Losing and Gaining

Everyone!!  I know that I’ve been a crappy blogger for the past two weeks….BUT!  I have a job!

I’m super excited to say that I now work at a local Starbucks! I love it already; the fast pace, my co-workers and being around and learning about coffee! Plus, I have something to do after the house is clean. :p

…And I’m super sad to say that they don’t allow nail polish at Starbucks.

So…I will only be able to do an actual mani when I have several days off in a row. However, I’ve started painting nail sets so I’ll be posting those and their Etsy links.

I will also be doing some make-up reviews because I am going to be receiving Ipsy bags! For those who don’t know, Ipsy is a $10 monthly subscription where they send you 4-5 deluxe sized to regular sized make-up produce once a month. More often than not, the value of the contents far exceed the cost of the subscription.

So. There won’t be as many nail mani’s, but there will be nail set posts and make-up reviews.

You won’t lose me, you won’t die ( ;) ) but there will be a little less of me.

Thank you all who read this and I hope you all enjoy what’s to come! Much love!

Alli

Day 4 - Green Nails

Oh. My. Goodness. This day has almost killed me.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I like the color green. But after redoing my nails three, yes, THREE times and hating them all? Yea…ya kinda start to hate it.

So. Here is Day 4 - Green Nails.

Pure Ice’s “Free Spirit” and some white acrylic paint.

Oh, and when I went to set up my lightbox to take the pictures for this post, my battery was dead. So that's why there's some wear on the ring finger(that's day two) and why this mani irritates me. :P

Good – 2( Forgot to do with with Day 3)

Meh – 1

Blah -1

P.S. Does anyone else have problems with Seche Vite cracking or shrinking? I feel that the cracks on my thumb are from the acrylic but it's deep....Hmm...

Jamberry Nail Wrap Review!!

So for anyone who doesn’t know about them, Jamberry nails are HOT!

You’re probably familiar with the idea of them but these are so much better than any other stick on nail decals. These stickers have way less chemicals, they’re cost effective, fast and they last!  Check out this pic!

So they’re less harmful to nails by a lot. Now for the costs. It's about $15 per sheet but there's a deal where you can get 4 sheets for the price of 3! Now check out how many mani's you can get out of them and for how much!

Now for me, I normally do my own nails but these are really great for a day or for a week that you know you’re going to be super busy and won’t have time to actually paint your nails. It takes about 15 minutes to apply everything with Jamberries. It takes 15 minutes to do the first couple coats of base and color with polish.

That’s a lot of time saved PLUS, you don’t have to worry about knicking or dinging a nail and have to either deal with the defective nail or re-do it. Which takes even more time.

So the amazing lady that has given me samples to try and show you all, is Meg and she is one of the most adorable people I have ever encountered. She’s sweet, loves coffee(like mwaa..), super friendly and just cute! She’s a great consultant for the Jamberries and so easy to work with. So here is her link, please let her know that you found her through me! Meg'sLink

For this mani, I used China Glaze’s “For Audrey”, Sally Hansen’s “250 Lightening” and Orly’s “Dazzle”. As well as a plain black acrylic paint. Pretty much took this opportunity to just do whatever to my nails and I liked most of them except my pinky. 

Jamberry wrap on pointer finger is called Teal Mini Polka!

So look at how well the Jams stayed on verses nail polish. SUPER WELL!! I don’t pick at my nails at all so this just just chipping from every day activities such as showering, washing dishes, cleaning building and whatever else you do in a day.  And yes, there is some wear on the Jam nail but it's so minimal verse all the other nails. 

They’re very worth it and there are soooo many cute designs! So check ‘em out and lemme know how you like them! 

Day 3 - Yellow Nails

I feel slightly..sheepish(?) about where my idea came from but slightly amused by it as well.

Ready?

A chopstick cover slip.

It is so weird how you’ll see a random thing/pattern and BAM! Nail Idea. :P

So, base color is Sally Hansen’s “250 Lightening” and a mixture of Savvy’s “Golden Honey” and an unnamed brown that’s a decade old with Bundle Monster’s plate 314. It’s the closest I could get to the design and I kinda like it. And I don't really care for yellow...but I do like this. 

Top design

I sorta reminds me of Belle’s ball gown in Beauty and the Beast.  Yellow dress...swirly brown hair....Ahhh….Disney. ^_^

New Background!

Yayyy! New Background!!!

I made this using Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 with three different brushes. And I really like it!

