Neon Leopard

I'm super annoyed with myself. I had a whole post written and set up about Essie Absolutely Shore, and my photos have disappeared. They're not on my camera, hard drive or Photobucket. *seethes* Anyway, I'll share another manicure that I wore this weekend for general partying, swimming and lazing at Grand Beach north of Winnipeg.

I take no credit for this one, but people on the MakeupAlley nail board have been trying it (I apologize, but I'm not sure who it originated with, but to you--kudos! Good idea!), so I decided to give it a whirl. It reminds me of something from my punk rock teenager-dom mixed with the Lisa Frank-dom of my elementary school years. All of this is kinda awesome.

Here's my rendition:

This is after 3 days of wear, so excuse the growth and lack of shine. I lacked a clean, crisp white, but I used American Apparel Cotton instead. The image plate is the ever-ubiquitous m57 (the first plate I ever bought), with Konad black Special Polish. The spots are all Color Club neons: 220 Volts (blue), Yell-Oh! (yellow), Pucci-licious (purple), Screamin' Fuchsia (pink), Limelight (green) and You got Soul-ar (orange--this has glitter, I couldn't find my basic neon orange, I must've left it in NY). I put those on with an ancient L'Oreal dotting tool I had lying around. Despite Seche Vite sorta smudging the black (and macro being unforgiving--it makes my clean up job look super shitty), this was definitely fun to wear, and my mother-in-law was pretty much freaking out about it, which was cute.

Hope your weekend went well! Anyone out there have any other great Konad ideas? I have like 90-something image plates (uhhm, yes, I have a problem), so hit me up with ideas. It's a creative wasteland over here.

More Pic Spam from the last couple months!

I really have no excuse for being MIA this time, except that I think I sort of have the winter blues. I also think that, upon going through my stash and updating my spreadsheet, that I feel that I'm reaching my nail polish saturation point. Creeping closer to being in the 4-digits--scary!! But fun. I know it's a harmless hobby, but yeah. Somehow when I realized how much I had acquired made me a bit crazy!

Plus, I have to decide what I'm going to do about it. I'm moving to Winnipeg in May, around 1700 miles away. I'm having my stuff shipped in a pod, but there's *no way* I'm packing that many polishes, and I won't have room for my polish in my car. My solution, so far, has been to decide on a core number to bring with me, pack them securely in one of my Helmers, and ship that, and store the rest of my collection at my mom's house in NY. Our move to Winnipeg is supposed to be somewhat-temporary (a few years, until I'm a dual citizen), and then we intend to return to the States. What would you do? Could you live without part of your stash? I'm certain I could, plus I could always grab stuff when I visit home, or have my mom mail it. Any suggestions from you other nail mavens?

Anyway, enough babble and on to some NOTD's from December to present, in some sort of general chronological order, with running commentary, as usual:

Milani Purple Gleam. Umm stunner! So awesome it needed two pictures. I bought all of these new glitters the released. When I'm in Canada, I will seriously, seriously miss these LE Milanis (do ya'll get these? I feel like I read you don't). I bought all the colors and the Jewel FX's, even the Silver one that I ordered especially from Cherry Culture. I have glitter sickness!

OPI My Private Jet. I won't lie, I own two bottles of this beauty. I only break it out for special occasions. In this case, I wore it to my graduation for my Master's Degree.

China Glaze Peace on Earth. I like this polish a lot but it was a bit hard to control the brushstrokes, as you can see. It was pretty much a one-coater, though.

China Glaze Sexy in the City. Liked this one more in the bottle than in practice here. This is also a terrible shot of it. It's just not as blue as I wanted. In the bottle, it sort of reminds me of the Cerulean Crayola Crayon. In reality, not so much :-(

Milani Silver Dazzle. LOVE.

China Glaze Little Drummer Boy with China Glaze Fairy Dust on top, Konad Plate M59. Got a lot of compliments on this one, I wore it for a while.

China Glaze Frosty with China Glaze Party Hearty. Love both of these polishes. Frosty is like snow, so gorgeous.

OPI Teenage Dream. This is awesome. I bought all 4 Katy Perry polishes, even though I have zero opinion of her one way or the other (I'm a rock'n'roll kinda gal, I have zero knowledge of pop music), but this is a lot of fun, and very pretty.

This is a hot mess of a picture but here's OPI Black Shatter (no topcoat). Just playing around, and here my camera starts to do an annoying streaky glare thing that it will continue to do for a few more shots to come. Once I get my hands on the black China Glaze Crackle, I'd like to do a comparison, as I also have the Cover Girl and the Isa Dora black crackles.

Sally Hansen Salon Effects in Cut It Out. This was amazing. Any "wear" you see in this shot was actually user-error, I broke a few off wrong and had what looked like chips, but they weren't. Anyway, these wore crazy well for me, no tipwear, chipping, lifting, anything. I didn't want to take 'em off. I got a few more packs to try too, but I think I'm saving them for when I know I won't have much time to change my polish, as they're a bit pricey.

