Monthly Archives: November 2014

Water Marble Turkey Nails

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I thought it was about time that I give water marbling another go.  I sort of did a bunch of experimenting, and as a result, every finger looks pretty different.  I’ll just say that’s what I was going for.

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And here are select fingers from my other hand:

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I think the polishes I was using were not really in the mood to be marbled with, because they were not very good spreaders.  I was using bottled room temperature water, so I don’t think my water was the problem…. You know, these close up pictures really show what a pain clean up is after water marbling.  Ugh.

Anyway, here’s another untried that got tried:

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This is NYC – Rule the City.  It’s a gunmetal shimmer with red micro glitter in it.  The red glitter sticks to the sides of the bottle, but not a whole lot of it transfers to the nail.  It’s still an interesting polish and I’m glad I have it in my collection, but it didn’t change my life or anything.

That’s all for now.  Have a blessed Thanksgiving, fellow Americans!  Everyone else, have a good forth week of November.

Peacocks, Gum Wrappers, and Crochet

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I’ve turned two more of my “untrieds” into “trieds”.  I know, those aren’t even words.

Here’s NYC – Precious Peacock:

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This polish is pretty sheer, so it took either 3 or 4 coats to get it opaque like this, but it’s so pretty!  The color is just so rich!  Sometimes I felt like my nails were an emerald-y Christmas green, and other times I felt they looked more turquoise.  Such a good color for the cooler months!  My hubby even liked it, and as a rule, he hates anything that has to do with peacocks.

I’m sure you are all dying to know why my hubby, Mike hates peacocks, right?  Okay, I’ll tell you.  The first apartment we lived in after we were married was out in the country in redneck territory.  One particular redneck owned a peacock that he just let roam around the country side.  I don’t even know if that’s legal.  Anyway, the peacock, who our little-old-lady-landlord called “George” liked to sit in the tree right outside our bedroom window.  Well, every morning from April to August, George would sit in that tree at do his mating call, starting at about 4:00am.  Here’s a youtube clip of what it sounds like.  I’m a pretty sound sleeper, but Mike is not.  He assaulted George with tennis balls, golf balls, rocks, a super soaker,….  George would just hop to a branch that was out of Mike’s reach.  George would not be deterred.  Anyway, we moved from that apartment after about 3 year when we bought our home.  After we moved, we heard that George was hit by a car.  We were not sad.

Back to nail polish.  I played with my gum wrapper in church and came up with this:

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Did you know that you can actually peel the foil off of the paper part of the wrapper?  It takes a little bit of work, but then you are left with a really thin foil layer that has a little adhesive on the back.

Here’s another untried that I finally used:  L.A Colors – Berry Red

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This is a jelly formula.  This is four coats and you can still see my nail line a little bit, and the color is still not as rich as it is in the bottle.  It is nice and shiny and I’ve actually gotten multiple compliments on this one.  I think I’ll have to do some jelly sandwiching with this one in the future.

You may or may not be wondering why I have not been posting as much lately.   Well, I’ll tell you.  It’s crocheting season for me.  I mostly make hats.  I do a handful of craft fairs this time of year, and I’ve been working to bulk up my inventory a little bit.  Here’s one that I jut finished yesterday:

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The “hair” is a whole bunch of loops like a Cabbage Patch Kid!  And the eye patch is removable/adjustable.

I actually have a little etsy shop, but I don’t have any items listed for sale now since I’m offering them at craft fairs.  I’ll let you know when I have some items back up for sale in my shop, just in case any of you are interested.

Ferny Nails and My Pile of Untrieds

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So, first off, here are some ferny nails that I did:

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These were inspired by Mr Candii Pants, who actually is a miss, not a mister. Check her out on youtube and/or instagram.  She does some of the coolest free hand nail art.

The base color for these was Fresh Paint – Firefly.  It’s an almost-white-but-actually-a-pale-bluish-grey color.  And it’s a one-coater!  By the way, do you prefer “gray” or “grey”?  I like “grey”.  It just seems like a nicer, softer spelling.

I painted all of my purple ferns first, then blue (I think), and then green.  It’s just way easier to do all of one color at a time, when possible.  I used a shiny top coat, but I think these would have worked well with a matte top coat also.