I have a few other backgrounds so I might change it again just to see what I like and then stick with one.

What do y’all think? Love it? Hate it? What would you change? I’d love to hear some feed back!

Day 2 - Orange Nails

Alrighty ladies. I could have sworn that this color was going to be the death of me because I couldn't think of anything good for two days!

Then I did them last night and...I like them. Alot.

Right about now is the time when the leaves start changing to the reds and orange and it all has such a beautiful orange hue to them so naturally, this was my inspiration! I so love fall and this was a good mani for me to do.

I used Sally Hansen's "250 Lightening", SH's "Orange Impulse" and Revlon's "730 Valentine" for the base gradient. Then I used plain ol' black acrylic paint to draw the leaves on. Seche Vite to top it off with.

Sorry about the yellow tint on my hands, the polish seemed very attached to me...

Like I said, it took forever to figure out what to do, but this is def one I like!

Good - 1

Meh - 1

Alli

Day 1 - Red Nails

First day of the 31DC2014. Colors. Red Nails.

Hmm…

First off…It’s been like a long time since my last freehand mani. And I had coffee that day.That being said, I was a little disappointed with how this one turned out. I could have redone it but I felt that it would just been cheating almost and good to post it as motivation to do better.  

The base coat is Revlon’s “730 Valentine” which I have swatched before here.

For the gold lines and the glittery color, I used Nailene’s Artist Expressions Warm. In this kit is a clear, glittery polish that’s almost holographic, a gold stripper brush and a small tube of loose gold glitter. I got this years ago from my grandparents and this is the first time I’ve really used it.

This isn't the correct color..

But I used the stripper first and then filled in with two coats of the shimmer color making the red underneath look like it’s a totally different color. I liked the effect and I’ll definitely have to use it again.

Day 1 Complete! Good – 0, Meh – 1.

31 Day Challenge 2014!

So I’m sure you all have seen and are familiar with the 31 Day Challenges for nails.

Well...I was email by The Nailasaurus to do this. Oh My Freaking Goodness. The Nailasaurus. (Yes, I slightly fan-girled over that email, not gonna lie.)

What better way for me to become more consistent and more creative with my designs that this??

However..they're gonna be spaced out here and there because I have other stuff going on but they'll still be coming. 

So yea! We’ll see how many good(and bad) ideas I can come up with! I think the one that I'm looking most towards would be day 19 - Galaxies and day 24 - Book. Not so sure about 25- Fashion or 30 - Tutorial. We'll see how that goes. 

Day 1 will be posted soon!

Nina Meets Glam

Hola!

I really do love the Nina nude polishes, so I decided to try out two designs at the same time. Hence this one being on my right hand.

With the same Nina “Spun Sugar”, I did another tape mani. It was deffinelty more of a hassle doing in on my non-dominant hand but I really liked the looks of this one. Not super noticeable but it still had the glam factor.

So I took a piece of tape, folded it in half, cut out a thinner line at the bottom and flared it out at the top to be wider to make the shape you see there. Laid her on top and used Sally Hansen’s XtremeWear 485 “Golden-I” to get a nice gold color.

Once that was somewhat tacky, I tried putting E.L.F. “Golden Goddess” on top. Didn’t quite work just brushing it on so I ended up using a toothpick to place the shiny flecks where I wanted them. Once that was done and it still being wet-ish, I carefully pulled the tape off.

For those who may not know, it’s a lot harder getting the tape off without pulling polish if it’s still a bit wet. And another thing I do is I touch the sticky side of the tape a few times so it doesn’t stick so hard either.

Anywho, That’s all for today!

Ta ta for now!

My Goals

Ok, so I have a few goals that I feel like I need to do.

Goal #1 – Change my freaking blog name! To anyone who just glances at it, it really just looks like I’m that retarded girl that just has to say “polish” twice. No one is gonna read back and figure out what the story behind it is and to be honest, it’s really retarded. I named it when I was….18. Yea…  

Time Length = 1 Month

Goal #2 – Change the look. I need something brighter and more versatile for what I’m wanting to do. This blog will have to have the look of an overall blog, not just nails anymore. I’m talking cooking and decorating stuff as well.      

Time Length = 1 Month

Goal # 3 – To be more consistent…I’ve always had the motto of being consistent with my character so why should having regular blog posts be any different?  

