Thursday, August 30, 2012

Sassy Saturday: MORE DOTS with butter LONDON

PART TWO of my PVA trip report! This is amazing! The only thing I would change is a thicker glue coat next time...I put the glue on really thinly and it was hard to get ahold of in places.


I wasn't able to get the glue off in one piece in most cases, but removal maybe took 2 minutes. All I had to do was run a q-tip with acetone down the sides of my nails. No damage! No dry nails! No foil hands for 15 minutes (I do one hand at a time)!


For my Sassy Saturday entry...well, for those who don't know, the first Saturday of every month Shelly's Sassy Nails holds a nail art competition. This month's theme was dots! I can do dots! Sorta!

I've been dying to use some of my new butter LONDON polishes (Cake Hole and Squatter were two of the Macy's exclusives I was talking about in the Brummie post). Gobsmacked is just WOW. It was meh at first, all grainy and boring, but after a second coat, Gelous and SV it's perfectly smooth, deep and sparkly. 


Look how sparkly!


The ring I got for $2 off of eBay :)



Finally, here's the Photo Grid I made up for my entry at Shelly's page...


And because I can, I leave you with this! Thanks for reading! K x

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

ABC Challenge "D" + TIOT: Julep Daphne & Elevation Polish Ama Dablam

Hi friendsies! (is that less lame than nailistas? Probably not.)

You maaaaaay have noticed but we have a new layout, it's sort of weird I guess but if anyone has any comments please let me know!

Anyhow! For this overcast, muggy TIOT (which also happens to be ABC Challenge "D" week) I had just gotten Elevation Polish Ama Dablam in my mailbox and really really needed to wear it. But that doesn't start with a D, you say! So I hunted through my spreadsheet and figured out which "D" named polish would work underneath, and settled on Julep Daphne. Daphne reminds me of Zoya Wednesday, but just not as nice. More on that later :/

It was also time for Round 2 of PVA Basecoat Fun. I found some Aleene's Tacky Glue in the back of my storage closet, and according to Duncan's site it's a water-based polymer emulsion. The bubbles in the below pic are totally my fault, guys, I tried adding some water to the glue and shaking it was a bad idea. Oops. Once the basecoat, polish and topcoat go on you can't tell, but Round 3 will be focused on eliminating the bubbles.


Drying time was about 10-15 minutes for both hands. The water in the glue made it sort of lumpy, I don't recommend this for even drying times. I followed the glue with Barielle basecoat, then Julep Daphne. I just don't like these colors on me. I love them in the bottle or on other people, just not me. Plus it had my usual complaint with Julep polishes, which is the runny + globby, crappy brush problem. I had to slap this on in 2 thick coats to get it to look OK. Like I said before the color reminds me of Zoya Wednesday but I like both the Zoya color and formula better.


I feel like my camera makes it look a little brighter and less green here than it really is.



After loading that up with SV I used tape to do angled Ama Dablam tips. AD is awesomeeeeeee. Elevation Polish describes it as being packed with micro multi-colored glitter, micro copper colored glitter, green teal square glitter, blue teal holographic hex glitter and copper colored round glitter. It makes me so happy to look at. Here are bottle shots of both, isn't that just amazing?




This is 2 coats of Ama Dablam brushed over the tips, I didn't need to place the glitter at all.



Julep polishes can be purchased at their site for $14. Elevation Polish announces her releases on her blog, but you can also check out her Etsy or their website. Unfortunately Ama Dablam is no longer available and will not be restocked, according to the preorder page, but her other polishes are gorgeous as well!

So far I see no difference between the glue basecoat and normal basecoat (and I've showered, washed dishes, etc. since last night) but I will follow up with removal either later today or tomorrow.

Has anyone else tried the PVA basecoat?

Thanks for reading!

 K x

Saturday, August 25, 2012

NOTD: Julep Pippa + Barielle Buddha-Ful

Hi nailistas (ok that was a little ridiculous but I've had some champagne)

This NOTD is a long, sordid story of FAIL. Argh. The Mr. is gone at a friend's house right now (I chose ME time over Street Fighter time, so I'm holding down the fort) so it's just me, my dog and my blog. LOL. All this free time means you guys get to hear the story.

