Untrieds: Sally Hansen Carribean Coral

Hey everyone! Sorry this post is late. I have another post I'm drafting too with my explanation of why but the post at hand is more important :) Today Amanda, Sarah, and I are back with our untrieds challenge and I actually didn't cheat (much).

This base is Sally Hansen Carribean Coral which is a red-leaning coralcreme, though the bottle looks like it has shimmer. It didn't translate to the nail so I'm calling it a creme :) Application was easy in two coats, no top coat in this picture.

Then I felt bored and had leftover Valentine's Day thoughts floating in my head so I did a simple skittle mani using my white dotter. My heart's wonky so it looks like a weird triangle but whatever. The glitter on my accent nail is Different Dimension Love Her? I Don't Even Lacquer! which had really good glitter payoff but I had to fish for the heart to get it out of the bottle :( It's a fun color anyway and I'll try thinning it for next time.

There you go, happy Thursday!

xoxo,
Amanda

December Untrieds: Essence Carrie and Mr. Big

Hey everyone! Day two of December and I am going strong! I wonder how Amanda and Madeline (note: new blog!) are doing... anyway, I'll stop procrastinating :)

Today I am lucky enough to have Mr. Big and Carrie from Essence's Nail Art Twins collection. I absolutely adore every single duo to come out of this line so I was certain I wouldn't be disappointed, especially since I LOVE Sex and the City.

Mr. Big is a purple-red creme. Perfect coverage in one coat, which I love. All of this line covers amazingly!

Then I added Carrie on top and voila! Instant nail art and beauty. a perfect couple :)

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: 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 1

Hi everyone! Madeline and I have decided to do a monthly untrieds sweep by brands... each month, we'll pick a brand and on Tuesdays and Thursdays we'll show you guys some of our untrieds. A way to get through all our untrieds, try some polishes we haven't yet, and challenge ourselves! So here we go, November is China Glaze!

I decided to try Ruby Pumps... I know, I know. I can see people shaking their heads and unfollowing my blog now: how did I not try Ruby Pumps?! I don't know. I'm not a red person? You guys are lucky it's even in my stash ;) Anyway, here's two coats on its own, no top coat. The formula was really good, especially for a glittery polish! 

There's day one! What do you think? Shockingly, a good amount of my China Glaze untrieds are from their holiday collections, so expect to see more reds and greens in your near future. Now head on over to Madeline's blog to see what she's showing you from China Glaze!

xoxo,
Amanda

Halloween Week Part 6

Hi all! Today's post is vampire themed nails. And, if you need reasons why (I bet you don't, but you're getting them anyway dagnabbit!), here are my best three:

1. I wanted to use Candy Lacquer Vampire Kiss.
2. I am a Twilight fan (keep your mouth shut if you don't like it. ;) You still love me, suck it up.)
3. An excuse to use some fimo canes, FINALLY.

So, for vampire nails, I started with Sally Hansen Sun Kissed on all my nails except my ring, which I added red from one of my Migi pens (hey, they were out, it was a one coater...). On the orange nails, I added Vampire Kiss which OMG IT'S BEAUTIFUL AND REQUIRES INTERNET YELLING DON'T JUDGE ME. I even got a red heart on my pinky which is <3 <3 <3. Then on the red nail, I added a fimo stick with vampire fangs! How cute is that?! Unfortunately, I cut this one a bit thick so it sticks up a little but it served the purpose.

Public Service Announcement: Sometimes, you're doing a manicure. Sometimes, your adorable kitty will walk by you, directly INTO your lightbox. And you will gently pet her and, um, forcibly push her out of it. And you'll look at your nails and think, "wow! I didn't get any hairs from her on my nails". And you will be proved wrong when you see the pictures on your computer. (So let's ignore those, mmmkay?)

So, anyway, in case you didn't catch on... I love this.

xoxo,
Amanda

More Christmas Nails...

Two days in a row?! I admit, I'm cheating: I wrote these two posts in a row. But STILL. Give me some credit for trying ;) This mani was intended for a party with my friends from school and we exchanged secret Santa. I liked this idea more in my mind and it looks sort of funny until step two... Also, please ignore my cuticles which are soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo drrrrrrryyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy. I'm sorry.

Anyway, step one: Nubar Reclaim (green holo!) and OPI Log on to Love accent:

Check out this gorgeous linear holo... yummmy!

Then I did a gradient over the Nubar with China Glaze Snow Globe using my Orly Smudge Fixer (basically, drop a dollop of a glitter polish and then paint over it with the Smudge Fixer and voila! gradient). And thennnnn I added China Glaze Ring on the Red over the OPI (sheesh, that's a lot of brands!). Here's what I got:

As you can see, I'm obsessed with Snow Globe. I got a backup bottle from my nail secret Santa and I'm so relieved - I was hoarding my bottle (seen here) and refusing to use it as often as I'd like. Now I will be using this wellllll into the summer, probably year round, calling it Sand Globe or Snow Cone or something so that I can justify it...

