making a comeback.

HELLO! I've taken an unintentional almost month-long hiatus, but I'm back now (I hope). If at least just a weekly post, that's certainly better than nothing. I guess like many others (at least I think) the upcoming new year has me thinking about resolutions and bad habits I've acquired this year. Read: my constant lack of blogging and my horribly inconsistent healthy eating and gym visits. Those are really the only two things I'd like to change. I'm quite happy with everything else... 

I'm dating someone amazing who I love very much... I can't remember the last time I was able to say that, but I am so grateful for him. Work is good, which thus means money is good... which will hopefully also mean my savings account gets to see some of that. I'm also starting my student teaching the end of January which I'm so very excited/extremely nervous for. 

I'm hoping to get back to posting here regularly because I have so many exciting things going on that I need to share with the world! :) For now let me share some of my recent manicures that haven't been featured in blogland yet. 

 

I wore this on Christmas. Candy canes! 

 

This one I wore to my family Christmas party. Not crazy about the colors but I was in love with this rhinestone tree!

 

This was my first encounter with rhinestones, and as you can tell from all of these manis I am OBSESSED ! 

My nails have been pathetically naked for about five days now, but I'm about to dazzle them up for New Years Eve, my FAVORITE HOLIDAY! I still don't know what the boy and I are doing but I'm super excited! This'll be my first NYE as a 21 year old ;D 

Now time to go do my nails and get myself ready for bed. I have an early wakeup for work tomorrow. Have a great (& safe) New Years, everybody!

haaaaappy monday.

Ladies! Hi! I hope you all haven't forgotten about me! Life is super duper crazy as of now, which is of course why I haven't been blogging. I've been working a bunch, studying a little bit, and trying to sleep as much as possible. As great as working this much is, I've been playing the "make a lot of money, so assume I can spend a lot" game. Oy. 

I have some goals for the new year. Not necessarily New Years Resolutions... those always fail me. More so, some new.... turnover goals:

- get my ass back to the gym

- blog regularly again

- save lots of money

Okay, so it's not a WHOLE lot... but I miss the gym, this blog, and having lots of money in savings. I need to get to it. I'm currently procrastinating doing some homework by writing this post... oops. Also gotta stop that, too. However, classes are almost over THEN student teaching in January and THEN I am out of community college for good and on to bigger and better things at the four year!

I finally had time to do my nails last night! I chose a light pink with some stamping. 

 

And I'll leave you with that! Have a great night, all! :) 

snow, snow, snow...

We're experiencing the first snow fall of the year here in Massachusetts.. and I am not all that thrilled about it! I hate the cold weather, and seeing snow makes it completely evident that the warm weather is over for a while. It's just so cold and bitter out, makes me want to do nothing but stay in bed and sleep. Here was my view when I got out of work today...

 

Okay, not that bad... but still. Yuck.

Argh. Last night in anticipation for this snow, I decided to do a weather-appropriate manicure. I pulled out my snowflake stamping plates and got to work: 

 

I used two coats of OPI Russian Navy for my base, a classic in my book. This was one of my first polishes, and I still love it so much. Application is very easy because the formula is great. The color is so opaque and rich that it's almost dreamy.

 To stamp, I used Color Club What A Drag. On my ring finger, I stamped with bm 319. My thumb is bm 14, and the rest of my nails are bm 323. What A Drag is a great stamping polish. I really like how it looks over RN. I also like the look of different snowflake stamps in one mani, it mimics how all snowflakes are different in real life. :)

What do you think? 

peacock print

Hi all! Happy Tuesday! I'm actually writing this Monday night and scheduling it for Tuesday so I can get this out of the way and study for a Spanish exam that I have tomorrow (well, technically today at this point). There are a bunch of different verb tenses on this test and I want to make sure I'm ready for it!

I'm pretty excited about the manicure I'm showing you today! It's something that's not necessarily complicated, but it looks great and really professional, at least if I say so myself. 

