First 3D manicure- Xmas Snowflakes

First 3D manicure- Xmas Snowflakes, a photo by KitaRei on Flickr.

Merry Christmas everyone! Here is my first 3D manicure that I've been waiting to post.

The base color is China Glaze Phat Santa, the stripes are Sally Hansen ColorFast Lucky Creme, a vintage Wet N Wild in White Gold, Crayon holographic gold liner, 3D acrylic snowflakes that I made, and topped off with Coffret D'or gel topcoat. Ignore the cracks in the topcoat on one nail. ^^;;

It was really easy to make the snowflakes, much easier than I thought! I just dipped the brush in acrylic liquid, then the acrylic powder, then brushed it in the mold, popped it out after about a minute, and done!

What do you think?
Happy Holidays everyone!

Before the unveiling of my Christmas mani, Pa goodness!

I haven't gotten a good picture of my Christmas manicure yet (bad sunlight) so to tide you over, I have some Pa for you.

I love Pa nail polish. For those of you who don't know, it is a line of Japanese polish made by company Dear Laura that is, well, awesome!! They aren't just polish either, check out their website Dear Laura. It's in English!

I started with Pa Lame Grande AA48, a nice, warm gold polish. I'm not sure why they call this one Lame Grande, or big glitter, since this is actually a foil and not glitter..but it's pretty just the same :)

After that dried I topped it off with Pa Rock Top Nail Z04, a bright pink shatter (damn you Dear Laura/Pa, can't you name your colors? That would make them so much easier to identify with!)

I LOVED this combo, pink on gold. I had this planned for a few months, but hadn't gotten around to it until recently. Not very fall/winter, but who cares? I needed something bright and cheerful, and this certainly did the trick.

Jaci's Xmas present mani

So, I do have a Xmas manicure all ready to snap for you (and my first 3D mani at that!) but first, a teaser :)

My friend Jaci texted me today with this picture. She said this is the first time she did a detailed manicure, and I have to say I think she did a pretty damn good job!

Jaci's Xmas mani, a photo by KitaRei on Flickr.
I don't know all of the color details yet (c'mon grrlfriend, follow us and give us the deets!) but I do know the red is Chanel Fire, and I think the red glitter is Homei Quick Dry Your Person of Destiny.

What do you think of her manicure?

Maybe giving does reap reward?

As much as I love giveaways (and I do!) But sometimes it would be nice if I won one! Well on the day that I sent out my polishes, I jumped on twitter to see that Zoya was having flash promos! Of course the negative Nelly in me was like Ill never get one. But just as I was about to move on, a flash promo appeared! And I jumped on it. And won! What a rush! Well what did I win?

Look at that wrapping!

Oooo Shiny!

A Zoya Color Box!

Trixie, Raven and Luna!

It's actually a funny (kinda) story, I remember ordering two of the Luna's when Zoya released the Ultra glitter collection way back. One was for me(of course!) and one for Renee because right at the time her Maine coon, Luna, had just died and I wanted to cheer her up. Well only one came with a note saying that Luna was out of stock. So I kind of just forgot about getting Luna again, and I guess I'm glad I did!

The other two are Raven, which is a glossy black, gorgeous and should put Black Satin from Chanel to shame! Not that I wouldn't say no to Chanel, ha ha. And the other is Trixie, it's a crazy shimmering silver that is very opaque. At first I thought Celeb City by Sally Hansen was a great dupe, but actually Trixie is more silver and bright(does that make sense?)

So thank you twitter and thank you Zoya! You made a girl very happy:)

Tata for now!

SCORE! Finally!

Not a mani today, but a score I just had to share. For those of you who don't know, I have been after a replacement for this polish forever.

Sally Hansen Teflon Tuff Secrets Frost #62, a photo by KitaRei on Flickr.
Left: UK/Euro Version, Secrets
Right: US version Secrets Frost

They are exactly the same color (we were right Erika! Yay!) I bought the one on the right several years back, (I don't remember when these came out..but I know it was a long while ago!) and this is by far the best holographic glitter I've ever had. Rainbows upon rainbows in a bottle. It's very hard to find.

