Pinata Snow Mani

Today is only a quick mani guys.  I pulled out the polishes with the intention of just something simple for an interview and I swiped on three coats of Sally Hansen's Complete Salon Manicure in Ivory Skull.  Like I mentioned before in the Colorful Leopard Mani, this white isn't my favorite because it takes so many coats to give full coverage, but I haven't gotten around to replace it because I've been lazy.

I was going to stick with just plain white, but then I wasn't paying attention and my bottle of Ulta's Pinata-Yada jumped into my hand and demanded I use it.  This is probably my favorite glitter polish ever, probably because it has a ton of different colors in it.  It has red, fuchsia, blue, green, silver and gold glitters in various sizes.  

Hex Lizard Mani

In case I have not already mentioned it before, I am a nerd.  I play video games, I watch nerdy shows, I read comic books, and I love the Avengers.
OPI's Amazing Spiderman line caused my love of nail polish, more specifically Just Spotted the Lizard did. It is definitely one of my favorite polishes.

The color changes from green to gold based on the angle that light hits it. I did two coats of polish and look how pretty it is! I've noticed with metallic duochrome polishes you have to do two coats. The first coat is always way too sheer and kind of ugly. The second coat is what makes it pretty. People always comment about how it looks like beetles.

I added very light green hex glitters on my thumb, middle, and ring fingers. They added a nice reflective quality to my mani that I kept getting distracted by. Now if I only had the patience to lay down the glitters in order so they completely covered my nail, I would be golden.

Zoya 3 Free Special: Morgan, Sophie, Ginger

Whenever I buy nail polishes, a lot of the time I pick them based on the name.  Sure I have a bunch of duochromes just because I love the color shift, and I have a ton of blues because I love oceanesque colors.  But in the end if I like the name of the color, I have to have it.  For example, I have a giant lemming for China Glaze's It's a Trap-eze, because of the internet meme based in Star Wars.  Every time I see swatches, all I can think of is Admiral Ackbar crying "it's a trap!"

The same rules apply to names.  Any and every company that has a trio of nail polishes called Morgan, Sophie, and Ginger, I have to have them.  So when I heard about Zoya's 3 Free special and I found the colors, I had to get them.

Ginger was probably my favorite out of all three.  It's a great bright orange with gold shimmer. In the picture I'm wearing two coats, only to cover a few bald spots.

Morgan is a Barbie pink creme that I wanted to love so much, but it fell a little short. It was really thin and needed three coats to cover a visible nail line. It was bright and really pretty, but it started chipping right away.

Sophie was the one that surprised me the most.  It wasn't particularly impressive in the bottle, and this picture does not do it justice, but it got onto my nail and I adored it.  It's a brick red creme, and surprisingly I do not have a color like it in my stash.  I have multiple bright reds, but nothing like this.  I painted on smoothy and like Ginger, only needed two coats.  I topped it with Sally Hansen's Insta-Dri Anti Chip top coat for the glossy shine.

Ocean Zebra Nail Art

Isn't this exciting?  I finally got myself a Konad Stamp kit and of course I pull out the animal print.  I used stamp plate M57 for this and Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure in Onyx for the zebra stripes.  They are on top of Nicole by OPI in Mer-Made for Each Other.

Mer-Made for Each Other is a duochrome that shifts from green to gold to aqua.  If I didn't have an obsession with blue duochrome, I probably would not have picked this one up.  I already have similar colors in brands I like better.  What really got me to buy it, was that this color looked like liquid peacock feathers in the bottle.  As soon as it got on my nails though, it was true to its name, and I do love me some mermaid polishes.  It did paint on a tad streaky, so I ended up needing three coats.

Now that I think about it, I probably should have taken a picture of Mer-Made before the stamping.  I'll remember for next time.

Mani with Essie Fair Play and Set in Stone

I was at the boytoy's house last week and he decided that he wanted to help pick out my nail polish.  So he dug through my bag of nail polishes that I happened to have with me (because I usually have my base and top coats, and a couple colors with me for some odd reason) and he chose Fair Play and Set in Stone to accent. 

Essie's Fair Play I got at ULTA on clearance, which is awesome because I never see Essie on sale.  It is a slate color that started out almost blue when I first put it on, but two days later looked entirely gray.  It went on pretty smoothly, I did two coats on my nails and three on my thumbs.  I guess because they're bigger nails there's more room to have balding?  The color was really pretty on it's own and demure, but I can't leave well enough alone.

Set in Stone is a awesome combination of glitter and chunky, reflective hexagons that I kept getting distracted by.  It sucked to get off, like all glitter, but it is one of my favorites right now.  I'm trying to keep myself from putting it on top of EVERYTHING. 

At the end of the day, I still love Essie.  I think I'm going to do this again after the damage from my acrylics grows out so my nails look smooth and pretty. :-)