The print I decided to recreate was peacock feathers. I originally wanted to do a full peacock on my thumb and peacock print on the rest of my nails but that was a bust. I was happy that I decided against this, and I went with peacock print on all five of my nails:

 

The base color I used on my thumb is Zoya Ivanka. I used Zoya Charla on the rest of my nails. My ring finger has Charla topped with Ivanka on the top diagonal half. These two polishes are a match made in heaven. They go together so nicely. I stamped with Color Club What A Drag, a really great & inexpensive stamping polish. The plate I used is bundle monster 212. 

What do you think? Is this a look you'd try?

nude paisley

No, the title is not referring to Brad Paisley... how I wish it were! He's hilarious, sexy, and has a wonderful voice. Mmmmmm. He always comes to mind whenever I see paisley print. The paisley that I'm referring to comes from bundle monster's third collection of nail stamping plates (the plate I'm referencing here is #315)! If you ask me, this is a genius idea. Who doesn't love paisley?! You can do so much with it. I always like the look of black images over a nude or tan creme, and that's what I decided to go with for this manicure. 

At first, I started out with two coats of OPI Don't Pretzel My Buttons. I wanted to think of some clever, unique accent nail... but I failed. I originally went with this look:

 

Then, I fell in love with how the paisley stamp looked and I wanted to add more. I didn't like how this looked with only two nails stamped. Thus, I added more stamping and an accent of Cult Nails Happy Ending, from the Fairytale Collection that was released this summer. This was hands down my favorite Cultie collection to date. 

 

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this combination. I love the paisley, but I don't like how dark the black is in comparison to the glass shard-looking multicolored glitter. It's something different, for sure. Overall, I seriously LOVE Don't Pretzel My Buttons. It's my ideal nude polish, for real. I'll probably wear it a million more times. My only problem with this shade is that I hate my application of it. I usually suck and mess it up by making it too splotchy or by accidentally flooding my cuticles. Oy.

What do you think? Are you a fan of paisley? What about nude polish?

With that, I'm out. Have a great weekend everybody! Tonight I have my first Saturday night off since my vacation in July! WOOO!

james bond chevron

So, I'll be honest... I wasn't completely sold on the new OPI collection... in fact, I wasn't impressed with much of any of the shades. I didn't plan on buying any of the colors. I thought they looked gorgeous in the bottle, but not as gorgeous on the actual nail. Well, needless to say I caved and bought two of the colors from the 007 collection, OPI's Holiday 2012 collection. I picked up Goldeneye and The Living Daylights, planning to use them together in a manicure. Well, that's what I have to show you today! 

I'm not totally in love with what I came up with, but I'll show you guys anyway. I was in the mood to break out my chevron stamp and do a cute manicure with it. My new James Bond polishes were staring at me, begging to be used (ok, that might be a stretch). I decided to use them as my base for my chevron:

 

First, I painted three coats of OPI Goldeneye. This is shown above without any top coat. It's so gorgeous and blingy on its own!

 

Then, as shown above, I added a thick, generous coat of OPI The Living Daylights on to my accent finger. Then, I top-coated each nail with some Seche Vite, my go-to top coat for stamping. 

 

Last but not least I stamped with Fingerpaints Black Expressionism and bundle monster #201. This plate always stamps really clean and it fits my entire nail pretty well. 

I personally think this is too busy. I sort of wish I didn't add the chevron. I think Goldeneye would look stunning on its own, which is impressive to say the least. Next time I wear it I'll probably leave it alone and wear it as a full manicure. I've never stamped over a glitter, and I don't care much for it here. Meh. 