So last night I planned out a funky french in my head: dark green sparkly tips, silver glitter striping and some nice OPI Coney Island Cotton Candy. Um, that's where everything good about this idea came to an abrupt end. Since everyone's talking about this PVA basecoat business, I picked up a few different glues to try my hand at it. One of them, Tombow Mono Multi, is a PVA according to Google but features "removable application" that I didn't notice at the store. This is so you can reposition photos, etc. as you choose. Turns out, this means this glue dries to a sticky finish. Oooooops. I kept thinking "it'll turn out OK, it'll turn out OK..." No. I ended up with some very nice and sparkly green tips (Smitten Polish I Want It Now) but this lumpy, gluey MESS of a nail bed. At this point I just gave up and took it all off. Note to self, read the glue next time.

After that I was pretty mad so I went for simple. I had recently picked up Julep's Pippa thinking it'd be a pretty good match for my skintone, as a one coat neutral to put under sheers and glitters. It actually is a decent match, but I could probably go for something a little more true neutral, this leans a little pink on  me. Either way I'm really happy with it. The formula is bleh coming out of the bottle, I feel like the brush just keeps dripping forever (thick but runny, the usual) but it has the nice wide brush most of the Juleps have. The below are two coats. I like the simplicity of it. Dry time was a little longer than I'd like but that's just what I expect from most Julep polishes.


After I was done I tried adding a paw print accent, but the base wasn't dry enough yet and things went slightly awry :s


When I was less mad I decided to add a topcoat of Barielle Buddha-ful. I love this polish even if it is a bit goopy and bubbly, it's this gorgeous nude base packed with green iridescent flakies. It bubbled on a few of my nails as you can see but overall I feel pretty happy with this. I used one coat.


Look at those flakies!!



Here's a bottle shot of Buddha-ful.

Pippa can be purchased from Julep's site (price depends on membership) and Buddha-ful can be purchased from barielle.com for $8.00.

Thanks for reading!

K x

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Darling Diva Polish - Channeling Coco: Alphabet Challenge "C"

Hello lovelies,
Tonight's post is very special! It marks the culmination of an epic trifecta: finally changing out Brummie, Lustrous Lacquer's ABC "C" week and my first on-time contribution to Try It On Tuesday!

For this I chose Darling Diva Polish's Channeling Coco. I saw this on her Etsy shop and had to have it (along with like 10 other of her polishes :p) Her polishes range from $8-12 per full size bottle and have some seriously cool/hilarious names. Plus the girl has a Battlestar Galactica collection, ok, let me hand over my wallet now, thanks. /love

Isn't this cute? She describes this as a pale warm pink base with small black and pink glitters. Yup, that's about right.


So, this didn't turn out very well on me. I shook it, turned it upside down for a while and fished like crazy but I could barely get any glitter. The Etsy picture for the item has a decent amount of glitter but I just couldn't coax it out. I was sorta bummed about this :(

This is five coats!




First of all, I probably should have put this over a nude base coat...but on the other hand, the only reason I got as much glitter as you see above is because I had to coax 5 coats onto my nails and be careful not to sweep the glitter off with the brush. It looks pretty and milky and only a tiny bit streaky, which is most likely due to me babying the glitter :p Topcoat is a must for this one because without it looks a bit uneven. However, it dries smooth, this glitter doesn't eat topcoat :) I feel like if the base was a little thinner and the glitter a little more dense in the bottle I could have gotten the results I was expecting, but don't get me wrong - I do think this is very pretty.

I've also picked up Ringer, Space Beetle, Princess Celestia, Fancy Nancy, Cherry Jubilee (LOVE) and Enchantment and can't wait to try them. 

Thanks for reading!
K x

Monday, August 20, 2012

Alphabet Challenge "B" - Oops!

