipped the brush back and forth to leave very little on the brush. NLTM and TOTGA (middle and ring finger) I used one dip of the brush with a drop on the end and spread it out on the nail in one step. On the right (my pinky, TD) I used a middle sized drop in two swipes. As you can see, if you do it in one swipe, you get the "scraped off", cheetahish look, and multiple swipes seems to give you very small cracks. Both, I think, are pretty, but it would depend on how much of the color you wanted to show through on which technique you should use.

What do you think of Katy Perry and Black Shatter? I'm a big fan of Shatter. I can't wait until China Glaze comes out with their line of Crackle to pick up other colors! 

xoxo,
Amanda

January Hauls! (Pic heavy)

Hi ladies, this post is just to show you the hauls I've gotten in the mail recently. I still have a few Zoyas coming in and I'm going to post Katy Perry and Black Shatter swatches in a bit (tonight or tomorrow). These are various smaller hauls I got in recently. First, here's my 3 free polishes from Zoya:

Gloria, Veruschka, Ki

Same order as above, this is two to three coats each with no top coat.

Here is Veruschka with top coat... gorgeous. Do you like it better matte or with top coat?

Next, I ordered Katy Perry and Black Shatter from a website called MBeautyLounge. They specialize in the popular and hard to find collections, although their prices can be steep (due to high demand, but low supply - hey look, economics did come in handy!):

The One That Got Away, Teenage Dream, Last Friday Night, Not Like the Movies

(Yes, I got the minis - I didn't love any of the colors enough to want full bottles, plus I never get around to using up a whole bottle of anything). I'll have better pictures and swatches of these later.

Finally, I ordered from DollarNailArt.com, which I highly recommend. They have a minimum of $25 order, but everything you see here I got for $25.50! Plus, they're currently having a hearts sale, so all the little hearts are buy one get one free (you order whichever colors you want, they will automatically double whatever you have - so if you order 1 silver heart, they will send you 2 - don't order two unless you want four, get it?) until February 15. Better go stock up! They also had super fast shipping, I ordered this Wednesday and had it by Friday!

These are little, flat hearts you can stick into wet polish. (Pictures are clickable if you want to make them bigger)

Here's a close up of "Capri Blue Hearts", perhaps my favorite color of them all. Each package has 100 hearts in it, so I got two of each!

Same deal, except these are all stars instead of hearts (note: stars are not currently the BOGO deal, so don't get confused if you order!).

These are the other 4 colors. I got the 10 packages for $8.50 deal which included all the colors!

I also got some loose glitter, either for frankening polishes or sprinkling onto my nails for some added glitter. :) These were $1 each but they also had a bigger case of tons of colors, as well as pastel and various sizes of glitter available (these are the "micro glitter" style). On the left you see "laser lace" which is a sheet of lace-type metallic material that you can cut into smaller pieces to use for nail decor.



So what do you think? Do you plan to order from MBeautyLounge.com, Zoya.com or DollarNailArt.com? Which polish or nail decoration would you like to see me try?

xoxo,
Amanda


Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Stylish blogger award!

Hey ladies, three posts in one day, whew! Blog overload! I had to post because the lovely Brigitte at Miss DeVious DiVa has given me a Stylish Blogger Award!

The rules are:

1. Thank and link the person who gave you the award (Thanks Miss DeVious Diva!)
2. Share 7 things about yourself
3. Award 15 recently discovered great bloggers
4. Contact these bloggers and tell them about the award.

Seven things about Amanda:

1. I am afraid of: spiders, most bugs, beetles, needles, heights, pain, dentists, doctors, and driving to places I'm not familiar with.
2. My guilty pleasures are Jersey Shore, Teen Mom, chocolate, and The Sims 2 (when I have time, i.e., never).
3. My boyfriend and I have been together over four years and I've pretty much planned our wedding already even though we aren't engaged yet.
4. I enjoy reading when I have time, and Jodi Picoult is one of my favorite authors (and she's really responsive to fans, which I love!)
5. My favorite TV show is "The Office", although "CSI" is a close second, with a smattering of others as third.
6. My favorite movie of all time is "Dirty Dancing", but I love recent comedies like "I Love You, Man" and "The Hangover".
7. I'm the biggest extrovert ever and I talk to everyone without it phasing me. My friends often find it weird or will tease me for it.

