Ha Bisky! Nails

Zap! Pow!

2011-09-07T18:02:00.001-04:00

Hello!

So I'm coming to the last of my back-logged manis. I'll have to start taking pictures daily again which is kind of sad. :( I kind of liked having pictures on my computer to just choose from and upload quickly instead of taking them, loading them onto my computer, editing, then uploading.

This design is probably one you guys have seen before, especially if you follow a lot of nail blogs. If you haven't already, you should take a moment to go check out Nailside because that blog is awesome. She does the absolute best tape manis and posts a bunch of tutorials as well. After seeing a bunch of different takes on the lightning bolt french, and seeing the fabulous ones posted on Nailside, I knew I needed to try it. The one I did is based off of the double lightning bolt. I'm not the best at tape manis, I usually fail pretty hard at them. But I followed the tutorial to the tee and was pretty impressed with myself on the way it came out. But it does have a few flaws.

The pictures are horrible too by the way. They're BLURRY, the lighting is all wrong, I used the flash, they're just bad. But they were taken in a hurry, so sorry!!

For this I used WnW French White (do not recommend using- its like painting your nails with white out), Orly Gumdrop and WnW Black Creme and topped with super goopy SV.

Evidently, white polish gives me major lobster hands so please ignore them!

The SV also smeared some of the black so that's the black gunk you see.

So after doing this mani, I loved the look, but decided I really should have rethought my color choice. Plus my execution could have been a lot better. So I did it again!!

YIKES!! Excuse the lobster hands, tip wear, funky gap line from 2 AM clean-up..., and just overall ugliness of the picture!!

I liked the results slightly more the second time around but there are still major flaws. Which of course macro makes look even worse!

For this I used WnW Black Creme, SH XW Green With Envy and Sinful Let's Talk layered with Zoya Mimi on top, with some goopy, bubbly SV.

So yeah, there are my two kinda unsuccessful attempts at the double lightning bolt. Maybe I'll try it again someday and the third time will be the charm!

Hope you all have a great day/night!

Thanks for looking, commenting and following!

Fiona

Lazy Labor Day

2011-09-05T17:41:00.000-04:00

Hello!

Like our new header? (Its should be up soon if its not already...) I made it myself using the fabulous tutorial made by Aimee'sNails seen here. I had a little trouble while trying to upload it though. Apparently I've exceeded my photo upload limit and I tried deleting a few photos, sidebar stuff, and it still wouldn't let me. So I've sent it to Amanda and hopefully we'll be able to get it up from there.

So today's post is another old mani that I wore, maybe 2 weeks ago? Maybe more like 3? I don't know. Anyway. This was my biggest lemming so far in polish that I have killed: China Glaze Starboard. It is totally as fabulous as I thought it would be and I love it! Although, I am a biased green lover...

I actually took notes on this the day I wore it (I am so proud of myself!!) So this is what I had to say about it when I wore it: Creamy, pigmented, more olive-y on me, good wear time, 2 days, no chips, tipwear without SV.

Here's 2 coats, no SV, under my LED desk lamp.

My camera, unlike me, is not a green fan and could not properly capture this color. All these pictures show it much too saturated and bright. Its really darker and dustier in real life. And as I noted above, it seemed to look more olive toned on my skin than in swatches I'd seen or in the bottle. Its probably the pink tone of my skin or something...

Here's a picture taken by the window in natural light. It shows the true color a little better but its not great quality.

And here's me playing around with iPhoto, trying to edit the color to look more true. Please excuse my weird corpse-y hands and the pixelatedness... This is pretty darn close to the actual color.

I hope all you Americans had a safe and relaxing Labor Day and everyone else a great Monday!!

Thanks for looking, commenting and following!!

Fiona

15 Weird Facts

2011-09-05T15:55:00.001-04:00

Hello!

I copied this from rebecca likes nails because it looked fun and I love survey type things.

Hey guys, it's Amanda. I know that this is Fiona's post, but this did seem like a lot of fun, so I'm the one answering in purple!

1. What’s a nickname only your family calls you?
My mom calls me "Fionie Bologna", my brother calls me "Foam" because that's what he used to call me before he could say "Fiona", my uncle calls me "Fie" as in "Fie-ona from Vir-ginia" and my aunt calls me "Tweety Bird."

My dad calls me Trixie as in Speed Racer's girlfriend Trixie; don't know, don't ask.

2. What’s a weird habit of yours?
I have OCD (diagnosed and medicated for) so I have a lot. Like always arranging things by rainbow order, checking door locks and outlets, touching the top left and then right of the shower before closing the curtain, eating small things (M&Ms, peanuts, ect) 2 at a time... the list goes on and on...

When I go into a store that has those plastic gift card at the register, I find myself rearranging the gift cards so that they are in a perfect bunch. It bugs me if they aren't all perfectly straight or the designs don't match up.

3. Do you have any weird phobias?
Ceiling fans... long time childhood fear.

A single straight black line. I don't know why, but a single straight line has always creeped me out since I was a kid. I think it has to do with heart rate monitors and they way the line looks when it flat-lines.

4. What’s a song you secretly love to blast and belt out when you’re alone?
I have many, many but one that comes to mind is Telephone (the Glee version of course!!)

Like Fiona, I too have a lot of songs like that, but I do like to play "Foreplay/Long Time" by Boston when I can.

5. What’s one of your biggest pet peeves?
This is weird and kinda of prejudiced, but people with the speech impediment where they can't pronounce their "r"s, like Elmer Fudd... "waskly wabbit"... slamming doors, spitting, people who don't wash their hands after going to the bathroom... *begin rant* Also, this one is also weird but it makes me SO ANGRY for some reason: people that don't know the sex of an animal and just assume and call it either a "he" or a "she". IF YOU DON'T KNOW, CALL IT AN IT! I hate it when people are at my house and call Marley a "she", I correct them, and they continue to call him by the wrong address. I also hate it when people call inanimate objects "he" or "she" like boats and Zoya polish. Its a thing, its doesn't have a sex, therefore its an "IT"!!! I don't care if Zoyas have female names, its still a bottle of nail polish, so it should be called an "it" not "she"!!!! Grrr, this makes me soooooo angry!! *end rant*

People who sing very softly. My mom is guilty of this. It bugs the crap out of me when she sings a sing on just a barely audible voice and I want to yell at her to stop. I feel that if you're not going to sing at a normal voice level, then don't sing at all.

6. What’s one of your nervous habits?
Playing with the ends of my hair, or sweatshirt strings or other piece of clothing

Adjusting my shirt; either pulling up the collar or pulling the hem down.

7. What side of the bed do you sleep on?
The middle, I always have my bed to myself at home and at school

Both sides; I have a twin bed at school and at home so I sleep on both sides of the bed.

8. What was your first stuffed animal and its name?
I don't know if it was my first but I had a tiny teddy bear named Natasha.

I had a stuffed beaver when I was a baby, but I don't know if it had a name.

9. What’s the drink you always order at Starbucks?
I don't go to Starbucks but the library cafe at school serves Starbucks and I order a Caramel flavored iced coffee and drink it almost black (a little milk) and some Equal.

Easy; either a medium Double Chocolatey-Chip Frap with whipped cream or a medium Hot Chocolate. I refuse to call a medium a grande however.

10. What’s a beauty rule you preach, but never actually practice?
I don't really preach anything but there's plenty of beauty rules I don't practice... but I won't go there!

I don't preach anything either because of the whole 'pot-kettle-black' thing. That way you can't be a hypocrite. I might preach about wearing a base coat, but I do wear a base coat all the time,

11. Which way do you face in the shower?
Its depends on what I'm doing, I guess I spin and face both pretty equally.

Both ways; I don't see how you could take a shower facing only one way.

12. Do you have any weird body skills?
I can almost touch my tongue to my nose, I have super grippy toes and can pick things up with them, I can also stand on my toes curled under...

I can roll my tongue, that's pretty much it.

13. What’s your favorite comfort food that’s “bad”, but you love to eat it anyway?
Oh jeez, the list goes on forever, I don't really have a favorite. I love Ben and Jerry's (Phish Food, Half Baked), really, really greasy cheesy pizza with ranch dressing, chocolate cake, chocolate pie, cheesecake, cheese danish, cinnamon rolls, Smartfood, Doritos, Kraft Mac n' Cheese made with extra butter and salt added, Pop Tarts, cheesy noodles, cheese, I think you get the idea... I'm bad!!

Any dessert that has chocolate in it. And chocolate itself, but I like dark chocolate which is actually good for you though so......

14. What’s a phrase or exclamation you always say?
I don't know... Amanda can't think of one either...

Fiona says I say 'yeah' a lot, but I also do use crap and s*** a lot. Yes, I have a dirty mouth and probably need some of that Orbits gum to clean it up.

15. Time to sleep – what are you actually wearing?
It depends on the season and where I'm living: at home in warm weather, I wear an oversized old T-shirt and undies and at school I wear the same kind of shirts and printed PJ capri pants. In colder weather at home and school, I wear the same kind of T-shirts, sometimes a sweatshirt if its really cold, and some kind of cute print PJ pants (snowflakes, ect)

No matter what the weather, I always sleep in an old tee-shirt and a pair of shorts. I get hot when I sleep so that's why I can wear shorts to bed in winter b/c otherwise I sweat to death.

Well that was fun! I might post again later if I get around to it... we'll see.

Feel free to copy this and do it but it would be awesome if you tell me if you do so I can go read your answers... I'm kind of a nosy person and love to read other people's answers to these things!! :D

Have a great day/night if I don't post again today.

Fiona

Happy Labor Day to all of our American readers out there, and happy Monday to the rest of the world!

-Amanda

Playing Catch Up

2011-09-01T11:47:00.000-04:00

Hello!

So... sorry about neglecting my posting duties. My laziness just gets to me and time gets away from me. But now I'm back in school and while that should mean less time to post, being on a schedule actually helps me remember to post so I should be posting more frequently. Hopefully.

Today is the first day of classes. It would have been yesterday but due to Irene, the move in date for school was postponed from Saturday and Sunday to Tuesday. I'm wearing a tape mani inspired by Nailside using 3 Zoyas, which you will see sometime. But today I need to start posting from my backlog of pictures... once I get through those, I start showing current manis.

So first is OPI No Room For The Blues. This was a huge lemming of mine from the time when I first got into nail polish in January and saw it on Chloe's Nails. I recently was able to get it my Ulta haul. Its not super unique, just your average bright sky blue. The formula is good. You can probably get full coverage in 2 coats if your nails are less stained than mine. My staining has gotten so bad that I have to do extra coats of light colors... :/ So I did 3 coats for the pictures. This is without top coat because at the time I was out of SV. I personally find that OPIs take a longer time to dry and don't wear very well, unless you use top coat. I don't regret this purchase but thinking back, I do wish that maybe I had used that $8 for a more unique polish.

These pictures are all under my LED desk lamp.

