Everyone's Irish on St Patrick's Day

St Patrick's is on a Friday this year?!? I'm not sure if I should be excited or scared. I don't usually make plans but this year might have to be an exception.

I had the idea to mix my favorite green and gold polishes for a subtle St Patrick's look.

The golds: Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure- Golden Rule + Victoria's Secret- Runway Angel, Sally Hansen Color Foil- Liquid Gold, Orly- Bling, 24k gold leaf with clear polish, Nina Ultra Pro- Big Spender

The greens: Revlon- Tantalize, Seche- Charming, OPI- Plaid About You, China Glaze- Rare and Radient, Zoya- Ivanka

Do you have any exciting plans this St Patrick's Day?

Seche Premier Color- Charming

I've known about Seche Vite top coat for a while, but this is my first time trying out their polish. The line was relatively new to Sally Beauty but it's already being discontinued. I picked up this green shade and 7 others on super discount- about $1.85 each down from $9.99. 

 This color is called Charming. The shade is nice but the formula could be better. I found it to be a bit thin and had trouble with it dragging. I have two coats on here and still have a little patchiness at the cuticles where the color pulled away as I brushed over it. A third coat or waiting longer between coats probably would have helped a lot. For the sale price I'm ok with it but would have been a lot more irked at full price (funny how that works).

Have you tried these? If so what did you think?

Seven Days of St Patrick's: Rainbow Water Marble Nail Art

I've just survived a harrowing ordeal. Apparently Comcast decided randomly at 8:26 last night that they were going to stop supporting our modem and we were cut off from the glory of the internets. We were without access for nearly 24 hours. It was a traumatic and distressing time, but I've pushed through to bring you this post for a late for St. Patrick's Day. The new modem is up and running and hopefully we'll have another spectacular ten years of internet access before they decide my equipment is obsolete again.

I've been waiting for St. Patrick's Day to use one of my newest Zoya purchases, Ivanka. I'm wearing three coats on all but my ring finger which got a rainbow water marble. Ivanka is much more magical than these pictures would suggest. It has a foil finish that reflects a lot of light. The polish itself is a green jelly filled with tons of micro glitter. I had full coverage in two coats, but wanted the third for the extra shine. 

I made water marble decals using most of the neons from the China Glaze Electric Nights collection plus Seeing Red from The Giver collection. This method is so much easier for me to create and apply than dipping my nails into the water. I even added bits of the decals on the under side of my nails for an extra fun twist.

I tried this out last year as well and wanted to do an updated version. My rainbow water marble wasn't as bad as I remembered it being, but I think I definitely have a better handle on this technique a year later.

An InLinkz Link-up

Seven Days of St Patrick's: Nails Inc, Spitalfields

For day five of the challenge (or day two for me) I have Spitalfields by Nails Inc which is a shimmery green magnetic polish. I found this one at Marshal's for the ridiculously low price of 93 cents. Crazy considering that it retailed for about $15 when it first came out. I wasn't previously much into the magnetic polish trend, but the fishnet pattern caught my eye. Plus everyone at work pretty much though it was witchcraft that I did this with a magnet, so that's a win for me.

The instructions say to paint a thin coat on all your nails first and let it dry. Next, doing one nail at a time, paint a slightly thicker coat and hold the magnet just above the surface of the polish for a few seconds. 

I feel like magnetic polish is an easy way to get some pretty intricate looking nail art. I messed up on a few nails and blurred the image or only got half the nail, but it was easy to paint a fresh layer on top and try the magnet again. The end result is a look with lots of depth and interest.

Here's what the other ladies have come up with for day five:

An InLinkz Link-up

Seven Days of St Patrick's: Army Green and Gold Chevron Nails

Staying true to my lazy nature... I am starting the 7 Days of St. Patrick's Day Nail Art challenge three days late! It's a relaxed challenge with the freedom to come and go as you please (thank goodness) and as far as I can tell the only rule is that the polish has to be green or St. Patrick's themed. This is definitely my kind of challenge. Huge thanks to Krystal of Polish Galore for putting this whole thing together.

For day 4 I have a toned down army inspired look. This is one of my all time favorite so ugly it's pretty polish colors- Don't Get Derailed by China Glaze. It's a really dark brownish green colored cream polish. The formula is a little on the thinner side, but overall applies easily. I'm wearing two coats here. 

