May Nail Art Part 1

May was a good month for me when it came to nail art.  I was actually pretty proud of the stuff I managed to pull off.  If you follow me on Instagram, then you've seen these already, but here you get a more in depth description and mini review on some of the polishes.  

For this first mani I used Julep's Janel.  Janel is a really pretty raspberry color and it took me two coats for this level of opacity.  Julep.com describes it as a frost, but it just looks like a cream to me, which is good, because I just can't seem to find any frosts I particularly like.  Also, I adore raspberry polishes.  They're like the perfect combination of red and pink, which are my favorite polish colors.  For accent nails I drew a black, white, and silver glitter starburst in the corner.  On my other nails I just did a coat of ORLYs Shine on Crazy Diamond.

To top it all off, I pulled out my Julep Freedom Polymer Top Coat.  I hadn't used it in forever and I could not remember why.  The day after I did this mani, I remembered.  The top coat just PEELED OFF.  Not my polish, put the Freedom Polymer stuff.  I sat there and sheets of clear polish just chipped off my nails.  Does anyone else have this issue?  Also it was kind of gloopy and didn't smooth over my nails evenly at all.  So if you looked at them, it was really obvious which parts hadn't been able to get some.  And it wrinkled on the base of my nails too.  Maybe I just had a bad bottle, because it looks like most reviewers loved it.  

For this next look I have to show you guys starts out with two coats of Picture Polish's Majesty.  It is described as a taupe/pink/nude color with a holo shimmer and no glitter what so ever.  I love this polish so much that I was almost sad to paint a design on top.  But I do love the final look of these guys, so I don't really regret it.

For the petals on these flowers I used my nail art brushes for the first time.  How exciting!  The petals are done in Illamasqua's Load, which the very sweet boytoy got me.  I have discovered that I love off white polishes and Load is white with a tinge of yellow, so yay.  The brown polka dots and edging of the center of the flowers is Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure in Haute Chocolate and the yellow is Hit the Lights from Nicole by OPIs Selena Gomez line.  

So as I write this, I notice just how LONG this post has gotten.

Want to see the rest?  I will post a part two!

What Wizardry is This? OPI and Liquid Sand

So for those of you who don't know, one of the nifty new things in nail polish right now are textured, matte polishes.  OPI was the first to come out with them in the form of four new polishes that were part of their Mariah Carey line.  They were chock full of glitter, which we know I love, but there were also little stars.  Considering how annoyed I've been getting lately with polishes that had confetti, I thought it best to stay away from the Liquid Sands.

Then Zoya came out with their Pixie Dust lines and I thought that they were awesome, unfortunately none of the colors really sung out to me enough that I needed to spend the extra money on shipping, so I controlled myself.   A couple smaller lines came out with textured polishes, like Milani, but they're not sparkly so I'm not interested.  Without the glitter they just kind of look like you messed up your polish while it was still wet and was too lazy to fix it.

Finally, OPI came out with the press releases for their line inspired by Oz the Great and Powerful and I saw this baby.  I NEEDED it.  Usually when I buy polishes, it's either when they're on sale or online and cheaper.  I really hate spending a full $9.50 on a bottle, but as soon as I saw the display at my Ulta on Saturday, I plucked it off the table and clutched it in my little hands.  I was so excited to find it, that I wasn't even upset that Ulta's usual $3.50 off of $10 coupon doesn't work on OPI any more.  Did you guys know that?  I had to pay full price for this sucker, and looking at it now on my nails, I regret nothing!

What Wizardry is This? is a chocolate colored polish with gold glitter and that totally awesome texture feel to it.  It went on in two coats perfectly and dried pretty quickly.  To keep the texture, you of course don't want to add a top coat.  It'll make the polish smooth and shiny, taking away the totally awesome bumpiness and matte look.  Also, sorry about how red my hands look.  I think it's the terrible lighting in the kitchen.

I'm a sucker for the feel of things, and while I do love a smooth and glossy nail, I adore the sandpapery texture of this nail polish.  I even showed it off at work by walking up to people and demanding they rub my nails.  Yeah, if my coworkers weren't used to me they'd think I'm a weirdo or something.

I've had this polish on for three days now, and for me that's a long time.  I don't even want to change my polish yet.  Usually by now the cheaper polishes have peeled off and most others are chipping away, or I get bored with the color and NEED to change it out.  This Liquid Sand color is still holding up strong with only the single chip on my middle finger.  Looking at it now, I might finally splurge on some of the Zoya Pixie Dusts.