Glitzy Strawberries

Hello!

It looks like I'm back to regular posting, so yay!! I was in a nail art mood last night and was inspired by this video to try some strawberry nails. I also came across this picture while looking up pictures of strawberry nail art so I decided I needed to try it. I also got some nail art brushes for my birthday that I didn't include in my haul post because they just came a few days ago. They're really cheap ones my mom found on Amazon.com (for like $7) and they're not that great and there's no dotting tool but that's okay since I already have a homemade one.

So last night as well as doing strawberry nails, I was inspired to do some "food" nails for Leslie at Nail Polish Art Addiction's contest where you have to create nails "good enough to eat"! I'm not allowed to show you my entry on here yet and I'm not sure if I'm going to go with the design I came up with because its not super good but since I spent over an hour doing them (mixing colors and junk) only to snap a few pictures and then immediately remove them it seems like a huge waste of time and effort not to enter them. I just know I could do a lot better. : / I guess it wouldn't hurt to say what my theme was since the rules just state that I can't post a picture of them... I did breakfast nails and that's all I'm saying!! 

Anyway back to my strawberry nails, here they are!!

Please excuse the tip wear which I have no idea where it came from... I did these less than 24 hours ago, haven't done anything today and somehow I have tip wear??! I don't understand!!

Here's what I used:

I built a super crappy and small lightbox this afternoon and tried taking some pictures in it. The bottle pics look pretty good but the nail ones aren't so great so I took some outdoor pics in the sun, since I can do that now that I'm home! :)

From left to right: China Glaze Ruby Pumps, SH XW Going Green, Sinful Happy Ending, Sinful Let's meet and SV. I used the brush closest to the bottles for the leaves and whatever the hell that metal thing is for the seeds. I don't know what its for but it looks to me like metal toothpick... or a super small dotting tool with a pointy tip??

I thought Ruby Pumps would be perfect for the strawberry color and now realize its a little too red and not pink enough. I wish I had Zoya Reva which would be better for this but hey, it still looks good!! RP is notoriously hard to photograph but I managed to capture it pretty accurately in the sunlight pictures. I'm sure you've heard all about RP unless you're new to nail blogging so I'll spare you the usual ramblings about how gorgeous it is and let the pictures do the talking. (It really is as gorgeous as everyone says it is and I think its a must have for any addict. I don't know if its part of the core line or not but I got mine pretty cheap on Amazon.com, it was like $2.50 with $3.99 shipping.)

Anyways, after doing 2 coats of RP for the base, I painted some flowy looking leaves with SH XW Going Green which is very opaque (and GORGEOUS, a must have for any green lover) and is actually very good for stamping! Thanks again, Amanda for finding this for me! *hugs* Then I highlighted the edges of the leaves with Sinful Happy Ending (am I the only one that finds that name kinda dirty... or do I just have a dirty mind?) Last I used Sinful Let's Meet, a shimmery golden yellow perhaps comparable to China Glaze Lighthouse?? for the seeds using the metal toothpick thingie. I finished with a coat of SV.

This mani was ridiculously easy, the only hard part was not getting polish all over my cuticles and skin when doing the green tops. The leaves are basically like painting a ruffian and then adding flowing leaves from it. So I think if you would like to try nail art but are not that confident in it, watch the video I linked above and I'm sure you could achieve a similar result with a toothpick or striping polish like she uses in the video if you don't have brushes. I'd love to see what you come up with if you try this!!

This is my thumb which I think came out the best and looks the most like a strawberry because of the shape of my nail.

This is also a pretty accurate representation of RP, its simply stunning!!

Whoa, check out my corpse fingers! This shows how shiny this is and my ring nail is exactly what RP looks like! It almost glows from within! YOU NEED THIS!! Haha!!

Oh and here's one of the pictures taken in my crappy lightbox (I Googled "DIY lightbox" and found a tutorial on how to make one, its so easy!!)

Yeah... it makes it look kinda matte and sooooo NOT color accurate!! That is the real color of my skin though... :)

So, I hope you guys liked this! Take home point: don't be afraid of nail art and give this a try! Also, get Ruby Pumps and Going Green (if you love green)!!

Have a great day/night and thanks for looking!

Fiona

Pick 3 Challenge!

Hello!