For one, it's late and I can't think of 15 blogs I read, and two, I don't have many recently discovered bloggers, so my favorites are (in no particular order):

1. Danielle at Polish Obsessed (she already filled this out though!)
2. Miss Devious Diva (also already did it)
3. Tara at For Your Nails Only
4. Cristina at Let Them Have Polish
5. Colette at My Simple Little Pleasures
6. All of the ladies at Polish or Perish
7. Jen at The PolishAholic
8. NeverTooMuchGlitter 
9. YOU! (If you just let me know, I'll link you in too!)

xoxo,
Amanda

Misa Sailor Beware, A Swap Haul, Some Experimenting, & A PSA

Hey ladies! This is my NOTD from Monday night and Tuesday using Misa Sailor Beware.

This looks kind of red in the photos, but I assure you it's a mid-tone pink which does lean towards red. Could also be the silly lighting in my room! It dries very shiny... this is with no top coat!


So, of course, immediately after painting my nails I got a package in the mail with some polishes I was swapping on MakeUpAlley. I was trading for 2 Nox Twilight polishes (yes, yes, you got me - I'm a Twihard. I hope this doesn't change the way you feel about me?) and was anxious to receive my end. Well, that sweetheart did me one better and saw the third Nox Twilight color I wanted on my wish list and sent it as a surprise! Don't you love people sometimes?

Nox Twilight: Poseidon, Sugar Plum, Talon

 I haven't swatched any of these beauties yet, but if I could describe them in the bottle I would say Poseidon is a stormy blue, Sugar Plum is a pink/purple duochrome, and Talon is a royal blue with some beautiful shimmer in it. They look gorgeous and I'm excited to try them out! Although I must say, for being Twilight polishes you would think the names would have something more to do with the series... just sayin'.

Finally, I decided to experiment with my NOTD before taking it off. I added China Glaze Fairy Dust (left), Orly Winter Wonderland (center), and Essie Matte About You (right) to a finger, just to see what it looked like.



Unfortunately, my camera wasn't really cooperating but you can see the multi-colored sparkle in Fairy Dust, the white sparkle from Winter Wonderland, and the matteness from Matte About You - what a contrast to its ultra-shiny normal state! This reminds me...

NeverTooMuchGlitter posts frequently about her feelings towards animal-tested products - she dislikes them. I agree with her, so I'm glad she makes this topic public. Unfortunately, Essie does test on animals, so I will not be buying any more polishes from them or featuring their colors I already own on here (except Matte About You, since I just did...). Unfortunately, OPI was recently acquired by Coty, which has iffy testing policies and refuses to sign a statement saying they don't test, according to PETA's Caring Consumer website. I know PETA is rather controversial and sometimes sensationalist, but if a brand makes their "goodie" list, I feel pretty secure knowing they leave animals alone. Therefore, after the Katy Perry Collection/Black Shatter, I will not feature or buy any more of their products, either (unless they will state they don't test on animals). If you have questions about whether a company tests on animals, you can check their bottles for a "jumping bunny" logo (although some companies that don't test don't use the logo on their bottles, so this isn't failsafe). You can also check Caring Consumer which updates weekly and simply reports on brands that signed a legal document stating they do not test on animals and those which refused to do so. Lots of brands we don't think about test on animals, so give the list a look if it strikes you. Animals shouldn't have to suffer for our own vanity, don't you think? Okay, PSA over. Sorry! Had to say it.

xoxo,
Amanda


Two Giveaways!

Hi everyone! Quick post to mention a couple of giveaways. I may post a bit later with my previous NOTD but it depends on how I feel. It was a rough first day back to school! Yikes. Anyways...

