Friday, December 30, 2011

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!!!

Monday, December 26, 2011

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!! :)

Thursday, December 22, 2011

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!

Sunday, December 11, 2011

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! :)

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

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?

Saturday, December 3, 2011

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!

Friday, December 2, 2011

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!

Thursday, December 1, 2011

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!