NPC: Glow In The Dark

Hi everyone!  Sorry for the absence.  My finals are over now!  Now I have a few days off, then clinical rotations start Monday!  I'm excited, but I do kind of wish I had a little more time in between to relax.  Oh, well, I guess I'll never get a break in the "real world"!

Here is my NPC from last Friday, "Glow In The Dark":

I started with a base of Elevation's "El Cap" and covered a couple accent nails with Ozotic 902.

 "El Cap" is a beautiful bluish purple with pinky-purple shimmer.  Unfortunately, the original formula is not available anymore.  There are two versions of "El Cap II", each more blue than the last.  They are great too, of course, but I loooove the original.  Ozotic 902 is a purple shimmer with a bit of blue duochrome effect.  This is part of the "Sugar" collection, and I love them all.  They look great no matter what you put them over.

For the glow in the dark effect I added Contrary Polish "West Bottoms".  This adds just the smallest amount of green with some glass fleck shimmer.

Unfortunately, I couldn't get it to show up in the dark!  I don't know if I needed more coats or what, but here is the best I could do.  You can see the bottle glowing at least!

This next picture is in the dark with flash, which okay, doesn't show off the GITD effect, but I really liked the way it turned out!

Thanks for reading!

An InLinkz Link-up

Had to Have It, Still Haven't Worn It.

Hi everyone!  Okay, so I lied last night.  I didn't get my second post up.  We went out to dinner with my parents and I was so tired when we got home that I went straight to bed!  I'm exhausted today too even though I got plenty of sleep last night.  I'm not sure what's going on, but I hope it's just allergies so that when I go to the allergist on Monday we can get it sorted out!

So yesterday's NPC prompt was "Had to Have It, Still Haven't Worn It".  When I saw that, I immediately thought of the first Zoya Pixie Dust collection from last spring.  This collection came out shortly after I had a bad experience with Zoya's customer service, so even though they were available on the website, I didn't want to order them from there and risk something going wrong with my shipment.  So instead I called Ulta over and over again asking if they had the Pixie Dusts in stock yet! When they finally did, I went by and picked up most of the collection and the girl at the checkout asked if I had been the one calling about them!  Well, after wanting them so badly and having them for over a year, I've only worn one of them.  So here's Zoya "Nyx", which I had to have, but never wore:

"Nyx" is a textured grey-blue base with tons of silver shimmer.  This is two coats.  While there's a little bit of VNL in my pictures, it's not visible in real life.

I love how this sparkles and shines in the sun!

Thanks for reading!

An InLinkz Link-up

NPC Day 7: Drugstore

Hey girls!  Not too much to say tonight; I am tired.  My allergies have started acting up, so I think that might be why.

Anyway, today's NPC prompt is "Drugstore".  I tried three different manis before I did one I liked enough to share.  So here is a new polish from Revlon, "Mayan Riviera":

"Mayan Riviera" is from the brand-new Haute Rocks Pebbled Texture collection.  I hadn't heard of these, but I saw a display at Walgreens and loooved the glitter, so I picked up a few.

"Mayan Riviera" is a milky-white base with green, gold, pink, blue, and silver glitter.  There's a little bit of everything in there!  This is 2-3 coats.  The glitter payoff was pretty great, but a few nails had some bald spots after two coats, so I added a third.

This is meant to be a textured polish, but I added a coat of Nail Pattern Boldness "Glitter Food" to smooth it out, and then sealed it all with Seche Vite.

 Bottle shot to see all the glittery goodness!

I'm so excited to see a drugstore brand branching out a bit more into fun glitters and textures!

Thanks for reading!

An InLinkz Link-up

NPC Day 5: Jelly

Hi Girls! Hope you're having a good week!

Today's NPC prompt calls for a jelly. I originally had a totally different manicure ready to show you, but I didn't really like how it photographed. When I put this on, I realized it counted as a jelly too! Here is Contrary Polish "Make Believe Reality":

"Make Believe Reality" is a minty translucent jelly with lilac microshimmer.  Unfortunately, the shimmer didn't come out to play in my pictures, but it's beautiful in person!

"Make Believe Reality" is from the new Love Lyrics Redux collection, and can be found at llarowe.com.

Check out the other bloggers in this challenge below!

An InLinkz Link-up

piCture pOlish "Wisteria"

Hi ladies!  How has your weekend been?  I'm off work today and tomorrow, so I have some time to relax!  I do have a test on Monday that I should be studying for though...Shhhh!

Today I have for you a truly beautiful purple cream, piCture pOlish "Wisteria":

This post is a little picture heavy since I love this mani so much, so I'm going to put the rest under the jump!