 Time Length = Forever

Goal #4 – Start an Etsy shop. You can buy, paint and sell nail sets to people. Erg. Meh. Gersh. Something I like that…could make money at the same time? Who said a job had to be something you hate. ^_^     

Time Length = 3-5 Months

Wish me luck and please…keep me accountable. :)

Nude With Sparkles..

After using nude colors a few times, I wanted to spice them up and give them more pazaz.

For this mani, I started with two coats of Nina Ultra Pro – Spun Sugar, a mildly dark nude color. Two coats worked wonderfully.

After letting it dry, I may have been overly excessive with the top coat because there’s a layer of it between the base color and the sparkle. Oopsy!

I’ve never done this method before but tried it on my accent nail. I cut thin strips of tape and layered them on top of the nail and then painted two coats of Finger Paints – Laugh My Art Off.  

It was interesting taking the tape off because it turned into a guessing game as to which one I put on first....

Anywhoo, on the other nails I used a makeup sponge to create a gradient with the same blue sparkle on the tips.

I think it all worked out pretty well, however I wouldn’t use such drastically different colors next time, I feel that a lighter or warmer color for the sparkle would have been better. Oh well. I’ll just have to do this again. :)

Watermelon Ice Swatch

By the husbands prompting, I did a spur of the moment painting and it ended up liking the color a lot.  So we’ve got a swatch to do!

Obviously, you have your base coat.

This color is a sheer one so instead of trying to wait for four or five coats to dry, I started off with Sinful Colors Snow Me White so that the pink would show well. One coat of that and two of the pink.

Pure Ice Watermelon Ice is the color and it went on very well, not very streaky and it’s new enough that there was no clump-age. (Yes, I do use made up words)

Finish that with a coat of Seche Vite and we’re good to go! 

Bowling and Nails Are A No-No

Ever had those moments where you’re wondering if something really happened? Did I really just find twenty bucks in my jacket? Did I really just fart in public?

My most recent question was when I was bowling with some friends recently. Did that flipping bowling ball really just take off half my nail?

Yes. It really did.

Apparently when you have longer thumb nails, they tend to scrape against the inside of the hole and it just grinds them down.

After one game, your nail will look like this.

Irritating…but I’m glad it only took that just off and no farther down. 

Date Night Sparkles

Hey Lovelies!

So the other day, my Hubby and I went on a date and I figured "Why not try something new with my nails?". So...I did and I ended up using 8 polishes total. 0.o

I've never really done the whole "most-fingers-one-way-and-one-accent-nail" thing and I was really curious to try it. So I looked at my dress that I was gonna be wearing and figured something off that. It's a real cute burgundy color that's A-line and ends above the knee. It has kind of a rectangle/triangle-ish design in it so I looked for something similar in my nail plate. (Yes, this involved nail plates.Yay!)

So I started out with a new base coat, Pure Ice - Bottom Line Base Coat, and did a base color of E.L.F.'s Metal Madness which is a charcoal black with holographic sparkles in it. I really only had to use one layer of this because it covers so nicely so that was wonderful.

Now for the nail plate. I stamped Bundle Monster 210 in Sinful Colors - Snow Me White on every finger BUT my ring fingers.

The top middle is the lucky design today...

Once that was stamped and dried, I used Revlon's 730 Valentine, Pure Ice Jamaica Me Crazy and Pure Ice Watermelon Ice(Which there will be more on this color soon...) in a gradient over the stamp. This obviously didn't effect the base color with it being so dark.

On the ring fingers, I used an un-named Melissa polish that has pink and silver flecks in it. It's old..So I had to wait forever on it to dry as well as re-do one because I smudged it.. This is a brand that's no longer in production unfortunately. :/ 

Finished up with a coat of Seche Vite Top Coat as always and there you have it! Loved them and they're now in my favorites list! 

Ta ta for now!
Alli

Updates Soon!

Hello Lovelies! 

I do apologize for the long hiatus that I've taken. I honestly can't remember the last time I posted but I'm here and ready to go again! 

To explain my long absence I just have to say that life got busy. School took over, met this amazing guy, got married to said amazing guy and am now not doing school(at the moment) and have more free time! Polish review, designs and product reviews will follow soon!

I'm so looking forward to getting back into the nail scheme and possibly integrating other elements into this blog; beauty, lifestyles and cooking. Any ideas from viewers and potential viewer are totally welcome! 

I am looking at re-vamping the entire blog to be more current and fun! So please stay tuned, changes will be made and posts will be posted! 

Love to you all and thank you everyone who has still been visiting my blog while I've been away! You rock! 

Allison