Next is a franken I made when I seriously needing a bright coral color (for some reason... probably because it was the middle of summer and it felt like a summer-y color.) To make it I used my franken that I called Pretty in Peach, which was too manikin hands on me and turned it coral. The original franken, Pretty in Peach was made of about 1/2 bottle of Sinful Snow Me White, 1/4 bottle of SH XW Sun Kissed and about 20 drops of a yellow creme. To make it a bright coral, I added a significant amount of Sinful Pink (neon pink), about 20 drops of CG Heli-yum and about 20 drops of Zoya Rica. The sparkle in Rica doesn't really translate onto the nail, however.

You can see in the bottle some of the sparkle (in some of the pictures... if you look really hard!), as well as that it doesn't look mixed all the way. It was, I shook the living hell out of it, and it was all mixed on the inside. I'm really happy with this franken, its the exact color I wanted. It took me a while to come up with a name for it but I finally called Malibu Barbie.

These pictures are all 3 coats with SV taken in sunlight.

I even did a matching pedi!

That's all for today. I have class in about 10 minutes, or that's when I'm leaving. I want to be there early and I'm still not sure how long it takes me to walk from this apartment to the science building.

I hope you all enjoy your day/night!

Thanks for looking, following and commenting!

Fiona

I'm Finally Back to Posting! Amazing, Huh?

2011-08-29T16:29:00.002-04:00

Hey everyone,

I just wanted to apologize to all of our followers and readers out there for the extreme lack of posts this summer. I'm just not happy with myself over it since while I did have sometime this summer in which to post, I had a lot of cool colors that I wanted to show you guys but didn't. I literally didn't have the energy in which to do so or the time, and when I did the nail polish on my fingers was destroyed from work. But that's over with now, and I'm back to posting regularly once again.

Tomorrow Fiona and I are going back to school. We were supposed to be going back over the weekend, but due to "Hurricane" Irene hitting New England (where we live), our school pushed move-in day back to Tuesday, the 30th. It was probably a good thing we weren't up there just because of the extensive flooding part of our campus suffered. I'll have to go take pics to show you the water levels; it's just mind blowing to see how high the water is and all the buildings and other things underwater.

But I do have pics to show you of a couple of the Zoyas that I bought during their last insider promo. I have to share with you today Zoya Norra and Jem,

Zoya Norra Norra is from the Divas collection that was originally released for Fall 2007. This is quite the interesting color. In the shade, this color appears as a red-tinged plum with a hint of silver shimmer in it like Zoya Marley. In the sun, the color appears as a maroon color or as a red-violet color. This was three coats of Norra with a coat of base and top coat. The formula was great just like any other Zoya polish that I have.

I had ordered Norra as a spoon from Zoya, and I kept coming back to it when I was trying to decide on colors to order. The color intrigued me because it wasn't like anything else that I had in my collection. Norra is a shade that can be called a 'sleeper shade' since it's an awesome color that isn't that well know or as popular as other colors. I'm very happy that I got this color. It's a great color for fall/winter or an anytime color.

Shade

Zoya Jem. Jem is from one of this year's Fall collections called Mirrors. Jem in person appears to be plum colored with red/pink and bronze colored sparkle to it (as shown in the bottle).

Oh. My. God. This is such an awesome color! Jem is like the little kid sister of Zoya Yasmeen (based on color) and Valerie (based on sparkle). If you mixed Yasmeen and Valerie together, you'd get this color. I know that a lot of other bloggers are saying that Jem and Valerie are dupes of each other, but I've compared Jem to a spoon of Valerie, and they are different enough to me that you could have Jem and Valerie and be fine. But then again I think that Jem is closer to Yasmeen than Valerie.....

I also can't stop looking at this color since I put it on Thursday just because it's such an awesome color to look at!

The next two photos are a little blurry, but you can see the sparkle in Jem a little better.

Did I mention how awesome she is?

Jem gets a big old HA BISKY!!! from me!

And since I haven't posted in a while, here are a couple photos of our family dog, Hunter. He was watching me take pics so I snapped these two photos of him!

"What 'cha doin'?"

Thanks again everyone for reading!

Hey Look, I'm Posting!!

2011-08-15T17:03:00.000-04:00

Hello!

Hi guys! Well, the mood struck and I felt like posting today. Mostly because I made this awesome franken last night that I just have to share with you guys. I've been frankening a lot lately. Mostly due to my desire for new polishes and my broke ass can't buy any new ones so I've been making "new" ones. I've had some successes and some fails. My recent fail you won't get to see because I dumped it out and tried again. That one was actually my first attempt at what ended up being this one. That one began with about 1/4 Sinful Daddy's Girl and 1/4 Orly Blue Collar with assorted glitters thrown in. Note to self and all frankeners out there: do not mix a dark jelly with a dense creme. You will get a funky dark gray blue color that is like Zoya Caitlin but ugly and chunky and sticky.

What I was trying to make was a purpley blue mulicolored glitter. The key is to just mix glitter polishes and don't try to make a base color because the base color will overtake the glitter. All of the glitter polishes I have are in the blue and purple family, besides being silver, so I figured why not mix them all together!!? And it worked out beautifully!

I call it Brittany S. Pierce (more on that in a minute) and here's the recipe:
About equal amounts of each (I only filled a 15 ml bottle about 1/4 full):
Zoya Roxy
Nina Ultra Pro Purple X-ing
Pure Ice Beware (fine silver glitter)
Pure Ice Strapless (fine blue glitter)
Pure Ice Cheatin' (fine blue/purple/pink glitter)
Wet n' Wild Kaleidoscope (chunky holo glitter)
Kleancolor Chunky Holo Purple

And a shake a shake a and voila!! Gorgeous! This actually shakes together so nicely too. Ugh, I hate shaking together dense cremes, I actually bruised my palms rolling a bottle back and forth while frankening... =P

So the name. I'm a recent Gleek, and a total and complete Glee fan its ridiculous. I just recently watched the whole first season on Netflix and then was able to find a site that had all the episodes for the second season as well. I was hooked immeadiately!! Its so so so so so good, I'm in love!! While I was frankening this polish I was listening (and singing along to) Glee songs so figured the name has to be something to do with Glee. I know $OPI (Sephora by OPI) did a Glee collection either this year or last year... anyway. They named the polishes after most of the characters but skipped a lot of them. One of which is Brittany, the adorabley ditzy Cheerio, who's one of my favorites. I think her character is one of the funniest on TV!!
Watch the video, this has the best Brittany moments. I know its 9 minutes long but its totally worth it!!

I really think Brittany would like this polish (I hope she would!!) especially because its sparkly and has rainbow glitters!

Here's some more pictures. These are all indoor under my LED desk lamp because its raining.

Oh and this is 3 coats with no SV because I'm all out. Plus, I think you guys will notice I've cut my nails. I liked them long but I was terrified of a bad break and with fall coming and the start of wearing darker colors (not that I follow seasons anyway) I think darker colors look better on shorties.

Well that's it. Hope you enjoyed.

Thanks for looking, commenting and following!!

Have a great day/night!

Fiona

Because Once Again I'm Procrastinating?

2011-08-09T21:15:00.000-04:00

Yeah, I have stuff to do before I can go to bed, but I'm procrastinating by watching YouTube (again), and watching the boys from The Microwave Show microwave.... makeup!

So, if you've even wondered what would happen if you microwaved a bottle of nail polish, acrylic nails, AND foundation at the same time, well, watch the video below and find out!

Hope you all found that funny or a little entertaining!

-A

Best Blog Award

2011-08-02T17:53:00.002-04:00

I'm back from the dead! Okay, that's not true at all, but I'm finally able to post for the first time in a while! I am really sorry about it, and I feel bad that I haven't gotten to post more this summer. But I'll be done working full time in less than 2 weeks so I will be posting regularly once again towards the end of August.

Also to my own (and my parent's) amazement, I haven't bought a single bottle of nail polish in a month. I couldn't believe it until I looked at the calendar and realized I hadn't bought any polish in a while. But then I've had to use the money I've been making to buy stuff for school. I think the only reason I got through a month of not buying nail polish is by redeeming my Zoya spoon credits for spoons. I'll have to show you all of the spoons that I have, it's kind of crazy all of the spoons I have. But anyway....

So, Ha Bisky! Nails was nominated for the Best Blog Award by Lady Luck a week or two ago (see how behind I am once again?)! She has a pretty ha bisky blog so you should go check it out! Thanks again Lady Luck!

Rules:

-You must link back to the person who awarded this to you!

-Share 7 random facts!

-Award 15 blogs and answer the questions listed above!

-And send the ppl awarded a comment letting them know!

Questions:

1. Fave Color - pink!

2. Fave Song - I have to pick just one?

3. Fave Dessert - chocolate creme pie!

4. What is pissing you off - certain co-workers

5. When you're upset you - hold it all in till I either cry or tell a friend.

6. Fave Pet - cats. While I love dogs as well, I like cats just a bit more : )

7. Black or White - black, white gets too dirty quick.

8. Biggest Fear - having a tumor grow back on my spine after 14 years of being healthy

9. Best Feature - I try to help anyone out who needs help.

10. Everyday Attitude - try to be positive, but then annoying people ruin it.

11. What is perfection - sharing laughs and good times with close friends.

12. Guilty Pleasure - watching TV shows that remind me of my childhood.

Hey, Fiona butting in because I wanted to answer these questions too! :P

1. Fave Color - Purple

2. Fave Song - It changes often but right now its The Edge of Glory by Lady Gaga

3. Fave Dessert - Ah, so hard to choose!! Either black forest cake or cheesecake

4. What is pissing you off - People slamming doors in my house

5. When you're upset you - Same exact answer as Amanda! See why we're such good friends!

6. Fave pet - Definitely cats!!

7. Black or White - Black

8. Biggest fear - Suffocating... being choked or smothered, and spiders!!

9. Best feature - My creativity

10. Everyday attitude - Try to put on a happy face but a pessimist at heart

11. What is perfection - Perfection doesn't exist.

12. Guilty Pleasure - Reality TV and making fun of famous people

7 random things about me:

1. I've been completely in love with American Eagle jeans since freshman year of high school.

2. I like to read fan fiction.

3. I'm a big tea drinker and I'll only drink coffee if I really need it to keep awake.

4. I used to be deadly afraid of thunderstorms, but now I don't mind them at all.

5. I like to cook.

6. I like to plan stuff out waaaay before hand so that way I'm not doing things last minute.

7. I hate it when people talk in a movie theater.

1. I prefer to watch TV/movies with subtitles on because I have a hard time understanding what people say on TV as well as paying attention to the action.

2. I might be narcoleptic.

3. I can tie a cherry stem into a knot with my tongue.

4. I still have a hard time telling my left from my right and have gotten lost driving because of it.

5. I have an obsession with drinking ice cold water and have to have a mini fridge near my bed with cold water in it.

6. I can drink a 12 cup pot of coffee and then go to sleep right after.

7. I get very agitated if I start a book or a movie and am interrupted during it; I like to read/watch it in one setting.

- F

Now here are the 15 blogs that I'm giving this award to! Winners are...

