Royal Wedding Nails

Hello!

I know I am simply a lowly American but I was still pretty interested in the Royal Wedding today. I did not however get up at 3 or 4 AM to watch it but as I am typing this, Amanda and I are watching the recap of the wedding on TLC. I thought it was lovely! William and Kate were so cute, and its so obvious how much they are in love, its very sweet. The dress, IMO, was just okay. I know *gasp* because everyone is praising it to no end but for me, it was very simple and understated. I do love the lace sleeves and the tiara but it was too simple for my taste! =P So that's my 2 cents on it, I hope its not too insulting to anyone British and I'm not out of place!

I've wanted to do a union jack (I don't know if that's supposed to be capitalized...) on my nails for a while now so I figured today would be a good to do it.

For my union jack, I used my navy creme from Fashion Bug called Dark Denim for the blue base, SH XW White On and SH XW Cherry Red with a striping brush for the white and red stripes. I topped off with Seche Vite. I am very proud of how these came out! They are by no means perfect and macro shows off all my minor flaws but I love them anyway, they look great, if I do say so myself!!

Please ignore any minor chips, I took a shower and they chipped!! :( Also, ignore the red smears, crooked lines and imperfections!!

Thumb detail, I think either this one or my middle nail came out the best!

I hope you guys liked them, especially anyone British and I hope I did justice to your flag!

Oh and *fingers crossed and knock on wood* hopefully our Zoyas will come in the mail today!! *squeal* I AM SO FREAKIN EXCITED!! Although I am sad because our order got messed up and now I am apparently not getting Rica... :( Oh well! If they do come this afternoon expect a VERY excited post from me with bottle pics galore, Zoya skittles and a pedi!! AHHH! I'm gonna go crazy when they come!!

Enjoy your Friday and thanks for looking!

Fiona

Green Wednesday #7: Flower Power

Hey everyone! I know that Fiona usually does Green Wednesday, but since she didn't post anything for today and I actually wore green today, I decided to do the Green Wednesday post today instead!

Today it's Orly's Green Apple (sorry, I forgot to take a picture of it by itself before I added the decorations). It's a nice limey/green apple green. I applied 3 coats of this polish, and it kind of streaked a bit unless I had a lot of polish on the brush while applying it to my nail. I'm just hoping that it won't stain my nails when I take it off later.

After I added a coat of Seche Vite over Green Apple, I decided to try to do some dot flowers with my medium sized homemade dotting tool. Fiona's done this kind of nail art before, but I wanted to try for myself. I used Sinful Colors Fly Away as the petal color of the flower and Sinful Colors Let"s Meet (a new yellow of Fiona's) as the center of the flowers. This is how it came out. I couldn't pick just three pictures today like I normally do since they all looked good so I just decided to go with all of them:

Form L to R: Sinful Colors Let's Meet, Orly Green Apple, Sinful Colors Fly Away

I like how these came out. They also matched with the bright colors of the shirt I wore today (it's finally warm and sunny out today here in New England; it's 78 degrees where out college is!). So I hope that you all like this design, and if you live in New England, enjoy the nice weather while you still can! It's going to be warm again tomorrow!

-A

Whatever...

Hello.

*Sigh* So my nails are actually green (ish today... OPI Catch Me in Your Net layered over a navy creme which makes it look very green...) buuut... I don't feel like taking pictures today. I really just feel like lying in bed all day. I don't know whats up with me. I'm in a funk I think. You know the mood where every little thing bugs the crap out of you... or maybe its just me... but thats the kind of mood I'm in today. Sorry to whine... but I feel the need to explain my lackluster post today.

So... since I haven't posted in a while I figure I should and just decided to post the pink manicure I had on on Saturday, before Easter. I was just messing around when I did this. I first painted my franken "Pretty in Peach" but HATED it because its so close to my skin tone (which is so sad...) and it gave me funky looking manikin hands... I don't think I spelled that right but spellcheck isn't telling me its wrong so... So I went over it with Sinful 24/7, a matte hot pink. Then the matte-ness was pissing me off, so I put a layer of Sinful Social Ladder, a sheer shimmery pinkish nude color, on top. I liked it okay at the time but was mostly tired because it was likely 2 AM so I went to bed without any top coat on... which is never a good idea. So it was kinda wrinkled the next day but I took pictures anyway. And now I'm glad I did because now I have something to post for today.

Here it is. Something girly and different. Plus now I fit in with Pink Wednesday. Woo.

Yeah, you can totally see the peach color peeking out around the sides. This is what happens when you paint your nails out of frustration at 2 AM, people. This is totally NOT color accurate as well.

This isn't color accurate either but I like the shade of pink it is here... and it shows off the shimmer nicely.

This is closer to color accurate but its still too bright...

Now its too light here... but close.

Wayyy too light. Whatever.

So I hope the rest of you are having a better day. Thanks for looking.

