Mani Monday: Red and White Polka Dots

Happy New Year everyone!  I hope you all have been having a lovely year so far.  I'm finally back.  The holidays always keep me super busy going back and forth between my family and the in laws, so I wanted to give myself a break and make sure I could start the year off right.  Now I'm all refreshed and can't wait to get back into the swing of things.

I am starting off today with one coat of Illamasqua's Throb.  Yes, you heard me right, one coat red cream.  It was smooth, opaque, and easy to use.  In case you did not know, Illamasqua is a UK brand that is only available on their website.  They used to be at Sephora, but no longer are available there.  One of the downsides of this polish, is that after exchange rates, they come to about $25 a bottle.  It's about the same range of other high end polishes, and down right cheap in comparison to the infamous Loubiton polishes that most nail junkies are freaking out about right now, but as we all know, I am cheap.  Recently Hautelook did have a sale on Illamasqua polishes, which is where I got this one and a few others.  They were on sale for $7.50, so I had no qualms swooping them up.  If you are not already signed up with Hautelook, you can totally use my referral link.  ;-)  I think they're a great place to pick up some high end products, whether it is beauty, home goods, or clothing.  It's where I got all my the Balm palettes.

I loveds this polish so much that I could not make myself do anything particularly elaborate on my nails.  For some reason, red polish always calls out for white polka dots to me.  I don't know if it is the Disney kid or the vintage gal in me, but I love red with white polka dots.  I used OPIs Alpine Snow for my dots.  It is not a one coat white, so I had to make sure my dots were super dense.  Unfortunately, that means I should have waited a little longer to top coat them, as you can tell by the slight streaking on my ring finger.  I topped off my pointer and pinkie fingers with a thin coat of China Glaze Fairy Dust.  It is a cult classic scattered holo topper.  There is no way of making this opaque, but it is a lovely way to spruce up a basic cream.

As the usual kind reminder, these products were purchased with my own money.  I am not cool enough to have companies send me free stuff to review them. ;)

Mani Monday: Glitter, Polka Dots, and Mint

Happy Monday everyone!  Did you all have a nice weekend?  I'm super excited right now because tomorrow I'm going to go pick up my wedding dress.  Whaaaaaaaat??  But LacquerVixen, you're not getting married for ten months!  Well yeah, but it wasn't supposed to be ready until January/February and then I got an email two weeks after ordering it that my dress had come in.  Apparently they happened to have my size in the warehouse.  Yeah, so here's hoping it looks all nice and new.   Cross your fingers for me y'all!

Today's mani was originally inspired by those Caboodles Nail Valets that are super nifty.  They have compartments to fit your polishes so that they do not wiggle around in travel and different areas for extras, including brushes and dotting tools.  And they look like this:

Now I love me some black with white polka dot, so I have been wanting this one for so long.  So my nails started out looking like the box, then I started adding extras.  What do you all think?

On my thumb and pinkie I have OPIs My Dogsled is a Hybrid from their Nordic 2014 collection.  It is a mint cream that was nearly opaque in one coat, I added a second to cover up a few bald spots.  Seriously, this is a great polish and it is still available in stores.  If you don't own it already, go out and buy it now.  I topped my thumb with Sephora Formula X in Chaotic which has black and white hexes and black bar glitter.  Now this Formula X is from Sephora's first and short lived launch of their store brand polishes.  I found this at Big Lot's for less than two dollars, so it's not particularly easy to find, but there are plenty of other brands that came out with the same kind of thing.  China Glaze and Hard Candy are the first ones that come to mind.  On my pinkie, I just have a coat of ORLY's Shine on Crazy Diamond which is a sparse holographic topper.  The glitters are slightly larger than China Glaze's Fairy Dust.

On my pointer finger I have two coats of Nails Inc in Noho which was from their Leather Effect polishes.  It is slightly textured and is probably my favorite black, glitterless texture polish.  I also added a silver square shaped stud on the base of my nail.  In the past, I have always just used a dot of top coat to glue studs on, but they would only really last about twelve hours before they popped off.  So today I used brush on Gel Resin.  So far it has lasted through a shower, sleep, and cooking, so it works pretty well for me.  

