Before & After: 'W' is for Whimsical Ideas by Pam Peanut Butter And Jelly

Hello!

I think most people have seen this polish, but I love it and I haven't seen it around the blogosphere in a while, so I had to feature it as my 'W'...which is for Whimsical Ideas by Pam Peanut Butter And Jelly. This is a deep wine jelly with golden glitters; despite my love/hate relationship with jellies, I love this one and don't have to struggle with it too much because the formula is very nice. :)

Whimsical Ideas by Pam Peanut Butter And Jelly

For some reason when I was staring into it, it made me think of pretty coins in a fountain with colored water...not that I've ever seen such a thing, mind you! So I decided to turn it into a surreal pond with gold water lilies and copper shimmer and hexes at the tips:

I stamped the pattern using Magno nails plate O, and China Glaze Passion. I decorated the tips with Different Dimention Penny!!!, one of my favorite copper glitters. :)

There you have my 'W'! Hopefully I'll have my 'X' up within a few days because I'm lagging a little bit on the challenge...:/

Thanks for looking. Xoxox,
M.

Review: China Glaze Avant Garden part 1

Hello!

Today I have part of the China Glaze Avant Garden collection to show you. I bought most of the collection, and today I'll show you four of the polishes...including two pinks...>.>...well, what can I say, one of them I thought was red, but it turns out there's 4 pinks in this collection! Okay, it is a garden collection, and China Glaze went insane with the reds in their holiday collection, so fair enough. :) Anyway, I'll show you the rest in another post or posts. :)


First, China Glaze Life Is Rosy:

China Glaze Life Is Rosy in indirect light

China Glaze Life Is Rosy, direct sun

Life Is Rosy is, well, a rosy pink. Okay, all you pink lovers out there, you have to let me know...is it just because I don't like pink very much, or is this polish...boring? Idk, it just reminds me of the pinks a mauves that women used to wear to work when I was a little girl, back in the mid- to late-80s. Even if I'm not partial to pink myself, I can recognize why some pinks are compelling, and it just seems to me that this one has no...oomph. That said, the formula was great, so if you like the color, you're in good shape. Also on the positive side, I can see this being a really great pink for nail art, and as a nice pair of undies for glitter, because it would lay a strong foundation without taking focus away from the glitter.

Next up is Snap My Dragon:

This is a raspberry pink that flirts with the border of red, and even pulls a bit orange. See, now, this pink pops! It has shine, it has brilliance, it has life! In some other lights it looks pinker, and so it's not for me for every-day wear, but it's pretty and I'll most likely keep it. Again the formula on this was good. :)

Next: Tart-y For The Party:

Ah, okay, now I'm a little bit more in my comfort zone. This is a pretty muted lilac, which is how I like my pastels, cause I'm not big on pure pastels. This is the ultimate Easter purple for me! Yes, I have a feeling you'll be seeing it again around that time, probably stamped with those awesome Bunny Nails plates I just got. The formula on this was also good (before you start to assume they're all good, that will change next post on these, lol), it went on beautifully.


And finally for today, Fancy Pants! Bear with me on this one...this is one of those blue-purples that freaks my camera out, and I had a hard time getting a picture of it. I tried every trick I know for shooting purples that my camera reads blue, and nothing worked. The only pictures I could get that were close were horrible in terms of photography--blurry a bit, lighting bad, chip wear because I took these in a last-ditch attempt, etc. But here they are for what they're worth; keep in mind that even so, the polish is a little more purple than you see here still:

China Glaze Fancy Pants

China Glaze Fancy Pants

Fancy Pants is a dark bluish purple with a subtle copper shimmer--there's a Zoya it reminds me of, but this has less of a copper shimmer (I'll find it and report back). The formula is also very good, and if I could get a good picture, this is actually quite a pretty polish.

I even tried putting on a glitter (Whimsical Ideas by Pam Once Upon A Time), thinking it would help give the camera something to fix on; it worked to a degree, but mostly just washed everything out a bit (the pinky-purple shimmer you see is actually copper IRL). Nonetheless, I think this is a pretty pairing in real life, so I include it here for inspirational purposes:

Fancy Pants + Once Upon A Time

So far I really like this collection, even with the top-heavy amount of pinks. Of course, I tend to love China Glaze, so that's probably not a huge surprise!