I stamped with Bundle Monster plate BM-604 and Maybelline Color Show polish in Bold Gold. I'm dying to get my hands on one of those clear squishy stampers to make placing images like this easier. I didn't do too bad with my regular stamper, but I could definitely see the advantage in having a clear one.

Check out all the other awesome green nails for today:

An InLinkz Link-up

30 Days of Colour: Green/Gradient

Arrrgh.. gradients! I still haven't mastered them. I wish I could have gotten these to blend a little better because I love the color combination. Today's theme for the 30 Days of Colour challenge is green/gradient, so I've done a gradient that has some green in it. I don't have very many green polishes and I didn't like any of them enough together to try a green only gradient, so green accents it is. What is the secret to a perfectly smooth gradient? If you know please share! I sponged over these 3-4 times on each finger and I feel like it's still patchy and blocky looking. Should I just keep sponging? How many times do you usually go over each nail? I must keep practicing!

I used polishes from the China Glaze Electric Nights collection for this gradient: Violet Vibes, DJ Blue My Mind, Treble Maker, and Daisy Know My Name? This collection can do no wrong. Even with my poor gradient skills I've gotten a ton of compliments on these. Probably more than any other manicure in the history of my nails. I can't stop staring at them. Soooo pretty.

Let's see what other delightful green/gradient creations the other ladies have for us today.

An InLinkz Link-up

St Patrick's Day Rainbow Water Marble

Last year I got so excited about doing manicures for all the holidays, but I haven't been feeling it at all this year. I only did the Valentine's nails because I needed some stamping to cover up a manicure that didn't turn out the way I wanted, and I posted it late too. I wasn't going to do a St Patrick's manicure either, but then I had the idea of a rainbow water marble. And I dreamed about it on repeat last night. All night long. So of course I had to paint it today when I woke up. I mixed in some green and gold for this St Patrick's skittlette.

The rainbow water marble turned out ok. I had trouble with the blue and yellow mixing together and then mixing with the green to make more green, but at least that kind of works for St Patrick's. Here's what I used to create this water marble:

Water marble in chromatic order- 

China Glaze- Seeing Red (Giver Collection)

Spoiled- Jail Bait

LA Colors- Hysteria

Spoiled- Permission to Proceed

Sinful Colors- Endless Blue

Orly- Saturated

The gold nails are Orly's Bling (full review here) and the green is a Sally Girl mini called Pea-Body. Love the color, horrible formula. It was watery and streaky. It took three coats to get decent coverage and was still dentable long after my other nails had dried.

Here's a rare glimpse of the right hand. The marble came out cool so I thought I'd show them all off together. I still need some practice marbling, but it's getting better. 

I've got my corned beef and cabbage ready for Tuesday, but it'll be a nice quiet night in other than that. Are you doing anything to celebrate this year?

The Polished Bookworms: Maze Runner

 

It's month two of The Polished Bookworms book club already! This month we chose Maze Runner by James Dashner. I just finished reading it last night, but right from the beginning I knew what I wanted to paint: the Grievers.

It looked like an experiment gone terribly wrong- something from a nightmare. Part animal, part machine, the Griever rolled and clicked along the stone pathway. Its body resembled a giant slug, sparsely covered in hair and glistening with slime, grotesquely pulsating in and out as it breathed. It had no distinguishable head or tail, but front to end it was at least six feet long, four feet thick.

Every ten to fifteen seconds, sharp metal pikes popped through its bulbous flesh...

...But hair and spikes were not the only things protruding from the Griever's body. Several randomly placed mechanical arms stuck out here and there, each one with a different purpose. A few had bright lights attached to them. Others had long, menacing needles. One had a three-fingered claw that clasped and unclasped for no apparent reason...

...Thomas wondered what- or who- could create such frightening, disgusting creatures.

Of course I had to paint the most disgusting nails ever to capture the Grievers.

I added some blood to my "needles" for extra grossness.

 I used quite a few things for this look. For the Griever's body I used my slug colored polish, China Glaze- Don't Get Derailed. I placed rhinestones on the wet polish and then painted another coat over them to create the bulbous flesh. 