I did this about 3? weeks ago... maybe 2... I have no idea. Anyway a comment Whitney made on yesterday's post made me realize that I never posted this when I did it.

So The Kiwi With The Crazy Nails tagged us for the pick 3 challenge that's been circulating around the blogosphere for a while now. The challenge? Blindly pick 3 polishes from your stash and do a manicure with them. So dumped out my stash, had Amanda mix them up for me since they were organized by color and reached in and picked Zoya Zara, Wet n' Wild Raincheck and China Glaze Flyin' High. I think I got pretty lucky! A purple, a periwinkle and a blue!! I'd said before I actually picked any colors that I would take the easy way out and just do vertical stripes with whatever colors I ended up with, but look! I got 3 very similar colors that lend themselves very nicely to a gradient! So that's what I did!!

Sorry I don't have a bottle shot of the 3! I thought I'd taken one, but I guess not!

I started with a coat of Flyin' High (blue) as a base and then painted Raincheck on the last 2/3 of my nail and tried to gently touch it with my finger a la Robin Moses as seen in this video but didn't do as good a job as she did. Then I did Zara on the last 1/3 of my nail and tried the same technique to get the colors to blend. I like out it turned out, although it could be better. This is with no cleanup and no top coat because I did not wear this a mani, or even both hands. I just didn't feel like actually wearing it so I took it right off after the pictures.

The pictures make it look worse than it actually was and my ring nail was shaped weird here... I don't remember why but I should have shaped it!!

Amanda already tagged people in her pick 3 post so I'm not gonna tag anyone else.

Again, enjoy your day/night guys and thanks for looking!!

Fiona

WnW Gray's Anatomy, party nails and pedi, and animals being cute

Hello!

Sorry for the completely uncreative title... First off I am finally up to date in reading blogs so this explains why I have just today commented on some of your posts from days and days ago. I'm so happy to be up to date because, truthfully, it was really stressing me out being behind. I have spent pretty much all day today in front of the computer just reading posts... 5 hours or more!! I'm so unproductive! But I am posting today so I think that might make up for it (in my own world it does!) I'm also in talkative mood today so forgive me if I babble on and on. I'll just bold in what's important and you guys can choose to either read the long or the short version!! I hope you guys don't mind. As my friend's mom said yesterday (she's also kinda my second mom!!) "Fiona can't tell a short story!" Haha, so true!

First off, as you've probably gathered from the title is some swatches of Wet n Wild Gray's Anatomy. I was too lazy to go and get the bottle upstairs (its REALLY hot and humid here, like 91 degrees F) so here are some awkward bottle-less swatches. Sunlight pics, woooo whoo!!!

I'm gonna apologize right off for any weird dents, bubbles and some polish on my skin that I swear I didn't notice before taking this pictures. It was a bad mani night last night. :(

This is 4 ish coats of GA, a semi-sheer silver with lilac and cool green flashes. Definitely a multi-chrome. I know this was popular a few months or so ago and everyone was swatching it then, so I'm kinda late. Better late than never. I'd wanted this one for a while now, but it was always sold out at the WnW displays. Supposedly, this is a close dupe of Lippman's Wicked Game and very similar to OPI Not Like the Movies from the Katy Perry collection.

I'm wearing 4+ coats because like I said it was a bad mani night. Its opaque and looks fine at 3 coats, 2 if you don't mind some VNL. I was watching I Am Number Four last night with my mom while doing my nails (I don't suggest do a mani on the couch while watching a movie. It never comes out very well) so I was rushing because she had already started the movie and I didn't want to miss it. Its an awesome movie by the way, I recommend seeing it!! Anyway, I did 3 coats and sat to watch the movie. Now, I'll admit I tend to fidget a lot while watching movies, I can't just sit still!! So I was picking the dried polish on my pallete (plastic bin cover) and ended up ruining the tips of some nails. So I did another coat to fix it. Then it was too thick and goopy and not drying, so I gave in and used SV, even though I'm trying to conserve it, and let that dry. I continued picking at the dried polish (its fun to peel it off!!) and the SV wasn't playing nicely with the 4 goopy coats of GA so I ended up with dents still. :( GA also bubbled a little (or a lot...) so that didn't help. Moral of the story is not to do too many coats because it may not dry right and you'll end up with a crappy mani.

