More Olympic Nails

Hey Everyone! I have another Olympics inspired mani for you. I should probably just call these USA inspired because there is no Olympic art on them. I am working on something for that though. I am in a fairly bad mood today after paying over $600 for car repairs and such so I will keep this short. I am getting this posted BEFORE I get home and glued to the games because today I am smart lol.

I used one coat of my Red, White and Blue polish creation over my silver holo glitter fade mani.

I then took rectangular nail gems and put them on my ring finger. Honestly I think they look more like police car lights than anything else. I kinda love them though.

This one is blurry but it shows one of  the stars.

I kind of don't want to take this off.

I had to take a picture with my army of fuzz balls.

I am super excited that tonight is the women's gymnastics and of course more swimming.

That's all for now. :)



Olympics Mania

Hey Everyone! I am writing this real quick in between Olympic events. I am completely obsessed by the Olympics. I have always been like this, staying up till all hours of the night, watching as many events as possible. This year I can't stay up real late but I try to watch as much as possible. I decided I had to do Olympics nails and change them every couple of days.

I have my first Olympic inspired nails for you. I started off with Red, White and Blue colors. I am going to make this fast because a race is going to start in a minute.

I did a french tip with Maybelline Sunburst which I think might be a jelly but I have to take a look at it again. I used a white striper for the white and China Glaze Ride the Waves for the blue.

I attempted to use a plate to stamp the stripes but it didn't work out too well. The colors stamped too light to  make the effect I wanted but it did help guide me a bit better.

I did the entire mani over a glitter fade with silver holo glitter so you can see a little of that peeking through.

The rest of the glitter is a concoction I created specifically for the Olympics since it was well after July 4th.

There is tons of glitter in there including stars though I don't think any are visible in this mani.

I loved this mani but the stripes remind me of socks. 

Ok, Phelps is about to swim so I must go.

That's all for now :)

Piggy Polish Create

Hey Everyone! It has been a hectic couple of days. My son went on a trip out of state with his dad. I have been worrying like a worry wart since. Too much stress, I think I need a vacation now! Yesterday was my mom's birthday so we had dinner and cake to celebrate. I had enough time to edit the pictures but not to do the post but today I am ready for you! I am quite excited about the Olympics starting. I am  going to have some Olympic inspired manis coming up soon. I totally forgot/didn't think about doing my nails with my planned mani for the start of the Olympics. Duh! I will probably redo them tonight as I am watching them. I get very excited for the Olympics. In 1992 I stayed up till almost 3am (if not later) every night to watch the extended late night coverage. Due to the time difference I thought I would miss all the good stuff if I didn't watch late night. Luckily it was summer vacation. I was so addicted I would watch anything they put on.

So today I have a polish that was sent to me by the LOVELY awesome Karen over at Frazzle and Aniploish. The link will actually take you to her post on this polish. I got a surprise package in the mail and turns out she sent me this baby to see if I could get it to work any better than she was able to. If you don't follow Karen's blog you should, NOW, go ahead, I will wait! She is awesome and has contributed to over 50% of my lemming list with her awesome swatches. I love her but my wallet is not too fond of her blog.

Today I have for you Piggy Polish's version of magnetic polish.

Piggy Polish Magnetic Polish in Create. This one is a interesting burgundy shimmery color. The bottle picture is very accurate in color. The flash in the pictures below make it appear a little brighter than it really is. It was hard to find a balance between getting the magnetic design to show up and getting the color correct. I am going to get a new camera someday I promise.

In my last posting on magnetic polishes I mentioned grabbing up a set of the Magneto magnet wands by Gelish. These were produced to be used with the Gelish gel magnetic polishes but there was a star magnet so I HAD to buy it. It was a must. Since I knew that Karen had issues with the Piggy Polish magnet I decided I would also try a Gelish magnet to see if it was the magnet or the polish causing problems.

Here are the magnets side by side. the one on the left is the magnet that came with the Piggy Polish. It has a shorter arm and is a square magnet. It is a lot heavier too. The one on the right is the Gelish magnet. I had gotten some polish on the label so I tried to remove it. Another DUH for me because it took the color of some of the label off. Sometimes I need to be smacked with a shoe.

I couldn't wait to play with this polish so I used it almost immediately. I have little patience when I am so excited about something. I had wanted to try one of these polishes but when I was at Ulta I was in a highly aggravated mood and didn't feel like messing with anything and ended up not picking one up. I was really excited that Karen so sweetly sent this to me!

