Hi Readers! The Hunger Games--are you familiar with these books? I am familiar with them however my reading tastes tend to lean toward adult romance and not teen fiction. My friend Igor loved these books. I'm thinking perhaps I will read them. My mom and I are headed to see the movie today so I'll let you know what I think of it. I know there is someone in the book who had flames painted on her nails but since I didn't read the books I wanted to do something different. When I first saw the bottle shots of China Glaze's Hunger Games Polishes I was SO not interested. THEN I saw nail swatches and went holy cow I need a bunch of these! I actually got 5 of them in a swap with my polish "wifey" Lori but did not get Riveting. I thought "nah it's not really my color" then Igor did a post of it here and and I went SHAZAM I need that color!
For my Riveting mani I applied 2 coats and then sponged on one of my franken dupes. This is a dupe of Lippmann's Boom Boom Pow which I named Boom Boom NAILED it!
This was NOT a picture friendly mani!
So hard to capture the true colors of this mani.
I decided to stamp over it (hahahah I crack myself up! Of course I stamped over it!)
I love how it looks with flash!
Here's a nice close up!
I realize I'm a bit late on the whole Hunger Games mani but I really love how this turned out! I've never really stamped over large hex glitters before and it worked well therefore I'll be doing it again!
Thanks for stopping by! I hope you all have a fantastic day!
Hi Readers! I have another half moon mani! Actually this mani is on my right hand and I sported it the same time as my mani from yesterday! So YES I had on two completely different mani's readers! I've been doing that a bit lately as I did with my snakeskin mani from Animalistic Week. So far no one has looked at me like I'm a wacko so I guess it's okay. So what's exciting about today's mani--wellllllllll it features one of my frankens! I named this one Fury after a story in the New Species series by Laurann Dohner. I'm not a huge fan of science fiction romance yet I LoVED this series!
Here's a bottle shot of Fury. My wonderful friend Claude (Claudia) sent me this bottle of MNY that I HAD to have because of the handcuffs on the cap! I added some Nfu-Oh 63 to it in the hope I was making a dark vampy scattered holo. Not really what I intended as it seems deep magenta to me but I super love it none the less!
I wish I would have done a better bottle shot--can you see the little handcuffs on the bottle? OMG that is why I HAD to have some of this polish. Claude sent me a black one too which I adore and good thing as she informed me they are being discontinued. FYI readers I love handcuffs for some reason!
Here's what Fury looks likes--pretty dang gorgeous if you ask me!
It looks great here and I could have stopped here but come on who are we kidding readers????? You know I don't "do" plain polish lol! I decided to do another half moon mani with Fury and topped him with Essie Spash of Grenadine
Just like yesterday's mani I added some dots to this one. I really like the color combinations together
And here's how it looks right side up!
I got some assistance from the camera man to try to get pics of both hands together.
Don't worry readers there's nothing wrong with your eye sight. It's not you it's the pic lol! As I've said before the camera man shakes likes he's 124 instead of 24 lol!
After I finished this mani I was looking at Fury and thinking oh oh don't I already have this color? I recently acquired OPI DS Extravagance and I was worried I had duped it!
Hmmm they look close BUT mine is darker and the the holo pigments is much smaller THEREFORE I need these both LOL! Do you see those little handcuffs on the MNY bottle readers? OMG seriously I love it! I wish they would make hand cuffs on a stamping plate. I would be all over that plate!
What do you think readers--am I crazy to wear two different colors on each hand? How are you liking this one compared to yesterday's? And what do you think of my franken Fury?
OOOH speaking of Fury here's the cover from the book!
I should have done the chain image!!
Thanks for stopping by! I hope you all have a fantastic day!
Hi Readers! I have this love/hate relationship with half moon mani's. I love them, they hate me. I finally figured out how to make them work for me! The secret you ask--circle labels instead of reinforcement tabs! I cut them in half to make them more pliable and YES success! Over the next few days I'm going to try a few half moon mani ideas so I hope they won't bore you! First up is my teal look. This is A England's St George with China Glaze For Audrey
While I loved just the creme on top of the scattered holo I felt the need to dot and I think it turned out great!
Here's a nice shot with flash
What do you think of this mani readers? Are you liking the pale creme over the dark scattered holo?
