The Crumpet: 200 Follower Giveaway - Ozotic AND A England

Uh Oh...the Lovely Crumpet is having a Marvelous giveaway!!

Follow the link for your chance at the goodies =)

The Crumpet: 200 Follower Giveaway - Ozotic AND A England

Finger Paints Special Effects Topcoats

So, I'm sure many of your have heard that Finger Paints has a new line of Flaky topcoats coming out in January. It just so happens that some of us have lucked out and gotten our hands on them a bit early.

The display also included a black for layering but I have plenty of black polish haha

The girls in PaA have been drooling over these and asking a lot of questions...and I'm here to answer the big one.

 Is Twisted a dupe for Cult Nails Unicorn Puke/Clairvoyant???   Well, let us see...

Wheel swatches taken in natural daylight

I think they look even better on the nail.

These are over Hard Candy's The End.

And now, the main question. How these compare to Cult Nails Clairvoyant...

These are all 2 coats of the base color. I used 1 coat for Clairvoyant and Twisted and 2 coats for Asylum.

I tried them over China Glaze White on White.

The nature of these flakes don't allow them to show up too well on white or light colors.

And of course Clairvoyant has a purple jelly base.

Over Hard Candy The End...

As you can see Twisted has a bit of yellow in it.

This is the truest showing of Asylum. Most of the time its just red/orange and blue.

And now, over Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Deep Purple. I used Clairvoyant over this for a full mani when I first got it and absolutely loved it!

Twisted isn't as densely packed.

Here you can see that Asylum doesn't come nearly as close. 

So I feel that while they're not exact dupes, Twisted is close enough to scratch the Unicorn Puke/Clairvoyant itch if you're short on cash. It's a little less dense but you can always do 2 coats to make up the difference. My guess is a coat of Twisted over a coat of Asylum would be the closest you'll get. Unfortunately I didn't think to try it until just now haha. 

The Finger Paints Special Effects will be available at Sally's Beauty in January. They're $4.99 each if you have a beauty club card. Cult Nails Clairvoyant is part of the Super Powers collection and is normally $10. It will be back in stock in February.

Badger, Mushroom, Snake

Yeah, yeah, so I'm late to the party. What can I say, I don't stalk stupidity.  Sadly, someone had to bring some more of said stupidity to my attention. Well this time I'm glad they did...because I laughed my a$$ off!!

Badgers are greedy, selfish, ugly creatures who just take what they want with no regard to others around them. So congratulations on making that comparison! All I know, is that I hope Romeo and Julia cause a fungus that will make some nails fall off!

Oh and by the way, lookie what I got! Karma was good to me =D

Two of each pair.

Essence Nail Art Twins!

Gabriella and Troy, Romeo and Julia, Chuck and Blair, Bella and Edward

And for a final note, the first thing I thought of in regard to it all:

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Maybe I'll get around to posting something real soon. Between the promotion at work and running a Secret Santa I've been a little busy =)

Must Have Halloween Frankens continued

So another one of Amber's fabulous Halloween Frankens has donned my nails recently.

Fairy Frightening is very dimensional. It's a deep purple base with flashes of blue shimmer and 2 sizes of fuchsia colored glitter. It almost looks like Bad Romance had a baby with something like Illamasqua Boo! haha. You wouldn't guess it from the first coat, but it's definitely pigmented enough to be opaque in 2 coats. Usually large glitter is hard to work with. This one isn't very frustrating. It's not like you can just throw it on but it's really not that bad. Of course the large glitter tends to give the finish a slightly lumpy surface. But I love Gelous Basecoat. You put it over top of any glitter and it smooths everything out. Then your topcoat can give it some shine. Two coats of your regular topcoat might work well enough though if you don't have Gelous.

So here's a few pictures. All are Seche Restore for a basecoat, 2 coats of Fairy Frightening, 1 coat of Gelous and 1 coat of Out the Door.

Day Light:

Flash (check out that blue!):

You can see what I mean about the dimension! Lots of fun little elements making this just pop. I was complimented several time the day I wore this to work. 

Again, this lovely polish was created by Amber and her husband over at My Nail Graffiti. This and the other 3 wonderful creations in this collection are available for sale. At least until her glitter supply runs out, so don't miss out!

You can see my orginal post on her frankens Here.

=)

Must Have Halloween Frankens

So about 2 weeks ago this awesome girl named Amber posted about some Halloween inspired frankens that her husband decided to create. I know, I know. I thought the same thing too. "A married man playing with nail polish? This ought to be good."  Well the joke was on me because these babies were AMAZING! When I first saw her post about it in PaA I realized I needed these to add to my growing collection of Halloweenies. Lucky for me (and all of you as well) they decided to make these creations available for a reasonable price.

So on to the Pictures! (unfortunately I only got pictures of Pumpkin Patch swatched but I'll link you to Amber's swatches at the bottom)

I love the homemade labels!