Its still super pretty though so I don't mind all the trouble it cost me. This is one the most subdued manis I've ever worn on here and I kinda like it. I still was tempted not to put either pink, gray or black crackle on it or stamp some skulls or something, lol!!

I also totally LOVE the name of this! I love all the bad TV show puns from this collection! They're terribley fantastic! I used to love the show Grey's Anatomy and used to watch re runs of it on Oxygen (I think) all last summer, starting from the beginning. My absolute favorite character was George as I have a thing for baby-faced guys with shaggy hair. After Googling the actor who played him, I learned that his character was killed off (spolier alert!!) in the second or third season, which depressed me to no end because I really only watched the show for him (his name is T.R. Knight if you are unfamiliar with the show) so I watched up until the episode before he dies because I couldn't bear to see him die (I know, I know, its only a show!!) and then I stopped watching it.
I also hated watching the opening credits of that show because at the time last year I was going through a break up with a guy named Patrick Dempsey (for real!!) and was really sad about it. It wasn't so much of a break up, but I don't know what else to call it because its a very loong story and I've already babbled so much. Basically he wasn't answering my facebook messages and being an @$$hole in general. We'd had a "thing" and gone on at least one date but we never really in a relationship so he's technically not my ex. So, seeing his name so much in the opening credits was actually making me sadder so I always avoided the opening. I'm okay with posting this personal info because he would never ever be reading this since he cut himself off from me completely.


Speaking of subdued (or not subdued), here's the mani I wore yesterday to my really good friend's graduation party (let's call her "J" since I call her that too!!) These were taken after the party so I apologize for the major chipping and the gross yellow nail tips!

This is alternating in between 1 coat of Orly Gumdrop with WnW Kaleidoscope (holo glitter for 99 cents!!) and 2 coats of Nicole Nicole's Nickel with Sally Hansen Crackle Overcoat in Fuchsia Shock with SV. Apparently, this combination of polishes didn't hold up too well because this chipped off, as you can see, in less than 24 hours. After the pictures, I was able to peel this all off in sheets. I should also mention that the first time I wore NN with SV, it all peeled off in sheets as well after about a day. The same thing happened with the combo of Nicole One Less Lonely Glitter and SV. I don't know if this is just my body chemistry or the combination of these opaque Nicole glitters and SV. It weird and I am not a fan of it.

Also, as you can also see the SH crackle didn't want to crack so well. I tried it over tacky polish but I think the coats were too thick. I did them thick because I wanted it to be opaque, but then I decided I like the effect of the glitter shining through it after the fact. I think I will do thinner coats next time over tacky polish because it definitely doesn't crack very well over completely dry.

I do like the way it cracked on my index though, as seen above. I kept these small because the yellow of my tips and peeling skin.

And here's the pedi I wore to the party with my matching shoes. Here's the picture of the shoes I posted on here when I first got them a few months ago, in case you didn't see it then. This is off the Khol's website.

Here's me in the shoes and my matching pedi. You can see my dog Cocoa's paw behind my feet, she insisted on being in the picture!!

Small because my toes are kinda ugly and red!! Please ignore my messed up left big toe. As I mentioned before, I had a procedure done on it to remove an ingrown toenail and kill off the nail so it wouldn't grow back. Its small and skinny now as compared to my chubby toes!


For this pedi, I used 1 coat of Orly Snowcone, which I wanted solely for the purpose of matching to these shoes, I promise its the exact same color, it just looks bright here. I also attempted to stamp one of my about 50 flower images from my fauxnad plates using Konad white. I was not having a good stamping night and its quite difficult to stamp on toes anyway, so it came out pretty terrible.

Out in the sunlight! Yeah, I have cankles... boo. And suuuuuper pale legs and feet which I pretty proud of. I embrace my paleness!!

And finally, my dog Cocoa wanted to be in the indoor pictures of the shoes so I decided to take some pictures of her and my cat Marley who was just hanging out. Some of them came out pretty cute so I decided to share them! 

She is TOTALLY posing for the camera here, look at that sassy eye roll!!

Here I was trying to get a picture of Marley, but Cocoa stuck her giant head in the picture at the last second!! Hahahaa!!

Here's Marley!!

Cocoa intruding on the picture again!!

Marley being a fat lazy and HOT! cat. I mean hot because it was so hot out today!

