Lazy 15: Galaxy Nails

Hi everyone! I hope you had a fabulous weekend. Mine was good, yesterday was soooooooo relaxing - something I haven't experienced in MONTHS.

So when this challenge began, there were a few days I read and groaned. You saw a recent one with water marbling. The second was galaxy nails, but I'm actually SO impressed with what I came up with.

So here's what I did (yes, I made a handy dandy graphic!):

Then, I added on some loose silver star glitter I had and voila!

So there you have it! I know it's not the usual galaxy nails you see with lots and lots of sponging but 1. you should know me by now. I like glitter. and 2. I think these are sort of a different take, like what the galaxy looks like from Earth if we're looking up at the sky. 


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 Week Part 1

Hi there ladies and gents! My post title MIGHT be a lie... the 7 manis I had for a week of Halloween were good, except for one. That one mani (which would have been yesterday's post) was all sorts of a hot mess once I saw the pictures and I couldn't bear to post it. Does that ever happen to you, a perfectly good mani until you see it photographed? Humph. Anyway, six days until Halloween, and it'll be seven if I do one more! Weeeeeeeeee!

For this mani, I started off with three coats of Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Sun Kissed, which is a beautiful orange creme, although it has some jelly tendencies so we're going to call it's a crelly. Then I put Wet n Wild Tangled in my Web from the elusive On The Prowl collection on my index and ring fingers and the pumpkin purple glitter on the other fingers. 

I LOVED the way TIMW looked, but not so sure about the shiny purple. I think my brain just doesn't seem to recognize shiny glitter anymore since I buy so many mattes now. (Side story: the other day I bought a shiny glitter and when I was trying to look at swatch pictures, I was literally thinking, "oh my god, this is TOO BRIGHT" because the light was reflecting off it.)

So there you have it, a VERY simple Halloween mani (hey, don't judge me because I can't freehand whatsoever!). Happy early Halloween!

xoxo,
Amanda

Sparkle Sunday: Wet n Wild Sugar Coat + Some Magic

Hello there! How's everyone doing? As I write this, I'm waiting for my nails to dry since I've smudged and redone them about three times now. Sighhhh, nail blogger problems! It seems like every time I paint my nails, everyone calls or texts me, I have tons of doors to open, my bed needs to be made, etc.! 

Anywho, today I have a lovely polish I bought from Steph's blog sale (I've been blog sale hoarding lately). I got lots of goodies from her, so it's kind of surprising that the light pink is the one I picked, but I digress! You'll see the rest soon! (Hint: one of them is what I'm waiting for to dry ... that was an awkward sentence. Sorry.)

This mani was what I wore for my friend Cath's birthday at Hibachi. I wanted something fun and pretty, so I put on Wet n Wild Megalast Sugar Coat. This is a sheer-ish light pink, which built up decently. Below is three coats and there's lots of VNL but I don't care because I had bigger plans for it ;) (Ignore the poor cleanup on my pinky, I forget that it has a side sometimes...)

Then I added Lynnderella's One Nutty Fruitcake (oh, me and my multicolored glitters...) which is a mix of basically every color glitter except silver in a million shapes and sizes. Basically, it's pure love! I added two coats over Sugar Coat and this magic happened:

Pre-topcoat

With topcoat

With topcoat

Ahhh, do you hear that? Birds singing, angels getting their wings, miracles happening... no? Just me living in glitterland?

xoxo,
Amanda

Boyfriend's Pick: Wet n Wild Buy Me a Drink

Hey there! It's been a while since I've done a boyfriend's pick mani, which is weird since he has actually picked out my polish but I guess I just forgot to label them as such? Anyway, he picked out a deep red from Wet n Wild's On The Prowl collection, Buy Me a Drink. I used two coats below and it covered effortlessly.

This was a lovely polish and the boyfriend liked it (he always likes me in red even though I'm always meh about it) but it's just not very me. It's vampy and not glittery and kind of shimmery... I don't know. I didn't love it but ended up wearing it for days and days and days because I had no time between work and stuff going on, so I'd go to work, get anxious and chip a nail off, fix it, chip a different nail off, fix it... you get the idea. It lasted about four days that way, and the nails I hadn't chipped off lasted fine!

xoxo,
Amanda

Wet n Wild Buffy the Violet Slayer + glitter

Hey ladies! Another late post today, I'm sorry. I stayed at my boyfriend's house again and didn't have anything saved up to show you, so this is hot off the presses!

I started this mani off with two coats of Wet n Wild's Buffy the Violet Slayer, which is a very vibrant violet. It was really easy to work with (I love WnW's brushes, even though I think they're a bit too stiff) and it was pretty shiny on its own (below is no top coat).