My middle finger is just two coats of Essie's Hors d'ouevers.  It is a dense gold glitter polish with silver hexes.  Finally, on my ring finger I painted one coat of my much beloved Cult Nails Fetish then made my dots with OPIs My Boyfriend Scales Walls.  

I am pretty happy with the over all result and I hope you guys like it too.  :-)

As the usual kind reminder, these products were purchased with my own money.  I am not cool enough to have companies send me free stuff to review them. ;)

Mani Monday

Good news everyone!  My computer finally works again.  Originally my track pad wasn't working and my computer would freeze up on me, and then finally the hard drive just died.  But now both the hard drive and the trackpad got replaced.  The future Mr. LacquerVixen is very happy I'm not stealing his computer anymore to sporadically do my blog posts.  Now we can get back onto a normal blogging schedule and my near daily polish changing isn't me being crazy, but being committed to you guys!  ;-) So here we go!

I am not big on team spirit.  I don't do the matchy matchy thing. But when my manager told me, very seriously, that I was expected to be "part of the team" for a work event I kind of had to.  So what do I do?  I pull out polishes in our team colors and some nail art.

Our team colors were orange and teal, so I started with three coats of OPIs Call Me Gwen-ever with is an orange cream.  On most people, two coats would have been perfectly fine.  The formula is smooth and painted on without a problem.  Unfortunately, because my nails are long and there is a large amount of white tip area, I could still see VNL with two coats.  The third coat made it perfectly opaque for my high standards.  Call Me Gwen-ever is from OPIs 2012 Amazing Spider-Man collection, so it would be considered a hard to find polish.  I did buy this polish when it was readily available in most stores, and since then I have only seen it once in a random mom and pop beauty supply shop.  Would I say it is a must have polish?  Meh?  I'm not the hugest wearer of orange polish and I'm sure other brands have more readily available options.  If you happen to come across it at a decent price, go for it, especially if you are a comic book lover.  

For the rest of my mani I used Essie Comfort Zone and Sephora's Formula X in Zing.  On a whim, I also grabbed my Ciate Flower Manicure kit.  I painted Essie Comfort Zone on my ring finger as an accent.  It is a silver and gold microglitter that is pretty dense and painted on in two coats.  It is from Essie's Winter 2012, so you can't really find it in stores too easily, but it is available on Essie's website.  For the polka dots on my pointer finger and pinkie, I used Sephora's new house brand of polish Formula X in Zing.  It is a great teal blue cream that is actually opaque in one coat.  *gasp!*  Shocking I know.

Now for my super interesting thumb and middle finger.  I used the Ciate Flower Manicure kit which comes with real pressed flowers, a mini bottle of Candy Floss (a standard pink cream), and a full sized bottle of fast dry top coat.  According to the instructions, you paint your nails as normal and while the top coat is still wet, you place the flowers on your nails, then brush another coat of the fast drying top coat.  Now, I hate opening a bottle of top coat when I'm already in the middle of one.  I don't like having multiple open bottles of something so standard, so I used my usual HK Girl instead of the Ciate top coat they had supplied.

At first I thought that it had worked just fine.  My nails looked pretty damn cool and I was excited to show them off at work.  But the next morning while I was in my shower, the top coat peeled off.  The flowers became exposed and fell apart in the water.  It totally sucked.  I don't know if they always do that and this kit is meant more for a one day use kind of thing, or if their top coat really makes all the difference.  I will have to try it again and report back my findings.

As a side note, when I removed the flowers with nail polish remover, they stained my fingers like crazy.  I suspect it has more to do with the color of the flowers than the product itself.  I don't think the lighter colored flowers in the kit would do the same thing.

As the usual kind reminder, these products were purchased with my own money.  I am not cool enough to have companies send me free stuff to review them. ;)

Mani Monday- Solitaire Spectrum

Happy Monday everybody!  My computer is spazzing out right now, so I'm trying to do this post on my iPad.  So far so good, but here's hoping nothing gets messed up in the process.  Also I've just noticed that I can't add links on here.  Damn.

Yesterday I went to a meet up with all my fellow San Diego nail junkies and had a blast.  Of course I spent way too much money, but I regret nothing.  We had decided to do blue manis for the event.  All I knew was that I had to use Bliss Polish On the Spectrum as my base.  

