HARE Polish - A Positive

Hey y'all!! Guess what I have today to show you - HARE Polish - A Positive!

As you can see, this is a goooorgeous raspberry jelly with lots of silver hexagonal glitter packed in!

With flash!

I love this picture! You can really see all the glitter clearly! And how cute are her labels?!

Nikole makes the cutest nail colors! Occasionally she sells them on her Etsy page (HERE) and she also has a tumblr you can see her manicures on (HERE)! Thank you so much for the gorgeous polishes, Nikole! You guys can stay tuned for another HARE mani soon! Next year!!!! :)

Happy New Year!!!

Zoya Akyra!

Hi everyone! Today I have for you a lovely Zoya teal polish - Akyra!

Akyra has a hint of frost but thankfully no brush lines!! Two coats was plenty for full coverage and lovely depth of color.

Outside

Outside in direct sunlight

Not too much to say, as you can see it's a really pretty shade! I had been reaaaallly wanting a teal polish when I bought this (right about the same time I got Essie Trophy Wife - these are two similar polishes. Maybe some day I'll have time to do a comparison :) If you like dark teal, I'd definitely recommend this one - great pigmentation, and of course wonderful Zoya long lasting wear!

Have a wonderful day! I hope everyone had a great Christmas!! I'll try and get a pic up soon of my Christmas manicure!! :)

Rimmel London Orange Sunset

Hi friends! It's almost Christmas (and for my Jewish followers, Hannukah is already happening!) I wish I could be one of those people talking about how excited they are to have five days off of work, but the only day I have off is Christmas Day, and that's only because I complained and complained and complained until my manager agreed not to schedule me on Christmas! This is the first year that I've had a problem with my work schedule, I guess now that I'm married and have been out of school for a while I'm starting to realize that Starbucks is not the job to be able to make lots of money and get a good savings going, and also I'm starting to want that Monday to Friday kind of schedule. I envy people who have weekends and more than one day off in a row, and hour long lunch breaks, and whose offices are closed for multiple days during Christmas week!! *jealous* Anyways....little girl not wanting to grow up rant is over, on to the good stuff!

Here I have a lovely mani from a couple weeks ago - I wore it on a date me and my husband went on - we went and got Italian food and it was delicious! Well, I was upset because as you can see I got an awkward break on my ring finger and also had to cut down my middle finger nail - the middle finger is almost at a "normal" length for me now and the ring finger has just about recovered too!

It's Rimmel London Orange Sunset! This nice coral shade was hard to capture, so I took a lot of pictures!

I'm standing in my bathroom here under a fairly warm, yellowy light. As you can see it looks pretty orange here.

But with flash, you can see how it really looks in real life, a gorgeous pinkish shade with a hint of orange!

It was nice and glossy once dry.

But of course it needed some sparkle! I had seen someone do a similar mani to this - sponging the glitter onto the tips, maybe Let Them Have Polish? I don't remember...at any rate I felt inspired and I thought the gold would look great with the warm coral, so I dabbed some onto the tips in a little layering! It's Milani Jewel FX in gold!

I thought it was just the right amount of glam for our date night! Hope you guys like it!

Etos Effect Green

Hey guys! My gosh it's been since Wednesday that I've blogged! I've been soooo busy with work and life! I hate when that happens! Although I suppose it is a good thing to have lots of work - that means more money to pay for Christmas presents and stuff!! :) Hope you all had a wonderful weekend!

Today I have for you one of the polishes I received in my swap with Inge from PolishSis! Along with the others, she sent me three little Etos Effect polishes - this is one of them! I didn't see a name so we'll just call it 'Green'!

This is a nice green polish with a hint of frost. 2-3 coats was enough to achieve opacity and there weren't bad brush lines despite the frostiness.

Indoors in natural light

In direct light outside, it's a nice grassy green!

In shade, outside

And one more outside for good measure! 

Thank you Inge for sending me this lovely green polish! There is another one, a reddish sparkly one that I can't wait to try out! Hope to show you guys more of these soon! :)

Zoya Jana!