Anyway, with that I'll wrap up for now, but will be back in the next few days with more of these gorgeous polishes!

Thanks for looking. :) Xoxox,
M.

(The polishes in this review were purchased with my own money.)

Before & After: Abstract budding blooms (Blooming buds?)

Hello!!

The people in my nail group are doing a Flip-Flop February challenge, and they said it's okay for those of us who can't participate every day to still participate when we can. This is my first contribution, and the prompt for today is abstract/plastic wrap--since I've done some plastic wrap lately, I decided to go with abstract.

I started with Zoya Happi. This color was recommended to me by my niece; she knows I don't like pink, but thought this one was really pretty with the peach shimmer that comes out in the polish, and I agree:

Zoya Happi

The peach shows even more than this in person, and I've discovered I like polishes that play with that pink/peach/coral line. :)

I decided this would be a pretty polish to use to make abstract flower buds; the idea was to make the bottom of the nails be abstract versions of the green part of a flower that has just opened up, while the top part would be the flower. To accomplish this, I sponged Whimsical Ideas By Pam Green Thumb on the tops of each nail (except the ring finger, which I did in reverse).  Then, I sponged over this and up a little with A'dor Beauty Supplies Green Apple. This created a cool effect I didn't intend--it looks green at some angles, but at others, it intensified the peach shimmer of the polish, giving it a really cool duochrome effect:

Budding Blooms

Blooming Buds

Soon I'm going to have to try Green apple and Happi together alone to see if maybe I can just create a duochromy-gradient with it. In the meantime, I love my little abstract blooming buds!

Thanks for stopping by, and please check out the other participants' manis, linked below. :)

Xoxox,
M.

Before & After: Whimsical Ideas By Pam Hatched

Hello!

Today's prompt in the CNT 31 Day Challenge is 'your cheer-yourself-up mani'. I don't really have one of those, so I am taking this as an official sign that it's time I did have one!

I started with one of the most cheerful polishes I own, Whimsical Ideas By Pam's Hatched. It's a pale yellow creme with multi colored teeny and medium hexes in various primary-ish colors, especially green, purple, and blue:

Whimsical Ideas by Pam's Hatched

Sort of like cupcakes with sprinkles...:)

So what do you do to this sort of polish that plays up the whimsy, but doesn't cover it? I decided to play with the colors of the glitter in the polish and add to the different sizes by doing a multi-sized dotticure on it:

Dot dot dot...dot dot dot...dot your mani!

Do not look directly into the dots...

To do this, I used Sally Hansen's Brisk Blue, Lickety-Split Lime, and Lively Lilac. I used three different sizes of dotting tools and swept slightly different angles of archs over each nail, trying to create a sort of continuum between the middle and ring fingers.

So does the mani cheer me up? Yes, it's the sort of mani that definitely makes me smile. I hope it makes you smile, too!

Thanks for looking, and please allow yourself to be cheered by the other manis linked below. :)

Xoxox,
M.

Before & After: Whimsical Ideas by Pam Kismet's Pajamas

Hello!!

Today is day 2 of the 31 Day Challenge in the Crumpet Nail Tart group. Today's prompt is 'silver'.

For the prompt I chose to showcase Kismet's Pajamas, by Whimsical Ideas By Pam. I really feel this polish is nail art in a bottle all by itself, so I only did a small tweak to it. I'd like to believe that I could have come up with a perfect layering of glitters over black to make something this beautiful, but Pam put it all into one bottle so I didn't have to.

Kismet's Pajamas is a black-based polish with silver and purple hex glitters of various sizes:

Whimsical Ideas By Pam Kismet's Pajamas

What is it with me and side-shots of glitter? Idk, I just love them. :)

And a quick straight shot!

