Happy 4th of July Nail Art

After finishing up the 500 nail art designs for the book, I can't believe that I still had the desire to do my nails for the 4th of July, but I did! Things should be getting back to normal around here very soon and I hope you're as happy as I am about that!

So anyway, I was originally planning on doing a totally different design on each nail, but decided that I wanted them to be a bit more unified. I decided on stars and stripes for the ring and middle nails and a glitter gradient for the pinky and index nails. The white is Milani White on the Spot, red is Zoya Sooki (which photographed more orange than it looks in real life), and blue is China Glaze First Mate. The glitter for the gradient is Shimmer Nichole.

For my thumbs, I decided to do a red, white, and blue gradient with Shimmer Alice on top. The white got overwhelmed by the red and blue, but I still think it turned out pretty good.

I'll be spending my 4th of July with my family on my grandparents' property, enjoying delicious food, sun bathing, and watching our own personal fireworks show! Do you have any exciting plans for the day? 

Jenna's Prom Nails!

Good morning everyone! I haven't done anything interesting with my nails lately, so I thought I'd post the nails I did for my sister's senior prom over the week. Jenna sent me this photo from @noemihk on Instagram and asked if I could recreate it to match her dress and I said "of course!"

We started out with one coat of Zoya Trixie to get a pretty solid silver base down and then I used three coats of OPI Which is Witch for more bling.

Once that was completely dry, I slowly and carefully painted the white sections using Milani White on the Spot with the brush from the polish. I used Zoya Ibiza for the navy blue and used a striping brush to paint those sections. That was the painstaking part!

And here is the beautiful little lady all dressed up! It seriously shouldn't be legal to be this good looking...

I absolutely loved her hair. She has the longest, thickest hair I've ever seen and it looked amazing.

And here's a shot of the front of her dress. She picked a good one!

Are you going to prom this year? Or, if you're not quite so young, did you go to your senior prom? What do you remember most? My prom was rather boring, unfortunately!

New Milani High Speed Fast Dry Shades for 2013 Swatches/Review

Good morning! I have a bunch of Milani stuff in line to review for you guys (sent to me by their PR) and today I have six new nail polish shades from their High Speed Fast Dry line.

Instant Pearl is the first shade and it is a white polish with a (you guessed it!) pearl finish. This is two coats and it actually wasn't as brushstroke-y as I expected it to be. 

Pink Express is a lovely, sweet pastel pink shade. Perfect coverage in two coats.

Move On Mauve is a shimmery slightly-jelly shade of medium pink. This was three coats.

Rapid Orchid is supposed to be a deep purple, but I think it's really difficult to see anything other than black in this one. I did two coats here.

Quick Teal was a hard one to photograph. I think I got pretty close with the shade, but it's much more vibrant than this in person. This is two coats.

Last but not least is Flaming Race, a super bright red than leans ever so slightly coral. This is two coats.

I'm a big fan of the High Speed Fast Dry line and these shades are a good addition to the line. The formulas were pretty good overall. They tend to be a bit thick but I find that they are easy to work with and I love how quickly they dry! These shades retail for $4.99 and can be purchased from Milani's website or drugstores like CVS.

These products were provided for my honest review from the company's PR.

Milani New Mascara & Eye Liner Releases for 2013: Review

Good morning! I have a couple of new eye products from Milani to review for you guys today. First is the Grandissimo Lashes mascara, which is a new voluminous mascara.

These are my bare lashes on the left and wearing the Grandissimo mascara on the right. I'm very impressed with this mascara! It applies very evenly and doesn't clump or smudge.

I also received some eye liners to try out as well. The four swatches on the left are the Liquid Eye Liquid-Like eye liners (here and here) and the two are the right are of the Eye Tech Bold liner. The Liquid-Like liners are sooooo smooth and creamy! From left to right the colors are: Perfect Purple, Brown, Graphite, and Black. The Eye Tech liner is a little too thick for my liking, but it works pretty well. You need at least two swipes to get a solid black line, but if you like your liner thick, this will surely be a great product for you.

These new products are available online on Milani's website and in drugstores nation wide. Are there any of these that you are thinking of picking up? The Liquid-Like liners will sure be getting a lot of use from me!

Products provided for review

Milani Color Statement 2013 Lipsticks: Reds & Oranges Swatches/Review

Hola! This morning I have swatches of some awesome new lipsticks from Milani to show you guys! Milani recently revamped the packaging for their Color Statement lipsticks and they now come packaged in beautiful gold tubes with a clear piece at the bottom that shows the color of the lipstick. Today I have the red and orange shades to share with you. All of these lippies have great pigmentation and smell like watermelon in the tube! The scent doesn't stay on the lip, but I love it!

