Mardi Gras Nails!

Hi dolls!  Merry Mardi Gras!  =)

In case you didn't know, Mardi Gras means "Fat Tuesday" in French and is the last hurrah before the liturgical season of Lent.  If you are so inclined to learn more about that particular facet of this holiday, feel free to Google it, as I'd rather not lecture.  =)

I love Mardi Gras, you just do not understand.  It's so colorful and boisterous and fun!  I would kill to go to New Orleans during Mardi Gras.  It's not just about the beads, you guys, haha!  There's dancing and masks and parades and copious amounts of drinking involved.  And FOOD!  Cajun food is probably the best thing in the world and the only authentic Cajun restaurant near me stopped taking reservations a week ago.  But Mardi Gras also means pancakes to me.  So you will probably be able to find me at IHOP stuffing my face.

Thumb and ring fingers: China Glaze Liquid Leather with dots in the other colors

Index finger: Orly Wandering Vine

Middle Finger: Zoya Pippa

Pinkie finger: Nicole by OPI...Justin Bieber purple that I can't remember the name of.

On top of all: Sally Hansen Disco Ball

This was really fun to do, even if I obsessed about the dots and then got mad that my pinkie finger smudged at the top.  The dots I realize are a little difficult to see on the black, but nude or white would have just been wrong.  The entire time I did this manicure I was listening to The Civil Wars and zydeco music.

Laissez les bon temps rouler!

New Year's Nails!

Happy 2012!!!

2011 is almost over, baby 2012 is about to crawl in.  2011 has been a great year for me, all around.  I have wonderful friends and family, we welcomed a new addition to the family (my precious niece Duckie), I got a great new job that will hopefully turn into an outstanding career, and I started my blog!  Those were just some of the nice things that happened to me this year, hopefully everyone else has had a fantastic year too.

This post is really just for absolute fun, no real review of a polish today.  For my New Year's Eve nails I did Ulta Alter Ego, which I will do a real post of sometime later, and Nicole by OPI Rainbow in the S-kylie.  This is more of a Rainbow The Sequal.  I think I'm going to revisit a couple of my glitters and ones that I had trouble with later, but not right now.

This manicure looks kind of like a peacock, but I like to think that it could also look like those silly party hats and decorations that go with the celebration.  =)

Tried to get a close up so you could see just how glittery it really is.

It's much more glitter-ific in person.  I think the flash reflected too much off of the silver bits but without it the pictures just looked horrible.

So have a wonderful New Year!  2012 is going to be the best year yet.  Leave a comment on your favorite polish of 2011 or even send me a pic of your New Years Nails!

Orly Wandering Vine

Christmas is almost here!  Yay!  Except I work in retail and the holidays make me kinda miserable.  But 'tis the season.

I did some very simple nail art in honor of Christmas being only 2 days away, even though I wore this manicure at the end of last week.  I used Orly Wandering Vine, which is a very dark pine green cream polish and Essie Size Matters with Nicole by OPI Orna-meant For Each Other for some sparkle.

Wandering Vine had a very watery formula, which I'm not exactly used to.  I used three coats of it just to get full coverage.  From what I had gathered in my own research of reading other blogs and fashion magazines, earthy greens were a very big trend for the fall.  I had gotten this shade with the intention of doing a green fall manicure, but never got around to it.  I thought this one was more of a winter because it reminded me of Christmas trees.

I used Essie Size Matters with a dotting tool to make something that kind of looked like clusters of holly berries on opposite corners of my ring fingers and thumbs and then put Orna-meant for Each Other on top to make it sparkle.  Before I put the glitter polish on the red dots they kind of blended in with the green (if you can imagine that, since they're on opposite sides of the color wheel) because they were both so dark.

Over all, I was very pleased with the results and it lasted for a good 3 days.  This was almost impossible to get off of my nails though.  Took almost an entire jumbo sized cotton ball per nail.  Such a waste.

