OPI Planks a lot and Funky Fingers Kenyan Sunset

I've been really getting into the gradient looks, using the make up sponge method. Who knew how easy it was! At first I was going to do a Red version, but at the last second I went with purple, my good ole stand by color;)

I used Planks a lot by OPI that came out in the Pirates of The Caribbean: Stranger Tides collection. Renee got me the mini set for Christmas last year and of course I was very happy! And may I add she bought in Japan, so I know that was not cheap. Any one who's been to Japan knows that OPI, ESSIE, and other American brands cost an arm, leg and first born child..(not in that order!) Then to finish the look, I sponged on Funky Fingers in Kenyan Sunset on the tips. You can't tell from the bottle but its a holo! A gorgeous shimmery HOLO! I love when that happens, you get a polish that looks pretty but then you paint it on, and kaboom..holo goodness;)

I want to try this gradient look in different colors, as it was super easy! But for now I must be going, work awaits!

Thanks to Scrangie and Painting rainbows for the images!

Guys just a reminder!
Giveaways are still underway-
All Glitzed up! and A Polished Life!

OPI DS Vintage

This was a very lucky Target find back in January, and is from the original DS line. Does Target normally carry this line? It was the only one there, and I grabbed it quick!

I just LOVE OPI's DS line, I can't get enough!  I'm a big holo fan, so it's not a huge surprise.  I have one more in this line that Julie gave me a while back, I need to get around to posting it sometime soon.

DS Vintage is a gorgeous coral-pink with holo glitter, though I've also seen it described as a salmon pink and peach.  This is two coats, and the formula was great.  Look how it sparkles in the light, rainbows on your nails!  ::love::

OPI DS Vintage, a photo by KitaRei on Flickr.

Weekend Manicure!

After receiving my package, I broke out the KleanColor Bluebell holo! It really is just a gorgeous and stunning color. I layered it over OPI Lincoln Park after Dark, which alone is a gorgeous dark purple red creme. It's a great substitute for Chanel Vamp (although I wouldn't refuse it).

Look at those colors! I had to take a few pictures to show the angles. And it was not hard! I think this is one of the only nail polishes besides Nfu Oh 51, where I literally didn't have to take 40 pictures to get all the colors in one shot. One thing that I did not like about this brand, the polishes REEK! I mean, wow.. they are 3 Free, but wow, whatever they put in there polishes, it stinks! Literally.

But as much as the smell is a downer, these really are amazing. And for the price, I can invest in a clothes pin for my nose, ha ha. I would also like to note that the dry time is very fast! I would clock it at about five minutes. Even faster with a coat of Seche Vite!

I can't wait to try another color, I have been testing different bases, and so far they look amazing.. except white.. which kind of sucks, because of the potential! But that is it for now, tomorrow I will post my hauls from Christmas Break, tata!

The West Memphis Three Are FREED!!! A New Car, And A New Swatch!

*If you have an opposition to the West Memphis 3, I ask only that you first educate yourself on this case before posting controversial comments. Visit http://www.wm3.org to learn about them.*

Hi everyone! I am sorry I've been mia - I have a heaping pile of issues going on in my life right now regarding fertility, my health, and my future. Needless to say, it hasn't been all shits n' giggles for me. I will fill you all in soon, and I promise some awesome swatches are to come.

But right now I want to focus my attention on the fact that the WEST MEMPHIS THREE are finally home! I am so happy, despite the lame Alford plea, that they will be able to continue their lives...18 years later...outside of jail. The case will continue investigating, and hopefully the DNA evidence can point investigators in the right direction. (ahem...TERRY HOBBS)

I have been a WM3 supporter for over 15 years. I have poured my heart and soul into spreading awareness of their case, and I am pretty sure I was able to get a lot of friends on board as well.

I threw together a few designs this morning, and posted them on Zazzle for sale. Please pass along the designs, as I will donate all money received from my sales to WM3.org so that they may continue the investigation. It is imperative that we find justice for the 3 boys who were murdered, and clear Damien, Jason, and Jessie's names for good.

I'm going to link the designs below here, but I am going to make them available in ALL shirt types, so please visit my Zazzle Shop for all designs, and designs to come.

