Wet n Wild - Back Alley Deals!

Hi guys!! Hope you've all been doing great! I have been super super busy between work and gymnastics, mainly, but am doing well! Last weekend was my first gymnastics competition (EVER!) and aside from a very wobbly beam routine, it went great! It was so cool to go out there and show your routines in a supportive environment! The competition was through the Texas Gymnastics Conference, which is all of the college club gymnastics teams in Texas! I'll put links to my routines at the bottom of the post, because I videotaped them :) I have another meet tomorrow (Saturday) and I worked really hard this week in the gym and added a new thing to my floor routine so my goal is to do better than last week! :)

I didn't wear this mani at my meet, sadly, because we aren't allowed to wear nail polish. Can you believe it?! I had to take off my amazing navy blue pedicure for the meet :( BUT this is one of the great Wet n Wild Color Icon polishes that came out last fall - Back Alley Deals. I wasn't sure how I would feel about the pinkish glitter mixed in with the purple, but it actually looks amazing in real life!

If you can get your hands on this polish, I would definitely do so!

Sorry, not a perfect photo, but you can see the pretty purple sparkliness :)

And here are links to my routines if you want to see!

Uneven Bars - http://bit.ly/H4hUb7

Floor Exercise - http://bit.ly/H3iRyb

Balance Beam - http://bit.ly/Hsy7p1

Have a wonderful weekend!!! :)

Zoya Caitlin!

Hey y'all! You're so good to be so patient with me lately on the lack of posts :) I've been working 6 day weeks at Starbucks and have only gotten to paint my nails once a week as a result lately :( Hopefully my injured coworker is on the mend soon so we can go back to having 2 days off each week! As a supervisor, we are often the ones who get to work more when others cant. Oh well...I signed up for that job!

Before I get started about this lovely Zoya color, I have to share the latest excitement with you guys - my husband and I had been taking care of a cat for the last two weeks (and one day, to be exact) - her name is Chanel and she is black and white and soooo soft and adorable! Our apartment complex found her and asked if we could watch her, since they knew that I had found a cat a few months ago and reunited it with the owner. I was really getting attached to her, and had tried calling the owner many times, because she had a collar on with a phone number and nametag - that's how we knew she was called Chanel. Unfortunately I only ever got voicemail, so after two weeks I had kind of given up. But no...today there was TONS of signs up in my apartment complex with a picture of her and her name and I was like noooooo!!! I had started to think maybe she was ours to keep! So sad...we called them and gave her back. The owner was happy to have her back, though I would have appreciated some tears of happiness since I cried with sadness letting her go! The $50 reward helped...and when my husband FINALLY caved and said we could pick out a cat (he's been anti-cat since before we got married in May) that really helped! I'll be sure to post a picture of our cat whenever we pick one out!

On to the Zoya goodness!

It's  Zoya Caitlin! A lovely dusty periwinkle cream!

In artificial light. 2 coats is plenty to achieve opacity with this gorgeous shade. It applies like a dream!

But of course I love sparkle, but I didn't want to do anything too flashy, so I thought I'd add a coat of Sinful Colors Pearl Harbor. Sadly it got a little lost in Caitlin, but that's ok.

You can see it a little teeny bit! It was a little more obvious in person.

Well I am currently waiting for my two free Zoya colors to arrive - I'm hoping they'll be here by Tuesday or so! I picked Sooki, the gorgeous bright red, and Erika, a nice pretty pink with golden shimmer! I got my Mom Sooki for Christmas so I already know how gorgeous it is (I totally stole it so I could use it for a mani! But don't worry...I gave it back!) but I think Erika looks beautiful based on the swatch pics I've seen so I can't wait to try it!

Have a wonderful start to your week! :)

My First GOSH!

Hey guys! I'm back, yay! Husband moved the camera uploading cord and I couldn't find it ^.^ BUT obviously I found it (yay!) so here is a photo of a mani I wore last week! This week I'll also try and post a very belated picture of my Christmas mani! That one I only snagged a pic of on my phone, so I'll upload it soon :)

Anyways, this manicure is a GOSH polish that I got in my swap I did with Polish Sis! It is called Gasoline, and reminds me a bit of OPI Grape...Set...Match! only with more blue shimmer. I haven't seen them side by side though (I do have both) so I can't be sure just how similar they are! At any rate this is my first and only GOSH so I am happy to have it :)

Here I am standing in my kitchen. These purple polishes always seem to photograph more blue than they really are. It is truly purple and not blue! And it has the prettiest shimmery quality to it, with a hint of pink shimmer but mostly blueish shimmer!