Nail Art: Chevrons

Hey guys!  Sorry I didn't get my St. Patrick's nails up yesterday :(  I've been taking this medicine the past few days that completely wipes me out.  I went to bed at 11:00 Sunday night and slept til 9:00 yesterday morning.  Then I ate breakfast and laid back down on the couch for an hour!  And after that I was still dragging all day at work, and when I came home after!  I was just didn't have the energy to take and edit pictures last night.  Luckily, this medicine is just an as-needed thing, so I'm going to stop taking it for now and go see my doctor again if I need something else.

Anyway, I went to bed early last night and got a good, restful night of sleep, and then I got so much done today!  I did my taxes finally this morning (got a nice big federal and state refund, whoohoo!) and then I cleaned and organized my office here at home.  I still had boxes to unpack from when we moved in last May!  I got everything sorted, and now you can see the floor!

Okay, sorry for all the talking, those were just two things on my Spring Break To-Do list, and I'm glad I got them done!

For today's manicure, I used some nail vinyls I got from Nail Vinyls on Storenvy.  I've used striping tape before, and I figured this would be pretty similar, but it turns out they're a little different!

 Nail vinyls are more substantial and way stickier than striping tape.  At first they would pull up the polish underneath when I tried to reposition them.  So I stuck the vinyl to my hand a few times to try to make it less sticky, but then it wouldn't still to my nail at all!  After some finagling I got it to work though!

This is one coat of RBL "Pause" over two coats of Butter London "Fishwife".   It was really hard to get accurate pictures of "Pause".  My camera kept wanting to make it blue.  For some reason, darker lighting (like the two above photos) worked better.  "Pause" is a grape purple shimmer, and "Fishwife" is a weak minty holo.

I'm glad I bought these vinyls; I'm already thinking of my next mani with them!  Have you guys tried vinyls?  Do you have any tips?

Thanks for reading!

Alter Ego "Beach Comber"

Hi girlies!

I'm so glad this week is halfway over!  My test today wasn't too bad, and we have a quiz tomorrow, but I think it'll be okay too.  I got some exciting news today!  I'm participating in a market research study about cat food, where the company gives me a bag of food to feed to my cat for a month and record any changes in his behavior, health etc.  It's been a week so far, and Mr. Tumnus really like this brand!  It's one that I haven't bought before cause it's a little too expensive.  Anyway, there are different "levels" of the study, and we got a call today that someone from the company is going to come out to our house to see how Tumnus does around strangers, and if all goes well, we'll be video taped next week!  I haven't asked what exactly they're taping for, but Ben is convinced it's for a commercial.  That would be awesome!!  My kitty could be a star!

Anyway, on to the polish!

Alter Ego Nail Enamel is a new brand to me.  I had never heard of it before picking it off of Gosia's polish wall, but I love aquas like this, so I had to give it a try!
Here is "Beach Comber":

"Beach Comber" is a beautiful aqua with a scattered holographic shimmer.  It dried to a satin-matte finish, but I really wanted the shimmer to come out, so I added a coat of Seche Vite.

Beautiful shimmer!!  The formula on this was a little sheer-it took 3 coats for full opacity- but it flowed wonderfully.  Hardy any clean-up needed!

I know I've said on here before that my favorite color combination is aqua and purple, so I decided to add some stamping with Julep "Morgan" and MoYou London Suki plate 06.

Alter Ego Nail Enamel can be found on Etsy and Storenvy.  She has some really awesome colors AND a "Three Spree" where you can pick any three full-size colors for $19.99!  I'll definitely have to take advantage of that once my no-buy is over!

And now, so you can say you knew him before he became famous, is the star-to-be!

This is his "Treats?" face :)

Thanks for reading!

piCture pOlish "Orbit"

Hi girls! 

Sorry for the lack of posts this past week.  The weather was kind of blah, which made me feel kind of blah, and then I had a test to study for, so I didn't have any time. But now my test is over, it's 60 degrees outside, and it was sunny this morning at least!

Unfortunately the sun didn't stick around for me to get these pictures, but the shimmer in "Orbit" is still AMAAAAAZINNNNGGG!!!

This first picture is a little brighter blue than in real life, but these next three are color-accurate:

 

"Orbit" is a deep blue and silver shimmer.  The silver didn't really come out in my pictures, but it is stunning in real life!!

I used two coats of "Orbit" here, but if my coats were thicker, one might have been enough.  This also dries a little gritty, so I used one coat of Nail Pattern Boldness Glitter Food on top, followed by my regular Seche Vite.  Glitter Food is a thick, dense top coat that is good to use over textured glitters to get them nice and sooth.  It does dry to a matte finish though, so I always use a good top coat on top of it!

"Orbit" is another polish that I borrowed from Gosia, and it immediately went on my wishlist! 
piCture pOlish can be found at llarowe.com, as can Nail Pattern Boldness.