I am Back! Lots of Pictures Included!

Hey Everyone!!! I AM BACK!!! It was a nice break but I am finally back. Things have settled down for the most part so I am confident I can devote my attention to the blog again. My nails, however, have decided to be complete jerks and not cooperate. I decided to go forward and blog anyway. All of that will be explained in the next post. I figure I will start out with 2-3 posts a week instead of trying to do daily posts. I even got a little calendar to keep track of my manis so I can stay organized. When I was going through pictures on my camera I had forgotten what mani of the polishes I had used were. I decided I must write down everything from now on to keep myself from staring at the computer for 20 minutes trying to remember what I used. The great thing about my memory is that I eventually did remember all but one of the polishes I used in the pictures below. I wish I could say the same for the stamping images though. 

Today I have some of the manis I have done over the past few months. My nails will be various lengths because some of the pictures are older than others. Shall we take a look?

Back at the beginning of football season I did this mani combining C's NY Giants and my Buffalo Bills. It didn't quite come out as well as I had wanted it to.

I wasn't thrilled with the gold stamping. It looked much nicer in my imagination. 

Back when I was taking ds to the doctor all the time I saw this NYC Fashion Queen collection at one of my CVS stops. Since I was stressed and they were cheap I did a little retail therapy and bought the glitter polishes called Crystal Couture. I, of course, did not buy them all at once which tells you how many doctor trips we actually made. 

The Blue one is called Blue Majesty and the purple is named My Princess.

I don't usually do gold but I actually really liked this one a lot. It is called Fashion Queen.

I decided that it reminded me of gold coins and pirates plus I just really wanted to use a skull image so I stamped one on as an accent. 

I used Sugar Bubbles stamping plate 008 for this cute skull.

Queen's Jewels is the green color for this collection and I love it! 

I decided to do an accent nail with another recently acquired polish Sinful Colors Cauldron Couture.

This was the only bottle shot I took for some reason. I have no idea why I do the things I do.

The red from the Fashion Queen Collection also caught my attention despite it not being my favorite color.

The red one is pretty pink but I still loved the vibrant juicy color. It is called Ruby Queen.

I had done a few gel manis as well to help my nails grow a bit. I figured the protection of the gel mani would help keep them going.

For this gel mani I used Gelish Race you to the Bottom.

My nails were pretty damaged so the gel manis didn't wear quite as good as I would have liked. I hate when one or two nails ruin it for the whole mani!

This mani was the one that I could not remember at all. I finally remembered that the base color was one of the Fall Limited Edition Wet N Wild Megalast Matte polishes but I still am not positive what the glitter accent is.

The Wet N Wild is called Distressed to Impress. I love the color of this one oh so much! I believe the glitter is a Sinful Colors glitter but I am not 100% positive on that one. 

That's all for now :) 

Violet Crystal Butterflies

Hey Everyone!! Thank goodness it is Friday!! 

Today I have some stamping I did over my Violet Crystal glitter mani. I used Bundle Monster Plate BM-307 and Konad Blue stamping polish to stamp the butterflies. The base of this mani was Gelish Medieval Madness with a glitter gradient using ArtsyFartsyCrafts Violet Crystal.

I was trying to make it a very spring like mani even though we pretty much skipped Spring and went straight to Summer here. It is quite hot out.

I used a coral striping polish to fill in the butterflies. I was going for a lead light technique look but I think my polish was a bit too opaque. I might have also just been a little bit more heavy handed with the polish in some areas because some of the areas look great.

I think I need a nap now. I just had lunch and I am thinking about all the stuff I have to do at home. I have a meeting to go to tonight after work and a cake to bake for my brother's going away party tomorrow. I definitely think I need a nap since just thinking about it all makes me tired. 

I hope everyone has a nice weekend! Hopefully I won't get too fried at the beach tomorrow. I hate the sun and heat but the party is at the beach so I must bring my pale self out there. Thankfully there should be some shade, I hope. 

That's all for now :)

Violet Crystal Medieval Madness

Hey Everyone!!! It's hump day woooo, woooo. It has been a little bit busy these past few days. The old saying when it rains, it pours has definitely held true for us this past week. Lots of stuff going on, most of which is the adult issues that I don't want to deal with ever. I would prefer being an irresponsible kid but of course we all know that isn't how it works. Since I have been doing a lot of work at the kennel, mostly on the weekend now, I have been using gel polish a lot. Today's mani is another gel mani. Fear not, I will have regular polish posts coming soon. 

I felt like I wanted a nice, light, spring mani however my gel polish collection is not as extensive as my regular polish collection. The good news is I have a ton of different glitters from ArtsyFartsyCrafts to help add some life and change up the colors I do have.

I wanted a nude or off white color and the only thing I have in my collection that fits that bill is Gelish Medieval Madness. I love the color but it wasn't exactly what I wanted. I think I was thinking more of an ivory or off white in my head. It still looked nice with this glitter so I was happy with it.

