A Little Project

Hey guys! I recently got a little crafty with my nail polish - and it had nothing to do with my fingers or toes! One of my Mom's friends gave me a set of dominoes as a housewarming gift - we love to play - the only problem is that they were all black and white. I know, first world pains. I prefer the colored ones, because it's easier to tell what number domino you have, so rather than get rid of them or buy a new set, I decided to get crafty, and painted the little black dots with some of my polishes!

I used: Zoya Pippa, Zoya Ali, Zoya Mira, Zoya Ivanka, Zoya Astra, Zoya Yummy, OPI Spark de Triomphe, and Petites Mango!

Final product:

I have no idea why this one is rotated this way! Anyways, it's much more obvious in person that they are different colors, although all that really shows up in these pics is Pippa!! I think they look cool and unique :)

What do you guys think?

50 Follower Giveaway!

Hey friends! Exciting news! I decided I'd like to do a giveaway! :)

When I reach 50 followers with Google Friend Connect (I'm at 19 right now, so not far to go!), I'll make a post with the full details and a form you can fill out to enter!

Right now I have two Sinful Colors polishes as a prize, and I'm going to think of one other thing as a second prize, whether it is a franken, popular polish at the moment, or any random polish I pick! If you all would be so kind, would you leave a comment with an idea for me for the second prize? You can also comment on my facebook page with an idea! But this prize is for you guys, so I'd really appreciate your input :)

Spread the word about the blog and tell your friends! If you make a blog post about it, I've included a spot on my form where you can put a link to it, for an extra entry!

Essie - Turquoise & Caicos!

Hey everyone! You might recall not so long ago I was posting on facebook about picking up a couple new Essie polishes, since I had a coupon for $1 off at Walgreens! I liked two of them a lot, so I picked up one with my coupon then went over to Target and got the other with my gift card! Yay :) These are my first Essie polishes, so I wasn't sure what to expect - but I like them both!

The one I bought at Walgreens was....Turquoise and Caicos! It's a fabulous bright, light turquoise color. I was worried that it would be streaky, but it evened out okay! I think I did three coats here. I think this color is going to look AWESOME as a springtime mani or a summer pedicure! Maybe I'll throw it on soon before the heat leaves Texas as a last hurrah! Who am I kidding...the heat never leaves! (But not really....it gets freaking cold in December/January/February!)

I love it! What do you guys think?!

EDIT: Also, I went through my whole stash and got it up to date, then created a Google Document for it! If you look at the top and click on My Stash, the link to the document is there! It is organized by brand, and has links to the posts where I've swatched each color. (Except obviously not all of the polishes have a post....yet!) Check it out, it's awesome!

I am Definitely Addicted - Giveaway Shoutout!

Hey y'all! I'm just dropping in for a quick post to let you know about a giveaway going on right now! I found out just now, luckily - it ends at the end of September! So go enter quickly if you like!

I am Definitely Addicted is doing a Halloween giveaway - the prizes include the China Glaze Haunting collection, an OPI Spookettes mini set, some Sinful Colors Halloween colors, and another OPI mini Halloween colors set!

So head on over to her blog and check it out! :) Just don't win my polishes, mkay? :D

Again, the link to the giveaway is HERE!

Ulta Haul/My First Butter London!

Hey all! In spite of the cold I am currently fighting [edit: well, I was on Tuesday when I wrote this!], I went out of the house today to get some fresh air...but mainly to go to Ulta so I could take advantage of their Butter London Buy one get one free sale! I was hoping to find Henley Regatta but someone beat me to it. I went less than two hours after they opened, and I can't imagine they got cleaned out that bad in two hours...it looked to me like they just hadn't stocked in a while. Oh well. I picked up West End Wonderland and No More Waity Katie! 

And, as you can see, I also grabbed two Pinata-yada-yada's, plus Celebutante - since the Ulta polishes were on sale for $2! I grabbed the old bottle version of Celebutante since Ulta recently changed their price from $5 to $6 AND they made the bottle smaller. Jerks....I actually had bought a bottle of Pinata-yada-yada a couple weeks ago, but when I realized that not only had the price gone up, the bottle was smaller, I returned that ASAP! And that paid off, since a few days later I got their magazine ad in the mail that was advertising their colors for $2! Heck yeah! I love Pinata-yada-yada for frankens, so I picked up two! And I just thought Celebutante was the cutest purple! Very similar to my favorite purple ever, Zoya Mira!