I got my mini bottle of Orly Wandering Vine for $3.50 US, Nicole by OPI Orna-meant for Each Other for $7 US, and Essie Size Matters full sized bottle for $8 US.

Rainbow in the S-kylie

Happy Veteran's Day everyone!  Also, happy Saturday!  I hope it was good for someone out there.  I've been sick with a weird head cold the past week and the only joy I've been getting out of anything is my nail polish and Netflix.  I'm so excited for holiday shades to come out, but I really want to take every holiday in its proper turn.  Never mind the holiday music in the background.

I'm completing the four-part series of my first round of the Kardashian Kolors today.  Last but not least is Rainbow in the S-kylie.  This one is strictly your traditional glitter.  To get best results, I suggest putting it as your pre-top coat over a solid color (I used It's All About The Glam).  It's a multi-color, multi-shape glitter floating in a clear polish.  It's also large enough to really be more like confetti than glitter.  With the white base, for some reason it made me think of the circus.   But I think with black or a navy it would be more fashion forward and seasonally appropriate. More Cirque du Soleil than circus.

The pictures I have are bad.  I'll just say it.  They're bad.  I was trying to show the difference between two coats and one all on the same hand, but it looks like a drunk toddler did my nails.

Index and middle fingers have two coats, and ring and pinky have one coat.

You can see all the different colors in the bottle much better here.

This was actually really difficult to remove.

Edit:  This is actually a prefect dupe for OPI Rainbow Connection that just came out, if you were debating over the two.  If price was your main decider, go with Nicole.  If anything else, go with OPI.  Either way, this is a really great happy glitter.  Although, I've never seen a glitter that isn't happy; I mean, it's glitter.  But this one is definitely a good one to have in your collection.

Nicole by OPI Rainbow in the S-kylie is available only at Wal-mart for a limited time and retails for $7 US.

Disco Dolls

Hey guys!  So excited that the weekend's almost here.  I did break a nail so far down that now it looks like a little stub on my hand.  It is a freak of nail and an outcast, to be shunned by my other nails.  But then all of them started breaking (like they do) so I'm going to have to start taking biotin or something.  Boo.

I'm almost finished with the Kardashian Kolors that I picked up, just one left after this post.  So, Disco Dolls is one of Khloe's shades and is absolutely perfect to ring in the holiday season.  Nicole by OPI has a short article on their site with a full description and a manicure suggestion for this shade and I really want to try it.  Khloe describes it as a disco ball exploding on your hands, and while I love the colors and effect of it, that description confused me a little.  Almost every disco ball I have ever laid eyes on has been silver, not gold.  But whatever, that's not what's important.

What is important is that I am going to tell you exactly what I thought of it.  Disco Dolls is a gold micro glitter base with multicolored, round, slightly larger glitters in it for dimension.  It applied completely opaque in two coats.  Not, "there's lots of little glitter and some bigger glitter floating around in a clear polish."  This shade is almost entirely glitter.  It looked absolutely fabulous on my hands, was very coarse because of all the textures, so load up on the top coat.  However, it chipped in huge flakes the very next day.  This mani didn't even last me 24 hours.  I was so sad.  I was so excited about wearing this color and then it fell flat on me.

But, all is not lost with this fabulously shiny shade.  I'm going to try it again during the holiday season and report back.  So far, I would recommend it as a one nighter party shade for New Year's or some other big shindig going on this winter.

In direct sunlight with the bottle

In the shade/natural light

Indoors, under artificial light

Direct sunlight

A very bad attempt at a close up with a 3.2 MP camera phone

Nicole by OPI's Kardashian Kolors Disco Dolls is available only at Wal-mart for a limited time and retails for $7 US plus sales tax.

It's All About the Glam

The second of the Kardashian Kolors I tried out was It's All About the Glam, another one of Kim's colors.  This would be a great holiday color, since it looks like a snowball.  It's a sheer shimmery white with what looks like micro glitter in it that gives a multidimensional shine to it.  You know how snow looks when the sun light hits it just right?  Where it practically glows?  That's what this polish reminds me of.  