Thanks for stopping by! I hope you all have a fantastic day!
Hi Readers! I'm featuring the same foil I had on yesterday but I "amped" it up! I'm actually thrilled I get to show you this mani because I'm "on call" for jury duty this week and felt like if I did have to go in I should wear something boring and conservative. No go on the jury duty though--which is actually sad for me because I was really hoping to get picked! I'm a SUCKER for the Discovery ID channel and all the forensic shows on them so to get a first hand look at our judicial system does appeal to me. ANYWAY back to the fabulous mani! Remember my glorious butterfly mani from last week? Well when I found that cool mani by ProfessionalDQ I found this one as well. My friend Jodi of Captivating Claws did it, I mean OF COURSE she did because she freaking rocks at water marbling lol! I'm not sure if she posted hers yet though so I might be beating her to it lol! Please look for her here if you're not already following her to catch it!
This was actually really easy. I applied the Rainbow Swirl foils again and then followed the tutorial using Nina Ulta Pro in Pink Frost and the LA Colors Craze Black I had. In the tutorial she sponges on a rainbow mani, and Jodi did this as well. I simply cheated and used the rainbow foils LOL!
SHAZAM! Isn't this cool?????!!!!!!! I showed it to some of my nail polish friends and Sarah from Chalkboard Nails said it looked like an oil slick! I REALLY love how this one turned out!
Here's a nice close up
My favorite is my thumb
I'm super pleased with this foray into water marbling. Jodi and I are going to try to do the same design again and hopefully I can do that one lol! This just goes to show though how versatile foils can be. You can wear them alone, stamp on them OR water marble over them!
What do you think readers--are you loving this one??
Thanks for stopping by! I hope you all have a fantastic day!
Hi Readers! Today I'm featuring foils again! Ages and ages ago--okay it was really more like a year ago I saw this way cool mani on Enamel Girl's Blog. Do you follower her readers? If yes then you know all about the awesome stuff she does and does with foils. You can find the mani I lusted after forever here. I knew I would have to try to recreate this. Now Kay did angled stamping using two images but I was too lazy for that lol! I used on stamp to give me both the images! The foil I used is called Rainbow Swirls and I got it from a haul from Dollar Nail Art (http://dollarnailart.com/) I stamped using image plate M78 and Sally Hansen Whirl Wind White
Here's a nice close up!
I love image plate M78 and this is one of my favorite's as I'm sure you know because you've seen it before lol!
I also transferred foils onto a lucite ring--check it out!
This foil is from my last order and I just got 10 more of them in a recent order lol! I can't wait to try them out and show them to you!
Thanks for stopping by! I hope you all have a fantastic day!
Hi Readers! I got nail mail from my first ever nail polish friend Julie today! Jules and I both love our blues and she sent me a gorgeous one! It's a brand I've never seen before Venique and she sent me this GORGEOUS blue metallic called Blue Suede Shoes! Woot! An Elvis song polish!!! Yay!!! I already had China Glaze Smoke and Ashes on because I was feeling guilty about having the Hunger Games polishes for awhile yet not wearing a single one yet! Instead of taking off Smoke and Ashes and putting on Blue Suede Shoes I hoped Blue Suede would be stampable--not even a word I know but it works lol! This is what I came up with
Here's a nice closeup
Here's the only bottle shot I have of the Blue Suede Shoes, it really is soooo pretty!
And one last pic with flash!
I found my butterflies on my DRK-A plate and I think this is a nice subtle stamping mani that turned out nice!
Julie sent me another Venique--a gorgeous red metallic called Vixen Pump I can't wait to give that one a try as well.
Thanks for stopping by readers! I hope you all have a fantastic day!
Hi Readers! Today's Sunday Stamping Challenge is black and white. I haven't done the last two because I seemed to be off kilter with them I think. This one seemed pretty straight forward black and white. But holy cow some things just aren't as clear as black and white lol! A long time ago I made a franken that didn't turn out as I had envisioned. I noticed it recently while in the process of updating my stash list (which is WAY too freaking big!). It sat next to me on the table staring at me as if willing me to fix it somehow. So I did what any normal person would do in this situation I added glitter! I wanted this to look like glistening snow when I made it, white with iridescent flakies and hexes. For some reason it just didn't work for me. So last night I added some micro holo glitter I have and SHAZAM it's super pretty now!