I was hoping to also find Zoya Jana, and the China Glaze glow in the dark polish, but they didn't have either :(

Here is West End Wonderland, a gorgeous golden glitter packed into a clear base. It's so laden with glitter, though, that some people would probably be fine with one coat! I did two coats and then did a teeny touchup on a couple spots that wound up looking a little bare. This also dried relatively smooth, which surprised me, I expected it to be very gritty.

Look! Look at that shimmer!!! Yayyy I love glitters!

You may be able to see in the bottle (and slightly on the nail) that along with the gorgeous fine gold glitter, there are some tiny red glitters, as well! They aren't super noticeable on the nail but definitely add some depth to the polish! It's so deliciously sparkly...I can't wait to wear this around the holidays! This one was kind of a snap decision for me, since I wasn't sure what colors to get once I saw there was no Henley Regatta, but I am thrilled with my decision to pick West End Wonderland!

Celebutante + Milani!

Hi everyone! Here is one of my grabs from today from Ulta's $2 sale - it's Celebutante. I immediately knew this was a dupe for Zoya Mira/OPI Funky Dunkey, which happens to be my favorite purple ever, so I snatched it up! I picked the one from their older bottle design, rather than the new design, because it is marginally bigger than the new design bottle. They raised the prices recently, yet downsized the bottle from .4 oz to .33. I know it's not a huge jump but...if the price goes up, the product should NOT go down. It's the principle...grrr Ulta!

Anyways I used the end of my Funky Dunkey for a franken I made today, so I'm glad I bought Celebutante! It's very pretty and a great backup for my Mira :)

Oops! You can clearly see I didn't bother painting my thumb, haha! Oh well. It's a bit more warm purple than this photo, purples are so hard to get right! I put the blue envelope in the background to try and help it show up more purple than blue!

Two coats was great, though I had to be careful not to flood my cuticles, it was a tad runny, I guess would be the word. I'm just pleased to get away with two coats, so I didn't mind too much!

I then topped it off at the tips with my Milani Jewels in gold! I love love love this glitter! What do you guys think? Hope you like! I spent the afternoon with this on, and am about to go take it off since I have work tomorrow :( (I know, I'm sick, yet I still have to work. My coworkers....they are so nice, nobody would switch with me/cover my shift! At least one girl is coming in an hour early for me, she actually is nice!)

I tried to do a bit of a gradient with the glitter, I think it looks neat!

I like the color combo! If only I went to LSU or some other purple/yellow/gold school haha! :)

Hope you guys like!

Kansas City Trip!

Hey everyone, I'm back! (kind of) I'm sorry to have deserted the blog for a few weeks, unfortunately on September 5th I had a close friend pass away unexpectedly and along with dealing with that, work has been fairly hectic. Sometimes I get lucky and have two days off in a row, but ever since I was promoted (yay! It's really a good thing, even though I work more now) I typically just have two days off per week, and I actually like that they aren't in a row! If they were, I'd wind up working like 9 days in a row or something silly. ANYWAYS....when I only have one day off, I usually don't do my nails, it just seems silly when it'd only be on for about 24 hours! But I got inspired the other day and did a few swatches of some untrieds I have, so those will be coming soon!

But the real reason for my post - I wanted to share some photos from my trip to Kansas City at the end of August! Myself and the husband, along with about 20-25 other soccer friends made the drive up to Kansas City from our home here in Dallas, to see our fave team FC Dallas take on Sporting Kansas City. I was looking forward to the trip because a)I had several days off, so I got to paint the nails! and b)KC just built a brand new soccer-specific stadium that I heard was very nice, so I was excited!

