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

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!!

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?

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

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**

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)

... 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

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