Hey y'all! You may remember me talking about my trip to Phoenix not too long ago - well, since I had like five days off straight from work, I decided to pamper myself and get a manicure at a salon that just opened up near my Starbucks that I work at! It's called Venice Nails (at Preston and Frankford for all you Dallas people who might be reading) and they have decorated it beautifully! Very relaxing environment. I went there right after they opened with three other girls I work with and we all got pedicures and they had 50% off which was awesome! They have lots of luxurious types like cucumber, herbal tea, orange, and milk and honey, that you can get in manicure or pedicure, basically they just spoil you in lots of different ways! The first time I went I got the cucumber pedicure, this time I went with the Milk and Honey manicure! It involved lots of lotion, warm oil and warm stone massage, my hand in a bag of wax, etc. It was great, I'd totally recommend this salon to anyone in the area. It is a little bit more expensive than most salons I've been to but the beautiful decor and wonderful pampering makes it worth it for me!

ANYWAYS. Of course I brought my own polish, the lovely Zoya Jana! Now, I was so excited about this manicure and the color I picked, but then I totally forgot to take pictures until like three days later, lol! So there may be a little tip wear in these pics, but overall I thought Jana held up beautifully. The nail tech wrapped the tips, I noticed, which helped, I'm sure! I did get two chips (not very big though) but I just carefully painted them back in, since I had brought the polish with me to Phoenix!

Jana is a beautiful mauve color that toes the line between purple, gray, and brown, all at the same time. Depending on the light I thought it looked quite gray or quite purple. At any rate it's gorgeous and perfect for the professional environment! This was two coats plus topcoat. Typical amazing Zoya formula and wear!

Jana with flash

With flash again, see what I mean about the purple/gray line?! Every time I decide which one it is, I change my mind to the other, haha.

Jana under a table lamp light. Looking more brown in this light, I think.

How do you guys like Jana? Do any of you own her or another one of the recent Zoya colors?

Kleancolor Holo Chrome!

 Today I have a HOLO to show you! Yeah! It's raining today so that's kind of gloomy...luckily we have these nice sunshiney pics from recently to cheer us up!

It's Kleancolor Holo Chrome, a gorgeous denim color that shifts between blue and purple with tons of holo packed into it! This was my first Kleancolor although there is about 20 that I want, they have so many awesome shades! It was like $5 after shipping, so very reasonably priced! I can't remember where I bought it. Just google Kleancolor and I'm sure you can find somewhere selling! Well, it seems like every nail blogger has reviewed this polish so I'll just let the photos do the talking :)

Indoors, natural light, just looks mostly sparkly

Indoors, natural light, even with iPhone you can see the holo goodness!

Outside in the shade

Sunlight!

Sunlight!

Oooooh blurry holo goodness!

Sparkle sparkle sparkle!

I hope you guys enjoyed! While this polish has a terrible smell, it is such a lovely light purpley shade and packed with holo sparkle so I don't mind! 

Have a wonderful Sunday!

50 Follower Giveaway Winners!

How exciting, my first giveaway complete! Yay :) First, here's a little breakdown of the stats -

43 of you voted you'd prefer the Sinful Colors Pair, while 41 of you voted you'd prefer the Franken pair. Isn't that interesting, a relatively even split! I was wondering how that would turn out!

We had 84 separate entries. A couple of you entered twice, but I was nice and simply disregarded your second entry. Just don't do it again! *shakes fist* :P With the extra entries you could have gotten by making me laugh (a fair amount of you did!) or blogging about the post, it came to a total of 138 entries!

OK on to the good stuff, the winners!!

The winner of the SINFUL COLORS PAIR!

Anibani!

Next, the winner of the FRANKEN PAIR!

Sarah at Starlight Radiance!

YEAH! Congratulations guys! I have emailed the winners, and they will have 48 hours from then to reply to me! If I don't hear back, I will choose another winner. And I'd really hate that so make sure you email me back! :) Thanks again to everyone who entered, and made my first giveaway a great success!

Zoya Charla!

Hey y'all!!

I couldn't decide what to wear as my Thanksgiving mani because I don't really have "fall" browns/yellows, etc to make a Turkey or anything! So I decided to wear my holiday mani idea - it involved a red, a white, and Zoya Ivanka and I planned to use tape to make diagonal lines like a candy cane. Unfortunately it was a total FAIL - the tape pulled some of the white off (even though I waited a long time to put the tape on!) and then when I finally did get some stripes done, it looked like straight up Italy flag NOT holiday!!! I was like noooo! So my backup idea was something sparkly and I hadn't worn Charla for a long time, so I decided to do that!

Here is Zoya Charla with accent fingers in OPI Spark de Triomphe! I made a noob mistake and painted all my fingers with Charla and then realized I didn't need to do that on the accent fingers, lol! On my left hand I did a thick couple coats of Spark de Triomphe on my ring finger, and on the right hand I decided to do two fingers each with a thin layer of the glitter!

