Belated Untrieds Challenge

Hey everyone... I think Madeline is done with untrieds so Amanda and I are returning with January untrieds, which we decided is brands we only have one untried bottle of!Since I never posted on Tuesday... or Thursday... you get two today!

This is a polish I got from Dolores long, long ago but haven't tried until now. It's a fairly weak linear holo but holo nonetheless! This is two coats of Magnetic Shimmering Titanium. Application was really easy

There you have it, hope you enjoyed this sparkly Sunday post!

xoxo,
Amanda

New Year's Nails!

Hi everyone. Super lazy lately. I must have 432857 pictures on my camera but uploading them and writing a post and yada yada is too much work right now haha. So I'm cheating and showing you my NYE nails that I posted on Instagram. I went to this neat (hipster) party at a nearby venue and it was pretty fun! They had hula hoopers, a couple DJs, go-go dancers, and my favorite part was they also had a tarot reader! So for my $5 admission I got a tarot reading at like 12:30 on New Year's Day! She predicted I will be making changes this year and it's a good year for it, I'll have success, blah blah blah. It was really cool to have that prediction right at the turn of the year! Actually, I also loved that it was called Glitter Ball or something cool like that and they literally sprinkled glitter all over the ground from the parking lot to the front door and said to follow the glitter trail! I was really excited... nobody else was as amused lol!

I started with basic black creme from the Wet n Wild Fast Dry collection (mine is actually Ink Well from the On The Prowl collection but it's the same as any of the other WnW black cremes). I let one coat dry. Then I pulled out my loose glitters I bought on eBay a while back in red, hot pink, orange, gold, lime green, teal, navy, and purple and applied them one by one in a second coat of polish while it was still wet. It was an arduous process but the look was awesome, even my boyfriend really loved these and he asked if I wanted him to take a picture for me for my blog. (Very sweet of him, but obviously he underestimates the number of photos I take of my own hands haha!)

Sorry for the crappy-ish photo quality. I have the iPhone 4 which actually takes surprisingly good photos IMO. Also sorry for the claw which is creepy to some people. Sorry also for the cleanup because I did this and it took an hour and then I had to go because I was late! So there's my first series of blog apologies for the new year! Happy 2013 lol!

xoxo,
Amanda

Candy Lacquer Modern Love & Rarity

Blaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh hi. I don't have any energy to blog lately so I tend to do like 10 posts all at once and schedule them. I'm determined to be on schedule for the Glitter Challenge with Amanda and Madeline!

I ordered some Candy Lacquers back in the day and my bottle of Modern Love had a funky formula. Just really thick and no glitter came out... so I emailed Sandra and she offered to refund me or send me another polish while she reformulated it. I really just wanted ML, so I asked if she'd just send me a reformulated bottle, which she did, plus a bonus bottle of my choice! Now THAT'S customer service. I know I've said this a bazillion times, but Candy Lacquer is one of my top 3 favorite indie brands, right up there with Lynnderella.  SO ANYWAY.

This is the reformulated Modern Love over Orly Decades of Dysfunction. As you can see, it was awesomesauce. But then again, I love heart glitter. I HEART heart glitter, as a matter of fact!

Rarity is the polish I chose as my freebie and, let me tell you, it was so hard to narrow down but this was a great choice! I'll be honest and tell you I have no idea what this base is because I spilled acetone on my notepad specifying it, but I'm willing to say probably Essie French Affair? Sorry about that.

What do you think? I'm pretty satisfied with my choices, if I do say so myself!

xoxo,
Amanda

November Untrieds Part 5

Hello! Almost the end of the week yayyyy! I'm actually off work tomorrow because tonight I'm seeing Bassnectar with my boyfriend. When we started dating, I took an interest in his musical tastes, of course, and Bassnectar is probably my favorite of all his music he introduced me to - so I'm pretty excited! I'm DEFINITELY excited for having tomorrow off. I used to have all Fridays off work but had to work them to make more money, so having one off now feels like a real treat!

