Day 9 - Rainbow Nails

I've had absolutely no time to update my blog :( But Day 9 is Rainbow Nails! I had NO idea what to do for this challenge and then I was like whatever let me try to do splatter. I think it came out pretty cool for my first time doing it. I used a straw and instead of dipping it in the polish which I realized wasn't working that well for me, I just used the brush and painted the bottom of the straw with the nail polish. I used a different straw for each color & I used all the colors of the rainbow :)

Thanksgiving Nails!

Here's an extra post for today. I saw a YouTube tutorial on this & I had to try it! Here are my turkey nails :)

For my base coat I used Forever 21's Love & Beauty polish in Nude. The red was Brucci - Jelly Apple, Yellow was Essie - Shorty Pants, Orange was Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Sun Kissed, the Brown was Orly - Naughty. The black was Art Club Nail Art Lacquer (with the thin brush) & the white was Kiss Nail Art Paint (also with a thin brush). Here is the tutorial I used: Julie G Thanksgiving Turkey Nails

I also saw another really cool Thanksgiving tutorial from Robin Moses, I just discovered her nail art and she's beyond phenomenal. Here is a link to her Thanksgiving nails: Robin Moses Thanksgiving Characters

Day 8 - Metallic Nails

So I didn't have metallic nail polish. I'm really not a fan. I went to Daune Read and I tried looking for some. I've never bought NYC nail polish so I figured I would give it a try. I saw a lot of other blogs who use NYC and the color comes out great. I saw these two great metallic purple & blue nail polishes. I didn't check what the name of the purple one was, but while I was waiting for the train I looked at my receipt. I swear this made me the happiest person ever. The name of the purple was "Buff the Violet Slayer." I had the biggest smile on my face. Buffy was my favorite show! I used to pretend I was her when I was in third grade and slay imaginary vampires! HAHA. I also saw someone blog about this color & I was going to buy it online. What a coincidence! Anywho, the pictures made the polish look blue. I tried getting some pictures that justify the color. Here they are:

Day 7 - Black & White Nails

Yay! One week down! I could not figure out what to do for black and white nails. I didn't want to do something boring, I wanted to do something fun. I settled with panda bears. Here's how it came out...

I painted all of my fingers Black on Black by Sinful Colors, except my ring finger. For my ring finger I used Sally Hansen Insta-Dri in Quick Sand. I couldn't paint it black or white because then you wouldn't have been able to see the panda on top of it, so I went with a neutral color. For the white I used Sinful Colors - Snow Me White. I used a dotting tool for the designs and a thin nail polish brush.

Day 6 - Purple Nails!

I feel like this challenge is going so slow! It's not even a week yet! Purple is another color that I absolutely love for my nails, especially dark purple. I had a couple of different purples to choose from but I chose Sephora by OPI - Eve-y On the Eyes. My friend Adriana got it for me for my birthday & it's such a fabulous color. 

It was so hard to really capture a good picture of this nail polish. It's a plum purple with the most gorgeous purple shimmer. You can see the shimmer in some of the pictures.

Day 5 - Blue Nails

My absolute favorite nail color is blue! I'm always wearing blue nail polish. My friend Adriana tells me all the time to wear a different color lol but I can't help it! So for this challenge I wasn't sure which blue to choose because I just love so many of them. But my favorite dark blue has to be OPI - Yoga-Ta Get This Blue! This blue is absolutely gorgeous. I had a little trouble getting a really good picture of it, so I took a couple. The shimmer when the light hits this color is beautiful. What do you guys think? What's your favorite shade of blue?

Day 4 - Green Nails

So for this challenge, which should be so simple, I had a little trouble. I couldn't figure out if I wanted to use a dark green, or a light green, or a yellow green, etc. I went with my favorite green even though it's not a typical green. After looking at the pictures I realized it looks a lot more like a blue on my nails. But I swear it's green in the bottle lol. I went with Essie - Mint Candy Apple. I absolutely LOVE this color. It's a pale green. Perfect for spring time and the summer. It looks great with a tan. It's extremely opaque and for some reason I have a little difficulty working with really opaque colors from Essie. I don't know if it's just me or if anyone else feels that way. 

Day 3 - Yellow Nails

So Day 3 is yellow nails! I love yellow nails! I think they're perfect for summer. So fun and bright :) As much as I love yellow nails, I only have one yellow nail polish. I used Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Mellow Yellow.  Again I'm using a Sally Hansen polish. I think they're great for a reasonable price. When I put my Seche Vite top coat on I guess there was some orange on the brush from my previous manicure and it got on my yellow nails. You can see it on my pinky and ring finger. I actually thinks it looks kind of cool. I was too lazy to re-do those nails so I just left it.

