Halloween Claws!

My apologies for this late post. I had difficulties getting my pictures to upload over the weekend, and I just figured out why... I had them saved as an incompatible format. I wish it just said so! Anyway, this is post I had planned for Halloween:

What can you create with these?---->

This spooky manicure! I started with a base of my favorite orange creme, L'Oreal - Sizzling Tangerine, waited 2 minutes and then applied a coat of Cover Girl Crackle Polish Ghost Fantome. The crackle effect takes about 15 minutes for the full effect. It is a little tough to wait patiently for that long, but I love the look when it's done. Then I hand drew some little spiders with Sally Hansen Nail Art Pen in black!

A friend had a Halloween party and I helped her do some setting up in the days before, consisting of carving pumpkins and making Jell-O shots. Here's the pumpkins we made:

Mine is on the left, hers is on the right

-Elaine

Maybelline Poptimistic

What a great unexpected find while grocery shopping! A new collection from Maybelline called "Poptimistic". I didn't even know it existed and there it was while I was picking up food! I was super excited. The display had spots for 5 colors: a green (!!!), a gray, a smokey blue, a shimmery white, and I am assuming a purple, since the display picture has purple nails, but it was sold out. I picked up two:

Opti-mist-ic - This is a warm gray with a subtle silver shimmer, and a more pronouned orangey-copper shimmer. Very interesting and beautiful. I wore this a ton! Sometimes I looked at it and thought it had a lilac look to it. It must have been the lighting, but still cool.

Glad to be Green! - This is a yellow-forest green that makes me think of crocodiles or going on safari. It is soooooooo hott!! Green is my favorite color, and I have a lot of green nail polish, but this is hands down my favorite. It is mezmerizing and perfect. I love this!!

Happy hump day!

Migi Nail Art Pens Swatches and Review

Freehanding nail art is something that I have always enjoyed doing, but have usually had a hard time with without proper tools (special pens, Konad stamping set, stencils, etc.) I always just did hearts and flowers and dots by dotting with the polish brush of the color I was using! And mayber sometimes with a toothpick. I now know it can be much simpler. One way to accomplish this is with Migi Nail Art Pens.

Here are the 4 colors I have for review. An olivey green with gold shimmer, a gold glitter, a pink creme and a white creme.

These pens have a two way cap. So one end opens just like a polish bottle and has a brush to paint with:

But if you pull the upper part of the cap you find a fine point to draw nail art with while you squeeze the pen:

Very fine point. It's like a needle

Here are all the colors painted with the brush end. Very smooth and even and have good coverage.

Here are some simple designs I did with them: A daisy which I did by painting dots far from the center and then pulling them in, flowers made up of dots, a snowflake, and little hearts made by making the top with two dots and then pulling them down to a point. These pens are wonderful for doing all these and more but I really love them for doing polka dots.

They also work well to do a french manicure since you can freehand the line with the fine end and then paint the rest of the tip with the brush. I also like it because you can draw the ends of the tip real close to the edges very finely. Also, although I don't have a pic ,they work well for halfmoon manicures as well.

Pros: Versatile. Fine point allows for intricate designs, small dots and lines, french manicures, letters and numbers. (I used these for my 30ROCK manicure) Migi gives free refills (2 per order) when you pay for shipping.

Cons: Glitter gets stuck in the fine tip. (Only the glitter pen) I played with the gold glitter and got it to work before I did my swatches for the review, but by the time it came time to do swatches and pics I couldn't get it to come out anymore. Also they can become pressurized and polish will continuously flow out of the tip on its own without squeezing the pen. This however, is easily fixable by unscrewing the brush and screwing it back on while slightly squeezing the pen.

Here is a little sunburst I did on a paper plate with the gold glitter before it stopped working for me:

The colors for these pens are sold in sets. There are 5 different collections of colors. Each retails for $24.99. That means you end up paying about $3.12 per color. Each color has 0.16 fluid ounce of product, so that breaks down to $19.50/ounce. It sounds pricey that way, but really it would be like paying $9.75 for a regular 0.5 oz. bottle of polish which isn't that far off from what a lot of us spend! Plus the flexibility for doing designs more than makes up for it.