Then I added glitter because it was a weekend and I figured "why not?", so I put Color Club Wish Upon a Rockstar on top. WUAR is a multicolored glitter featuring large pinky-silver hex and smaller glitter in red, aqua, silver, green, and gold.

Lots of people were disappointed by this collection by Color Club but I loved it! Yes, the glitters are large and kind of tricky, but nothing unmanageable and I'm glad to see a glitter collection out! This one was, of course, my favorite and I bought two bottles. Just in case.

What are your thoughts? What other colors could I have paired this with?

xoxo,
Amanda

Halloween Part One: Cougar Attack!

Hi ladies! With Halloween being my favorite holiday, I'm shocked I have yet to post a Halloween mani! All the posts I show you guys are NOTDs so for a while, I thought it was too early for Halloween... then the end of the month snuck up on me! I'm having a party this weekend and I'm so excited! And that is why this post is scheduled: I totally slacked on preparation and I'm spending the day prepping! haha

Anyway, here's my homage to Halloween part one, Wet n Wild Cougar Attack, which was part of this year's hard-to-find On the Prowl collection. This applied kind of awkwardly, this is three coats which was perfect for opacity but some nails were okay in two. The brush on Wet n Wild is perfectly sized to cover my whole nail in one stroke but that means sometimes I get pooling on the edge of my nails from the brush pushing excess over there, if that makes sense? On to the polish.... first, without topcoat.

And with topcoat...

In my opinion, this absolutely requires a great topcoat. It will dry on its own fine, but it will be dull and lack dimension. Once I added topcoat to this, I LOVED it (I usually take my pictures pre-topcoat so you guys see what it actually looks like, not what the topcoat adds). Very Halloweeny, no?

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

Recent Purchases and Packages

Hey guys! I'm in an alliterating mood, so be careful! Just giving you guys a glimpse into my awesome acquistions as of late.

With the Ulta Butter London BOGO I snatched up these two lovelies: Bluey and Rosie Lee.

And to get free shipping, I needed $25 so I grabbed these too: Nicole by OPI One Less Lonely Glitter (my work inappropriate week was sadly lacking in purple glitter), NOPI Do Good... Feel Good, and Ulta Baby Doll. (I'm still on my quest for a non-shimmery light, light almost nude pink after OPI Play the Peonies.)

I also ordered last year's Halloween set from OPI, Tattoo Ta-boo! mostly because I wanted the glow in the dark purple :)

And finally, the lovely Dana sent me some goodies just because. Funky Fingers Sand and Stillettos, Wet n Wild Stream of Wonder (from Mermaid's Cove) and Funky Fingers Baby Baby Baby (which I hope is a Justin Bieber reference, just because). She also sent a Nail Fetish polish from the dollar store, but I had already opened it when it was time for pictures and forgot it at my best friend's house. :-\

So, I got some good stuff! I also have multiplied my Migi supplies, but I don't know if it interests you guys to see all of those colors? Let me know!

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

Some More Hauls

Hi ladies! Do you guys like seeing haul posts? I post them pretty often but I'm just wondering if they are of interest or if it's better if I just stick to manis and swatches.


These are bottle pics then the quick and dirty swatches immediately below them in the same order.

I got these five mini glitters from etsy from a seller called Windestine. These were $8 including shipping and definitely worth it!

Above and below: Summer Love, Sunset Glow, Fireworks, Surf's Up, Pansy (one coat of each over a nail wheel painted half white, half black - to show them over both conceivable options)

Then, I finally ordered from a-England! I must say, this company is amazing! Adina is an incredibly kind person who takes an interest in her fans, and I'm definitely glad to support anybody like that. She's announced recently worldwide shipping is now free indefinitely! So go take advantage!

Above and below: Lady of the Lake, Tristam, and Merlin (two coats each)

And now.... drumroll please! Wet n Wild On the Prowl! (Confession: no, I didn't actually find these. It didn't look good for my area since we never get limited edition products, so I bought these off eBay)

Above and below: Ink Well, Buy Me a Drink, Ready to Pounce, Jungle Fever (one coat each)

And the glitters...

Above and below: Cougar Attack, Behind Closed Doors, Correction Tape, Tangled in My Web (one coat each)

And finally (for today) I ordered from Cult Nails when she had her Labor Day sale. Shipping was SO FAST. I ordered Friday and had them Tuesday, on a holiday weekend! Wow!

Above and below: Living Water, Let Me Fly, Awakening, and Iconic (two coats each)

 So, that's all for today! I'm still waiting on my Models Own order, which is annoying because a) I placed the order on August 23rd and they confirmed it then on the 28th told me I had to re-do it and b) because it's shipping from the same place as a-England, yet I got a-England a few days ago and they shipped days after Models Own. Hmph!