1. Deez Nailz

2. Whitney @ Elemental Styles

3. Gotham Polish

4. My Nail Graffiti

5. Kawaii Nail Art

6. No Naked Nails!

7. Aimee's Nails

8. Do Not Refreeze

9. The Kiwi With the Crazy Nails

10. Emily's Nail Files

11. Spellbinding Nails

12. The PolishAholic

13. LastLash

14. Jessica's Nail Art

15. Ice Queen's Nail Parlour

Congrats ladies! Look for a comment from me soon!

So I hope that you all have a great rest of the week if I don't get around to posting again this week!

-A

I feel bad about this, you guys UPDATED

2011-07-31T23:36:00.001-04:00

Hello!

Betcha thought I was dead, huh? No post in like 3 weeks?! Unacceptable! I have no legitimate excuse... "I was on vacation and didn't have the internet..." "My computer crashed..." "My grandma died..." Nope. Nada. I have pictures. But do I want to edit and upload and babble on and on about them? Nope. So why am I posting now? To let you all in on why I'm so lazy.

Here is what I just posted to a forum on Idiopathic Hypersomnia (a condition where no matter how much sleep you get, you're still tired, for no reason any medical test can find, sleeping in excess of 12 - 14 hours and long daytime naps without feeling refreshed)

Hi everyone, I am a 19 year old female college student. I just had a sleep study with a nap test done a few days ago. I haven't been diagnosed with anything yet, but my doctor says its most likely either narcolepsy or Idiopathic Hypersomnia. I don't have sleep apnea. My thyroid is fine. I do have periodic limb movements, restless legs and teeth grinding at night. I have also been diagnosed with depression, anxiety and OCD since I was 8 and have been on antidepressants (all of them, currently Prozac) since then. I've always been a sleepy person, even as a baby, I slept through the night. My parents always said I slept like the dead and I was very hard to wake up.
It became a problem my senior year in high school (2 yrs ago) when I began falling asleep in class, not remembering that I had, and waking up when the bell rang, to find that I had missed a whole class. I would then come straight home from school (at 3PM) and fall asleep and sleep right up until my alarm went off the next morning at 5AM. And I was still so tired. My mom worked really hard, and was really annoying, making sure I didn't take any naps. Whenever I could, though, I'd sleep for 12 - 14 hours. I once slept for about 36 hours, not once waking up. Since the onset of this, I've had super vivid dreams (someone else mentioned this) and I sometimes have a hard time telling the difference between dreams and reality for a few hours when I wake up. Recently, I've been having issues staying asleep. I wake up several times, only for seconds and go back to sleep. This is strange because until now I've always had deep, restful uninterrupted sleep.
I've been on Concerta (methylphenidate) 36mg for a year or so now and although I hate the side effects (dry mouth, excessive thirst, jittery, sweating, ect) it has done wonders to keep me awake. Without it, I can't function. I'm also a caffeine addict, I drink huge amounts of coffee and other drinks with caffeine and have built up a high tolerance to it. College has been hard, I've slept through several classes, missed deadlines, missed out on having a social life, despite the Concerta. I'm still so tired during the day. There have a been a few instances when I've come very very close to falling asleep while driving, which terrifies me. My parents still make me run errands (I'm home for the summer) even though I insist I don't think its safe for me to drive. I think they think I'm making this all up. My mom thinks I'm just depressed and she thinks changing my diet and exercising will help. No one else, aside from doctors, understands. They all just think I'm lazy. In reality, I'm addicted to sleep.

I have a difficult time talking about this because so few people believe me and I truly believe that you can't understand what this is like unless you experience it. So... this is hard putting this out there, but I feel like us nail bloggers are non-judgemental people (for the most part!) To prep for the sleep study, I had to go off my Concerta for 2 weeks and start sleeping "normal people hours" like midnight to 10 AM instead of 3 AM to 3 or 4 PM or whatever. So, I've been pretty messed up these past 2 weeks. But, I'm back on my speed now (haha) and am getting back to normal.

**UPDATE** 8/15/11: My official diagnosis is idiopathic hypersomnia with long sleep time. Basically (this is all what my sleep doctor in Boston told me) most people go to sleep and fall steadily into a deep sleep and then come out of it within an hour and go into REM sleep within that time and repeat it over and over throughout the night, known as the "normal" sleep cycle. My diagnosis means that my sleep cycle looks like I fall immediately into a deep sleep and stay there for a while and come out of it, and so on, and it looks completely normal except I don't go into REM sleep until about 8 hours into my sleep. I'm so tired all the time because I get so little REM sleep which is essential to feeling recharged and maintaining body function. There is a possibility that I do have narcolepsy as well but I take Prozac for depression and SSRIs like Prozac are what is prescribed to treat the major symptoms of narcolepsy. The Prozac would suppress the cataplexy (suddenly losing muscle tone often due to strong emotion) and the pre or post sleep hallucinations which I can't remember the name of. In order to officially diagnose me with narcolepsy, I would need to go off the Prozac and repeat the sleep study. The possibility of narcolepsy comes from the results of the nap test which were that I fell asleep on every single one, in under 10 minutes every time. For one I fell asleep in less than a minute and that was at 5:30 PM. But I didn't go into REM during my naps so I couldn't get the narcolepsy diagnosis, but that could be due to the IH or the Prozac, she's not sure.
So I came off my Concerta, which I was "severely undermedicated" with and started taking Provigil last week. Provigil is the drug prescribed to people with narcolepsy so my Dr. gave me the narcolepsy diagnosis in order to get the medication (confusing, huh?) Its not a stimulant, they're actually not quite sure how it works but its supposed to work. I haven't noticed anything yet. And also, I'm not supposed to drive. Apparently I'm a danger on the road because of how unpredictably I fall asleep and how quickly I fall asleep. So yeah, that's how that's been going.

I'm hoping to start posting pretty regularly starting sometime this week.

Thanks for reading my personal ramblings, if you did, and I hope you all have an awesome night/day!

Fiona

I'm pleased to present... (PIC HEAVY)

2011-07-12T18:46:00.000-04:00

... but first formalities...

Hello!

First off, wow, we're up 5 followers in 2 days which may not seem like a lot to some but for us, that's a lot! Thanks new followers!! We've been blogging for almost 5 months now and are almost at 50 followers. Not as fast as some people have grown but at least we're growing. Anywhoo...

I have an amazingly awesome fantastical post today. In fact its so great that those words don't even describe it. I don't have any words to describe it... so I'm not even gonna talk about it. Yup. That's how amazing it is. Fiona is speechless and is resorting to referring to herself in the third person momentarily.

Its...

Kleancolor...

Chunky Purple Holo!! (well actually the label says "Chunky Holo Purple" but whatever...)

Okay, so now you're probably wondering (like I was when I saw this and this) where do I get these and how much are they? Go to the Beauty Joint website where they are $1.75 each. Everyone. Go. There. Now. I don't know if this is a sale or what but all Kleancolor polishes are that price. The handling fee for 1 polish was $1 and shipping was $1.71 for the one item bringing my total to $4.46. A bargain. I ordered it the 5th and it came yesterday, the 11th. It was wrapped in about a 2 ft long piece of bubble wrap and sealed with tons of strapping tape all safe and sound. I also liked how Beauty Joint sent me emails throughout the whole ordering process letting me know my order was received, processed, shipped, ect. I'm very happy with their website and will definitely be ordering from them in the future.

So onto the polish. I had heard that Kleancolor has a very strong smell, different from other polishes and I was prepared for that. The verdict: its definitely strong but, the weird thing is, I don't actually think it smells all that bad. Its not that I like the smell, I just don't mind it. It smells very familiar to me and I just can't put my finger (or nose!) on what it smells like. Mini science lesson: I know that our olfactory glands (smelling glands) are the sense most strongly connected to memory and it brings back some memory of childhood which disturbs me because it makes me wonder why a strong chemically smell would remind me of my childhood... I think it might be Mineral Spirits (paint thinner) that it smells a little like and the reason that would remind me of my childhood would be the time when WARNING, storytime, if you're not interested skip ahead to next paragraph shortly after my family and I had moved into our "new" house (the one we're living in now) and I was about 9, my mom wanted all the rooms painted in the house because she hates white walls. Together, my mom and I came up with the idea to paint the kid's bathroom a deep plum color and then sponge on silver stars. That first part went well until I was left alone to do the stars on the ceiling (no idea why on earth my parents would let me do that on my own unsupervised...) I had this little pot of the special metallic silver paint that I used a brush to paint it onto the star shaped sponge and then make the stars on the ceiling while standing on the ladder. I guess, for some reason, I thought it would be fun to also paint my entire silver as well (I was a very creative child...) and I continued on with the stars. The paint on my face had dried and started to itch and burn so I went and showed my parents and they were horrified. They immediately tried to scrub the paint off my face with soap and water but it wasn't coming off. It wasn't normal water based wall paint, it was more for stuff like door handles and such... kinda like nail polish now that I think about it!! They tried everything, and at that point I'm screaming and screaming because my face is burning and burning. So finally they have to wet a cloth with a little Mineral Spirits and clean my face with that. It felt like my face was burning off! So yeah, that explains why the smell of paint thinner reminds me of my childhood. If you read that, I hope you had a good laugh at my childhood misfortune and let me know if you would like to hear more childhood stories like that (because I have millions...)

Anyway... here it is. Chunky (Purple) Holo (Purple) wherever the "Purple" goes. I have it layered over 2 coats of Nicole I'm A Beliber, which is the closest I had to the base color. My application of IaB sucks so please don't focus on that. I used 2 coats of the Kleancolor, no top coat. The formula is thick and the base is mostly clear, very very faintly tinted purple so you could layer it over most anything. The brush is like the OPI Pro Wide brush which I like. It had a pretty normal dry time. I'm not even going to try describe the colors so I'll let the million pictures do the talking.

Sunlight pictures.

Not much effect in direct sun.

Bottle in sun.

Attempting to get color shift...

There it is...

The next set of pictures are all indoor by a window in the fading sunlight with the camera flash off. These are the best depiction of what this looks like.

I'm sorry that some are blurry. The flash is off because the sunlight couldn't be too bright as you saw above.

Here are some bottle pics because in my opinion, this is the prettiest polish in the bottle I've ever, ever seen...

My camera can't even handle all the beautifulness of it... I have literally 30 pictures just like this one.

Its so beautiful it almost makes me want to cry... I have no words to describe it... no, I'm not being dramatic...

And there you go. Go ahead and catch your breath. Because I know, its breathtaking.

And now I have a dilemma because I don't know what color to classify this under. I guess I won't. Hands down, this is #1 on my favorite polishes that I own (so far anyway) *sigh* I have nothing else to say about it.

Have a great night (day... whatever) and I hope to talk to you soon!

Thanks for looking, commenting and following!

Fiona

Blue Iguana

2011-07-10T15:23:00.001-04:00

Hello!

How is everyone this lovely (?) sunny Sunday? I'm in a much better mood than I was in yesterday, although my post titles haven't gotten any more creative...

