No H8

Even though I'm not too popular in the nail art community, I still wanted to say something about this. 

I actually just read about this this morning, browsing some of the other blogs that I read daily. And I'm glad that I did. I actually wasn't too aware that things were this bad, that people were 

I'm glad that I had a purple mani in storage too. lol

I used Kleancolor here, it doesn't have a name though, as the base. 

And for the glitter top coat, Icing Written in the Stars.

Bullying is not funny. It is not cool. It is not right. And more importantly, it is not okay. 

Most of us are, thankfully, residents of countries that support tolerance and many of our families have settled in these places simply for that reason. Generations later, it is our responsibility to perpetuate that message of tolerance across our new social platforms, including the internet.

As members of the nail polish blogging community, we all share a love of beauty, color, and lacquer. Other than that, we are remarkably different: from our race to our religion to our hair color...even to our polish application techniques. To marginalize anyone because of those differences is completely unacceptable and today I take a stand against that. I refuse to allow other people's view of "normal" dictate how I behave, believe, and blog. 

In solidarity with a multitude of bloggers linked below, my purple manicure represents my proud commitment to the No H8 movement. Today, November 8, I dedicate my post to ending bullying of any kind and to encouraging diversity and imperfection among our colorful community.

Icing - I Like the Nightlife

I bought this along with the other polish, Forget You, at Icing with their buy 1 get another half off sale. 

I really love this color, it has to be one of my favorite blues in my collection. 

Sorry about my horrible clean up... I had to leave for class. 

I Like the Nightlife - it does seem like a jelly polish to me, but I can't be sure of that. It does have a lighter blue shimmer/glitter in it and a light purple sheen to it when the light hits it directly. This took 2 coats.

The price of this polish is $4.50 but I bought it on sale. 

Forget You!

I stopped by Icing the other day for the first time in forever and picked up a few polishes; they were having a buy 1 get 1 half off sale. 

I got my hands on this polish: Icing Forget You, among others. 

Forget You - a pretty purple with a prominent blue shimmer. I love this colors, but the formula was a little had to work with, which made it not so great. It was kind of runny, but still thick? Is that even possible, this polish managed. It was very streaky and tacky. But the second coat did manage to cover this up. However when the second coat when on it became somewhat congealed, I don't know, kind of gritty almost. It was very difficult to get smooth and even after the finish still felt a little gritty. 2 coats to full opacity, but some needed 3 coats to battle the weird formula. But it is a beautiful color so I'll try this one again. 

$4.50 at Icing, but it was buy one get one 50% off. 

Sally Hansen Posh Plum and Designs

I've had this color for awhile and kept passing it up, but now that I've put it on I can't imagine why! 

Posh Plum - this is a gorgeous purple color that has a little bit of a duochrome to it. In some lights it does look a bit more pink than purple, but mostly it gives off that wonderful bright purple color. Fuschia! This is the name that I was trying to come up with, I think this name aplies to this color quite accurately. It does have a bit of a shimmer to it, but it is very fine. 2 coats got this opague and to the color in the bottle. 

I did do a design over this as well. I did something simple because I wanted the plum to still show through really well. 

I used Sally Hansen's Golden-l for the designs. 

This has got to be my all time favorite gold as well! I have used quite a few, Milani Signature Gold, Essie Good as Gold... Nothing compares! And for the price, it is amazing for detailing, designing, or a while nail!

I got these both from Walgreens: buy 2 for $5 or 1 for $2.99

Navy and Gold

I did another french tip mani today, but with a little bit of a twist. I did do an accent nail, as I usually do, to spice things up a little bit. 

But I took a picture of my right hand, instead of my left this time, because it turned out better. 

Polishes used: 

For the navy - Milani Sail Away

For the gold - Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Golden-I (or Golden-l)

I don't know if the last letter in the name of the Sally Hansen polish is an upper case I or a lower case L.... 

But anyway, the Milani went on great; it was a little thick, but it did only need one coat and dried super quick, so by the time I was done painting my nails and clean-up I was able to put the tapes down and start with the gold. There was no wait time there. 

The gold was a little bit trickier. It was thick as well, and wanted to goop up at the tips of my nails, especially on my ring finger, which is why I decided to take a picture of my right hand. My left hand; the ring finger looks pretty bad. When I put the top coat on, the polish wasn't nearly dry enough because it had gobbed on near the tips and when I put the top coat on, the polish bled a little into the stripes. But it a very vibrant gold, just a little tricky to work with and, as you can see I was able to get it to work for my right hand, once I knew how it was going to work; this had been my very first time using this polish. 

Milani - Approx. $3.27 (Wal-mart)

Sally Hansen - Buy 2 for $5 or 1 for $2.99 (Walgreens)

Pink and Grey Tips

Something a little different, I don't usually go for really light colors, or when I do I offset it by a darker color somewhere.So I figured why not! What do I have to lose? If I don't like it, I can just take it off. 

