Jade Holografico "Deja Vu"

Hi girls!

How was your weekend?  I'm going out after work tonight to get sushi with some friends!  I'm so excited; it's been a long time since I've had good sushi!

Today I have another practice kitty manicure:

This is Jade Holographico "Deja Vu".  When I pulled out all my red holos, I noticed this one and KBShimmer "Whole Lava Lovin'" are very similar, so look for a comparison on that soon!  This top photo is the most color accurate, "Deja Vu" is not quite as maraschino-red as the next two pictures.
 

I added a couple little paw prints on my accent nail with some new dotting tools I got off Amazon.  I'm loving these paw prints!  I think they're super cute :)

Jade is a Brazilian brand that can be found, like almost everything, at Llarowe.com.  These are a bit cheaper than most holos tend to be, and the formula is great!  Could have been a one-coater, but I did a second coat just to deepen the color.  If you're looking to try your first holo, and don't want to spend too much, I definitely recommend Jade!

Thanks for reading!

Colors By Llarowe "Dirty Diana"

Hey girls!  I meant to get this up last night, but then I got caught up in the excitement of having the Purina people over (more on that in a second!), and then Ben and I went to Office Depot later and we ended up being there longer than we planned on.  Some shit went down guys, lol.  Basically the manager wouldn't let us use a coupon from the website even though we were making a LARGE purchase (Ben's re-doing his office).  Whatever, we went home and ordered everything online and the manager missed out on a big sale that probably would have helped him make his plan for the night.

Anyway, the people from Purina came over yesterday to see how Tumnus was around strangers (he's a little shy, but he comes around), to discuss what the video will be about, and to see what the lighting is like in our house.  It turns out the video is for an ad that will be on their website and on their banner ads on other websites!  We'll be celebrities! 

I've been trying to think of ideas for manicures that will be a little eye catching, but not distracting on camera.  I don't even know if my hands will make it on camera, but I want to be prepared!  Here is my first test-mani:

This is Colors By Llarowe "Dirty Diana" with a little kitty tail on my pinkie!  I don't think you can tell it's supposed to be a cat tail though; it just looks like a squiggle :-P

More beautiful pictures after the jump!

Valentine's Mani part 5: WTF Camera!?!

Just a real quick post today because I wanted to post the last of the KBShimmer Valentine's trio, but I could NOT get my camera to capture this color-accurately at all!

Just two, horribly inaccurate photos:

This is Julep "Carrie" with RBL "Mismas" and KBShimmer "U Rock My <3 accent="" nail.="" nbsp="" on="" p="" the="">
Carrie is not the weird putty color it looks here; it's actually a bright bubblegum pink.  I was surprised at how much I liked it, since I'm not usually into "classic" pinks.

Mismas is a darkened purple--it is fairly accurate in these photos.

And lastly, U Rock My <3 a="" and="" black="" different="" glitters="" hearts.="" hex="" hot="" is="" matte="" mix="" of="" p="" pink="" sizes="" star="">
Julep can be found at Julep.com
Rescue Beauty Lounge can be found at RescueBeauty.com
And KBShimmer can be found at KBShimmer.com.  Christy Rose also makes great bath and body products.  I buy one of her bath bombs every time I place a polish order!

Thanks for reading!

Valentine's Mani Part 3: Burnin Love

Oh my God, Oh my God you guys!  (Read in the voice of Elle Woods from Legally Blonde the Musical)

Everyone and their mother has been restocking and putting out new collections in the past couple weeks!  Last week KB Shimmer debuted her V-day trio, piCture pOlish restocked on Llarowe on Tuesday, and then Colors by Llarowe restocked on Thursday, and then Elevation restocked and launched her new Patagonia collection yesterday!  Oh, and OPI's new Brazil collection came out.  I was going to hold off on that until I saw the mini CopacaBabies set at Ulta, and it happened to include all the colors I wanted to try from the collection.  I'm excited for all the fun nail mail coming my way, but my bank account is not happy!

