Turquoise glitter and stone pedi

Turquoise glitter and stone pedi, a photo by KitaRei on Flickr.

It was time to change the polish on my toes, and I had just gotten this really pretty turquoise nail polish, so why not?

The turquoise polish is by AC. I'll swatch it on my nails another time.. as soon as I think of a good manicure idea that uses turquoise glitter ;) It's very pretty, the polish base is a clear turquoise color with big and small glitter pieces. It is actually much shinier in person, but my camera didn't catch that too well.

Next, I applied gel topcoat to give the stones a good base to stick to. Then I used a gold jewelry jump ring to frame the center hot pink stone, and coated it with gel polish to make give it the illusion that it is bigger. Then I placed two light pink stones on either side.

This one is simple, but elegant :)

Diagonal & reversed edge, holographic and "bullion" mani

For today's manicure I did get a little inspiration from one of my Japanese manicure magazines, the basic design, but to mix it up I changed the colors, reversed the patterns on two nails, and re-arranged the placements of the gold balls.

OPI Tickle My France-y swatch:

I called the gold balls bullion in the title, because well thats what they're called here, and well, I don't know what else to call them.. they aren't beads.

Diagonal & reversed edge, holographic and "bullion" mani, a photo by KitaRei on Flickr.
After my base coat I applied the base color, OPI Tickle My France-y. Its a great color, a mauve-y nude, which works so well with other pink and purple polishes. I then freehanded (let me tell you how hard that is.. and I did mess up and fix it a few times) the diagonal hot pink (no name) polish edges, purporsely reversing the sizes,(look at index and middle finger, for example, the bottom corner on the index finger is bigger, while the top corner on the middle finger is bigger) and I reversed the pattern on the thumb and pinkie fingers.

Next, I took a nail art brush and painted stripes, reversing the placement on the nails of course ;) of Sally Hansen Teflon Tuff Nail Color in Secrets Frost. I LOVE this holographic polish.. I need more!! After that, I placed the gold bullion in alternating places on the nail (seeing a pattern here? ^_~.) The spacing/placement on the nails is on purpose, no gold beads are missing/placed incorrectly. Finally I topped it off with Coffret D'or gel topcoat.

I actually found a much better gel topcoat, will blog about that one later!

Brown and Gold Studded Mani

Hi everyone!

How was your weekend? I'm back with a Street Wear swatch, and a new mani!

Sorry about the bad picture.. I just couldn't get a good one this time. This is something I came up with a little inspiration from my Japanese manicure book, and my first experiment with 3D nail parts. They used blue polish, jewels, and they didn't do the all glitter on two fingers look (I had to change it somehow!) but I wound up liking this look much more.

The base color is Street Wear Forbidden that I got from Erika last year for my birthday. I've been dying to use this gorgeous color in a manicure for a while, but I had to wait for the right idea. This color is so amazing, it is a reddish brown with gold shimmer in it (though it's hard to see in the picture.)

Then I did a graidient look with the gold glitter from my Beauty World Champagne Nail Cocktail kit, then used my dot art tool to dot two different sizes of Beauty World bronze dots, and finally I added gold colored studs on the ends. I sealed it off with Coffret D'or gel topcoat.

Brown and Gold Studded Mani, a photo by KitaRei on Flickr.

What do you think?

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My Restored Faith in Glitter In The Air

Just hanging out here on this icky rainy day, pressing the Inception button at an alarming rate.

Thought i'd show off my current mani. I swatched it once when I got it last month, and it ended up in my closet ignored. Something was just off about it, and I was starting to feel like I just don't like it. Yesterday I applied 2 coats of Seche Vite Ridge Filling Base Coat, and wanted to keep it plain at first. Have you ever tried their ridge filler? It's so pretty! Smooth, pearly, a hint of sparkle, works great on its own. But then I thought i'd give GITA another shot, and added 2 layers of it on top of the Seche. And I LOVE it!