Thanks for reading my lengthy novel of a post if you did and I hope you enjoyed the pictures! Enjoy the rest of your Memorial Day (our American readers) and Monday for everyone else!! 

Fiona

The Zoya Fairy Came Saturday along With a Giant Sally's Coupon

Sorry that I haven't posted since Monday everyone, I caught the cold that my dad had on Tuesday and I was fighting it all week. It's the end of May; it should no longer be freakin' cold season! But I did get my package from Zoya Saturday that contained the nail polishes I got from their French Twist promo last weekend. :) These are the one's that I got:

Crystal (Fiona got this through the swap and then I wanted it!)

Suvi (it's more emerald green-ish)

Tart

Isla

Charisma (sorry for the weird background, I was trying to get this photo color accurate and it's still not the real color. It's more of a neon purple/magenta color)

Alegra (it's really a magenta color, my camera hates magenta with a passion)

Astra (the red is magenta, not red. Damn you camera!)

Catlin (one of the free bottles I got through the Twisted French promo)

Dove (the other free bottle I got through the promo)

Also this month, I got a coupon from Sally's Beauty Supply for 15% off since I spent more than $25 in there last month. I really wouldn't call what I got a coupon though since it was a huge ass green postcard that was about a foot wide and 5 inches tall. It's probably the biggest discount coupon that I've ever gotten and also one of the hardest to lose since it was huge and green. But with my huge coupon, I bought:

Peaceful Purple (part of the Finger Paints' Spring collection)

Laugh My Art Off

Hue Left A Message?

Crushed Candy

Broken Hearted

And I also got another bottle of SV. I had a hard time picking out the China Glaze crackles though. My Sally's had all of the colors except for the black one. They had Cracked Concrete (which Fiona got for her birthday), Fault Line (the purple crackle that doesn't really crackle), Lightning Bolt (the white that doesn't really crackle either), Crushed Candy, and Broken Hearted. I couldn't remember if Broken Hearted crackled that well, and I couldn't text Fiona if she knew, so I decided to just buy it. Mine does crackle pretty well so it was a good buy then.

With all of the polishes I got Saturday, I couldn't decide which polish to put on, but I finally decided on Zoya Charisma. Charisma won the InStyle Best Beauty Buys 2011, and there's a reason for it! This polish is described on the Zoya website as an "ultra bright neon fluorescent magenta/red-toned purple cream. This neon shade dries matte, but also can be worn with topcoat for a glossy finish". And this is exactly what this polish is. This polish went on smoothly, and it did dry matte which also means that it dried pretty fast. Not as fast as normal matte polishes, but fast for a neon color. It took three to four coats to get it full coverage, and a coat of SV brought Charisma back to a shiny finish. 

Charisma is quite the lady: indoors she's a bright neon violet purple that stands out in a subtle way that says "oh, don't mind me, I'm just naturally bright. I'm not trying to stand out intentionally.". Outside she's a bright neon purple-tinted magenta that just screams "I'm here, let this party begin because I'm here now and I'm ready to shine!". 

Here's what she looks like inside. Sorry I don't have any outdoor pics yet because it was too hot and humid to go outside of my house yesterday. All pictures are four coats with a coat of SV on top.

Charisma with the flash on indoors: this is what she kind of looks like outside.

This is what she looks like indoors with no flash. I kind of had to brighten my pics on my computer since the lighting in my room sucks a bit with this color. My hand did not look yellow at all with this color so please ignore the jaundice look of my skin in the next few pics. Also these pics are exactly what the bottle of Charisma looks like.

Charisma is a good color for people who have cool skin tones like me (even if some of my pics make me look yellow), but it's such a fun and bright color that people with warm tones can pull it off as well. So if you've been wanting to buy this color for a bit but just weren't sure you'd like it, I say that you should because it's a good color for summer and it's just so bright and fun that you kind of just have to have this color for yourself. So along with the Best Beauty Buys award, I give Charisma a big HA BISKY! for being so awesome and bright.

-A

OMG WHAT?! A BLOG POST!!? (May haul)

Hello!

Guess who's actually posting!! Me!! For the first time in over a week here's an actual post for you guys! I am such a bad blogger, and I apologize for that. Due to the fact that this is long overdue, I am gonna post about a million pictures and talk a lot... I hope you don't mind an epic post.