RBL Coral with OPI Dress to Empress on top. I felt like I needed RBL Coral in the last sale and I'm not sure why. It is pretty, but I don't really do coral. I got Dress to Empress at a salon on clearance, I hadn't heard of it before. It looked kinda sheer, so I layered it here. In real life, this sort of resembled OPI Wing It, and even though it was 2 coats of the RBL and two coats of the OPI, it was still kinda-not-totally-opaque. Lame!

Zoya Edyta. OK so sue me here. This picture sucks, and I have to say that I recognize and respect that this polish is gorgeous but I hated it on me? It was so boring and one dimensional on the nail. Yuck. Oh well... it wore great. I got this with my sale order, I also got Crystal (love), Cheryl (love), Valerie (untried), Tiffany (untried), and SARAH!! (my name!!!), which is serious, serious, serious love. It's wicked gorgeous, thank you Zoya! I didn't take pics though, sorry :-/

Essie Dive Bar with China Glaze Millenium & Konad M61. I'm trying to use my Konad more lately, it's kinda gone by the way-side. I'm bummed that the gorgeous purple duo in this polish doesn't show really on the nail except at some very random, incapturable moments. This is part of the new Essie retail line. Also grabbed Mochachino, and I reallllly want Coat Azure from the new spring line. *saves CVS coupons*

Milani HD. I can't tell you how many times I've passed this in the store. In CVS lighting, it looks dreary and un-holo. Actually, all the gorgeous Milani holos look dreadful in this light. I heard they're dc-ing these, so I wanted to grab the few I still didn't have. I still want the blue and pink ones. Anyway, this is WAY more holo than this picture shows, it's so pretty, I'm in love. This is tonight's manicure and it looks like it'll be my Valentine's Day one, too. Maybe I'll add a Konad heart, even though I don't celebrate (husband is far away, so boo).

I've gotta stop doing this in giant chunks and blog a little more regularly. I have fun ideas for posts, but then I get lazy! Ugh! Winter! All I do is read and work and try to stay warm and watch movies! I'm just itching for spring.

One last question to my lovely readers: Anything from China Glaze Anchor's Away that I need? I can't decide. Ugh. I've gotta go get a better look at 'em.

China Glaze Light As Air & Konad M69 with China Glaze IDK

I sort of forgot that I had one pastel left to show you from my 10 Up & Away polishes: Light As Air. A very whitened pastel purple creme, I was pleasantly surprised, when I finally got around to trying it, that I loved it! Its formula was excellent, it was perfectly opaque in two easy coats, it dried well. The color is a tad dainty for my taste, but oh well! I'll wear pretty much anything.

Here's 2 coats of Light As Air:

Intrigued as I have been by subtle Konads lately, I whipped out a favorite design from M69, and Konaded it using China Glaze's IDK from the OMG Collection. The results are subtle and pretty, but my camera pretty much failed to capture the holographic nature of the Konad. Here's a few pictures of my handywork:

I really like that plate. Anyway, I'm not sure what's coming next! I have a ton of untried polishes, like any collector, but I don't have many "new" ones. I guess I can try and finish out the remaining five American Apparel colors that I have. I also have a bunch of Barielles I got forever ago that haven't seen much (if any love). Also I have some old school Sally Hansens that I scored at Dollar Tree around Christmas that I haven't done much experimenting with. Hmm, decisions decisions!! I guess we'll see what I decide when tomorrow rolls around. Thanks for looking!

China Glaze L8R G8R & Konad S6

Ooops, looks like I might have relapsed. What I have for you today is yet another holo, China Glaze's L8R G8R. I would describe this one as a goldy limey green holo, which at times appears more green or more gold depending on how you look at it. It's incredibly holo, and looks so in the bottle (unlike LOL, for instance), even in low light. It went on smoothly, and I used three thin coats for opacity.

These photos don't entirely do it justice, they pull more gold, and lose a lot of the green. Here they are nonetheless.

No flash, but the holo looks neat!

At the last minute I decided to attempt another subtle Konad, so I used China Glaze Four Leaf Clover for the stamp and a line design from Konad S6. I don't often think to Konad over a holo. They're so cool on their own, they don't seem to need embellishment. But, I was itching to try it, so I went ahead. The lines break up the holo interestingly, and Four Leaf Clover works pretty well over L8R G8R. These Up & Away polishes seem to rock for Konad (I've tried a few that I haven't posted), so that's nice. Anyway, here's my Konad:

And that's all I've got today! Thanks for looking :-)

American Apparel Mouse & Konad M65

So, here's Mouse. As I look back on this, I really wish I left Mouse alone and wore it as you see it below: un-mattified and un-Konaded. But I didn't because I wanted to experiment with a technique I saw on Laquerized's blog.