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one million pagesviews + blogaversary : one month of giveaways from FashionPolish! Enter to win here:

http://www.fashionpolish.com/2011/11/one-million-pages-views-blogaversary.html?spref=bl

Day 2 - Orange Nails

So Day 2 is Orange Nails - another color I have never worn. I like neon orange but only in the summer & even that I've probably only wore once. Orange just isn't my thing. But this challenge made me use a nail polish I bought a while ago that I never wore. I put this color on just one finger & took it right off. I didn't give it a chance. It's Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Sun Kissed. I'm a big fan of Sally Hansen, they're not as expensive as Essie and OPI and the nail polishes work just as well. You need two coats of this color to make it opaque, the first coat was pretty sheer. I hate sheer nail polishes, bleh! 

I thought the color was going to be a lot brighter. This is definitely a color for summer and would look so much better if you had a tan. But now I'm going to use this color in the summer. I'm glad I used this for the challenge. It was the only orange I had to so I had to. How do you guys feel about orange nails?

Day 1 - Red Nails

If you know me, you know I absolutely HATE red nails. I know, I know - shocking right? Who hates red nails? I don't know what it is about them but I hate the way they look on my nails. BUT! Thanks to this challenge I used a nail polish I've had for the longest time that I never used. I actually had to open the bottle using my teeth because it's been that long. I didn't even care if I ruined my teeth that's how much I only care about my nails. Just kidding. I probably would've cried, but at least my nails would've looked nice :) So for this manicure I used a red from the OPI Alice in Wonderland Collection. When this came out I was obsessed with the colors. Don't ask my why because there's two reds in it and I don't wear red. I loved the glitters though. And I love Alice in Wonderland. So my sweet boyfriend who feeds into my obsession bought me the mini collection. And this is the first time I'm using it. I had to have had this for maybe 2 years. I don't even remember when it came out.

I could NOT get a perfect picture of this color. These pictures do the color no justice. How cute is the wittle bottle? I love. I thought maybe I would be able to get a good picture of the color from the bottle, but NOPE. It's a shimmery, dark red. It looks like silk or foil. I think it's perfect for Christmas time too. Now I wish I would've tried this color when the collection came out so I could've bought the bigger bottle. I guess I'll have to check Amazon or Ebay. Oh, I almost forgot. The color of this nail polish is called 'Thanks so Muchness'

31 Day Nail Challenge

So I decided today I'm going to do the 31 day nail challenge! It looks like too much fun to pass up & it's giving me incentive to use some nail polishes that I never used before. Here is what the 31 day challenge is: 

Colorful French

This is another one of my favorite designs. I love a regular french tip - it's classy and elegant.. but why not put some color into it? For this design I used the same colors I used for the shatter design. See how many different things you can do with just a couple of colors? You don't need a million nail polishes.

For the base coat I used Sally Hansen Insta-Dri in #150 Petal Pusher. The pink is from Forever 21 Love & Beauty - Pink, the purple is from Color Club but the sticker isn't on the bottom anymore so I have no idea what the name of the color is, the yellow is from Sally Hansen - Mellow  Yellow, and the blue is from Brucci - Gianna's "Rockin" Blue. (Please excuse my cuticles, they're a mess right now.) I tried using tape for this design because I've been reading a lot of other blogs that say they use tape and they came out perfect, but obviously they didn't for mine. I didn't try to perfect this either, I just wanted to show you how cool this french design is.

Rainbow Shatter

A little switch up from those subtle nails. This manicure is a little more eye popping. I'm sure some of you have seen this before since the shatter nail polishes have been out for a while, but I didn't have a blog when I first did this mani. I love this mani so much! It's definitely one of my favorites. Here's a picture of what it is:

This is such an easy and fun manicure. I started with my base coat - I use Diamond Shield - then I put one coat of white - I used Sinful Colors Snow Me White - just to make the colors pop more. Then with my dotting tool I dotted colors on my nails in random patterns. The colors I used were:

OPI - Who the Shrek are You?

Brucci - Gianna's "Rockin" Blue

Sally Hansen - Mellow Yellow

Love & Beauty (Forever 21) - Pink
OPI - Black Shatter

The purple I used is by Color Club but the sticker on the bottom came off so I don't know the name of it. This is what my nails looked like before the shatter. They're a little bit of a mess.

It's ok if it's not perfect. It's not supposed to be. And if you get it on your cuticles you can clean it up after, no biggie.