Happy Monday again (not), there's no excuse for me...I just felt like playing video games all week and not posting. I do kinda have an excuse though...MoP comes out in a month and I gotta tie up all those loose ends. Someone understands, right? :s

"B" week was last week for Lustrous Lacquer's alphabet challenge, I did these Sunday and seriously sat my lazy ass on editing the pictures for an entire week. Wow me. Wow. Sorry guys.

Anyway, for "B" I chose Brummie, one of the Macy's-exclusive colors from butter LONDON. The fun thing about this color is that it dries to a rubber finish. I have a love/hate relationship with rubber finishes. Love, they look so darn cool. Hate, they seem to wear so fast! According to Wikipedia (Reputable sources, psh), "Brummie" is is a colloquial term for the inhabitants, accent and dialect of Birmingham, England. Hm, ok. Not sure what that has to do with rubbery purple, but it's still fun right?

Brummie went on sort of thick, but it was easy to manage. I did two coats for the swatches below. Even though I did end up using topcoat, I wanted to take pictures of just the rubber finish for you guys. If I knew I'd be changing this in the next day or two, I'd totally leave it like this:

It's so rubbery!

Please ignore the fingerprints on the bottle! :p

This bubbled a little; you can see it on the sides of my fingers somewhat.


As you can see, I should have added another coat just on my pinky...for some reason I have issues with polishing my thumb and my pinky, who knows. 

Since I did want this color to last decently, I threw some topcoat on there after adding an accent sticker (cupcakes! yay!). The sticker I got from MagnoNails, they're in Germany so shipping's sort of pricy but they have 92830284092784092 cool stickers and decals. I got a bunch of stickers and striping tape there a while back when they were the only place to order an XL stamper. (like seriously, I need to get around to my peacock feather water decals)

Poor MegaBloks Thrall. This is what he's reduced to.




For being so thick, Brummie cleaned up really well. All in all, I don't really even know if I'm too crazy about it. From the bottle, I thought it would be a little brighter, maybe even a touch neon. Even the pictures look brighter than it does in real life. Don't get me wrong, it's a really pretty purple, but it's something you probably want to experiment with layering over.

There are three other Macy's Exclusives from butter LONDON that I grabbed at the same time: Cake Hole, which is a bright hot pink and shares the same rubber finish; Alcopop, which is a light pink creme, and Squatter, which is a neon green creme. I don't even know why I got Squatter because I don't particularly like neon green but I think I had a NAIL POLISH o.O moment. I bought mine off the Macy's website, so I don't know what the availability is like in stores...also Brummie and Squatter seem to be out of stock at the moment. Their stock seems to fluctuate, though, so I'd guess they'd be back in soon. 

Random complaint, I hate opening BL bottles. That label on the side...I don't like peeling labels off of things. I have to get a knife out, and pry it up, and then the BF tells me to be careful...why can't it just be easy?!

Sweet...now back to liquidating my assets before the next xpac ;)

K x

Monday, August 13, 2012

Versatile Blogger Award!

Hi all, happy Monday :) *grumble*

Gini from Sassy Paints nominated me for the Versatile Blogger Award! I really love her designs so go check her out asap! Thanks for the tag Gini :)

Anyway, the rules!


The rules surrounding this award are:
1. Thank the person who gave you this award.
2. Include a link to their blog.
3. Select 15 blogs/bloggers who you've recently discovered or follow regularly.
4. Nominate those 15 bloggers for the Versatile Blogger Award, you could also link to them.
5. Finally tell the person who nominated you 7 things about yourself.

My 15:
1. Hello There, Blondie!
2. Munchy's Nails
3. I Feel Polished!
4. Pinked Polish
5. Nails by Ms. Lizard
6. Narcissistic Nails
7. Once Upon A Polish...
8. Nail & Polish
9. The Fox Claws
10. Polish Pixelle
11. iHeartPrettyPolish
12. Jilltastic Nail Design & More
13. Nailin' It!
14. Lace & Lacquers
15. Lustrous Lacquer

7 Things About Me:
1. I can solder pretty well LOL.
2. I dislike skinny brushes on polishes, which usually includes most minis *grr*
3. I lived in Colorado for a couple years and miss it every day.
4. My favorite coffee creamer is English Toffee flavor.
5. In that vein, I can't function without coffee, period :p
6. I don't like to talk on the phone!
7. My favorite Disneyland ride is AstroBlasters, I don't lose. Ever. :p

K x

Thursday, August 9, 2012

Hot Mess + "A" Alphabet Challenge!