What do you think? Did you pick up Goldeneye?

black and orange

I can't sleep.  I don't like using this as a place to air my dirty laundry so I won't go into details as to why I can't sleep, but I can't. And I'm absolutely miserable because of it. I want to scream my head off but I can't. A. NNOY. ING. I guess the silver lining to this is that there isn't all that much to do at 4am so I wound up on my laptop... and on Blogger. I'm usually reaaaally lazy about blogging (at least, as of late) but I legitimately have nothing else to do right now so I figured I'll share my Halloween manicure with you all. 

PS: If anyone happens to be awake at this ridiculous time, too (and wouldn't mind hearing me complain my head off), please feel free to let me know! I could use somebody (Kings of Leon, anybody?)!

Let's get this show on the road. Here is my current mani, and the first EVER Halloween manicure I'm sporting, at least I think. Last year I didn't do any fun Halloween manicures because we got smashed with a storm so early in the season. Actually, hilariously enough, last year around this time I did a snowy skittle manicure. Ha ha ha, bipolar New England weather, you are so funny! As I'm sure a lot of you ladies are as well, we're bracing for Hurricane Sandy. Kinda crazy and a little bit nerve wracking, but I'm excited. I love extreme weather conditions, even though they do pose so many risks. Maybe that's the part that's exciting? Who knows. We'll see what happens tomorrow. As for now...

 

My base coat is two coats of Fingerpaints Original Orange. I stamped with two different bundle monster plates (not sure which ones off the top of my head- google "bundle monster lightning bolts" or "bundle monster pumpkin" if you're dying to know) and Fingerpaints Black Expressionism, of which I'm almost out of! When it runs out, I'd like to try Cult Nails Nevermore as my go to black stamping polish.

Original Orange applied very nicely. It suited its purpose as your average orange. I actually put a coat of China Glaze Ghoulish Glow over this manicure before I Seche-d it... it smudged the stamping a bit. Boo. I'll have to try and get a picture of the glow in the dark-ness tomorrow (well... technically today -___-). I completely forgot to do that today.

What do you think? What are you sporting for halloween?

autumn leaves

Growing up, fall was always my favorite season. As I've gotten older, I tend to enjoy summer more. No classes, warm weather, more opportunities to travel and vacation... but as a kid, fall what were it was at. I loved the changing leaves, playing outside after school in the crisp weather with my neighbors, going to the Big E, camping... the memories go on and on.

Today's manicure was inspired by something I saw on The Nail Network. I tried to copy this look in its entirety, minus a few color changes. I love everything about her blog; I suggest you check it out! Anyway, I found this manicure by googling "autumn leaves mani." I wasn't entirely impressed with some of the others but I loved this particular one. Here it is:

My version didn't come out perfectly but I was happy with the finished product. I first painted on two coats of Essie A Lot Of Shekels which is my go-to sheer pink/nude French manicure shade. Every time I use it, I fall more and more in love with it. I think it's an older color, because I got it in a clearance bin at a beauty supply store (actually, at the one I'll be working at starting next week!). Great clearance bin find.

I then freehanded some French manicure tips with OPI Warm & Fozzie (bottle pictured in the picture above). W&F is such a great fall shade! It's got so much depth to it. I swatched W&F on its own here, if you're curious! ;D The French tips don't have to be completely perfect because you end up stamping over them anyway. I used two coats of W&F to get this look.

For the leaves, I used image plate bm04 from bundle monster's first collection. I tried a whole TON of different colors to stamp the leaves but a lot just wouldn't show up well over my base. I ended up with a brown/orange, Love & Beauty Brick, and a red, OPI Revved Up & Red-y. Brick is actually a brown but looks more like burnt orange stamped. I wish I could've gotten more colors to work.

I'm eager to try this look again with different shades or even a different variation (ie butterflies instead of leaves, or snowflakes??). I'll leave you with two pictures I took at Ashley Reservior in the town next to mine in little old Western Massachusetts.

 

My foliage mani WITH some foliage! Couldn't pass up this shot.

This picture was edited on Instagram to show the depth of the foliage. I love this time of year.

