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!