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

I'm Not a Nail Artist... Part Two

Hi, I'm back! More nail art! Hopefully you all haven't lost faith in me after the last attempt :/ This one came out much better, but was much simpler. I decided to go for wrapping paper nails. Each nail is themed differently, but I think that made it even more fun! Behold:

For this I used base coats of a basic white, Ulta The Jungle Look, Cult Nails Iconic, and Orly Sweet Peacock. Then I added green and red polka dots on the white, a red bow on the green, green swirls on the red, and silver ribbon on the blue.

This was pretty simple and I liked it a lot! My favorite were the polka dots, they were just so cute! I wish I had done the bow facing out but hindsight is 20/20. Which nail is your favorite?

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

Guest Post: Lisa from Happy Nails

Hi everyone! This post is going to be coming to you straight from across the pond (unless you're reading this in Europe or not in North America, I guess) with my friend Lisa from Happy Nails! Enjoy!


Hello everyone!

My name’s Lisa and my blog is Happy Nails ( http://happynailsuk.blogspot.com/ ).  I’m a UK polisher, brand new to blogging but firmly addicted to colour and sparkle.  I am so happy to be guest posting!

In my post I’ll show you polish from one of my favourite UK brands, 17 by Boots.  I love it because a) it’s cheap, and b) it has a really vibrant range of colours.  I will be painting my nails blue with a cheeky bit of nail art thrown in at the end ;-)

These are the polishes I’ll be using:

On the left we have the lovely Ruby Gem, a rich and creamy crimson; in the middle, Mini Skirt, a bright solid white; and, on the right, the polish I’ll be mainly painting with here: True Blue, a solid, fairly dark primary blue.

After a base coat of Sally Hansen’s Double Duty (I only bought this a couple of days ago so can’t give a full opinion, but it’s worked really well for me so far), I painted 2 coats of True Blue.  I think it’s a fab ‘wardrobe staple’ colour but it is noticeably darker on the nail than it is in the bottle, as you can see in my pic:

 (Excuse my messy painting!  It’ll be evened out just fine in the top coat.)

After being patient for once and letting my nails dry fully, I got painting on my ring finger with Mini Skirt and then Ruby Gem, borrowing the skinny brush from a nail art polish for the details.  And this is what I ended up with...

A patriotic salute from the UK blogger!  *‘God Save the Queen’ plays in the background*

The above Union Jack flag is about as steady as my hand can get, and so I’m fairly proud!  The sparkle on the rest of my nails is from a prized polish in my collection, INM’s Northern Lights silver holo glitter top coat.  Here it is:

I ordered this online as holos are seemingly nonexistent in UK shops (especially if you live in the dreary North-East of England like I do!).  As a sparkle addict this polish drives me wild; holos are like catnip to me!  On this Union Jack mani it represents the most British of institutions... rain XD

Here I will wave goodbye with my nails sparkling.  Thanks so much Amanda for letting me post!

Hugs,
Lisa from Happy Nails xx

Ahh, it feels so British in here ;) Thank you for the lovely post, Lisa! I really have to start practicing my freehand nail art!

xoxo,
Amanda

Zoya Reva

Hello m'ladies! First off, I hope all of you have Zoya.com accounts because they're once again treating their fans to some free polishes: buy one get two of your choice free! It ends today though so hurry! I picked Neeka, Savita, and Yara as my three and my boyfriend's mom is picking three that she'll let me swatch, so I'm excited! She already got hers, but I didn't get mine yet :( Hopefully today!

Anyway, I was inspired to try Zoya Reva since it's been sitting in my untrieds under my mounds of non-work appropriate polishes and, actually, I kind of just stuck my hand in the bottom of the bin to see what I'd pull out from underneath the glitter and holo. I'm glad Reva came with me!

Reva is a sparkly, glittery red. I believe it's cool toned, but I'm really just terrible with the whole warm vs. cool debate and I wear both because I just wear whatever I like and those damn temperatures can leave me alone! Hmph. Anyway, it kind of reminded me of the Ruby Slippers from the Wizard of Oz and now I'm a bit peeved they didn't name this Dorothy. But whatever. I digress.

 With flash.

In "natural" light. (True color)

As you can see, Reva is one of those polishes that kind of glows from within. It was really sparkly and I wore it to work for a day or two and really enjoyed her. I'm not the biggest fan of red, but this one was nice and I'd definitely wear it again. It goes up in my top two reds with OPI Red Dazzle :) I think I just need glitter to make red better for me! LOL

What are your thoughts? Did you use your Zoya promo yet? What colors are you getting?

xoxo,

Amanda

OPI DS Extravagance vs. Ulta Material Girl

Hey again! :) How is everyone doing? My day is going rather craptastically, and I'm in need of some cheering up!

