Sally Hansen Insta Dri - Presto Pink

I keep thinking to myself "Pepto Pink." But actually that would be a great description of this polish color. Lol

 It went on very easily as most Insta Dri's do. Very pigmented! I could have easily gotten away with one coat if I'd been more careful. This polish is supposedly very good for stamping, but I have yet to try that out. When I do, I'll let you know.

It dried very quickly and had a nice shiny finish. Thank you Sally Hansen.

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Green is the new dupe.

The reason OPI - Jade is the New Black was no longer on my wishlist, is because I received Essence In the Jungle which is a supposed dupe. Well I can now tell you that with a side by side comparison.... I can't tell the difference. When applying the polish, the OPI formula is superior and easier to work with, but once the polish is dried... I can't tell the difference.

This first picture is just OPI Jade is the New Black

This picture is alternating the two polishes as I have labeled.

OPI Jade is the New Black = JISTB   (haha just realized I left out the "N")

Essence In The Jungle = ITJ

Essence In The Jungle is from the Show Your Feet line of polishes.

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Nail Mail - Winnings!

You may remember the franken contest that my friend Laura did recently. Seen here. I was so happy to find out that I had won! Thanks to all that voted for my franken! Here are the polishes I won. Love them all. :) Excellent contest Laura and excellent polish prizes.

First up is LA Colors Glistening Purple. This was 4-5 coats and still visible nail line. It would make great for layering more so than on it's own.

LA Colors Aqua Crystals. This glitter was much more dense. This swatch is only 3 coats.

Same size, shape, and color glitter as Milani One Coat Glitters - Blue Flash. Definite dupe, but requires a few more coats to reach the same opacity.



NYC Purple Pizzazz Frost - this was 3 coats. A little craptastic formula. I had trouble with it being thin and then lots of cuticle drag. Along with slow dry time. It's a lovely color though, so I'm still happy.

OPI Jade is the New Black. This color was on my wishlist before and it's just as wonderful as I imagined. My favorite color is green, but there are not too many green polishes that work with my skin tone. This one is perfect though. 2 easy coats. Fabulous formula. My pictures came out slightly more dusty looking than the polish is in real life.

Essie Trophy Wife - easy 2 coats. Formula was a bit more difficult to work with than my other Essie's. I love this vibrant teal. Beautiful. :)

The last item was a small travel size hand cream. It's very thick and creamy, smell is very mild and pleasant. In general, just a great hand cream to have.

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A Lacey Look

This was one of my brief returns to stamping. As you can no doubt tell, I'm a little out of practice. Some of my stamping smeared, and I didn't care enough to fix it. Lazy me. :( I used Wet N Wild Black Creme and China Glaze Emotion.

BM14 for the roses and Konad m57 for the fishnet pattern.

It served it's purpose to match my dress that day, but if I'd worn it any longer I would have taken more time to be careful with my stamping. Have a great day!

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Vintage Autograph

I was in the mood for some sexy vintage red nails with this new almond shape.

This is OPI No Autographs, Please. 2 coats. Slight visible nail line in pictures, but it wasn't visible in real life.

I added Essie Sand Tropez in half moons. You could easily paint the nude color first and then mask off the half moons with a hole reinforcement sticker before you paint the red. Just find your preference.

It got lots of attention. One girl at work asked me what was up with the half moons, so I got to ramble on about it being a "vintage" manicure. Thankfully she politely listened! :)

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Patchwork Toes

I used three different shade of gray. Zoya Dove as the base, then China Glaze Recycle, then a dark gray franken I made. You could easily substitue the darkest gray for any of the new fall gray polishes that are out this season. I just don't happen to have any of those. :)

I layered the polishes and let them dry well between layers. Then I used a black striper polish to outline because my lines were a little shaky.

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NFL Nails - Go Saints!

The Saints are on the same level as LSU with football fanatics in my area. They are all in a fervor now that the season has started up again. I'm not into sports, but lots of my friends and coworkers have asked for designs related to these teams.

There is something to be said for the elegant look of black and gold together.

I had a few loose polish strings from the black dots. Just pretend they aren't there. :)

I used Wet N Wild Black Creme and China Glaze 2030. The fleur de lis is from konad plate m15. It didn't transfer well, so I had to touch it up a bit.

Then I added gold dots to the black nails using the smallest of my dotting tools.

Then I went in and filled the void space around the fleur de lis with black dots.

What do you think? Are you a football fan?

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Think Outside the Bun

That's right, Taco Bell nail art. I couldn't resist.The bundle monster BM223 image of a bell is totally Taco Bell.

I painted all of my nails with China Glaze Spontaneous. Then added Zoya Areej in a freehand zigzag french. You could use those funky craft scissors and tape them off if you prefer. For the accent nail, I painted it Sally Hansen Lavender Cloud then stamped the bell image from BM 223 with Zoya Areej. It was a little light, so I just filled in with a fine brush to darken the color. Then I added the yellow with a 2 way nail art pen from ebay. It was too bright on just the white, so I filled around it with China Glaze Spontaneous.

 Taco Bell is the most delicious when you're slightly buzzed and starving late at night. I don't recommend driving yourself there if you're buzzed though! Just thought I'd clarify. :)

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A Girl Worth Fighting For

Mulan Nail Art! 

Each of the Disney Princesses have been requested multiple times. I wanted to wait and only do their designs when I was feeling inspired, so it may take me a while to get through all of them. I love Mulan. I was 11 years old when it was released, and of course a big tween Christina Aguilera fan at the time(she's on the soundtrack). But how can you not like an inspirational movie about a courageous girl trying to protect her father? Still to this day, I love the music from Mulan. I can belt out the lyrics to "A Girl Worth Fighting For" or "Be A Man."

