Ack! Apologies!!

ACK!!

Earlier, a couple of incomplete posts posted to my blog. This was unintentional, and I just now caught that it happened! Please accept my apologies if you saw them...Let's pretend they were just previews of things to come, lol...

>.<

Sorry again...

M.

Before & After: Orly's Buried Alive (quickie post!)

Hello!

I'm still trying to catch up with all my Thanksgiving obligations, and prep what I hope will be a cool review post for you. So today's post will be quick, and unfortunately my cuticles, etc. don't look the best. But I think this is a cool combination that came out of a disaster and wanted to share it with you. :)

Today I have a polish from Orly's Dark Shadows collection to show you: Buried Alive. This is a rich dark brown polish with coppery flecks throughout; it has a lot of depth and texture:

Orly Buried Alive, direct sun

Orly Buried Alive, in the shade

This is the sort of brown I like--warm and glowy and complex.

For some reason, I thought that a little bit of China Glaze's Golden Enchantment would add to the effect in a nice way. Yeah, it didn't. It just looked like a big glob of yuck. So I tried to do a full coat over the whole nail, and that didn't work, either. I was just about to take it off when I thought I'd try one of those save-me techniques...throw a coat of matte over it. So that's what I did:

Not half bad, actually! The matte turned the brown into an almost metallic sort of finish, and the glitter looked like silver and gold glass flecks in the polish.

Thanks for looking!

Xoxox,
M.

Before & After: My Thanksgiving Manicure

Hello!!

Today will be a quick post in between tending to Thanksgiving duties, but I wanted to share the manicure I'm wearing today for Thanksgiving dinner.

I started off with Color Club's Model Behavior as my base color. When I first got the bottle, I was a little disappointed, but once I put it on, the beauty came out:

Color Club Model Behavior

Color Club Model Behavior

Then I added one coat of a mystery glitter polish that I'll be reviewing for you in the next few days, and stamped a simple turkey on top of the accent nail with China Glaze Passion and Bunny Nails plate HD-06:

Gobble gobble gobble...

Oooo...look at that pretty holo glitter goodness...

So there you have it, a simple but pretty Thanksgiving manicure. :)

Thanks for looking, and I hope everyone has (or had!) a Happy Thanksgiving!!

Xoxox,
M.

Before & After: K is for Kiss

Hello!

Today it's time for the next installment of Llama Nails alphabet challenge; we're up to 'K'. I know what you're thinking--wait, what do you mean you're not doing 'K is for Kitten'?? Hey, I can't go with the expected, I'm not gonna let expectations hold me down! That's just how I roll--if you zig left, I'm gonna zag right! HA!

Sorry, I got a little silly there. I'm better now.

Honestly, I had planned on doing 'kitten', but I did want to try something a bit different, and had been playing around with some new red polishes, so I decided to go with 'K is for Kiss'. :)

I started out with this base of China Glaze Igniting Love, from the Cirque Du Soleil collection:

China Glaze Igniting Love

I thought I'd play around with glitters on top of this a bit, so I put Jessica Glitterati on my ring finger and Jesica Hot Hot Hot on the other nails. These both look soooo pretty in the bottle, but I was a little disappointed with how they looked over this polish. So, I continued with just playing, and threw a coat of A Rhyming Dictionary Polish's Tolly-diggle (Indie alert!!!) over it--and the magic happened. Tolly-diggle is an amazingly unique polish consisting of gold and pewter-blue flakies: 

Ooo...aaaahhh...ooohhhh...

The bottom picture shows more accurately what this looks like to the naked eye, but it's hard to get the complexity of Tolly-diggle on camera. Add to that the red glitter peeking out on the main nails, and the metallic glitters poking out on the accent nail, and my camera nearly threw its hands up and quit on me, lol. The final picture below actually shows the overall layered glitter effect best.

When I saw this combination, I knew I had to do something cool with it, but I wasn't sure what. And then I thought...red and pretty metallic colors...perfect for a bunch of pouty smoochie kisses! Here is the final SWAK product:

Ack! Dog hair on mah nail!

In this bottom picture, despite the stamping, you can see the layered glitter effect better than in the pictures without the stamping. I think maybe because the stamping gives the camera something to latch on to? I don't know...but I'm glad that it came out and shows you the true effect, because I personally think this layering combination is really nice. :)

For the stamping, I used Pure Ice Silver Mercedes. For the accent nail, I used the new Red Angel plates...I'll review these soon after I do more testing with them. The other lips on the other nails are from Bundle Monster plate BM-02.

Thanks for taking a look! Please check out the other 'K' manicures, linked below. :)

Xoxox,
M.

Before & After: Fierce Glequin French

Hello!

Today I put together a simple fall look that's quick and easy. :)

First, I started with Color Club's Winter Affair; this is a deep maroon that has gorgeous red-orange flecks in it, from their Holiday 2012 collection of the same name (I recently reviewed the collection; if you missed it, you can see my review by clicking here):

Winter Affair

My second step was to add a coat of Snow-Flakes, which is also from that same collection. Snow-Flakes is a standard multi-color flakie, but that doesn't make it any less gorgeous: 

Winter Affair + Snow-Flakes

Finally, I wanted to add a little bling, so I chose glequins in colors that coordinated with the color of the flakies in Snow-Flakes. I used two green, two orange and one yellow glequin on each nail, in a Fierce French pattern:

Glequin are pretty. Smudges in my topcoat and little fibers on my nail tips are not. >.<

There you have it--a fast, but stunning fall manicure with, in my opinion, just the right amount of bling. Of course, if you want more bling and want to add more glequins, I say go for it, you awesomely fierce creature you! :)

Thanks for looking. :)

Xoxox,
M.