Now I'm going to go back to being huddled in my bed effectively avoiding reality by reading fan fiction. =P

PS, If you're a fan of fan fiction you might like Wide Awake by angstgoddess003 on Live Journal... I'd put the real link but then I would lose my place... its a Twilight fic but its very different and the best one I've read so far!

Fiona

Dyed Easter Eggs

Happy Easter everyone! I'm going to keep it short tonight since I'm dead tired after my day today and I really want to go to bed. For my Easter nail design, I used Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Blue-Away and Pink Blink and China Glaze Re-Fresh Mint and Light as Air and a pair of zig-zag craft scissors in order to make a pastel dyed egg design. It wasn't hard to do, but the polish didn't want to dry unless I did a coat of Seche Vite on top of each new polish layer. It came out looking pretty cool in the end though!

(from L to R): Sally Hansen Blue-Away, China Glaze Re-Fresh Mint, Pink Blink, Light as Air

 Bright sun, no flash

no flash

Well I hope you all like it. Now, time for bed!

-A

Happy Easter!

Hello!

Happy Easter! I hope you all are enjoying your day! Today I did a fun Easter egg inspired mani using a bunch of pastel colors. I literally did this at 2 AM this morning while watching "The Nanny" (I LOVE that show!!) on youtube and didn't have a clue what the design was going to be. This is just my tired brain throwing crap together... I used at least 10 polishes which I don't have a picture of and won't list because I've shown them all to you before, plus a looooong list of polishes is boring.
I used a dotting tool and toothpicks for this... I lost my striper brush!! Sorry this is so messy and random... :)

Here's my left hand... I don't like my index, middle or ring on this hand. 

My left thumb is my favorite! The glitter is Wet n' Wild Kaleidoscope by the way. If you want to know what any of the other colors are, feel free to ask in the comments!

Right hand, which I like better, but please ignore my nubby middle nail, I just broke it today!! Good thing it wasn't my left!

I have some bonus Easter pictures for you guys! We have 9 chickens here at home that lay eggs. They're my mom's and she loves them, so she decided to get 3 more chicks this spring!

Here are some baby chick pictures! They're so darling and adorable!

This is the one my sister named, Twiggie, sleepy and all curled up in a towel on my lap!!

Oh hi!!

Just walking around, she's so fast!!

Here's me holding her (I'm not hurting her, promise!!) My nails are my NOTD yesterday which I might get around to posting... a layering experiment with Sinful 24/7 and Social Ladder...

View from above in their little cage! Its red tinted because of the heat lamp... yes there's poop every where, but we just cleaned it!! They're messy babies!!

They don't like the flash too much!! There's Twiggie in the foreground, The dark and striped one is the one my mom named Ester, and the one in back, my brother named Nugget, which I think is horrible!!
Sorry, I know the poop is a little yucky!!

I thought this was so cute!! Look at Ester, she looks like she's wearing eyeliner and mascara!!

Mischeivious Marley the muffin-head likes the chicken wire...

Yummy Easter candy!!

Mmmmmm...

I hope you guys enjoyed your day! The babies say "peep peep peep!!"

Thanks for looking!

Fiona

Why the Bay of Evil is... Evil

So we've all heard of eBay (and if you haven't then you must live under a rock). We all know that you can pretty much buy or sell anything on that site auction style at either extremely cheap or expensive prices. But there is an evil side to eBay, hence why it is affectionately known as the bay of evil. Sounds like a Harry Potter book doesn't it? Harry Potter and the Bay of Evil. Except I doubt that Harry would be battling eBay in this tale. But anyway, the reason why the bay of evil is... evil.

I had seen on a post last weekend on Chloe's Nails a manicure of her's that she used OPI DS Original. Since the original DS line was discontinued, it's pretty much impossible to find them anywhere (although I did find DS Signature and Sapphire on Amazon, love Amazon!). So I decided to look at eBay to see if they might possibly have a bottle of DS Original. And they did! And it was only $10 + $3.75 for shipping! I was so psyched that I knew I had to get it and signed up for an eBay and a paypal account in order to get it. I then bought the polish thinking that it would be easy and I'd have my polish by the middle of the week. That's when eBay became the bay of evil.

I didn't realize that when you add a credit card (or in my case a gift card that acts as a credit card, I don't trust the internet THAT much) so when I kept trying to figure out why the bay of evil wasn't allowing me to buy my polish, I was getting so mad that I tried to cancel my order (it was a buy now item) and though it was done with. It wasn't since on Sunday and Monday the bay of evil kept sending me e-mails telling me that I still had to pay for my order. Turns out that no one told me that once you buy a buy now item, you have to pay for it. That would have been nice to know before had. So on Tuesday I finally just decided to go back onto paypal and try and verify my gift card credit card. They said it would take a day or two to show up, but in reality it took 30 seconds since it was a gift card. But anyway, my gift card got verified, I bought my bottle of DS Original,  and it was shipped out five minutes later.