 

so to report some more happy news, my 30th birthday just passed (that's not the happy news!) and I got an amazing new camera for better photos that I haven't been able to fully test out yet. It's the Canon EOS 69D, digital SLR. What a fantastic camera!!

And, I got a new JEEP! Not for my birthday though, but because my JEEP is ready to be laid to rest. 130k miles, yes, it's time!

My new Jeep, a Wrangler Unlimited Mojave Ed.

 

Oh, you were expecting some nail polish, right?? Here is my current swatch, a very coveted and beautiful swatch by OPI Sephora - Midnight Mambo. Excuse my peely fingers.

Hi everyone!

I got the Pirates of the Caribbean Silver Shatter about a month ago, and I've been dying to swatch it ever since. I was waiting to get another OPI color to swatch it over so I could add it to my Flickr OPI album.

Speaking of Flickr, has anyone noticed how weird it's been acting lately? Since the other day it is giving me hell when I try to post pics, one time it says it doesn't go through, and another it says it went through but I don't see anything.. (so if this gets double posted.. you'll know why.)

Anyway, so I found a drug store that has some OPI polishes CHEAP, (and they were running out) so I grabbed Chicago Champagne Toast while the getting was good so I could swatch it with the Silver Shatter.

First, a swatch of Chicago Champagne Toast:

It's a really pretty metallic mauvey-pink. It looks great on it's own, but I was dying to swatch the shatter polish. Now the mani:

As always, thanks for looking!!

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!

An Eastery Sparkly Day- And My Easter Present!

Happy Easter! 

Is that just about the scariest easter bunny you've ever seen? I couldn't help myself.

You know by now that I cannot just keep one color on my nails for longer than 24 hours, right? So consider the last Easter post a "trial" of sorts! A preparation for the real deal ;)

I was also just thinking, as I know I've pretty much created over-kill on sparkly accent nails. What do you, as readers of our blog, want to see more of? Because we are ready and willing (perverted thoughts aside!) to deliver what you would like to see! At first, we started this blog more as an outlet to feed our obsessions, and share our nail polish looks as friends, but now since we have followers, we want to keep you entertained as well! So speak up. Let us know what we can do more of, less of, no more of....and hey, we'll give it a shot :)

I recently purchased an armload of nail art stamps (copies of the real Konad deal on Amazon for  a fraction of the price) so look forward to many Konad experiments ahead in near-future posts.

And moving on to my Eastery Sparkly Day look.....

My new Sephora OPI swatch "Havanah Dreams" accented with Deborah Lippmann's "Today Was A Fairytale". The blue jelly blended in really nicely with the blue cream swatch, and I really like this look! Maybe I will try it over purple next time. I *like* the Deborah Lippmann swatch, but I feel like it's been done before, by just about everyone. I think they could have really knocked this swatch out of the park if they added super-micro glitter, too. 3 levels of glitter would have been bliss!

this is just 1 layer of TWAF

Now on to the Easter present....please note, this was an Easter present to myself! I don't expect Mr.Scary Easter Bunny to leave anything at my doorstep, so I have to take initiative and buy a present for myself, right? I found this Juicy Couture Kindle case for $35 at TJ Maxx, and didn't even hesitate. I had to have it. I love it!

A Secret Bunny Exchange

I belong to a really freakin amazing community called Purseblog.com, and I obviously spend most of my time in the sub-forum for nail junkies such as myself.

I noticed there were occasionally these "exchange" posts, organized by a really awesome girl, where you sign up, and become a secret santa of sorts for another person on the board. You can participate to send internationally, that way you can get goodies from any part of the world. And you never know what you're going to get. You just brief the organizer on what nail polish finishes/brands you like/dis-like, etc, and the rest is up to whoever gets to buy for you.

And this is what my Secret Bunny (Easter!) put together for me! People can be SO awesome and thoughtful. I am so happy to have found that forum, and so grateful for this amazing gift!! Keep your eyes out for swatches of these!

 

Left to right:

Sephora for OPI - Havana Dreams
Sephora for OPI - Traffic - Stopper Copper
Milani - 530 Gems
Illamasqua - Ruthless
 

I see this Illamasqua perfecting a great outfit. Black tank, my 7 For All Mankind Roxanne skinnies in Beverly Glen, my red ruffly spike pumps....red on fingers and black on toes. Oooh! SO going to do that!