I did two coats of Charla and I think next time I'd do three because it was a little patchy in spots and in some lights it looked quite thin but in other lights it looked fine, so that was weird. Anyways, it was nice and sparkly and did the trick for some holiday sparkle! We had a great Thanksgiving dinner at my husband's cousins' house and his aunt and uncle cooked everything from scratch, it was wonderful! We had turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, stuffing, sweet potatoes, cranberry/marshmallow stuff, and probably other things I can't remember! And she baked pumpkin and pecan pie too! :) We also had dinner with my family the next day, but I had work that morning so I didn't get to have a mani there :( Hope everyone here had a great one, although I know this is a bit past Thanksgiving now haha!

Left hand! I love the depth of Charla, the glassfleck really adds another dimension to the shade!

Right hand with my baby pointer finger nail haha

Right hand!

Does anyone else here own Charla? I think I prefer it in the summer and as a pedicure, but it is a gorgeous teal color with tons of beautiful glassfleck shimmer! I think this is a definite must have for anyone - I thought I wouldn't like it so I never ordered it, but once Zoya did a promo where they would include a Ivanka and Charla with any purchase, so I took advantage of it and I'm so glad I did! It's lovely!

Have a wonderful day friends!

50 Follower Giveaway - CLOSED

Hey y'all! Well I am exhausted and have work early in the morning, but I don't want to end the giveaway early (even just an hour!), but I want to go to bed now, so SURPRISE! I'm extending it until 3 pm central time Thursday. Yay! <3 Amy


Giveaway now closed! Thanks for entering!

Last Day to Enter!

Hey friends!

Just wanted to remind you that today (Wednesday) is the last day to enter the 50 Follower Giveaway!

Anyone can enter, just remember you must be a Google Friend Connect follower - I'm not going by Facebook follows, I'm going by Google Friend Connect! (Although we just hit 100 on facebook which is pretty awesome too!) Once we hit 100  (Edit: Uhhh I just noticed we went from like 83 to 130 overnight?! Did someone link to me? If so...THANKS! This is awesome! I'll revise the new giveaway number to 150 since we blew past 100 and aren't too far off from 150!) followers on here I'll do another giveaway, probably my favorite Color Club polish!

Once again here are the two prizes you can win one of!

CLICK HERE TO ENTER!!!!

:) Have a wonderful day!!!

Triple Threat Post!

Hey guys!! Today I am showing you not one, not two, but three polishes!

They are: Petites White, Sinful Colors Pearl Harbor, and a Bon Bon's polish which has no name and I'm calling Clear Flakie! It's not super flakie, mostly a clear glaze with iridescent glitter but it does seem to have a few iridescent flakies mixed in!

First up, here is the Bon Bon's flakie/glitter by itself. I showed this picture so you could all see that it does show up totally clear, even though it looks milky in the bottle. This was two coats, and can be found at Walmart for like 99 cents.

See? Very clear, iridescent small glittery pieces.

Here I'm showing the same Bon Bons glitter over Petites White. It's very subtle over the white, I think it would look awesome over other colors.

As you can see, you mostly get the pink and yellow tones from the iridescent glittery pieces. There are some tiny pieces and also some hexagonal pieces. I also saw some that looked like flakies but now I wonder if they weren't just hexagonal pieces that had gotten cut in half somehow. Hmmmm. At any rate I think it's quite pretty and reminds me a little bit of China Glaze's new one Snow Globe.

One with flash

Here is Petites White by itself. 3 coats to achieve total opacity/no bald spots. This is not my favorite white color, but it is the only one I own and costs a mere $1.50. So...if you want to spend more for one, go for it, it will probably be a nicer quality, but if you only want white for a layering polish like me, I'd be pretty happy with this. I love the Petites line, personally. At $1.50 they are a terrific bargain, and generally have pretty good opacity after one coats, total opacity after two coats. I have a flamingo pink, a red, a black, and this white, among others, that I love from this brand!

Next up we have the beautiful Sinful Colors polish Pearl Harbor! I saw this at Bed Bath & Beyond and thought "MUST BUY!!" It is the most gorgeous iridescent glitter in a clear base. In the bottle in real life it looks mostly blue and green, but in other lights you also get the pinkish and yellowish flash!

