Pink Wednesday - February 29 (Vintage Mani)

On Sunday I posted a "vintage" mani for the 52 week challenge. Little did I know there was an actual vintage mani. I went ahead and posted my vintage mani still because I liked it but felt that I cheated because I didn't do the actual vintage mani. So for today's Pink Wednesday I am wearing OPI Sparrow Me the Drama in a vintage manicure. Let me tell you, I do not like it. At all. I don't know if it was my technique (half moon & tape) or just the fact that it looks odd but it just does not look right to me.


Jenna posted a link to an article about vintage manicures. Apparently for a vintage manicure, "the nails are supposed to be in an almond shape and the reason why the moons & tips are left unpainted is because it allowed the manicure to last longer. Thank goodness for Helena Rubeinstein, who was the advocate for painting the entire nail. (Lena, 2010)"

Here's how my vintage manicure without the almond shape nail turned out. I edited a picture to give it a cleaner look and even still, I don't like it. This will be coming off immediately.

Click to enlarge both pictures.

 

Spring Trend 2012

After viewing Glam Morena's Tangy Tangerine tutorial, I wanted to be sure I had some tangerine beauty products in my collection. I'm still scoping out WnW Mega last lip color in Purty Persimmon and 24 Carrot Gold as well as the perfect tangerine nail polish but until then I have to make do with what I have already. So I pulled out my orangey lip colors and swatched them to share. I may have a FOTD to share later.

Sunlight from window

overhead light

Check out the other colors on trend for Spring 2012 Do you want or need to add any of these colors to your closest or stash?

Twinsie Tuesday: Franken

I was so excited to be asked by Amanda of Amandalandish to be apart of Twinsie Tuesday. I literally had a huge smile on my face as I replied back to her email. It is an honor to be apart of a group with these wonderful ladies and fellow nail polish lovers.

My Frankens

  This week's theme is a franken. I've played around with a few frankens but I don't think I have mastered the true art of frankening. It was hard to choose a franken to feature for today's post. After much thought I decided to spice up light pink polish that I had previously added purple glitter to. I added SC Frenzy, SH Strobe Light and Rockstar Pink, Milani Gems and WnW Party of Five Glitters. This franken has small and large glitters and is not at all lumpy.

Although I wasn't trying to it turns out the end result was similar to Nory's Princess Abby but a tad lighter. I hope you don't mind Nory.

 Be sure to check out the other bloggers participating in Twinsie Tuesday!

Amanda at Amandalandish

Anna at Going to the Showing

Anne at Grape Fizz Nails

Ashley at Art Evolve

Brandi at The Collegiate Nail

 

Chelsea at Nailed Blog

ChiChi at I'm Just Me...ChiChi

Jenn at All That is Gorgeous...

Jenna at I'm Still Thinking...

Katherine at Haul of Fame

Marisa at Polish Obsession

Meredith at Polish and Charms

Nory at Fierce Makeup and Nails

Rachel at Top Coat It

Sarah at See Sarah Swatch

Petites: Island Smoothie + Guest Appearance!

Today I have a polish that I have featured on my blog before and even then I wasn't very impressed with it.  That polish is Petites Island Smoothie. I picked this polish up at a Wal-Mart in Florida in 2010. I really can't remember using it that much. The reason being is I was so disappointed with it. In the bottle it's a beautiful pearly pink color but on the nail pink does NOT show up. I'm guessing the finish is somewhat of a metallic because it leaves behind streak lines until it is dry. For me, this polish does not stand well on it's own and I will probably only be using it to layer or as an "underwear" for other polishes.

Now I'm sure there is a question about who the guest appearance is...I'd like to introduce my mother-in-law's nails.

My "mil" wanted something simple and natural. I picked out several of my neutral colors and she ended up choosing China Glaze Camisole. Camisole is a sheer peachy brown with subtle shimmer. I applied two coats to mil's nails. On the accent nail, I used WnW French White Creme with a stamper to stamp on the rose. I then topped all nails with Essie Luxeffects Pearl Perfection. She didn't want anything to out there this time but said next time, we can go for something more. I used flash in the picture below so the details can be better seen.

All products used for my mother-in-law's manicure.

52 Week Challenge - Week 9 - Vintage Mani

Let me start off by saying that I did not follow the "rules" for this week's challenge. Even with the power of Google being at my fingertips, I did not think that there was an actual vintage manicure trend to follow. That being said, I present my "vintage" mani...

I seriously racked my brain all week trying to come up with an idea that was vintage that I could convey on my nails. So when I think vintage, I think something old, maybe could be found at a thrift store or something handed down. Somehow, the original Mickey Mouse Club came to mind and that's what I went with.

After doing a little bit of research, I found out that the original Mickey Mouse Club debuted on October 3, 1955. So 1955 is on my thumb and 3 Mickey heads are on my pinky. On my index finger, I wrote my name because the original mouseketeers had their names on the front of their shirts. On my middle finger, is an "inspired" Mickey Mouse Club logo. And on my ring finger, is the ever famous Mickey ears hat. The base color didn't turn out how I wanted but that's okay.

While this isn't the expected "vintage" mani, I really liked how it turned out. Maybe later this week I'll take a second shot at the actual vintage mani.

Check out some of the other bloggers for real vintage manis for this week's challenge!