I'm gonna do this by posting my collective haul for the month of May with swatches of specific colors (if I have them) under each individual haul picture.

May haul all together.

Starting with my birthday haul (my birthday was 11 days ago) My parents are awesome people and got me mostly everything on my list.

From top row of polishes: 2 that Amanda got me, SH XW Going Green and Plum Power, Nina Ultra Pro Purple-Xing, Nicole Make A Comet-Ment, Finger Paints Give Pink A Chance (my mom picked it out), China Glaze Four Leaf Clover and Cracked Concrete, Orly Snowcone, Gumdrop and It's Up To Blue (another my mom picked out) and Seche Vite. Konad special polishes black and white, Konad stamper (I got a scraper too but its crap and I haven't been using it much, plus its all covered in polish from the 2 times I used it, I've been using an old credit card) and 20 fauxnad plates that all begin with "B" and don't really go in any order. Please excuse the scratched (thanks Konad scraper) and dirty ones...

Funny story about the SV. My mom says she went to Sally's to get my presents and asked the lady there if they had any "sesh-veet" like I had pronounced it to her. The woman looked at her like she was crazy, so my mom showed her my list and then the lady said, "Oh, you mean seck-ay veet-ay!" Seck-ay veet-ay?? Haha, lady you work in a beauty supply store, get your pronunciation right. Its "sesh-veet."

From this haul, I have used most of the polishes, except Plum Power, Gumdrop, and Give Pink A Chance.

Here's a mani I did on May 19th using Orly It's Up To Blue and China Glaze Cracked Concrete (topped with SV) This is on day 2 so excuse the tip wear.

This lasted 3 whole days even thought it chipped quite badly from me moving out of my dorm room. This is the longest I have ever worn a single mani.

This is what can happen to your nails when you move all your crap out of your dorm room:

I had to file all my nails down after the picture due to a few breaks. Back to ultra nubbins for me. :(

And this is my collection all packed up and ready to go home.

My dad was like, "That's all nail polish!? Both boxes?"

Round bottles, organized by color and brand:

Square and odd shaped bottles and art supplies.

And here's a swatch of Snowcone and Gumdrop on my Zoya Intimate collection swatch board.

Gumdrop (at least I think that's Gumdrop... I'm not sure) and Snowcone; I'll talk about whats next to them in a bit...

And here's my first time stamping on myself. I'd done my sister's toes and my mom's nails before this. I know how terrible a job this is... I had a hard time picking this image up. I don't remember what the plate is called but I'm pretty sure its a dupe of a Konad plate image but I'm not sure. This is on 1 coat (!!) of Snowcone (gorgeous color) with Konad black (which is a BITCH to clean up!)

Next is my Target haul I got with the gift card I got for my birthday.

I got a $1 Sally Hansen toe separator which I love, Nicole I'm A Beliber and Nicole's Nickel, SH Barracuda from the new Tracy Reese collection, and Sinful Forget Now (which I am still convinced is a very close dupe of China Glaze Ahoy! because no one has done a really good comparison of the 2...)

Here's a swatch of Nicole's Nickel on my swatch board.

Nicole's Nickel by itself (2 coats) left and 1 coat over black on the right. I wore NN but forgot to take pictures because I will definitely wear it again soon. Its pure awesome-sauce... a completely opaque glitter in like 2 coats. Its the charcoal/silver version of One Less Lonely Glitter and is definitely a top coat eater. It gives an amazing tin foil look and sparkles like crazy. I reccomend picking this one up if you like glitters... it won't disappoint.

I think that might be Barracuda on the far right and not Gumdrop but I'm not positive... Barracuda takes at least 3 coats for opacity, its a little sheer. My sister is wearing it right now and its stayed well on her for 3 days or more. I haven't worn it yet. Its a little lighter and bluer than Gumdrop so they're not dupes but I don't care because I'm obsessed with this kind of color right now...
Incidentally I also got some purple flip flops for $2.50 that exactly match I'm A Beliber so of course I wore that as a pedi and it looked awesome. Amanda has that one and has swatched it on here before if you're interested in seeing it.

Next up is my K-Mart haul. I was surprised to find as many good things there as I did.

