Crazy Diamonds

Hello Gorgeous! Hope your December is going well! Mine is full of craziness. Saturday is my last day of work, then next Thursday, we're hopping on a plane to Vegas to tour schools, celebrate my birthday and Christmas, and start to get things settled for our stay there. Kiddo is very excited!

 As you're aware, I'm a part of the Hobby Polish Bloggers, and from that group I made a great friend, Narmai from PiggieLuv. She's always got AMAZING art on her nails, and she's an absolute muse. I took some inspiration from her GORGEOUS Don't Let Anyone Dull Your Sparkle nails, and decided to work with it. I bought some OPI Sheer Tint minis on Amazon, grabbed my chunky glitters and went nuts.

First step in this process is using a sp- you know what, she's got a great tutorial over on Youtube. Check it out!

I went out and about like this, before they were finished... Even unfinished, they got comments and compliments! 

Macro Shot. Because these will never get old lol

For my nails, I went with a different message than my muse:

Shine on, you crazy diamond! 

My diamond in Macro

To create the lettering and the diamond, I created my own decals using Seche Vite, a piece of paper, and a ziplock baggie. I wrote out what I wanted to say on the paper, put the paper in the baggie, and then painted the baggie with Seche Vite. After that was dry, I painted out the words using Pure Ice's Silver Mercedes and Sinful Colors' Black on Black using my medium-length line brush. The diamond is Silver Mercedes, with LAC's Glitter Bomb and China Glaze's Fairy Dust behind.

I sooo love these! They were so cute and fun to make! I hope you enjoyed them as much as I do!

In the comments, please lemme know what you're doing for Christmas!

Snow Days

Hello from the midwest, where it went from 60°F to snowing the next day.

I was not ready for this. I am cold.

But in celebration of the season, I've done an homage to my family's second-favorite snow activity: Snowmen!

To create this look, I used an unnamed pale blue Rue 21 nail polish, a single coat of China Glaze's The Outer Edge, from their The Giver line, and to create the snow, I dabbed on OPI's Liquid Sand Solitaire. Pretty easy, and actually very quick. 

This was the first time I've used The Outer Edge. It's a dream to use on the nail, very easy to control the glitter, but a nightmare to get off the cuticle. I do like the way it looks, though. It's made of dense, tiny white matte glitters and then some less-dense, even-tinier silver glitter suspended in a clear base. 

I top coated with Diamond Claw from Dragon Claw Polish before I dabbed Solitaire.

Are you excited about winter? If so, what's your favorite part?

Argyle Nails, Striping Brush Fun

I have never gotten along with my striping brush. I have never managed to get a straight line with it, but after several attempts of struggling with my striping tape (are you sensing the pattern here? I am...) I gave up and dug out the nemesis.

Sooo glad I did, these nails turned out WAY cuter than they would have!

Today I got my hands on OPI's Int'l Crime Caper from the Muppet's Most Wanted line. My Walmart's Smart Style salon had it in their Buy One, Get Two Free promo, and since kiddo was getting his hair cut... I had to grab some. And then I had to use this one! Inspired by this, found on Pinterest, I went with a totally different color scheme, and I'm really pleased with it!

The colors used are OPI's Int'l Crime Caper,  Salon Perfect's Blue Ribbon, Pure Ice's Kiss Me Here, Revlon's Violet, and Revlon's Spirit. I used Seche Vite for top coat, Orly's Nail Armor as a base.

After two coats of Nail Armor, I laid down a layer of Int'l Crime Caper. Once it dried, I sponged on two layers of Kiss Me Here (I put Int'l Crime Caper on the sponge too). I freehanded the diamonds, and then used my striping brush to finish. Topped with Seche Vite and lookit how gorgeous! Must say, I'm tickled pink with how this turned out.

I'm going to start trying to post every Friday, as I have Thursdays off regularly now. With my recent hiatus, I do have some posts saved, in case I ever need backup again. Thank you guys for sticking around for me, glad I have some loyal people around.