On each hand I used the Piggy Polish magnet on my thumb, index and middle finger. I used the Gelish magnet on my ring and thumb finger. I held the magnet so close that it was almost touching the polish. In some cases I did accidentally touch the polish. I held it there for about 30 seconds give or take seeing as I was actually counting to thirty.

As you can see on this hand the index finger barely showed a pattern at all. The middle finger has a hint of a pattern whereas the ring and pinkie fingers have much more of a pronounced pattern. I waited a bit before putting top coat on my right hand to see if that would help keep the pattern strong after putting the top coat on my left hand sooner and noticing the pattern was not as strong.

Honestly it didn't seem to make much difference. It actually seemed that putting any top coat at any time on this polish faded the pattern a little. You can see where I accidentally bumped the magnet on my pinkie finger. I tried to fix it by adding a second coat and doing the magnet again but it didn't help much and I bumped it again. I decided to just leave it alone at that point.

The light outside made the color look strange in the outdoor pictures.

I love my Piggy Polish polishes but this one was definitely not a winner. Karen and I both had issues with the polish and the design showing up and fading. The color is nice but I am not buying a magnetic polish for just the color but rather for the color AND magnetic properties. This polish seems to be lacking in the magnetic spectrum.

The thing that truly baffled me was I got this design on my thumb with the Piggy Polish magnet. It was the best result with the PP magnet but I couldn't get that result consistently. After using two different magnets on this polish I can't say with 100% confidence that it is the magnet that is causing the issues. I need to test the magnet with another magnetic polish to see if it works well with others. I can say that I got a better design out of the Gelish magnet. I don't know if it is a combination of the polish and a weaker magnet or the polish itself but this is not one of the better magnetic polishes I have tried.

Just for Karen as a huge Thank You I have a couple of pictures of Bruce Kittlee Master Ninja Warrior "playing" with Neil.

Bruce says HI Neil! Neil LOVES Bruce! He does! He always looks for him and wants to play with him. He also admires his super cool AC DC shirt.

As Neil is trying to say Hi back to Bruce Bruce decides it is time to go for the neck and knock Neil over. It is pretty much usually how it goes if we let Bruce near Neil. Neil will try and play and Bruce jumps right on him. We keep Neil in a BIG dog crate in the living room and he has his toys and bed in there. Neil will be sleeping him his bed and Bruce runs up, sticks his arm in the cage and smacks Neil waking him up. Then he runs. Neil never knows what hit him.

That's all for now :)

Ocean Rush at the Ocean

Hey Everyone!! Today I have Saturday's beach day mani for you! We went to the beach for a few hours in the morning and I took the rare occasion to wear a holo. Whenever I wear holo nail polishes I end up with no sun. The first little bit we were there was no exception! It was bright out but there was cloud cover that was blocking the sun. It figures. The sun did come out, I have a nasty burn to prove it. I almost posted a picture of that but figured it would not be nice to subject you all to. I do have beach and holo pictures for you instead though.

It was pretty windy and the waves were pretty rough. I love the waves though so it worked out well for me. This was later in the morning when the clouds cleared.

A picture down the beach.

It was a great day until it started getting TOO hot and we ran for air conditioning.

Layla Ocean Rush.

I kept shoving my hand in ds' face asking if they saw the rainbows. I think that got annoying.

I used two coats. After being in the water a couple of hours it was rather chippy as you can see on my pinkie.

The holo is strong and the color is gorgeous. I used Nfu Oh Aqua Base as a base for this one because I knew it would work and I didn't want to play around with base coats.

 I also used topcoat. It didn't seem to dull the holo at all.

The mani didn't last long due to the chipping but it sure was pretty while it did.

Since I have rarely seen a holo ON ME in the sun I was very impressed with this one. 

Application was decent. I have tried to use a Layla holo before without the Aqua Base and I have had some application issues but this time things went a little better.

I now need to try my other holos but I am avoiding all contact with the sun for awhile.

