I'm Back!

Hello!

Yes, I'm back from my little unscheduled break! I'll try not to go MIA again but can't promise anything. Ironically, I should be back and able to report feeling great but I have actually taken ill today. My family is sick as well so we're thinking its a virus of some kind. My mom, brother, sister and I are all experiencing stomach flu issues (I'll spare you the details) as well as a fever, dizziness and fatigue. So I'm really feeling like crap right now.

So, all that aside, I have some pictures of the manis and pedis that I remembered to take pictures of while I was away.

First is a mani I did a while ago (I honestly don't remember when) with Sinful Forget Now and Sally Hansen Crackle Overcoat Fractured Foil. Forget Now is a magenta glass fleck jelly very similar to China Glaze Ahoy! and 108 Degrees as well as the new OPI Be A Dahlia Will You? from the Nice Stems collection. Oh yes, I have done my homework on this one!! I am still convinced this is a dupe of one of the above but since no one has done a really good comparison of them and I don't own any of them... I'll just have to speculate. 

These pictures really don't accurately capture what Forget Now really looks like. Its most like the bottle in the first picture, but thats still too red due to these crappy indoor flash pictures. I'll have to take some sunlight pics of this by itself.

Here's a pedi I did last week with Zoya Faye. I didn't think I would like this on my toes because I don't really like it with my skin tone, but I ended up loving it! I even discovered I have shoes that perfectly match this, but forgot to get a picture of them. The sad part is that I have soooo many pairs of shoes, that I was able to "discover" a pair that I own... I seriously have around 25 pairs of shoes and only wear about 4.

This is Nicole Make A Comet-Ment, a fine holo glitter. Holo fans, check this one out!! Its a scattered holo but its still awesomeness in a bottle! I have 3 coats pictured here, but if you do less than you can get a subtler look with the base color showing more. This is over Wet n' Wild Black Creme (best black EVER!!)

I mean, look at that bottle!! That is closer to what this actually looks like with top coat. I didn't wear any top coat with this because my bottle of SV is reaching its last days and I desperately need a replacement bottle. I saving it for slow drying polishes and nail art. This dries very quickly but does leave a the typical gritty glitter finish.

Here's a blurry picture to show the holoness!

Ba-BAM!! Now thats awesome! Get this one if you can, I always see it at Target! I mean it, you need this! You have to see it in person!

As you can see on my pinkie, its only holo in certain lights but thats due to the lack of top coat. Without top coat and in normal lighting (not sunlight) it kinda looks like static or white noise/snow on an old TV set set. But get it in the sun, it'll blind you!

Last, this is my latest franken. I have officially caught the frankening bug and have made quite a few.

I named it 3 AM. The story behind this is, I was doing my nails at around midnight, as usual, and was doing leopard print with Orly Its Up to Blue and China Glaze Four Leaf Clover. Its Up to Blue is a foily, metallic bright teal. I did the spots with IUtB over FLC and realized it created a mermaid-y, mettallic greenish-teal reminiscent of Zoya Charla and its many dupes. So, in a stroke of genius, I got out Sinful Love Nails, which I discovered was an almost exact dupe of IUtB, and Zoya Ivanka, from the same collection as Charla and basically the green version. Next, I needed an empty polish bottle. So, after looking through my stash at polishes that I never wear and don't like and picked up Wet n' Wild Raincheck. It was 99 cents and I realized that I don't like it, since its a grayed out periwinkle frost, so I emptied it out and rinsed the bottle a few times with acetone. Then I emptied about half of my bottle of Love Nails into the empty WnW bottle and added a bunch of Ivanka, tearing up because I was using up one of my precious Zoyas. After adding and shaking and adding and shaking, I ended up using half of my bottle of Ivanka (*tears up*) By the time I was done, it was 3 AM, so that was its name.

Unfortunately, these pictures aren't showing what this truly looks like. The color is less saturated and there's more sparkle in it. The addition of Ivanka, created a really awesome gold sparkle. The sparkle is not as dense as it is in the Zoya Sparkles so it doesn't create a foil look. But its there, I swear, just not showing up at all on film.

I am in LOVE with this polish, it has almost quenched my lemming for Charla (or one of the dupes) and I know it really doesn't look like it here, but in real life, this polish is quite close to Charla. I have been wearing this for the past 3 days (which is very unusual for me) with no tip wear (I did use SV since it dries slow) and still love it just as much and am not sick of it yet!!