ANYWAAAYYYYY... today's pictures are awful. Maybe my battery was dying or maybe I was lazy or maybe my life malfunctioned? I don't know. But it's not the best photography ever so forgive me. I needed to do my next day of mine and Madeline's challenge and apparently I overlooked that my photos SUCK. ... uh. Ahem. Moving on.

China Glaze Jungle Queen was actually an accidental purchase for me. I found it on clearance at Sally's and thought it was Elephant Walk... which, of course, it wasn't. So I grinned (grun?) and beared (bore?) it and tried it anyway. I don't love it, don't hate it. It's a dusty purple with shimmer (ughhhh I hate shimmer) but it looks gray in some lights. This was two coats and it applied well.

Then I added a coat of JENsations Follow Your Heart. This is black and white matte glitters (including hearts, eeeee!) in a clear base. If you're running to Jen's shop now to buy it, you're going to be disappointed - because this was a custom one made for me! However, everything used was a combination of glitters from her other polishes, so if you're lemming it you could probably request "Follow Your Heart" or just do what I did and tell her you want a custom polish with all the matte black and white glitters she has except bar glitter. :)

Here's a bottle shot of Follow Your Heart. I absolutely LOVE this polish. Jen did a great job (by the way, custom polishes by Jen are $9.20 - the .20 is to cover a listing fee - and she's so quick and dynamic! I definitely recommend her custom polishes!)

There you are... sorry this post was 90% NOT China Glaze, oops!

xoxo,
Amanda

Halloween Week Part 7: Halloween!

Happy Halloween!! This is my favorite holiday so I'm pretty stoked for today. I am handing out candy at my boyfriend's house so I'm fairly excited for that. Enjoy trick-or-treating! (Fun fact: there are no documented cases of strangers poisoning or putting razor blades in candy, only by parents... oddly enough.)

So the holiday called for something special: My first gradient! Megan sent me some cosmetic sponges in a swap, so I decided to use those and make something epic. And, um, I was close? Here's the colors I picked (the wand is my Migi pens, which unscrew to be normal, one coater polish!):

OPI Atomic Orange, OPI Funky Dunkey, and Migi nail art pens.

My base was plain white and I made a gradient going from white, orange, purple, to black, and I was mostly successful except the black didn't come out very much, and where it did... it stained my cuticles omg. I really liked the subtle effect though, it was really cool and I wish I had a good up-close shot to show you how it came out! (Although, if you're really curious, you could just enlarge the photos...)

And there you have it! Happy Haunting, Ghouls!

xoxo,
Amanda

Halloween Week Part 3

Hello out there my pretties! Whoa, that sounded in my head like the witch from Wizard of Oz. Weeeeirdddd. Halloween is really getting into my brain.Anyway... Today's post is another quickie because (shhhhh!) I'm writing this at work. Don't get too huffy and puffy, I'm currently not being paid for this time at work so it's fine. :P I'm hosting a Halloween party this evening so I knew I wouldn't have time to write this post otherwise (no, this isn't my party mani, but maybe I'll show that belatedly!).

Today's mani was made using Orly RIP which came out this year. I actually whined about not finding this enough that TWO people sent me bottles haha! Glad to have backups ;) It's your quintessential black base with orange glitter. I did two layers over Wet n Wild Ink Well. On my ring finger I skipped RIP and put orange crackle (because, sadly, I didn't do ENOUGH crackle when it was popular so I sneak it in now and then...). Unfortunately, this crackle didn't crack too much. Humph. Stupid crackle making me look crazy!

Then, because I can never leave well enough alone, I matteified (matted? added matte? mattied?) the glitter and it's BEAUTIFUL. For some reason it still looks glossy on all but my middle finger, which I'm guessing is from a) the top coat not being 110% dry when I took this or b) the lighting reflecting. Either way, pretty cool!

xoxo,
Amanda

Halloween Week Part 2

Hey guys and gals, quick post today. Not feeling too chatty! (For once...)