Sweet Nectar is a bright orange creamy shade. I thought orange would be too crazy for me, but I actually kind of like this one.

Orange-Gina is a metallic warm orange with a "pearl" finish.

High Voltage is a seriously bright red with a "vinyl" finish. It is so shiny!

Red Label is a pretty even-toned red to my eye. Nice and saturated.

Cherry Crave is a warm metallic red shade. I generally prefer cream shades over shades with shimmer, but this one is very pretty and flattering.

Best Red is my favorite of the set and the first one that I wore. This is the most matte shade out of all of them (I actually gently patted a tissue over my lips to take away a bit more of the shine when I wore this). It matches perfectly with the True Red lip liner.

Ruby Valentine is the last and darkest of the shades. This one has a vinyl finish and is very shiny! However, you can see that it doesn't match too well with the True Red lip liner.

Here are swatches of all the shades on my arm. From left to right on the top: Sweet Nectar, High Voltage, Cherry Crave, and Ruby Valentine. From left to right on the bottom: Orange-Gina, Red Label, Best Red, True Red lip liner, Nude lip liner.

These lipsticks retail for $5.49, which is incredible for how nice they are. You can view and order them on Milani's website, or find them in your local drugstores. Do you rock red lips?

Products provided for review

Sexy, Edgy Nails feat. Milani!

I did these nails for a weekend trip to Philly to see my best friend and I LOVED them. They were so glittery and fabulous and the studs added just the right amount of edge. I started with two coats of Milani Black Swift and just used the brush from Milani Silver Dazzle to do the stripe. The studs came in a little wheel that I ordered for super cheap from eBay. I would definitely wear these again! Maybe even for New Year's? ;)

Snowy Winter Tree Nail Art

Well, it's December! How about some winter nail art? I knew I wanted to do a winter version of the autumn tree mani that I did and this turned out just like a imagined.

I started out with two coats of RBL Bella, followed by sponging with Konad white on the tips of my nails to create a snowy ground and very lightly on the rest of my nail to simulate falling snow. I also sponged Zoya Sparkle Gloss all over, but it's subtle and hard to see in the photos.

I drew the trees with a thin striping brush and Milani Dark Coffee. They didn't turn out as good as the past ones I've done, but oh well. They look great at a regular viewing distance ;) I used a small dotting tool to add some snow to the branches and then stamped some small snowflakes using MASH plate m50. What do you think?

Turkey Day Nails!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I wasn't planning on doing any themed nails for Thanksgiving, but I decided last night that I couldn't resist painting some adorable turkey nail art. So these cuties are what I will be sporting while I stuff my face today ;P

I started out with Milani Chocolate Sprinkles on every nail except for my ring nail, which I painted with two coats of Essie Sand Tropez. I painted the feathers with China Glaze Riveting, Lighthouse, and Nicole by OPI Keeping Up with Santa. I used my biggest dotting tool to create the turkey's body with Milani Dark Coffee and then used Riveting again for the beak and feet. I hope you love them as much as I do!

Autumn Leaves French Manicure

I guess that I should have named this week Festive Fall Nail Art Week! :P Today I have a festive french mani for you to enjoy. I always forget how much I love fun french mani designs like this; I did one around the holidays last year and swore to myself that I would wear them more often, but alas, I never did.

I started with two coats of Confetti Pink Paradise and used Milani Chocolate Sprinkles to create my french tip by painting it right on the tips of my nails. I didn't use any kind of tape or anything since I knew the edge would be covered by the leaves anyway. After that was totally dry, I stamped some leaves randomly with a bunch of different colors: Essie Very Structured, Milani Rapid Cherry, Orly Luxe and Rescue Beauty Lounge Santa Fe. I think I'm going to do this again as my Thanksgiving mani! :)

Festive Autumn Tree/Foliage Nail Art

I know I mentioned this in Monday's post, but I was really inspired this past weekend to do some nail art. I realized when I was working on my guest post for Let Them Have Polish that I have done barely any nail art recently and it made me sad! So to remedy the lack of nail art situation, I looked at some of the recent photos that I have taken and drew inspiration from them! This mani was inspired by a photo of the fall foliage at the lake behind my house; you can see that photo at the bottom of this post.

I started out with two coats of Rescue Beauty Lounge Bella for my base and sponged the "leaves" with Rescue Beauty Lounge Santa Fe, Zoya Elisa, and Illamasqua Scarab. Once I was satisfied with the color variety for the trees, I drew the actual tree on with a thin brush and Milani Dark Coffee. I thought the design was missing something, so I sponged Shimmer Tracy on the rest of the space. I'm glad I did; the gold glitter reminds me of leaves blowing around in the wind!