Here's a pic!
You can't see the flakies in here but they are definitely present. Check out the cool hexes in it
There's just only problem with them--they are all stuck on the bottle! Hardly any of these transfer to the nail :(
I decided to name it Lost and Bound and I used it for the Sunday Stamping Challenge. I added some nice butterflies and one of the faeries from the Red Angel plate and the mani turned out really cute. I'm going to show it to my niece to see if she'd like to wear this for her prom mani.
I like how the sweet butterflies and faerie are black--kind of like naughty butterflies and faerie lol! This is the best pic I could get of the buried flakies and iridescent glitters in the polish
All in all I like this mani! I'm one of the lucky ones who ordered the Red Angle plates right when they came out because versions of the faeries now don't all have wings.
Thanks for stopping by readers! I'm off to have corned beef dinner with the family and get my butt kicked in Guesstures! I hope you all have a fantastic day!
Hi Readers! Welcome to the weekend! Anyone have big plans? On Sunday I'm getting together with my family for our annual corned beef and the trimmings dinner. I always cook the corned beef and my little sister cooks the cabbage, carrots, potatoes and parsnips (yes parsnips! that's our non traditional twist on it I guess lol). This year my folks are here instead of in Florida and my dad is THRILLED to be able to get in on the corned beef action! We're going to have a game night of Guesstures again so I can only hope to get out of that one unscathed!
Even though I've had some way cool mani's the past couple of days I'm really just a novice stamper/nail artist. I've been doing this for a year now--stamping that is and I still have a lot to learn. You already know some of my idols are Carolina from Colores De Carol, Cris from Let Them Have Polish, Kayla from Kayla Shevonne, Sarah from Chalkboard Nails, and of course my internet daughter Rebecca from Rebecca Likes Nails. I, not too long ago, discovered my blog crush which is nailXchange. She pretty much blows me away! I love all her ideas, all her color combinations, and her nails are freaking perfect. It's sickening actually lol! I love a love/hate relationship with her much like Kayla but with her it's the polishes she always seems to find. When I first saw this post I feel in love with Sephora Moody Woman and then was hacked when I discovered oh hey you can't get it in the states. So thank you Google when I discovered Missha HRG01 is a dupe for it! You can't get Missha in the states either but that didn't stop me from buying this baby on ebay! It's really gorgeous a nice metallic light green to blue duochrome. Today I've recreated nailXchange's mani AND I made a matching ring of it to boot!
I hope whatever plans you have for the weekend you have fun doing them!
Thanks for stopping by! I hope you all have a fantastic day!
Hi Readers! Holy Hannah I'm still on a high from my fabulous butterfly water marble! I cannot believe it but I posted my pic on ProfessionalDQ's facebook page and she told me she liked mine better than hers! WHA??????????!!!!!! OMG my head is EVEN BIGGER now!!!!! LOL! But what no one realizes is wow that's a lot of pressure to live up to! I mean after that great mani if you wear something bad everyone looks at you like you're a one hit wonder. Not that one hit wonders aren't great--I mean come on Vanilla Ice and Ice, Ice, Baby-- Debbie Boone with You Light Up My Life or Aha's Take On Me. Or how about Peter Billingsley from A Christmas Story or Paul Hogan from Crocodile Dundee??? All great one hit wonders. So really I will be in good company if that's they way the cookies crumble readers.
Instead of Franken Friday I decided to use some of the polishes I used for my butterfly water marble. I really liked a few of them and thought to myself why the heck do I not wear these??? I did another gradient and really I should have submitted this one for Rebecca's contest but again day late and a dollar short lol! Here it is readers!
For some reason whenever we see the colors green or teal, blue, and purple together we just think peacock!
What I love about this mani is you can still see the black stamping over the darker colors of the blue and purple. Here's a nice close up!
I have to say I think this is stunning so I'm still on top of the billboards!
Check out my new peacock ring! It goes great with this mani!
It's a really huge chunky ring so really only suitable for looking good while doing nothing such as work or house work lol--kind of how high heels work best when you are sitting down ahahahahahaha!!! I do really like it though.