Which of these would you like to see as a mani, in a different combination, etc.?

xoxo,
Amanda



Little Hauls & My Blue Obsession

Hello ladies and gents, but mostly ladies! Today's post is a few polishes I've bought recently, but mostly I'm showing you for the stories behind them.

First up, I got these lovelies from the Walgreens 99 cent Wet n Wild sale. Hannah Pinktana, Buffy the Violet Slayer, and Teal of Fortune (I love these names). No fun story behind these. :(

Next up is a fun  is a fairly random bag of polishes that I got with Emily from Embellished Nails. We actually live really close and it was so nice to meet her in person and find someone equally interested in nail polish as me! We found these bags of 10 polishes for $3.99 at Christmas Tree Shops (not sure if these are a Northeast phenomenon or if you guys know what those are?) Emily jokingly mentioned that her mom pointed them out before and that they were mostly old polishes, but we went to look anyway... and then we sat down on the floor, opened the packages (whoops), and picked out the best ones from each. We laughed like idiots and joked about getting caught, and it was a lot of fun.

What we ended up finding was:

Cutex Cherub Red, Wet n Wild Super Silver (which is an awesome topcoat which makes an effect similar to the glitter in No More Waity Katie) x 2, Passionate Purple x 4 (one for Emily), Black Ice, unsure of the name on the red, and Sweet Georgia Brown (?) Aqua Crush.

Here's Passionate Purple up close, I think this one is one of my favorites!

Then Emily and I got polishes from our local beauty supply we both frequent and joked about how they probably saw us together and thought, "Finally, those two addicts know each other!" haha! I got OPI's Swimsuit... Nailed It! from the Miss Universe collection and Pink Shatter.

Now, the next three polishes have a funny story too. When I first got into nail polish, I didn't like blue. I thought it looked funny (Emily actually told me she initially felt that way too!) or slutty or something. I loved glitter, but thought it would make me look 12, so I avoided it. As you can see from the next three polishes I bought, I've definitely outgrown these preconceived notions LOL (Either that or I'm a 12 year old slut with some funny looking nails, who knows!)

This is Milani Blue Flash, Revlon Mint Fizz, and Swimsuit... Nailed It!

What do you think?

xoxo,
Amanda

Zoya Jo

Hey girls! The subtitle of today's post could be "A Polish I'm Not Crazy About, But Not Sure Why". I have for you Zoya Jo, which was one of my picks in the buy one get two free promo Zoya recently had (I love Zoya, their promos are awesome!)

Jo is a perfectly nice blue with a soft shimmer and is a color I would definitely describe as "gentle".

But for whatever reason I just wasn't in love with it and I had all these polishes out and, next thing you know... This Wet n Wild dusty Super Silver made its way on top. Super Silver reminds me of the sparkle in No More Waity Katie, and I think it could make some excellent frankens! I loved it as top coat, but I wonder what it would look like within another polish.

(PS Sorry this picture below is only two of my fingers. You may notice in the pictures above that my middle finger is about to rip off, which was already occuring but the acetone to take off my previous mani didn't do much for it and I just kept it long for these pictures and then it got chopped, because it was literally falling off, so by the time glitter came into play it was long gone :( Poor middle finger...)

Thoughts? Do you love Super Silver as much as I do?

xoxo,
Amanda

Wet n Wild Diving for Pearls and Confetti Tazmanian Devil

Hi again! I'm so close to 100 followers I cannot believe it! It's amazing how many people care what I have to say, and again, I'm very grateful. Thanks guys! *waves*

I got Diving for Pearls in my swap with Dana, and I LOVE it! Once I got this polish, I started lemming all the WnW collections, which sucks since they aren't available in my area. Or even any of the bordering states to my area. Booooooo! Anyways, so I had that on for a day, then left for my vacation gone awry. (Thanks, Hurricane Irene...) and forgot to take pictures. Then, every day as my anxiety mounted about the impending hurricane I added a layer of Confetti's Tazmanian Devil, which equalled two coats and then we left. LOL So here is what I ended up with:

And yes, I got a huge chip in my ring finger that I ended up filing down but didn't have my mani kit with me on my trip. So this is all I got for you guys! I plan to re-wear Diving for Pearls for sure, so I'll have more pictures then!

xoxo,
Amanda

Epic Comparison Post, AKA I'm a sucker.

Well, hello there, my dears! You're looking dapper today! ;) If you aren't all in a good mood now, you'll be in one by the end of this post because either I am high from fumes typing this or these polishes are just AWESOMESAUCE. (And that is a word I don't use lightly!)