On the Spectrum is a beautiful blue polish with a linear holo.  I almost want to call it Crayola blue, if that makes sense.  I love it because it is holo AND a one coater.  The only other one coat holos I own are the Color Club Halo Hues.  

 I knew that I wanted to do some sort of nail art for the meet up too, but for the life of me couldn't come up with an idea.  Finally I just went with my stand by, rhinestones and polka dots.  

First I dropped a glob on top coat on my nail and placed eight pink rhinestones on my nail in the shape of a flower on my nail.  I also made sure to swipe on a coat of top coat before moving on to seal the stones in place.  On my ring finger, I used two coats of OPIs Solitaire on my ring finger.  It is their white texture polish from the 2013 holiday Bond Girls collection.  On my thumb and middle fingers I lined up my polka dots.  On my pointer and pinko I scattered them on the nail.  I made sure to do my polka dots on top on my top coat because it gives my nails some extra dimension.  

When you touch them you have smooth and rough bits.   I think it's fun.  

As the usual kind reminder, all of these products were purchased with my own money.  I am not cool enough to have companies send me free stuff to review them. ;)

May Nail Art Part 2

Hey look! I'm finally continuing this nail art post!

In this third mani, all of the polishes except for the black one, which is Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure in Onyx, I got from my swap last month with Megan over at You've Got Mail!  Seriously, that girl decimated my wish list.  There is like next to nothing left.

The pink is Essie's Peach Daquiri, which in really life looks a little bit peachier and less hot pink.  It was still a pretty neon color, which is why I had to use it.  Generally, I can't do neons.  Something about them turns me off.  Whenever I have tried painting at my nails with various neon colors, I always end up just staring at them, not because they're super pretty but because they are distracting.  Almost in a bad way.  This one though, I LOVED.  Maybe it's why I went the extra mile, or four, of doing some full nail art.  I swiped two medium thickness coats of this color for full coverage on three nails.  Then I painted three coats of Color Club's Magic Attraction for full coverage.  It is a silver and holo glitter with specks of pink in it.

On my middle finger, I used one layer of Shopaholic from Pop Culture Cosmetics, just a fuchsia glitter. On the remaining two nails I used my trusty dotting tools and black polish to make big polka dots and filled in the empty space with little ones.  The whole thing was topped with my usual Sally Hansen Insta Dry (in the red bottle), which you can see smeared the dots a little bit.  

I got a lot of compliments on those nails.  I had my nails painted like that when I was sent to New Employee training and people kept commenting on them.  People kept being shocked when I said that I had done them myself while I was bored.  To top it off it was super easy!  

My last bit of nail art was inspired by one of the boytoy's coworkers.  She is obsessed with the Minions from Despicable Me and she was having a birthday party.  So what better way to get ready for a party then to draw some Minions?

For the three nails I started out with two coats of Nicole by OPIs Hit the Lights from the Selena Gomez line on my left hand and three on my right.  Does that happen to anyone else where it takes more coats to properly coat the nails on your off hand?  The color is a touch splotchy, but I really like it because it reminds me of macaroni and cheese.  The blue overalls are Essie's Butler Please.  I used the same black as always for these along with China Glaze White on White for the eyes and teeth.  The edges of the goggles are Sally Hansen's Celeb City, the best silver ever.  

My favorite part of Despicable Me is the part were Gru wins Agnes the stuffed unicorn at the carnival and she screams out "IT'S SO FLUFFY, I'M GOING TO DIE".  At the time, I felt this was my fluffiest unicorn polish.  As of yesterday though, I own Dollish Polish's It's So Fluffy, I'm Going to Die!, so not the case anymore.  

My two accent nails were done in JENsations Unicorns and Rainbows, which she no longer has up anymore.  My other lovely, nail mail buddy Candace over at CinnamonKandy sent me this in out last swap.  For some reason, people seem to think I love unicorns.  :-P  This was an awesome polish very similar to that ice cream sprinkles trend that is going on right now.  The reason why I love this one is that the glitter is all the colors of the rainbow.  I ended up doing three coats, not because it needed it, but because I couldn't stop using it, if that makes sense.

Hope you guys enjoy this!  Hopefully I have some more up soon!