Teeny Tiny Sally's Haul

Hi all! Sorry for my absence... I had some, err, house problems and had to vacate for a few days. But I'm back again. As long as no more storms knock out power or things kick me out of my house, we're back on track!

Above you can see that I've been doing some haulin'. This was actually a complete accident: I went to Sally's for FingerPaints Fun-fetti only to discover it's an online exclusive. I couldn't just leave empty handed! So Sally's had the holiday displays out and I picked up the following:

Color Clubs from the Scent-uous collection: Kiss Me Mistletoe, Very Merry Berry, Sugar Plum Yum

Orly gift set including Sweet Peacock, Lucky Duck, and Fowl Play (and a bonus wristlet!)

So it was a good trip overall! I was especially excited for the glitters and Fowl Play, but the wristlet and accompanying Orlys are pretty :) I already wore Fowl Play, so you'll be seeing that soon!

xoxo,
Amanda

Pink Wednesday!

Hey ladies, seems like forever since I've participated in Pink Wednesday! I have for you OPI Chapel of Love. Blogger flipped ALL my pictures for me (um, thanks? but not really?) so they are all tilted awkwardly if you think my hand is actually holding the bottle this way haha. Anyway...

Here's Chapel of Love in natural sunlight at three coats.

Then, being the glitter fiend I am, I added accent nails of Color Club Backstage Pass, which is a chunky purple and silver hex glitter.

Here's a close up... ignore the fact my stupid middle finger got dented.

Please excuse the cuticles - blegh! These imperfections are so clear on camera but I don't even notice them IRL!

I liked this color combo, I struggled for a while on what color to wear this over, but I think pink works so well with it without being super over-the-top girly. Thoughts?

xoxo,
Amanda

Guest Post: Amanda from MaD Manis

Hi ladies, today I have a guest post from Amanda (isn't her name awesome? Great name!) from MaD Manis. She and her mother, Melissa, blog together and I just love that idea! Amanda (and Melissa, for that matter) is an incredibly genuine, sweet, and kind person who I've had the pleasure of getting to know through twitter, facebook chat, and our common love for our kitties. Meow! Anyway, on to her post for today, China Glaze Trendsetter.

Hello all!
I know I'm late to the party on this, but I just got some of the Metro colors recently. This is the one I was most excited to use so I thought I would share it with my fellow Amanda's readers!

Trendsetter is an awesome yellow-green mustard color with teeny tiny shimmer in it. It honestly kind of looks like the color of baby diarrhea.. that's the best way to describe it. It's one of those colors that's super, super ugly but still interesting  at the same time.

This one definitely got some weird looks. It's one of those colors that you either love or hate. I happen to love it because I'm a nail polish freak and I like anything weird and unusual, but I know some *normal* people don't have the same sentiments. :)



Application on this one was awesome! Pictured is two coats. Perfect consistency - no cuticle flooding or streaking. Really just perfect. I couldn't have asked for a better application. It makes the swatches look that much better!

I tried to think of some cool nail art to add over the top of this, but I think it's one of those colors that works better when left alone. It's definitely out-there enough as is, don't you think? I think adding to this would just be overkill and way unnecessary. 

I don't think I've ever seen another color like this. So if you like this one, I highly recommend going out buying it. It's just so unusual that I think every collection needs it!

What do you lovely ladies think? Yay or nay? It's definitely not for everyone!

Thanks, fellow Amanda! I'm glad to see this color on here because it's a) not a color I own and b) not a color I feature very often (if ever) since I avoid mustards, browns, and basically, non-glittery colors... although, this one looks great on you, Amanda!

xoxo,

Amanda

Colors I Do Not Like: piCture pOlish Sparkle

Hey ladies... Today is a sad day, because I have a sparkly, glitter polish that I don't like (loud gasp). Those of you who know me well know that I am a sucker for anything glittery, and so this seemed like no exception: Picture Polish (I refuse to keep typing it the confusing way) Sparkle:

Sparkle is a lavender purple frost with multicolored sparkle microglitter throughout. My problem with this polish? Where do I begin? The color is terrible on me! It looks like death hands on me, which isn't appealing anyway. Add to it that the color washes me out and the frost finish, ugh. It's actually a really gorgeous color in the bottle and on other people... but just not on me. So it will go to live on my swap list for the time being until someone else sees it and wants it and it will go to a new home to be appreciated.

However, I do want to add this: I got this polish in a swap on MUA and I must say, the swapper was so generous. We agreed to swap this and another polish, and she ended up also sending Picture Polish Jealousy and some other goodies! It was so generous of her, and if she's reading this: THANK YOU. I totally appreciate lovely people in this world like her and I hope she's not offended that the color didn't look good on me, but I love the thought and generosity. <3

xoxo,

Amanda

OPI Avojuice Lotions

Hello out there! Today I want to show you guys one of my favorite products: OPI Avojuice Skin Quenchers lotion. This is my favorite moisturizing lotion for my hands and nails. This happens to be my favorite (or possibly second favorite, to their apple) scent as well: Raspberry Violet. I bought this at Ulta for about $8 for a 6.6 ounce pump.