What do you think? Do you own this color? How do you wear it?
 

Just another manic Monday~

So here's something to "brighten" your day!

Don't mind the chipped thumb nail, it's still growing out from where I cracked it last month ^^;;

So, this manicure was in one of my books that I have, so I decided to try it. It was in the chapter of "fresh" look manicures, due to the bright contrasting colors and patterns, and it was inspired by the color of fruit juice.

A little background about this color, don't trust fluorescent lighting. I bought this thinking it was a salmon-y color, and it was neon orange. I know there are fans of neon polish out there, and I actually really like neon blue, pink, and purple, but I'm not the biggest fan of neon orange (please don't hate me, everyone has one thing they don't like!) and I wanted the salmon-y orange for this mani, so it's now a franken. Here's a swatch:

Believe it or not, before I painted this mani, I added a total of about 8 drops each of pink and white polish, some before the swatch and some after, and it hadn't changed much.. it's a tough one, but I do like the color it is now.

"Fresh" juice inspired mani, a photo by KitaRei on Flic

The orange base color is from AC. For the random pink and white glittery circles, (some of them are two-toned, from this pic it's hard to tell) I used the awful Diamond Nail Homei and New York Color Polyester Pink Creme, and topped it of with Nailene top coat.

A Marriage Of THE 2 Most Beautiful Polishes Ever: Zoya Zara And Unicorn Pee

I've always wondered how these two would look together, and it is no doubt a match made in heaven. Zoya has a beautiful microglitter in it, and shines amazingly on its own. It is just common sense to add some more shimmer on top. The combination is sparkly, soft, girlie, a unicorn pee-pee and dragon vomit concoction. I will certainly be staring at my nails all night at the Yankees game (if it's not rained out)

Happy Saturday my nail friends :)

Wet n wild, why you impress me so much?

I just have to say, WnW has been steller with their offerings this past year. From eyeshadows to eyeliners. I have been nothing but impressed with the new products.


Last night, I went food shopping with my boss( if this sounds weird, it aint, I'm a live in nanny) in pathmark( a supermarket chain in the states) and I was kinda of shocked to see that they had put in a huge Wet n Wild display with new products! Including there new Mermaids Cove nail polish collection. I practically sprinted to it like a cat chasing a mouse.

But the one thing that caught my eyes was a color called Waves of enchantment. It was like a shimmery light coral, but with more pink. It has been desribed as a carnation pink with lots of sparkle and shimmer. It is just a gorgeous color, and perfect for the spring/summer months. Overall dry time was pretty fast, I mean it wasn't a minute but I would l clock it around 3 minutes.

Waves of Enchantment- 1.99$

 Seriously, how stunning is this shade? I would have to say a good dupe for this color would be Zoya's Rica. Except Rica is more red. Both amazing colors to say the least. But that's it for now, going to watch some gilmore girls on Soapnet and probably fall asleep. Don't judge me.
 Tata for now!

My First FRANKEN! Glitter In MY Eyes

I'm so excited to say that I have finally tried out frankening, and I think I might be good at it! I started with a bottle of Rainbow by China Glaze, and dumped a small vile of teal sparkles, a small vile of pink sparkles, and a few dustings of green loose pigment, and voila. We have my first franken. That which I will name Glitter In MY Eyes (my take on Glitter in the air)

The pink from the sparkles kind of melted into the color which I ended up loving, and the green added a more shimmery base to it. All in all, I really love it!I love how the glitter kind of floats in the color instead of an all over glitter type of thing. And I love the iridescence of Rainbow.

What do you think? Do you franken? I can't wait to try more!!! Any suggestions?

"I'm back, baby doll!"

If anyone knows where that is from, you are awesome;)

sorry for the lack of posts, last weds morning, I pulled a muscle in my back that made it very hard to do anything remotely easy..aka.. everything.  But I did manage to do a few manis. This manicure was from a few weeks ago, guh.. I know! So bad at posting my nails!