Well, HOLO There!

I've had this semi-fascination with holos, but always felt that they just don't work with my skin tone. Not sure why. Anybody else feel this way? I do remember buying these by the armload back when Sally Hansen released the prisms collection, and thinking it was the greatest thing since triscuits. I just had a swap with a super awesome chicka and she sent me so many extras, and was actually able to dig up some DS holos by OPI in a beauty supply store, so she got me two! One is DS Sapphire, the other is DS Original. I swatched one, and wow I just fell in love. Screw bad skin tones, there is no way on earth anybody could not be drawn to this nail polish. These are just as the Sally Hanson Prisms collection were, with even prettier colors IMO.

This is OPI's DS Original-

Click me!

You MUST click this one to see full size! I insist :)

Also we want to keep you updated, we are still working on getting all the entries together so we can announce our winners, and we are going to start working on our next giveaway, which we will inform everyone of once we've reached 500 followers. We were going to do 300, but we just don't have the time to do a giveaway following so soon after we've just completed our last one! We sure wish we could! But we hope 500 comes soon, and spread the word! We are going to do THREE prizes this time around, and first prize winner gets to choose from all 3. Stay tuned!

From Simple to Colorful ;)

You guys should know how I feel about my OPI for sephora's, well if you don't.. I lurrrve them. I wish I could buy every color, but at 9.50$ a pop (yes they did go up from 9$, damn you sephora!) I have to get the ones that really catch my eyes.Which brings me to my next mani. I know I have mentioned flurry up a few times I believe, so I know your familiar with it.

It is marketed as a topcoat, but I wanted to try it by itself and see how many coats it would take before it actually covered my entire nail. Well I stopped at 5 coats. Lesson learned, keep it as a top coat! I even blobbed it on, to get the hexagons silver to stick, but still no luck. Overall, It was worth it, because when I was in Wegman's (which I have to say is amazing! I have never been there before so I was pleased to say the least) I got stopped by two people who said they could see it all the way at then end of the aisle, now that's amazing!

Ah simple, but so sparkly!

Now to the colorful, I have been eyeing the Sally Hansen nail effects for a while, but I thought 10$ was a little pricey for just one use. I mean you could get a whole bottle of O.P.I for that! So I passed, but then I saw them for sale priced for 4.59$ I grabbed two designs and viola! Here are the results:

Also, very easy to do, this took me a grand total of about 10 minutes!

Also we reached our goal! So ladies keep those fingers crossed and good luck!

OPI Merry Midnight! I Love My Flakies!

Hola! Happy sunny afternoon. I have to say that I am in a pretty damn good mood today. I went to the health food store and got this nasty-ass "green" concoction which consisted of spinach, parsley, broccoli, and other greens in a smoothie form. While it tasted disgusting, it definitely gave me a super boost of energy! That aside, I thought I'd share my swatching OPI's Merry Midnight. I managed to snag this for $18 on eBay which was well worth the buy! Do you own this? What do you think of flake polishes?

For those of you who think spending $18 on nail polish is a joke (I feel ya) Cult Nails also has a wonderful pink flakie polish called Iconic that you can order from their site for $10 (along with their other amazing swatches- have you seen Living Water? WOW!) - and I feel it's more versatile than Merry Midnight, because it can be worn in the spring, summer, fall, winter etc....whereas I feel Merry Midnight is more of a Fall/Winter only polish. Here is Iconic from a prior post.

Oh, and before I forget - this is an older swatch I had done of Finger Paints brand black polish. I meant to rave about how it's probably the best black nail polish out there. I highly recommend it! Just 1 layer on top of a base coat and it's opaque. Great quality for $3.99. I also tested out my photoshop skills here - is it blatantly obvious that i photoshopped out my jagged cuticles?

Lastly, I noticed that Walgreens is now stock FULL of the gorgeous glittery Sinful Color swatches that had been becoming difficult to find. So hurry up and go grab them! This glitter is seriously the most amazing glitter polish I've yet to find. This one swatched below is called Nail Junkie.