And the pumpkin stickers are an adorable touch =)

Magic Dust has a slightly pinkish shimmery base with multi glitters including purple, blue and orange.

Fairy Frightening looks like DL's Bad Romance but cooler because is has a purple jelly base and blue shimmer.

Pumpkin Patch is a very happy orange with green glitters (in 2 sizes). 

Black Raven is an incredible blue/purple shimmer in a black base.

The green glitter is a great idea. This could have been opaque with only 1 thick coat but I opted for 2 thin. Unfortunately this doesn't quite get the orange color right. It's not as red. 

Here it is on my nephew (he's a funny little guy lol). It's 1 coat and a better idea of what the color looks like. 

Here's the best idea of the color of the orange. I decided to have a little fun the second day I had this on. I used Zoya's Ivanka for the leaves and vines.

I have played with all 4 of the polishes in this collection. They're all amazing. Black Raven is highly pigmented and is slightly slow to dry (but don't let that deter you). Magic Dust is so pretty and colorful. I can't wait to try it over various base colors. And although Fairy Frightening looks like it may be a DL Bad Romance dupe I think its much prettier. It seems to have more depth and dimension to it then Bad Romance. As with most large glittered polishes it may take a little extra work to get the big hexes where you want them but its definitely not that hard. And as usual I recommend using Gelous Basecoat over top to smooth out the glitters.

I am so glad I jumped on these when I did. They are super original and very fun. Anyone who like Halloween as much as I do will definitely want to get their hands on these ASAP! I can't want to see Amber's hubby's next creations!

For swatches of all 4 polishes as well as how to contact Amber to purchase these pretties you can visit her blog at My Nail Graffiti. 

Did I mention she's only as $16 for all 4 of them?? ;-)

Check out Fairy Frightening in my follow up post Here.

Galaxy Nails

I know, I know. How dare I not post anything in forever. I am truly sorry. Things have been majorly hectic around here. Between working 9 days stretches here and Hurricane Irene and other issues there, well I can barely keep up with PaA.

Speaking of, this week's Monday Mani theme was Galaxy inspired nails. And after posting my mani a tutorial was requested. I've never done an actual tutorial but I figured I'd give a pic-torial a whirls. So, here goes nothing!

To start, you're going to need some polishes. I'm using Nic's Sticks Silver-ella, Finger Paints Gallery Glam, Seeing Stars (a Hungry Asian franken), Claire's Mystical, and Nicole's Make U Smile. I didn't even use any other art tools. At most I had a piece of paper to dab off excess polish.
(all pics are clickable to enlarge)

I did 2 coats of Gallery Glam as my base color. It's a very deep bluish purple.

Up next I used Silver-ella to do the dust trails. I started by brushing off the excess that came out. I wanted to make it look as much like sponging as possible without having to go through the extra steps of finding and using a sponge.

Using just the end of the bristles I dabbed a trail across each nail. Vary the pattern in any way you desire.

Next I used Seeing Stars, which is holo and dark royal blue colored glitters in clear base. I more or less followed the same process as with Silver-ella and the same pattern in a semi sloppy manner. Again, going for the sponging look without the sponge.

Then I used Make U Smile to add larger "stars" in the open areas. I worked the brush in the bottle to get some of the larger hex glitters onto the tip so I could strategically place them where I wanted. Bonus of this polish was that it also has smaller silver glitters that ended up in random places giving some "stars" a more distant appearance.

Then to add just a touch more sparkle and to darken up a few spots I used Mystical (a dark, superfine blue and purple glitter in clear base). I just dabbed it over any spot I though turned out a bit too light or needed something extra. The first 2 nails have it, the 3rd not yet.

And finally some topcoat to seal it all together and Ta-Da! Far out spacey Galaxy Nails =)

And here's the picture that inspired the tutorial. 

I hope this is informative enough to help anyone who is interested in giving this look a try. Obviously any of these polishes can be substituted by other colors, brands, etc. Who knows, you may end up coming up with a better combination. I'd love to try this again using some other colors, maybe with something kind of pearly. I'm also curious as to how holo-y Silver-ella will look in the sun tomorrow LoL 

100 Followers!!

It may have taken a few months and I may not post a whole lot, but I've finally reached the big ONE-ZERO-ZERO!!

I'd like to say thank you to each and every one of you personally. It warms my heart to know someone out there takes even a second of their busy lives to just glance at the randomness I spew =D

I really wish I had the means to have some fantabulous giveaway, but that's just not in the cards right now. Hopefully by some next big mile stone I'll have the means to make it's marking a bit more special.

So again, Thank You! Each and every one of you!

Independence Day

Happy July 4th to everyone! I've had a nice 2 days off work, went out with some friends, and relaxed around the house a bit. But with all the festivities I still don't feel like I've gotten nearly enough rest.