In case you didn't already guess, I'm going to show you all today China Glaze Blue Iguana from this summer's Island Escape collection. Unless you don't follow a lot of blogs or are new to nail polish, you have probably seen this color about a million times already. I'm sorry. But in truth, I don't really care. This is (in part) my blog and I'll show what I like. :) I don't have a lot of money and our blog is not huge so we don't get to sample collections before everyone else so we get polishes when we get them even if they've been out for a while and people have already shown them and discussed to death. End rant. Sorry about that... I get a little fired up sometimes. Annnyyway...

Blue Iguana is an absolutely gorgeous bright, medium blue glass fleck shimmer that almost has a metallic finish. It also has a slight purple flash that is not visible in all light and is very hard to capture on film, but I tried like hell. It is kinda sheer and I was going to layer it since my nails are so badly stained and my nail line is kinda wacky but before I did that I tried it on its own first just to see if I could get it opaque. And I'm so glad I did wear it alone!! Layering it over itself gives it so much depth that layering it over an opaque color wouldn't do. I was able to get it opaque in 3 thickly applied coats. The good thing was that I was able to apply it thick since the formula was fantastic, not gloopy or runny or thick either, just perfect and easy to control, plus it dried relatively fast. I was able to apply a thick first coat to all 10 of my nails and by the time I finished my 10th nail, the first nail was dry! Even on the second coat, the same thing happened. I didn't even have to use any of my limited supply of SV to dry it before going to sleep. I didn't wake up with sheet marks all over either! Very happy with the formula of this! Even more happy with the color! Its beyond gorgeous... *sigh* There's so much depth and complexity and the hidden purple flash is so fascinating when it comes out! Okay, enough babbling, here are the pictures.

Please excuse my slightly blue toned cuticles. I did this mani at 3 AM and that's also when I did my clean-up. It looked good to me then but I guess maybe I shouldn't do clean-up at 3 AM. And like I said before, I'm working on moisturizing... it won't happen overnight. This first one is in the shade. The next three are in full, bright sunlight.

These next few pictures are in tree shade where I'm trying to capture the purple flash.

Then I gave on holding the bottle and capturing the purple...

Here it is (look closely and use your imagination a little...) at the top edges...

Grrrr... I swear its there!!

And here are some more bonus kitty pictures, I know two posts in a row!! But Marley was being extra photogenic today, like he was begging for his picture to be taken!!

Here's one of him sleeping on the couch last night just being the cutie-patootie that he is!

And these are from today. I think I got a few really good ones, if I do say so myself...

And my favorite ever I think...

I hope you all enjoyed your weekend!!

~~I'm expecting some super awesome nail mail tomorrow so hopefully there will be a super amazing post tomorrow!! :)~~ *EDIT* There won't be a post from me tomorrow because I just found out my family and I are going to the beach!

Thanks for looking, commenting and following!

Fiona

Uninspired...

2011-07-09T19:27:00.000-04:00

Hello!

Hey, sorry guys that I missed a few days. I've been feeling really lazy lately due to the super hot weather we've had here and as a result that makes me rather polish uninspired. Since my 4th of July mani, I put on Orly Royal Velvet which I meant to take pictures of but it was just always too hot to make myself go outside to take them. :( I wore that alone all day Tuesday and then Wednesday morning I layered on top of it Sally Hansen HD Laser which looked super amazing. But I couldn't get myself to take pictures of it. It looked about the same as it does on black so you can just Google pictures of that if you're curious. I will most definitely be wearing both again soon so I will get pictures of them eventually. I wore that combo all day Wednesday and Thursday (rare for me, but I was lazy and I loved it!) and then Friday I put on the current mani I have on which I will show you today.

I've been wanting to try China Glaxe Crushed Candy ever since I saw the press release pictures of the collection months and months ago. I was finally able to get to get in my Ulta haul and spent a good amount of time swatching it under a bunch of colors on my palette (plastic container lid) to decide what it looked best over. I finally decided I liked it over Zoya Jolene so that was my mani for Friday. I haven't taken it off since then like I normally do; I normally change my mani daily.

This is 2 thick coats of Zoya Jolene with China Glaze Crushed Candy and SV. I'm sorry if you're sick of seeing crackles and I realize I'm late to the party on showing this one, but I really don't care! This is day 2 of this mani so excuse any minor tip wear.

This is indoor with flash so the colors look a bit more vibrant than they actually are and my skin is definitely not that color!

Outdoors in the setting sun. My skin is a little dry looking because I wash my hands so much and spend a lot of time in the A/C... sorry. I'll have to try to be better about moisturizing.

And here's some bonus pictures because I feel bad about slacking on posting. My kitty Synyster was outside overseeing his territory while I was taking pictures so I took his picture as well.

He's a 5 year old part Maine Coon and weighs about 18 lbs!!

Here he is watching over the chickens in the yard.

I hope you guys enjoy the rest of your weekend and hopefully I'll be back tomorrow with a post!

Thanks for looking, commenting and following!!

Fiona

Zoya Fall 2011 Smoke and Mirrors Press Release

2011-07-05T21:07:00.003-04:00

Hey everyone!

If you're into Zoya nail polishes (um, yeah, slightly embarrassed to say I might be overly obsessed with Zoya...), then you may or may not know that today Zoya released what their Fall 2011 collection is going to be. So without further ado, Zoya Smoke and Mirrors collections!

NEW ZOYA NAIL POLISH COLLECTION ANNOUNCEMENT

the best fall 2011 nail color
smoke and mirrors

...beautiful illusions

Zoya Nail Polish presents 12 enticing and mysterious new colors for fall 2011.

Zoya Nail Polish: Smoke Collection (cream nail polish)

Jana (ZP564) - smoky mauve nail polish quartz cream

Petra (ZP565) - smoky eggplant mauve nail polish cream

Codie (ZP566) - smoky brown taupe nail polish cream

Anja (ZP567) - smoky palatinate purple nail polish cream

Cynthia (ZP568) - smoky Prussian blue nail polish cream

Dree (ZP569) - smoky camouflage green nail polish cream

Zoya Nail Polish: Mirrors Collection (metallic nail polish)

Nimue (ZP570) - smoky rich thistle mauve nail polish metallic

Marina (ZP571) - smoky steel blue nail polish metallic

Tao (ZP572) - smoky slate gray nail polish metallic

Yara (ZP573) - sparkly olive green nail polish metallic

Neeka (ZP574) - sparkly amethyst purple nail polish metallic

Jem (ZP575) - sparkly fandango pink nail polish metallic

Zoya is the new color of fashion... The new Zoya Fall 2011 Nail Polish,smoke and mirrors colors were designed and inspired by top fashion designers and beauty icons.

Ultra long-wearing, glossy nail lacquers by Zoya are free of harmful industrialchemicals like toluene, camphor, formaldehyde, resin, dibutyl phthalate (DBP)that are known to cause cancer and birth defects.

Find Zoya smoke and mirrors as well as over 300 other high-fashion Zoya shades at www.zoya.com. As always, each and every Zoya color is made for beautiful women so we name them after beautiful women.

Zoya smoke and mirrors
available July 15, 2011

Sug. Retail $8.00 per 0.5 fl.oz. bottle (US)

###

I've already fallen in love with these two collection. I'm seriously hoping that Zoya will have a promo for their new fall collections b/c otherwise I don't know how I could explain wanting both collections to my parents. They're finally reaching that 'really, more nail polish?' point now since I've gotten a lot of Zoya in the last 8 weeks. This might be something I'll order at school at the end of August so that way they don't have to know! Yep, that's when you know you have a problem when you're hiding ordering nail polish from those who care about you. But that's what I'll probably be doing next year at school when other collections come out. Yes, I'm a little obsessed, but, but, but.... I NEED THEM!!!

-A

Hey, Fiona here. I just wanted to add that the nail blogger queen herself Scrangie has posted some swatches of this collection already so if you haven't seen them yet click here.

I am totally lusting after Jem, Neeka and Yara. Those 3 I will definitely NEED, without a doubt!! I so hope, along with Amanda that's there's a promo for this (I bet there will, it wouldn't be Zoya without a promo!!) I especially NEED Jem. Ohmygosh, when I saw Scrangie's swatch of it, I literally gasped out loud and said, "Need!"

Talk to you guys later!

Oh Say Does That Star Spangled Banner Yet Wave...

2011-07-04T16:47:00.000-04:00

Hello!

Happy 4th of July/Independence Day!! (to our American readers) Happy Monday to everyone else! I know that's a corny title, but I always associate the 4th with cheesy, corny stuff... does that make me a bad American?

Today I have a mani that I'm actually quite proud of. A lot of thought, planning and time went into it. I really hope its a unique idea, because I wanted to do something different. My idea was to make it look like if I had painted an American flag onto my whole hand, including my nails, and then erased the image from my skin but left it on my nails. Confused?

Here's what I mean,

How did I do it? Its quite simple actually. I sat with my hand in that position on the flag and then just sketched what each nail would have to look like in order to complete the flag. I eye-balled the angles and the sizes of the stars and fortunately I'm pretty good at that.

Then I painted my base colors, the same colors as yesterday, Cherry Red, Dark Denim and French White. I did my thumb and index red, my middle and ring blue and my pinkie white. Then I painted the modified diagonal Frenches freehand on my pinkie, index and thumb using the appropriate colors. Then, I very, very, very carefully and slowly painted the star on my ring nail in white and the half of the star on my middle, using my smallest nail art brush. I wasn't happy with how the stars looked, so I went around them using the same brush in the blue. And royally f**ked them up. After much cursing, I cleaned the brush and tried again with the white, cursed the American flag for having stars, took it back, even though I'm not superstitious, cursed some more, and finally made the stars look halfway decent and left them alone. (Stars are f**king hard to paint, man!!)

After taking some pictures, I decided that since it was the 4th, I needed to go all out, so I added glitter. I added the same glitters as yesterday (Ruby Pumps, Beware and Strapless) over their corresponding colors and then took some sunlight pictures outside in the sweltering summer heat (the thermometer says 86 degrees, but it feels much warmer with the humidity)

My fingers aren't in the right spots in these sunlight pictures and I'm sorry for that. I'd redo them, but A) I'm not leaving my air conditioned room to go outside again and B) After taking these, I smudged my index nail :( Also, sorry for the lack of cleanup. I thought they weren't that bad, but then when I looked at the pictures, they told another story...

Placement FAIL! Haha the sun was so bright I couldn't see well enough even with my sunglasses on, to see if they were exactly in the right spots! Sorry!

Blurry for maximum glitter effect!! Small because no clean-up is ugly!

I even did my toes for today!

All the usual disclaimers apply to pedi pics (do not recommend you enlarge, blah, blah, blah...) Haha, funny story about the vertical stripes on the flag toes... I didn't realize that the stripes on the flag are horizontal not vertical... I'd already added the blue before I realized that so I couldn't fix that... whoopsie.. I think I made the same mistake on my mom's nails that I posted yesterday, I'll have to go check. Wow, FAIL!! The rest of my toes aside from my big toes which are just the creme colors, are the creme colors, with a coat of the glitters over them too but you probably can't tell unless you enlarge the pictures, which I don't recommend...