Today's post is a comparison I stumbled upon by accident. Dolores at Colorful Bottle and I have been in the midst of an epic cross-continent polish swap, and she requested OPI DS Extravagance for her friend. I went to Ulta to pick one up (I have it at home, but wanted to give her a new bottle), and happened upon Ulta Material Girl.

In the bottle at the store, they looked nearly identical in color and holo. Of course, I thought of you guys and doing a comparison post. The Ulta was on sale for $3 and OPI was about $9, so I scooped up two bottles of Ulta (one for me, one for Dolores or a giveaway if she didn't want it) and decided if she wanted the DS, I could send her my bottle. I quickly swatched both for her so she could compare and you can see for yourself: which one is which?

Answer: OPI is on the left. The only real difference was that OPI has a bit more holographic glitter, but other than that the colors are pretty much the same. The angle and lighting here may have affected the holo, but the colors are so similar! OPI could have been one coat but I applied two coats of each for uniformity.

In the end, Dolores decided Ulta was just as well and passed on the OPI. What do you think? Dupes? Similar? Totally different and I need to get my eyes checked?

xoxo,
Amanda

Ulta Birthday Goodies :)

Helllooooo! (Said like Mrs. Doubtfire. Kudos if you grasp the reference.) Today I have part of my birthday gift from my boyfriend. My boyfriend is a lovely lovely man who gives me pretty much everything I want and has the manners of a saint (we've been dating for almost 5 years and he still opens the car door for me every time). So my boyfriend brought me to Ulta, and said "go crazy, I'm buying". No, seriously, he did. And the worst part? I had just ordered a bunch of stuff from Ulta.com so I couldn't even go fully crazy ;) Anyway, he did get me a bunch of goodies I was wanting including my first ever Butter London polish.

Behold, my birthday haul! Apologies for the picture's poor lighting and such. My boyfriend was over and I was trying to get a quick pic for you guys before he made me put everything away and go to sleep!

From left to right:

• Ulta Material Girl: found quite by accident, Dolores and I are mid-giant cross-country swap and her friend requested OPI DS Extravagance. I found Extravagance, and then saw this. They are almost identical! I have a comparison post coming up for you guys so you can be the judge, but I honestly think the difference is so minute it's not worth paying the extra $5 for it.
• butter LONDON No More Waity Katie set: This came with NMWK (my favorite polish name ever) and a bottle of Powder Room polish remover. It smells really nice, too, for some reason. (The packing, I haven't been huffing the polish remover, I promise.)
• Yes to Cucumbers Eye Gel: I am one of those unfortunate people that cries a lot. And even more unfortunate is that if I cry one single tear, my eyes are puff city the next day. So I'm hoping this eye gel will help with puffiness. Review to come, perhaps?
• OPI Glam Slam: Grape... Set... Match! and Serving Up Sparkle!: I know, I know. Another OPI purchase. I give up. I'm sorry, I can't resist. I just needed this. Although I will say, Serving Up Sparkle looks kind of boring and almost exactly like one of my Maybelline polishes, so I'm a bit disappointed I had to buy them as a set.

So, what do you think? This was a bit early since my birthday isn't until the 22nd, but isn't he cute?

xoxo,
Amanda

July 4th Mani

Hey ladies! As promised, here's what I really ended up wearing for July 4th/Independence Day. I started off alternating between red, white, and blue (OPI Red Dazzle, Pure Ice Super Star, and Ulta Blue Streak). I put the blue on my pinky only (since the American flag only has a small amount of blue, after all), then red on the ring and pointer, and white on the middle and thumb. (Warning: the picture below is with no cleanup yet, I wasn't done! Please be forgiving of my white messiness!)

Then I added some star shaped nail sprinkles, which you may remember from one of my first posts, to the white fingers (the white looked really stark against the red and blue and kind of boring). I store these by color in a pill organizer I bought at a local drug store.

And here is what resulted! I randomly added two each of blue, red, and iridescent stars to my thumb and middle finger. The iridescent stars look kind of pink in the picture, but in real life they were more clear.

Here's the middle and ring finger for detail. You can see the stars lift up a little off the surface, which is kind of annoying as they sometimes chip off. It's a good thing I only needed this mani to last for one BBQ because it wasn't going to make it much longer! For future reference, I would have placed them more deliberately on flatter areas of my nail and secured them with nail glue, but this was just a quick fix for my disaster mani earlier in the day. I also wanted you all to see Red Dazzle as I don't see it very often and it is by far my favorite red (and I don't really like reds). My camera is giving it kind of an orange tone, but in real life it's bright red.

