Neon Swirls

So, my daughter and I went to Michaels the other day and she bought some neon acrylic paint in pink, yellow, green and orange. I immediately started thinking about a possible manicure using them. Please excuse my very stained cuticles. If someone has a tip to get black Konad polish off after stamping, I would love to know. This stuff is so MESSY and difficult to remove from skin and cuticles!

I base coated my nails with one coat of China Glaze white. Then I used a tiny paintbrush to paint a pink swirl in the center of each nail. Then, I added the yellow, green and orange around it to create a swirl pattern, almost a tie dye effect. When it was dry, I painted a coat of Northern Lights silver holographic over it. This helped blend the colors a bit more and give me a good base for stamping. Finally, I stamped over each nail using BM 203 and Konad Special Polish in black. It is hard to see the subtle shimmer of the Northern Lights, but it is sooooooooo pretty in person! I love this stuff when I just want a little 'kick' to my polish.

Thanks for stopping by!

August Julep Maven

My Julep Maven box arrived at work today. I don't always get these. I actually only get one every few months. If they have something intriguing or different, I will let my order ship. This month, I liked the metallics in the Amerian Beauty box, so I didn't opt out. I am so glad I let this one come to me!

It is the birthday celebration box, so it came in a cute little reusable bag:

Isn't it cute?!?! I sure thought so! I wasn't disappointed with the contents either:

There is a little bottle of non acetone remover with the pump dispenser lid. I have one for my normal polish remover, but this will be nice to use for non acetone remover! I will probably just keep refilling it with my normal brand unless I find this to be special in some way. The polishes I got are Dakota (a gorgeous rose gold color) and Stefani (a beautiful gunmetal gray with a small amount of microglitter in it).

It was hard to get a picture that did these colors justice! I didn't do it on my own nails since I just did a new manicure last night, so I swatched them on a nail wheel. This is one coat. They have great coverage. The rose gold one is more pink and the silver has more fine glitter in person.

Overall, I am pretty happy with this month's box. The bonus??? There is a TON of holographic hex glitter in the box and bag. I am so frugal, I am going to salvage as much as I can for a future manicure! lol

Thanks for stopping by!



Revlon Just Bitten Kissable Balm Stain

I think I am in love! I am a die hard Tarte Lip Surgence lover, but at $24 each, I only have a few. I just love the way that they moisturize my lips and they last a long time. The other day while browsing the makeup, I noticed the Revlon Just Bitten line. I know they have been out for a few months, but I haven't ever tried them. I have tried their other lip stains and they dried out  my lips so bad! I was reluctant to try these, but at around $8, I thought I would give them a try. They come in 12 shades and they are a matte lip stain. That made me think they would probably be drying, but they are so not! They moisturize my lips just as much as the Lip Surgence do! They also last for hours. I notice my lips are still tinted after my lunch hour, so I am very impressed! I only have Romantic (a deep warm red color) and I love the fact that I can put on a little and get a nice reddish tint or I can layer it and get a much deeper color. I will add a swatch to this post when I get home, but I just had to share how much I love these lip stains and will definitely be buying more. I especially love the fact that I can buy 3 for the price of one Lip Surgence! I will still cherish my Tartes, but I found something that is very comparable for a fraction of the price! That makes me very happy!!

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Braided Nail Art

I am seeing this new braided nail art technique popping up on Youtube. I thought it looked like it might be fun to try. I, in no way, am claiming that I came up with this idea.  I am just sharing my results. All of the videos I have watched did a full manicure with the technique. I didn't, for two reasons: I don't have time during the week to do that kind of labor intensive technique and I think it is way too much for all of my nails. I chose to just do accent nails.

This is in the shade:

This is in sunlight:

Now, this was very easy to do, but HOLY COW is the polish thick when you are all done. I think I will wear this tomorrow, but I will probably take it off tomorrow night. That is, if it doesn't just peel off my nails on its own! It makes my nails look acrylic and since my nails are natural, I prefer them to look that way :) Thanks so much for stopping by!

Polish I used:

Jessie's Girl All Things Girly and Mermaid Lagoon

Sally Hansen Insta-Dry Silver Sweep

Sunday Nails

I always do a full manicure on Sunday mornings. This is the one day I make time to do my cuticles and nail treatments. The rest of the week, I change nail polish as I feel like it :) Never on a particualar day. Today, I decided to not do the normal brighter summer colors I would usually do this time of year and actually try my OPI Just Spotted The Lizard.

 I got it when it first came out, but to me it is more of a fall color, so I haven't used it yet. It is the only one of the Spiderman collection colors that interested me and I really wish it looked as good on my nails as it did in the bottle. Of course my pictures are awful, I really need to figure out how everyone else does such great pics of their manicures!! This polish is so sheer! I am thinking I may see what it does layered over another polish in the future.

I did three coats of base color. Then I stamped just the tips (this was my first time using a french manicure stamp...little tricky to get lined up right) with Konad black special polish and Red Angel plate 101. Finally I used Seche Vite for a top coat.

 This picture was done inside. You can 'kinda' see the coloring shifting from green to gold to blue. I can actually see it better here than I can in real life! lol

These next two pictures are done in natural sunlight. It was hard to get a good picture in bright light because that is when the superfine microglitter shows up.

All in all, I like this nail polish. Not a huge favorite of mine. I am hoping that the new China Glaze Bohemian collection colors are better than this one. I don't see myself reaching for this one alot.

Thanks for visiting and stop by again!

If you have any requests, suggestions or feedback, I would love to hear it!

**edit**
Okay, so after wearing this nail polish for a few hours, I have to edit this post. I have decided that this polish DOES have a cool effect that I wasn't seeing before. I guess I was hoping for the colors to all show when just looking at it, but I realized that when I move my hands I do see all of the colors that show in the bottle. I should have videotaped it, but will try to show you with these two pics:

This one is just when looking straight at the nails in natural light. There is no flash, they are just so shiny that they pick up the small amount of light coming through a window. They are goldish-green.

Now, when I tilt my hand forward, they totally turn teal blue. I kept my pinky up to show the difference, ignore that it is out of focus. lol

So, I am beginning to like this polish more after further examination.

Some of my past designs...

Here is some of my early nail art. The Christmas one is from this past year, but the others are from when I first started doing nail art. Pardon the horrible pictures. I promise that I will get better at that.

Green nails with black tips and polka dots:

4th of July:

China Glaze For Audrey and black water marble w/ CG Fairy Dust:

Watermelon nails with CG Fairy Dust:

CG Ruby Pumps as base color. Handpainted Santa & Rudolph. Snowflake glitters on other nails:

Again, I promise I will take better pictures in the future. These were just pics that I was taking to put on Facebook and Pinterest before I decided that I wanted to start blogging about nail art :)

WELCOME!

Welcome to my new blog. I am hoping to share lots of fun beauty tips with everyone. I love doing interesting things with my nails and I want to be able to share them with all of you. I will soon be adding a gallery of my past designs for inspiration. I also want to share reviews of various beauty products and the latest and greatest things that are hitting the market. So, again, welcome to my Nail File!