Here is Pearl Harbor over Petites White. Here with the flash you can see the yellow and pink tones. In the bottle obviously you can see the blue and green tones.

Another nice subtle glitter!

For some reason, I could only get my camera to pick up the yellow/pink on the nail, yet the bottle would only show me the blue/green! So weird.

Anyways. Hope you all enjoyed these three similar polishes! And don't forget, with my giveaway, Pearl Harbor is in one of the prize packs, and the Bon Bons flakie is in both packs! :) Welcome to my newest followers!!! I am so happy to have you here :) Make sure you are a Google Friend Connect follower (it's on the righthand side of the blog, click 'Follow') and you can enter the giveaway HERE!!

Essence Prism@tic White

Hi friends! Happy Thanksgiving! I know it's not really *technically* Thanksgiving today, but I've had a long celebration - on Thursday I worked (time and a half woop woop!) and had a casual Mexican food dinner with my in-laws/cousins, Friday we had dinner with my husband's family and cousins, and Saturday we are having dinner with MY family, save the best for last and whatnot ;) So anyways I've been really enjoying all the family time and am thankful for it, I'm also thankful for my good health, my husband, and OBVIOUSLY my nail polish and all my nail friends! (That's you! Yay!) So again...Happy Thanksgiving! And now, let the Christmas season begin!!! :D (Or Hannukah, Kwanzaa, whatever you celebrate - I'm just thrilled to have my Christmas tree up and Christmas lights and holiday flavors and scents and Christmas music!!!)

 Today I have for you a polish I recently won from the Trace Face Philes! She sent three of the Essence Meet Me @ Holografics.com collection, and here is one of them!

Prism@tic White is a icy, pearly white with some blue shimmer. I think this was 3 coats but it may have been 4, to achieve total opacity and avoid visible nail line. As you can see I still have a little bit of VNL but I don't mind it too much as it looks a bit like a french manicure without actually having to do any of the work to get the white line, lol!

As you can see, despite having several coats, if you catch it at the right angle this still looks very translucent and almost like you're not even wearing any color! I think this polish would look better if you have short nails, so you don't run into the VNL situation.

Overall I thought it was quite pretty to look at, very girly, and I liked it more than I thought I would! Also I feel like it makes my fingers look really tan, haha :)

What do you guys think? Anyone else own any of the polishes from this collection?

While you're here, don't forget to enter my GIVEAWAY!!!! Free nail polish yeah!!!! Click HERE!

Versatile Blogger Award!

Hey guys! Here's a fun little post - Holly from Holly and Polish tagged me with the Versatile Blogger Award! Woop woop! I'm not really sure what that means, but I'll interpret it as I blog about lots of things - which makes me versatile ;)

The two rules are:

1) List 7 things about yourself

2) Pass this along to 15 other bloggers!

So here I go!

1) I am a Shift Supervisor at Starbucks Coffee, and have been an employee with the company since September of 2006! I enjoy working there because I like socializing with people, it's pretty easy (after working there for so long!), and I have wonderful benefits with a job that is considered part time! I average about 35 hours a week, I have a 401k, health/dental/eye insurance, and stock options, plus tips every week (average $1.60/hour, not bad for a little extra spending money every week!)

2) I have been married for 6 months today! (Tuesday) :D

3) My husband's name is Daniel, and he writes an excellent soccer blog called Big D Soccer, it's about soccer in the Dallas area! He is a great writer and very very knowledgeable about soccer. Well, this isn't really a thing about me, but since he's my husband I feel like he's a part of me! We've known each other since I was 17 and he was 18, we're now 24 and 25 respectfully!

4) I always liked nail polish, but I really developed my love for it in February, after I had knee surgery and got stuck on the couch for weeks! I had six weeks off from work so I had a lot of free time to paint my nails! We aren't allowed to have nail polish on our hands at work (health hazard I guess?) so anytime I have more than a day off, I paint paint paint! It started with Zoya's giveaway for 3 free polishes, and spiraled from there ^.^

5) I graduated from the University of Oklahoma in May 2010! I love the football team (ahem, Sam Bradford! I once came about three inches from walking straight into him, we both turned a corner from opposite directions and nearly walked right into each other! When I saw who it was I was like OMGOMGOMG hahah) and I also love the gymnastics team!

