Summer Challenge: Olympic Medals

Hello!

One of the bestest things about having a sister is that you can borrow her polishes! :P  For today's mani, I borrowed OPI Warm and Fozzie, OPI Designer de Better, and Sephora by OPI Only Gold for Me glitter.

 

 

For the silver, I used a base coat of Designer de Better.  For the bronze, I sponged on some Warm and Fozzie.  I cannot express in words how wonderful Warm and Fozzie is.  Like if you had to pick one color to wear for the rest of your life, this might be it for me.  I should probably buy it.

The gold flecks are on the tips but the application was rushed so it is a little blobby but still shiny and pretty :O).

Thanks for reading and Happy Olympics!

Emily :O)

 

Adventures in Stamping: Red & Black

Hello!

For today's mani, I used Revlon's Saucy, a deep, rich red with slight hints of golden flecks. 

 

You can see the golden in the bottle a little more than it shows up on your nails but it adds a lot of depth to the color!

Then I added a stamp from Bundle Monster, BM-204.  I used Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Black Out and it didn't show very well.  I think it is high time to invest in some black stamping polish.  I also think some white accents would go well, as in Vera Bradley Deco Daisy.

Thanks for reading and have a wonderful day!

Emily :O)

 

Summer Challenge: Olympic Rings

Hello!

I just got back from a wonderful weekend in New Jersey visiting the fam.  Therefore, I am late yet again! Although I diligently did my manis, I did not diligently remember to bring my camera cord to post my manis :(.

For this part of the Olympic-themed manis challenge, I used Bundle Monster stamp BM-322 to create a rings pattern.  Did you know that the rings are supposed to represent different lands?  Blue is supposed to represent Europe, yellow is Asia, black is Africa, green is Oceania and red is the Americas?  Does that seem odd to anybody else?  ...It is totally inappropriate to call European people blue!

China Glaze White on White, Essie Mesmerised, Sally Hansen Insta-Dry Lightening, SH Xtreme Wear Black Out, CH Four Leaf Clover, Essie Russian Roulette

Bundle Monster <3 <3 <3

Thanks for reading and have a great day!

Emily 

oxox

 

Summer Challenge: A Day @ the Zoo

Charlie says hi!

Hello!

Happy Friday!  I hope everyone has a great Olympic weekend planned!  I cannot wait for the opening ceremonies tonight.  We don't have cable so we are going to workout at the gym tonight to watch it there, lol.

For today's mani, I used one of my favorite colors, China Glaze Cross Iron 360, an orange metallic.  It came in their Halloween set of four polishes in October 2011.  It is absolutely gooorgeous.  The tiger stripes came from yet another Bundle Monster stamp, BM-223.

 

 

You can see I am having some trouble cleaning up around my nails.  I have tried eyeliner brushes dipped in polish remover but I must not be doing it right...any tips or suggestions would be much appreciated! :D

Thanks for reading and happy Olympics!

Emily

oxox

Some music to get pumped with...

Music of the Day: Survivor "Eye of the Tiger" 

 
 

Summer Challenge: Red, Orange, and Yellow 

Hello, dearies,

My inspiration for the red, orange, and yellow mani came from Neivys at the Maquiclub Girl, which you can read here!

Starting with a yellow basecoat of Sally Hansen's Insta-Dry Lightening, I sponged on Sinful Colors Big Daddy and Essie Russian Roulette.  The chevron Stamp is from Bundle Monster, BM-201.  I have been wanting to try this for a long time and am really excited about it!

Thanks for reading!

Emily 

oxox

this has been stuck in my head ALL day...

Music of the Day: Neon Trees "Everybody Talks"!!!!!

Stamping Mani: Storm Clouds

Hello, dearest readers,

Band camp started this week so I am way behind this week on manis and realized that I didn't get any good pictures for today's post!  On the positive side, we now have four followers!  Thank you, Debbie! :D 

Last night, I went to the Legend of Zelda: Symphony of the Goddesses, where the Pittsburgh Orchestra played arrangements of the music from the Zelda video game series.  My husband is a huge video game geek so this was right up our alley!  