When I first saw the name, I was really intrigued by it...I thought 'How deep! Kismet/fate/predestination wearing pajamas...symbolically, what does that mean?! And the polish looks like a night sky with fantastical elements! So cool!' Then, when I read about it, I found out it's named after her cat, Kismet--and that made it even better somehow. :)

As I say, I love this polish as is, and I struggled with the idea of stamping something over it to add more silver, or something similar. In the end, I decided the best thing to do would be to play up the silver already in the polish, which I did by matte-ifying it:

Kismet's Pajamas with matte topcoat

I love it both ways, and this is one of those rare manicures I actually wore for 3 days before taking it off, and even then didn't want to. This definitely tops my list of favorite polishes and I see a lot of use for it in my future.

Truth be told, every polish I've had from Pam has been a stunner. You can find her polishes on her Facebook page here; she sells via e-mail and Paypal.

I'll be back later today with another post featuring my "'Q' is for..." manicure. In the meantime, please check out the other silver manicures, linked below! :)

Xoxox,
M.

(I purchased this polish with my own money.)

Before & After: Millenium FAILcon

Hello!!

In my Adventures In Stamping group, we have a weekly challenge that posts on Sundays. This week's prompt was to stamp over glitter. Something I've done a bunch of times.

In my 'about me' section, I mention that sometimes I'm successful, and sometimes I'm not. Today is a NOT.

Let me say a little bit about that for a minute. There have been some questions circling the nail blogosphere about the level of professionalism that should be posted in nail blogs. Should cuticles be perfect, manicures be streamlined, etc.? My position is that every blogger should do what they feel on this issue. My personal feeling is, I'm not perfect, far from it, and so my blog content will not be perfect. I try to present good pictures, clean manicures, and respectable cuticles. But sometimes my cuticles are raggedy, sometimes in my rush to capture a manicure I love, I forget to clean my cuticles well, and sometimes the idea in my head doesn't come out right on my nails. That's all a part of my journey, and that's what this blog is documenting. Other blogs have other purposes, and that's okay, too! But if you've ever had a great idea for a manicure and when you executed it, it looked like crap...well, you can come here and take solace i knowing that you're not alone, lol.

Enough about that--count yourself warned! This mani will not be pretty.

So, I started out with Misa Date Night To The Twilight as my base polish, which *is* pretty. However, the problems began when I tried to get a picture of her true color. It turned out that the only way I could do it was inside in my light box, holding a blue background sheet, in weird, inelegant poses; everything else came out far too blue. But, the color is accurate, which is good because this is a very pretty, subtly sparkly purple:

Misa Date Night To The Twilight

Misa Date Night To The Twilight

The rest of the pictures don't capture the color very accurately, and sort of throw everything off. But you get the idea from above, hopefully...>.>

For my next step, I put on a coat of Whimsical Ideas By Pam Once Upon A Time (INDIE ALERT!!), which was recently added to her line-up as a Halloween glitter. For a Halloween glitter, it's very subtle and nice; it's also beautiful for a spring glitter, or any other darn thing you want. It has pretty hexes in sage green and muted lilac, plus a spray of micro glitter. The colors are muted, but do show a bit more than you see here--the purple base overwhelmed them in the camera a bit:

DNTTT + Whimsical Ideas By Pam Once Upon A Time

DNTTT + Whimsical Ideas By Pam Once Upon A Time

There's nothing wrong with that step--it was a beautiful addition to the base color. And I should have stopped there. Sigh...But, it was a stamp-over-glitter theme, and I thought I had the perfect idea for it. In my head, it looked beautiful and perfect. Ah, the best laid plans...

It looked better in mah head...

Millenium FAILcon

I stamped over the design with a fauxnad plate I got from Anna's, using Pure Ice Silver Mercedes. This was supposed to be a pretty Fierce French design, with the circles at the top going well with the hex glitter. It didnt' help that I messed up and blurred the stamping on the accent nail, but even if the stamping had been pristine, that wouldn't have saved it.

However, after looking at it for a bit, I decided it sort of looks like a spaceship (on each nail) flying through a sky filled with planets in stars. If they re-made Star Wars today, the front of the 2012 Millenium Falcon might look like this. Maybe. A little.

Ah well, I've done worse. Live and learn...live and learn.

Thanks for looking!