What do you think of my autumn mani? Do the leaves change color like this where you're from?

inspired by... gray cheetah

Hello hello! Happy Friday! As of late I haven't been working on Fridays, just babysitting for a few hours. So glorious! Especially with my newfound constant headaches. I had a CT scan yesterday for them so hopefully we can find out what's wrong. Not sure if it's due to nerves or something but I haven't been able to get much good sleep the past few nights, most especially last night. It was a battle the whole night. I just felt like shit and kept waking up every hour, nearly right on the hour. Ugh. 

Now for the good news, I got the job I interviewed for the other day. It's at a beauty supply store that sells OPI, Zoya, China Glaze, Essie, Color Club, pretty much everything. AhHhHhHh.. I am so excited. I get everything either 50% off or at cost... come to mama, OPI! I can't wait. It's only part-time, so probably like 20 hours or so, but that's okay. :D

Today's manicure was inspired by this bracelet:

 

Gray cheetah print is really popular in clothing and accessories, and it's something I've never attempted before. I really like how this came out. I just wish I had a lighter gray to use as the base, and use the gray I did use for accents on the cheetah print with the black. I used two coats of Essie Power Clutch from last year's fall collection, my one and only gray. The black is Fingerpaints Black Expressionism and I sponged on China Glaze Silver Lining on my thumb, pointer and pinky. I used the same silver glitter to accent the cheetah. 

What do you think?

pastel tribal nails

Not feeling too talkative so I'll get right into my notd. I was feeling very inspired last night. I originally planned to do a solid nude color with black stamping, but I saw this manicure using the exact same stamp I planned to use and I loved this way more.

 

For this manicure, I started off with a base of OPI Alpine Snow- just one coat. I then painted on stripes with my three pastel colors. Using white under any polish will simply make it brighter on the nail. I started painting without a white base and I just didn't like how it looked. 

On the bottom-most part of my nail near the cuticle is Piggy Polish Poet-tree. The middle is Essie Tart Deco, and the top (and bottle shown in my pictures) is China Glaze For Audrey. I started with the green, then did the blue. I then went halfway between the two to add a stripe of the coral. All of that polish looked pretty clumpy, but I smoothed it out with a coat of Seche Vite (after letting it dry a long time; no way was I gonna mess this one up). After waiting a while, I stamped using Fingerpaints Black Expressionism with bundle monster image plate #315. I love this image! Absolutely love it.

All of the polish I used cooperated quite well. I have no complaints with this manicure. In some areas my stamping was a little funny but I've gotten so many compliments on this manicure; others don't really notice the imperfections quite like your own self does. 

What do you think? Do you like my color choice? What about the tribal look?

betsey johnson roses

Hey everyone! Happy Friday! :) I had one of my interviews yesterday but unfortunately it was only for a seasonal position... not sure how I feel about that. My interview next week is at a store that might be affiliated with OPI, Zoya, Color Club... I'll tell you more about that after the interview. Fingers crossed!

Here's the mani I'm currently wearing:

I used one of my favorite pinks, Sephora by OPI Too Too Pink. This is two coats. I first blogged about this polish here and I've worn it several times since then. So in love with it. One of the best parts of this polish is that it's infused with Betsey Johnson's fragrance. I'm forever smelling my nails when I wear this polish, lmao. The scent really does last, too. It's awesome. I think the roses are very Betsey too. She incorporates a ton of different styles of roses in her designs but they're all pretty great. For the roses I used bundle monster 323 from the most recent bm collection. 

Too Too Pink goes on really smoothly. The brush is bigger but it suits my nails. I love the bottles on $opi polishes too, the caps are really easy to hold which makes application come out that much better. I stamped with my favorite white, OPI Alpine Snow.