And on my ring finger I did an a coat of China Glaze - White Cap. I just love that golden shimmery goodness! It looks so gorgeous on top of anything! I was hoping it would stand out a bit more over the purple but...oh well! I think the blue flash is really apparent in this photo.

Here is the most color accurate, I'd say, a nice plummy hue. Obviously it's with flash! You can really see the blue flash here, but sadly the White Cap on my ring finger gets a bit lost. Oh well. I find myself leaning towards lighter colors for my manicures, or if I don't do a lighter color, I don't like to wear it for as long, but this was a nice change of pace!

Thank you again Inge for picking this lovely GOSH color for me!! :)

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!

Polish Galore Guest Post!

Hey y'all! Today I have a special treat for us, it's a guest post by Krystal from PolishGalore! A while back she and I did a little polish trade in which she sent me one of the OPI Serena Williams sets (with Spark de Triomphe and White Shatter) and so I decided to make her a franken as a thank you! She told me she loves purple, and sparkle, so I went to work! Without further ado....
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Thank you Amy, for letting me be a guest writer on your blog!  Today I have your own custom creation, named for me by you – Krystal.  Krystal is a squishy purple almost jelly with multicolored and multisized glitter – kind of like a deborah lippmann Happy Birthday or Forget You but in a purple base!  Amy made this knowing my love of purple and glitter.  I used a base coat of Zoya Get Even and 3 coats of Krystal.  I did not use a top coat (didn’t need one for the shine!).

As you can see in the sun, the glitter is suspended within the layers of purple, so while it’s not totally in your face, it’s also not hidden by any means.  The glitter refused to focus for the camera, but you can at least see it nicely in the bottle!

In the shade, the base color appears a bit darker, but it’s just the absence of sun.  This purple is not as blue as China Glaze Grape Pop, but I feel it’s in the same family. (FYI Note from Amy: The purple I used it Ulta - Celebutante!)

This is probably my favorite shot of this polish – you can see how some of the glitter is sandwiched into the base color and how others is bright on top.  The formula on this was super smooth and removal was not an issue, even with the glitter.

Finally indoors with the flash – again you can see how nice the polish wears.  If you’d want more glitter, you’d just need to make sure your brush was loaded a bit more.  I may need to add a few ballz to the polish to help shake it up, but otherwise I’m in love with the custom franken!

Thanks again for having me!  For more PolishGalore, you can follow me on Twitter, like me on Facebook,or just visit the blog!

Butter London - No More Waity Katie!

Hey y'all! I have a lovely Butter London polish to show you today, it's one they came out inspired by everyone's favorite glamorous princess Kate Middleton - it's called No More Waity Katie!

Also, hello to my new followers! We are making some more progress towards our 50 Follower goal! I can't wait to start the giveaway! I'll post some pictures of the prizes at some point this week - 12 more people to go! Tell your friends! :D

Let's start with a nice pretty bottle shot :)

As you can see this is a nice squishy perwinkle-grey color packed with glitter.

The glitter is fairly subdued, although there is a lot of it. It's not super sparkly, which I don't love. However, it went on nicely and I think it would be a nice office appropriate color despite it's sparkle.

I really love this color, it kind of reminds me of a rainy, cloudy day. I love a good stormy sky so I particularly like this :)

What do you guys think of this nice grayish-purple color? Happy Monday!

Wet n Wild - Night Prowl!

Here is a polish I picked up recently at Walmart for 94 cents! - it's Wet n Wild Wild Shine nail color in Night Prowl!

