Sweet Summer Lemonade, Topcoat Comparison

So I recently made my first purchase at the Born Pretty Store, and if you read the previous post, you saw that I got a round of fruit fimo decals.

At first, I was gonna do watermelon nails, but I decided to use the lemons and make lemonade nails first. I usually HATE yellow, but I really like LAC's Hysteria.

These were really fun to make!

1. Prep clean as usual, basecoat.
2. Paint with a white base (I used Sinful Colors' Snow Me White), and then add two coats of your yellow over it. I used LAC's Hysteria, which is a neon jelly, I think. It layers REALLY well. You can find it at Dollar General or online.

For the accents:

1. While the paint is still wet, sprinkle your glitter over the tip of your accent nails. (I got the glitter I used from the Dollar Tree, but honestly, I saw some that looked the same at Walmart today in the craft aisle.) Run a dry brush over it gently to knock off excess glitter. 
2. Using a quick dry topcoat, secure the slices of fimo to the nail. Press and hold into place until mostly dry.
3. Topcoat

For the "regular nails:

1. Take your white nail polish and create rings of white using a coffee stirring straw. Allow to dry
2. Apply a thin coat of Hysteria, allow to dry
3. Create larger rings of white, using a regular straw. Allow to dry.
4. Apply another thin coat of Hyteria, allow to dry
5. Using a dotting tool, pen, pin, toothpick, etc, throw on some random dots.
6. Topcoat

The night before I did these, I received an order from Sally's Beauty Supply, which had a bottle of Seche Vite in it. It's currently on sale! Plus, I have a Sally's membership, AND I had coupons. I got the bottle for about $4.50.

SO I put it up to the test. On my left hand, I used my [new] favorite, NYC's Turbo Dry Top Coat, and on my right, I used the Seche Vite.

Here's my observations:

• You can't tell the difference, once they're dried. And they dry at about the same rate. They're both very shiny, very hard, very smooth.
• Seche Vite smells like one of the cheap polishes I won't buy at the dollar store (yes, there are some that I won't buy!). I REALLY found it off-putting, and I did not like it AT ALL.
• NYC is a little thinner, but it's kinda hard to tell unless you're looking for things to compare
• So far, neither of them have chipped. In fact, most of those pictures I took about 10 minutes ago.
• There's a bit more bubbling on the hand with the NYC, but I don't know if it's because of the topcoat or because I was being hasty with letting my lower layers dry. 
• (Probably me being hasty.)

Honestly, I think LAC's Turbo Dry Topcoat is the winner. For the price I paid (50 cents), it has a much better value. Seche Vite isn't 3-Free either, second ingredient is Toulene.

Neon Water Shredding

For this design, I wasn't going for the traditional water spotting, more like shredding the nail polish. Kinda like this. And I did it in neon.

These two were my favorite. The watermarble on my ring finger turned out SO PRETTY, and I love the pink on my middle finger.

To get this look:
Paint your nails white over your basecoat.
Prep with tape.
Get your watermarbling glass of room-temp water, and drop one drop on the surface. Grab your hand sanitizing spray and spray the nail polish once or twice. Find a spot you like and dip your fingers in.
Put your favorite topcoat over and enjoy!


For this look, I used Sinful Colors' Snow Me White, Sally Hansen's Blue Me Away, Sinful Colors' Bikini, and Wet'N'Wild's Limelight. 
For topcoats, I used NYC's Turbo Dry Topcoat and NYC's Matte Me Crazy. 

I'm REALLY loving the NYC's Turbo Dry Topcoat. And I got it for $.50! SUCH the best!

Born Pretty Store

I've been wanting a holo polish for a while, so when Born Pretty had their holos on sale, PLUS the 10% off discount if you follow Polish Art Addiction, who has her own coupon code, I kinda had to finally get one!

Get it here

For the price, Born Pretty's holo polishes are very small. I wasn't aware that it was only .2 fl oz, which is really disappointing. The regular (non-sale) price is $12.88! That's... WOW. One of the reasons I assumed they were full-sized bottles!

I haven't gotten the chance to try it, as Era hasn't gone to bed yet (it's only 1:15 and I JUST got the mail. Had to share this asap!!) and it's such a tiny bottle I would feel it a waste to do a swatch on a fake nail.

