Leftover Rainbows

Well, in all the hullabaloo of trying to keep up with challenges, I swatched far more rainbow-themed polishes than I'd realized. I'm only now finding the hidden folders of rainbows! Here's a few for today :)

Nfu Oh 66, which is the green holo. This is two coats and I took these in my lightbox, no base coat or top coat. The formula on these is tricky: WAIT between coats and you should be fine, but I was a bit impatient and you may notice some bald/thin spots. Or maybe you won't, because you'll be mesmerized by the holo.

I swear I also swatched the light blue one (65) but the swatch eludes me. I'm losing it. Anyway, it's like the green one but baby blue. :)

Deborah Lippmann Let's Go Crazy is a deep purple based rainbow glitter jelly. I got this for a ridiculously good deal on HSN for $8 back in the day (Amanda did too, because I told her about the deal. she's welcome.) I have to own pretty much all of DL's versions of rainbow glitter because she really started all of these shenanigans, and I love it.

These pictures are three coats and it's still pretty sheer but the glitter takes away from that, I think. I stopped at 3 coats because IRL this wasn't as patchy but, of course, lightboxes and bright lights are bound to show all the flaws.

Okay, done with rainbows for now... probably for a little while but believe it or not, I have even MORE swatches saved up. Rainy day vault photos, someday.

xoxo,
Amanda

Rainbows: Candy Lacquer Spam!

Happy Thursday! Today is my Friday since I don't work Fridays so I'm pretty pumped for that. Today I have about a million Candy Lacquer swatches because I apparently have been hoarding them in my vault not to mention some recent ones so go grab some popcorn or another snack, get some water, and go potty before we begin. Go ahead, I'll wait. The polishes will be under the cut whenever you're ready (I have EIGHT to show you).

MOAR RAINBOWS

Some more rainbows today. Rainbows WITHIN A RAINBOW, as a matter of fact. I did some skittles using a few crelly-based rainbow glitters I had in my untrieds bin and this is what happened:

The blue is Pretty and Polished Party At Joe's (which I got primarily because my boyfriend is named Joe, so, yeah...) and the rest are all minis I got from a set from Claire's with no names. The lavender on my pinky is very reminiscent of It's A Trap-eze except a lavender base. They're actually all pretty unique, who knew?

Don't forget to go check out Amanda and Sarah!

xoxo,
Amanda

Stop! It's a Trap(eze)!

Happy hump day! It feels so weird for me because the last few weeks I've had Mondays off for snow, sickness, or holidays... so Wednesday feels like Tuesday! Anyway, we're nearing the end of February, hope you get all your comments in before March 2nd because I'm drawing a winner sometime that day! I'm going to do this again next month but I have to round up some prizes first :)

Today's post is China Glaze It's a Trap-eze. At first, I was really overwhelmed with the amount of glitter in the bottle and I didn't like it much. I thought it'd be hard to work with and lumpy and too much going on to really be pretty, but, happily, I was wrong! My glitter-lovin' heart loved this! This is about three coats, I believe... but my notes are basically that I was just really excited about this so they're no help. No top coat in this photo but I'm sure it would help with any texture issues, although all the glitters sat flat on the nail.

What a glitter beauty! Do you own this one? I'm glad I didn't sell my bottle before trying it because I'm sort of in love!

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

Chaos & Crocodiles & A Jelly Sandwich!

I'm officially out of greetings. Let's jump right in.

I don't know how I found this brand or what possessed me to buy ANOTHER rainbow glitter, but I did. Sorry I'm not sorry. This is Chaos & Crocodiles and the glitter is called Rainbows All Around, which I layered over white. It was fairly chaotic in a good way, I think!

Here's the bottle, just because!

Then I decided to play with my new jelly polish, Colorama Espuma to tone it down and make a white jelly sandwich, which I loved! I forget how much I love jelly sandwiches sometimes because I love glitter on its own too... it's a hard knock life.

What do you think? Sorry for my silly cleanup on my pinky, didn't catch it until just now *sigh* Go check out Amanda and Madeline!

xoxo,
Amanda

Saturday Mini-Challenge: Cling-Wrap Mani

Hey everyone! Happy weekend! I'm so so so glad that it's the weekend, work has been nuts lately and I love my breaks on the weekends now.