What do you think? Did I do better my second time around? I loved this mani once I had it on. It's too bad Captain America isn't out for a few weeks, because it would have worked perfectly for that movie as well!

xoxo,

Amanda

51st post: 4th of July Mani, Take One

Happy 4th of July, fellow Americans :) Hope you enjoyed the long weekend. And for all my international readers, how was your Monday? Tonight I'm going to show you my first take on my Independence Day mani, which was a complete failure, in my mind.

Let me start with my vision: red and white stripes with blue crackle over it. Then I decided I needed a blue on the base too with the crackle over it. So I started with a nail wheel experimenting with different colors and decided on OPI Red Dazzle (best red ever, hands down... a major dusty, but it's a beautiful, vibrant red with red glitter), Ulta Blue Streak (I know I've used this about a million times now, but it was perfect!), and Pure Ice Super Star (white) with OPI Turquoise Shatter on top. I tried using horizontal stripes, vertical, diagonal... all to see which one worked best with the crackle. On the wheel, it seemed diagonal stripes of blue, white, and red with the crackle applied vertically worked best. But on the nail: nope. It was just a gross, misguided mess. The Turquoise blended into the blue, the red clashed with the turquoise... yuck. Well, here you go, if you must see. It's not a sight I'm proud of.

Sigh. You only get one finger because cleanup was a beast (3 types of polishes, multiple coats, weird angles... you get the idea). This is the finger that came out the best, and I'm not sure why there's a shadow in the picture because it didn't show up on my camera *shrugs*. On the bright side, I loved Turquoise Shatter over white so that may become an option later on?

So what do you ladies think of this mani? I ended up taking it off immediately and I switched to another 4th mani... but I'll show you that tomorrow. :)

xoxo,
Amanda

I'm baaaaack!

Hello again! I'm back (again) with my tail between my legs... but I have good news! Those expensive little letters that go after my name are finally here! That's right - I'm all done with school!! :) Unfortunately, now I'll be entering the work world as a therapist and taking my licensure exam, so life is still going to be busy... but much less so. This also means my nails may be a little more boring work-friendly for the most part. But enough about me, how have you lovelies been?!? Any requests, anything you've been missing here or on other blogs that I can help with? Anyway, on to the NOTDS!

Here's Zoya Gloria, which is a nice, almost glass-flecked red polish. I'm not a HUGE red polish fan, but this one was nice and applied well.

Here's China Glaze's Tronica High Def. This reminded me so much of blue jeans, but I did like it. I definitely noticed the holo in this one, even though lots of people with the older holo collections said it wasn't too noticeable. Maybe since I don't have those, it doesn't seem so disappointing haha.

And finally, here's Sinful Colors Mint Candy Apple. This was a gift from my friend Sarah, so if she's reading this - hello! This one was a nice, springy color. I had trouble deciding if it was baby blue or green in some lights. Application was pretty good, although the formula was iffy on whether it would apply thin or too gloopy. Some of my nails are one or two coats, others are four.

So, thanks for sticking by me! If you read this, shoot me a comment! I read them all and will reply to you as soon as I read it. And, if you like what you read, share my blog with a friend - the more followers I have, the more readers I have, the more I'll want to post and I'll start doing giveaways :) Also, vote in my poll to the right: are you for or against pedis of the day?

xoxo,
Amanda

Past week of manis

Hi girls! Sorry I went another span without any posts. I figure you'd rather wait for the real thing than read excuses. Here's my past week of manis, starting with my Valentine's mani inspired by Danielle's Valentine's mani. This is Zoya Reece with Sinful Colors Show Me White, Finger Paints Easel Come, Easel Go!, and Zoya KI layered over each other on the accent fingers with Bundle Monster plate (I forget the number, but it's the three hearts!):

Next up is Color Club Gossip Column. This is about 12 hours of wear and there are huge chips all over. I forgot a picture earlier in the process, so unfortunately this is all I've got! Sorry. Formula was good on this and I loved the color, but wasn't impressed with the wear (obviously).

Next up I have two Milani Holos, Hi Def (purple) and Digital (pink). They were scattered, beautiful, pigmented holo and I adored them. 

Next was Petites Figi. I imagined from the bottle this was holo too, but instead I got metallic. Highly disappointed by that! It was pretty easy to use and lasted forever, but I didn't like the color on me so it didn't last long. Into the swap bin!

And finally, I got in my China Glaze Crackles (!!!!) and couldn't resist. This is Cracked Pavement over China Glaze Ahoy! which I forgot to take a picture of on its own. This was amazing all in all, even though I didn't expect to be layering over this color since it was beautiful on its own.

More crackles are in for the next post as I made some swatches, but I have to run for now! What did you guys think of my manis? My nails are naked right now, so perhaps I could use some advice for the next mani?

xoxo,
Amanda