So my fabulous group Polish-aholics Anonymous has created a group unity activity. Each week we vote on a theme and then create a manicure to reflect that theme and post it on Monday. Thus our Monday Manis were born. These weeks theme was Patriotic. We had some awesome manis from girls from countries all over the world showing pride for their nation. And, of course, there were many many Independence Day inspired manis. They were all awesome and all so unique. This might have been the funnest week so far.

So I thought I'd post my design in here and explain a little as to what I did to make it.

For the thumb. middle and index fingers I used Nicole's OMB! (red) and Pure Ice Celestial (blue).

The stripes and dots on the middle and index are Kiss nail art.

The white on the thumb is Sinful Snow Me White, and its covered in OPI silver shatter.

For the pointer and pinky fingers I used Hard Candy The End for the background. Kiss silver nail art for the streamers. Ulta Pinata Yada Yada, Nicole Make U Smile and Let's get Star-ted, and some random almost Mad as a Hatter dupe for the firework explosions.

I know its a little messy but I ran out of time for clean up because it was time to get the spare ribs on the grill ;-)

Color Club Red Velvet

Traci and her blog sales and giveaways are going to be what fills out my polish collection haha and I love her for it!

Traci is running what seems to be an on going Blog Sale. She keeps updating and adding all kinds of new polishes at super fair prices and she ships fast and all over. So make sure you check it out.

One of the gems I was able to snag from this sale was Color Club's Red Velvet from their Fall 2010 collection. Its a black jelly base with a whole lot of bright red glitter.

I can't believe Traci never got around to swatching this one. It's amazing. I should have done my True Blood mani and used this!

So this is basecoat and then 2 coats of Red Velvet (first thin, then a thick coat. I was too impatient to do 3 coats and if I had done all thin coats I think it would have needed the 3rd coat) and then Out the Door topcoat.

There's nothing I really need to say beyond the fact that these pictures don't do it fair justice. These are only a hint at how amazingly the red glitters pop from the base which is a very true black.

She's at it again!

That's right, the fabulous Traci has hit a new milestone and is doing something special to celebrate!

The TraceFace Philes: The Trace Face Philes 500 Followers Giveaway!!: "YAY!! My blog has hit another milestone thanks to YOU!! OF COURSE we need to celebrate!! I am pleased to announce The Trace Face Philes ..."

True Blood Inspired cupcakes!

So if you're cool you know that tonight was the True Blood Season 4 premiere. If you didn't know, well, I'll forgive you if you promise to take a crash course in that awesomeness that is this show ;-)

So in honor of the premiere I decided to whip up some Bloody Cupcakes!

(click image to enlarge)

So these were really simple and super yummy.

They're just strawberry cupcakes with some strawberry filling and cream cheese icing with some drips of red food dye for the blood.

Now I can't wait till next weeks episode!

China Glaze Crackle Metals

Alrighty then. Have you been won over by all the companies putting out their version of Crackle and Shatter polishes? If not, I think you're about to!

China Glaze has recently (or is very soon depending upon if your local stores are slacking) released a second set of crackle polishes. This time they're all metallic! Instead of black and white they've added bronze and gold. I happen to not care very much for anything in those colors so I didn't bother grabbing them when I was lucky enough to stumble upon these beauties at my local Sally's Beauty Supply this week. They did keep the aqua, pink, purple, and grey (silver) shades.

All I can say is that these are PERFECT! They have great application. They don't start to dry and crack so fast that you can't even get your coat finished. You actually have a moment to play around with them a bit before your committed to whats on the nail. And the way they crack? Just WOW! I don't think I can describe it any better so I'll just show you what I mean....

This is Platinum Pieces over Color Club's Alias

I love the patterns this stuff creates!

Platinum Pieces over Alias again.

Despite the tip wear I needed a shot of the incidental Star-burst on the middle finger =) 

Here is Oxidized Aqua over an unnamed Funky Fingers purple and Latticed Lilac over SH Celeb City 

Here are my Beauties!

Platinum Pieces, Haute Metal, Latticed Lilac and Oxidized Aqua 

(and ChG Broken Hearted since I finally got that one too) 

Each over Sinful Snow Me White and Hard Candy The End

 Comparison

The top swatches are OPI Silver Shatter

The bottome swatches are China Glaze Platinum Pieces

As much as I love the OPI shatter I think I like the China Glaze Crackle better. The chunky bits that it breaks into appeals to me more. I think that's part of why OPI chose the name Shatter for their line since it does have more of a shattering lengthwise vs a all over crackling pattern.

