Day 4: Green

The theme of Day 4 is green. I picked up a new green that was on sale at Sephora recently, so I decided to try it out! It's called Designer Fig Leaf, and it's from Sephora by OPI. I actually had my eye on this color for a while, so I was pretty excited to find it on sale.

I decided to do another tape mani. I taped off my nails diagonally and used Zoya Julieanne for the purple half. Julieanne is such a fabulous purple with lots of interesting shimmer. Overall, I liked this mani. And I just love when my lines are so clean!

I was too lazy to set up my lightbox for pictures this time...oops!

The next theme in the challenge is blue. Look for that in a few days :)

Hare Polish: Magic Mist

I've been trying out a lot of indie polishes lately, but I've gotta say - Hare Polish might be my favorite so far. I drooled over their polishes since I first saw them, so (after much internal debate over which colors to buy) I bought some as soon as I could. All of Hare's polishes are just so well-thought out and interesting. I picked up Asteroid Turf along with Magic Mist, which is the one I have for you today.

Look at how cute the labels are!

Magic Mist is a blend of orange, blue, pink, and purple hex and square glitters suspended in a lavender creme base. There are also teeny tiny purple microglitters. Look at that macro shot! So pretty.

I've read that this polish can be opaque on its own, but I wanted to conserve this beauty. So I found some matching undies - Brucci Nail Hardener in Sylvia's Pretty in Purple. I used one coat of Sylvia and added two coats of Magic Mist, then topped it off with a coat of Seche Vite.

I have to say, the formula on this was fabulous. The polish is packed with glitter, and it distributed easily and evenly onto the nails. I'm pretty much in love with this polish.

I recently saw on Hare Polish's Facebook page that they indefinitely discontinuing some older colors once they sell out, so get them while you can! I ordered three more: Heat Plague, Rad Cloud, and Cosmo Blossoms...and I (reluctantly) restrained myself from buying all of the colors! I can't wait to see what Hare releases next.

Hare Polish is available through her Etsy and on Llarowe.

Liebster Award

Hey guys! The other day, I noticed that Nail Polish Monster nominated me for a Liebster Award in a comment. I had no idea what that was, so I went to her blog post explaining it. Basically, she gives me and some other bloggers 11 questions to answer, and we also state 11 random facts about ourselves. And then we're supposed to nominate some other bloggers with < 200 followers and include 11 questions for them to answer, but we'll see about that haha.

But anyway, I thought it might be a fun thing to do :)

Eleven Random Facts About Me

1. I have a freckle in the white of my right eye.
2. I am a Creative Writing and Professional Writing double major at Carnegie Mellon University.
3. I own a plethora of earrings, and 90% of them are from Claire's. The pair that gets the most compliments are zipper shaped!
4. I think it's really difficult to choose a favorite anything.
5. My high school mascot was the lasercat. It's still disputed whether it's spelt "lasercat" or "lazercat."
6. I have an undying love for The Beatles..
7. I still unabashedly play my Nintendo 3DS despite the fact that I'm 20 (anyone else excited for the new Paper Mario game?!)
8. I really like wearing bright pink lipstick.
9. I am a die hard New Jersey Devils hockey fan.
10. I've been a vegetarian for over four years.
11. I am a very angry driver.

Questions from Nail Polish Monster

1. What is your favorite brand ?
   Hmm...I think I'm gonna say China Glaze! They always put out nice polishes.
2. What kind of nail art do you like to use ? (rhinestones, micro beads, glitter, fimo, etc.)
   Everything. I'm always up for trying new things! Generally I like things that are quick since I'm usually pressed for time. I love dotting tools.
3. Do you like using acrylic paint ?
   I've never used it on my nails, but I like using acrylic paint to actually paint!
4. Where do you usually buy your polish ?
   Sally's, Walgreens, and CVS are the places I check out when I'm at home. Now I've been buying a lot on Etsy, haha.
5. How often do you buy a new polish ?
   It varies. I always put myself on no-buys and then break them :(
6. How many polishes do you own ?
   Around 400 oh my gosh haha.
7. How often do you paint your nails ?
   Every few days. 2-4 times a week.
8. How much is too much for a polish to cost ?
   I don't like paying any more than $10. I think they should cost around $5.
9. Do you like glitter polish ?
   YES.
10. What's your favorite design that you have done on yourself ?
    I really liked my Pokeball nails. And my Harry Potter nails!
11. How do you feel about drugstore polish (Rite Aid, CVS, Walgreens, Walmart, etc.)
    Drugstore polish is just as good as high end polish! And you can get like three drugstore polishes for the price of one high end.

My nominees (looks like I only know of 4!):

1. http://paperthinnails.blogspot.com/
2. http://idanailsit.blogspot.com/
3. http://lacenailart.blogspot.ca/
4. http://xoxo-jen.blogspot.com/

My Questions:

1. What's your favorite non-nail polish beauty brand?
2. What got you into nail polish?
3. Is there a certain color of polish that you always seem to buy?
4. How do you feel about indie nail polish?
5. If you could create your perfect nail polish color, what would it be?
6. What do your friends think of your polish collection?
7. What's your favorite color combo?
8. Do you have an overall obsession with makeup or just polish?
9. What's the most expensive polish you own?
10. How do you store your collection?
11. Besides nail polish, what's another one of your loves?

