some "Hooray I survived Sandy" swatch spam

WOOOHOOOO! Unless you live under a rock, I'm sure you heard about Superstorm Sandy and how shizz for us east coasters was all like:

well, I am happy to say my family and I made it through the storm. We lost power for a while and saw some trees out back come down (NONE of which came down ON us, thankmyeverlovingod), but we're good now. So, in celebration of our new lease on life, and also because I desperately need to clean out my "to post" folder, howzabout a ton of pics of lots of awesome recently released polishes? You down? Ok sweet. Let 'er rip!

First up, lets all admire the gorgeousness that is Sally Hansen Diamond Strength Twist of Lime, from the Fall 2012 Limited Edition Collection that started popping up about a month ago. This is 2 coats of Twist of Lime layered over 2 coats of Zoya Midori. On its own, this polish is really sheer so I definitely  recommend layering it and BELIEVE me, it is worth the layering. Freakin beau-dee-ful!! Gorgeous glass fleck yellow green that flashes either kelly green and gold depending on your angle of view. 

Next, we have another shade from the limited edition Diamond Strength collection. This one is called Blue Frosting and it is another multichromatic stunner. This one shifts from sky blue to lavender to a deeper purple and blue. I have2 coats of Blue Frosting layered over Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Lacey Lilac. Like Twist of Lime, Blue Frosting is painfully sheer on its own and definitely needs underwear to bring out its true awesomeness.

Moving on we have YET ANOTHER limited edition Diamond Strength shade (yea, I admit, I bought the whole damn collection when I saw it). This one is Moonlit Dance--gorgeous gold-flashing orange glass fleck amazingness. This is 2 coats layered over Sinful Colors Courtney Orange.

Here's the 4th Diamond Strength shade I have to show you today (I haven't gotten a chance to try the others yet). This one is called All Aglow. This one lacks the color shift that the others have but it is still a beautiful glass fleck finish polish. This one requires no layering--this is 2 coats of All Aglow on its own. Oh Sally Hansen, why you do spoil us so?!

(nail decals courtesy of Kiss)

Here we have Nicole by OPI If the Blue Fits, which is from ANOTHER amazing fall collection--this one Target Exclusive. Beautiful sapphire blue and purple flecks in a navy blue base. I am seriously loving the ubiquitousness (not sure if that's a word or not--meh...) of this polish finish this season as it is one of my absolute favorites. I love the depth & multi-dimensional shimmer  it lends. This is 2 coats of If the Blue Fits on its own--seriously glossy even without topcoat!

 Lastly, we have Python from New York Color. This polish is from their limited edition fall 2012 Fashion Predator collection. This is the only polish in this post I am "meh" about. It's pretty enough--nice olive green glass fleck polish but I've seen it done better. Also, the formula on this one was thin and runny. I'm wearing 4 coats in the pic. C'mon, NYC, I know you are capable of better!

Anyway, hope you all enjoyed my spam. And hoping all east coast peeps are safe and haven't experienced too much Sandy-induced drama!!

Still kickin

Sup, homies? I know its been a while. Life keeps eating up all my time--damn you obligations and responsibilities!! Despite the fact that I haven't blogged about my nails, I HAVE been doing them and I've still created manis for the CNT Halloween Challenge. I just seem to be having issues with being able to get said manis posted on the days they're supposed to appear....sigh...oh well--better late than never, right??

So anyway, here's the mani I did for the "Bump in the Night (monsters, etc) " prompt of the challenge:

Yep, unoriginal mummy nails that 5 million bloggers have done 5 million times before.  But, hey, how many bloggers take pics of their mummy nails while holding adorable little tuxedo skeleton wind-up toys? Yep, that's me, always gotta shake things up.

This mani consists of:

Zoya Dove (the gray)

Wet N Wild Black Creme

Wet N Wild French White Creme

Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear  Cherry Red for the pupils

Next up, I have the mani I did for the "pumpkins" prompt of the challenge:

outside shade

inside under swirly eco light bulb thingy

Yea I know, they kinda suck but, like I said, I'm still a newbie with all this free-hand nail art stuff. 