What do you think?

paisley print + some food porn from the big e

Hiiii guys! Happy Monday! Hope you all had a most excellent weekend. I certainly did. I worked all of Saturday which is actually okay because my hours keep getting cut and I need the money. I took Sunday off so I could hit up the Big E. For those of you who don't know what the Big E is, you are missing out. It's this pretty big New England fair that happens every September during the last two weeks of the month. It's the same every year and that's why I like it. It's one thing in my life that I know won't change. The food, the music, the atmosphere... I just love it all. 

Before I post some nailz I must share some food porn from the Big E. Plus a few more..

My two best friends and I stage-side: we had front row seats to see Rodney Atkins!

The giant pumpkins! A favorite of mine EVERY year.

Something new this year: fried. lasagna. Can you say heaven?

An annual favorite: baked taters from the Maine building

And these...? --->

Yup. Fried samoas.

Oh, how I love the Big E.  I genuinely try to eat pretty healthily and work out regularly but these two weeks... nope. No diet, no exercise regimen. I just enjoy myself. And it's worth it. 

As far as manicures go... this is what I wore to the Big E yesterday:

 

This is two coats of Zoya Charla stamped with Sonia Kashuk Smoke & Mirrors. The stamping plate is from bundle monster's third collection- I forget the exact plate number. It's gorgeous, and comes out so well! I absolutely love the way a silver foil looks stamped over shades like Charla- think OPI Catch Me In Your Net, etc. My fave. 

What do you think?

Day 13: ANIMAL PRINT

Hi everyone! It's Thursday, and a GREAT one at that! My last class of the day was cancelled, and I don't have to work today because I'm going to a concert tonight! Yup, another country concert.. I've gone to at least thirteen this year. Definitely my guilty pleasure (besides nail polish...).

I wanted to do a sort of... closure manicure. Closure of the end of summer. The last full out neon manicure before they sit in my melmers until next spring/summer. Not that I strictly follow color/season rules but I like wearing darker colors in the fall and winter. Here's what I came up with.

 

I used Nina Ultra Pro Solar Flare and China Glaze Pool Party. I have a serious weakness for China Glaze neons.. they are just beautiful! This manicure didn't photograph too well. I personally like how it looks in person better. I used Konad stamp m57, which had both a zebra and a cheetah print stamp. I used Fingerpaints Black Expressionism to stamp. This manicure is so much fun. I actually really like the yellow. I layered two coats of each polish over two coats of OPI Alpine Snow. Using white for a base under neons makes them really really bright, as you can see above.

What do you think? 

Day 11: POLKA DOTS

Wooo POLKA DOTS! Today's challenge theme gives me a chance to use my dotting tool for the first time. Yup- that's the extent of my dotting tool skills. I seriously give props to all of you amazing artists who can use a dotting tool to conjure up nail art. I think it's crazy insane. I'm sure I'd be ok at it if I practiced... but I'm just not patient enough.

For today's manicure, I was inspired by an old dress that I saw at my best friend's house. We were reminiscing looking at older pictures (we've known eachother since we were 5- that's 15 years, WHOA) and she saw one from our junior prom. Of course, that led to a twenty minute dress up sesh and it ended up in this brown dress with light blue polka dots that she actually wore to my sweet sixteen. I'd show you a picture from my sweet sixteen but my Facebook is acting up- darn. ;P I remember begging my parents for a big party and they insisted I didn't need one. Of course, I was able to convince them otherwise. Those were the days. 

I don't like how my fingers look in this one, but I wanted a good sunshiney picture
to show you the beautiful orange shimmer in SpaRitual Howl.

For this manicure I used two coats of SpaRitual Howl. I never understood why it was called Howl when I first got it, but I noticed the orange shimmer today. DUH, Halloween polish! Side note: I freaking love Halloween polish. It makes me feel so nostalgic and reminiscent of my childhood. Love, love, love! 

I'll definitely be wearing Howl again sometime soon because I loved it. I am always so impressed by the formula of SpaRitual polishes. A polish's formula can either make or break a manicure, and this polish went on like satin. It applied perfectly. I want more SpaRituals, but I'm just not crazy about a whole lot of their shades.

