More January Untrieds

Sheesh, this January untrieds challenge has actually been really challenging! I don't have really any one-off brands in my untrieds pile so I'm resorting to some collections from brands that are all I have left to swatch or just brands I have less than 4 of to swatch haha! Today I have two swatches from Jindie Nails and both are high in demand! I waited about three weeks (maybe four?) for these so they were highly anticipated! I'm lemming Barney Blew Up now!

I have Swoon up first which is a light blue base with neon green, pink, and blue glitter in it. I layered this over Ruby Wing Moonstone which I somehow forgot was color changing when I did these swatches but it was at night when I did these anyway so *shrugs* I actually wasn't super impressed with this, I couldn't get the green glitter out and I realized almost immediately it was an impulse buy but it's still pretty. If anyone wants to swap for Barney Blew Up I'm game! ;)

Next is the elusive Candy Land, which has been high in demand since she premiered it. For good reason too - it's really unique! This is a milky base with neon hexes in it. Candy Land Remix has some microglitters too but this is lovely and I think I like it better, IMO. This is two coats over white undies :)

So there you have my first and only Jindies! What do you think?

xoxo,
Amanda

January Untrieds!

Hey everyone! Writing this last night (as you're reading it, anyway) and my blogging BFF Amanda just revealed her big secret I've been holding in FOR WEEKS: she's having a little baby! I'm so excited for her so today's untried is my homage to her in that JENsations is one of my favorite indies and Amanda is one of her favorite people... and glitter is mine and Amanda's baby... okay, I'm stretching here. Basically, these are my only untrieds from JENsations so I am dedicating them to Amanda's baby, okay?!

I layered Snow Angel over Hits Melon. To give you an idea of what the base of this polish is, here's Melon on its own for comparison (PS this is more green in person and it's a little streaky as this is only one coat):

This is one coat of Snow Angel. Snow Angel has a shimmery white base and has some translucent white glitter in it. The glitter was a little sparse but I think that's intentional so you can see the shimmery base. It was really easy to get glitters because they lay against the flat side of the bottle.

Next up is Locket which is the complement to Key to My Heart. You may remember when I swatched KTMH over purple it was perfection so I wanted a purple version so I could wear it over pink and wear them together in a skittle mani (probably for Valentine's Day). I named it Locket because... you know, key to my heart and the locket... so.. yeah. It's black, white, and purple matte glitter in all shapes but including hearts and I LOVE THIS. Like I love Amanda and her future baby (see what I did there? it all comes full circle, people). I layered one coat over two coats of Elf Mango Madness (which is my only Elf untried!!! LOOK AT THAT! so many full circles today, people!). It's really gorgeous and I love love love this. Jen does awesome customs!

Okay, chatty Cathy mode off! Last is Christmas Cookie which is obviously for Christmas. It's red and green glitter in a white base and it's great! It reminds me of one I have by Lacquerhead which I will be posting soon. This is two coats over white creme undies.

Finally, a bottle shot because they're just so pretty to look at. Happy Tuesday!

xoxo,
Amanda

Lazy 15: Inspired by Another Blogger's Mani

Hey guys and gals! Last post of the lazy 15 and I'm pretty relieved, tbh. Nothing like a challenge to teach you that you need a LOT more practice at nail art before you're considered "good", haha! I tried though and finished it (also, I was only late once which seems notable!).

So for the final challenge, we had to try something inspired by another manicure. I ended up doing a very professional google image search for "nail art dots" and came up with this mani by Little Green Heart. It was based off another blogger's mani as well so it feels like this is some sort of paying-it-forward situation... but anyway. I happened to buy a set of Claire's pastel minis and this seemed like a perfect opportunity to use them all. Instead of doing the white base, I chose the Claire's pink and peach and then did the dots in the three remaining colors: green, blue, and purple. The minis are unnamed so I can't really identify them beyond that but it was fairly recent and they were just a 5-pack of minis, something about "pretty" in the name? Anyway... the base:

