Christmas Tree

I hope you are enjoying your Saturday! Its been a little over a week since I last posted, and I apologize for that. The holiday season has me stressed out. Getting ready for the holiday itself, plus work. I work in retail and I am sure you have seen how the stores are this time of year. I have never little time left. So I am cramming a post in before I go to bed tonight.

You have probably seen this type of design floating around the web lately. It has been very popular this season. I used one coat of Milani Signature Gold as my base. I love this gold, and keep picking it up as the gold in my holiday designs. For the tree, I taped off my nail leaving a triangle. Then I placed striping tape, making sure to lap it over the tape. I painted on a layer of Color Club Holiday Splendor before carefully peeling the tape off. Finally, I topped my tree with a silver star glitter.

The design is very easy to create. I need to work with striping tape more.

Color Club Gingerbread Man & Holly

I hope you are enjoying your Thursday! I recently got a new camera. I have been playing around with it and trying to see if it is what I want. Obviously, macro shots (close up photography) is a large part of my camera use. I have not perfected taking manicure shots with this camera yet, but decided I needed to start posting them. If anything, seeing them on my blog will hopefully help me figure out tricks to make the pictures better. I purchased a Fujifilm FinePix HS30EXR. The camera is amazing. I am just having trouble getting macro shots in my light box without casting a shadow with the long lens. Also, getting my skin to turn out the right color. If you have any advice, please let me know, whether by comment or email.

Enough of my camera rambling, onto the pictures!

Color Club Gingerbread Man is a light gold foil. The application is perfection and opaque in one coat. It may appear like your basic gold foil, but it does have something special about it. Its scented! It smells like a frosted gingerbread cookie. The scent is very light. Nothing overpowering.

I wanted to make this manicure into something even more Christmas like than gingerbread, so added hollies. Three berries and three leaves. I used stamping plate BM14 and Ulta The Jungle Look. I attempted to stamp red and green on my thumb, but the delicate design dried too much before I could stamp it. So I decided to do green and add the red afterward. I went back with a small dotting tool and Love My Nails New Love to make the holly berries red. I personally love this. Its simple and very easy.

Lex Tuileries

I hope you are enjoying your Wednesday! I need to get myself into the Christmas/Winter spirit with nail art. It does not feel very much like the holiday season. And our weather just recently started to feel like December. Louisiana weather... But I do have a very pretty pink polish to show you today!

Lex Tuileries is a sheer pale pink base filled with orange, red, silver, and purple medium hex plus orange, red, and silver small hex glitter. The sheer base easily builds to be opaque in three coats, while allowing you to see the underlying layers of glitter. The application is perfect. Absolutely gorgeous!

Lex Cosmetics lets you submit an idea for a nail polish. If chosen, it is voted on by you and other polish lovers. If it wins, they will create the polish. How amazing is that?! Each polish retails for $10, with 10% of that donated to a charity.

The story behind Tuileries is: "First, tulips are one of the first signs that spring is really, truly, finally here! Second, they always remind me of my mother..... I would love to have a color that can represent her in every way: in beauty, in color, in her favorite things, and in her uniqueness. My color would be light pinkish-red with glass-like flecks of silver, red, pink, and orange within it to showcase the depth of both tulips and my mother."

Glitter Sprinkled Gold

I hope you are enjoying your Sunday!

Milani Signature Gold topped with Snowman Red Glitter. Signature Gold is a metallic copper gold. Perfect and opaque in one coat. Red Glitter is a clear base filled with red micro glitter. The bottle is shaped like a snowman and they are exclusively sold at Rite-aid this time of year.

Zoya Katherine and Wet n Wild The Gold and the Beautiful

I hope you are enjoying your Friday! I have what I discovered to be a popular manicure to share with you today. I wore this for two days and had an usually large amount of people compliment me on it. Some actually reaching to grab my hand to get a better look.

Zoya Katherine is a sheer eggplant jelly. It starts off very sheer and light colored. As you build it, it grows darker and more opaque with each coat. Four coats to reach opacity for me. In person, there is no visible nail line, completely opaque. This polish is a dream to work with. It does not look or feel thick, even after four coats. Given it is a sheer build-able jelly, the layering possibles are endless.

Wet n Wild The Gold and the Beautiful is a clear base filled with small (almost micro) gold glitter flakes. I absolutely love this polish as a glitter gradient! I am so happy I grabbed it to use. It is perfection. It easily gives solid tips, while also making it easy to fade the glitter out.

I originally planned to wear Katherine alone. I painted it on with a fast dry top coat as my last step. However, I did not give it ample time to dry. I ended up with a few exposed tips from push back, a couple of dents, and smudges. All toward the tip of my nails. I did not want to wear a mangled mani to work, but did not want to take Katherine off either. A glitter gradient was my solution. Before work, I quickly sponged The Gold and the Beautiful on. It saved my manicure and turned out so lovely that I am glad I messed up my polish.