Here are the sets:

Gold Collection - 8 shimmers - This has the green I have swatched

Silver Collection - 8 bold cremes - I believe this is the set with the white I have swatched

Bronze Collection - Described as the "french" set - This set has mostly shimmers, but also the gold glitter I have swatched

Black Collection - Pastel cremes and shimmers

White Collection - Neon cremes and shimmers

Thanks for checking out my review! You can purchase these nail art pens at MigiNailArt.com
Each set retails for $24.99, or you can get all 5 for $99.99.

Disclosure: The products featured in this post were furnished to me by the manufacturer or PR company for review. For more information please visit my disclosure policy.

Seche VITE for Breast Cancer Awareness

Hello everyone! I had a nice surprise the other day when I went to my Sally's Beauty Supply to pick up a new bottle of Seche VITE top coat. For the same price, I purchased a bottle of SV which came in a box and included a strip of pink ribbon nail decals and rhinestones for Breast Cancer Awareness Month. I have been trying to support breast cancer any way I can, including joining Michelle from All Lacquered Up in raising money for the Breast Cancer Research Foundation here.

About Seche VITE: I love this stuff. I couldn't live without it. Before I learned that such a wonderful product as this existed, I never used topcoats because to me it seemed a waste since I would just have to wait longer for my manicure to dry. I never used anything that took more than two coats (which excludes plenty of colors that are gorgeous but take at least three coats, and forget about layering combos) and I usually always ended up messing up my manis. Then this baby came into my life and I will never go back. It sets my polish quickly so I can do my nails even if I am in a hurry. I can layer layer layer! I can do anything!! It's empowering!

Back to the decals.... They are super cute:

Here is the mani I did for today with them:It is Sinful Colors - Social Ladder with one of the pink ribbon decals. I had a hard time putting in on. Not the fault of the decal; I just never use them so I was sloppy. I messed up the nail first so I had to take off the polish and try again. Then I put on the topcoat to dry my polish so I wouldn't wreck it, then put on the decal, then I put on another layer of topcoat to seal it in and I instead made the polish underneath do a weird crinkling action over the whole nail. I probably couldn't do it again if I tried! It actually looked kind of cool. It has since smoothed out a bit. It must have been the first layer was still trying to get things set and then the second layer showed up too soon and messed up his plans.

I have never bought Seche VITE in a box so it was interesting to see what they had to say:

"Seche VITE Acknowledged as the world's finest top coat. Its patented formula allows it to penetrate through the nail lacquer to the base coat forming a single solid coating over the nail plate for a much more durable finish which is guaranteed not to yellow. Seche VITE is unmatched as a top coat. Your nails will feel silky, be stronger, and will absolutely not chip. Seche VITE creates the highest gloss and is longer lasting than any product on the market today. Apply thickly, get a nice bead on the end of the brush, then set softly down on the first nail painted and watch how Seche VITE flows over the wet nail polish without dragging of streaking the underlying manicure"

It may be a little hyped up, but it is a wonderful product. I have seen it at Target for about $10, at CVS for about $8, at Sally's for about $7, but with a Sally Beauty Member Card it only costs $4.95. Big difference from $10!

It is however, not completely big 3 free:

Warning: This product contains a chemical known to the state of California to cause birth defects or other reproductive harm.

Butyl Acetate, Toluene, Cellulose Acetate Butyrate, Isoprpyl Alcohol, Trimethyl Pentanyl Diisobutyrate, Benzophenone-1.

POST TO COME Thanks to Christy!

Today I want to show off some new polishes I received. I would looooove to swatch them all since I am home, but there is absolutely no sun and these are too glittery and gorgeous to shoot without sunlight. So I took some bottle shots to tease you until we get some sunshine!

These awesome sets are in my possession only because there is a wonderful girl out in Virgina who sent them to me. And that girl is the adorable, bad-ass, wonderful CHRISTY of The Kronicles of a Konad-er! I am quite certain they only sell these in Rite-Aid stores and I don't have those here. Boo. But Christy does so she sent them my way! I actually only asked for one but she sent me both!! That was pretty awesome! THANK YOU, GIRL!!

EDIT: According to Brooke of Getcha Nails Did, these are elsewhere besides Rite-Aid. She saw them at Walgreen's, so keep your eyes peeled!

These Borghese mini nail polish sets don't have names for the individual polishes, but the sets themselves have names.

First up is Allegra:

And the second one is Serena:
I will swatch and post them as soon as possible!!