A quick swatch instantly reminded me of Deborah Lippmann's Bad Romance. If you are turned off by Lippmann's high prices (usually around 18-23 at Nordstrom or online) and don't mind a little bit of a difference, this might be a nice alternative for you! This has the same blackened base and purple glitter, but unlike Bad Romance, this is just one size of purple glitter, no hexagonal glitters here. However, this was 94 cents so....ya know :)

In this photo, I did a base of Petites Night, which is just a regular black polish. However, it's only a dollar and is practically opaque in one coat! I find the Petites nail colors to be a great value, usually look flawless in two coats and come in a nice variety of colors! Anyways, I then topped it with two coats of Night Prowl, and then a Wet n Wild topcoat. It's not as nice as Seche Vite but I've reached that awkward point in the bottle where it's really difficult to get any more out, yet it's still like a good third full. Hm...waste of my money.

Anyways....on to the pics!

And for comparison, here's a pic of Deborah Lippmann 'Bad Romance'! Very similar, no? Same black base, purple glitters, just has some nice added hexagonal glitters! To save about $17...I think I'd be fine with this Wet n Wild almost dupe :)

What do you guys think?

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!

Grape Shimmer - Franken!

Hi everyone! I'm finally back for an update, yay! I have been sooo busy lately, my nails have been naked more than painted but...oh well. I recently indulged in a pedicure, since a salon just opened next to the Starbucks I work at! They were doing 40% off and it was sooo luxurious! But anyways, I'll post a couple pics of that in a later entry so I won't spoil anything else :)

On to the good stuff!

Here is my fifth Franken, I call it Grape Shimmer! It is a mixture of OPI Funky Dunkey (Zoya Mira dupe...I prefer Mira's formula but I thought I'd rather use up Funky Dunkey instead of Mira if it turned out badly haha!) plus a little clear polish, mixed with Sally Hansen HD nail color in DVD. You may remember that Zoya Mira and Sally Hansen DVD made up one of my favorite manicures ever - so I thought I'd try and create something similar, a nice purple with the purple/blue shimmer of DVD mixed in. Well, the shimmer is a little more subtle than I'd like, but that's ok! It's a nice alternative to layering the two polishes, but gives you a similar look!

Here are some photos!

Sorry these two are rotated funky! I didn't realize til I uploaded it to Blogger and now can't figure out how to rotate them, haha! Anyways...You can't see the shimmer too much on the nail but it shows up nicely in the bottle! In person the shimmer is visible but not overly so.

These photos are all three coats of Grape Shimmer plus Zoya Armor topcoat.

Next I added China Glaze silver crackle! It seemed to work a little better than OPI Silver Shatter for me, but I'm just happy to have a shatter bottle that isn't all funky and dried up at the top! I topped this with two coats of Zoya Armor top coat.

And because I can't resist sparkle, I added a couple coats of China Glaze Fairy Dust on top of all that!! It looked very sparkly in the sunlight :)

What do you think?

Purple & Gold

A few weeks ago, I picked up OPI's Planks a Lot, a gorgeous light purple creme color. It is such a pretty color! You may have figured out by now that purple is my favorite color, and I had been looking for a light purple for a while, since I don't have one in my stash. I bought my flower girl at my wedding Zoya Malia, and it was so cute, she wore it on her fingers and toes! Our wedding color was purple so it fit right in but was girly and cute for her too! OK anyways....I liked Zoya Malia but didn't want to order from online since it can be so expensive if you're just getting one polish. Soooo when I saw Planks a Lot I was like "WANT!"

I decided I needed a little something to jazz up my manicure (I now see why people like stamping, it seems like a nice way to jazz up a manicure and you can do as much or as little as you want. Maybe I'll get into it someday!) so I decided to do an accent finger of one of my other new acquisitions and loves, Spark de Triomphe! I had a brain fart and painted all my nails with Planks a Lot before I realized I could have left my ring finger bare and just done SDT over it, haha, so you can see a little purple underneath it. Oh well!

(Sorry, stupid iPhone pic again)

It was a nice girly mani! I liked it a lot :) What do you think?

Davis Cup Nails!

Hi everyone!

So I mentioned in my last post that the husband and I were driving down to Austin (from Dallas) to go to the Davis Cup tennis, which was USA vs Spain, a semifinal round! Spain won, though :( I guess my Serena Williams nails didn't help :(

In keeping with the tennis theme of the weekend, I decided to break out my new Serena Williams set - I got Servin Up Sparkle paired with Grape Set Match! Grape Set Match is a really nice shimmery purple that has some pink and blue flashes. I didn't really buy the set for the purple, though, we'll just say that. I REALLY wanted Servin Up Sparkle! It is a gorgeous holographic glitter that has some little glitter pieces but also some hexagonal bigger pieces. They all flash holographic and it's pretty when indoors but outside in the sun it's like BAM!!! Sparkle everywhere! :) I definitely recommend enlarging these - they actually turned out pretty well for iPhone pics!