One of my favorite melodies from the games is the "Song of Storms," so I used China Glaze Rainstorm as a base coat.  It is almost a periwinkle with tiny flecks of blue glitter and is very serene.  

Then I used one of my favorite plates, BM-312, from the new Bundle Monster collection to add the rain clouds on the ring finger and thumb.  Sorry for the hard-to-see pictures, these were taken in quite a rush!

Thanks for reading and have a lovely day!

Emily

Music of the Day: Legend of Zelda "Song of Storms"

Adventures in Stamping: Favorite New Stamp
                 

 

Hello!

This is my very first Adventures in Stamping post (yeeks!  I am intimated!).  There are a lot of very talented ladies in this group and I am always excited to see what they have come up with!


In the last two weeks, I got both the 2011 and 2012 Monster Bundle sets and the latest Cheekys (which is why I'm not allowed to buy any more polish for three weeks lol).  Needless to say, it was hard to pick just one stamp--so I did a skittles!

From left to right, what I used:

Hearts (I love all the detail...there are also two other complete circles on the stamp that I couldn't fit on my nail.)

Basecoat: Essie's Russian Roulette

Stamp: Monster Bundle BM 317 

Clouds (I love this one and can't wait to do a full mani with it!  It reminds me a little of Hokusai's paintings.)

Basecoat: Essie's Mesmerised

Stamp: Monster Bundle BM 312

Cupcake (This fun stamp reminds me of Katy Perry!  Have you seen her movie yet? I was skeptical at first but it is very inspirational!)

Basecoat: China Glaze Under the Boardwalk

Stamp: Monster Bundle BM 307

Chickies (This was hard to use because the lines are so thin.  It took 3+ tries to transfer the entire stamp to my nail)

Basecoat: OPI Strawberry Margarita (yes, please!)

Stamp: Monster Bundle BM 302    
 

 Music of the Day: Katy Perry's "Wide Awake"

Thanks for reading!
Emily

Dark Knight Rises Mani
"What's the difference between you and me?"
"I'm not wearing hockey pads."

Hello and happy Saturday!

On Friday the hubby and I saw Dark Knight Rises.  Like many of my peers, I grew-up watching Bruce Wayne put on his tights, slip into his yellow utility belt and kick some booty.  I love Batman and this movie is mosdef going to have to go into the BEST. MOVIES. EVERRRR. category.

That being said, sincere thoughts and prayers go out to those affected by the Colorado shootings.  I'm not going to say anything else about it because I don't want the attacker to think he deserves any attention whatsoever.  Besides, this blog is about nail polish....so here we go!

I started with base coats of China Glaze White on White and Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Black Out.  For the bats, I used Monster Bundle Plate BM 213.

Since I am not very comfortable doing free-hand, I used a permanent marker to make a very light dotted outline, which I then outlined with a striper.  It was much easier to trace over the dots and gave me more room for error.

 
The lines around the thumb were made by using a striper and quickly and lightly going from the outside of the nail to the inside. 

The bats came out kind of blotchy in places but that is because...they are batty!! *crickets*

Music of the Day:  Danny Elfman animated Batman theme

 Thanks for reading and have a great day!
Emily

Summer Challenge: Golf 

Hiyooo,

I hope everyone is doing well!  For today's golf mani, I tried to do a dot gradient like somebody dumped a bucket of golf balls on the green.  It turned out slightly unfabulous but I just love using my dotting tools so it's all good.   

For the basecoat, I used China Glaze Four Leaf Clover, which looks teal in the bottle but dries as slightly more of a green.  I used China Glaze White on White for the dots.  You may see in the above picture that my dots sort of yellowed....I wasn't sure why but...I ended up doing dots over my dots...resulting in...A BLOB GRADIENT!! :D 

I'm going to geek out but this sort of reminds me of Yoshi eggs. 

Thanks for reading and have a great weekend!

Emily