I used ArtsyFartsyCrafts glitter in Violet Crystal to give it a pop of color. This glitter is very fine .025" 1/40" glitter. It is probably the largest glitter I will work with on a mani unless I am going to strategically place the pieces of glitter. I tried doing a gradient however it just wasn't working out for me that day. It instead wants to be a gradient but didn't quite make it. 

This glitter is a really pretty iridescent violet color. It is much lighter on the nail then it looks online or even in the jar. When the glitter spreads out it shows it's true color. I was surprised the first time I used this particular glitter because it was so much lighter on the nail than I expected and it didn't show up the way I wanted on the base polish I picked. Against Medieval Madness it really shows how pretty it is. 

I love the versatility of Medieval Madness. It can be a great palette cleanser and you can do so much using it as a base. It is definitely one of my favorite gel polish colors.   

I did this mani around Easter because I thought it would be a great base for some Easter stamping. Unfortunately my stamping was all disastrous and then I ran out of time and had to go with this mani non stamped. 

The good news about having a gel polish base is that even though I had to remove 5 different stamping attempts I still had a great mani ready to go. I would have probably given up after two attempts if I had to keep redoing the base every time I messed up the stamping.

That's all for now :)

Inseparable Forces

Hey Everyone! I stopped using Photobucket because it was being quite a brat and today I have had nothing but troubles from Blogger. Oy. I am going to be speedy with this one before it starts messing with me again. I have twice had it shut down Opera while I was trying to move pictures around and it kept freezing up on Internet Explorer too. The internet does not love me today. 

I am happily back to doing Monday Blues though! This is exciting and I am going to try my best to be able to actually keep up with it.

Today I have for you Magnetic Lacquer from the Gelish Magneto collection. These were released sometime last year. Gelish made a line of gel polishes that were magnetic as well as matching magnetic regular polishes. I believe they were sold as a set mostly however I had only ever seen the gel polishes in store. This is one of the regular, non gel, polishes.

Inseparable Forces. I used two coats of this polish using the magnet on the second coat. This one had a diamond patterned magnet.

I wanted to try stamping over the magnetic mani after I saw a really nice mani on a blog somewhere. Mine didn't come out as cool as the one I saw. I used Gals plate GA12 from the Princess collection.

I like the color of Inseparable Forces, it is a denim blue type color. It was not a one coater as some of the magnetic polishes are but the formula was good. 

You can see it has a slight purple cast to it when it is magnetized. It is a really pretty color. I wonder if you can see the purple if you don't use the magnet...I didn't notice it.

The magnet is a typical flat magnet with a little ridge for you to rest on your finger. The problem with the flat magnet is that nails are curved and the sides do not get the magnet effect unless you sort of roll the magnet so it can reach the sides. Not only does this make things more complicated but it gives you much more of a chance to touch the magnet to the nail which I did several times.

The stamping went very well and I liked the open design. I did not like my top coat smearing my design though. I really don't like when my stamping gets smeared like that. 

I was disappointed that my magnet design didn't show up better. Overall this mani didn't come out as great as I had envisioned but it wasn't too bad.

You can see the purple well in this close up. It is really very pretty and was very unexpected.

I have a few more of these Gelish Magnetic Lacquers that I am going to have to try out soon. 

I apparently took a ton of pictures for this mani.

That's all for now :)

Galaxy Blue Holographic Glitter

Hey Everyone!!! OH WHAT A WEEK!!! I missed posting yesterday but I was thinking about it lol I know that doesn't get it done but I was just worn out. In the past two days I have been to the doctor for a physical, the lab for bloodwork (my veins don't like to play well when it comes to drawing blood) and the dentist. Since the dentist didn't see anything to indicate why I have sensitivity and pain they want me to see the root canal guy and since my insurance doesn't allow the doctor to take an xray I have to go get it done at a "free standing facility". It is only Wednesday!!!! I am tired. lol I couldn't wait any longer to post this mani though. I actually haven't painted over this one yet which tells you how little time and energy I have had. I feel bad because I missed posting on World Autism Awareness Day but better late than never!

I decided to do a Gelish mani with some awesome blue glitter. I used a base of Gelish Medieval Madness then a gradient of Artsyfartsy Crafts glitter in Galaxy Blue Holographic.

Galaxy Blue Holographic is a gorgeous royal blue holo glitter. Unfortunately my camera wouldn't pick up much of the holoness. It was quite disappointing but trust me it is REALLY pretty and visible in real life.

These pictures were taken outside but the sun was not cooperating, which of course meant the holo effect wasn't going to be picked up on camera.

I probably should have used some blue under the glitter so it didn't look as sparse but I didn't think of that until well after the mani was underway.

The glitter is really pretty and quite sparkly.

It doesn't look as sparse in person except for that stupid middle finger.

I rather enjoy these glitter gradient manis.

I tried to get some of the holo to show inside. The picture is a little blurry and the color is a bit darker than it should be but at least the holo is peeking out a little.

That's all for now :)