Showing posts with label China Glaze. Show all posts
Showing posts with label China Glaze. Show all posts

Monday, September 5, 2011

Lazy Labor Day

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

Sunday, July 10, 2011

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

Saturday, July 9, 2011

Uninspired...

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

Sunday, July 3, 2011

Patriotic Nail Fail and Guest Nails

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

Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Glitzy Strawberries

Hello!

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

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

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


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

Here's what I used:


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

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

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

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



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

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


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


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

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


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

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

Have a great day/night and thanks for looking!

Fiona

Monday, May 30, 2011

Pick 3 Challenge!

Hello!

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

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


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

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



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

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

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

Fiona

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

I Give In

Hey all!

Yeah, about the lack of post in the past week... blame in on the lab reports. Last week I had to write five different lab reports: one for the Biological Science class Fiona and I have, and then the other four for for my Organic Chemistry class. I honestly don't mind writing lab reports, Chemistry ones are pretty easy since you're pretty much just spitting back out what you were told and then trying to write an introduction to it. Biology lab reports however suck big time. The discussion we had to write had to be 3-4 pages double spaced alone. It's hard enough trying to get enthusiastic about bugs as it is, but having to try and write 3-4 pages about them? That was painful.

But anyway, I have pictures of the manis I did last week (it was the only thing that was keeping me sane at that point...). And since it's Pink Wednesday, I do have a pink mani in here as well. So I give in to the Pink Wednesday. So here we go!




Zoya Kelly. Very pretty dark purple-grey color that I love. It went on smoothly with only two coats needed and was one of my less messy manis I've done (yay!). This will be a perfect color for the fall. I think the name's funny only because my first roommate here at college's name was Kelly. So Kelly, if you're reading this, these photos are for you!







Zoya Areej. Dark magenta color that at times appears to be slightly dusty in color. This was also a two coater that went on smooth and dried in a good time frame. I decided for Mother's Day to do some flowers and used Sally Hansen White On for the flower petals and Sally Hansen Black Out and Zoya Phoebe for the flower centers. I showed this to my mom the next morning and she thought they were amazing, then asked me how I had the patience to do all of that.




Zoya Malia. Medium purple creme color that went on smooth in two coats. Love this color a lot. I decided to try some multi-colored dots on the tips of my nails because i thought that it would look interesting. For the dots, I used Zoya Kieko and Areej, China Glaze For Audrey, and a drop of Fiona's Color Institute Singin' Like a Canary mixed in with Sally Hansen White on to get a cream color. I like how it came out; it reminded me of those Dippin' Dots.

And I know that our blog was given the Kreativ Blogger Award and that Fiona picked other bloggers for the award and listed 10 things about herself. I didn't get a chance to do my 10 things so here are mine:

1. I used to paint a lot when I was a little kid. I had quite a large acrylic paint collection because I was always painting something. 
2. I was born in Massachusetts, but I've live in the Seacoast area of New Hampshire my entire life.
3. I'm an only child. All my friends have siblings so they find it different when I tell them I'm an only child.
4. I have a 4 1/2 inch scar on my back.

That scar is from two surgeries that were done on my spine when I was 7 and 8 (in the span of 9 months) to remove a tumor that was eating away at my vertebra. It's always a permanent reminder of what I've been through and how far I've come since then. It also reminds me that things could have been a lot worse and that I should be grateful for being well and healthy today.
5. I've worn glasses ever since I was one-years-old. I don't mind then since they're a part of me. I can't really get contacts because of my eye problems, but even if I could I wouldn't since I can't imagine myself not wearing them.
6. I'm a avid reader. If you saw the picture Fiona had of her bookshelf, that's pretty much me as well. I have three bookshelves going in my room, and will probably need a fourth one by next year.
7. I love archery. My dad got me into it when I was 14 and I've done it ever since.
That was my old bow. It got retired two months ago for my new one that I'm currently using. And yes I shoot purple arrows!
Picture of an arrow (not mine!) that got logged into the wood. I put that paper plate there to show were it was so no one walked into it and lost an eye.
8. I am studying Biotechnology in school. I'm more into the cellular and molecular aspect of Biology, and I hope to work in a hospital someday or doing biomedical research.
9. I play guitar. I used to play a lot in high school and I always had my nails very short in order to play. That's also why I didn't wear nail polish all that much during high school since it always chipped while playing. I haven't played much in college because I don't want to cut my nails down to nubs.
10. I like to cook and bake. This year I baked quite a lot of things in our dorm's kitchen. I don't like cooking or baking in the dorm since I have to go down four floors to get to the kitchen and I can become quite lazy at times.

So I hope you are all enjoying your day and I'll see ya all later!

-A