Mine looks full but actually it is less than half full, the polish dried inside the top of the bottle. I got the second as a refill (totally keeping my original bottle, I LOVE the matching caps-ahh don't you love those Big 3 old formula days?) which I totally did after taking this pic, (and a little before actually, the second bottle was completely full when I bought it) and now the UK bottle has less than 1/3 left, I really killed my original bottle!

No idea why it was called Secrets Frost in the US since it clearly is a glitter and not a frost (there is another old Sally Hansen in the Colorfast line with the same name, -which incidentally, always came up on eBay when I was searching for this one- which is actually a frost) but oh well, I LOVE it! I can't tell you how long I was searching, and how happy I was to finally find it.

Swap goodies!

Ok part of them, I did a makeup/polish swap with an American girl in Germany, and these are the nail polish goodies that I got!

In this pic: Essence Gel Look Topcoat, MNY (Euro Maybelline Line) #553, Flormar numbers 418, 419, 431, 314, P2 Most Wanted #10 True Blue, P2 Color Victim (LOVE that name) #601 Good Luck, and Catrice Cosmetics #300 Be My Millionaire

I'm in love with all of these polishes! I really can't decide which one I like best, there's metallics, creams, a gel topcoat (LOVE those) and even a duochrome in there! I was so excited to see MNY, it is a German Maybelline line with super fun colors (not just polish, makeup too) aimed at the younger set, think Urban Decay. I think the logo looks rather Urban Decay-ish, actually. I so wish we had this line at home, all we get are the boring Maybelline Express colors. I did a post with all of the goodies at All Glitzed Up (this blog is strictly polish, so I didn't post the other pics here)

I can't wait to try all of these out!

Ruby Pumps by China Glaze

Okay, another red, sue me! Okay, don't! This is one of my favorite China glazes. It's just a gorgeous sparkled filled glitter packed red.

It's also a bitch to photograph! Out of about 20 photos, these were the best four to use. (mind the cuticles..please) I have to admit that I used white as a base first, because as much as I love this color, it takes a lot of coats to achieve that bright opaque red!

If you are starting a polish collection, this is one of the reds you must get! It is worth every penny and perfect for the holidays!
I'm also here to let you guys that the other two blogs that I write in are going to have a giveaway:
ALL GLITZED UP! and ERIKAJANEJEWELS. So please stay tuned, they will be awesome prizes!

Okay back to work!

Ta-ta for now,
Erika

NYX Girls Royal Purple and Sapphire

Julie gave me this super awesome NYX Sapphire topcoat when she visited last month,(with sapphire being my birthstone, and with the color being a holo, it was love at first sight!) and I was searching for the perfect color to wear it over. My search ended when I found NYX Girls Royal Purple in the mall by me! This is SUCH a pretty color, my swatch pic does it no justice. It's a dark, lovely purple with dark blue shimmer. It is super hard to photograph, the shimmer just doesn't always show up well. First I took a pic of Royal Purple outside:

It looks totally different inside and out. Next, I took a pic indoors with a coat of Sapphire on top:

NYX Sapphire, a photo by KitaRei on Flickr.

Doesn't it look totally different indoors and outdoors? The shimmer really shows up in this one! I love NYX :)

Acrylic nail mold lot from eBay

Acrylic nail mold lot from eBay, a photo by KitaRei on Flickr.

Yay! I've been wanting a set of these for a while, and I'm very excited to get them. This was a random lot, you didn't know what you were going to get (it was like $10 or so) so I took the chance. Lots of good shapes in here, lollipops, seashells, palm trees, flowers, ladybugs, winged hearts, ribbons and more. Unfortunately, there were no plain hearts, so eventually I will be on the hunt for one, but these are a great start for now! I want to do cute things like this:

image owned by: alibaba

Now to research how to mix the acrylic supplies!

Mischa by Zoya

I ordered this last year but it is the first time I am using it! Here is the information from zoya:

 

I did not realize that it was only a 2 on the intensity level, so you can guess how many coats it took to get to this:

 

Four Coats.