Well, I hope all you Americans have a safe and happy Independence Day, 4th of July, whichever you call it!! I'm probably off to eat dinner soon where we're probably having a good ol' American cook out with good ol' American hamburgers and hot dogs and I will eat my hot dog and baked beans like a good American and then eat too much ice cream, also like a good American... :) See, I can be patriotic for one day a year. :P

And I hope everyone else has an awesome Monday night, wherever you are!! :)

Thanks for looking, commenting and following!!

Fiona

Patriotic Nail Fail and Guest Nails

2011-07-03T17:54:00.000-04:00

Hello!

I hope everyone is enjoying their Sunday!

So, I was bored this afternoon since the internet was out, because my dad was doing some repairs to the airport so our wireless works faster, and I decided to do some 4th of July nail art. I had an idea of what I wanted to try, mainly to see if I could actually do it, so I gave it a try.

And failed.

It's not a miserable fail, which is why I'm posting it, but its not very good either. No laughing, okay?

I'm gonna keep this smaller too, because I'm not all that proud of them. Feel free to click to enlarge for detail if you wish.

For this failed art I started by alternating white, red and blue on my fingers. I used Wet n' Wild French White, SH XW Cherry Red and Fashion Bug Dark Denim. Then I painted the stars and the "USA" with a nail art brush using China Glaze Ruby Pumps, Pure Ice Beware (silver glitter) and Pure Ice Strapless (blue glitter.) Then I made some white stars using the same white and then (unsuccessfully) outlined the stars with the white on the red and the blue nails. I didn't use top coat (although that would have made the pictures look about 10 times better) because my SV is on its last leg and has only about 1 or 2 more uses left in it and since this was coming right off after I didn't bother.

The fingers that sucked the worst were the index and the pinkie. The ring and thumb were the best (uhhh... in terms of this mani...) and the middle is just okay.

The 2 fingers I liked the most.

Overall, I think the idea is good, the execution just could have been better. Also, maybe it would look better with less glitter, like only one glitter star per nail? I don't know... I'll try again tonight (something different!!) for my actual 4th mani and show it tomorrow.

Now here's some patriotic nail art that I actually like!! I did my mom's and my sister's nails for the 4th and like how they came out.

These are my mom's nails. I used the same colors mentioned above (my base colors, not the glitters). As you can see she has tip wear already after 1 day because I didn't put any top coat on.

And these are my sister's (she's 13 in case you didn't already know that.) This is done on a set of acrylic nails (Kiss, most likely.)

I used Sinful Social Ladder as a base to make the acrylics shiny and sparkly and then I painted a french on, freehand using WnW French White. I went over just the french tip with WnW Kaleidoscope (holo glitter) and then using my striper brush, striped across the bottom of where the white met the pink with Dark Denim. Then, using the striper again, striped above the blue, but leaving a space of white, with Cherry Red. Then I striped over the blue stripe with Strapless. Then just on her thumbs, dotted white with a toothpick; I would have done all her fingers but she lost patience and ran away.

I know the red stripe on the thumb on the left looks jacked up but most of them looked fine and you can't tell from a distance!

Uhhh... I can't think of an ending... so...

Thanks for looking, commenting and following!

Fiona

Saturday Haul from Zoya and the Mall of NH

2011-07-02T22:40:00.000-04:00

Hey everyone!

I hope that you are all enjoying this lovely 4th of July weekend to all of our American readers (and to our international readers, a lovely weekend). Today I went to the Mall of New Hampshire with Fiona. The Mall of NH is centrally located between out two houses since we live in different parts of the state. But before I went to the mall today, I got a package from Zoya today that contained the Color Lock System promo that I ordered last Friday. The mail lady that drops off my packages at my house is very stealthy since I didn't even hear her drive by or leave the package on the porch; she must be trained in the ways of the ninja! But that just meant that my package was now pretty hot and I was afraid that my bottles in the Color Lock System or the free Sunshine collection I got might have exploded in the heat of the intense New England summer and sun.

Color Lock System

Sunshine collection: Reva, Kimmy, Rica, Tansy, Apple, and Faye. Don't know why Kimmy's looking more orange than red in this pic...

But anyway, back to the mall. The Mall of NH just put in a brand spankin' new Ulta store right in our state! Before, the closest Ulta to us was in Portland, ME which is still a good 2 hour or so drive from my part of the state. All I have to say about this store is that it is EPIC. They have so many OPIs, Essies, China Glazes, and Orlys that it was mind blowing. We walked into the store and just stood there for a good 30 seconds taking it all in. I was amazed with all of the different products they had from Cover Girl cosmetics to Bare Essentials mineral makeup (which I almost bought but due to no prices I didn't). This Ulta kind of had a selection of Zoyas, but it was one Intimates collection display that had been pretty picked over since it only contained two bottles of Dove (which I already have) and to my delight, two bottles of Marley. I was happy to finally get Marley since I've been wanting her since I saw her on the swatch plate that came with our Earth Day promo package. I also found a bottle of Orly Space Cadet hidden on an end display of China Glazes and OPIs on the very bottom underneath the display for some OPIs. Someone must have put it there so they could come back later for it; too bad for them since I bought it, sorry person. : ( They also had the Nice Stems! collection from OPI, but they didn't have the one I wanted which was I Lily Love you (a polish that contains flaky pieces in it). They only had it in a mini Nice Stems! collection that would only be good for one-time usage.

Space Cadet and Marley

I was actually proud of myself since I was able to walk out of Ulta without buying a million polishes. I just wished they had more Zoyas than what I found. Maybe in a few months they will, but for now our NH Ulta is not stocked up on Zoya. If they did have more Zoyas than I would have walked out with more. I did well until, like Fiona just said, we went into this store called Hair Cosmopolitan.

I had only seen a display that contained a lot of OPIs and I was hoping that I might find I Lily Love you in there, but then Fiona kept calling my name until I finally turned around and saw the large display of Zoyas. I think my brain just shut down seeing it. I had such a hard time picking out two colors that I really wanted since they had so many that have been on my want list since becoming a Zoya addict. I finally settled on Pinta and Yasmeen since they were two of the purples that I've really wanted for a bit. I almost picked up Roxy instead, but I really wanted those two. I then decided I needed a bottle of Freja as well since it was a cool gunmetal grey.

Yasmeen, Freja, and Pinta

But the best part was that at the register, they had a display that contained some Nice Stems! polishes. And guess what polish I found?

I Lily Love you: Epic Win

Here's another pic of it to show more of the flakies and glitter that's in this awesome polish:

So besides the mall being 90 degrees since they clearly didn't have the AC on, it was a great day spent with Fiona! And sorry for rambling on at times; hope you all have a great rest of 4th of July weekend (or just weekend for international viewers)!

-Amanda

Mall Haul and Zoya Roxy!

2011-07-02T18:52:00.001-04:00

Hello!

How is everyone this lovely Saturday evening? I am awesome! Why? Because I just hauled a bunch of polish from the mall (mainly Ulta) with Amanda this afternoon!

Wanna see what I got? Of course you do!

From top L-R: China Glaze Blue Iguana, Starboard and Crushed Candy. SH HD Laser and Zoya Roxy
Bottom L-R: Orly Halley's Comet (!!!!!), Royal Velvet, and Blue Collar. OPI No Room For the Blues.

Not as big a haul as some people but this is the most I have ever spent on nail polish and got at one time!! It was exhilarating!! Ulta is like a nail polish heaven! I couldn't believe all the choices! We spent close to an hour or more in there. I was glad they were having a buy 2 get 1 free sale on polish or all this would have cost me a lot more! When the guy first rang me up, he hadn't added in the free polish and it had come to $20 more than I actually spent, I was so scared!! I was so close to getting the OPI Grand Slam set with Grape... Set... Match! and Serving Up Sparkle but there wasn't a price on it (a common theme we discovered at Ulta... annoying) and I was afraid it was super expensive so I didn't. I was also contemplating getting Turquoise Shatter and passed it up and by the time we had come back to it, it was gone! :( I also almost got OPI Purple With a Purpose but when I realized the BOGO didn't apply to OPI, I quickly put it back since the OPIs are $8.50.

The Zoya came from a place called Hair Cosmopoliton. Amanda and I were just walking around and saw polish through the window and went in to check it out. She went right to the giant OPI display and I immediately saw the giant Zoya tower and was like, "Amanda... Amanda... AMANDA!!" And then she had a heart attack when she saw it! I only got one because they were $7.99 but it was hard to resist!

It was hard to decide which to wear first (I love them all so much! So many lemmings are killed!) but Roxy was calling out to me so I put it on. And Oh. My. God. WOW. This one goes straight into my Top 5 Favorite polishes ever (if I had a Top 5 list...)

Just... just... just.. LOOOK AT EEET!!

Amazing-sauce, full of win... whatever... Zoya Roxy is stunning. Simply stunning. And I don't even like these types of colors!! ~~I don't know whether to call this a glitter or a sparkle~~ *EDIT* I've decided to classify this as a glitter because it removes like a glitter, so break out your acetone and tin foil!~~... somewhere in between.~~ Now, I'm no polish expert, but to me, after studying this intently, this looks to be magenta glitter and shimmer suspended in a dark raspberry jelly base. The base is definitely dark, and the glitter/sparkle/shimmer pieces are definitely magenta. Shown is 3 effortless coats with SV. I did a quick clean-up because I was trying to catch the some sunlight before the sun set, which fortunately I did!

Here's about a million more pictures... sorry but this soooo pretty I had to!

It's darker and has more depth than this...

So I think I've made my point clear... Zoya Roxy is beyond gorgeous!! So, so, so glad I decided to pick this up!

I hope you all enjoy your holiday weekend (in case I don't post again until Monday)!!

Thanks for looking, commenting, and following!

Fiona

I'm Actually Posting Finally (And It's A Long One)

2011-06-29T22:25:00.000-04:00

Hey everyone (and hello to all of our new followers; thanks for following our blog!.).

I have not been motivated to post in a while just because work has pretty much drained all of my life force out of my body. I've been working overtime since I last posted, and I've filled the time I have left in my day when I'm not working 10-11 hours with eating, sleeping, showering, and doing a wicked quick nail polish change. Last week I worked almost 50 HOURS. I wanted to hurt someone so bad when I had to get up for work last Friday; I actually cried because I didn't want to go in because I was so tired and I had a pounding headache. Lets just say I spent a good portion of Saturday and Sunday sleeping to make up for getting up at 5:45am everyday last week. Don't get me wrong, I do really like my job and I have fun with my co-workers (I work with my dad so I get to spend time with him which is pretty cool); it's just I hate getting up that early during the summer. But Thursday always make it worth the early hours when I get my paycheck and I have money in my pocket : ) Sorry, complaining portion of this post is over now. On to better things!