Have a lovely evening!

OPI's Spotted Has A DUPE!!!

So the boyfriend and I were walking around Walmart and as I was perusing the nail polish section and OMG LOOK WHAT I FOUND!!!

A SPOTTED TOP COAT!!! 

I'm sorry about the fuzzy quality of this pic, but I was reeeeally excited...

It's still going for quite a bit on Ebay, with a few going for $40, though there's a couple that are only in the teens.

This bottle was only $2.50 thereabouts. Compared to the usual $9 a bottle w/ OPI? WIN!!!

Also, shoutout to my boyfriend because he is awesome and was the one who bought it.

Only 11 days left to vote on the poll, please vote!!!

Comments section: What are you gonna do with your bottle?

Happy New Years'!!!!!

Another 12 months have passed since this time of year again! Yaaay!
And of course I have to have nails for the occasion :D

OH NO WHERE DID MY PINKIES GO?!

Fireworks!

And a toast to finish off the new year/welcome in the new one!

In the past three days I have taught three people how to successfully stamp using stamping plates. I'm pretty damn proud of that :) They had beautiful nails :)

To create this look I used Sinful Colors Black on Black, and Snow Me White, Fingerpaints Peacock Portrait, and OPI Nicole Heavenly Angel. 

Thank you guys for sticking around :) This year my goals are to start getting comments outta you guys, get some subscribers, and to finally sit down and work out a schedule. Do you have any goals geared around your hobbies?

Christmas nails!

These are the nails I wore to my family Christmases. Everyone had a great time and we all enjoyed each others' company :) My awesomesauce boyfriend got me a bottle of Essie (not my only present), which I'll show off in another post.

The first time I tried stamping my accent nails, I stamped with Mash-50, but I just could NOT get them to come out right, so I gave up and tried something different, which you see below.

I'm getting back into the stamping groove! My mom got me a $100 gift card to Amazon, so I could spoil myself a little for my birthday (my dad gave me a check, which mostly went towards bills. Ugh, adulthood!), and I bought some Winstonia stamping plates (as well as a crapton of other nail art stuff, so stay tuned as it all comes in!).

Finding a green that will stamp on red is REALLY hard. Finally I gave up and stamped red on white and green on textured white. 

For my main nails I stamped Sinful Colors' Under 18 on Sinful Colors' Tokyo Pearl using W120, and Sinful Colors' HD Nails on OPI Liquid Sand Solitaire using BM-205 on my accent nails.

The first time I tried stamping my accent nails (the plaid in the top pic) I stamped with Mash-50, but I just could NOT get them to come out right, so I gave up and tried something different.

The shimmer of both Under 18 and Tokyo Pearl made the nails look kinda like candy canes :) It was very interesting to look at, but I couldn't get it to capture on the camera :(

O.P.I. Solitaire Snowmen

I FINALLY got my hands on some O.P.I.! My Walmart has a hair salon that sells OPI, and they occasionally have their wares Buy One Get 2 Free when they're on clearance. So I picked up Solitaire, Vesper, and Honey Rider. I've been wanting Honey Rider for forever, because it looks like sand. But then I saw Solitaire, and realized it looks like snow!

Next I know, I'm making snowmen and snow drifts :)

Welcoming Winter

I'm cold. We actually hit below-freezing recently, and that was horrible. I really need to get ready and buy myself a coat.

But I'm excited. Snow soon! And then I got this polish from OPI, Heavenly Angel, and it made me think of snow.

The base color is Essie's Bikini So Teeny. On my thumb and middle finger, I sponged two coats of Heavenly Angel. On my ring and pinkie fingers, I added a coat of Pure Ice's Oh Baby!, and on my pointers, I freehanded snowflakes using Sinful Colors Tokyo Pearl. 

My review of Bikini So Teeny: Two-to-three coater. It's difficult to work with, because the second coat streaks the first, lifting it off the nail.

My review of Heavenly Angel: Definitely needs to be sponged on. The flakies aren't thick enough in the base to brush on.