For my next post, I will have pictures of my other franken which I decided to call Glitter in the Haze. Its a lilac version of the Lippman Glitter in the Air, or close to it and I love it!

Finally, here's my pedi that I did a few nights ago.

The colored stripes are done with my striper brush on a base of SH XW Green With Envy (lime green) and I won't list all the colors but there is dark blue, teal, pink and orange. Then a day later, I added the daises with a dotting tool. My pinkie toe is not painted with the stripes because its too small to get more than 2 colors on it and I thought, at the time, it wouldn't be noticed, but now I see that it kinda sticks out as not being striped. Oh well.

I hope you guys enjoyed this and thanks for looking!! I hope to be back to posting regularly!

Fiona

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

Hello!

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

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

May haul all together.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Round bottles, organized by color and brand:

Square and odd shaped bottles and art supplies.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mysterious dim lighting...

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

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

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

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

Last is my Walgreens haul from Friday.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fiona

Mmm, Lilacs

Hey everyone!

So I'm done with school now and I moved out of the dorm today. It was a bit sad to leave, but I'm home for the summer now which means I'll be figuring out what I need to pull out of my totes for the summer. I'm a little mad though because I bought a bottle of OPI Silver Shatter almost two weeks ago along with a bottle of Planks a Lot and Sparrow Me the Drama. The PaL and SMtD came last Thursday when they were expected to come, but the Silver Shatter hasn't come and it should have about five days ago. Grrr. If it does come to my college mailbox, it's going to end up sitting there all summer which sucks since I want to use what I bought! Okay, the rant portion of this post is over now.

Last week Fiona and I were tagged by The Kiwi With The Crazy Nails in a challenge post. What this challenge is is that you blindly pick three polishes out of your collection and with the three polishes you pick you have to come up with a nail design. We both accepted the challenge. When I picked my three colors, I got Nicole by OPI My Lifesaver, Sinful Colors San Fransisco, and Color Club Fashion Addict. I had picked a creme, a shimmer, and a holo polish. All I could think was 'what the hell am I going to do with these colors?'. I thought that I'd try doing some branches with dotted flowers on them, but them I ended up going a totally different way once I started.

I used My Lifesaver as the base color, and then borrowing Fiona's nail art design brush and painted San Fransisco on to make some leaves. I was going for branches, but once I started to use my dotting tool to try and make the flowers, I decided to try and make lilac flowers at the last minute. And I actually ended up liking it for three colors I thought for sure this wasn't going to work!

Close up of my pinkie nail, it really does look like a lilac flower!

And if you didn't know, the Purple Lilac is the official flower of New Hampshire. But now it's time to pick three other people for this challenge: Amber at My Nail Graffiti, Whitney @ Elemental Styles, and Annelise at No Naked Nails!. Good luck ladies, and pick your poison well!

-A

Why the Bay of Evil is... Evil

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

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

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

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

-A

I've Got the Blues for Autism Swatch Marathon Part 1

Hello!

Today I have for you the first installment of IGTBFASM (Wow, crazy acronym) Part 1 is comprised of light blues and glitters.

I'll keep each of these short and just say the name and how many coats and if its been reviewed it yet or not.

Let's get staaaarted...

My franken, Baby Boy (new and improved, made with white and medium blue cremes) - 2 coats - flash

Baby Boy - no flash

Sally Hansen Insta Dry Blue-Away - 1 coat - lamp lighting, no flash - already reviewed

On Amanda: Sinful Colors Nail Junkie - 3 coats - indoor lighting, no flash - already reviewed/shown over things

Nicole by OPI Me + Blue - 2 or 3 coats (I wrote it down but left the Post-it at school and am home now sooo...) - indoor with flash - Amanda reviewed before

Me + Blue - no flash

Pure Ice Strapless - 3 thick coats - excuse the poor cleanup - have reviewed before - indoor lighting, no flash

On Amanda: Sinful Colors Green Ocean - 2 thick coats - indoors, no flash, blurry to show iridescence - has been reviewed about a million times...

Green Ocean - no flash

I enlisted Amanda to swatch the sheer glitters to spare you the trauma to your eyes my badly stained nails would cause. :)

So that's the end of Part 1. I hope you enjoyed this, let me know if you did, please! :)

Part 2 will probably be up sometime next week... bright blue cremes... oooooh... ahhh...

Hope you have a great day/night and thanks for looking!!

Fiona