Now onto a completely different subject:  My untried polishes.  Here they are:

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Now, some of these are untried because I got them on clearance when they were out of season.  Others are untried because… I don’t know.  I don’t really have any good reasons.  I decided that I really need to tackle this pile, so I’m going to make a good effort to reach for these polishes until they are all tried!

I’ve tackled two so far.  Here’s Wet n Wild – Echo Dark from the recent matte collection:

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It’s a little tough to see, but I actually did a jelly sandwich with this polish.  I was pleasantly surprised that the polish still looked blue in person instead of black.  I didn’t love the formula though.  I can’t quite pinpoint why I didn’t.  It took a while to really dry, so my nails ended with some little marks in them.  That irritates me like crazy.

I also tried Sally Hansen – 3K or More:

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The sun came out for me, so I got a nice sparkly picture!  This is a nude polish with a gold shimmer in it.  I don’t know how I feel about this polish yet.  I feel like it looks really pretty in the picture, but I don’t think this shade of nude looks the best with my really light skin.  There’s a bit of a yellow undertone, and I generally do better with cooler shades.  It’s growing on me, though.  This is a good pallet cleansing polish.  After wearing Echo Dark for a few days, I felt like I needed something a little more neutral.  This polish might be a little hard to find.  I got this in a clearance bin awhile ago.

Oh, can you tell my nails are shorter in the last picture?  I had some nail peeling going on, so I just gave them all a chop before one just broke off.

Well, thank you all for reading!  Find me on instagram and facebook!

My Fall 2014 Limited Edition Polishes

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I just sort of realized that I’ve picked up a few limited edition nail polishes recently that I haven’t shared on here, so… Shame on me.  These are all drugstore polishes that cost about $2 each.  Really, I love a good polish, but I’m no snob.

I haven’t gotten around to wearing all of these on my nails yet, but if I wait until that day comes, these will be long gone.  The swatches that are next to the bottles are all two coats.

Let’s start with the Wet n Wild Megalast Matte collection.  There are 6 polishes in this collection, but I just grabbed the two that spoke to me the most.

This is Careful, It’s Vine-tage:

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This is a beautiful dusty purple in the bottle, but it does dry a good bit darker.  My swatch looks REALLY dark, but when it’s on the nail, it’s still clear that it’s purple, not black.

This is Echo Dark:

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This is a beautiful deep blue in the bottle, but on the swatch it really does look almost black.  The formula is a jelly, which seems weird for a polish with a matte finish.  I’m a little disappointed that it dries so dark.  I haven’t done a full mani of this yet, but I’m pretty sure that it will just look black once I have it on.  I wonder if I could make a jelly sandwich with this…  If I try that, I’ll let you know.

Next I have two polishes from the NYC Fashion Queen collection.  This collection of six polishes has been around for a few months, and I didn’t think I wanted any of the polishes…. Until I got a $1 off coupon.  That prompted me to pick up two.

Here’s Royal Chic:

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I highly suspect that this is a dupe for Essie – Little Brown Dress, but I don’t know for sure.  This looks like Hershey’s Syrup when it’s wet.  It’s such a rich chocolate brown!  It’s dark, but it is definitely brown, not black.  I used this as a base for my recent Golden Leafy Nails. I’m a little bit in love with this polish right now.

I also have Rule the City:

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This is a gunmetal grey micro-glitter polish with slightly larger red hex glitter.  The red glitter tends to stick to the sides of the bottle, so on the nail it looks like it has less glitter than it does in the bottle.  The finish is a little bit textured.  I have yet to wear this, but I’ll bet it would look super pretty with a shiny top coat…. It might even look awesome with a matte top coat.

Last I have Sinful Colors  – Prosecco.

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This is from the Sinful Shine line of polishes and the collection is called Shining Bright Off the Runway.  There are 8 polishes in the collection.  The display said, “5x more glossy that patent leather shoes!”  Who the heck comes up with stuff like that?  What kind of gloss-o-meter is used to determine that sort of thing?  Anyway…

After I bought this polish, I found out that it’s kind of the big deal color from this collection.  People out there are searching high and low to find it.  I found mine at Rite Aid, by the way.

I have actually worn this polish, but I was a dork and deleted, so you’ll have to check it out on my instagram.  I think I had to apply three coats to get good coverage.  It really is super shiny!  Because it’s sheer, you can sort of slop it on and it will still look good.  I actually didn’t love the color at first, but it really grew on me!  It’s a perfect color to wear when you need to look a little more professional for work or an event or whatever.