I wanted to do something sort of FC Dallas themed with my nails for the trip. The obvious decision for me would be to do "Hoops", since that's one of FCD's nicknames. When I first heard the nickname Hoops, I was like what? Is there circles on the jersey? Well, basically they're just like horizontal stripes - but they call them hoops since they go all the way around the jersey (they're on the back too). But, I felt a little intimidated at trying to do red/white stripes on the nail, since it was kind of late at night when I finally got around to doing the mani, so I decided to try something else. Oh, I should specify that the FC Dallas colors are red and white, but on the road they wear a great royal blue and white!

It turned out to be equally time-intensive, but I like how it turned out so that's ok! I decided to go for a splatter mani - and I used Zoya Carrie Ann, Zoya Breezi, Zoya Loredana, and Petites White. I used a base of Loredana and then splattered Carrie Ann, Breezi, and white on top of it. Next time I think I'd do a base of white, and just splatter Carrie Ann and Breezi, but that's ok. This was a "different" mani for me, so I'm just proud of myself for trying something new!

Alright, on to the photos!

Left hand! I dunno why my thumb is all messed up towards the top of my nail, oh well! Some of the nails splattered well, and sometimes I'd just get a huge blob of color covering the whole nail, and have to re-do the colors I'd already done on that nail, haha!

Right hand! I actually thought the right hand went better than the left, which is weird because I'm right handed!

Here are some more photos from the trip:

Started off the trip with some Oklahoma Joe's barbeque! Long wait in line but this food was beyond worth it! I got the 'Hog Heaven' - I believe it was pulled pork and sausage! And the french fries had some crazy seasoning on them that made them super addicting! Husband didn't care for them but...that's cool, more for me :)

After dinner we headed out to the Power and Light District - it's downtown, like the party area I guess! Nothing against KC girls but...some of them looked pretty rough, hahaha. For example, I saw not one but TWO breakups occurring, and neither of the ladies were handling it very well! One of them, the girl was initiating it, and I saw her shove the boy several times then stomp down some stairs. He followed at a distance, then they left, I was kind of bummed to miss the end...haha! The other one, the girl was super hammered and the guy looked very irritated to have to deal with her in public! Anyways, I had a great time people watching! It's a really cool outdoor area connected to lots of bars and restaurants, and the weather was great, so it was nice to be outside hanging out!

Here is Sporting KC's stadium, one view at least. We got to take a private tour of the stadium, which was really neat! It's way nicer than the stadium in Dallas....we'll just leave it at that.

And finally, here's me and the husband Daniel before the game! We thought it would be fun to take the FCD monkey around with us and take pics but we didn't really take many! Daniel bought it for me last year at an FCD game, because I have a childish love for stuffed animals, hehe :)

The best part of the weekend - FC Dallas was losing 2 to 0 until about the 75th minute (out of 90, for you non-soccer people!), when Sporting KC got a man sent off. The tides turned in FC Dallas' favor, and about ten minutes later we scored a goal. I was happy that we wouldn't get totally blown out, but still thought we'd lose. A couple minutes later we scored again! I was shocked, but pleased with a tie since we hadn't played too well during the game, I thought it was good to escape with a tie! And THEN, in the 93rd minute (stoppage time!) this rookie scored! So we totally poached a win at the last minute, it was great! :)

OK hope to see you all again soon with some more posts! Leave some comments and let me know what you thought of my first ever splatter mani!

Wet n Wild - Sparked!

Here is another one from my recent Walgreens haul! It's Wet n Wild Wild Shine nail color in Sparked, a really pretty pink glitter! I recently developed a lemming for Butter London in Rosie Lee, and when I saw Sparked at the store, I immediately thought of it. Now, I don't have Rosie Lee so I can't really compare them but they are both a pink glitter so I thought oooh pretty!!

Here is Sparked by itself, nothing underneath, though I suspect it would look really pretty layered over a darker pink. It is two different colors of pink glitter suspended in a clear/pale pale pink base. I could have left it at 3 coats but I love the golden-pink hue so I went ahead and did a fourth coat! This is sooo pretty, I really like it! It reminds me of a lighter version of Zoya Astra or Nova!

What do you guys think? And as ridiculous as this is going to sound, it was kind of a neutral sparkle! It wasn't like a Zoya Charla or Ivanka, the bright AND sparkly combo, it was nice!!