For anyone who is reading this outside of the U.S., this weekend is Fourth of July Weekend for us Americans. I decided to go out on my nails last night and get a little fancy with them (I've only been painting them in shades I've already worn for work since I work with acetone quite a bit, and it still manages to seep into the latex gloves and ruin my polish). I went with Zoya Isla (an absolutely GORGEOUS ruby red polish that is a must have for people who have cool skin tones. Trust me, it's amazing!!!) and Zoya Tart for an accent finger on my ring finger. To top it off, I pulled out my OPI Silver Shatter and put it on over Isla and Tart. The results were pretty patriotic, at least that's what I thought:

(had to cut my nails last Friday; I had screws getting lodged underneath my long nails and they wouldn't come out! How sad and pathetic is that?)

And since Transformers: Dark of the Moon was released today (seeing it Friday and I'm pretty pumped for it!), this can also double as a Transformers mani idea as well since Optimums Prime (head good transformer for those who haven't seen the movies or hear of Transformers at all) is painted red, silver, and blue. So it's a dual purpose mani then? You guys can tell me if it's stupid or not in the comments.

Also I got my Zoya Charla/Ivanka promo two weeks ago (see how behind I am on posting, I got that package two weeks ago and I'm finally talking about it now!). Here are a few pics on what I got:

Armor and Anchor

Emme, Rica, Sooki, Faye, Julieanne

And Charla and Ivanka

I immediately tried out my new bottle of Anchor that I got. I love this base coat by Zoya. I've tried a base coat from Sally Hansen and it was horrible. It never wanted to dry, and when I would put it on, go to class, and then come back more than an hour later and start to paint my nails, it would prevent the first coat from going on smooth. This base coat however, dries very quickly and does what it says it's supposed to do which is bond the color to the nail. And it also has proteins in it that help to strengthen nails and I've felt that my nails are stronger in the two weeks that I've been using it. It's also helped to keep my nail color on longer which with my job and the high mortality rate of my manis since coming back from school is amazing since instead of lasting a day and a half, now my nails are lasting 3+ days in the last week! The reason the polish comes off now is because I don't want to be wearing that color anymore!

I then did my toes in Charla because well, it's Charla man! Warning, a pic of my toes is right below this!

And on my fingers I did Faye (my new exam taking nail polish color since I wore it during my three finals last semester and I did really well on them) with a coat of my new top coat Zoya Armor. The corner of my thumb got a little weird some how, I forget how now, but I wore Faye for five days with Anchor and Armor on and it didn't chip once (and three of those days were spent working)!

I have to say that I like Armor much better than Seche Vite now. I've been having major cuticle shrinkage problems with Seche Vite; it made it look like my nails had been painted for a week when it had only been about a day. Also, the smell with Seche Vite is qutie strong. My parents don't even want to be in the same room as me as soon as I open the bottle and then they avoid me for the next hour after I put it on my nails. So I tried Armor to see if I'd like it better. And I do! I have to say it smells a million times better then SV does and it actually smells a little fruity to me. It's also glossy when it dries. Sure it takes a little longer then SV to dry, but the durability, smell, and non-cuticle shrinkage makes up for it big time. So yes, I've become a Zoya addict and I've got no shame in admitting it.

Sorry for not posting half of this post last week, and that it was really long, but I am really sorry and I feel bad for neglecting my posting duties. I am going to post this weekend about the nail polish I'm going to actually wear for the Fourth so I hope you check in then to see what it is! And thanks for reading this really long post!

-Amanda

New Sinful and Pride Pedi

2011-06-29T19:07:00.001-04:00

Hello!

Sorry there was no post yesterday. My aunt has moved into the apartment in my family's house and she hired me to clean out her old apartment. That's what I spent all day yesterday, from 10 AM to 4 PM doing. Vacuuming 2 bedrooms, cleaning a bathroom, kitchen, all that good stuff. Needless to say, I am exhausted. Surprisingly, I didn't break a single nail! Plus, I get a lovely chunk of cash to spend this weekend when I meet up with Amanda. We're going to the largest mall in our state to check out the brand new Ulta! Neither of us have ever been to an Ulta so we're both really excited!

So when I got home this afternoon from finishing up cleaning the kitchen of the apartment, after I took a much needed shower, my nails were... well, they looked like I'd had the same mani on for weeks. Yikes!! So definitely had to redo my mani. My toes were looking pretty shabby too so I decided to do them too. Plus I had been meaning to do something rainbow this month for Pride Month. Better late than never I guess! So I used the new Sinful that I got the other day, called Open Seas. Its from that new collection that's supposed to be a dupe collection of the OPI Pirates of the Caribbean collection. This one is supposed to be the dupe for Mermaid's Tears. I was going to get the dupe for Stranger Tides, but once I saw it in person, it just looked too icky too me. If I'm being honest, I would probably only wear it to swatch it and then put it under Fractured Foil to see what it would look like. And then it would probably never be worn again and put in my swap pile (if I had a swap pile...) And in case you're interested, because I know people have been having a hard time finding this collection (as well as that damn Wet n' Wild Mermaid's Cove... but we won't go there) I found it at Rite Aid but didn't see it at Walgreens or CVS.

So here's what it looks like,

This actually had a great formula! I think Sinful has done some work on their formula because this is unlike any Sinful formula I have! Its not runny at all but its not thick either. Its just pure creamy, pigmented, perfection. This was very easy to apply, and shown is only 2 coats. This is no top coat either, so its quite shiny. This also dried surprisingly fast as well! I was shocked! Usually Sinful has an average dry time but this had a dry time of something like a SH Insta Dry.

I don't know how closely this compares to Mermaid's Tears, but it looks a lot like the pictures I've seen of it. I don't know if anyone's done a comparison of the two yet (I haven't looked... *EDIT* All Laquered Up did one here and they're basically identical) but I bet someone will eventually. But, I think its safe to say, if you don't have MT and want a very cheap close alternative, look for this collection and pick this color up. Heck, pick this color up anyway because its a gorgeous color and and a kick ass formula for $1.99!!

Here's how this color compared to similar colors in my collection,

Done on my pallette (lid of a plastic bin) so please excuse the dried on polish. Very top is SH Barracuda, on the left is Essie Turquoise and Caicos, middle is Open Seas, right is Orly Gumdrop and very bottom is Sinful Mint Apple. I actually think Mint Apple is the closet except for the shimmer in MA. T&C and G are both too bright and B is too light.

And finally, here's my pride pedi. This is for my gay cousin and gay friends I've had over the years. Also just showing my support!

As always, enlarge at your own risk, because this is not cleaned up. I won't list polish colors because I'm sure none of you are really interested in reading a list of 10 polishes. If you want to know what a specific color is, just leave a comment asking! :) Oh, and I did this this way because I didn't want my big toes to both be green, I wanted at least one big toe to be purple, so I did it so when I crossed my feet, there would be a rainbow.

I hope everyone had a good Tuesday and a good Wednesday and I'll talk to you tomorrow (hopefully!)

Thanks for looking, commenting, and following!

Fiona

Sinful Colors Love (pic and word heavy)

2011-06-27T15:23:00.001-04:00

Hello!

Look! Its me! Posting at a normal hour! WOW! This is a first in a while, haha! I actually got up at a normal hour today too: 9 AM! I've been getting up every day for a few weeks at 2 PM or later.

First order of business, thank you all so much for all your great comments on my last post on my splatter nails! I really appreciate it and loved hearing what you guys had to say! Your comments make my day! :)

My mom's party was really fun last night, she was really surprised at all the people that were there! The only bad part was ~~right around cake time I started to get my blurry vision which meant a migraine was coming on and then~~ This is me editing myself because I feel like sometimes I talk too much about my personal problems and unnecessary information. I would love it if you would please leave a comment telling me whether you prefer edited, shorter posts or you enjoy the long posts. Or if you simply don't mind (or care) either way. Thank you! the worst migraine I'd had in months slammed me. I spent the last half hour of the party lying in the back seat of my parent's car, feeling like the world was spinning and like my head was going to split open. The car ride back home from my aunt and uncle's house was hell, especially since my 15 year old brother drove (my mom was in the passenger seat instructing him; don't worry!) I went straight to bed when we got home at 9 PM and went right to sleep after taking my migraine meds. I feel much better today, thankfully!

Today I was bored ~~since I have a lot more time on my hands than I'm used to since I got up so early~~ so I decided to do some swatching since its a nice and sunny day. Its also quite warm ~~(80 degrees F or 26.6 degrees C... haha, I just used my phone to convert that!)~~ but it feels warmer because of the humidity. I really don't like the heat ~~(I know, I'm abnormal, my family reminds me all the time)~~ so I'm holed up here in my nice and air conditioned room. ~~I love A/C. My parents finally caved and bought me an A/C unit this year and it so nice!~~

So today's swatches are all of a brand that I love, ~~as if you couldn't tell from the title,~~ Sinful Colors, ~~or simply~~ Sinful as I always call it.

My Sinful collection (top, middle) where they live in one of my polish drawers.

Sinful is a brand that I think it underrated ~~because a lot of people don't like it simply because its a drugstore brand.~~ It also gets a bad rep because some colors are known to be runny and sheer, which is true. Sometimes their formula sucks. And their colors are usually not unique. ~~But this is also true of the majority of nail polish brands (drugstore brands, anyway.)~~ I've also heard that Sinful has been known to have a poor wear time and staining issues, and I won't dispute this either. But as someone who usually changes their polish daily, wear time is not something that I'm concerned with. ~~But for ladies that want their manicures to last for several days, I do not recommend Sinful because in my experience their wear in not good.~~ So why do I love it if I've said so many negative things about it? They're cheap! $1.99 is their regular price and you can often find them for 99 cents on sale. They're also readily available at Walgreens, Rite Aid, CVS (I think) and some Targets. They're great for people just starting to get into nail polish collecting and who want to build a core color collection ~~because they have every color and every finish. If you know what to look for and what to avoid, you can get some great shades by them.~~ Shades I would recommend by them are: Let's Talk (~~my favorite color ever!~~ Glowy purple/blue, opaque in 2 coats, gorgeous), Why Not (pretty bright blue, opaque in 2 coats), Happy Ending (gorgeous yellow toned green with gold shimmer, opaque in 2-3 coats), Boogie Nights (very flattering coral jelly, up to 4 coats for opacity but its a jelly) and 24/7 (bright, bright neon pink, sheer but can get by in 3 coats, 2 over white. ~~A tip for this one: leave up-capped for 10 minutes or so and it will thicken up so you can do 2 coats)~~ And then these 3 I'm going to show you!

Okay, enough babbling... onto the swatches!

Daddy's Girl. This is a gorgeous deep purple with pink glass fleck jelly that reminds me of grape jelly. This one is quite sheer but that's typical of jellies. This is shown at 4 coats. You could do less if you don't mind as much VNL or have horribly stained nails like me ~~(I'm always saying I have "horribly stained nails" and here's the proof in the swatches of this color and the next color. I need to invest in some Bubble White or something.)~~ Oh and ignore the bright pink flash at the bottom of the bottle in these pictures, that's my red camera! ~~While there is a slight pink flash because of the pink flecks, its not that strong!~~ You can also see my reflection in the bottle and nails... sorry!

