A Tribute For My Mom

Hey everyone... not the most upbeat post but I am hoping that this has a positive spin. It's the anniversary of my mother's passing but this year in her memory a lot of you have offered to do manis and commemorate her with me, which is very special!

In the ten years since my mom passed, so much has happened. Growing from the 15 year old I was when I lost her to now as a 25 year old has been a tremendous difference but of course I've missed her all along the way. It's so hard when the person you love is really sick and suffering but yet you don't want to see them go either. It's also quite hard to have all the special moments in your life (my first boyfriend, turning 16, turning 18, graduating high school, turning 21, graduating college, graduating grad school, etc.) without a special person there - especially when it seems like everyone else has their mom there.  I wish I could say I was over it and fine but the truth is, it's still something I struggle with and often fight back tears when I talk about it, no matter how hard I try. She's certainly very missed in my heart, but I can feel her with me sometimes.

Anyway, enough of the sobbiness. The polish I have for you today, Tuilleries, is very special because it was inspired by my mother and created by Lex Cosmetics based off my color story. I'm not sure Lex realizes how special this polish is to me, and then when I see people swatching it, it feels so special and like we're all so connected in my mom's memory although people might not know it. It's her best seller so I know a lot of people are loving this polish out there and I hope my mom is loving that as much as I do. I hope you all love it the way I do!

For my swatch here, I layered two coats of Tuilleries over American Apparel Coney Island (which Jasmine sent me off my wishlist, thank you!). Tuilleries is a little sheer on its own (I think I wore it alone once and I had no VNL at 4-5 coats) but I absolutely ADORE it over this light pink creme. I cannot think of a better way to honor my mom.

So now for all the other lovely manis for this special day - thank you to everyone who participated or even thought about it. If you want to add one a little late, I kept the Inlinkz open until February 6th so you can add your posts until then. (If you don't own Tuilleries, please feel free to post something pink, red, related to tulips, or antique - all are things my mom loved.) It means so much to me to have all your support. If any of you want to add this code to your post, it's at the very bottom after my usual signature.




Dolores participated belatedly, but it was too late to add to inlinkz, her post can be found here. Also, here's some pictures used with permission for people who participated but didn't have a blog post to link to:

By Nicole

By Kylie

By Nicole Ghosh

By my IRL friend Julia

By Judy

By Bridgette

xoxo and thinking of you, mom,
Amanda

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Claire's Poison Apple, in honor of my mom

Hi ladies, today I have a somewhat somber post as it's dedicated to my mother who passed away 8 years ago today from emphysema. But I don't want it to be depressing, so we're going to focus on the good things and the polish! Okay? Okay!

I picked Claire's Poison Apple out at the store not long ago because I heard it was a MAC Bad Fairy dupe. Since I can't afford MAC, nor do I really want to pay that much for polish, I thought it was worth a try. It was sitting in my unworns bin when I realized I wanted to do a special mani for my mom. Red was her favorite color, and I have a feeling she would have picked this color out herself for me to wear, so here we have it, Claire's Poison Apple:

This polish is a nice, glittery red-orange duochrome that I was at first afraid was a mistake. The first coat went on really yucky, and it came out looking like a sheer, reddish gray mess. But I decided to stick to it because if it looks like that in the bottle, there must be some way to make it look like that on my nail, right? Right! After about 3 coats it looked good, but I decided to do a fourth coat just to even out some bald spots and make sure it was even. I topped it with Seche Vite, and voila!

I hope my mom's happy with my choice, it seemed like a color she would've liked and I like it too. I feel like I need to personally rename it since "Poison Apple" as a name of a polish to remember your mom is a bit off-putting. So I'm renaming it for my own purposes to "Mom's Tulips", because tulip was her favorite flower. Hopefully I did a solid tribute to ya, mom!

What do you ladies think of "Mom's Tulips"? Do you have the MAC Bad Fairy, does it compare?

xoxo,

Amanda