So this is Mouse, my second favorite taupe color (first is Rescue Beauty Lounge Grunge). It looked so divine and classy with shiny Seche Vite. Here's 2 coats (and no clean up, whoops):

Don't you love it? I happened to wear this polish on a day I saw my friend Amanda, and it made me think of her. Amanda and I very different and if you saw us together you might wonder why we're friends. I'm a tattooed, pierced, kinda "bad girl" looking chick (though I am not!), with a penchant for stuff that leans heavily on the rock'n'roll side of life. Amanda has this elegant, polished way about her I've never been able to pull off. She always looks classy in an understated sort of way, from her chic haircut to her elegantly understated wardrobe--we are as different as different could be. But we get along because we're both kinda bitchy! I think that is what attracted us to eachother (we used to work together), a mutual understanding. BUT, anyway, when I wore this color, I felt so... elegant... which, though I am many things, elegant is not one of them. I was totally pleased when I saw her the day I wore this, and the first thing she did was grab my hand and profess her admiration for my nails.

Digress much?? OK, back on topic. So, I mentioned above that I wanted to use a technique I saw on the Lacquerized blog that involved mattifying a color and then Konading a design over it in clear polish. Hers came out way better than mine, but I was pleased with the understated look that I achieved. This is from M65 and I used Barielle Manicure Extender for the clear.

It's kinda hard to do because even "slow dry" topcoats seem to dry wicked fast when they're scraped over a Konad plate. So give it a try but don't even bother attempting Seche Vite--that's a joke! (Trust me, I tried).

That's all for now :-)

American Apparel Poppy & Konad M72

This isn't my favorite manicure that I've ever done, but here it is nonetheless. I broke out of my holo streak for a day here and dipped back into the American Apparel polishes. I haven't seen too many swatches of this one, Poppy, floating around. It's a very bright orange-red, not really coral, not really orange and not really red. It's a little weird. Though the formula seems good and opaque, 2 coats really wasn't that opaque. I would've needed three if I hadn't Konaded over it. Reddish colors seem to be odd that way--opaque, but you can still see that nail line for some weird reason. This one had the good formula I've come to expect from these polishes.

Here's a couple photos of it pre-Konad. Excuse how messy they are--my desk lamp broke and I've been doing my nails in crappy light lately! Haha, I'm actually kind of embarrassed to show these. Hopefully I'll be getting a replacement soon.

It actually looks more coral in these photos than it does in real life. An interesting color.

I decided to use a full nail design from Konad M72, kind of a busy retro pattern. I thought it'd look neat over Poppy. Not sure how I feel about it in the end but here are my results:

As usual, I used Konad's Black Special Polish for the stamp. I like this stamp, even though it's pretty busy, but I'll have to try it again for something else. Don't know why I feel so lackluster about this! Haha. I think holos have spoiled me lately. Any-who, that's what I've got for today! Hopefully I'll return tomorrow with something a little more my speed :-)

China Glaze Kaleidoscope Him Out & Konad M28

I dug out an oldie today, because I was in the mood for some holo in my life. I own a slew of both the Kaleidoscope and OMG collections from China Glaze and yes, some of them still remain untried despite the fact that they have been in my collection for about 2 years. This is one of them. It's so old it's also old formula (I lucked out and most of my Kaleidoscopes are old formula). This one is so gorgeous I don't know how it escaped my attention before: a sky blue holo with large sized-holo shimmer. I like how pixelated the Kaleidoscopes look, as opposed to the OMGs which are smooth. I think I never tried this in the first place because I was worried that this was going to be very washed out and almost silver, but I'm happy to report that it's not! It's very visibly blue.

The formula on this was good, it needed 3 (thin) coats, and it seemed to dry well for China Glaze. Sometimes we have (drying) issues, China Glaze and I, but we overcome them so we can be together!

Anyway, enough rambling from me, let's see if I can capture the awesomeness of this one. OH, and you might notice my little Konad accent I threw on in all the full shots here... I forgot to take pics before I added it. Oh well!

Well, the blue is definitely a bit washed out. The blue is more vibrant in real life, and less icy.

Here's a close up of the Konad, which is really my speed. I used the scorpion (I'm a Scorpio!) for my middle fingers and the skull on my thumbs, and both images are from plate M28. I used Konad Black Special polish for the stamp. This Konad is really my speed... pretty badass if I do say so myself. I especially like how subtle it is against the glittery girliness of the blue.

This is one of the first times I've done an "accent" Konad, as opposed to doing something on all my nails... not sure how I feel about it! It feels incomplete or something... Anyway, that's all I've got for today! For tomorrow, I've already picked out another China Glaze...

Thanks for looking!