 I just want to note real quick that there are several different opinions on what works best to get the best performance out of any of these polishes. Some swear by topcoating in between your base color and your crackles. Some of the brands seem to work a little better on bases that are not completely dry yet. But on a cream or shimmer polish I, myself, don't see the need. All I can suggest is to play around and test out different methods with each brand till you find what works for you. I personally chose to apply these to dry base colors without topcoat in between. I think if I did a glitter base I would definitely want to add topcoat in between to smooth the surface.

Now, who else is excited?!

Traci's "Just Because" Giveaway

Go...Run...Enter!!!...she's got some BRAND NEW RELEASES that you're sure to want!!

The TraceFace Philes: The Trace Face Philes "...just because!" GIVEAWAY!...: "Yesterday I was fortunate enough to snag the Nice Stems Collection and newest Serena Williams sets for cheap! I thought of you..."

Slacking

Yes yes, I know, I'm being the Queen Slacker of the nail blog world. Ok, that might be an exaggeration but close enough. I just wanted to throw in here that I have not forgotten about this fabulous little page of mine, nor any of my fantastic followers. I've been super busy with work and some stress that I don't really feel like blabbling about here. But I promise you that I have quite a few fun manis that I've done in the past couple weeks and I will be doing a couple entries, one of which will most likely be a spam post.

In the mean time, if you haven't already joined my Facebook group, Polish-aholics Anonymous, get on over there and submit your request. Anything and everything you'd ever want to know about polish is discussed there, or can be if you bring up something new ;-)

So for now, I bid you Adieu and Happy Polishing!

Memorial Day Weekend (picture heavy)

First I hope everyone had a safe and fun Memorial Day. Thanks to all those who have served our country and deserve an honor on this, and every, day!

Even though I had the weekend off from work I was still rather busy.

Saturday my buddy Traci (The TraceFace Philes) and her pal Casandra came down and we went on a polish shopping expedition. We hit 3 Five Belows, 2 JC Penneys. Ulta, 2 nail supply stores, Trade Secret, Mac, Lush, Sephora, Nordstrom and a CVS. I believe they also hit another Ulta and Nordstrom Rack on their way home lol. Grand Total for my day was 14 stores, 3 malls, and several shopping centers. That's a lot of hoofing. But it was all worth it. We had a blast. Joked, laughed, mocked...and also found a ton of polish! Including a few lemmings. So don't let me bore you with things you had to be there to find interesting. Let me just show you the pictures!

Traci and Casandra enjoying some Rita's about half way through our day.

By the end of the day our nails were the ultimate tester skittle mani ;-)

Back to my house. Traci's at the top, Cas' in the middle, mine at the bottom.

this includes the couple of things Traci and I swapped before hand.

There's all mine again...

Shatters!...until this day I had none and was very sad. JcP had all their OPIs bogo half...

The Silver was one Traci swapped me.

and of course Purple is Sally Hansen which I got at CVS

Lucerne-tainly Look Marvelous, PotC Stranger Tides, Sparrow Me the Drama, and Steady as she Rose, Not Like the Movies (new version) and Simmer and Shimmer.

Sparrow me the Drama I actually had to get at Cedar on Sunday but it completed my Pirates collection =)

Hard Candy Fabuluxe (a Traci swap), Ulta- Pinata Yada (another Traci Swap) Little Black Dress, Underground, Green with Envy,  and Funky Finger- Baby Baby Baby, Sand & Stilettos, and Snakeskin

And of course some much needed extras... 

Of course as soon as I got home my sister (and even my mom) started drooling and I could see the gears turning in their heads for what they wanted to use first...ugh. Even my dear 2 1/2 year old nephew Brody was getting handsy haha. So my mom asked for me to do something patriotic on her nails that very night. I thought for a second and came up with this:

Flags!

My mom's poor stubby nails. We put our hands through hell at work. 

 This is Sinful White (i forget the exact name) with China Glaze Dorothy Who? and OPI Red Shatter

I swiped the shatter sideways across the nail hoping for a horizontal "striping" 

Then of course I had to play with my new polishes on me =)

This is Lucerne-tainly Look Marvelous with Turquoise Shatter. 

Sunday was also busy. Employee Appreciation Day at work so I could actually shop in my own store. Got a couple pairs of jeans and some jammies. I love 50% off sales in this respect. I also had to bake and decorate my sunflower cupcakes for our bbq at work. And my friend Carrie spent most of the day tagging along. Sunday was also when I made a point of going to Cedar to look for my last PotC color. 

Today, oh boy, today. Hectic and crazy and definitely not a holiday I got to celebrate. We always have a 50% off sale on Memorial Day. And when you team up the words "Sale" and "Thrift Store", well, all hell breaks loose. Staff meeting at 8 am, doors opened at 9 and then near constant pandemonium until 5 pm. Needless to say a nap, dinner and a long hot shower helped round out my day.

So now I'm well past tired and still have another day of work before I get my "holiday". I'll have 2 whole days to spend mixing and matching with all my new goodies. =)