Giveaway #1 is for a bottle of GOSH Holographic nail polish! Can't miss out on that one over at Girly Addictions. Click here to enter.

Giveaway #2 is for a little set of goodies from Rachel Marie's Nails. Click here to check out the swag and enter.

Seems like a good way to get followers is to do a giveaway, what do you ladies think? What would you want to get - a bunch of littler things or one good polish (let's say, China Glaze OMG! Collection TMI... just as an example...)? Would you enter and blog about it to help me out?

xoxo,
Amanda

Monday, January 17, 2011

China Glaze Tronica Electra Magenta

Hi everyone! I was going to space my posts out a bit better, but I'm having a rather slow and annoying day and needed a distraction. At least this is productive, right? Right?!

Anyway, as mentioned last post, this is dedicated to a wonderful man who I recently lost, my boyfriend's grandfather. I was painting my nails last night when my boyfriend texted me "Grandpa passed away" and so this color is dedicated to him. (I could be really cheesy and write about how it sparkles like his personality, it's captivating like he was, and I love it like we all loved him... but I'll spare you. Oh, wait, um... nevermind, I guess.)

Here it is: China Glaze's Tronica Collection, Electra Magenta (two coats, no topcoat; pictures taken indoors in yellowish lighting unfortunately- but this is pretty true to color):


Here is my favorite picture, the only one that truly shows some of it's holographic qualities:

So there you have it, Tronica's Electra Magenta. A great color to correlate with a great man, rest in peace. What do you ladies think? Will you be picking up this color, or any of the Tronica collection? I didn't get the OMG collection so I'm pretty pumped for this one, China Glaze is by far and away my favorite nail polish brand (big 3 free, no testing on animals, and willing to go outside the box for colors and styles, unlike some other big companies *coughOPIcough*)? I'm sold.

xoxo,
Amanda

PolishAholic Contest!

Quick post: just wanted to let all of you know about an incredible giveaway going on at The PolishAholic! Go to her site, follow her, tweet, become a fan on facebook, and you can win a TON of polishes she's hand picked out! (Cross your fingers for me!) Here's the link again: http://www.thepolishaholic.com/2011/01/1000-followers-giveaway.html

xoxo,
Amanda

Misa It's Electric & Jesse's Girl Confetti

Hi everyone! Here's my NOTD for yesterday and the day before. I started with two coats of Misa "It's Electric".


The name "It's Electric" is pretty misleading. Don't get me wrong, I love this color - but wouldn't you have expected a florescent, neon blue? I'm glad it wasn't since I'm sure that wouldn't have complimented my skin tone, but still! Anyway... This was one of those polishes that naturally dried to a satiny finish, but I'm still not thrilled about that particular finish. Matte or shiny, there shouldn't be an in-between! So I added Seche Vite for the look above and to force it to go to the shiny side.

(Side note: this was my first time ever using Seche (!!) and I must say, I was totally impressed. I had avoided it for a while as I thought my 99 cent topcoat was working fine, but now I've seen the light! ;) Shiny, dries fast, and the polish stays on FOREVER. Now I understand why everyone complained about glitter taking forever to take off, because mine always just chipped. Those days are behind me now, and I'm not the least bit sad about it!)

I wore the polish with the Seche for about a day but then I started getting bored with it. I decided to add Jesse's Girl Confetti, which was one of my Rite Aid finds. It's kind of a glittery, sheer, duo-chrome that complimented It's Electric perfectly!


In some lights it was purple, others dark blue, others light blue. Overall, very pretty! I'm not crazy about sheer polishes... I get upset because I like the color in the bottle to be the color on my nails, and 15 coats of sheer is not what I intended, nor is layering it over a different color. But this sheer was very pretty especially over this blue. It definitely gave it depth and made it more interesting, so I could wear it another day without being annoyed with my boring polish.

What do you think? Was it better before or after Jesse's Girl?