Finally, the bay of evil wasn't so evil anymore, until I realized that the bay of evil had shipped DS Original to my house instead of my mailbox up at college. Once again the bay of evil screwed with me, sigh. Well, at least I'm home for the weekend since it's Easter and DS Original is sitting in our mailbox down at the post office so I'll have picks up later of it and the DS Signature I got off Amazon. So long story short, the bay of evil can be evil, but for some reason I'm still on it trying to get more holographic polishes. You'd think I'd learn from the first time, oh well.

-A

Showing the Earth some love!!

Hello!

Happy Earth Day (to our US readers... I don't know if you celebrate Earth Day in other countries as well...) I did a special mani for Earth Day today! I'm going to keep this quick because I have to head over to where our school's Science Society (which I am a member of) is having a plant sale in honor of today. I'm sure you guys don't really care all that much about my ramblings anyway... :)

Here's what I used:

China Glaze Shower Together, Nicole Iceberg Lotus, SH ID Jade Jump, SH XW Pacific Blue, Nicole One Time Lime, SH XW White On and Kiss Nail Art Paint in black

I started with two coats of Shower Together on all my fingers except my accent ring. I then sponged Iceberg Lotus onto those nails and then painted with the brush of IL, tips across my nails. Then I painted my accent nails with Jade Jump. After it dried, I painted on a circle with Pacific Blue just with the brush from the bottle (this was difficult... I wish I had some reinforcement stickers to use for this!!) After that dried, I used my dotting tool with One Time Lime to make some vague continent shapes. Then I used a Q-tip dipped in White On to dab on some clouds. I wasn't happy with how this looked, so I very carefully outlined the circle using the Kiss striper and went back over the continents with a brighter green (SH XW Green With Envy, not pictured) Then I finished with a coat of SV.

Here they are!

Detail of left Earth, sorry I didn't realize this was blurry!!

Right Earth, sorry blurry again, I was in a rush this morning! I actually like this one better!

Let me know what you guys think of these!

I gotta run now! Enjoy your Friday!!

Thanks for looking!

Fiona

I'm On Crack!

Hello!!

So... I caved. I tried crackle. And surprise surprise, I FREAKIN' love it!! I NEED it in every color now!! I shamelessly copied this mani from this. I going straight past "inspired by" and right to "copied" even though I used different colors than her. As soon as I saw that, I knew I needed it on my nails! So I used the crackle polish that Amanda got from our little local salon downtown. Its not any brand I've ever heard of... this is what the back of the bottle looks like:

This is what I used to do this mani:

SH XW Lacey Lilac, WnW NERDS Need Love Too, SH XW Green With Envy, China Glaze For Audrey, Sinful 24/7 and the black "Crackle Shatter"

I started with one coat of Lacey Lilac. My bottle has gotten weird after using it a lot... it needs thinner, but the good thing is now its opaque in one coat, it just applies like glue... haha! Then I made random dots all over my nails with the other colors, not going in any pattern, some going on top of eachother, it was very messy!! I would never wear this as an actual mani... although maybe something similar if it were a little neater.

Then I went over it with the crackle!

I love this look so much!! I left the crackle matte, so there's no TC in this mani. I liked the matte effect though and didn't experience any chipping!! This crackled really well, I think! Its comparable to pictures I've seen of OPI Black Shatter IMO. Some nails crackled better than others... like my middle nail, which was my favorite! My pinkie was kind of a fail because I applied it a little too thick so it didn't crackle as evenly or as finely so it didn't look as good. It just kind of globbed up. I like the effect of the fine crackles within larger crackles as in my middle and index.
I got a few compliments on this during Biology lab today. My lab partner, the same one that asked about the polka dots a few weeks ago, wanted to know where she could buy crackle and was very fascinated by it!! It was so funny! :) My lab instructor also commented on them. She likes polish as well... not as much as say a nail blogger does, but knows about it so she immediately mentioned the OPI Pirates of the Caribbean collection with the silver shatter!! :) She's a pretty cool lady, but making up tromp through the woods in the cold and snow (!!) and count plants is not so cool.

Here's a few more pictures... I can't help myself!!

Close up. Dagger nail is back!! Also, see the awesome lighting bolt that formed in the middle of my middle nail... that was so amazing to me!!

Haha, posing with my mini fridge...

Let me know what you guys think of this!!

 Also, I'm sure you saw our post about the Zoya exchange. Well I wanted to mention along with that that I am soooooo freakin' excited to FINALLY own some Zoyas!! I am exchanging 8 piece of crap polishes (including my first ever franken that I have named "Strawberry Barf" which I think I just literally mixed my entire collection at the time together in one bottle... yeah  I had like 4 polishes then so its pink, purple, green and blue I think. Not hot.) which means I'm getting 8 new Zoyas!! YAY! My first ever Zoyas! I've ordered: Mimi, Faye, Crystal, Rica, Ivanka, Zara, Dannii, and Jolene. Purple, blue, green, pink... mostly sparkles!

I hope you guys enjoyed your Thursday and I'll post again tomorrow for Earth Day!!

Thanks for looking!

Fiona