Nautical Mani

Finally, after ages of swatches, a detailed manicure!

First, a swatch of the base color. I used Canmake #50, a navy blue polish.
Oh blue nail polish, why must you be so notoriously hard to photograph?? This is actually a deep navy blue polish, and try as I might I just could not get the actual color to show up. Natural light was even worse, it looked light blue!
I had this planned for months specially for last month when I went to Okinawa(which was AWESOME.) I used Canmake #50, NYC French White Tip, and Homei quick dry Your Person of Destiny

Nautical Mani, a photo by KitaRei on Flickr.
I know I posted several months ago about how terrible the Diamond Nail Homei polishes are. The glitter Homei polishes are actually really good, great colors and tons of multi-sized glitter, and mine even came with a free nail tool. It's the Diamond Nail Line (which, incidentally, I haven't seen recently) that bites. I'll post swatches of both in a later post :)

Gel look frosty half moon mani

Good afternoon everyone :)

I came up with the idea for this manicure on a whim after I swatched the Tina Rose glitter polish and really wanted to do something with it. I took this one slightly blurry on purpose to show the sparkle. It is so hot now, and I thought I'd make a cool look to help beat the heat ;)

The main color is Tina Rose #316. This is a great glitter polish! It is almost as good as the SUPER sparkly/holographic one that I got back in Japan in 2009 (which is currently missing :( I really need to find it, I would LOVE to swatch it and do a comparison with this one!)
It has both big and fine glitter mixed in, and though not as good as the one I mentioned above I would definitely say this one is the runner up. They also have a gold version of this.. I may go and get it..
.

The white is New York Color French white tip. I used silver bullion to line the half moon circles, and I covered it with several layers of Coffret D'or gel look topcoat. I found a MUCH better gel topcoat (much better gel look with MANY less coats, even only one is good!) which I will swatch and compare to this one later.

Gel look frosty half moon mani, a photo by KitaRei on Flickr.

What do you think? :)

Blue zebra print manicure

For this manicure, I had a little inspiration from a mani on nailcrack. I saw a manicure similar to this on their website, and I had just gotten a blue nail polish (though not the same color blue) so I wanted to try my hand at it :)

Here's the blue polish, from AC (a Japanese low-cost line, who makes some pretty decent colors! I used it in my recent turquoise pedi, and a past orange mani.) As far as quality goes, I'd rate them higher than NYC because their polishes only need two coats for even coverage, and they cost about the same. However, NYC has more variety.

I used AC #68 as the base color. It's a nice, vivid blue, and I do mean vivid! After that I painted the stripes on with Majolica Majorca black nail polish. Majolica Majorca is made by Shiseido, I LOVE this brand (they also make other makeup, their eye shadows are so pretty!) I need to get a thinner art brush one of these days, this one is good for most art but not when I need more detail.. Finally I finished off with Nailene clear coat.

Blue zebra print manicure, a photo by KitaRei on Flickr.

It is a little loud though, and I'm going out with my husband and his coworkers/friends this Friday night, so I may change it Friday to a basic swatch of a little more subdued color ^^;; I mostly just wanted to swatch the blue!

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.

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.

It's Wednesday, and I'm wearing pink!

Hi everyone, happy Wednesday!! I actually have an older mani and swatch to post, but I thought I'd post this one first since it's Wednesday, and well, I so happen to be wearing pink!

First the good news: The Japanese school that I will be attending isn't just a Japanese school, it isn't even just a language school. They offer all sorts of programs in the arts, which just so happens to include-are you ready for it-classes for Japanese manicures! The best part is- the regular class is about $10, and one class per month FREE for students! What does this all mean? Well I have a chance to become professional in Japanese nail art, SQUEE!

Ok so back to the manicure. Yoshi just got me a book on Japanese manicure tips and tricks (still learning some of the Japanese terms yet for this stuff) and I saw a relatively easy tutorial for marbling (well, much easier than water marbling anyway, and less messy) so I decided to try it.