Here is one of the polishes from KB Shimmer's new trio, "Whole Lava Lovin'":

"Whole Lava Lovin'" is a red holo with pink undertones.  I'm not normally a huge red polish fan (I know-blasphemy!), but the holo and the pink undertones make this extra special. 

I added on some hearts with Rescue Beauty "Aqua Lily" and Julep "Morgan"

The hearts were totally fast and easy.  You just make two dots next to each other (you can use a toothpick or bobby pin to make dots if you don't have a dotting tool), and then sort of drag the polish down and together into a point. 

"Whole Lava Lovin'" was super-easy to apply and covered completely in two nice coats.  My next mani features another polish from the KB Shimmer trio, so be on the lookout for that!

Valentine's Mani Part 2: All You Need is Love

And by Love I mean Julep's "Love" that went out to all subscribers this month!

 "Love" is a super-shimmery gold with pink undertones and loads of red microglitter.  It almost has a gold to pink duochrome effect.  I tried to catch the pink flash in the next couple pictures:

 

To add to the Valentine's-y-ness, I added a pink heart rhinestone from a pack from Sally Beauty.  Rhinestones are totally easy to use.  You just place them on your nail while your polish is still wet, let it dry for a couple minutes, then seal it on with a thick coat of top coat!

  I love "Love" so much!  I hope Julep puts out more colors with this finish.  The formula was a little thick though.  I didn't have any problems with application, but I might add a bit of thinner next time.

Julep can be found at Julep.com.  Julep's Maven program is a boutique nail polish subscription box.  I'll let you read more about it here.  If you want to become Maven, you can sign up through my link and use the code "FREEBOX" to get your first box free!

Elevation Polish "Darkest Storm"

Hi girls!

Has anyone else been having a super-lazy day today?  I've actually somehow managed to get quite a bit done, but I feel like I've just been sitting on the couch all day!  And I certainly don't feel like getting up anytime soon!

Today's post is a couple of new (to me) Elevation Polishes:

 

This is Elevation "Darkest Storm" with "Plumeria" as an accent nail.

 Darkest storm is a dark blue holo, and Plumeria has multicolored and sized circle glitters!  How fun!!

 

 My flash did something weird with the lighting here, but I feel like it shows off the holo nicely!

I tried to take some close-ups of my accent fingers so you could see all the different colors in Plumeria, but my camera was like "nuh-uh", so they're a little blurry.

I love it!  It looks like bubbles!  I did two coats of Darkest Storm, but if you're careful you could probably get away with one.  For Plumeria I used the blob & spread approach--get a bunch of glitter on the brush, blob it on the nail and then spread it around.

Elevation Polish is becoming another favorite for me!  I've yet to try a disappointing color!

Elevation can be found at Llarowe (check out that new site!) and at their Big Cartel Site.

Thanks for reading!

Back to school mani!

As I was leafing through the Jan/Feb issue of Nail It! I decided to do a mani inspired by the cover model for my first day back this semester

They used foil nail strips for the gold, but I decided to do something similar with a new foil finish polish.

I did two coats of OPI Push & Shove from the new Gwen Stefani collection, then put down hole reinforcement stickers to block off the bottom part.  Then I painted a coat of OPI Lincoln Park After Dark for the tips!  Mine's obviously not as crisp as the professional one, but I'm happy with it!

Push & Shove is another foil finish like the Formula X I showed the other day.  It comes with a mini bottle of Lay Down that Base, which is OPI's special base coat.  This is even shinier in person!  I hope OPI comes out with more of these mirror finishes!!

Lincoln Park After Dark is a classic OPI shade from the 2005 Chicago collection.  I know it looks black in these pictures, but it's really a deep dark plum.  You can kind of see where it smudged a bit.  I like colors that are dark, but not quite black like this.  They're sort of softer somehow.

All right guys, I'm back to school tomorrow.  I probably won't be posting as much, and I definitely won't be able to do much nail art, but I'll still try to post at least once a week!

This is my last semester of classes before I start rotations!  I'm excited, but also nervous!!

Above the Curve "Husbands Just Don't Understand"

Today's reward for yesterday's workout is Above the Curve's "Husbands Just Don't Understand"