Today's post is a polish from China Glaze's 2010 Awakening collection for Halloween that somehow I didn't wear until this mani: China Glaze Mummy May I?. I layered two coats of it over Wet n Wild Ink Well (a magnificent one coat black creme, fyi - probably a dupe for their normal black creme with a different name for the On The Prowl collection). MMI is small fuchsia glitter in a blackened base (I think it's dark dark purple), a perfect combination for Halloween without being black and orange.

I loved this! Not sure how it sat untried for so long, but a great mani nonetheless.

xoxo,
Amanda

Halloween Part Two: Hits Zeus

Hey everyone! So, today I have a polish I'm going to classify as Halloween, but really it's only because: a) it's black and b) I was dying to wear it because it was holo :P I got Hits Zeus from llarowe and it's straight from Brazil! This beauty was $10 plus minimal shipping, and I also got Hera and Hestia, which I'll be showing soon!

Zeus is a gorgeous dark gray/blackened holo. I layered two coats over a layer of a black creme to conserve it, since the bottle is small (only 6 mL). However, it was totally worth it, in my opinion! Since I use polishes so infrequently (since I have so many), this is a perfect size for me, in all honesty: it's small enough that it doesn't take up a lot of room, it's enough that I will still probably never use it all, and it's perfection. Behold:

Zeus was a bugger to photograph, which I think is because it was a dark holo, but you can definitely see the sparkle and the linear holographic-ness, especially in that bottle! *drools* Now I'm off, it's my Halloween party tonight and I'm so excited! I'll be showing you guys my costume nails, but would you be interested in seeing my makeup too?

xoxo,
Amanda

Lex Cosmetics Seashell

Hi ladies! Sorry for my lack of posting, I'm lazy lately! Today I have Lex Cosmetics Seashell, which is inspired by the inside of a conch shell: oil slicky. This is a blackened base with scattered, sparse holo and it's a beaut!

Flash

Low light

For some reason, this polish didn't play nice with my topcoat and the "tip wear" you see is actually shrinkage :( it wasn't noticeable in person though, so I wore it for a few days! This is two coats and it was really easy to apply. I love Lex's polishes and this one was amazing. I love the caps, especially. If I wasn't crap at nail art, I'd attempt the pattern!

xoxo,
Amanda

China Glaze Haunting

Hi gals! I have one of China Glaze's Halloween polishes for you today, the only one I bought from this collection (yep, didn't even buy the glow in the dark one - gasp!). This is China Glaze Haunting, a black base with silver microglitter throughout.

I only took one picture because it kind of showed all I had to show for this polish. This is two coats, and cleanup was kind of difficult because it's not only black, but it's glittery too! It's pretty basic, and I felt like some of that pretty silver glitter disappeared in the base. I may thin it a little bit to make it a bit more jellyish, but we'll see. I think this polish is very Halloweeny, and a great way to wear a black polish without it being boring. What do you guys think?

xoxo,
Amanda

Wet n Wild Behind Closed Doors

Hi ladies... sorry for my absence. I got sick with a cold, so I gave myself one day off. Then yesterday, tragedy hit when I got the worst sinus headache/tension migraine of my entire life. My poor boyfriend on the phone with me and I'm yelling at him that he's talking too loud and crying because the street lights were too bright... anyway, all of you migraine sufferers know what I'm talking about. Not fun. Then today I was working all day. So ANYWAY...I'm a bad blogger, and you get this random night post.

Today I bring you one of the elusive Wet n Wild On the Prowl polishes: Behind Closed Doors. This one was my real lemming of the collection, and I've heard it's dupey for a Deborah Lippmann polish but I'm not rich enough to buy that one to compare... sorry. Anyway, it's a black jelly base with small red microglitter and larger red hex glitter. It's a true stunner.

For this mani, I layered BCD over a black creme (to conserve BCD, of course) and then put two coats of BCD over it. I could have just done one coat, but it didn't apply very consistently (which you can still sort of tell in my pictures) and it was not my desired look at just one coat.