I painted toothpicks with OPI, Push and Shove to create the metallic appendages. I also placed some spike studs from Miss A and cut up bits of a paper clip to use as needles. All of these things stuck pretty easily into the wet polish. I had the most trouble with the tiny needles, but they worked out in the end.

Last, I drew in some veins using Spoiled- Pumping Gas, Finger Paints- Don't Make a Scene, and Zoya- Pepper. These weren't in the description, but I thought it would make my Grievers look even more disgusting.

I really enjoyed the book and had such a fun time painting these nails. I can't wait to read the other two books in this trilogy. They left Maze Runner with a bit of a cliff hanger, so I'm definitely going to have to see what happens next.

Find out what parts of the book inspired all the other ladies this month:

An InLinkz Link-up

The Polished Bookworms: Big Little Lies

I joined a book club! I've been reading a ton lately so I jumped at the chance to join The Polished Bookworms group on Facebook. Each month we vote on a book to read and then later in the month discuss it and post a manicure based on what we've read. The book for January was Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty.

I was inspired by the scene where Madeline runs into Bonnie (her ex-husband's new wife) while out Christmas shopping.  

Bonnie had arranged for the whole family to volunteer at a homeless shelter on Christmas morning. "I just hate all that crass commercialism of Christmas, don't you?" she'd told Madeline last week, when they'd run into each other in the shops. Madeline had been doing Christmas shopping and her wrists were looped with dozens of plastic shopping bags. Fred and Chloe were both eating lollipops, their lips a garish red. Meanwhile Bonnie was carrying a tiny bonsai tree in a pot, and Skye was walking along next to her eating a pear. ("A fucking pear," Madeline had told Celeste later. For some reason she couldn't get over the pear.)

I couldn't get over the pear either! I painted two red lollipops for Madeline's children and a bonsai tree and pear for Bonnie and her daughter Skye. 

I couldn't be happier with the way the lollipops came out. The sticks really complete the look! I started with a coat of Hit the Brakes from Spoiled. It's a red jelly that was perfect for the shiny red candy. I used white and brown polish to paint in the detail of the sticks and the round center of the lollipop then gave it another coat of Hit the Brakes to create a pond manicure effect with the details encased in the "candy." I rolled up bits of paper and stuck them to the under side of my nail to complete it.

For the bonsai tree I started with a sponged grey and white gradient- Sinful Colors, Snow Me White and Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure in Ion. The tree trunk is Spoiled, Pumping Gas and the leaves are a combination of Sally Hansen Hard as Nails, Limestone; China Glaze, Holly-Day and China Glaze, Don't Get Derailed.

The base for the pear is also SH Limestone. I sponged patches of Spoiled, Did I Dye It Too Blonde? which doesn't show too much, but possibly adds to the mottled texture of the pear skin. I used Spoiled, Pumping Gas for the dots and stem.

I'm not a very picky reader. I'll pick up anything as long as it's interesting. I wouldn't have thought to choose this book myself, but it was both entertaining and serious at the same time, touching on topics of domestic abuse and the difficulties of relationships in general. 

Right now I'm averaging around 3-4 books per month, so I'm going to run out of things on my reading list soon. What's your favorite book? Tell me what I should read next. :)

Here's what everyone else in the group is up to:

An InLinkz Link-up

ILNP- Mutagen Swatches

I've had these swatches of I Love Nail Polish's Mutagen in my archives for a while and haven't posted them for a few reasons. As much as this polish is beautiful, it's equally hard to photograph. It's been swatched many times by ladies much more talented than me and I'm not bringing anything new or earth shattering to the table. I also took so many photos it was hard to choose which ones to post. In the end I narrowed it down to these. They might not be the best pictures ever taken but they're not half bad and they're mine. I love this polish and I had a ton of fun playing around trying to capture all the shifts. 

I've taken photos in a bunch of different lighting so you can see how the polish looks in different settings. I've got on three coats with no base color, although I've read a black base can make multichromes pop more. The pictures above were taken in a light box with diffused lighting. You can see the colors shift from green to a bluish purple at the edges.