How did I get this look?? Quite simple I did two coats of Petites Utopia then sponged on OPI Swimsuit Nailed It (I think one of my favorite blues EVAH) and then I sponged OPI Grape, Set & Match on the very tips. I stamped using Kleancolor black using image BM211. Here's a picture of the polishes I used
Since I mentioned the peacock today I thought we should all learn a little bit about the gorgeous peacock so here are our peacock fun facts for the day:
They are actually called peaFOWL as the males are peacocks and the females are peahens (I seriously thought of also capping "cock" and "hen" in those names and decided against it. Good call wouldn't you say????)
Their offspring are called peachicks--omg how adorbs is that??
Just like cupping your hand to your ear to hear better the same thing is applied for the peacock when he spreads his tail--this helps him pull or direct sound so he can hear it better!
Color mutations do exist in peafowls and they are sometimes bred exclusively to produce an all white or leucistic plumage
They are forest birds which nest on the ground but (and I did not know this) they also roost in trees
Peafowl are native to India and Burma but there are also populations living in Japan, England and even South Florida in the states!
Peafowl mean different things to different religions:
In Christianity the peacock symbolizes eternal life
In Babylonia and Persia the peacock is seen as the guardian of royalty
In Hinduism the peacock is associated with Saraswati the diety representing benevolence, patience, kindness and compassion and knowledge
In ancient Rome the peacock was associated with Hera Queen of the Gods
In some cultures the peacock represents pride and vanity due to their "cocky" nature of their strut!
Look at this gorgeous peacock!
And here's one of the beautiful white peacock
Okay so that's it for today readers! What do you think of my mani today?? Am I just a one hit wonder or did I pass muster with this one?
Thanks for stopping by! I hope you all have a fantastic day!
Hi Readers! Don't be alarmed--I broke my arm patting myself on the back with this mani! SERIOUSLY! I am in so much awe over this one I feel like I'm dreaming when I look at my hands. I guess I was on a high with water marbling since my shamrock mani turned out so the other morning at 4am I was checking out youtube and came across this fantastic tutorial. I'm not sure what made me think I could pull it off I simply loved it and wanted to try it. And here it is readers--be prepared for a buttload of pics!
Holy Hannah right???? This mani is a gorgeous thing of beauty! I mean where was this mani for Sarah's dotting tool contest??? LOL! I love my left hand best. Here's a close up
I think my ring finger turned out the best! I love how cool the thumb is though too
The trick is to use the sheer polish with black so you can still see all the beautiful colors of your mani underneath.
Here's a nice pic of it with flash
And you know I love looking at it from this view
Here's the right hand--not as great as the left hand (it's freaking hard to marble your right hand when you are right handed)
Here's my wonky looking right hand in "mani" stance. What the heck is up with my stupid point finger anyway???
I feel like a was too dot heavy with the ring finger on my right hand. I was too scared to try to remove them and do it over though LOL!
The camera man I have sucks quite honestly. He took a zillion 2 hands together pics but shakes like he's 120 instead of 20! So this is really the
only "good" one
I had an observer during the making of the mani.
Geez Baxter the least you could have done was helped with the clean up!
I used a bunch of polishes to make this mani and this was not a quick process. I'm not a good marbler, I have a lot of bullseyes that don't work. This entire process of both hands took me over 3 hours. I think it was worth it. Basically you do the gradients on your nails then using a black and sheer polish or even clear if you can find one that spreads you water marble over the gradient. After all your fingers are marbled then you dot on the white dots in the areas of black to simulate butterfly wings.
Here's a shot of the polishes I used
Basically I used a lighter creme and then sponged a darker metallic or glass fleck finish on the tips. For the marbling I used Dollar Store LA Color Craze black and my sheer pink was Nina Ultra Pro in Pink Frost. The beauty of Pink Frost is because it's sheer you can still see the shimmer on the tips through the polish. I wish my camera was better to show this to you.
What do you think of this mani readers? Seriously I broke my arm patting myself on the back and couldn't wait to show it off to my nail polish friends. I'm friends with both Colores de Carol and Let Them Have Polish on Facebook and when both of them replied to my picture telling me how awesome it was I almost passed out! To receive recognition from the ladies who you are always copying is quite an honor!
Thanks for stopping by! I hope you all have a fantastic day!