6)I really love gymnastics, it is one of my passions in life. I started gymnastics when I was about six at a small gym near my house and did it for fun until I was 13, then quit to focus on figure skating, which I had also been doing since the age of five. I wound up quitting competitively skating at 18 when I graduated high school (burned out) and dabbled in recreational co-ed soccer for a couple years. While I was at OU I rediscovered my love for the sport through watching old gymnastics meets on YouTube, and new ones on TV! I began working part time with a gymnastics website called Gymnastike, filming gymnastics workouts, interviews, and meets for the website. I also wrote briefly for The Couch Gymnast, called Amy's Gym Diary, that pretty much ended when I hurt my knee. I was participating in a weekly adult gymnastics class at Texas Dreams gymnastics up until I hurt my knee, and hope to go back at the beginning of December! I also used to coach gymnastics for about a year at the same gym I began at all those years ago. I really loved coaching and teaching the kids new things but was easily frustrated by the kids' short attention spans and not being strong enough to help some of the kids learn new skills. (Some of today's youth are not at a healthy weight, we'll just say that, haha). OK well that was like seventeen facts in one so you guys got lucky :)

7) Giraffes are my favorite animal :) I would really love to pet a giraffe someday! There is a myth that giraffes are mute....but they are not. FYI! 

and one extra for good measure:

8) Peppermint Oreos are AWESOME!!!!! I just got some at Target the other day, they're limited edition for the holidays and are so super delicious and if you like Oreos and you like peppermint you NEED to try them! :)

I tag:

......anyone who wants to do this. If you do it, I'd love to see! :) (sorry to be lame and not tag people but I am tired haha) 

Everyone have a wonderful Wednesday! I'll be enjoying my day off :) I have a new mani to put up in a few days - sadly I had to cut two nails down yesterday which frustrates me!! One had a terrible peel so I chopped it down to below the peel so it can grow out again, and the other had a small peel that I fidgeted with and made worse so I had to cut it too :( So I now have three nails that I love the length of, and three more that I'm ok with the length of, and the rest are short and I want them to grow again. I think my job is too rough on my nails because I keep getting random breaks and peels which make me have to cut them. Argh! Thanks Starbucks, haha.

Glam Holiday Mani!!

Hey guys!! I really love this mani I did last night and was so sad to take it off - I did it as a pedicure and thought I'd recreate it as a one-hand mani to show you guys since I liked it so much!

It is OPI From A to Zurich with OPI Gettin' Miss Piggy With It! on top! I've shown A to Zurich on here before so I'm just showing the finished product here, but it's a gorgeous cranberry red, I think perfect for fall!

Gettin' Miss Piggy With It adds the perfect amount of ketchup-red sparkle on top of A to Zurich!

I did two coats of A to Zurich, and two coats of Gettin Miss Piggy With It, which did involve some dabbing, to try and get some of the silver hexagonal pieces onto the nail. I even shook the bottle for a long time and rubbed it in between my hands before applying with the hopes that it would help loosen up the hexagonal glitter pieces. I think this looks like gorgeous sparkling rubies when it hits the light!

Here it is with flash. You can really see all of the individual pieces of glitter - small red, larger hexagonal red, and some hexagonal silver pieces.

And as usual I finished it off with a healthy coat of Seche Vite topcoat. This is a little bit of a hassle to remove, being that it has the larger glitter pieces, but I took a cotton ball and added one extra pump of Zoya Remove+ than I normally do, and it really helped. I held it on the nail for about five-ten seconds then did my usual back and forth motion combined with some rubbing down towards the tip of the nail so I wouldn't stain my cuticles red! It seemed to work better than normal, maybe I was a little more patient haha :)

So I think this would be a GREAT holiday manicure!!! I can't decide what I'll wear this holiday season...I know I have work on Thanksgiving, but not Black Friday, so I'll probably do a mani Thursday as soon as I get off work. And I should be off on Christmas Day thankfully, but I'll have work Christmas Eve during the day. I've worked for Starbucks since September of 2006 and I have worked four of the Christmases since then, at least the last four straight, I think I must have not worked the first Christmas since I was still pretty new to the company. Anyways...I think I've earned a Christmas Day off work :) Thanks boss for giving me the day off!!! Well, maybe I'll do this as my Christmas mani! I could add some Zoya Ivanka to spice it up even more with Christmas colors! I wish I could have captured the wonderful sparkle this mani had in the pictures, unfortunately it's one of those "has to be seen" sparkles!

Have a wonderful day guys!!! Hope you like this gorgeous sparkly mani! :)