It seems very fitting that I'm listening to Christmas music while posting this.  I'm usually the holiday nazi too--I like to have my holidays in the calender order, but I'm getting into the holiday spirit early this year.   I'm definitely wearing this color again this holiday season, possibly with a gold or white glitter top depending on the outfit and the party.  

In direct sunlight with the bottle

Natural light

Indoors under artificial light

These pictures I used three coats plus a quick dry top coat to make as opaque as I felt it was going to get.  Kim's colors are very sheer and almost delicate, so even with the extra coats you can still see the tips of your nails for that extra white tip.  But they hold up very well and don't chip easily.  The last one took three days of hitting my hands on stuff at work to even start to chip on one finger.  Twin also requested to borrow Kim-pletely In Love the day after I posted that color.

I already loved the Kardashians, this polish line just makes me love them more.

Nicole by OPI's It's All About The Glam is available only at Wal-mart for a limited time and retails for $7 US

Kim-pletely In Love

Bonjour, mes amies!  I saw last night that the Kardashians have released a polish line with Nicole by OPI called Kardashian Kolors.  So naturally I went out and bought some of them this morning on my day off and did some swatches.  I love that entire crazy family, they are so entertaining, and they always look fabulous.  It also makes me happy that they don't look like stick figures and that they're savvy business people.

Today I'm wearing one of Kim's colors called Kim-pletely In Love.  It's a sheer shimmery baby pink that is just to die for.  I did three coats plus a quick dry top coat to get it opaque.  I don't normally like lighter colors, but this is so pretty!  This goes perfectly with your LBD as a nice soft touch and is a perfect "day polish."  If you like to coordinate your polish with your outfit and event, this would be perfect for a baby/bridal shower or (as my gran would probably like) Easter Sunday.  This one isn't exactly a holiday color, in my opinion, but it's still great for any time of year.

In natural light.

In the shade

With the bottle for comparison. 

Nicole by OPI's Kardashian Kolors, including Kim-pletely In Love, are available only at Wal-mart for a limited time.  Kim-pletely In Love retails for $7 US plus sales tax.

Purple Rain

Now for what I did to my own nails today.  I got the Justin Beiber Mini-Hitmaker Set from Nicole by OPI the other day and was slightly embarrassed that I was buying a Justin Beiber product.  I was also confused as to why he was selling nail polishes, almost entirely in shades of purple.  Well embarrassment aside, Nicole by OPI has yet to fail me.
   I used Prized Possession Purple as my base, which did have a couple bald spots up at the top but that was easily fixed with another coat after letting it dry for a couple seconds.  That color is more of a royal and was the darkest of the two in the four pack.  Next I applied a single coat of Not Another Lonely Glitter, which is a purple micro glitter with some slightly bigger round pieces in it.  Once that part dried I added more glitter to the tips so there was a high concentration of sparkle at the tips.  It looks like I've dipped my fingers in purple glitter!  I really like how it has the fading effect and my other dear friend Twin said it looked like purple rain.  So that's what I call this look.  Stolen from the Symbol formerly known as Prince and now again known as Prince.
  In between the glitter application I put on my quick dry top coat so it would set and not move around before I started adding tons of glitter.  And like all glitters I have used extra top coat was needed to smooth things out.

I like getting the mini sets of colors so I can test it out without buying the full sized bottles and finding out if it looks good or not.  I've said it before, it's a good investment.  The only problem I have with minis is the applicators are also tiny.  It's almost to the point of being awkward.  I almost can't get the standard three-stroke coverage with them, but I managed with this set.  Just had to say that.

Prized Possession Purple looks very similar to the NYC Purple Pizzazz Frost that I did a few posts ago, but with less blinding shine and maybe a little less rich of a color.  So if you can't get your hands on this particular shade by Nicole, NYC Purple Pizzazz Frost is a great dupe.

Nicole by OPI full sized bottle retail at $8 US, I got the mini set that came with four different polishes for $7.99 US (I think I got it on sale)