Cracked Up!

cracked medallion

A nice easy one today to start the week!!  I did some crackle nails awhile back with copper and a mint green polish which I LOVED.  Then I got this green polish in a clearance sale for around $1 and I decided to test it out.  The color is beautiful but it seemed super plain on my nails and even though I tried a hundred times to come up with something snazzy to put over the top, I just couldn't find anything I liked.  So I went with my old staple of,  "If you can't figure out a great art for your nails: Crackle it." And I did.  I used gold crackle this time because it had more contrast than the others. I did later use this and a similar color in lots of Christmas mani's! I guess I just got it too early in the season!  In other news, my nubbins from January are very nearly back to where they should be so when I get some free time (read as: next Sunday) I will try to get the rest of my flakie dupe posts ready to upload.  AND new mani's (which do not have ugly nubbin nails) will be showing up on my blog! :)  (My luck all my nails will now break today in class/work.)

Hope you all had a lovely relaxing weekend! Enjoy the nails and thanks for following!!


Base is: Orly Wild Wisteria 
Crackle is: China Glaze Cracked Medallion

Tan shoes with pink shoelaces and a polka-dot hat...

essence

This week's Purple Crumpet Fairy challenge was polka-dots!  There are so many things you can do with dots which is one of the reasons I'm so in love with my dotting tools.  There is literally no end to the amount of art you can create wtih them and without much effort at all.  This is made entirely of dots!!  It doesn't scream POLKA-DOTS but I think it works!! :)  I apologize for the short post but 70 hours of work/school/clinic is killing me this week!  Next post will be better I promise!

Thanks for following!Hope you all enjoy and have a wonderful weekend!!

 Base:Essence Romeo
Flowers and dots: Essence Gabriella, and OPI Fly

Dangerous curves ahead...

color club


These nails were the result of a lot of glitter sandwich experiments!!  The base color on this, P2 Dangerous, is quite sheer and jelly like on the first coat.  You can't really tell in the picture but after three coats it was still a tiny bit sheer.  I layered it with Color Club Sugar Plum Yum because I hate the scent on it and I was hoping a few layers of polish and some top coat would mask the scent.  Then the whole thing got messed up and when I started over I didn't have the patience to redo all the layers to make the sandwich. So I went with an open faced (lol) and just put a coat of glitter over the P2.  The Seche Vite topcoat DID actually mask the scent of the polish  pretty well. :)  Thanks for following! 

Have you tried a glitter sandwich?

Things I've learned: Vol I

healthy nails
Many of you know that I started school to become a nail technician last week.  I'm not really entirely sure where I want to go with it yet, whether I want to work in a salon or a spa or just build some clientele and do my own thing.  But I have a bit of time to figure it out.  On the long term, I'd love to have my own business and my wonderful and always supportive husband has already offered to help get me started in any way he can. :)  I entered the world of nails with a lot of information already.  Information I had learned from blogs, magazines, web sites, trial and error, and even from some of you lovely ladies.  I was honestly surprised at how much of what I had learned on my own was actually correct.  But the first week of school also taught me a lot of new things and I wanted to share some of them with all of you!! So here we go:

Things I learned in my first week of nail school:
  • It's OK to 'saw' your nails when you file. But it's considered bad form.
  • Formaldehyde is OK to use on your nails in amounts of 1% or less.  HOWEVER, if you use it over long periods of time it will poison you.
  • Pledgents are the best thing for removing polish. All the absorption of cotton; none of the fuzz.
  • The best way to get healthy nails is to drink lots of water, take a multi-vitamin and use oil!
  • Cuticle oil three times a day will turn your nails around in no time.  Best kinds: avocado, grape seed, and jojoba.  (CND Solar Oil is great too!)
  • You should never buff your nails more than once every other week.  You'll ruin your nails otherwise.
  • Dehydrators (like OPI Bond Aid) will help you keep polish on longer no matter the base/top coat combo.
  • Polish never stays on children more than a day or so.  It's not because their nails are so small; they regenerate oil and cells too quickly.
  • You can exfoliate your hands once a week by mixing sea salt and oil (I use grape seed).  It makes your hands super soft.

So there you go. Things I learned that are already improving the health and growth of my nails!  Thanks for following!