This is Zoya's South beach. I love this color, but you need about 1000 coats just to see the green. I mean I'm sure they didnt mean for it to be a topcoat, but yeah... thats pretty much what it is. It is to bad, because it has so much potential! Under it.. shock.. NYC black. I swear, black makes every nail polish so much more amazing. It is just a fact.

Here is the other manicure that I did last week( that Im still sporting because its clarins 230!) and I dont want to take off that magic that is unicorn pee! But its all peeling and gross so it has to be done!

 

Crap picture, as I had to use my camera phone. Also take note of that crap konading, doesnt it just have a certain je ne sais quoi? But as I said before I am utter crap at Konading, so you were prepared. But that is it for now, work awaits! Tata for now,

Flower Glitter French Manicure

Hi everyone,

For this week I did a two-part manicure. I had done a similar manicure to this a few times last year before I started blogging, and I never took a picture of it, so this is kind of like part one. I wanted to take a picture of the original look before I added the rest of the flowers. I think the simpler look is more classy, but as I have worn it before I wanted to spice it up.

First I'll start with the swatch. Hanagoyomi is a cute line of Japanese nail polish that mimics the colors of flowers. It also comes in cute little heart shaped bottles. This color is called Cape Jasmine, or "kuchinashi." It is a pinkish tinted nude shade, great for French manicures. This brand also makes a birth flower line. I need to find more of these.

Cape Jasmine photo courtesy of gardenguides.com

On to part one. The main color is Hanagoyomi Cape Jasmine. I painted the tips with Hanagoyomi Cattleya (type of orchid.) The big purple flowers are stickers, and I painted the white flowers I used New York Color French White Tip and a no-name Japanese yellow polish for nail designs. I finished the look with Coffret D'or gel topcoat.

This is part two. I painted the smaller purple flowers with Maybelline forever strong metallics + Iron Punked Out Purple.

Flower Glitter French Manicure, a photo by KitaRei on Flickr.

Which look do you like better?

A Konad French Experiment And Nfu Oh 61 is MINE!

Hello my friends :) What a beautiful Saturday morning in New York! And I'm laying in bed on the computer instead of jogging and doing something productive....as per the usual.

I've really been polishing it up lately! This week, I think I had about 2 colors per day on. So my hands are pretty shot. I need to mellow out and let them soak up some moisturizer.

Thursday morning, the mail surprised me with Nfu Oh 61. It finally, after quite some time on hiatus, became available for sale on fabuloustreet.com and soon after, sold out (i'm talking in less than 24 hours sold out)

Since this is swatched like crazy already, I didn't feel I had anything fresh to add, so here's one little photo...

Also received the most beautiful Orly swatch I've ever seen, called Royal Navy. I don't know why my camera insisted on turning the blue shimmer into white, lets call it outdated camera creative license....but this has such an intense powder blue shimmer in it, and it reminds me of the microshimmer in Clarins 230. It's amazing. This is a MUST own for blue lovers.

And last, took the dogs to the park last night - this is Sasha and Raven, our pitbull and boxer.

I had done a fancy konad french mani yesterday, and couldn't find the right lighting to photograph it. Then, as the sun was setting in the park, I was so glad I grabbed my camera! Because the photos just lit right up and looked beautiful. I also used my shih-tzu's fur for some contrast ...thanks, Abba :)

 

Spring pink pedi

Yay, it's finally starting to feel like spring!!

Spring pink pedi, a photo by KitaRei on Flickr.

I've been avoiding pedicures for a looong time, mostly due to the fact that I haven't had a salon pedicure since December and because of that, my feet were looking pretty scary.
I had some time today and decided to give one a shot myself.

The main color is a no-name hot pink pearly polish. For the big toe I painted the upper corners with NYC Polyester Pink Creme, put Broadway Nail Art stickers on the border of the two colors, and topped it off with Coffret D'or gel topcoat.