Inside the arena! I think it looks kind of like stars in the sky at night!

and....SPARKLE! :)

What do you guys think?

Planks a Lot :)

Here's a pic of my two newest polishes - OPI Planks a Lot from the Pirates of the Caribbean collection, topped with OPI silver shatter, which I had a beast of a time finding! I went into Ulta one day and they had like 20 of these, and I decided, no, I don't need that. Then I saw some pretty pics and decided I did want it! I tried like 3 different Ulta's and none of them had it, and I called them every week to see if they got it in. FINALLY one store had it in, so I went right in and bought it along with Planks a Lot, a gorgeous lavender shade!

Planks a Lot is really pretty, and seems kind of similar to Zoya's Malia. I have been wanting a pretty light shade of lavender for a while, since I only have darker shades of purple in my stash, and Planks a Lot definitely kills my lemming for a nice lilac!

This was my first time using Silver Shatter, and I think I'll definitely get better at getting it to crackle as I continue to use it! It looks really pretty over Planks a Lot, but I think it would look nicer when put over a much darker color, so you can really see the color difference!

Here you go, a nice sunshine picture! (Well, at least me standing next to the window, hence the lines behind my hand haha!)

Zoya Kieko!

Not too much to say about this one, because I thought it was just ok. I really loved the Coral manicure I did before this one so the bar was set a little high, haha! I also prefer Mira to Kieko, which is funny because when I was debating on my colors to order from Zoya, I actually was like "I NEED KIEKO!" at first, and only decided to add Mira at the last minute! And now Mira is my fave :)

ANYWAYS.....here is Kieko! She photographs more like Mira, actually! In real life Kieko is a little more pinky purple, still a very pretty color, and much lighter than Mira. Of course I did my usual top coat of Seche Vite, but it looks a little dirty here, haha! Whoopsy :)

Two coats of Zoya perfection! I love their formulas :)

Zoya Mira!

I had an absolutely ridiculous time trying to decide which of my new Zoya colors to use first! My indecision was absolutely pathetic, haha! I even had a deadline - my fiance was on his way to pick me up, that just made it worse! I hurriedly took off my silver tips mani and threw some of each color on each finger on one hand.....which didn't help at all. My best friend said "Pink! The answer is always pink!" when I texted her to see her opinion, but in the end, I went with my favorite color, purple, and Mira!

Mira looks gorgeous, a true dark (but not too dark) purple, the color I think of when I hear the word grape! Unfortunately it photographs some weird blue-ish color, but here's a picture anyways!

See what I mean about the blue-ishness? It doesn't look blue at all, it is my new favorite grape color :)

So then I thought to myself, hmmm, I wonder how Sally Hansen HD color in DVD would look over this? I bought that bottle about a month ago when it lured me in at a Target display. It is this gorgeous sparklyness that appears either blue or purple, depending how it catches the light. Now, I also do gymnastics (well, not right now thanks to the dang ACL reconstruction.....which was actually thanks to gymnastics. It's a vicious cycle!) and before I hurt myself I had JUST ordered a new leotard which is this great fabric that is purple with blue sparkles over it - JUST LIKE THIS NAIL POLISH! I put a picture of the leo at the bottom for reference!! So you can see why I bought DVD, right?! Anyways, when I put DVD on my fingers, it was so translucent, I was kind of sad. 3 coats made a beautiful purply blueness on my finger, but I thought, Oh well...it will make a good layering color. Enter Mira, and behold:

I love it! You mainly get the blue sparkles, as the purple is hard to capture on camera, but you can kind of see it at the very top of the bottle and about the top third of each nail shows a little purple. I love it! Mira is the perfect backdrop for DVD! :)

And of course, Revlon basecoat, and Seche Vite topcoat perfect the look!

And here's my beautiful new leotard, which I have no idea when I will get to wear. Boohoo :(

Doesn't it match DVD perfectly?!