I used Sally Hansen Wet Cement and OPI Hawaiin Orchid to make this design. 

And let me just say, I've had the OPI for a few years now and I've never used it... I don't really know why but with my experiences today I cannot blame myself. It was very watery and took about six coats to fully cover the grey. I don't know if it was like that when I bought it, I can't remember, but it is a very pretty color in the bottle. But so impossible do deal with. 

Any tips to thicken a nail polish?

OPI - I believe that this one was about $6-7, but as it has been so long that I've bought it I really don't remember. I bought it from a local beauty salon. 

Sally Hansen Xtreme  was Buy 2 for $5 or 1 for $2.99. 

Gold and Red

I finally used my striping tapes! 

But I got lazy and just used the red polish that I posted the other day. (Revlon Saucy) 

The tape was a lot harder to apply than I had origanlly thought. It wasn't very sticky, so obviously it didn't want to stick to my nails, but of course eveything else. When I finally got it onto my nails and in the right place and moved onto start painting some of the tape had started to lift, and I hadn't noticed. So my right hand is pretty messed up, because I had done that one last so the tape had plenty of time to be good and lifted. My left hand is still pretty good except for my pinky finger. Next time I will have to be wary of this. 

But I just put the tapes down in a cross pattern on all my nails, except for my ring fingers; there I just did typical french tips for something different and to show more of the red. 

I was going to do red french tips on the rest of the nails, for more color, but then I decided not to... I liked this look too much. 

The gold polish is Essie Good as Gold.
My firsy Essie polish ever! And I must say that I do like it, worth the price definitely. It went on with only one coat, even over the red and dried very quickly. I half expected it to start crackling with how it went on, because the formula reminded me of my crackle polishes; they go on thick and dry fast.

Essie - $8 (Walgreens, it is cheaper at Wal-mart)

Revlon - Approx. $5 (Walgreens)

Revlon Saucy

I fell in love with a post that I found a bit ago, that I ca't quite remember who made... But it had a Zoya nail polish called Carrie Ann in it. Needless to say that I just had to go out and find this polish. 

Well no one around here sells Zoya, unfortunately, but I think I did find something similar. 

I found: 

Saucy - A bright red with a gold shimmer in it. The polish is less orange in real life and more red, but with the gold in it, the camera wanted to make it go orange I guess... But it is a definite red and not orange at all. This polish did go on very smooth with only two coats. 

This is what Carrie Ann looks like: 

(image pulled off google)

Revlon - Appox. $5 (Walgreens)

Black and Gold

I did this nail polish the other day, finally using the Hunger Games nail polish that I got in the mail a while ago. With it being such a bright sparkle I didn't really know how to use it, whether I wanted to wear it over something or just do a few coats and wear just that. Finally I got over my indecisiveness and just picked it up and put it on. 

I wore China Glaze Electrify over Sinful Colors Black on Black, which is just a creme black and on my ring finger I just wore it plain; 3 coats and the glitter was solid enough to cover up my nail.

Electify definitely has a fiery shine to it that I couldn't really capture in the photos. I do think it would have looked better if I had done a gradient rather than just painted it on, but I'll just have to do that next time. 

Sinful Colors - $1.99 (Walgreens)

China Glaze - Approx. $4.50 (Amazon)

Sponging for the first time

So I tried sponging today, and it didn't come out exactly how I wanted... 

My base coat was Sally Hansen's Wet Cement, which is a light grey and I sponged a gradient of Sally Hansen's Celeb City, which is a silver. 

It didn't quite have the impact that I wanted because they were both so similar in color, so I added Sally Hansen's The Real Teal to give it a little bit more of a pop. So then basically now my nails are just a blue-ish silver..

I really need to work on sponging because I am no where near that good. The colors basically took over my whole nail and you can't even tell it's supposed to be a graient anymore.

Tutorial I used:

Link

I bought the Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear for Buy 2 for $5 or 1 for $2.99, so these were on sale when I bought them from Walgreens. I did buy them in a bundle for the cheaper price, so that they were only $2.50 each.

China Glaze - Fast Track

When I went crazy and bought a whole bunch of polishes online, I was most anticipating this one and it was well worth the wait! I love it! 

I was exploring Amazon one day and came across the Hunger Games collection and I was kind of iffy about getting them because I had never owned the China Glaze brand before and they were kind of expensive, or at least more so then what I was used to paying for polish, with shipping and tax. But I saw this color and the Luxe and Lush and just fell in love! As you may have seen from my previous post, I also bought Electrify, which I will be showing to you guys in the near future. 

But along with these, I also bought Seche Vite Top Coat, which is amazing! (It came yesterday in the mail) I never knew what a difference a top coat could make! 