Okay, so that’s the end of that!

I’m looking for a little feedback from you.  Would you rather see a series of posts that are color themed (my favorite reds, my favorite pinks,…) or would you rather see posts that are brand themed (my favorite Sinful Colors, my favorite Wet n Wild,…)?  Or do you mostly just care about nail art?  Any feedback is appreciated!  Thanks for reading!

Golden Leafy Nails

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Right now I’m spending a good chunk of my free time raking up all of the leaves in our yard, so it seems like the appropriate time to sport some leafy nails. Here they are:

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I just can’t make my right hand pose nicely.  It’s all awkward or something.  Anyway, the base for these nails is NYC – Royal Chic.  I sort of think this is from a collection that was out not that long ago, so it might be a little hard to find now.

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The wet polish looks just like Hershey’s Syrup.  I feel like this polish should smell like chocolate.

Then I added some leaves with Wet n WIld Fergie – Gold Album.  Every time I use that polish I can’t believe how beautifully gold and sparkly it is.

I was sort of tempted to just “leaf” my mani like that, but since I had already pulled all of my fall colored polishes off my rack, I decided to go ahead and add some color.  I used polishes that tend to to be sheer so that the gold would show through.  I just used a little brush and added a little bit of color to each leaf.  I topped it off with a shiny top coat.

After four days of wear, I had no major chips, just some tip wear.  I touched up the tips of my nails with the brown polish and then for kicks I added a matte top coat.

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I really like how this looks with a matte top coat!  The metallic leaves just really pop off of the brown background!  I think I’m going to get a full week’s wear out of these.  Hooray for that!

Thanks for reading!

October Favorites

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So I’ve been a bad blogger recently.  I’ve been working extra hours at my job, plus this is the busiest time of year for my Pampered Chef business.  Okay, those are my excuses.  So…. October favorites.  Here they are:

IMG_3875Now, four out of the five of these polishes I bought in Canada, so I think they are going to be next to impossible to find for my fellow U.S. Americans. Side note: Do you know the sales taxes in Canada (or at least in Ontario) are like, 13%?  Ugh, it’s painful!  It was like a dagger through the heart whenever I went to pay for anything.  If I was Canadian, I would totally come to the U.S. to shop for stuff…. Except for these nail polishes.

Let’s start from the left.

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This is Essence Effect – Glitz & Glam.  Here I have it swatched over black.  It’s a clear base with small and medium size pink hex glitter with a mint green shimmer running through it.  When it’s worn over a dense pink glitter polish, the green shimmer sort of gives a duo-chrome effect.  This also looks cool over a mint green polish.  I got this in Canada, but I think you might be able to find these at Ulta.  Not sure.

Next we have…

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Joe Fresh – Twilight.  This is a flaky polish, but the base is a sheer black instead of your typical clear.  I think it took 3 or 4 coats to get the desired effect, but it was so worth it!  When I had this on, I could not stop looking at my nails!

And…

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Joe Fresh – Bumbleberry.  I don’t think that’s an actual type of berry…. Unless is some sort of exclusively Canadian berry.  Anyway, this picture does not do this polish justice.  I messed around with my lighting, and I just couldn’t capture the true color.  This polish is much more purple in real life.  It’s just a really beautiful berry color.  It seems like it should be a really common color, but I didn’t have anything really close already in my collection.  It’s on my toes now.  It’s just a perfect girly fall color.

Next we have…

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Joe Fresh  – Sour Citron.  This is an almost neon color that straddles the yellow/green fence.  It’s the perfect color to top with a glow-in-the-dark topper for all of your Halloween activities.  The formula is really great on this, too.  Usually colors like this are super sheer, but I think this only took 2-3 coats to get the color you see in the bottle.

Finally we have…

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Fresh Paint – Sugar Crush.  Ever since I got this polish back in the summer I have been eagerly anticipating October, just so I could wear it over black.  It’s just amazing.  I could go on and on, but I’ll spare you.  By the way, as far as I can tell, this is a perfect dupe for Essie – Shine of the Times.

I promise that I won’t keep you waiting forever for my next post!  I know all of you have nothing better to do than to keep refreshing your screen on my website to see if I put up a new post.  (That’s some tongue-in-cheek, there.)  Thanks for reading and commenting!