And then my dots:

I loved my accent nails but I sucked at making half moons with a gap like Little Green Heart did in hers. However, since I sucked uniformly, it looks like it was the intention. I actually loved this mani and I wore it for a day or so, which is pretty much a record in this world. The polishes were pretty easy to work with except the pinky, which you can see was a bit temperamental. But anyway, the lazy 15 is now officially over! Did you have any favorites?




xoxo,
Amanda

December Untrieds: Candy Lacquer Hard Candy

Hey there! Here's my first official untried post of December and I have quite a doozy! These swatches have actually been hanging out in my computer for a little while, just waiting for their perfect moment, and today is their day.

Candy Lacquer is, as you all know by now, one of my favorite brands ever. She's a super sweetheart and I always buy a million of her polishes every order I place, so she probably sees my name and thinks "$$$$" haha! But today is one of my favorites that I haven't featured before: Hard Candy.

First I'll show you the bottle shot:

Obviously this is a party of colors of all square, matte glitter. I swatched this originally over Barry M Peach Melba, and I realized how much I loved it so, after I finished swatching, I made it my mani over Make Up Factory 532, which is a teal creme.

I think I prefer it over the Barry M because the peach really brings out all the colors, but it's gorgeous both ways. What do you think? Don't forget to go see what Madeline and Amanda have in store for our opening day!

xoxo,
Amanda 

Lazy 15: Where I'm From

Hey hey hey! Happy Monday, or maybe not. Soon the holidays will be upon us in full-force so I hope you're all ready! I am certainly not... but nobody said the holidays will wait for me ;)

Today's challenge was "Where I'm From" and I wanted to avoid the typical USA flag thing and be specific. I'm from Massachusetts and I was inspired by the state flag (I bet you didn't know all the states have flags too!)

However, this mani was a pain in the ass...htray. My Migi pens were working well but I smudged every nail at least once and then I just gave up. and ended with what we have here. The yellow is much brighter than the goldenrod in the picture but I didn't have that kind of color or feel like frankening one. Soooo... Massachusetts yay! (?)

xoxo,
Amanda

Lazy 15: Bonfire Night

Happy December! I'm sorry I failed at this challenge so much, I've just been so lazy. So so so lazy.

I was a little uninspired for bonfire night but a conversation early on with some of the creators of this challenge gave me an epic idea: bonfires + nights = okay. But bonfires + nights + S'MORES = FUN. So these are my S'mores nails.

My nails are the pieces of a s'more: graham crackers on pointer and pinky, marshmallow on middle, and chocolate on ring. The marshmallow is Essie Marshmallow, chocolate is Essence Sneezy, and I only have one brown polish in my entire collection (you can see it right in that photo) so I actually had to Franken another polish for the graham crackers. It's Sneezy with one drop white and one drop fall orange Migi.

There you have it, belated challenge mani!

xoxo,
Amanda

Lazy 15: Guilty Pleasure

Hey everyone... I totally slacked on the Lazy 15 challenge this week; not because I didn't have manis done, but because I was too lazy to upload the pictures onto my computer. So today I have today's challenge a little late and tomorrow I have Monday's challenge I never posted. Sorry!

The challenge for today is guilty pleasure and this was one that I contributed to the challenge, thus I knew this one from the beginning! However, this was kind of a fail because I can't sponge and that nail looked stupid and the first time I tried it, the yellow polish I had on stained my cuticles/fingers. Ugh. Bear with me and don't click to enlarge.

Okay, so JERSEY SHORE! Yes, I know. I'm a teenage girl. I love the drama, the idiocy, the jokes, the personalities, etc. So the mani below is inspired by them:

Pointer: Migi neon green base with Funky Fingers Mermaid Lagoon on top (glittery, gaudy)
Middle: black Migi with red Migi to stamp (supposed to look like the logo, but the sponging wasn't subtle enough)
Ring: Migi orange (to demonstrate their skin tone lol!)
Pinky: Mattese Elite neon pink with Sally Hansen Jade Chrome and m78 from Born Pretty Store (animal print, duh!)