Anywho, a few of my twitter buds and I decided to challenge ourselves to do a cling wrap mani... just once. My fellow challengers are Nicole, Wes, and Fitzy. It's a one-time challenge - right up my alley! haha! I've never actually done one before this so I was having a lot of trouble deciding what color combination to do... and then I had an epiphany. ALL THE COLORS!

Magnetic Radiant Red, Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure Shrimply Devine, OPI Atomic Orange, Zoya Pippa, Essence Bashful, Essence Sleepy, A-England Tristam, Color Club Pucci-licious

I heard that putting dark colors over light worked best and it just so happened all my light and dark colors alternated so I could do every other for my base coat. We have Sally Hansen Shrimply Devine, Zoya Pippa, Essence Sleepy, and Color Club Pucci-licious as my base colors:

I waited for them to dry (a tough feat since I'm impatient). I only did one coat even though they have some bald spots because I knew they'd get covered up :) Then I added the remaining colors (Magnetic Radiant Red, OPI Atomic Orange, Essence Bashful, and A-England Tristam) on top, and used the Saran wrap to dab it away while it was still wet.

 

Here are a close up of the nails I liked better:

There you have it - I managed to use all of the colors of the rainbow. Even indigo! (Which after intense twitter debate, it was discovered can be one of 4 shades and I just chose the darker blue version of the definition.) I really like this method and I loved the results! The Magnetic brand one is a scattered holo and it came out really pretty, it kind of looks like the glitter crackles earlier this year.

Anyway, HOOOOOOOOLYYYYYYYYYY chattiness this post. Sorry about that! Kudos if you made it through and I hope you enjoyed ;)

xoxo,
Amanda

Geek Glitter: Rainbow Guard

Hi! So sorry that I've been MIA this week. I had a big exam to get my license on Thursday so I studied all week and was just worried and unfocused in general. The good news is I passed - so I get a raise and all that jazz :)

Today I have for you an incredible glitter by Geek Glitter, who was sweet enough to send me this bottle when I told her I liked a promo picture! Rainbow Guard is inspired by Game of Thrones (another reason I love it - my boyfriend and I both are into that show!) and features rainbow colors of glitter in small/medium size hexes, along with tiny holographic shimmer (or maybe it's microglitter...I can never really figure that out!)

The bottles are super cute so I included a couple pictures, her logo is adorable!

So for these swatches I used Essie French Affair as my base and applied two coats. The first coat I applied like a normal polish because I wanted the shimmer to be even and not just globbed on in random places. Glitter was somewhat sparse on the first coat, but I used a bit of dabbing with the second coat to put it where I wanted and I really liked the effect it had. The purple glitter really stood out to me because I feel like purple glitter is underutilized in indies a lot, but not here! I wouldn't wear this one alone but it's an amazing topper. I've worn this a couple times already, which is unheard of for me! I give this an A+ overall, even with the kind of-but-not-really tricky application.

PS Did you guys notice my subtle new watermarks? Also, this is my first post with a polish taken in my new lightbox! What do you think?

xoxo,
Amanda

Sunday Funday: Candy Lacquers!

Hi ladies! I am so excited for this post! Like, Christmas morning as a seven-year-old excited, because I love this brand. If you follow me on twitter, you might have seen me excitedly tweeting about these as I swatched them last week. I stumbled upon these accidentally when I saw a post that Candy Lacquer's shop was open and checked it out. I was able to snag three:

As soon as they came in, I was in love! I love the labeling and the polishes themselves. Below the cut I have swatches of these three!

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

Coming soon to a glitter addict near you...

Hi, quick announcement and sneak peek!

By popular request (meaning, like, two of my followers on twitter and myself) I'm going to update you all with my rainbow glitter collection! This will affectionately be called Sparkle Saturday (or Sunday, depending when I get to posting it next weekend). I have a bottle shot of one of my lovelies, which I picked up at The Icing. Nevermind the rainbow glitter, I would have bought it just for its name: Birthday Beyotch.

Anywho, be on the look out for those! I'm just waiting on one coming in the mail and then I can start photographing! Let me know: should I just do bottle shots, swatches on a nail wheel, or swatches over black or white? Also, anybody have any guesses on exactly how many bottles of rainbow glitter I'll be showing you?

xoxo,
Amanda