This mani consists of:

Maybelline Orange Blazes

Sally Hansen Diamond Strength Moonlit Dance

Wet N Wild Black Creme

Only 3 more prompts left in this challenge. Think I'll manage to post about 'em before Thanksgiving? Stay tuned and find out!

Crumpet's Nail Tarts rock my socks

More late Halloween Challenge nails...

Yep, once again, here I am posting for Crumpet's Halloween Challenge a day late...but honestly--at this point--do you expect anything else from me?

The prompt for this mani was "Freestyle Halloween" so I took the opportunity to experiment with a nail art technique I haven't tried yet: needle marbling. In orange and black, of course...

outside sun

outside shade

even more outside shade

So basically, I took Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Sunkissed, painted my nails with it and let it dry. Then, going one nail at a time, I painted half Sunkissed and half Wet N Wild Black Creme--put them both on a bit thick and then I dragged a pin-point through them randomly. I decided NOT to attempt any sort of specific design within the needle marble since it was my first time with it. My aim was simply "lets see if we can do this without it becoming a hot and hideous mess." Once again, kids. If you set your goals nice and low, you won't be dissappointed. After the pin-dragging, I applied 2 coats of Seche Vite.

I admit, I am actually really happy with how my nails came out--even if they are super simple (see readers, I'm taking your advice and trying to be less hard on myself)...I'll definitely be experimenting with needle marbling again!

Oooooh Things that Go Bump in the Night is the next prompt! Ghost nails, here I come!

Yay for Crumpet's Nail Tarts!

Halloween Challenge Day 3: Zombie Nails!!

We have arrived at day 3 of the Crumpet's Nail Tarts Halloween Nail Art Challenge 2012. Day 3 belongs to the zombies!! I have quite an affinity for the undead--what with the glazed over eyes staring into space, the drooling on oneself and the tendency to communicate with grunts and growls, zombies and I have lots in common. I, too, desire brains--not so much for eating but for thinking more clearly and remembering things (I'm convinced the only thing I have between my ears is empty space)...

Anyway, enough yammering and onto the nails:

inside under lamp with swirly eco bulb thingy

outdoors under overcast sky

Zombies--heart--brains....get it? Yea I know, my brilliance is awe-inspiring.

For this mani I used:

China Glaze Immortal as a base

Wet N Wild Black Creme

Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Cherry Red

LA Colors pink nail art polish

Wet N Wild French White Creme

Tiny flat, angled nail art brush

Detail/lining brush

Dotting tool

Crumpet's Nail Tarts Halloween 2012 Nail art challenge--day 1 "Trick or Treats"

So guess who decided to finally join a nail art challenge....I figured since I want to do tons of Halloween theme manis for the month of October and could use a little impetus to keep me going, why not hop on board this nifty little challenge that starts today? I learned about it in this nail-related Facebook group I'm in and the minute I saw it I was like "I'm SO on board with this!" I love the prompts and I love that everything is staggered out over the month of October because I know for a fact I could NEVER keep up with any kind of daily challenge (too many kids and too short of an attention span for that kind of nonsense)...

So anyfrickinway, onto the pics!

Crumpet's Nail Tarts Halloween 2012 Nail Art Challenge Day 1: Trick or Treats:

(please ignore the chip in my index nail...I whacked it on the screen door on my way out to snap these pics)

So the prompt for today is 'trick or treats'--basically sugary candy goodness. We all know I am a stampaholic but I am massively inexperienced when it comes to other forms of nail art--especially anything free form, so I wanted to push myself to do more free form stuff. I figured I could pull off something nice and simple like a candy corn manicure, so that's what I went with. 

I started off with a base of Finger Paints Papier Mache. Then painted Maybelline Sunshine half way up each nail. Next I painted Sally Hansen Extreme Wear in Sunkissed a quarter of the way up. I guess it's not that bad...right? It could have been worse...

So that's my installment for day 1 of this challenge. I am SO excited for all the upcoming prompts! I LOVES me some spooky things and am looking forward to painting all manner of ghoul and gore on these 10 little canvases on the tips of my fingers!

