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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lazy 15: Water Marble

Hey everyone! I'm being really last minute typing this up the night before when usually I have posts ready at least a few days in advance now to make up for my schedule... but that's life! I'm watching Jersey Shore and not going to bed like I should be, but whatever ;)

Today's challenge is water marble and... groooooooooaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnnn.

I was dreading this challenge, I won't lie to you. Once upon a time I loved water marbling but it's so time consuming and wastes nail polish like whooooa so I was not imagining this would come out well... and I was right. It's bubbly and it smudged easily and never ever ever dried and ughhhh. I will not be doing this again anytime soon (probably not unless another challenge calls for it actually haha!)

I used Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure Cherry, Cherry, Bang, Bang! (the dark purple/bottle I'm holding), Mattese Elite Pink Tutu (light pink), and Mattese Elite Attitude (blue).

So, there's that. A day of this challenge I am glad to have in my past ;)



xoxo,
Amanda

Pink Wednesday & Lazy 15: Dots

Hello everyone. Not feeling so chatty... quite a few things have me a bit upset lately but not getting into that here. Just understand my posts might be a bit quiet for a little while.

I'm back with another day of the Lazy 15 challenge and today's challenge is dots.

I started off with China Glaze Sexy Lady (one of my untrieds, I should get extra credit for mine and Madeline's November Untried Challenge, too) which was two coats of pink perfection (AND it's a pink... on a Wednesday!). Also, yes. My nails are complete nubbins right now and no, I don't want to talk about it.

Then, I got creative and made a "subliminal" message in my dots. I used my neon orange and yellow Migi pens and there's a little message in there in my dots!

I wasn't too impressed with myself because moments after making my dots, I managed to smudge a couple nails on a stray hair that miraculously dove off my head into my manicure. (You might also see my middle finger dots are no where near straight lines but... when you see what the shape on that nail was subliminally, you'll understand why I was struggling. Also, it was late.) I added some matte top coat which did anything but disguise the mistakes...

If you want to see the "subliminal" message (I admit, it's tricky to see...) check below the cut, after the pictures of all my fellow challengers manis!

xoxo,
Amanda

Lazy 15: Gradient

Hello out there! Happy Monday... just kidding. No such thing ;) Today I'm back on the challenge bandwagon!

Today is gradient nails. Now... let's be honest. I haven't gotten this technique down. I tried really hard... but for some reason, my gradients barely are showing up when I sponge them on. So I tried, I really did, but you couldn't even see the gradient on my white underwear. I need some more practice. Not to let you down, I did a gradient of dots in the same colors I'd chosen for the gradient originally (no, there's no picture, because it just looked like white nail polish with sponge-shaped dents in it).

I started with a base coat of Hits Hello Kitty Sweet, which is a perfect coral-orange creme. (I have 6 of these Hits and I love them all, so you'll see the swatches of these as I use them for underwear for manis throughout this challenge.) 

Because I can, here's a bottle shot to show how RIDICULOUSLY cute these are. I love Hello Kitty!

Then I added a gradient of yellow-purple dots using Barry M Lemon Ice Cream (yellow), Orly Frisky (blue), and Barry M Berry Ice Cream (purple).

Once I was done, I added matte top coat and this was the final result:

What do you think? I'm a bit disappointed I didn't do a "normal" gradient but... call it going outside the box! I loved it matte!




xoxo,
Amanda

Lazy 15: Tape Mani

Hey everyone, today marks day one of the Lazy 15 Challenge! It's not too late to join if you'd like, just gotta do a quick mani today then you can pick up after the weekend with the rest of the challenge ;) *nudge nudge*

So this is actually my first ever tape mani... or successful tape mani? I think I maybe tried once before unsuccessfully and I'll admit, I wasn't really thrilled to try this because I'm not the most patient person alive and I was worried I'd try too soon and take my base coat off. Anyway, I knew holo always makes it better, so I started with Jade Delirio Rosa, a light-medium pink linear holo:

Then I added striping tape I recently got from Born Pretty Store in random laser patterns to get this look:

Super duper holo... mmmmmm!

With flash to show off the holo ;)

Finally, here it is in low light so you can see the actual laser mani itself.

There you have it! I hope you enjoyed! Check out the rest of the ladies doing the challenge with me :)



xoxo,
Amanda