This is the consistency, right out of the bottle, as shown on my wrist. It's kind of thin, which I like because it absorbs quickly.

This is it rubbed in right after.

And this is it, about 15-20 seconds later.

You can see it absorbs SUPER fast, and my skin definitely looks more hydrated. The scent is pleasant, and they have a lot of unusual scents (not your typical vanilla, apple, etc.) that combine two things that I normally wouldn't pair together, but go very well; including raspberry violet.

Do you guys use this? What do you use to hydrate your hands and nails?

xoxo,
Amanda

OPI Rainbow Connection over Ingrid

Hi all! I told you that I livened up Ingrid 351 in my last post... and by livened up, I mean totally recreated and changed and you hardly see Ingrid anymore but it's okay because on top of her is GLITTER. This post should come as no shock to you: I bought the OPI Muppets multicolored glitter, Rainbow Connection. To nobody's surprise. (Actually, I bought two bottles, just in case... but let's not get into that now.) Anyway, I got so excited I decided to layer it over my Ingrid polish from my last post and show it to you that way, even though I built it up (mostly) to opacity. Below is two coats (with one touch-up "coat" to fill in patchy spots) and it was glorious:

In sunlight

*drools* Look at the glitterrrrrr

I absolutely love this polish. Is anyone shocked? *crickets* What do you guys think?

xoxo,
Amanda

Ingrid 351

Hi all! Today I have a polish I received in my swap from Slovenia with the incredible Dolores. <3 This is a brand I hadn't heard of before, Ingrid. The polishes aren't named, but the sticker on the bottle says 351, so I'm going with that! This is a deep purple with silver and purple microglitter and it is breathtaking in person.

Application on this was a breeze. Above is two coats and very minimal cleanup. There's a slight smell to this, so it's probably not B3F but I can't say I mind too much ;) I livened this up after wearing it for a day, which I'll be showing you tomorrow. Any guesses?

xoxo,

Amanda

Kesha Makeup!

Hi all! A few of you requested to see my makeup from my Ke$ha costume, and that's what I will show you today! I actually really liked the way this came out, it was my favorite part of my whole costume!

To get this look, I followed the tutorial below, but changed the colors and such. I did mine in all black and put purple glitter over it, outlined in dark purple. I used mostly makeup from Hot Topic: an angled sparkly winged eyeliner, Nyx purple glitter pallette, and a purple eyeliner. I also wore fake eyelashes because, duh, it's Halloween! I should have taken a picture where I wasn't smiling so the stuff on my cheek wouldn't look warped but, trust me, it was good!




Bonus pictures: here are some shots of the ridiculousness that took place during and after my party that left me and 650,000 others without power for three or more days (reminder: this is October 29th, which, until now, had a record of 1" snowfall in past years).

Me shoveling the 8 inches of snow



A shot of my backyard and all the trees and branches down. Multiply this by my neighborhood and my half of the state and you can understand why we had no power!

 Hope you all had a safe Halloween: what did you and/or your children dress up as? We didn't get any trick-or-treaters because of the aforementioned insanity and because no power + downed power lines = not a good time for children to wander at night. :(

xoxo,
Amanda

Halloween Part Three: Kesha Nails!

Hey all, I know I'm a bit late but... well, you read my last post. You get it. So here's my last installment of my Halloween nails: my costume inspired nails! For Halloween this year, I was Ke$ha. Whenever I told people that, they'd tell me it was perfect for me. I don't know exactly how to take that, but I took it as a compliment. When I was deciding what to do for my nails, I couldn't decide between epic glitterness, Halloween, or animal print, so I decided to combine all three: glow in the dark animal print with glitter accent nail... EUREKA! ;)

Below is OPI Glow-Ink the Dark from their 2009 Halloween collection (I bought the minis on Amazon) layered over white. It's about four coats: this polish is SHEER (and, to add insult to injury, incredibly hard to take off - like, worse than glitter... ugh). It's a very pretty purple (and does glow in the dark well, but I couldn't get a picture of that since I was doing my hostess responsibilities and then I lost power).

After Glow-Ink the Dark, I stamped with Color Club Lumin-icent using the animal print stamps at my disposal and did my accent nail with coordinating Color Club Jingle Jangle:

Zebra, cheetah, glitter, giraffe. Totally Ke$ha!

 Here's a more close up view so you can see them all. The giraffe stamp wasn't very cooperative, but hopefully people understood the point. Maybe it's more of a cow stamp? Eh, I like giraffes better!

I actually ADORED this mani. It made me want to stamp and glitter-fy everything. I think Ke$ha invaded my brain. I kinda liked it. And tomorrow: Kesha makeup!

xoxo,
Amanda

I swear I have a good excuse...

Hi guys! Sorry I was MIA for the past few days. My Halloween party was, um, interesting. Massachusetts broke records by getting 8-30 inches if snow (I got 8). Not a huge deal normally, except leaves on the trees caught the snow and weighed them down and trees snapped and crashed all night. I have pictures of my neighborhoods and it looks ridiculous with all the trees down, power lines down, and snow... In October. Anyway, that's where I was: no power for 3 days so no Internet to post. I'll be back with a real post later today or tomorrow.

Xoxo,
Amanda