So, I'm sorry for the weird finger staining and my terrible middle finger. I shouldn't try nail art ever.

xoxo,
Amanda

November Untrieds Part 8

Hey everyone - last of November's China Glaze untrieds! I'm glad to have worked through my China Glaze untrieds (well, most of them) - I highly recommend joining us if you have any untrieds you want to go through because this was really successful in helping me try a bunch of them.

Anyway, to ease our transition into December (and because I have a million holiday polishes...) I decided on a very Christmas color for today: Mrs. Claus. Mrs. Claus is a pinky-red base with red glitter and is a very perfect girly Christmas polish, IMO. This was two coats and application was easy breezy (beautiful, Cover Girl?).

So that's the end - bye bye, China Glaze; hello, glitters! Now go see what Madeline has in store :)

xoxo,
Amanda

Lazy 15: Fairy Tale

Hi everyone. I think it's my duty to warn you: today's post is kind of mushy. I think it might be vomit-inducing. I warned you...

Today is fairy tale themed and rather than going with the typical fairy tales, I decided to go with my own personal fairy tale: my boyfriend. So without getting into mushy-gushy-vomity details, I'll just say that he's a very special person in my life and this was inspired by him.

The base color is Sinful Colors Island Coral and the rest of the design used loose heart glitters, pink rhinestones, and my white Migi pen. Nothing too fancy and just so we can all be assured that I'm not a lunatic, I didn't go out in public with this on haha

So there you go, lovey dovey foofy adorable-ness. Hope you made it through without meclizine ;)


xoxo,
Amanda

November Untrieds Part 7

Hey, happy Tuesday! Madeline and I are almost done with this challenge and I'm already preparing for December: glitter. I have about 784731897487198 indie glitters that can use my attention so next month's challenge is perfect! Let me know if you'd like to join, Amanda already signed on!

Today I have Ray-diant for you which is from one of their recent collections that I actually totally ignored. I ended up getting this in a random grab bag and I kind of fell in love instantly - I can see this being a really great accent nail that would match a lot of other polishes.

I wish I could tell you what color this is but I honestly don't even know. It's primarily silver but there's a bunch of other glitters sparsely thrown in so just look at the enlarged version and see for yourself - it's quite lovely :)

xoxo,
Amanda

Lazy 15: Underwater Creatures

Hey all, hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving for those of us who celebrated it yesterday!

I feel exceptionally lazy as I write this so you won't hear much from me. I suck at nail art. I hope someone can figure out what I was going for here... for this look my base color is Diamond Cosmetics Whisper Softly and I used my Migi nail art pens for the design.

Um, in case you can't tell what this blobbiness is, it's supposed to be the bottom of the ocean and fishies. Hey, I never said I was an artist.


xoxo,
Amanda

Lazy 15: Disney

Hey everyone! Hope you're having a good week. I'm out of work early today so I'm pretty excited for that, as well as a long weekend!

Today's challenge is Disney movies and characters. I'm really not much of a Disney person so this was a bit challenging for me because I just wasn't very inspired. I decided to start with a color and see where I went with it and China Glaze With Love from the recent holiday collection was my choice. Instantly I thought: Minnie! So that's what we have today.

From left to right I have Minnie's bow (yes, I know, the colors are reversed), little Disney mice, Minnie's polka dots, and more mice. This was obviously super easy nail art but I'm still fairly proud. Nobody would probably know my inspiration if I didn't tell them but that's okay. Check out what my fellow challengers came up with!




xoxo,
Amanda

November Untrieds Part 6

Hey hey hey! I'm running out of greetings to start my posts with lol! Accepting suggestions ;)

Today Madeline and I are back with some more China Glaze untrieds! I'm happy to say I think my China Glaze drawer in my Helmer will be 100% used by the end of the month... though I have some from the Cirque du Soleil collection I'm not counting ;) By the way, December's untrieds isn't a brand, but a type: glitter. So if you'd like in on it, let me know and we can include you too!