Matte Zebra Print

The very first nail art I did was zebra print. The idea popped into my head out of no where and my first attempt at  it was horrid; it was random stripes all over my nail, looked nothing like zebra print, and I thought it was the greatest thing ever. Practice makes perfect & I think I have the zebra print down to almost perfect. But this one has a little twist. I got this idea from a photo I saw on Tumblr. I painted my nails black - Black on Black by Sinful Colors - & used the matte top coat from Essie. I made all my fingers matte except my two ring fingers. Then I used a black polish with a thin brush from Art Club and made the zebra stripes black, but they were shiny! This is how it came out.

BUT I got bored with my ring finger, of course, so what better way to make something more fun than to add glitter! :) This is my finished product:

For the glitter I put a top coat on to make my nail wet again & dipped my nail in Sephora by OPI nail glitter. I actually really love this glitter. The glitter is so fine, not chunky at all, and it's not too gritty. It's delicate which I think was really good for these subtle but super fabulous nails. I did the zebra print free hand, I didn't use any sort of stamping. These are definitely one of my favorite nail designs!

Nail Fanatic Giveaway

Nail Fanatic is giving away the complete set of the OPI Touring America Collection. That's 12 nail polishes! Here's the link to her giveaway: http://nailfanatic.blogspot.com/2011/10/giveaway-opi-touring-america-collection.html

Burt's Bees Lemon Butter Cuticle Creme

Another must have! I don't know about you, but I absolutely hate cuticles! They make a cute mani look bleh. I had a really bad habit of biting my cuticles. Instead of biting my nails I would constantly chew the skin around my nails (I know, sounds gross). I saw someone use this in a YouTube tutorial, she had amazing cuticles, so I said I have to try it. Someone in another blog (can't remember which) said she got this at her local drug store for $5-$6 but I paid $16 for it at my local Duane Read! Crazy! I think it was worth it though. I am constantly using this, especially with the cold weather my hands/cuticles get so dry. It smells really good too, very fresh. It doesn't leave your hands greasy and it's really easy to apply. You can stick it in your bag and apply it whenever and wherever. I'm constantly using it in class or on the train & especially before I go to bed at night. For some reason that's when it works the best. My boyfriend even asks me to put this on his cuticles! Awesome product that really makes your manicures look so complete without the hassle of using those scary cuticle tools that I have no idea how to use.

Guchi Muchi Puchi by Essie

The lighting isn't so great but this picture really shows how awesome the Seche Vite Top Coat really is. It's completely dry & super shiny. I love! I painted my nails Guchi Muchi Puchi by Essie & I have to thank my girl Adriana for giving me this color :) I'm taking my college graduation pictures tomorrow & my mom said "not to wear any funky colors." lol - so I went with a conservative pink. I really love this color, but it's definitely not for fall.

Seche Vite Top Coat

I have to share this with the world because this is by far the best top coat I have ever purchased. I have purchased SO many top coats and none of them worked the way I wanted them to. They were super shiny, until they dried. I always wanted that salon manicure finish. For some reason the salon's always gave you this super shiny finish to your nails that lasted for days & I could never find that - until I bought Seche Vite Top Coat. First of all, it dries SO FAST! Who doesn't love a fast drying nail polish that leaves your nails looking salon manicure shiny for days!? I saw this on someone's nail blog & I was like wow I can't believe I've gone so long without this. You can put it on your nails while they are still wet with your color and the manicure will be dry to the touch in minutes. Now note, I said 'dry to the touch'.. don't go poking at your nails and digging around for stuff! My mom didn't believe me so I put it on for her before she went to bed one night & usually she wakes up the next morning with the sheet prints which I'm sure you're all familiar with. Guess what? She didn't with Seche Vite Top Coat. Fabulous product! Definitely worth the price. It's $9-$10 & they sell it in any sort of CVS or Duane Read.

Sephora by OPI - Sugar Plum Fairies Gone Wild

Just by the name someone would have to buy the polish. I love Sephora and I think it's awesome that they started carrying nail polish. This particular one caught my eye (anything with glitter does). I thought the formula would be super glittery with just one coat, but as with most glitter nail polishes, I needed at least 3 coats to get it the way I wanted with all glitter and no empty spots on the nail. I've gotten so many compliments on it, I think because it really catches someone's eye. Excuse the pictures, my camera isn't the greatest.

First Post!

Took me about an hour to figure out a name for my blog, but I figured one out! This is my first time blogging so excuse me if I'm awkward, I'm new at this. I am absolutely OBSESSED & ADDICTED to nail polish. I always have been, even before this craze that is going on now. I'm constantly looking at other nail polish blogs so I figured why not start my own? Hope you enjoy :)