China Glaze Spellbound

Hello everyone! I thought to get us in a Halloween Mood I would bring you China Glaze's Halloween set, "Spellbound", including a fabulous glitter topcoat of the same name. The set includes a black and a white creme, the glitter, and a glow-in-the-dark topcoat. The packaging for the set is super cute. It has a little witch on a moped all decked out with Halloween friends: a toad, a spider who has a web on her hat, a black cat and a raven. So cute.


Liquid Leather - Black creme. Nothing to write home about. It is very thin. It took me 3 coats to get it opaque. Not a winner in my book.


White Out - White creme. Although the 3 coats it took are annoying, I like the look of the end result. It is just a smidge less harsh than actual white out. It has a softer feel.


Spellbound over White Out - Spellbound is described as a topcoat, but it is dense enough that you could get complete coverage. In this swatch, I did a different number of coats on each nail to show how it looks as you build it. Left to right they go:
-- 1 coat of Spellbound
-- 2 coats of Spellbound
-- 3 coats of Spellbound


Spellbound over Liquid Leather - Same as the previous swatch:
-- 1 coat of Spellbound
-- 2 coats of Spellbound
-- 3 coats of Spellbound


And here are some close ups:

1 coat of Spellbound over Liquid Leather


2 coats of Spellbound over Liquid Leather


3 coats of Spellbound over Liquid Leather


This swatch has White Out on the first two nails and Liquid Leather on the last two. The glow-in-the-dark topcoat, Ghoulish Glow, is on the index and ring fingers to show you how it alters the base color of the polish.

And for fun:Pic of glowing bottle

30ROCK Manicure

Happy Thursday! I am very happy today because the season premiere of one of my absolutely favorite shows, 30ROCK, is today! If you don't watch it.... you really should! I was so excited that I decided to do a mani to celebrate!

The title card of the show is pretty simple, so besides for writing "30Rock" on my nails, I was at a loss of what else to do. I thought maybe the NBC peacock would be a good idea. Then I came across this little gem:

If you don't watch the show, it is about a fictional sketch comedy show on NBC called "TGS" and this deal-breaker sketch was from one of the episodes.

"If you're man leaves in boxers and comes home in briefs, that's a deal breaker, ladies!"

So I thought I would used the pink polka dots for the mani. Here is how it turned out:

I used:
base: Color Club - Oooooo La La
Dots: Zoya - Dita
"30": Green Migi Nail Art pen (full review to come)
"ROCK": Black Sally Hansen Nail Art pen


Peacock:
red: Milani - Red to Tango
orange: Misa - Speed of Life
yellow: Sally Hansen - Lightening
purple: Zoya - Pinta
blue: Essie - Mesmerize
green: BB Couture - Poison Ivy
white: Migi Nail Art Pen

I did however, screw up the colors of the peacock on the left side. They should go yellow, orange, red not red, orange, yellow... ooooops. I think the point gets across. It took me a whole day to figure it out.

Have a great day and watch 30ROCK!!!

Glitter Trimmed Vampy Nails

So last night I was sitting with a friend and we had a bunch of polish out, and I grabbed her Massini - Magic Attraction (same as Color Club - Magic Attraction if you don't have access to Massini Nail Polish) and I painted just the tippy tip of my nails on one hand. No idea what made me do it. I just wanted to put it on something and since I already had my nails covered in Konad and rhinestones, it just ended up there. And I really liked it! It hit me that it would probably look great with a dark color painted on the nail. So I went home and re-did my mani while watching the Dancing with the Stars I had recorded, and came up with this little combo:



I used Sinful Colors - Rich in Heart with Color Club - Magic Attraction on the tippys. I didn't paint the underside, or the nail tip as you would a typical french manicure. I did just the perpendicular edge to those surfaces. That itty bitty thin edge. Just the tip. See how it feels.

It feels just like the icing on the cake. The icing detail, that maybe you didn't really need, but it gives it something special. I'm going to have fun looking at this all day!

NOTD: Dream On Konad

Hello and good afternoon! Today I want to share with you my Nail Of The Day. I wore Sinful Colors - Dream On yesterday, and last night I decided to jazz it up! I love this color so much, but I had an itch to use my Konad.



The base is Sinful Colors - Dream On
The stamp is Konad Special Polish in White using plate M22
And then I added sky blue and black rhinestones

I'm diggin' it!