Let's start with a back story. (I wish I could somehow insert the wobbly lines down your vision like they do on TV to show a flashback LOL) Back in the day (okay, about a year ago) I became obsessed with my first lemming. Yes, the polish that started it all: Mad as a Hatter. The problem was that it was about 2 months after the collection came out, and I couldn't find it ANYWHERE. I became that obsessive polish fiend we now all know as "Amanda" ;) Alas, I didn't ever find it, until the fabulous Jamie sent it to me (love ya!) and the lemming was fulfilled. But not before a lot of other polishes came home with me...

So after a lot of taunting from my boyfriend ("oh, another one?" "wow, that's a lot of rainbow sparkle", etc.) I decided to put this collection to good use, and I swatched them all and will compare them so you can decide just which one is the perfect one... for you. For me, they're all perfect.

 (Ignore the smudged Sharpie, I was going to label them on the wheel but it would not cooperate. So I got creative and wrote the labels around a piece of paper). These are two coats of each in order of the bottles above: Wet n Wild Party of Five Glitters, Sephora by OPI Spark-tacular, Claire's Bedazzled, Essence Circus Confetti, Ulta Pinata-yada-yada, Milani Gems, Nyx Carnival, and (the epic, the ultimate) Deborah Lippmann Happy Birthday (yes, I broke down and bought it).

And here are some close ups in the same order: Wet n Wild Party of Five Glitters, Sephora by OPI Spark-tacular, Claire's Bedazzled, Essence Circus Confetti below.

And the remaining four: Ulta Pinata-yada-yada, Milani Gems, Nyx Carnival, Deborah Lippmann Happy Birthday.

And, not to be outdone, Dana actually pointed out one I was missing so I snatched this one up just before this went to presses: Confetti Tazmanian Devil:

So here's the rundown: All nine (!) of them have a clear base and a variety of glitter: either micro-glitter (small specks), small glitter (next size up), and regular glitter; either hex, round, or square in shape.

• Wet n Wild Party of Five Glitters: Small red and green circular glitter, slightly larger green circular glitter, hex glitter in silver and light blue. Price: about $3-5 depending on the retailer (I forget what I paid exactly.)
• Sephora by OPI Spark-tacular: Multicolored micro-glitter, small pink, blue, orange round glitter, and sparse larger hex glitter in orange, pink, blue, green. Clearly different from the others because of the abundance of micro-glitter outweighing the hex/round glitters.  Price: $9.50
• Claire's Bedazzled: Multicolored micro-glitter, large red, orange, yellow, green and blue hex glitter. Price: $4.50 but can be combined with Claire's buy one get one half off special.
• Essence Circus Confetti: Sparse multicolored round micro-glitter, some multicolored small hex and round glitter, and large pink, orange, yellow, silver, blue and green hex glitter. Price: unknown, estimated about $2-5 but I got this in a swap and it's only readily available in Europe.
• Ulta Pinata-yada-yada: Small round multicolored glitter, red, pink, orange and yellow hex glitter. Dries a bit matte. Sparser glitter than the others, definitely meant as a top coat and not to be used on its own. Price: $5 in the old Ulta bottles, $6 in the new cylinder bottles.
• Milani Gems: Small round multicolored glitter, red (?), orange, green and silver hex glitter. Although this is usually hailed as the dupe for Happy Birthday, it doesn't have the light blue hex glitter. Older versions also don't include the pink hex. Price: unknown, I got this one in a swap also, but it's available from beautyjoint.com for about $5-7.
• Nyx Carnival: Small round multicolored glitter, pink, orange, silver, green, and light blue hex glitter. Price: about $3-4, also available through beautyjoint.com
• Deborah Lippmann Happy Birthday: Small round multi-colored glitter, Pink, orange, yellow, green, light blue, silver hex glitter. Very dense compared to the others, only required one coat to compare to the others at two coats. Price: $18, or as part of the Get This Party Started set which is 3 polishes (Candy Shop, Forget You, Happy Birthday) for $42.
• Confetti Tazmanian Devil:  Like $OPI, it has a lot of microglitter which sets it apart. Multicolored small round glitter, pink, orange, yellow, green and light blue hex glitter. Dries matte, not as sparkly as the rest. Price: $2 at CVS

Whew! Okay, now that my vision is blurry from staring at swatches of these glitters, I'm going to rest haha. I hope you all enjoyed this comparison, but which one is your favorite and which ones do you own? Obviously, I own them all haha but my favorites are probably the ones without the microglitter, like DL Happy Birthday, WnW Party of Five Glitters, Claire's Bedazzled, and Essence Circus Confetti. Are there any questions left unanswered? I'm hoping the price points, glitter rundown, and swatches were helpful!

xoxo,
Amanda