•  Addicted 2 Nails
•  Asa Nisi Masa Nail Spot
• Beauty Obsessed
•  Charlotte's Nails
•  Emerald Sparked
•  Fun With My Nail Polish
• Glitter Obsession
•  Gypsy's Glitter
•  Hurr Did, Nails Did
• Isabella's World
•  I'm still thinking... 
•  Lauriestrodes Fun With Nails
•  Lissa's Nail Blog
•  Meisie's Nails
•  Nail Art by Joy Ella
•  Nails By Carol
•  NailsN'cupcakes
•  No More Nail Biting
•  Nothing But Nail Polish
•  Oje Sihirbazi (Wizard of Polish)
•  Olivia Writes
•  omgnoodles
•  Only Always Soccermom
•  Operation: Nail It!
•  polish, polish, polish
• Polished & Not Quite Put Together
• Polished Criminails
• Prncess Sarah 02
• Square Polish
• The Dragon Lady
• Tres Chic Nails
•  

Mermaid-like Nails

When I finish a manicure, I usually show Loro or his mom first. Last night, I showed my "mother-in-law" my current nails, she said "oh it kinda looks like a mermaid". If you follow me on twitter, you saw my sneak peek and spelling flub (sneak "peak" - lol, I guess I was thinking in rhymes). If not, first, let's take a look at my base color.

For my base color, I used China Glaze Shower Together. This color is a pretty cerulean blue. I applied it over white and a base coat to try to avoid smurf nails when I take it off. I think because the white I used was streaky, it made the application of ST seem streaky but it smooths out at the end. 

Brand: China Glaze
Line: Ecollection 2008 (source)
Color Name: Shower Together
Finish: Cream
Number of Coats: 2
Top Coat: no

Then this is where this manicure gets fun! Next I added Sinful Colors Green Ocean. (Another polish I picked up on Thursday when I wasn't supposed to be buying polish. I just couldn't pass this one up!) From what I can see, this polish is similar to Zoya Opal. I applied it over blue for now because I know, I'll be going crazy with the greens next month. On my accent nail, I used 2 coats of Spoiled Jewelry Heist over Green Ocean.

Oh! And guess what?! My nails are finally long enough to wrap my tips. I don't remember where I first heard of "wrapping tips" but All Lacquered Up has a great post explaining it. I wanted to try this for the longest time (well since the start of my active blogging) but my nails never stayed long enough and if I tried to wrap, I'd just end up painting my fingertips. Now my nails are of decent length...

Spoiled Glitters

I honestly did not intend on buying anymore nail polish until my next check. I failed.

Last night, I went to CVS with Loro. I was headed to the Easter candy to look for Butterfinger Eggs and sadly they didn't have them. But on my way to the candy section I saw that the Spoiled display was restocked. In my head, I was thinking "oh this is bad". Luckily they didn't have all the glitters, so I was able to restrain myself. I did end up picking up two, Jewelry Heist and Cougar Attack.

Jewelry Heist was so pretty in the bottle, I thought it looked a little similar to OPI Teenage Dream and SH Strobe Light but had to have it regardless. I'm glad I did because they are not very similar at all. JH was awful to apply. The glitters stayed stuck in the brush, I didn't remember having this much trouble applying Shuffle the Deck. JH is large pink and gold glitters with smaller round gold glitters and small square holo glitters. In the pictures below, I applied JH just over a base coat.

 Brand: Spoiled
Color Name/Number: Jewelry Heist S068
Finish: glitter
Number of Coats: 3
Top Coat: no

 Cougar Attack is one of the polishes I wanted from the WnW On the Prowl collection. So when I saw it, I grabbed it. After seeing the original pictures of WnW Cougar Attack and Spoiled's version, I would say the two are basically the same. They should be anyways, since Spoiled is made by Wet n Wild. Oh and guess what?! Apparently Cougar Attack is similar to Deborah Lippmann Superstar, Vampy Varnish has a post comparing the two. CA is a brown jelly base with coppery orange glitters. This was easier to apply than JH.

 Brand: Spoiled
Color Name/Number: Cougar Attack S021
Finish: glitter
Number of Coats: 2
Top Coat: no

Claire's Precious Metals

Last Saturday when I went to Claire's to pick up Candy Shop, I also got a boxed set of nail polish. It was hard for me to decide and Loro helped me narrow it down. I ended up getting Precious Metals. I was so excited to use them but since I had a corset mani on my left hand (and there was no way my corset mani would look decent on my right hand), I decided to do a quick swatch on my right hand over 3 coats of NYC Little Italy.

Sadly, these polishes are unnamed. I only used 1 coat of each glitter polish on each nail. All of the glitters are one size in a clear base. Starting with my pinky, is the lavender and dark purple glitter. Then we have a blue and magenta glitters. Next is the glitters that I used on my accent nail for my Mardi Gras NOTD, these are magenta, green and teal. The glitter polish that drew my attention to this box is black and silver holo glitters and finishing up on my thumb is holo glitters!!

The only thing I don't like about these polish is that the odor is SO strong, like white out and old school permanent markers strong. So besides  the odor, I like these glitters. One coat applies nicely and I didn't have to place the glitters. I think I will get a lot of use out of these glitters, so there will be more posts to come. Until then check out this post I found by Laura at Nails on Nails on Nails. She has these glitters over black with 2 coats.

Pink Wednesday - February 22

Left over Mardi Gras at the Cabana

 Hey bonitas! Today's Pink Wednesday is featuring Sinful Colors Cabana with my accent nail from my Mardi Gras Mani. I liked my accent nail too much to take it off after one day, so it got recycled. Cabana is a dark pinky-red. It went on so smooth and was opaque after only 1 coat but I used 2 coats. I then topped Cabana with my new Essie Luxeffects Pure Pearlfection  (which I basically bought from CVS for about $2.75 because of my $5.00 CVS rewards - score!).

What's on your nails for Pink Wednesday?

Mardi Gras NOTD

 I wish I was eating King Cake today because well...it's just so yummy. Instead I have a fun festive NOTD to share. I love how the accent nail turned out but I wasn't crazy enough (this time) to do that much glitter on all my nails.