OPI Princesses Rule!

Here I have OPI Princesses Rule!, a lovely pale pink shimmer polish. For these photos, I did three coats and as you can see, it is still pretty sheer. I suppose you could get it opaque enough if you used another one or two coats. However, since it is so sheer, Princesses Rule! makes a great base color for a french manicure and the shimmer makes it nice and glitzy ;).

After wearing it alone for a day, I naturally got bored with it, so I tried out some new nail art polishes from Jordana...

It's pretty boring as far as nail art goes, but I think it looks really pretty anyway. It reminds me of those long fake eyelashes. The Jordana nail art polishes are available at Kmart for $1.99 and they are great! I'm planning on going back to try some of their regular polishes soon.

Sally Hansen Gunmetal

This is Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Gunmetal. Gunmetal is a dark grey, metallic-ish color with a bit of microshimmer. Unfortunately, since it is kind of metallic, I had a serious issue with brushstrokes showing on my nails. They aren't very noticeable from a normal viewing distance, but I know that they are there and it bothers me. I did two coats of Gunmetal, but I don't think three would have made a difference.

To spice it up a little bit, I added an accent nail with China Glaze Turned Up Turquoise. I know that it looks nothing like TUT in my photos, but I swear to you that it is. My DSLR just really hates neons. I saw a mani similar to this a few weeks ago (on Glamour Beauty, I think) and really wanted to try it. Since it hasn't really been very warm and summery lately, I decided that now was the perfect time. Turned Up Turquoise is an awesome color... perfect in two coats and dries super fast. I can't wait to throw some Black Shatter over it...

Flowery French

I love these... I've done a couple so far and they are sooooo pretty and good for formal events. For the mani above, I used China Glaze White on White for the tips, Confetti Pink Paradise over that, and Wet 'n' Wild Blue Moon for the flower stamp (from the Bundle Monster plates). I used light green rhinestones from eBay for the center of each flower stamp.

For this mani, I used Sephora by OPI Just a Little Dangerous for the stamping and placed a clear rhinestone (also from eBay) in the center. That flower stamp is my favorite... I use it a lot when I need something "extra" over a plain nail polish.

White on White works pretty well for french manicures; I can get away with a pretty thin coat for my tips. Pink Paradise is AWESOME though. I used one coat on both manis and it evened out perfectly and gave just a bit of color to my nail beds; it's also a cheapy! As usual, I topped everything off with Seche Vite and called it a day. Hope you like!

China Glaze Shower Together

You know how everyone has the one color that they are drawn to and they always end up buying clothes or accessories (or nail polish!) in that same color over and over again? Well, blue is that color for me. Any shade, any item, doesn't matter. I can't get enough of it. Lucky for me, there are so many awesome blue nail polishes out there that I can feed my obsession with! 

This is China Glaze Shower Together, a lovely darkened teal creme from the 2008 ECOllection. It's not as washed out as it looks in my photo, but it's hard to capture it exactly. The application was absolutely perfect; it was completely opaque with two coats and dried quickly in between. 

And since I can't leave well enough alone, I sponged some OPI Catch Me In Your Net on my tips! It's still hard to believe that I actually own this color... 

Since the glitter sponging made it a little rough to the touch, I topped it off with two coats of Seche Vite. Also, I picked up Shower Together at Sally Beauty Supply for $4.99 with Beauty Card. You may even be able to find it cheaper online. 

Wet 'n' Wild Waves of Enchantment

Here is the other polish that I managed to snag from the Wet 'n' Wild Mermaid's Cove display. Waves of Enchantment is a gorgeous peachy pink packed with the same kind of glass-flecky glitter that Ocean Grotto has, except there's an incredible gold flash when the sun hits it. I had an annoying time applying this on because the brush had bristles sticking out every which way. I really should start checking the brushes before I buy nail polish... at any rate, after three patient coats this is what I got... 