Review: China Glaze Cirque Du Soleil Collection, Part 2

Hello!!!

Today is the second part of my China Glaze Cirque Du Soleil collection review. If you missed the first part, you can find it by clicking here.

Same with the first half, I have been at the mercy of the weather right now, so I don't have direct sunlight pictures for all of these. :(

First up for today is Bend Over Backwards. This is a red-orange metallicy-shimmer, and is one of my very favorite polishes in the collection; in fact, it might be my number one favorite. At first glance, you might think it looks like Orly's recently released Flicker, but Flicker is much more orange, while this one is more red. They do have the same finish, however.  (I'd be happy to do a comparison post if anyone would like to see it). This polish has that glowing-from-within-look and it applies like a dream. This is two coats plus one coat of Seche Vite:

China Glaze Bend Over Backwards

China Glaze Bend Over Backwards

What can I say, I just adore every aspect of this polish, and can't wait to play more with it. :)

Next up is Def Defying, another one from the collection that I really like. Def Defying is an avocado green crelly of the best sort. It's jelly enough that you can do cool layering things with it, but creme enough that it goes opaque in a reasonable amount of coats and doesn't make me want to rip off my own face when trying to apply it. It did take three coats to become fully opaque, which I normally don't like, but I'm happy to make an exception for this pretty color:

China Glaze Def Defying

China Glaze Def Defying

I have a glitter sandwich that I'm looking forward to trying with this...In the meantime, I tried it topped with Get Carried Away, one of the glitters from the collection that I showed you in the last post:

Get Carried Away over Def Defying

I like this polish much better over this than over Creative Fantasy (maybe I'm just biased against that polish, lol!). This is one quick coat over the base polish, without topcoat. I did have to play around a bit with it to get the number of rose glitters I wanted, so it wasn't a completely hassle-free application. And if I'd spent a bit more time, I could have made it look a bit less messy. But I wanted you to see what it looks like with just a basic application. :)

Next up: Igniting Love, another one I really like. I have nothing like this in my collection, and I've very excited to have it. It's a red-orange crelly, which leans a bit more toward the jelly side than Def Defying does, in terms of final look. After Creative Fantasy, I was worried that I was going to be thrown by the application here. Absolutely not. This polish applied like a dream and looks great in two coats:

Igniting Love

Igniting Love

Igniting Love

This is a polish I might have overlooked in the past, but once I put it on--in love. :)

And for our next polish...Running In Circles. This is a glass-flecked finish grass green polish with yellow flash to it, and since I love green polishes and glass-flecked finishes, I love this. At first glance it might look like Zoya Logan, but this is a bit lighter and more springy:

China Glaze Running In Circles

China Glaze Running In Circles in the sun

This is two coats with a cover of Seche Vite, but as you see in the sun picture, I really should have used three coats to get full opacity in all lights. Still worth having, but unfortunate, in my opinion.

And last but certainly not least, there is the final glitter of the group, Water You Waiting For. This one is definitely a glitter bomb--if Dorothy's ruby slippers had been blue, this is what they would have looked like. There is actually purple and green glitters in this too, and the blend really does give a nice effect. But if you're not into glitter bombs, this probably won't be for you:

China Glaze Water You Waiting For

Side shot to see the glitter blend

This is two coats with one coat of SV. You may notice a little chipping on one of my nails. This really isn't the fault of the polish--I made an early Thanksgiving dinner this weekend, and subjected this manicure to the worse possible conditions. It's actually quite a tribute there was any polish left at all after all I put it through, lol.

Since I can't see myself wearing this as a full manicure too often, I wanted to see what it looked like as an accent nail. So here is one coat over Hanging In the Balance:

Water You Waiting For over Hanging In The Balance

...And again in the sun.

This is much more my style, and is still really pretty. :)

Overall, I love the colors, glitters and finishes in this collection. I was disappointed a bit that it took three coats for opacity with most colors--I'm spoiled with China Glaze and used to only having to do two coats, sometimes only one. This may have been intentional on their part to make this collection a little more layering-friendly; that certainly would make sense given the glitters. And, it's really not the end of the world. :)

This collection is on sale now; I found mine at www.transdesign.com.

Hope you saw something you liked!

Xoxox,
M.

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

NOTD Twin Post: Anchors Away!

Hello!

Today's post will be a fast one because I'm cooking a version of Thanksgiving dinner today, so I'm a bit rushed. :)

This week, Dina and I are on Cheeky 36, and agreed that we would use the anchor stamp from that plate. Here is what I came up with:

Anchors Aweigh, my boys

Anchors Aweigh!

Here's how I did it. The base polish is China Glaze Water You Waiting For, which I'll show you more of tomorrow. Then I stamped over it with Konad white, using Cheeky plate 36. Finally, I free-handed the french tips...yes, I know this is obvious >.<...

I hope you all are having a wonderful weekend! And don't forget to take a look at Dina's version by clicking here!

Xoxox,
M.