IRL, I didn't have this much VNL and the color is richer more depth. Its more like the bottle. This color is truly gorgeous but not super flashy and will look like a dark dark purple indoors. Highly recommend this one, my pictures DO NOT do it justice. I suggest you Google this one and look at pictures of it.

Also, I should mention, I tried to do a proper clean-up of my nail, cuticle and "gap" area with a brush and acetone and actually put effort into it. I still need practice, as you can see I smudged my side of my pinkie in the process, but I tried.

Forget Now ~~(such a stupid name!)~~ is a beautiful raspberry pink glass fleck jelly. Pictured is 4 coats but again, if you don't mind VNL and don't have stained nails, 2 would been fine. The formula on this one is a little bit more problematic than Daddy's Girl, I will admit. Its a little runny and thin and has a longer drying time, but with a color this gorgeous, I think its worth it! This color was VERY difficult to properly capture and after about 50 pictures I think I got it (third pic) This is the color that I mentioned a few posts ago that reminds me very strongly of China Glaze Ahoy! or China Glaze 108 Degrees or OPI Be A Dahlia Won't You? (any of them, because to me all 3 are very similar) so if you're lemming any of those and are on a budget (like me!) or simply can't find them, Forget Now may be a good substitute.

A bit brighter than it actually is, but my ring nail shows the insane glass fleck shimmer. ~~Oh and that's my pool in the background. Its still being cleaned so it looks kinda green...~~

This is the most accurate picture I could get of this. Please be kind to my stained nails!

While I was outdoors swatching, my cat Marley and doggie Cocoa were just inside the screen door wanting to come outside... ~~both are indoor pets! (Cocoa also wants to play, but doesn't understand the concept of fetch so she just carries her toys around in her mouth!)~~

Cocoa says, "I'm a good girl, I'm a good, good dog, see!?" Marley says, "Psshhhh... no you're not. Moron." And I just noticed the white thing attached to either her collar or toy dog... I think its a wrapper of some kind on the floor next to her and its an optical illusion.

Last is Midnight Blue ~~(creative, huh?)~~ which is a glowy, dark (though not in this picture) metallic (ish) shimmery blue. This was my problem child today. I took about 50 pictures of this one as well and not one is color accurate. Oh well. This is not the most unique color, for sure, but its surprisingly unique in my collection (if anyone knows of a dupe, please let me know!) The formula on this one is just okay. There are bubbles in this mani because I did this with the A/C on. Shown is 2 coats and it went on smoothly and dried pretty quickly, standard for my "good" Sinfuls. The formula was a little runny but not thin. I'm wearing this as a full mani today and I really like it. I've worn it before and I liked it then too. This is a pretty standard color for me as I like to wear dark shimmers and duochromes (though this one isn't a duochrome.) I recommend this color as well if you like these kind of colors and because its one of the "good" Sinfuls (IMO, of course)

Closer to accurate color although it looks strangely frosty here (its not frosty at all!) and brushstrokey (which its not!) Looks like bottle color here.

Closest to color accurate ~~though you can my crappy clean-up job and application (I really did try!)~~ and you lose the shimmer/metallic-ness.

Finally this is my Sinful collection again:

~~It bugs me how some have the little "SC" on the cap and some don't.~~ Now here are the names, from memory ~~(I'm so pathetic because I can do this...)~~
Top Row L-R: Daddy's Girl*, Let's Talk*, Fiji^, Midnight Blue*, Love Nails*, Rise and Shine^ and Open Seas ~~(from the new OPI Pirates dupe collection, the supposed dupe of Mermaid's Tears,~~ untried)
Middle Row L-R: Mint Apple*, Envy*, HD Nails^, Happy Ending*, Irish Green^, Green Ocean^(flakie), and Unicorn^
Bottom Row L-R: Let's Meet^, Boogie Nights* (jelly), Gogo Girl* (jelly), Sugar Sugar (untried), Forget Now*, Pink^, (24/7* would normally go here ~~but my sister has stolen it again and I don't know where it is...~~) Cream Pink* and then all alone in the very bottom row is Social Ladder* ~~(sparkly, sheer nude, good for French manicures)~~.
* = "good" one (good formula/color), recommend checking out
^ = crappy formula, don't recommend

So, I hope this post was helpful for at least someone ~~(even if it helped one person, that would make me happy!)~~ and I hope the rest of you who didn't find it helpful ~~(are hopefully already Sinful fans!)~~ had a great weekend and have/had a great Monday or whatever day you read this!

Thanks for reading, looking, commenting, and following!!

Fiona

Splatter Nails

2011-06-25T18:47:00.000-04:00

Hello!

Today I have for you guys (Hi new followers! Thanks for choosing Ha Bisky Nails!!) a mani I did the night before last. I was strongly inspired (okay, I copied) this post by Jen, The PolishAholic. I fell in love with the bottom one and knew I had to do it! To do it I used a combination of the two awesome splatter mani tutorials by Jen and the lovely Jessica at Jessica's Nail Art linked Jen's here and Jessica's here. Whew, I think that's enough links!! I used both of their tutorials because they're both the same basic idea but each with a unique way of explaining things and each offers their own helpful tips as well! I used Jessica's idea of using tin foil to put the polish on as I found that to work better than a paper plate/piece of paper because paper absorbs polish. I also found Jen's tip of "fast, quick puffs of air" to blow since I was having issues at first while I was practicing, getting any polish to come out of the straw. I could just see my doctor shaking her head at me because due to my slight asthma (I know, how can one have slight asthma...? I'm not sure, but its mild and mostly exercise-induced) This left me feeling a little light headed when I was done from all the puffing, but it wasn't too bad.

Close up of the nail that came out best, my ring.

For this mani, I began with a base of WnW Black Creme topped with Pure Ice Rio, a combo which I posted on a while ago. This creates a magical purple/blue sparkly duochrome. Then, following the tutorial(s) instructions created my splatters. If you're interested, I suggest checking out one or both of the links above to see how to do it, because that's exactly what I did. Fair warning though: this is MUCH messier than I thought. And time consuming. And frustrating. For me, it was quite frustrating because, like I said, I had issues getting the polish out of the straw. I was like "WTF IS THIS SHIT!!? There is no way this is gonna work!!" But then it did. You just gotta keep at it until it happens, its like Konad, theres a learning curve, but once you get it, its so fun and easy and you get an awesome nail art design with not a lot of effort! This also requires no artistic skill whatsoever, and is almost impossible to f-up.

I splattered first using WnW NERDS Need Love Too, which I have posted on before, on all my nails and then did Nicole I'm A Belieber, which I found to splatter much better than NNLT for some reason. I topped it with SV, because the blowing through the straw made the polish dry weird, kinda matte, plus this was lumpy.

More crappy indoor lighting flash pics because its still raining here and we haven't seen the sun for days now. :( Please excuse the weird chipping around my cuticles (no clue how this happened) and the chips on my middle and index nails. My nails like the chip in the shower.

That's all for today. Now I have to get to work on my mom's birthday party stuff. She's turning 50 tomorrow and we have a huge party planned (shhhhh.... its a secret, she doesn't know how big the party is, she just thinks its a small gathering but there's really like 30+ people coming!) I have to make these posters with quotes on them about turning 50, type up the Jeopardy game questions (my mom LOVES Jeopardy) and make some decorations and sort through the bag of decorations my aunt gave me. Yeah, I've procrastinated because its tomorrow and I've had days and days to work on it... I'm also doing her nails tonight. I showed her the splatter and she loved it and wants it for her birthday. So I'm doing a splatter of fun, bright rainbow colors and accent ring nails on both hands, on one hand a birthday cake with candles and on the other a 50. This should be fun to do on the couch!

I hope you all enjoy your weekend! I may post my mom's nails tonight if they come out well...

Thanks for looking, following, and commenting!!

Fiona

More crack... are you surprised?

2011-06-22T23:50:00.000-04:00

Hello!

I'm a crack addict. I need rehab. As of now, I will put crackle nail polish on just about any manicure within an hour because I feel it needs it.

The good news is that I have many options. I managed to get the Sally Hansen Crackle Overcoat Vintage Violet at Walgreens yesterday (SCORE!!) I wasn't planning on buying it. I went there because I needed white and wanted to try WnW French White to see if its as awesome as Black Creme (it totally is) and then I looked up and saw it. I had to be mine. So I bought it. Along with a SH HD that was on sale for $1.69 (originally $6.49) I got a pretty cobalt blue, appropriately named Blu. I almost got a coral and green from the same collection since they were such a great deal but I resisted.

So as you may have guessed, I have a mani for you today featuring my new pretty Vintage Violet. I know, I know, Amanda has already shown this one to you, and recently too, but I'm excited about this and this is the most recent mani I've done and taken pictures of (read: this is all I got for you.) Plus, this is a totally different color combination. Maybe even a color combo that most people wouldn't have thought to do.

Like she said, VV is a total win. It crackles perfectly over tacky and dry polish. Its totally gorgeous too. Its a pink toned purple with a slight blue-ish shimmer and flash, very interesting!!

I decided to try it over Zoya Rica because I saw on someone else's blog recently (I have no clue who, I read SO MANY blogs) a purple and orange combo and thought it was interesting and funky, totally my style. I really, really like how this came out!!

Look at that blue-ish flash in the bottle!! Oh and I should mention this is with SV over 2 coats of Zoya Rica. My index has 2 coats of VV because I messed up the first one. I like it but the crackle pattern is different and not as linear as I like. I like the color it makes it though!

Oh and I'm sorry for the sucky pictures. It was rainy all day so I couldn't get any outdoor pics so all I had to work with was indoor flash pics since the lighting situation in my house is terrible since I don't have a good desk lamp like I did at school. I could unpack it but I really don't have a place to put it. These are surprisingly pretty color accurate though. My camera likes orange and pink toned colors like this.

And sorry for the hairs on the bottle (I have a dog and 3 cats, its bound to happen!) I didn't notice them until now. And for my horribly shaped cuticle "gap" and what appears to be tipwear on my ring nail. I don't know what that is, its not present IRL. I think its just macro and flash picking up little imperfections.

I hope everyone enjoys the rest of their week in case I don't post until this weekend and thanks for looking!

Please comment and follow!

Fiona

Top 10 Award

2011-06-22T23:13:00.002-04:00

Hello!

First off, thank you to Whitney from Elemental Styles for tagging Amanda and I for the Top 10 Award!!

The rules:
1. Thank the person who tagged you and link to their blog.
2. Put the Top 10 Award logo on your blog.
3. List your top 10 cosmetics.
4. Choose 10 bloggers to tag, link to their blogs, and let them know.

Okay so, my Top 10 cosmetics... uhhh... I don't use any cosmetics... *shifty eyes* I just don't... I have a long list of excuses... sensitive skin, no money, bad past experiences, can't find concealer/foundation in my skin tone, ect... mostly the extremely sensitive skin around my eyes which Whitney herself has suggested I talk to my dermatologist about which I am in the process of getting an appointment with a new one since derms are notoriously hard to get an appointment with. So, long story short, I don't wear any makeup... I know, I can hear the collective gasp. So instead, I'm going to list my top 10 products, not necessarily cosmetics or beauty products. Just products I like, use everyday and repurchase... These are also in no particular order since I couldn't even begin to go about ranking them...