I'm not joking... for $1.99, you NEED these! Also, from what I can tell by swatches that I've seen online, Waves of Enchantment vaguely reminds me of Zoya Rica (which I really wanted until I found this). I should also probably note that I always use Seche Vite as a top coat when I'm done with a mani. 

In a slightly unrelated note, I'm thinking of putting together a give-away if I can get to 50 followers. Any suggestions or requests? 

Wet 'n' Wild Ocean Grotto

This color is... interesting. It's not something I would typically go for (I haven't really ventured much into the yellow/orange/green section of the color wheel, though I'm trying) but I picked it up because of how glittery it looked. And I'm glad I did! Ocean Grotto is a limey yellow-green shade that is packed with glitter flecks. The application was decent and I used three coats for the below photos. The best part? These (not so) little guys are only $1.99! This first photo was taken outside in what was left of the sunlight for the day...

        

And this photo was under room lighting... I think the glitter shows up better in this one...

I found this at my local CVS; it's part of the (apparently) limited edition summer collection called Mermaid's Cove. A lot of the polishes in the display were gone, including what looked like a nice lighter orange shade. You may still be able to find some in your area if you check soon! 

Neon/Crackle love!

Since I'm still completely infatuated with Catch Me In Your Net (ah!) on my nails, I'm going to give you guys a post or two of older photos that I have. A lot of these photos were taken before I got a lot of practice doing my nails, so please don't judge if my painting skills leave something to be desired here ;)

First, we'll start with China Glaze Pool Party under OPI Black Shatter. This was my first experience with Black Shatter and Pool Party was the perfect neon pink to put under it. It's bright, in-your-face, and looks great in two or three coats (if you're picky). The only problem I had with the formula is that it chipped easily. It's not the end of the world to touch it up once in a while, but it is annoying. Neons are notorious for not photographing correctly, but I think I got pretty close with Pool Party.

Next up is China Glaze Flip Flop Fantasy under Cracked Concrete. I think that this is a more toned-down version of the neon and crackle combination. FFF is such a unique color, kind of peachy, kind of coral-y, but almost cloudy in appearance. It applied and wore much better than Pool Party and is perfect for a summer pedicure!

Overall, I love all of these colors and their combos, and I can't wait to get my hands on some more neons!

OPI Catch Me In Your Net!!!

Guess who found 3 (THREE!) bottles of the illustrious Catch Me In Your Net from OPI at Wegman's yesterday? This girl! I'm still kind of in shock about it; this kind of stuff doesn't ever happen to me. It wasn't even on my wish list because I knew how hard it was to find, and there I was with three bottles of it in my hands. I had a little freak out while my sister watched and laughed until I explained why I was so excited.

At any rate, I ended up buying all three of them; one to keep, of course, and the other two to sell on eBay. I'm going to start them at $8 each, since that's what I paid for them. I'll post a link here once I get them listed in case any of you lovelies are interested in them! Here it is: CMIYN eBay listing!

My sister also ended up buying the lone bottle of Wing It! in the display, so I will swatch that for you all once I can bear to remove CMIYN from my nails!


As I'm sure many of you know, Catch Me In Your Net is a gorgeous blue/green glass-fleck glitter type polish. The tiny glitter is just so amazing! The formula of my bottle was also fantastic; I did three coats, as two was just a bit too sheer for me, but they applied perfectly. I actually was surprised how quickly they dried in between coats as well. All around, this was a great experience! ;)

I had a tiny bit of VNL in certain lighting situations, but with Catch Me In Your Net, I just don't care. The color is way too beautiful to be concerned about a little bit of nail line showing. 

China Glaze Reggae to Riches

This. is. incredible. Seriously! Look at it! Reggae to Riches is a gorgeous fuschia/pink shade with a hint of blue shimmer, which gives it this incredible blue flash in direct light. The photo below is a tiny bit underexposed in order for me to show you the blue shimmery goodness. The application on my bottle is fantastic, although it is pretty sheer. I did three coats here and I still have some VNL (visible nail line). HOWEVER, it's not very noticeable in person and it doesn't bother me one bit because of how stinkin' beautiful this color is! 