Lastly, here is the photo that inspired these nails! I took it with my iPhone and added a filter to make it a bit more pink so that it would match my phone case when I used it as a background. I hope you guys enjoyed this mani; I know I did! :)

Milani Fall Fashion Nail Trends Photos/Swatches

Hey everyone, happy Friday! Today I wanted to share my entries to the Milani Fall Fashion Nail Trends Pinterest boards and I hope you enjoy them. The first design I did was called Haute Rod and I used Milani Rapid Cherry as my base coat. Then I drew a thick stripe down the center of each nail with Black Swift and finished it off with Silver Dazzle half moons. This was my favorite look!

The next look was called Colorblock. I used Milani White on the Spot for the base here and then taped off sections of the nail and used Fresh Teal and Black Swift for the actual colorblocking. I finished the design off with some dots in Totally 80's.

This design was for Gilded Rebel and is my second favorite of the ones I did. Here I used Black Swift as my base and did french tips using Gold Glitz. Lastly, I took a toothpick and picked up the individual glitters from Gold and used them to accent the tips.

This is the fourth and last design, called Glamazon. With a name like that, I knew that I had to do something bold and glittery, so this is what I came up with. I used Black Swift as my base (which by the way is an awesome and quick-drying black!) and sponged Twinkle, Fuchsia, and Teal from the cuticles in that order. This was was really fun and sparkly!

Do you think I got the trends right? Which design is your favorite? You can check out the rest of the Fall Fashion Nail Trend boards by heading over to Milani's Pinterest page.

*Products in this post were provided for my use to create these designs.*

Milani Shadow Eyez 12 Hour Pencils

Hi everybody! I have some Milani swatches of a different variety for you this afternoon. These are the Milani Shadow Eyez eye shadow pencils and they are awesome! The full range of colors is swatched below and for this look, I used four of the six. I started out applying Champagne Toast to the inner section of my lid and then blended that as best I could with Brown Deluxe on the outer section. These aren't the easiest to blend together, but if you work quickly it is possible. I used Winter White as a highlight under my eye brow and Aquatic Style as a pop of color on my lower water line.

These are the six shades that the Shadow Eyez pencils are offered in swatched over primer (from left to right): Winter White, Champagne Toast, Brown Deluxe, Green Safari, Aquatic Style, and Royal Purple. I really, really love eye shadow in pencil form. It's so quick and easy to apply and control and these last a really long time over primer. I rubbed my arm really hard with my thumb after swatching these to see if they would smudge and they didn't budge one bit! All of these colors have a metallic finish with the exception of Royal Purple, which actually is kind of matte.

The Milani Shadow Eyez pencils can be purchase on the Milani website or in most drugstores that carry Milani. If you have tried these pencils, what did you think? If you haven't, would you want to?

*Products in this post were provided for my honest review.*

Milani Swatches: Part Two

Hi all! Here is the second half of the Milani nail polish swatches that I have for you, starting with Just Grayt, a nice gray shade that kind of reminds me of wet concrete.

Teddy Brown is a dirty, dusty shade of taupe. I love this type of shade for fall.
 

Natural Touch is a dirty rose pink/beige shade. Very grandma-esque.

Morning Coffee is a unique reddish brown shade. I don't own anything like this and I'm really glad to have all these browns to add to my stash.

Dark Coffee is a deep, dark brown, exactly like black coffee. Only without the nasty aftertaste. :P

Chocolate Sprinkles is my favorite out of this second set of colors. This is the most sparkly, warm, and gorgeous shade of brown that I've ever seen.

Milani polishes can be purchased at most drugstores and on their website.What do you think about browns and neutrals for fall? Are you on board?

*Product(s) in this post were provided for my honest review.*

Milani Swatches: Part One

Hola everyone! I have a bunch of Milani swatches for you, so I'm going to split them up into two different posts. There will be six more colors tomorrow as well.

Fuchsia Fierce is a fantastic bright shade of pink. What you're looking at here is two coats, but this very easily could have been a one-coater. Color me impressed.

A Rose MyLady is a shimmery pale pink. I used two coats for this swatch and did experience a bit of streaking, so make sure you let your coats dry in between.

Signature Gold is a warm gold metallic. I'm not crazy about it against my skin by itself, but I have a feeling it will be great for stamping. I used two coats here.

Pink Slippers is a sheer warm pink with some pearly shimmer mixed in. I used three coats and I was still able to see my VNL in some places.

Hipster Plum is awesome! The name cracks me up and the color is perfect. Two easy coats were all that was needed for this juicy deep purple creme.

Deep Thoughts is a gorgeous purple-blue shimmer. I love shades like this and this one really is great to have. Two easy coats here.

Milani polishes can be purchased at most drugstores and on their website. What do you think of these shades? Are you excited to see what I have for you tomorrow? :)

*Product(s) in this post were provided for my honest review.*