Overall, I loved this polish! You have to shake it up before you use it to get the full glitter effect, but it's awesome, and perfect for Halloween! What do you guys think?

xoxo,
Amanda

Orly Rock Solid

Hi ladies! Wanted to post today since I missed yesterday due to hangover haha. I'm feeling really tired and I caught a cold, so this will be short and sweet.

I posted about Orly Rock Solid last night on twitter, and I'm actually still wearing it today. The verdict: unimpressed. It's a nice enough polish, but it's not really that interesting. For a Mineral FX polish they're pricing higher, putting it in the category of Halley's Comet and the previous FX collection, it's disappointing. I'm okay with this as a few dollar polish, something like Finger Paints or Nina Ultra Pro, but not for Orly retailing at $9 a pop. Anyway... Rock Solid is the blackened gray or black base with sparse holo glitter (and I mean sparse, you'll see below).

Two coats and topcoat. Natural light.

Blurry to show the sparse glitter.

So it's not a bad polish; application was easy, it's opaque quickly, and dried pretty fast. But it's just kind of... boring. I don't know. I already put it up for swap so if you're interested, contact me on MakeupAlley as az270890.

xoxo,
Amanda

Work Inappropriate #4 & Fried Koolaid

Hello girls! How are you liking this glitter series? Too much? Too often? Well, too bad ;) I have a few more planned as I top off my vacation so you'll get probably 3-4 more glitterbombs and I'll be back to normal!

Today I have a much sought after polish: Correction Tape by Wet n Wild from the On the Prowl collection. I'm stupid, though, and layered it over black when it contained black glitter. In the words of Homer Simpson: d'oh! Oh well, it still looked gorgeous!

After about a 18 hours, I couldn't leave well enough alone, so I put Love and Beauty (Forever 21) blue glitter over it:

 And then added their green glitter as well:

It was a little too far from the original at this point, so I just took it all off and started with another day of my glitterness :)

And finally, this is fried koolaid:

Those of you who read my tweets already know this (and lots of you were curious about it!) but I went to a fair (The Eastern States Exposition, or the Big E) which is here every year, and my friend Nikki (holding the container) bought Fried Koolaid for us to try. It looks so weird, but it's basically fried dough with koolaid mixed into it. It tasted like fried dough but a bit sweeter, and the aftertaste was like straight up koolaid mix. Weird, but not bad!

xoxo,
Amanda

Deborah Lippmann Forget You

Hi all! I just wanted to start today with the inevitable mention of the anniversary of 9/11. It's always a hard time of year for the USA and the world, and for me, I'm always left feeling like there are people who only focus on "well, we got that bin Laden, he got what he deserves" or the terrorism aspect, but I'd really like to encourage all of us to focus on the lives lost, the heroes who risked, and lost, their lives to help, and the unity that was inspired in this country following these events. Even with tragedy, we must find the positives and I think, in this case, this really brought a very individualistic country together and inspired patriotism we didn't show before. So everyone, try today to get back to that spirit of helping one another and love, and remembering the brave victims - not just the negative parts. /end preach

ANYWHO, "I see you drivin' 'round town with the girl I love and I'm like... FORGET YOU!" Okay, I had to. I painted my nails this color and the song was stuck in my head immediately. I must admit, I love Deborah Lippmann's idea of naming polishes after pop songs. Anyways, Forget You is another gem from DL that I got in the box set with Happy Birthday and Candy Shop.

While I have you on the topic of forgiveness... please forgive my nubbins and my cuticle rips. For some reason, my nails have been breaking really easily lately. I'm blaming the weather, stress (I used to bite my nails and while I don't know, I do have the habit of cleaning under them a lot when I'm stressed which puts strain on the free edge), and my base coat. But what it boils down to is I had 5 of my 10 nails ripped down shorter than the others, so I needed to cut my losses and trim them all and start from scratch rather than having them all different lengths. If any of you have any ideas for how to help out my poor nails, feel free to share! For now, I'm using European Secrets Rock Hard strengthener (not much about this on the blogs, since I seem to find Hard Rock by Deborah Lippmann when I search for that..) and can hopefully let you know how that goes!