If you don't own this, go get it! I got mine as a gift from Sally's and if you have a beauty club member card, China Glaze polishes are only $4.99. I'm going to go sit outside and stare at my nails all day now... Hope you enjoy!

Pirates of the Caribbean Shatter/Crackle/Tattoo mani!

This may possibly be my favorite mani to date! Considering my slight obsession with the movies, I was so excited to find out that OPI was doing a POTC themed collection! To start off, I used OPI's Stranger Tides, which is a really unique, murky kind of green. I guess I would call it a dirty pistachio shade. The formula was perfect; the only issue I had was with the little baby brush, but I anticipated this since I bought the mini set. I also knew that it didn't really matter if Stranger Tides wasn't perfect because I was going to be crackling over it anyway!

So after Stranger Tides dried completely, I added a moderately thick coat of China Glaze's Cracked Concrete. It crackled perfectly and after it dried, I added yet another layer (excluding my ring finger on both hands) using OPI's Black Shatter. Then, I applied a skull and crossbones nail tattoo to my left hand ring finger and a Jack Sparrow tattoo to my right hand ring finger (both from a shop on Etsy, search for "pirate tattoos"). Finally, I covered everything with a thick coat of Seche Vite. Bask in it! 

You can really tell where the outlines of the nail tattoos were in these photos since they are so close, but the crackle underneath them really helped conceal it in person.

What do you think? Do you love the movies as much as I do? 

OPI Skull and Glossbones

For this manicure, I started with OPI Skull and Glossbones from the Pirates of the Caribbean mini set. I think I'm going to need a full size bottle though, I love it! Skull and Glossbones is a light, kind of murky/dirty looking gray; it seems much lighter than other grays I've seen recently, such as China Glaze Pelican Gray or Recycle. Anyway, despite the itty bitty little brush, the application was perfect and I only ended up using two coats for what you see below. Then came the fun part... 

Newsprint nail art! Haha... Looks awesome and is incredibly easy! All you do is cut out strips of newspaper to fit on your nail, lay it on face down and hold a cotton ball soaked with rubbing alcohol on it (like a temporary tattoo). The harder you hold the cotton ball down, the heavier the ink from the newspaper will transfer and the darker the letters will be. You can see this in the photos; the letters on my right hand came out much darker than the ones on my left (which I did first).

Then I stamped some kissy lips from the Bundle Monster plates using OPI Chick Flick Cherry on my ring fingers and thumbs. I love how this came out! I want to call it something cheesy like a "love letters mani" or something like that ;). 

Wet 'n' Wild Bijou Blue

This was a fun manicure I did recently when I finally found Wet 'n' Wild's Bijou Blue. The two CVS stores near me have only a limited variety of nail polishes in stock (which sucks), but I picked it up when I went to a new Wal*Mart in the area. Bijou Blue is a shimmery ocean blue shade that is gorgeous out in the sunlight. To jazz it up a little bit, I tried a paint splatter technique by blowing nail polish out of a straw and onto the nail; it was a messy process! The colors I used for the paint splatter are China Glaze's Flip Flop Fantasy and Orly's Dazzle.

This photo was taken without flash and it represents the color more accurately, I believe. However, Flip Flop Fantasy is actually much brighter than it appears here; neons just don't photograph correctly. :(

I used the flash here to show the shimmer in Bijou Blue, isn't it beautiful? The formula on this was okay,  it was a little sheer and thin; I ended up using three coats for what you see in the photos.

Thanks for visiting!

Here goes my blog virginity...

Hello everyone! Anyone? Well, this is my first ever blog post. I've been throwing around the idea of starting this ever since I joined Blogger to follow other nail-related blogs a few months ago; I guess I finally got bored enough to do it ;). As you can probably guess, this blog will mainly focus on nails: nail polish, nail art, etc. However, I'm sure I'll end up throwing in some of my other obsessions (re: cupcakes, sci-fi shows, nerdy paraphernalia, anything and everything nautical). Here goes nothing...