Fast Track - it is a light tan color with gold shimmer in it. I have a light skin color, so when light is not hitting my nails, the polish is just barely darker than my nails and almost looks skin color. But when light is hitting my nails it is more of a gold color because the shimmer is so prominant in it. It's so hard to describe this color properly..

When light is hitting, so you can see the shimmer and it is more gold.

When the light is not hitting directly, so it is more tan. 

If I had seen this color in a store, and not swatched on someone else's nails when I was buying it on Amazon  I probably wouldn't have bought this color, and I am so glad that I did! I really do love it.

I really don't like how the color looks in the bottle. It's kind of muddy looking and you can't see the gold at all, unless you hold it really close to a light, or if there's a window near; which, in the stores around my house they are pretty closed off from natural lighting. 

China Glaze - Approx. $4.50 (Amazon)

China Glaze - Luxe and Lush

I finally got China Glaze Luxe and Lush in the mail yesterday! So instead of completely redoing my nails, I just put it on the nails that I already had done because they hadn't chipped yet. 

I had on Sinful Colors Midnight Blue which I talked about here. 

Luxe and Lush - is a polish that  you really need to wear over another color. It's a very large glitter that is foil, if that makes sense... They're foil pieces to make up the polish. They foils are a gold sheen and a pearl-ish opal that change colors as the light hits them.

When I went to put this on, I was dabbing it on at first and it made it go on really thick, as you can see. But on my right hand, which I don't have pictures of, I started to just paint it on like I would a normal polish and it went on much more scattered, and in my own opinion, I like the look better.
The pictures did not capture how beautiful this polish really is!

When I put this polish on however... When I went to put on the clear topcoat, which you will need one because the foil is kind of chunky, but the polish wasn't dry yet.. Well, the blue polish ran over the Luxe and Lush polish a bit! 

Now let me remind you, I have had the blue polish on my nails for a few days now, so I didn't even think that it would have wet it again. 

But now the little foils have a little sheen of blue now. I would prefer that they didn't because it did take away from the shine, but keep this in mind when putting on a top coat. 

Sinful Colors - $1.99 ( Walgreens)

China Glaze - Approx. $4.50 (Amazon)

Milani Yellow Whiz

In this I am just wearing Milani Yellow Whiz. It is a very bright yellow. 

The bottle says that it is a "fast dry", it did dry quite fast. Faster than most polishes anyway and I didn't put a quick dry top coat on top of it. 

I didn't do anything special with my nails today. In a few days I am going to update this post with pictures of me putting China Glaze Fairy Dust over this yellow to see how it looks because it may tone down how bold this color is and add a bit of sparkle. 

I did add that Fairy Dust to the manicure that I had in the very first post that I have here. It looks absolutely wonderful on top of black. I would've posted pictures, but my camera doesn't pick up the fine sparkles. It does have pink, blue, green, and gold very fine sparkles in it. Though it does make your polish a bit dull because as you might be able to see from the bottle, the actual polish is a bit grey, it's not completely clear. 

But I will post pictures when I put it on this yellow.

______________________________

I finally got the Fairy Dust on this polish.
And I was right it did tone down the yellow quite a bit.
I don't know if I like it all that much.. I think the Fairy Dust is more suited towards darker polishes. On this one, it almost makes the polish look dirty, in my opinion anyway.
My camera didn't really want to pick up the little sparkles.. I tried everything. But right now it's getting dark so I can't sit next to a window; I'm just using a lamp. You can see them really good in the bottle and a little bit on my ring and pnky finger... But these pictures do not do this polish justice. It has a ton of little sparkles that catch the light, like they do in the bottle.
But what makes the yellow polish look dirty, is that there are also a little bit of grey fleck in there too that doesn't sparkle. I didn't pick that up when I had it on Sally Hansen Black Platinum, and that could also have been what made it look a little bit dull.

Milani - Appox. $4 (Walgreens)

China Glaze - Approx. $5 (on sale Sally Beauty Supply)

New Polishes and Tools

I bought new polishes today and yesterday and I just wanted to show them off a bit. I also bought some dotting tools and striping tape. I will update when I actually get them on my fingers, and what they look like on, but as of right now I only have the names and the bottles. I did buy some online too so I don't actually have those in my posession. 

But the polishes that I got from the store yesterday were Milani Yellow Whiz, Sally Hansen XTreme Wear Sun Kissed, China Glaze Fairy Dust, Beauty Secrets Top Coat, ORLY Nail Defense Base Coat, and this last one doesn't have a name on it but it's brand name is Sally Girl and it's a chunky gold glitter. 

The ones that I bought online are China Glaze Luxe and Lush, China Glaze Fast Track, and China Glaze Electrify all from the Hunger Games Collection. 

Milani - Approx. $4 (Walgreens)

Sally Hansen - Approx. $3 (Walgreens)

China Glaze Fairy Dust - Approx. $5 (on sale, Sally Beauty)

China Glaze (The Rest) - Approx. $4.50 each (Amazon)