Dorothy Who? is the polish for today. This is Ruby Pumps' blue sister. It's a light blue base with darker blue glitter in it and it's beautiful. The formula is a little thin and hard to work with, so excuse the bald spots and uneven application in some places. This is two coats, no top coat.

I'm not usually a blue person, but I liked this one. I don't know when I'll wear it, though, because I rarely find a reason to wear blues and constantly wear pinks and purples *sigh*

xoxo,
Amanda

Lazy 15: Dessert

Hey everyone - another Monday is upon us! However, for my fellow Americans, it'll be a short week for us because of Thanksgiving on Thursday. I'm out early on Wednesday and then off the rest of the week, so I'm definitely looking forward to some quality time off. I'm going to be doing Thanksgiving with my dad, boyfriend, and boyfriend's mom this year and I'm pretty excited for good food and our families to mix and match ;)

The challenge for today is dessert nails. My first thought, and probably many of yours, was cupcakes, but I worried they'd be overdone. I decided to go for a cookie theme: sugar cookies with sprinkles! Every year for Christmas, I make sugar cookies and I can never resist leaving some without frosting and just adding sprinkles to them before they bake, so that was my inspiration.

For the nails themselves, I used a basic white, then Smitten Polish Confection, and topped with Orly Winter Wonderland. They kind of look like if sugar cookies and snickerdoodles mated, but that's okay. I'd still eat a cookie if it looked like this ;)

Smitten Polish is quickly becoming one of my favorites: this one was a white jelly base with rainbow glitter and it was really pretty and easy to work with. I just bought another one recently with pink and purple glitter in a white jelly base and it looks like pop tarts! Here's Confection on its own, in case you were wondering :)

 Anyway, that's all for today, go check out my fellow challengers!


xoxo,
Amanda

Lazy 15: Feminine

Hi everyone, I am feeling SUPER lazy today and thus, this post is several hours late (actually, it's almost tomorrow so... sorry about that).

For today's mani, I started with Nicole by OPI Holiday's Glaze, which I can barely seem to find on other blogs anywhere, but I got it from a recent blog sale. Basically, it is a very light pink linear holographic polish and I adore it. It's super feminine too, to me anyway.

The bottle shows the linear holo better than any of my nail shots could:

Then, I added some random bow stamping to my nails using m59 which I got from Born Pretty Store. I was kind of playing with stamp placement here to see what I liked best and I think my pointer and ring were my favorites.

So there we have it - some feminine/girly nails :)


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

Lazy 15: Favorite Color (bonus: Pink Wednesday)

Hey guys and gals! Happy Hump Day :) Not too much to say today so let's jump right in!

Today's challenge is your favorite color, and mine happens to be purple... but I also love pink. I was torn, what do I choose? And then I remembered a certain indie brand's spring/summer duo I purchased and realized I could cheat and show you both under the guise of being thorough and showing you a full collection at once. I'm sneaky, aren't I?

First up is Hare Rad Cloud, which is a purple base with pink, orange, blue, and purple glitter in it.  The glitter on this was incredible! I couldn't believe how much glitter was in that base considering how comparably sparse it looks in the bottle! Application was really easy, no fishing or pushing - just apply like you would any creme. This is two (or possibly 3?) coats with no base color.

Here's where Pink Wednesday comes in: The other half of the duo is Magic Mist, which is a pink base with pink, orange, blue, and purple glitter (she might have used the same glitters but different bases? whatever. looks good to me! haha). This base seems more like a creme to me and Rad Cloud looks more like a jelly. Both were easy to work with though Magic Mist was a little thick and I'll have to thin it in the future. This is three coats with no base. Also, excuse the glitter herpes, or GLERPES, as Amanda and I like to call them.

 

So there's my cheating way of showing you both my favorite colors. Check out what the other challengees came up with!


xoxo,
Amanda