Wet n Wild Party of Five Glitters, the Lippman Glitter in the Air-esque franken I made using PoFG which is still unnamed, Jordana Pop Art black striper, Milani 3D Holographic Hi-Res, WnW SaGreena the Teenage Witch, and WnW Black Creme (which has obviously been used quite a bit already) Oh and FYI, the pink stickers on some of the polishes mean that they're good for stamping.

Here's a mani I did using WnW Black Creme as a base and 2 "coats" of PoFG. I say "coats" because the method of applying this is dabbing because its so thick and its difficult to get the glitter pieces to go on evenly.

Mysterious dim lighting...

I loved this look a lot so it needed 3 pictures... Its so happy and fun and foily like confetti!!! I love love love it!! Except I don't love my ultra nubbins. :(

And here's a swatch of Hi-Res and SaGreena the Teenage Witch (I may or may not have bought that one just for the name...)

Holllllooo!! Wow, this one was so surprising. I remember seeing swatches of it a while ago but forgot what it looked like. This is soooo freakin' holo amazingness!! Its like the CG OMG collection holos, its a super strong linear holo (only slightly scattered, mostly linear) and I found it at K-Mart for $4!! It was all alone by the Sally Hansen display and I searched and searched for the Milani display and couldn't find one so I still have no clue where this came from... or if K-Mart even really sells it. After Googling swatches of this one I discovered that this is a close dupe of China Glaze Octa-Gone Wild from the coveted Kaleidoscope collection.

I tried to get a better picture to capture the holo in this but failed. I will be wearing this one again so look out for better swatches of it. SaGreena is just a typical emerald green but its kinda thin but I'm okay with it since I only spent 99 cents on it and I love the name. I think it will be great for Christmas.

Last is my Walgreens haul from Friday.

 Wet n Wild Gray's Anatomy, Sinful Pink and SH Crackle Fuchsia Shock.

I initially went wanting to get the purple and pink Sally Hansen crackles and when I went for the first time Friday they had the purple one and I should've grabbed it but didn't have my money with me. I went back later because I was bringing my mom to an appointment (she just had knee surgery so I've been driving her around) and the purple was gone! So I got 2 of the Fuschia Shock (one was a present for my friend who's birthday/graduation party is tomorrow... or I guess today because I'm writing this at midnight) This crackles fairly well, but its kinda picky. It wouldn't crackle over my mani I had on already which had SV on it.

So painted a coat of Gray's Anatomy on my other thumb and then did a coat of the crackle while it was still tacky and it seemed to work better.

 On the left side of my nail its thinner and I made it thicker as I went across. It seems to work better when painted in thicker coats. I just dipped it in the bottle and didn't wipe any off and that seemed to be good amount. Its also kind of sheer when was disappointing but if you do it thick it'll be more opaque.

Oh and here's a pic of that mani I was wearing in those pictures.

3? coats of Zoya Zara and then zebra stripes painted with the Jordana Pop Art striper. I looked at a picture of a mani stamped with the M57 Konad plate and tried to replicate it... :)

And then here's a pic of today's mani using Sinful Pink (seriously its just called "Pink." I found it in a neon display at Walgreens. I'd never seen or heard of it before so I got it. It reminds me of one of the CG Poolside neons...) I also stamped with a plate (I don't know which... not that it matters anyway because I'm probably the only one that has this set of plates and I don't recommend them because there are several duplicate images on more than one plate, a few of the images aren't engraved deep enough and there are no full nail images, just lots of boring flowers) with Konad black. This image would NOT pick up so I did my best. I still obviously need practice.

As you can see, this color FREAKED my camera out, lol. The bottle color here is pretty accurate though. So I attempted to try to photograph this underwater since I'd heard that works with neons but I don't think it made it much better. Its still waaaay too red. But at least you can see the stamp now... the only decent one was my index. This is also with SV by the way since it dries very matte. This was also about 4 coats because it has the typical neon sheerness. I think this color might be a good $1.99 substitute for one of CG Poolside pink-y reds if you're lemming them and haven't picked them up. I don't have any of those CGs so I can't say for sure. This is definitely very very bright, like retina searing bright and screams summer to me.

So there you have it, my May haul. If there's any specific color you'd like to see swatched, feel free to leave a comment and request it.

I hope this wasn't too long and boring and at least some of you read and enjoyed it.

I hope you all enjoy the rest of your weekend and have a great day/night. Thanks for reading!

Fiona