That's all for now :)

Absolum and Fear or Desire

Hey Everyone! I hope everyone had a nice weekend. This post was supposed to be up Friday but I ran out of time. Saturday morning we went to the beach. The wind was crazy and the water was quite rough. It was so windy we were afraid to put up our umbrella thinking it was going to blow away. I used sunscreen, SPF 50, but still I am a lobster. My arms and chest are pretty burnt and I spent the rest of the weekend moving as little as possible. Sleeping and showering are quite painful. I HATE the sun! I will have some beach pictures for you tomorrow. I have some catching up to do since I didn't get any photos uploaded or watermarked this weekend.

Today's mani is one that I wore recently. After wearing Crowstoes Absolum alone I thought I wanted to see it over orange. I have seen photos of it over blue and black but I thought it would look great over orange. I happened to have picked up Essie Fear or Desire and combo was decided.

This is one coat of Absolum over two coats of Fear or Desire. I still hadn't thinned Absolum so it was thick and some nails will have a lot more glitter than others.

My darling son almost got smacked with a shoe when he said my nails looked like Florida Gators nails. I told him to look again because there were other colors in there too and it was MOST DEFINITELY NOT Florida Gators colors. He is lucky I allowed him in the car after that comment.

I didn't like this combo as much as I did when it was a thought in my head. I think it is the shade of orange. I didn't hate it and I love Absolum so it is hard to go wrong. I just didn't LOVE it like I thought I would. I am pretty sure Fear and Desire was not the right choice for what I wanted.

It was cool though and I did enjoy looking at it.

It was surprisingly easy to remove too. I didn't want to deal with the foil method so I just used cotton and it came off pretty easily. The nails with more glitter took a little more effort but it was much easier than I anticipated.

That's all for now :)

Absolum - Your Potions Master

Hey Everyone!! I could use a nap. I am hungry too so I need to figure out what to do for dinner. I finally feel pretty good, enough to work out, but now my Achilles tendon is pretty sore so I need to rest it. I think the workout might do more harm than good. Days like today I really REALLY wish I had a pool! I could definitely swim without stressing the Achilles.

Today I have another awesome creation from CrowsToes! Her polishes are now being carried on Llarowe so you can get them there.

This one is Absolum - your potions master.

It is so cool and I still LOVE the labels on these bottles.

Ok this was another car mani. I have some clear that wasn't cleaned up but it is better looking than yesterday's orange. This is one coat on all nails. 

This polish was thick and I don't do well with thick polishes. I was trying to conserve as much as possible so I refused to do two coats. You can see how it is slightly crazy because my pinkie has a lot less glitter than my middle finger.

This is totally blingtastic and I love it! The lack of glitter on my pinkie started to bother me after awhile. It didn't bother me enough to use more of my precious though.

Since I was at work I didn't have thinner or clear to add to it and thin it a bit. I will need to do that soon though. It is so jam packed with glitter a tad of B3F clear will help it flow better. I find that most glitter polishes are so jam packed that they will need thinning and it really isn't a big deal in my book. Especially when a polish looks this cool!

I love the mix of colors and glitters in this polish. I very much wanted to take it off and then redo the mani with an array of different base colors because I was so excited. I didn't and instead just started at my nails a whole lot while wearing it.

That's all for now :)

Fear or Desire

Hey Everyone! As promised I have some beach photos for you today. I took them Friday evening. I used to spend so much time on Hollywood Beach as a kid. It has changed so much but I still love going there.

When we were young we KNEW we were close when we saw the big waterball.

I have been wanting to go to the beach but there was SO MUCH seaweed I am kinda rethinking. I HATE seaweed. It kinda creeps me out.

Love the water though!

The boardwalk. Spent tons of time hanging out there.

My favorite time at the beach is when the sun is behind the buildings and it is getting dark.

Today I have Essie Fear or Desire from the 2012 Summer Collection Bikini So Teeny. I am on a major orange polish kick lately and I need all the oranges.

This is two coats of Fear or Desire. I did this mani in the car so I hadn't done cleanup yet. I was also going to add glitter to this baby so I wasn't ready for cleanup.

This is a great orange! I love it!

It is a really nice creme with great application and makes me think of a smooth orange ice cream bar. I have no idea why. Perhaps because I am hungry and ready to eat lol.

Sadly to the naked eye it looked like I did a pretty neat job polishing and I didn't think I needed that much cleanup. Then macro came along and ruined it.

This is a perfect summer color. Bold and bright.

I very much like this polish. It reminds me of Jesse's Girl Crush though I believe this one is darker. I will have to check on that when I get a chance.

That's all for now :)