Xoxox,
M.

NOTD: If I were a zombie...If I were a zombie girl!

Hello!!

When you're in two Halloween challenges, it's unavoidable that certain topics will appear twice. Today is the first instance of this for me--this is my second 'zombie' prompt. For my first prompt, I did little hungry zombies trying to nom some brainz. In this prompt, for my 'This Is Halloween' challenge, I wanted to do something a bit different.

I thought to myself...what if a polish lover, with pretty glitter polishes, was turned into a zombie? What would those nails look like? Would the glitter turn? What kind of gunk would mess it all up? Here is my take on it:

I'm a zombie girl...

In a zombie world...

It's brain-tastic!

Mmm...look at all that awesome gore!

For once the 'claw' pose is appropriate...hee hee hee!

Run!! It's zombie-glitter-nails girl! She will claw out your brains for awesome polishez!!!

Okay, enough weirdness. Here's how I did it. First I applied one coat of Whimsical Ideas by Pam Wicked (Indie alert!). Then I applied one coat of China Glaze Zombie Zest to zombie it up a bit. Then I used a second coat of Wicket, to get that layered glitter look (sort of a reverse glitter sammich?). Then I used The Nail Junkie Black Cat ('Nother Indie Alert!) and sponged it on the tips and up the cuticles, to make it look like I'd been digging in the dirt. Finally, I used Pure Ice Siren to put blood on the nails, using a fan brush to sweep it across. I didn't clean up the cuticles/fingers cause I wanted it to look gory...but as I look at it, it just looks sloppy. I need more gore! :P

Thanks for stopping by! Please check out the other zombie manicures by my fellow zombie-ites. :)

XoXoX,
M.

Indie-licious Before & After MSMD: Whimsical Ideas by Pam: Georgia Peach Fuzz

Hello!

Today I am going to revisit a technique that I previously featured as an MSMD--but with a twist...hee hee hee...

I started with the Indie beauty, Georgia Peach Fuzz by Whimsical Ideas by Pam. This unique darling is a creamy peach base with tons of copper glitter in it:

Whimsical Ideas By Pam: Georgia Peach Fuzz (sunlight)

Whimsical Ideas by Pam: Georgia Peach Fuzz (shade)

 I only used two coats for these photos because I only wanted a splash underneath to peek through my planned design, so there is a little VNL here. :) But, this polish is wonderful, and it was my choice to show the VNL; the polish applies really well, and the glitter stand up tall and proud. I have another of Pam's polishes, and it's the same story there--excellent quality, no fishing needed, unique colors. The only issue I have with these polishes is they take a liiiiittle bit longer to dry than other polishes, but not much and nothing that can't be fixed with your favorite fast-dry topcoat. :) I highly recommend you check out her stuff; You can find her store here. :)

Then, I decided I wanted to play with the nail-tape gradient technique that I originally saw here. I have tried this technique once before; you can see my first attempt by clicking here. I had been talking about this technique with Dina of Secretary's Nail Art and she showed me an attempt she'd done with pink polishes which you can see here. For some reason, when I saw it, the thought popped in my mind: Glitter! I need to do this with peek-a-boo glitter, so that you only see the glitter on that part that was covered by the nail tape. So I used Georgia Peach Fuzz as my base, and sponged China Glaze's Platinum Gold over my carefully placed nail tape...and you couldn't see a darned thing. It came out so bad, I didn't even bother to take a good picture of it:

But I am not a quitter! I do not give up! I will not be defeated! So, I decided to give it another try, using stripes of painter's tape cut a bit wider, so that more of the underwear would show:

Ah yes, now that's better! I still can't claim to be 100% in love with it; I think the colors are too neutral for this sort of design. Also, while I tried to do a sort of spiral thing on the accent nail, that was a complete FAIL. But I do like it quite a lot, and I love how the glitter shows through the peek-a-boo stripes. So I have every intention of playing around with this a bit more, and I'm sure you'll be seeing some other version again soon.

Thanks for stopping by to look! I posted this a day early, but it's my MSMD for this week. Please check out the ones done by the other CNTs, linked below. :)

M.