Btw, is that dancing skelly not the awesomest thing you've ever seen? Seriously, I want to tatt it on me somewhere!

Galaxy nails!

As I've mentioned in past posts, my boys are on a huge outer space kick, so of course I had to do galaxy nails to fit in with our ongoing theme! Since this was my very first attempt, I did a test nail on a wheel to start out with:

Not bad, eh? Pretty colors, just the right amount of glitter, some nice multi-dimensional sponging, a few dots here and there--the usual galaxy nail fodder...so I went ahead and did a full mani. Unfortunately, though, I don't think any of my nails turned out as good as my test nail did. Observe:

I think my fatal flaw here is I went a little overboard with the dotting tool. Plus I think the sponging got a little too heavy on some of the nails. Oh well, at least I tried. I'll definitely be trying this technique again soon! I have a whole bevy of pics I've saved from one of my favorite space nerd sites, Astronomy Picture of the Day, that I want to try and recreate on my nails!

Here are the polishes and tools I used for this particular galaxy:

Sally Hansen Insta-dri in Blazing Blue--base color

Kleancolor Holo Chrome layered over base

Sally Hansen CSM Purple Posy for sponging

Wet N Wild French White Creme for sponging and dots

a dotting tool

ripped up makeup wedges

metal palette (what I drip my polish on before I pick it up with sponges/brushes/dotting tools/whathaveyou

Are you a fan of galaxy nails? Have you ever tried them?

Jupiter nails!!

My kids are on a huge outer space kick right now. In the past few weeks, we've made 2 model solar systems, watched pretty much every space show on Netflix, stayed up til all hours of the night to watch live coverage of Curiosity's landing on Mars and we're very excited for this month's blue moon on the 31st and the upcoming meteor showers...

Somehow,  my kids interests always get translated into manicures for me--partly because I just get inspired by what we are consuming at any given time and partly because I love how they get such a kick out of seeing their favorite things painted on mommy's nails. Their favorite planet is Jupiter, so I did my first water marble ever to make Jupiter nails. Yes I am aware of the  geekdom involved in rocking Jupiter nails. I own it and love it. Snort.

left hand

left thumb

rarely seen right hand

almost never seen right thumb

posing with the big model Jupiter from the solar system mobile in my boys' room

posing with the little Jupiter from our mini solar system model

It's not that bad for my very first water marble, right? I mean, I accomplished what I set out to do--I think my nails do look rather Jupiter-esque. Post-mani clean-up was hell, though. Frickin polish EVERYWHERE. I'm messy to begin with no matter what I do, but when I use a messy nail art technique, then it's like mess on Steroids.

I don't know if I'll be attempting a water marble again any time soon. Aside from the mess (did I mention it was messy?!?!), I was kind of perturbed by how much polish this mani used up! Not that I have any kind of polish shortage in my life, mind you. I just hate seeing 4 bottles of polish 1/4 of the way gone just to do 10 little nails. 

Polishes used in this mani:

Finger Paints Papier Mache (white--used as base color and in the marble)

Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Sunny Side (yellow)

Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Red Rebel (orange--yea I don't know why she's calling an obvious orange red, either)

Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Cherry Red (now THAT'S a red, Sally)

Seche Vite top coat

Of course now that they've seen this mani, my kids want me to do all the other planets on my nails. So don't be surprised if this blog features more finger nail geekery in the near future...

Have you ever tried water marbling? Thoughts? Tips?

jelly sandwich + sticker-stencil stars

The minute I saw swatches of China Glaze Ride the Waves and heard tell of its jellyness, visions of stunning blue jelly sammies started dancing through my head. You know, kind of like this one: 

I do believe this is the most EPIC jelly sandwich I've ever conjured up. It's 1 coat of Ride the Waves plus 1 coat of Sally Hansen Multi-Facted, another coat of Ride the Waves, another coat of Multi-Faceted, one final coat of Ride the Waves and Seche Vite to finish 'er up. Just look at the squishy, speckly goodness!!