The good news? I have some guest posts, some older posts I didn't publish yet, and I'm planning a mini series, affectionately called "Colors that Look Good on Short Nails" as well as the sub-mini series: "Colors that Don't Look Good on Short Nails"... just until I get my normal length back. Anyways, on to the lovely!

Forget You is a blackened jelly base packed with the famous glitter we... okay, I know and love from Happy Birthday and her numerous dupes. It's opaque in two coats, one if you don't mind a bit of patchiness or are really careful.

Nom nom nom look at that glitter...

 And finally, a shot of the bottle so you can see just how densely packed it is and how easy it is to get glitter on to your nails (no fishing for glitter with this one, I promise).

Whew, I'm chatty today! haha What do you think of Forget You? Which is your favorite: Happy Birthday, Candy Shop, or Forget You? I must say, Happy Birthday is the original, so it must be my favorite because you can't really replace that... but Candy Shop is a close second. Not that I don't like Forget You, but it's just not my normal style.

xoxo,
Amanda

Black Crackle Comparisons

Hello my lovely followers and new readers! How are you all doing today?

Today I am here to answer the age old question: Are all crackles the same? (Okay, maybe not age old, just since every brand started releasing their own crackle)

I have three black crackles in my collection: China Glaze Black Mesh, OPI Black Shatter, and La Rosa black (sent to me by NailDeRoyale).

I applied them all over OPI Extravagance to see the differences, using the same technique of applying like a normal polish (from cuticle to tip in three separate strokes, one center, two sides). Here are the results:

As you can see, China Glaze is a little more linear, and created lines in the direction of the brush but not many horizontal lines. The OPI (which, by the way, dries out in no time and was chunky as h-e-double hockeysticks when I broke it out to try this, which reminded me why I never use OPI's shatter) broke up into smaller bundles of crackle, appearing more like a leopard print pattern. Finally, La Rosa broke up pretty evenly, leaving the gaps in the polish but the overall look is black. La Rosa was actually my favorite because, as you can see, China Glaze and OPI require some coddling (special techniques, thinner) whereas La Rosa just applies like a dream. Its consistency is quite similar to a normal polish and isn't thick, so you can work with it pretty easily.

Which one do you prefer?

xoxo,
Amanda

China Glaze Crackle!

Hello again! As you can see, I use the weekends to catch up and this long weekend was perfect because I got China Glaze Crackles in and I couldn't WAIT to show you guys! I swatched each shade (yes, I got all 6) on a nail wheel over two different colors to show some diversity of what you can do and I think I was inspired for my next mani!

First up are the three "basic" colors: white (Lightning Bolt), gray (Cracked Concrete - whoops, called it Cracked Pavement in my last post!), and black (Black Mesh). I decided to show these over colors to highlight what they can do. Here they are over Petites Figi (for you researchers or people who had to take a research class, you might notice I used a "convenience sample" of my revently used polishes for these swatches).

Secondly, I layered them all over Revlon Rock. (Sorry, the right side is coming out dark for some reason. It looks fine on my camera but on my computer they came out dark?)

Next I used the three colored crackles: pink (Broken Hearted), blue (Crushed Candy), and purple (Fault Line). The first picture shows them layered over Finger Paints Easel Come, Easel Go, a really nice, bright silver:

And in other strange things my computer is doing news, this picture is rotated and I can't get it back... mostly because Blogspot tilted it so I can't fix it! But anyway, here they are over Sinful Colors Show Me White.

So what do you guys think? I personally love them, but know they aren't for everybody or every setting. I'm going to wear them today to play around with and maybe when I'm in class but they will have to come off for work! Which ones did you like most, which color combinations worked best, and are you getting this collection?

xoxo,

Amanda