I love this that I came across on Pinterest from this source.

Maybe that's why I'm still single? But the guy would have to be amazing for me to change that.

Blah, blah, blah.... on to the nails. I wanted to feature part of her face and then her traditional outfit.

To start the outfit nails, I painted a solid base of China Glaze Lemon Fizz. It doesn't have to be entirely opaque. Just make sure that the area near the cuticle is, that's all that will show in the end.

All of these next steps can be done with tape to mask off the areas, but I'm too impatient for that and have a steady hand, so I just freehanded. Do what works best for you. I added Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Going Green. Once again, doesn't have to be perfect coverage on the entire nail. Just the part that will show.

Then add a lighter shade of green. I used Pure Ice Free Spirit.

Then straight across and down 2/3 of the nail paint a solid navy blue. I used Sally Hansen Insta Dri Co-Bolt Blue.

I left it like this as first, took some pics, and then later went back and added the red across the very bottom to represent her waist sash.

I used OPI No Autographs, Please for the red. Which way do you like it best? With sash? Or without sash?

Here are the step by step pics of the face. I realize I got ahead of myself a bit, so it jumps from naked base to lots of black detail. Sorry about that, but I can't go back in time.

Solid base of Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure - Cafe Au Lait.

Black acrylic paint for hair, eyebrows, eyes.

White and brown acrylic paint for eye details. Elongate her loose hair in her bangs. And don't forget her nose!

Add a white shine to her eyes and topcoat!



Hope you like it!

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Zoya - Dannii

Running late for work, just a simple color swatch this morning. I'll be off tonight, maybe I can work on something more exciting for the next few days. I'd still like to hear if you have any ideas on what I can do as a theme for a contest or giveaway for 1,000 followers. Leave a comment.

This is 2 coats of Zoya Dannii. It was a good bit more opaque than I remember from the first time I used it. I'm not sure if my bottle thickened up with age, or if I just have a faulty memory.... but it covered really well and was easy to work with. 

 It's so shiny and lovely.

I'm still liking this nail shape. I'll keep it up for a while until I get bored with it.

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Barielle - Swizzle Stix

First up: 900 followers!?!?! Awesome! I didn't think I'd get to this point with a blog. It makes me really happy to know there are others that enjoy my work and the positive feedback is wonderful. I'd like to do another contest or giveaway once I hit 1,000 followers. I just don't have any ideas yet. Help me out, what would you like to see as a contest theme? Or what would make a great giveaway prize? Comment below.

3 thin coats of Swizzle Stix. This was my mani the other day. Simple dusty, light blue, almost jelly finish. I really like it.

I'm trying to also experiment with new ways to photograph this almond shape. The only time I dislike them this way is when I'm taking my pics with them lined up straight together, so this softer hand position works better for me when they are this shape. I'm liking them in my day to day life. They feel stronger because I've filed off the the weak corners. They are long enough to be helpful when opening things (yes, my nails are tools to me), but they don't feel "too long."

Nail-venturous had asked "was it hard to do?" (She's also from Louisiana! Hey!)

Was it hard to get them all even and to the same approximate shape? Just a little. It took some time to shape them, more time that it takes me to just file them squared. Then I filed them a little more the next time I changed my color, because there were a few spots that I felt needed more attention. Was it hard to hack away at my nails and potentially mangle them until they could grow back? Not really. I was at the point where I was ready to chop them to nubbins, they were long enough that it was irritating me and getting in my way. So even if it had been a major fail, I would have been fine to take them down the rest of the way.

I hope that answer your question!

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School Spirit Pedicure

I'm trying to be more diligent in creating designs for my toes to then post here. As I mentioned before, my blog's stats reveal that a lot of my blog's traffic comes from google searches regarding toe nail art designs. And 2 out of my top 5 most popular posts are toe related! So I'm trying to put more out there.

I wanted to make a toe nail design to compare to my LSU nail art design.

My coworker was telling me about her most recent trip to the nail salon for a pedicure. She is a big LSU tigers fan as are most people in my area. She asked for some tiger stripes or some kind of design using purple and gold. She then showed me what the lady had done and I had to laugh! These nail technicians in my area have a sad interpretation of art! Her toes were a dark purple with a thick white french tip (why white? what the heck? and it was too thick of a line... looked terrible). Over the white french tip, the lady had done a few light pale yellow "stripes" coming in from the sides, and then next to that she had put more "stripes using a bronze/gold glitter polish. The colors looked terrible together! A pale yellow and a bronzy gold? Really? The mix of shimmer polish, creme finish white, and glitter gold.... disaster. My only response was "And let me guess.... you ended up tipping her too, because you felt obligated?" And she had! I just know that I can never set foot in another nail salon from around here, they are all a mess in serious need of overhaul. If I could make the same amount of money as I do being a nurse... I would go take the little course to get licensed and open my own shop.

So here is the what she would have been happy with!

I painted Sally Hansen Insta Dri Lightening for the yellow. Then I stamped the zebra/tiger stripes from BM 223 using a Nail Art Diva Stamping Polish in Violet Dreams (i think violent dreams every time I read it). It's difficult to stamp on my toes. My big toe is obviously too big for a single stamp, but my little toes are difficult to get to with the way my knuckles are. So I stamped what I could and simply filled in around the pattern with a striping brush. On the big toe I added the letters freehand with white acrylic paint. Tip: do the S first and center it, then add the other letters. Otherwise, you might run out of room.

You can easily adapt this to your school spirit colors. Take inspiration from their colors, the mascot, and perhaps even the letters themselves! Try it out!

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