First, here's a swatch of NYC Long Wearing Polyester Pink Creme #108A. Just like the other NYC polishes, it took four coats to get an even color, but it is a nice shade:

Now the mani. This is my first attempt at a marble manicure, so forgive me if it isn't super-awesome :p

First Marble Mani, a photo by KitaRei on Flickr.
For the base color I used NYC Long Wearing Polyester Pink Creme #108A. I used Visee Glamorous Sparkle #10(I still can't find my fine brush, so I used a toothpick..) for the glitter half moons on my nails. Half moons are really big here. For the actual marbling, I used NYC Long Wearing French White Tip #134 and Revlon Limited Edition Diamonds Are Forever. I topped it off with Coffret D'or gel topcoat.

Thanks for reading!

New mani and NYC French White Tip #134 Swatch

So last night after I cracked my thumbnail (damn shampoo samples, why do they make them so hard to rip open??) After I repaired and bandaged it I gave myself a new manicure. Of course, that thumb will be out of pictures for a while.

First I did a swatch of NYC French White Tip #134, as I was using this polish as the base for my next manicure anyway, so I thought I'd take a shot of it first on it's own.

NYC French White Tip #134 Swatch, a photo by KitaRei on Flickr.

This polish, like a few of the other NYC Long Wearing polishes I've tried, takes 4 coats to get an even color. The first few coats are uneaven and streaky. The end result is a pretty decent nail polish, however, and they make some very awesome colors, I especially like the glitters.

Here is a shot of what it looks like after two coats:

And here is the final product. For this manicure (of course I started with a good base coat) I used NYC #134 French White Tip as the main polish. As with all of the NYC Long Wearing colors I've tried, it takes about 4 coats to get an even color. The first 3 are streaky and uneven. For the thumb and ring fingers, I used a no-name hot pink polish, and on top I used NYC #105 Starry Silver Glitter, which I am really starting to like!

Week 2 in recovery (Renee)

While at home recovering, (and let me tell you, it gets old FAST) I decided to give myself another manicure (it's amazing how nail polish chips off, even when you aren't being super active!). Disclaimer: any resemblance of this manicure to anyone's, living or dead, is strictly coincidental ^_~
It's my first time doing such an intricate design, but since nail design is HUGE in Japan, I decided to try it for myself (trust me, it gets SUPER crazy here, including 3D plastic objects and other things). My design is much tamer, though I have to take a pic of the nails I bought on here sometime.

I started with a Jordana salon formula in frosted pink that I had totally forgotten about. What's nice about this polish is it contains the powder of actual pearls (or so the label states) which gives it a natural and pretty pearly sheen.
Next, I used Maybelline Express Finish Glitters (remember those?) in Mandarin Mars to put on the tips in a triangle twist on the french manicure design. I have some more Maybelline Express colors, I just need that polish reviver and I'll be busting them out ::winks at Erika::
Then I put dots of NYC polyester pink on the tips, and above I painted hearts. They may look like the same color, but they're not, the middle is red and the two sides are dark pink.
Finally, as gel nails are really popular here, I used a gel-look topcoat from Japanese brand Coffret D'or, mabe by Kanebo (though it's hard to see in the pic.)

To make my designs, I use a nail brush that I bought here for the equivalent of a whole dollar! Even better, the brush actually comes apart and snaps into itself, making it much more portable.
The lighting in the pic is casting some weird dark shadows on my fingers..0_0

I'll be back again soon with beauty tips!

Good morning polished fans! (Renee)

Slightly late-comer here.  My name is Renee, I'm a fashion, makeup, and of course, nail polish junkie transplanted from the Big Apple to the capital of the Land of the Rising Sun, Tokyo.  Since nail design is HUGE here, I'll not only be giving you the first hand scoop, but I'll be doing some designs myself.  I'll also pop in with some good nail care tips I have to share.

Today, I didn't do anything too crazy, but classy never the less.  I'm wearing the Sephora by OPI Teal We Meet Again that Erika gave me, with New York Color #105 Starry Silver Glitter on the tips that Julie suggested.  Very pretty!  

Mata ne~ (see you later)