Yep, four coats. But it's so pretty so I forgive you Zoya! I also put a coat of Fairy Dust from China Glaze on top. I mean, I just had too. Mind the cuticles, I ran out of cuticle oil, and I'm really not a huge fan of trimming them (I'll let the professionals take care of that...)

It's a great color, but I think it would look amazing over white or black! If you have a ton of patience, which I do because I watch children everyday, then this would make a great addition to your nail polish collection! But okay, off to watch some TV (addict over here!)

Tata for now!

Erika

 

Zoya Kelly and an unexpected treasure!

So when the lovely Julie visited me a few weeks ago, she gave me a few awesome polishes, and I can't wait to try them all out!

The first one I tried was Zoya Kelly. With a name like that, you'd expect it to be some shade of green, but it's this beautiful dark gray with blue and purple undertones. I don't have any other color like this (I mostly have pinks, reds, blues, and glitters) so this was really awesome! It's such a pretty color, perfect for fall. It does dry darker than it looks in the bottle, which may be a problem for some people, but not at all for me. This time my photos suck more than usual (lol) but my camera is MIA at the moment. (Even when I have it I get terrible sunlight on my balcony for pictures..sigh) so I had to use my iPhone camera, which is usually good, but it doesn't photograph creams so well (it makes them look even streaker than they usually are) so bear with me here.

Here's the lovely Zoya Kelly!

Isn't it gorgeous!

So what is the unexpected treasure you may ask? Well, do you remember the gel look Beauty World polish sets I blogged about a whiiiile back? Well, they have ghetto fabulous copies of them in the Japanese version of dollar stores here. They are two bottles to the pack instead of three-well, what do you want for a buck?- and I never really thought they were very attractive colors (the one in the photo below has a clear yellowish base, and I didn't think yellow-looking nails would be attractive) but I gave it a shot, and was very pleasantly surprised! It's an awesome holo glitter, and looks great layered over a dark color like this. I guess the lesson here is don't judge a polish by it's bottle color!

(blurred to show holographic sparkle)

Teal-y fast and teal-y beautiful!

Okay, that was corny! But I had too go there! I picked up one of the new Sally Hansen Insta-dry a few weeks ago, and I love it. The color is a mix between teal and indigo. Just a striking color. It's really hard to peg it as just a teal color, so that's where the indigo comes in. I love these polishes because they really do dry insanely fast! These are great for little girls who love to have their nails painted, but don't want to wait more than ten seconds to go play.

But you know me, can't leave well enough alone and had to coat them with China Glaze fairy dust. Thank you (once again) Julie for telling me about this color, it just makes any polish look a billion times more beautiful.

Found my camera card! And the sunlight was streaming in!

and then the sun was gone..

But that's it for now, time to hit the hay!


Erika

World Aids Day

Every December 1st, is World Aids day. I usually rock a red ribbon and try to buy at least 1 or two Red products. It also doesn't hurt that red is my favorite color dejour since I was born. (okay not exactly the day, but I'm sure I was pretty young!) So guys, please rock your ribbon or some red nails!

This past week I was in New Orleans for the Thanksgiving holiday, (I hope everyone had a great one! ) I visited my sister, her husband, and my niece Mariam.

I am not even remotely kidding, right after I took this shot, she erupted in tears..Someone doesn't like their picture being taken me thinks.

But okay back on subject! One of my favorite Zoya's is Sooki, it to me, is just the perfect cherry red with a jelly finish. I own a few red Zoya's, but this one just always grabs me. If you do not own it, get to it now. NOW.


I did this last night, but for the life of me can not find my memory card for my camera. So I had to use horrid lighting and my iPhone to capture the beauty. Of course I had to put some kind of art on my ring finger. It just felt naked! I thought a simple candy cane would be the perfect image for the first day of December.

It figures I have amazing painting skills and moisturized cuticles and my memory card is missing. Puh.

Okay, that's is it for now.

Erika