1. Suave Professionals Humectant Shampoo/Conditioner The only shampoo and conditioner my sensitive scalp can tolerate. I've tried just about every shampoo brand and have had reactions of some kind to all of them. I like the humectant one because its a very unique smell (seriously, just smell it next time you see it at the store because I can't describe it) kinda coconutty, floral, musky, vanilla-y... plus the scent always reminds me of my mom because thats what she used when I was growing up. I have thick, naturally wavy, unmanageable hair and this stuff tames it so its soft and easy to work with. I just love it, period.
2. Neutrogena Oil Free Acne Wash Pink Grapefruit Foaming Cleanser I really don't care for the smell of this at all. At first it smelled like grapefruit, but the more I use it, the more its started to smell like ammonia (cat pee) but its not overwhelming so I can get past it. This makes my skin really soft (I have weirdly really soft skin naturally anyway) but this keeps it that way. This has also cut down on the amount of blackheads on my chin and forehead and decreased the oilyness of my face dramatically. I have combination/problem/sensitive skin and this has helped keep it under control.
3. Cetaphil Daily Advance Moisturizing Lotion for Dry Sensitive Skin This lotion works really well for when my skin is irritated and itchy (I also have eczema patches) or sunburned. Its soothing and sinks in fast. Its a little greasy, but every lotion I've tried is greasy on me. Its also non-irritating to my skin so I can use it on the eczema patches at the outer corners of my eyes, where I have baby-sensitive skin.
4. Bath and Body Works Dark Kiss and Secret Wonderland Lotions These are my favorite scents from B&BWs. I like their products because their cruelty free with no animal testing. I find their regular body lotions to be very greasy even I just use a little bit but they are quite moisturizing so I don't use them if I'm going to be doing anything. I save them for just before bed in the wintertime so I wake up with soft, moisturized hands and arms. Plus, they smell so good and are quite strong so I even use them as a perfume by rubbing them on my neck and shoulders and the scent lasts all day! They do irritate my skin sometimes though (not my hands!) so I don't always use them.
5. Garnier Fructis Curl Sculpting Cream I don't use this everyday but when I do, I get good results! This makes my natural semi curls appear more curled and less like waves (its hard to describe!) and keeps my hair from being frizzy and poofy (amazingly!) My natural hair is a monster, its very voluminous, frizzy and wild-looking. I like it sometimes by other times I just wish it was naturally smooth and flat. The only problem I have with this product is that I have a difficult time getting the right amount. The "quarter-sized" amount it says on the back is not enough for my hair since its so thick and just longer than shoulder length as well. I always end up with too much which makes my hair crunchy and weighs it down. Thats why I don't use this everyday.
6. Jeez, I'm only at 6 and I've babbled so much and have almost ran out of products... Blistex Medicated Lip Balm Pretty self-explanatory I think. New England winters are harsh and you need a good chapstick and this is the one thats worked best for me. I like this one because its a little minty, but not overly minty and I'm not a fan of overly minty things. Thats the main reason I like it. Otherwise its a pretty standard chapstick.
7. Garnier Fructis 100% Color This is my absolute favorite hair dye. Unfortunately, its gotten harder to find in the past year or so and that makes me mad. My go to color always used to be Blue Black but I haven't been that color in a year or so. My natural hair color is... well... here's another long story. I've been dying my hair since I was 12. I've been every color you can think of, some a few times. When I began dying it all those years ago, it was a golden blonde color. My parents both have dark brown hair. I was born blonde and was blonde growing up... I looked like Shirley Temple with my curls... well actually I looked exactly like the little girl (young Drew Barrymore) in ET, or so people have said who've seen pictures of me growing up. Anyway, I have no idea what my hair color is now. My roots growing in are a medium mousey brown, so its probably that. But I will continue to dye my hair different colors my whole life, I believe. Anyway, this dye is the best one ever. It doesn't smell at all like hair dye, it smells fruity, it lasts months longer than other "permanent" hair colors I've used. It even outlasts the expensive stuff I've bought at Sally's. Try this stuff, if you can find it!
8. Degree Ultra Clear in Pure Rain Best deodorant I've tried and I can honestly say I've tried them all. Even the weird indie brands that smell like a grandmother. Even a medicated prescription one (that I was allergic to, haha!) I know everyone's body chemistry is different but I am only saying that this one worked for me and I no longer have a sweating problem (gross, I know!) Plus, I love the smell of this one, so pure and clean, mmmmm!
9. St. Ive's Oatmeal and ~~Honey~~ Shea Butter Body Wash EDIT: I checked the name and fixed it! ~~At least I think that's what its called... anyway,~~ I love St. Ive's because they're a vegan brand, with no animal testing or animal products and thats awesome. I'm not a vegan, by the way, I'm a cheating vegetarian. I eat chicken and occasionally cheat and eat pork or beef. I try though. Anyway, I like this body wash because its moisturizing, so its good for the winter so thats the only time I use it since I find it makes my skin greasy in other seasons. It has a light, subtle smell which is okay, not my favorite. I mostly like this because its vegan and is nice in the winter. It also lathers nicely.
10. Shick Intuition Razor This is the most genius thing ever invented! I have never, not ever, cut myself shaving while using this. It has the soap already on the razor so there's no need to use shaving cream and make it a whole ordeal. You can just shave in the shower and not worry about cream washing off before you get to that part of your leg. I love everything about this, except for 2 things. The price is ridiculous, and the reason I can only use it occasionally when I get the money. Its $9 for a starter kit: a razor, 2 refills and a shower hanger thing. Refills are like $12-14. Seriously. Its total robbery, and you only get 3 refills in a package! The other thing I don't like is how quickly you go through it. You can get maybe 4 shaves out of one soap head thing and than you need to replace it. So its not worth the money, but I still love it anyway because I cut myself with every other razor. Maybe I'm just inept at shaving without it.

So, those were my top 10 products. I hope I wasn't too boring (although I'm sure some of it was...) and at least some of you read it!!

Now its time to tag 10 more bloggers to do this. I apologize if you've already been tagged for this!! I tag:

1. Gotham Polish
2. Jessica's Nail Art
3. No Naked Nails!
4. The Kiwi With The Crazy Nails
5. The Nail Buff
6. Deez Nails
7. Nailstah

Whew... this is hard, so I think I'm gonna leave it there. The other 3 people I would have tagged, Whitney, Liz, and Amber were already tagged for the award...

I hope you all enjoyed your Wednesday!! (as much as a person can enjoy can enjoy a Wednesday, I suppose...)

I actually have a nail post to do today as well and was going to include it in this post, but this post has become so long so... yeah. I'll do another post right after this one. :)

Thanks for looking! Don't forget to comment and follow (please?)

Fiona

Glitter in the Haze

2011-06-18T22:51:00.000-04:00

Hello!

I hope y'all are enjoying your weekend (sorry, I'm watching Country Strong... and I was born in Virginia, so its kinda a habit) Anyway, tonight I have some pictures of a franken I made a few weeks ago but hadn't tested it yet. I liked the idea of Deborah Lippman's Glitter in the Air, where the pieces of glitter "float" in a sheer polish due to the multiple layers. So after getting WnW Party of Five Glitters, I used a bunch of that to make this franken. The recipe is: about 1/4 bottle of clear (I used top coat and don't recommend using fast drying top coat like I did), about 1/4 bottle of PoFG, about 20 drops of Zoya Zara, about 20 drops of Nicole I'm a Beliber, about 10-20 drops of white, and about 20 drops of Nicole Make a Comet-Ment. I really like the way this came out although the formula is very thick and goopy like white school glue and dries really fast which is a good and a bad thing. Its a good thing because it allows me to layer it quickly without waiting a long time for each individual coat to dry. Its a bad thing because it dries almost as soon as I paint it on, so if I make a mistake, I can't just wipe it off, plus it makes application difficult. Also, the glitter pieces are very difficult to get on the brush and then to transfer enough pieces to the nail. So the application style tends to be similar to the way I apply PoFG on its own; sort of a dabbing type thing.

I didn't use top coat for this because it dried so fast.

Here's an extreme close up done by cropping in iPhoto where I edit. I didn't know I could do this is until now and I really like it. You can see all the pretty sparkle that MaC-M added to it. And the hex glitter shows really well.

Unfortunately, due to the 4 coats I put on, the polish was so thick that I was able to peel it off in sheets literally a few minutes after these pictures were taken, resulting in this:

Also, I cut some beautiful white and pink peonies from my mom's garden. Peonies are one of my favorite flowers, they're just so gorgeous to me. I took some pictures of them and posed a little with them. Enjoy!

This is my favorite

I hope you all liked that and have a great rest of the weekend!

Please comment and follow!

Thanks for looking!

Fiona

Wild Thang

2011-06-17T15:31:00.000-04:00

Hello!

I hope everyone is enjoying their Friday! I know I said in my previous post that I would have pictures of Glitter in the Haze today, but I decided to do a leopard print instead. I know the animal print trend is very popular right now, and many of you are probably sick of seeing leopard print but I'm pretty proud of how this one came out, so I've decided to share it! This is the first time that I have used a dotting tool for the spots and a nail art brush for the "C"s.

I started with 2 coats of Orly Gumdrop, a bright, clean aqua which I really love. Its opaque in 2 but I smudged a few nails before they were dry, so I added a third coat. Then I used a mix of SH XW Lacey Lilac and Nicole I'm A Beliber to get a bright, light purple. IAB is too dark for what I wanted and LL is too light so I made medium color by mixing equal parts of each. It still came out a little lighter than I wanted; I was going for China Glaze Spontaneous. Oh well. Like I said, I used a dotting tool for the "blobs" instead of just using the polish brush. I think the key to making a good-looking leopard print is to space the blobs evenly, and not too close together. I need to work on that... Then, using a weird looking brush with a kink in the top of the handle so its like a bendy straw, which makes painting small details easier, I used WnW Black Creme to make the little "C"s and random dots. I finished with SV, which had some sparkles in it from my 3 AM franken so thats the greenish sparkles you can see.

Crappy indoor picture, but color accurate.

Outdoor, under cloudy skies, minutes before it started raining!

My nails look so much longer and nicer to me but then when I see pictures, they look stubby and gross... because macro picks up all the imperfections in the polish, like bumps and tiny chips, as well as in my skin. I guess you'll have to trust me that my nails look really good (to me) IRL.

My nails also match my outfit today, an aqua t-shirt from Aeropostale and a purple cami underneath. Gumdrop actually matches exactly with my shirt but the purples are different.

This is blurry, its hard taking a photo at this angle, but it shows the colors accurately.

Here's a clearer picture but the colors don't look as accurate due to the indoor lighting.

TGIF!! (I want to go out to eat at Friday's now...) I'll be back with another post tomorrow!!

Thanks for looking! Please comment and follow!

Fiona