Hi all!

Today I have for you a gorgeous polish from Hot Mess Lacquers. This girl makes some seriously awesome polishes (and some spiffy cuticle cream) so I was pretty damn excited when my order arrived today. :D

This week is also the first week of Lustrous Lacquers' Alphabet Challenge, so today I'm knocking out both "A" and getting to wear the dreamy Across The Trailer Park by HM.

To start I'm going to share the unboxing pics...my order was packaged up really cute with scrapbook paper confetti, a cute bag and star glitter. Yay!


Bonus dog :p


Look at the cute little bag it all came in! Stuff like this makes me smile when I open a box :)


The labels are are so sharp and fit her theme so well!


I think I'm just gonna leave it on my dresser like this so I can gawk at it for a while :p The Cracks Are Wack cuticle cream is on the left, Aquanet is center and Across The Trailer Park is on the right.


Gorgeous. Just gorgeous.


Work it, Thor!
I put two coats of Across The Trailer Park over one coat of Revlon Royal. I seriously can't stop staring at my hands. My fingers are like magic sparkly blue water. Aaaaahhh.


To make things even more fun, I decided to stamp a cat using Color Club Worth the Risque and SHANY plate SH08. I added silver stars using a dotting tool and drew the "snow" on under the cat. So these are my magical cat outside on a starry night in the snow nails. Mmmmm.



My camera totally failed at taking these pictures, it's just too sparkly. Can't complain about that.

Hot Mess has a Facebook and an Etsy here...go check her out! This girl works hard on her polishes and it shows!

K x

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Illamasqua Loella + Rage Stamping

Hm so let me start by saying I don't really like this. It started as a tape mani with Rage angled at the tips - and that looked fine. But of course I had to go one step further, and meh, not crazy about it, but I can see how with a different stamp or a different base color it would look neat.

Base is 2 coats of Illamasqua Loella, which unfortunately I'm not crazy about either - for some reason it's all watery, I have to be careful with this one. I stamped Orly Rage at an angle on the tips with BM plate 216.




K x

NOTD: Fantasy Fire

This was actually a NOTD a few weeks ago, but it was a NOTD at one point so it counts right? Right?
I'm still wearing Smitten Polish's The One on the Right and just can't take it off, it's so pretty.

Anywho, I got Max Factor's Fantasy Fire courtesy of one of my buddies across the pond. I normally see it layered over blue or black but due to my combined love for neons, fuschia and jellies I decided to layer it over China Glaze's Under the Boardwalk from the Summer Neons collection (This goes on beautifully, by the way - I only used one coat under the FF). This combo wasn't very durable for whatever reason, but I got a few days of ogling it before it chipped ;) Please ignore my owies, I hurt myself at work :(




What's your favorite FF combo that you've done or seen?
Thanks for reading!
K x

Saturday, August 4, 2012

Smitten Polish Winter Is Coming + The One on the Right

Hi guys!

So one of my new favorite discoveries is Smitten Polish. Noelie makes the cutest combos and I can't wait to wear them all!

First up I have Winter is Coming. I thought this was so cute, like a Wedgwood plate color scheme (Even though I know it's supposed to be one of her GoT polishes). This is 3 coats below, if you wanted less of a layered look you could wear it over white with one coat.



Next I have The One on the Right. It's this goooorgeous cornflower blue with blue and purple glitters, and it's just this squishy glitter goodness. This is 3 coats below, I probably could have managed with two if I painted carefully.



Noelie's blog has swatches of her complete line, updates on her restocks and preorder info when she's running one! The preorder for her new Confection collection may still be up. It's gorgeous so I recommend everyone to check it out!

K x