Next post will be dedicated to a very special man who passed away last evening, and I found out when I was painting my nails, so stay tuned for that (and it's a Tronica!).

xoxo,
Amanda

Sunday, January 16, 2011

China Glaze Tronica: Techno Teal

Hi all! Sorry for my delayed postings. I had a minor complication last week that resulted in me being unable to focus completely on nails:
Can you find my car? ;)

 So basically what I had intended to spend on nail blogging, ended up being spent shoveling and cleaning off cars. We got about 18 inches of snow in 24 hours so it was a bit hectic!

Anyway, enough with excuses. I quickly swatched Tronica (the ones I bought, anyway) for you guys last week, but here's a recent NOTD where I wore Techno Teal:


Here's one with flash to (attempt to) show the sparkliness and holo:


What do you think of Techno Teal? I love it, it may be my favorite of the collection!

xoxo,
Amanda


Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Nail Art for Dummies

Hi ladies! We just got hit with a major storm here in Massachusetts (about 18 inches of snow!) so I'm going to be in all day. The good news is that means I'll probably be doing manis, playing with nail art, and taking pictures :) Today I thought I'd show you guys my guide of "Nail Art for Dummies". You see, I have the artistic talent of... a snail. I can manage maybe some lines on my nails with a nail art pen, and that's about it. What's a girl to do?!

Well, here are my solutions, my "cheat sheet" for nail art for the artistically challenged:

1. Fimo sticks:
So as I showed you the other day, these are fimo sticks (also called fimo canes, nail art sticks/canes, etc.) in the process of being cut for use. You can see the full stick on the left, the small slices I already cut up, and my razorblade on the right for cutting. I started cutting these up and, I kid you not, I have a blister on my hand from it. It's work to cut these tiny little pieces! But, as you can see, the results are great (and cute)!

Fimo sticks are available online, you can buy them through Amazon.com pretty cheap, usually sold in bundles of 25-100. Bundle Monster (more on them in a bit!) sells 100 sticks for $17.99 with free shipping, which is the deal I decided on with my gift card. Once they arrive, they are flexible and can be cut into small pieces. It requires a little force, but it can be done! To make them softer, you can dip them in warm water, but that can warp the designs, so you really need to cut the whole stick once you do that. You can also buy pre-cut fimo designs, but they tend to run you a bit more money and you get much less (usually about $5 per 100 little decorations).

The next challenge for me was storage. What do I store these tiny little nail designs in? I checked around at craft stores and the small containers were 10 for $5, and would not have fit all the designs, even if I mixed them together. So my creative solution?:

I decided to use a pill organizer. You know, those things that you can buy at the pharmacy that have days and times listed to put your pills in for the week, so you can keep track of what to take at what time? Well, at $4.14 at Walmart, this pill organizer was the perfect solution! (Can't say I'm not creative!)

Here are some of my fimo sticks, all cut up. I've been busy! I decided to color code them by "type". Top row is fruits, and weird designs on the end that I don't intend to use. The second row is flowers (3 different kinds mixed into each compartment). Third row is (currently) butterflies and hearts. The bottom row is for holidays and I have one little compartment of clown fish on the left. So far I have Halloween, Valentine's Day, snow flakes, birthday, and Easter.

To attach these, you can either imbed them in gel or acrylic nails or stick them in wet polish on natural nails. For natural nails, the thinner they are, the better. They're more flexible when they're thin, so you can contour them to your nail. You can also use nail glue to apply them to real or fake nails.

2. Nail Stickers: 
On the left, I have nail stickers. We have all used these since we were little girls. Very simple: unpeel from backing, stick onto nail. Voila! Easy and self-explanatory. I got these from Transdesign.com for about $2, but they are available pretty much everywhere (Walmart, Sallys, etc.).

