Day 17: Glitter

Glitter polishes are my favorite. I couldn't decide which glitter polish to feature, so I'm giving you three!

First is the very affordable L.A. Colors "Goddess."  This polish surprised me; when I first bought it, I just knew it would be stupidly sheer and take a million coats. Wrong! "Goddess" is actually an opaque glitter! It's gorgeous, and it only cost me $1.  This is two coats in the shade because the images I took in full sun didn't show the polish's true color.

"Goddess" is a great summer polish. It's a light golden color with different sized glitter. Just look at those big ol' honkin' silver hex shapes in the bottle!

Next is another inexpensive glitter: "Ants in My Pants" by Spoiled.  This is one of the CVS exclusive polishes, and I'm 99% sure it's a dupe of Wet 'n' Wild's "Behind Closed Doors" from the limited edition Halloween 2011 collection, which I'm 99% sure was a dupe of a fancy Deborah Lippmann polish.

I took these photos at my Mom's house after doing yard work, so you can see some tip wear. Overall, though, the polish held up really well. And it is gorgeous. This is one coat over black. The only problem with this Spoiled polish, and with the other Spoiled glitters I own, is that the formula is so chunky it's like painting your  nails with molasses.  Don't care, though, because my crappy photos do not do this polish justice. "Ants in My Pants" is a sheer black jelly that is jam-packed with red hex glitter. ME GUSTA.

Finally, I have an expensive polish to show you: "Ruby Slipper" (yes, just one) by Del Sol.  This is one of those color changing polishes, and of the several Del Sols I own, "Ruby Slipper" is by far the one that has the most dramatic color change.

Here are before and after pictures.  The "before" was taken in the shade, and the "after" was taken out in full sun.  

If you go to the Del Sol web site, the demo bottle of "Ruby Slipper" they have is silver glitter that turns red.  Mine, though, is gold glitter that turns red. I don't know if I got a dud or what, but I like the change from peachy gold to red.  I liked it so much I made a daggone video of it and put it on YouTube! See?

Oh, by the way... I mentioned the last time I posted a blog entry (about a month ago!) that if I hit 50 followers, I'll do a giveaway.  Well, despite the fact that I am the laziest blogger on the Internet, I have 51 followers! And I have prizes! I just need to get my junk organized. Stay tuned! ;)

Nail Fail: Nailene Duracolour Nail Strips

My local Dollar Tree had several different styles of the Nailene Duracolour Nail Strips for sale back during the summer, so of course I stocked up. I'd been thinking about trying the Sally Hansen nail strips, but they are way too expensive. I figure this would be a cheap alternative, and even if they didn't work, I'd only be out a dollar. 

Here's a shot of the package and one of the strips on my left thumb:

Anyway, this is #77650, which is a lovely red color. The package contains 36 strips in 18 different sizes. However, when I applied these full-nail stickers to my nails, look what happened:

Apparently, my nails are shaped like marbles. I never noticed how round they are until I started putting these nail strips on. What a big ol' mess. 

Here's a shot of my right hand:

I only wore these a few hours but look at the damage. Maybe my nails are too short for these nail strips. Or maybe they have too much curve. Or maybe these Nailene strips are just crappy and "real" Sally Hansen ones would work better. No clue. All I know is that I have way too many packages of these nail strips, so I do believe I'll be hosting a giveaway soon to get rid of them. ;)

Day 9: Rainbow - Nyan Cat!

Since y'all don't know me in real life, you probably aren't aware that there are two things I really enjoy: random internet stuff and kitty cats. So when I happened upon Nyan Cat, it was a match made in heaven!

I knew I had to do a Nyan Cat design for the first rainbow challenge, but I had no idea it would be as difficult as it was. The final manicure ended up being a hot mess, which was a shame because I really wanted to wear this for a few days. Instead, the stupid thing ended up peeling off my nails the very next day.