815

dating a royal

This mani is one of the first I did after cutting my nails down.  I don't normally mind to have shorter nails, in fact, I normally keep mine relatively short since I use my hands a lot and it's just easier to manage.  For some reason though, I really had zero motivation to paint my nails after cutting them back this time.  But after a quick conversation with some awesome ladies in a polish group I belong to (they are my polish sisters!!) I got inspired to do these.  They're inspired by my favorite television show: LOST.  Those of you who didn't watch the show (you SHOULD), this is the Oceanic Airlines logo. It's generally on a white background but I wanted to do something that was more the color of the actual planes so that it would be similar to what the wing or the tail of the infamous 815 flight would have looked like.  I hope you guys enjoy!! Thanks for following! :)

What's your favorite television show?


Base color is: OPI Skull & Glossbones
Logo is made with: OPI Fly, Essence Gabriella, and OPI Dating A Royal

Put your Dupes Up: Fairy Dust vs. Teenage Dream

Dupes



It's time for another edition of Dupes Up! This weeks contenders:

Jordana: Fairy Dust
Retail Cost: $1.99 to $2.99
vs.
OPI: Teenage Dream from the now discontinued Katy Perry line
Retail Cost: $8.50



First I want to say, please excuse the 'noisy' pictures.  My camera setting got stuck and now the camera is dead so I can't retake them. :(  But the color is accurate and that's 90% of the point so I'm still going to post!  The new Jordana glitters are here (in some places) and when I saw this one I knew I had to swatch it.  I love my OPI Teenage Dream and as you can see in the pic, it's starting to get a little low. :P  I thought if they were similar then I'd have a cheap back-up since the Katy Perry colors are discontinued and are slowly dwindling from retailers.  So let's break it down, shall we?

Jordana Fairy Dust and OPI Teenage Dream

A close up of the bottles pretty much says it all.  They're both micro pink glitter with larger, round holo glitter in a clear jelly base.  I was thinking the Jordana would likely be thicker and have a sub par brush (OPI famously has wide brushes).  But that was not the case.  The Jordana brush is quite thick and I actually found it a bit easier to work with than the OPI brush.  And both formula's were a bit thicker than normal polish but not so much so that they were hard to use. 

Left to right: OPI Teenage Dream, Jordana Fairy Dust, OPI Teenage Dream, Jordana Fairy Dust. Two coats each. Artificial lighting.

There was an ice storm here last night and try as I did to take pictures outside in the natural light, all I got was flash or shadowy pics.  So this is an indoor shot.  There is definitely more pink to these in person, the glitter looks less sparse and it's sort of a foil-y pink effect with larger hex chunks in it.  Either way the fact remains that there is zero difference between these on the nail.  The coverage is the same, the color is the same, the spacing of the glitter is the same.  If I had to guess I'd say the wear time on the OPI is longer, but otherwise...exactly the same.

LtoR: Jordana Fairy Dust, OPI Teenage Dream. Artificial Light.

A macro shot of the glitter confirms it.  For some reason, on this particular nail the holo glitter in the Jordana sort of all ended up in one place near the free edge.  But the application was the same for each.  These are not like Lippmann's which require a certain touch to get the glitter to apply evenly.  It's fairly simple to get an evenly sparkly nail!  

Verdict: Dupes.  These two are the same color and density.  In my personal opinion, there is no difference between the two other than the label and the brush.
Availability:OPI Teenage Dream was part of the now discontinued Katy Perry collection.  It still has limited availability at Ulta stores and all retailers where OPI is sold nationwide. Jordana polishes can be purchased at Kmart stores nationwide and online at Jordana.com.

Thanks for following! Do you have either of these polishes?

Purple Crumpet Fairy Challenge: Glitterbomb

absolutely alice

This week's Purple Crumpet Fairy Challenge was chosen by Abby and it's a glitterbomb mani! For those of you who are unaware, a glitterbomb is when you put crazy amounts of glitter on your fingers (or toes!). While I have collected TONS of glitter over the past year or so, I really hardly use most of it. It's not even the removal that keeps me from putting it on it just doesn't really suit me I suppose.  However, for those of you who haven't heard yet, I started school this past Wednesday!  I'm going to school for Nail Tech and when I graduate I hope to get a managers license and get a sort of "on the go" mani business going.  Of couse, I'll need to build some clientel and whatnot first.  But anyway,  I could not for the life of me decide what to do for my first day of school mani.  My first thought was to go super over the top with my nail art (it's nail school after all!) but my second thought was to go totally neutral or bare.  I mean, how often do you see famous nail gals with polish on?  So I went with something sparkly.  It's understated but it's also special becuase...it's Absolutely Alice! An HTF polish that I swapped a good friend for awhile back AND which I've not yet used.  I was surprised how much I liked it.  And while it's not a TON of flashy glitter.  It's just enough for me. :) For a little bit of a fun mix-up I used Tarnished Gold on the ring finger.  Hope you all enjoy and thanks for following!!

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