3. Nail Sprinkles
(On the right in the picture above in the round containers)

These are much like fimo decorations in that they are small, slightly flexible, and you can stick them right into nail polish or gel/acrylic, or glue them on. These are white holo stars (top) and holo silver hearts (bottom). I got these at Sally's, where they run about $3 for the small containers. However, Dollarnailart.com also has them for, what else, $1. I can't vouch for how big the containers of those are since I haven't ordered from there yet, but I can say they are currently having a buy one get one free sale on heart shaped designs until February 14th - go snatch some up!

The only downside to these are their inflexibility. I have used them on my nails before and despite clear polish and sticking them in wet polish, they weren't bendable and so the edges stuck up from my nail. This resulted in losing some of them overnight, and then many more the following day. They look really cool, but they don't last very long (especially if they are pointy) unless you can contour them to your nail.

4. Finally, Konad/Fauxnad: 
I'm sure many of you are familiar with Konad plates. They are small metal plates with designs imprinted on them, so you can apply polish, scrape off the excess, and use a soft stamper to transfer the design from the plate onto your nail. If anyone would like further explanation, please let me know!

These are the Bundle Monster plates, available on Amazon.com for $17.99 (free shipping). Great deal to get a ton of designs (I believe it includes 21 plates). Now, lots of other companies have caught on and these plates are available all over the place in a variety of patterns. Original Konad plates cost about $5-6 each, but lots of places have them cheaper or in larger bundles with similar patterns to the Konad plates. Check out WowSoCool.com, BornPretty.com, Transdesign.com, and Amazon.com for some examples (and if you know of any other places, let me know so I can link them too!).

For me, I had trouble storing them. What to do with tiny metal plates with sharp edges that I didn't want to scratch? As you can see above, I borrowed some of my nephew's trading card sheets (the ones you stick in a binder to display/collect) and slid them in - they fit perfectly and it protects them well. I fold them in third and store them that way. The only downside is that they slide out fairly easily, so if you happen to hold the sheet upside down, you can get pelted with sharp metal disks!

So what do you ladies think? Any other suggestions or ideas? There are also foils out there, but I have yet to try those since I've heard they really only last a couple hours or so. Water marbling is also an option but that might require a whole new post...

xoxo,
Amanda

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

China Glaze Tronica

Hi all! I went to Cosmoprof as promised... they had most of the Tronica collection but I decided I could only afford to get my favorite five for now, and I'll wait to get some more in February when they're at Sally's. So here they are, my "fave five" if you'd like to call them that:

High Def, Gamer Glam,  Techno Teal, Virtual Violet, Electra Magenta

Now for some quick and dirty skittle swatches, it's 8:30 at night so there's no sunlight to show off the holo in, so you're stuck with my awful, yellowy room lighting - sorry! Each is two coats and no top coat:

High Def, Gamer Glam, and Electra Magenta
  • High Def (left) is a holo blue that reminds me of denim. Not my usual cup of tea, but I'm glad I picked it up! It looks really nice on, and is a good fall holo.
  • Gamer Glam (center) is a light purple that I LOVE. Mostly because I love all purples. Seriously, you have to do something seriously wrong for me to not love a purple.
  • Electra Magenta (right) is a nice vibrant pink with some hints of purple. Loveee! Reminds me a bit of an OPI Designer Series I have.

  • China Glaze Pom Pom is on the left... I got it today with my deal at Sally's (buy Seche Vite, get a free bottle of China Glaze!) and it felt weird to only put polish on two nails. It's clearly not holo, and at two coats it's still very sheer. I'm on the fence about it, but maybe it'll make a good layering polish. Anyway...
  • Techno Teal (center) is my favorite of the bunch. It's a gorgeous blue and the holo shows up well in it. It was also pretty thick, could have been one coat but I went for two to maintain consistency.
  • Virtual Violet (right) reminds me of Color Club Wild at Heart, which I mentioned was one of my favorite polishes ever. It's a nice deep, purple holo.
What do you guys think? Which Tronicas do you want? I almost got a sixth, but I read it's very similar to TMI which is the only OMG Collection polish I have, so I passed for now. I'd love to get my hands on some more of the OMG Collection someday, but I'm happy to have the Tronicas to supplement my holo obsession!

xoxo,
Amanda

Favorites

Hello again! No swatches to show you yet (hi ho, hi ho, off to Cosmoprof I go...) but later I hope to have some Tronica and possibly Katy Perry! Until then, I thought I'd do something very new year-ish: my favorite nail polishes list. Am I the only one who thinks "new year" is synonymous with "superlatives"?