Ride the Waves is a beautiful bright blue jelly polish from China Glaze's summer neons collection. It doesn't quite venture into neon territory, but I still LOVE its vividness and the formula is perfect! It applies so smoothly--no dragging and no streaking--which makes it the ultimate jelly sandwich polish. And, like most jellies, it dries super glossy.

Multi-Faceted is part of a Limited Edition collection of Sally Hansen Diamond Strength polishes that came out in the spring. It's a clear base filled with large black, silver, blue/violet holographic, very light pink holographic and very light gold holographic hex glitters. 

After about an hour or so, I decided I needed to do something ELSE to my nails (A.D.D. much??), so I busted out my bag of tricks and some little star stickers caught my eye. I found them  at Target a while ago for $.99. I bought them because they were small enough to fit entirely onto my nails (I'm constantly on the hunt for itty bitty stickers that can either serve as nail decals or as stencils for nail art)...and here's what I did with them:

Basically all I did was take a sticker, place it onto my nail, sponge over it with Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Celeb City, peel the sticker off with my trusty Mash nail art tweezers & then I sealed the whole she-bang with top coat. I thought it made for an interesting look--with the speckly jelly sammy peaking through the star-shapes...

Hooray for using random, non-nail products in nail art!

who doesn't love a crazy animal print?

I luuurves me some leopard and zebra print--especially when they're in wacky colors and they're on my nails.

Awwwww yea!! This mani consists of:

2 coats of Color Club Electro-Candy

Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure in Purple Posy lightly dabbed onto the nail with balled up Saran Wrap (the effects of which is pretty much invisible in these photos)

leopard print is from a konad plate stamped with Wet N Wild black creme

skully decal by Fing'rs

Seche Vite top coat

And I even got the chance to do nails that aren't mine for the very first time. I only wish my nails were as naturally long and strong as hers are. She asked for blues and purples and zebra:

Base color is Sally Hansen Insta-dri Blue By

Stamp color is Sally Hansen Insta-dri Orchid Express

zebra image from a Cheeky plate

Seche Vite top coat

distressed stamped nails

I love the look of layered, distressed paint--where the top layer is worn away and you can see the underlying layer of color peeking out. I've been playing with ways to recreate that look on my nails (I'm sure there is probably a blogger out there who has already perfected this, but for some reason I decided to re-invent the wheel and try to figure it out all by myself)...

My experimentation has led me to double-painting my nails--one coat of color and then another coat of contrasting color on top of that. Then, using a fan brush dipped in acetone, I strip away the top layer just enough so the underlying color can be seen.

Anyway, so that was what I did to create today's mani. Then I stupidly stamped over my distressed polish WITHOUT taking a pic of what it looked like pre-stamp **head--desk**...observe:

(click to enlarge)

So anyway, here's all that I used to create this mani:

I started out with 2 coats of a no-name L.A. Colors lime green creme (it came as part of a 6 or 7 bottle "brights" set that I found at TJ Maxx sometime last year. Then I laid down a coat of Sally Hansen Insta-dri Blue By (a summer 2012 LE shade that I recently found in my Walgreens clearance bin). After that, I poured a capful of pure acetone, dipped my fan brush in it and stroked it across the blue polish until the green was visible in places again. Of course, I can't live without some kind of glitter in my mani, so I added a coat of Pure Ice Rescue Me, an awesome translucent lime green jelly polish with this killer duo chrome green/blue glitter in it that just GLOW (speaking of which, this polish actually does glow in the dark and it is BRIGHT too--but I was more interested in the tint and the glitter this time)...all that got a coat of Seche Vite.

While I was waiting for the Seche Vite to work its magic, I suddenly go the itch to stamp, so I busted out my BM 208 plate and my Konad Special white polish and used the 2 shattered images--ya know, shattered...distressed...I figured it goes with the whole deconstructed look of all this. And don't get me wrong, I like the stamping...I just am kicking myself for completely forgetting to get a pic of my nails before I stamped...oh well...

I'll be doing other manis like this soon. Maybe I'll even do something crazy like post a tutorial, if you're interested, of course...

So have you done any nail art experimentation lately?