I'm gonna use it tonight.

NEXT ITEM!

I've always wanted to try Fimo decals, and I REALLY like the fruit-salad-looking nails, so...

Get them here

Ooooh! They're tiny and rubbery and very cute! Apples and oranges and watermelon and citrus and strawberries!  I can't wait to figure out the designs I'm gonna try!

I was very happy with the size of this item, there are quite a bit of each design, and the detail is great :)

Overall, I'm very excited to use my new stuff!



These items were NOT given to me by Born Pretty for review, nor were they given as gifts.

Marble Nails and a Foiled Success

I really should come up with my own designs, I know. But pinterest is so inspiring, and there are so many things all right there... yeah. I'm sure I'll get tired of it soon enough.

Anyways, I fell in love at first sight at this mani and had to have them!

So here's my take:

 I LOVE these!

Here's how:
Prep nails.
Apply light blue/periwinkle. I used a light blue by Rue21 that I picked up a few months ago.
Get a cup of lukewarm water, and drip one (it's all you need!) drip of silver nail polish. I used Pure Ice's Silver Mercedes. It tends to shred instead of spot, which is what I wanted.
Spray hand sanitizer on the spread out drip. (You can get the spray kind at Dollar Tree)

Dip your fingers in. You can get up to three, depending on how far it spreads!
Topcoat.

Easy peasy!

For my accent nails, I tried a foil from Dollar Nail Art, then waterspotted over it with the blue.
It came out kinda funky, so I did the corner in the solid blue, and a stripe of the Silver Mercedes.

I would like to take a moment here to be excited. This was the first time I've EVER gotten a smooth cover in foil the first time. Guess it was just that I needed practice, which this blog is all about, I guess :)

On this mani, I tried a new topcoat (new for me) by NYC. It's a speed-dry topcoat. I've worn these nails ONE DAY and they've chipped. And I haven't been typing all day and being hard on them, so I'm a little disappointed. It did REALLY well on sealing everything, and it did it fast, so there's a plus, but I might go over it with another layer of something more reliable.

I would also like to say that this topcoat worked REALLY well with the foil's adhesive, but I'm wondering if that's because of the waterspotting on top of it. If that is the case, maybe it's possible to use water to keep the adhesive from wrinkling... I'll have to look into this!

What other colors do you think would work well with this method? I like the two colors that I used because they're so similar and you kinda can't tell at first glance :)

Have a wonderful week, luvvies!

Nubbies :(

I took off the skittles mani to every artist's nightmare: nasty nails. The tips of my nails were chipped, peeling, yellow, and just plain nasty. Three of my nails had fixes that were peeling on the edges.

So I gave them a trim.

All of them.

I HATE having nubbies! They feel weird when I type, or pick things up, and I can't scratch, grab tiny things, or peel off stickers.... I hate it.

But hopefully, it's for the best!

Anyways, I did a simple design, another glitter gradient. I LOVE them, and I'm sorry if you're getting tired of them :(

Sunlight

Flash, inside

Two coats of Sinful Colors' Lavander, gradient with Queen of Beauty. On the accent nail I did a coat of L.A. Colors' BCC 655? I can't find a name for it...
You can best see the color in the sunlight picture, but honestly it's less blue and more grey.

Neon Skittles

So I finally broke down and did a Skittles mani, based on this pin. I decided to do neons, though, instead of the almost-but-not-quite pastels in the original pin.

I'm trying to use my thumb to hide the stupidity that was my  ring finger... ONE SPOT stayed wet, and I have no clue why.

The thumb was my favorite.

This was another late-night mani that gave me more frustration than it was worth. I stayed up watching the end of Downton Abbey season 2 though, so it was worth it.

To get the gradient, I wet a cosmetic sponge, and then put black polish on the corner, slowly moving back and forth.

Fourth of July Nails!

Happy Birthday, America! *Raises glass* Here's to what you were supposed to be!

I promise that thumb is clean, the cuticle is looking odd in general

I am still on haitus, for an indefinite amount of time. Grannie's death has hit my family hard, and I'm not taking the time to take care of myself like I used to. 

I hate having nubbies!