So here we go, my favorite red, pink, green, and blue (I don't have many oranges or yellows, so it didn't seem fair to include those categories):

  • OPI Log on to Love: an oldie, but goodie. I came upon this at work one day and decided I needed to buy it, so I did... and I'm so glad I did, because it is a perfect, vixeny, shimmery, perfect red. Did I mention it's the perfect red?
  • China Glaze Strawberry Fields: I have a lot of pinks, it takes a lot for me to narrow it down. But Strawberry Fields is incredible. Pretty summery pink with gold glass flecks? Yes, please.
  • China Glaze Mistletoe Kisses: From their most recent holiday collection, this was a beautiful polish. Perfect for the holidays, but I'm going to find ways to incorporate it in every season... somehow.
  • OPI Catch Me in Your Net: When I first started nail polish hunting, I saw this and passed. I didn't think I could pull off blue nail polishes... yet. Then I got brave, and I'm so glad I did because this color is gorgeous. 
Now onto purple, silver, gray, and black:

  • Color Club Wild at Heart: Color Club can make a fantastic holo. That's how three ended up on my favorites list! his is a deep purple holo that I just adored. I believe it may have even been my very first holo (aww!).
  • Color Club Worth the Risque: Silver holo... Color Club is after my own heart. I love this one so much it's one I avoid using because I don't want to use it all up! (That and I have a huge bin of unused nail polishes, whoops)
  • OPI Lucerne-tainly Look Marvelous: This polish is often remembered for it's silly name (I think it's kind of clever, actually) but I love it for the color. I got tons of compliments on this polish and wore it for two whole days during my one-day-polish phase!
  • Color Club Revvvolution: Black holo. Gorgeous.
And now for my own categories: favorite holo, favorite glitter, and favorite suede.

  • OPI DS Reflection: The color I will always regard as "so nice, I bought it twice"! Bought it online at the beginning of my obsession, then bought it again about a month ago (while talking to the saleslady about how I was passing up on OPI Burlesque colors because I thought I might have them at home - d'oh!).
  • OPI Mad as a Hatter: The bottle that started it all. Seeing this color on a client's nails was all it took for me to fall in love, and I had to have it. I searched high and low, to no avail. Then I started supplementing my collection with similar colors... and they got further and further from MaaH, but my collection began. I eventually was able to swap for this and Absolutely Alice on Makeup Alley, but I only ever got the minis.
  • OPI We'll Always Have Paris (Suede): Beautiful color, with such depth. I tend to hoard purple polishes, but this made my Top 11 of 2010 list, so you know it's good.
So what do you think? Any that you have and love? Have and hate? Ones you think I left out?

xoxo,
Amanda

Monday, January 10, 2011

Fimo canes!

As promised, here's post number two today! I got a $25 gift card for Amazon.com and decided to spend it very wisely on textbooks fimo canes. What are they, you ask? Well, they are slightly flexible, small sticks (about 1-2 inches long) that you can cut into small slices to use as nail decorations. They remind me of the erasers on fancy pencils from my childhood. I bought the Bundle Monster kit of 100 canes, and they broke them up into packages of 25, so here they are:





Cute, right?! I haven't used them before so I plan to take some of the designs I probably won't use (or use very often) and practice a bit before I get into the ones I really like. Which designs are your favorites?

Stay tuned for tomorrow: I'm going with my friend to Cosmoprof to get (hopefully) China Glaze's Tronica collection!

xoxo,
Amanda