Here's what I did. First, I used my Sally Hansen Nail Art Pen in white to dot out the areas for the rainbow to make sure I had enough room for all the colors. I also drew in an area for the cat, but instead of drawing him like Cute Polish or Professional DQ and others have, I turned the kitty on its head. ;)

Unfortunately, I kept messing up the Pop Tart so I ended up removing the outline. I moved on to the rainbows. I used the following colors:

• Red ~ OPI: Color So Hot It Berns
• Orange ~ Wet n Wild: Everybody Loves Redmond
• Yellow ~ Fake OPI I got from an eBay seller
• Green ~ Another fake OPI I got from that same crappy eBay seller
• Blue ~ L.A. Colors Color Craze: Static Electricity
• Purple ~ Ulta Mini no-name from a Halloween 2010 mini collection
• I added two coats of Wet n Wild: Hallucinate for some sparkle.

I wish I would have had some acrylic paints instead of nail polish because the colors went on too thickly and messily. I got so mad working on this design that I had to take a smoke break! But then I thought, "Holy crap, my nails are still wet so how am I going to light a cigarette? My hands will explode!" Grrrr. Anyway, that's what my rainbow mess looked like. I should have used a different orange since the two colors look too similar, making the yellow and green too bright; the whole thing looks more Rasta than rainbow.

What a mess. Like I said, the whole thing made me mad. After I (messily) painted in the rainbow, I mixed up some colors for the Pop Tart and for the cat. Here's what the final version looked like:

I used my Kiss Nail Art Pen in black to outline Nyan Cat. I used dots instead of solid lines to give it the 8-bit appearance of the original online graphic.

Anyway, what do you think? I love the way the cat looks, and I'm ok with the Pop Tart, but the overall effect is just blech. Blech, blech, blech, blech, BLECH. Working on this design reminded me why I prefer nail art stickers and stamping to freehand designs. I suck at it. 

Holiday Nails: Christmas Crack!

By now, you've seen hundreds of nail art designs for Christmas. I'm lazy and not patient enough to recreate those designs for you. Instead, I have a couple of images I'm calling "Christmas Crack."

These designs feature Pure Ice Crackle: "Show Stopper" (a red crackle polish) over different greens. In the image above, the greens are: Icing "Lucky Luis" (first two nails), Max Factor Diamond Hard "Momentum Moss" (red and silver diagonal stripes), Sally Hansen Color Quick "Green Chrome" (vertical crack and red glitter striping), China Glaze "Zombie Zest" (red glitter striping curves and cracked swoosh), and China Glaze "Mistletoe Kisses" (random vertical cracks). If my nails were long enough, I would have done them like the swooshy design.

The designs above have the same "Show Stopper" red crackle polish over Max Factor Diamond Hard "Momentum Moss" (diagonals), Sally Hansen Color Quick "Green Chrome," fake mislabeled OPI green color (two nails), and then some green color that I can't identify. Oops.

Basically, this was an experiment to see if the Pure Ice crackle would work better on these greens than it has for me in the past. I have tried using "Show Stopper" over white, but ended up with a smeared pink mess. I let the greens dry a LONG time before using the crack polish, so most of the designs turned out ok.

Do you have any of the Pure Ice Crack polishes? I also have the white one, but I'm not 100% satisfied with it or the red I used for these swatches.

Day 1: Red - Maybelline Express Finish: Red Caviar

Day 1 of the challenge begins a week of primary color manicures. I chose a great nail polish that I picked up at my local Dollar Tree: Red Caviar by Maybelline Express Finish.

Now, you would think that a 35-year-old woman like myself would know how to properly paint her nails, right? Well, you'd be wrong. No matter how careful I am, I always seem to get polish all over my cuticles and fingers. See?

Here are a few swatches of Maybelline Express Finish's Red Caviar nail polish on a nail wheel. Each "finger" has two coats of Red Caviar.

Finally, here are the products I used for this manicure. I started with Hoof Hands Naturally Strong Bamboo Strengthening Treatment, then the Red Caviar, then finished it all off with good ol' Seche Vite.

Overall, this is a truly luscious red creme nail polish. The application was smooth, although I made a mess of things. I should have used thinner coats on my nails like I did on the nail wheel. I will definitely use this color again since it's a fast drying fabulous red. 

What's your favorite red nail polish? I'm an OPI girl, but I love how quickly these Maybelline Express Finish polishes dry. 

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