The dots and bow are done with China Glaze For Audrey and my dotting tool from Sephora. Of course, you don't need to actually buy a dotting tool. Polka dots can be made with toothpicks or even the head of a sewing needle.

I'm in love with this manicure. I don't want to take it off. It's so much fun and so girly! What do you think?

Day 9: RAINBOW

Happy Sunday, my fellow polish fiends! Today is day nine of the challenge! For today, the theme is rainbow! I can honestly say I've never done a full-out rainbow manicure. There's gotta be a first for everything, right?!

 To me, the "rainbow" idea is a little daunting because of how many colors it requires... I am not an artistic person, and sometimes matching colors is hard for me (i.e. which "purple" or "green" is right). I was a little nervous about this challenge day. The fact that there was so much creative liberty scared me. Red is red. Blue is blue. Polka dots are polka dots. Stripes are stripes. But rainbow? You can do anything with rainbow. Ahhhh! The possibilities are endless.

I ended up with a rainbow base and a black stamped manicure. Check it out.

 

My first thought process was.. roygbiv = 7, my fingers = 5. This is where the idea to do half-colors on my nails came from. Then... I stamped.

 

I'll list the colors I used from pinky->thumb:

pinky: OPI Overexposed In South Beach, Love & Beauty Dark Purple

ring finger: China Glaze Shower Together, Brash Electric Sky

middle finger: OPI Don't Mess With OPI, Piggy Polish Poet-Tree

pointer: Zoya Pippa, Essie Meet Me At Sunset

thumb: Essie Ole Caliente, Cult Nails Evil Queen

HOLY POLISH! I've never used this many colors in one manicure! It was a lot of fun to do, though, that's for sure. I used however many coats it took to reach full opacity. For the yellow, it was a few more than for the red. Actually, I only used one coat for my thumb nail- Cult Nails polishes rock! 

I stamped with bm-205. I really like this butterfly/bow-looking image. It looks whimsy & fun over the rainbow design, something different.

What do you think? Are you wearing rainbow today, too?

 

Day 8: METALLIC

I've made it through a full week of the challenge! Wahoo! I wasn't sure if I'd make it, because let me tell you: painting your nails every. day. and working full-time and going to school is HARD work! It's a great feeling to get a brand new post up on the blog every day, though. I hate hate hate not being able to update regularly, so I try my hardest to fit it into my schedule, no matter how busy I am. 

Today is day eight of the challenge: metallic nails! I only own a few metallic polishes, but one of my untrieds just so happens to be Essie Penny Talk from Essie's recent Mirror Metallics Collection. I'm trying to use untrieds for this challenge, so Penny Talk fit the bill!

 

After wearing Penny Talk by itself, I decided to add some stamping to see how that would change it up. The image plate I used is bundle monster-322 (I usually forget to add in which plates I used but I'm getting better at that!). I used two coats of Essie Penny Talk and stamped with the same black you saw yesterday, Nina Ultra Pro Black. 

My stamping wasn't perfect but I'm happy with it! As for the Essie, application wasn't horrible, but this polish will show any and all imperfections on the nail, so beware! That's just the nature of metallics. I've heard that this line by Essie is much better than some others.

What do you think!? Are you a fan of metallics?

Day 7: BLACK AND WHITE

Hi ladies, happy Friday! Today I tried a stamping pattern for my black and white mani. I just received some new polish in the mail from Zoya so it was hard to put those aside and wear black and white.. wah!! That's definitely the hard part of this challenge! Anyway, here is what I ended up with today:

 

My black was Nina Ultra Pro Black and my white was OPI Alpine Snow, my go-tos. I'm not sure why my stamping didn't come out so good, but I didn't have the time to re-do the mani so this was my end result. The stamp I used was bundle monster-319.  

Do you like the puzzle piece look? I'd love to see how this looks with different colors.