Day 3: Yellow

I've certainly had a busy weekend - I was on call for work, and I also came down with a terrible cold :( But I'm feeling a bit better now despite my incredibly raspy voice. Onto the nails:

The theme of Day 3 is yellow! This mani turned out to be almost as much purple as yellow, but oh well.

I started out with three coats of Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Mellow Yellow. I started this mani with the intention of doing a glitter gradient with a stamped accent nail, but that's not really what happened.

I used a makeup sponge to add Milani One Coat Glitter in Purple Gleam to my tips. I decided I didn't really like how it looked on its own, so I added a little bit of Another Heart Breaks by Dandy Nails onto the gradient.

I originally wanted to do a stamping accent nail. I tried stamping a pattern on with Sexy Divide by Essie, but I decided it was too light. So I redid my finger with a yellow base and freehanded some swirls with a striping brush. Then on a whim, I added some dots of Purple Gleam to all of my nails.

Also, my new light box came in! I had fun playing around with it. I think I need to get some better lights though. It's kind of a pain to set up every time I want to take pictures, but it's also nice that it folds up for storage. I don't wanna take up too much room; I do have roommates after all!

The next day's theme is green. But I don't know - I think I might do every other mani as a challenge mani. I just have so many indies that I want to try out! At that rate, it'll be slow going with this challenge, but I really did it for some inspiration for nail art.

Day 2: Orange

Today I have Day 2 of the 31 Day Challenge! The theme is orange.

I'd been wanting to try a half moon mani for a while. As you may or may not know, you can create this look using paper reinforcement stickers.

The process is simple enough. The color you want to use for the half moons will be your base color. I used Stone Cold by ORLY. Let that dry, then place the paper reinforcement stickers at the top of your nails so they're covering a half moon shape. Then paint another color over it! I used Burst of Mango Creme by Sephora, a darkened orange creme. I also add a coat of Fresh Squeezed by Nicole by OPI to add some shimmer to the orange. It's like a modified tape mani.

I really like colorblocks of contrasting colors!

It's a little messy, but not too bad for my first try.

The next challenge theme is yellow! Look for that in a few days.

Day 1: Red

Welcome to Day 1 of the 31 Day Challenge! The theme of the first post is: red.

Okay, just before I came back to school, I realized that I owned about two red nail polishes. I, the girl with hundreds of bottles of polish, owned but a few lonely reds. And only one of them was a creme. The other was some sparkly number by ORLY. I picked up a few new reds before I left, and today's theme was a great way to put them to use! And since I now had several red cremes, I decided to do a gradient.

Sadly, the gradient is a little more subtle than I would have liked. I think my colors were just a bit too similar. I used three reds and a makeup sponge to achieve the gradient effect. From lightest to darkest, I used Energetic Red by Sinful Colors, Hey Sailor by China Glaze, and City Siren by China Glaze.

I then decided that a plain ol' gradient was too boring for me. To try out another one of my new indies, I added just one coat of Carbon Copy by Windestine. Carbon Copy is a clear base loaded with tiny matte black glitter. It has great glitter density! Here's a bottle shot if you're interested. It pretty much just looks like a black polish in the bottle since it's quite dense!

I think you can see the gradient a little better here...I'm so good at glitter gradients, but achieving a good color gradient is an art! Oh well; practice makes perfect.

Day 2's theme is orange...you'll see that in a few days.

31 Day Challenge 2012

You may have seen that lots of other nail art blogs are doing the 31 Day Challenge as seen on Chalkboard Nails. I've decided to start doing it too, but at my own pace! It's really impressive and awesome that so many bloggers are doing all 31 in just a month, but I really don't have the time. I'm a full time college student; I barely have time for sleep let alone daily nail art! I'll do my best to do a challenge every few days.

Tomorrow, I'll start with red nails! I'm excited :)

Different Dimensions: Light It Up Blue (For Autism)

I have another indie polish for you today. It's by Different Dimensions, and it's called Light It Up Blue (For Autism).

Light It Up Blue is a sheer blue base with tiny silver holographic and blue hex glitters. There are also some large matte white hexes in there too. But the best part about this polish? It glows in the dark!

The base of this polish is quite sheer, so I started with a base of White on White by China Glaze. Then I added three coats of Light It Up Blue.

I wish I would have stuck to two coats, because between a base color, three coats, and a top coat, I've got a lot of polish on my nails. But I just didn't feel like the blue was even in two coats.

Regardless, the polish is very pretty. The white hex glitters came out readily, and the glitter distributed evenly. The holographic sparkle is also very nice! These pictures are in the shade since the sun didn't want to come out today, but you can still see the rainbow sparkle.

Taking pictures of glow in the dark nails is hard! I charged these by holding them up to a light for about 45 seconds. The glow lasted for a few minutes in the dark. And they glow blue! Before Light It Up Blue, I only had polishes that glow green.

I think it looks extra interesting because of the glitter. 

You can purchase Different Dimensions polishes from her Etsy shop. Two of her polishes, Light It Up Blue and Puzzle Pieces, were inspired by Autism Speaks and World Autism Day. 50% of the cost of those polishes will be donated to Autism Speaks.

Press!

Hey everyone! Today I have a different post for you. My friend Lauren from high school wrote a great article on nail art featuring yours truly and a few other old high school classmates.

Check out the article here!

It's a great read, especially if you're just looking to get into nail art and don't know where to start.