The next pictures were taken outside. The one above is direct sunlight. It has crazy green metallic shine like a green beetle. Below is indirect sunlight. At some angles you get a soft peachy reflection. This is the shift that was most easily observable to me in person. In low light I often saw a pink glow almost hovering over the surface of the green polish.

I've also read that photographing a multichrome underwater helps bring out all the colors of the shift at once. My aquarium has a great light and lots of fish.. and water. The fish are always very happy to see me since it means they'll get fed soon. They were excited to participate in my photo session. This seemed like a good idea, but it was really hard to keep the angle of the light from reflecting too much off the surface of the water and get a good clear picture of the nails at the same time. The first picture has great shift but blurry fishies. The second picture has awesome fish, but the polish looks plain. I love the swirly colors of the fish tails. I Just wish I could have gotten these two things combined into one picture. 

After the aquarium experiment I moved on to a bowl of water inside my light box. I was able to capture some great pictures of the shift, but the pictures are soft and blurry due to the reflections on the surface of the water. I would love to know how other people get such crisp, bright underwater pictures. Waterproof camera? You can see below that Mutagen shifts from a vibrant green to blue and fuchsia back to a golden yellow-green.

Mutagen is one of my first multichrome polishes. I bought a few more from ILNP at the same time and so far I've been thoroughly impressed. They really do live up to the hype. I sat around at my desk all day wiggling my fingers back and forth to catch all the different colors.

What do you think of this one? Worth the hype or overrated?

Snips and Snails

Don't Get Derailed from the China Glaze All Aboard collection is the most delightfully sludgy color I've ever owned. It's a dark olive green cream with great coverage. I painted on one coat and it was so opaque I didn't even bother doing a second coat. How often do you find a true one coater? 

This color is so different from anything else I have that I wanted to find a unique prop to do it justice. My little snail friend was shy at first, but apparently you can add snail whispering to my list of talents. I convinced him to come out and say hi to everyone and show off how he's the perfect color match to this polish.

Just to be safe should I say no snails were harmed in the making of this post? He's pretty darn cute too don't you think? I put him back into the grass clipping pile where I found him when we were done hanging out.

NYC City Samba Collection- Amazon Green

*This polish was sent for review*

I'm such a perfectionist this entire post is going to drive me crazy. I had a ton of trouble with this polish! I love the color and the other polishes I tried from this collection had really nice formulas, but I had no luck with this one. I think at least part of it was my fault to be fair. I was painting outside in the middle of summer during a mini vacation and it was way too hot. It's not exactly the environment to give a polish its best chance. I'm sorry, Amazon Green. I'm going to try you again sometime when we're both in a better mood to prove that you're not entirely misbehaved (hopefully).

Edit: I just spotted the City Samba collection today at my local Dollar Tree. Even though I had a little trouble with the formula on this one, I picked up a couple of the others I was missing because I enjoyed the line overall.

 I found the formula to be pretty thick and goopy which made application a little tricky. On top of that it has a pearly finish which makes it look a little streaky when dry. As you can also see I had some trouble with that whole drying process. I got some serious bubbling going on, but I think that was more about the hot/humid weather than the polish itself. I'm going to put a little thinner in and see if that helps next time I use this one.

Despite everything I can't help but really want to love this polish.. look how the pearly finish is similar to green milk glass. Did I ever mention my other addiction is antique dishes? I can't hate something that reminds me of old Fire King.

Sally Hansen Color Foil Minted Metal With Stamping

My Color Foil review continues with a look into stampability. I've read this on other blogs and it holds true for me- these don't seem to be great for stamping with, but are awesome for stamping on. I was a little disappointed that I couldn't get anything to pick up with my stamper. I'm sure I'll have to try again several more times out of stubbornness, but the first attempt was a failure. My original bottle of Chrome Nail Makeup is awesome for stamping so I'm not sure what's up with these new ones. 

I decided to go for a two-tone look. I don't have a ton of stamping polishes yet and this teal complemented the shade of foil the best. I stamped using Bundle Monster plate BM-212 and Mundo de Unas stamping polish #24. The pattern reminds me of foil wallpaper in the best possible way. I love how the polish shines under the stamping.

And because I can never leave well enough alone I went back several days later and added gold dots with a dotting tool. You can see a bit of tip wear but this is after about 3 days so not too bad at all for the type of polish.