Franken: Nothing's Gonna Change My World

Hi everyone!  Yesterday I promised to show you my other attempt to franken a dupe of a Deborah Lippmann polish.  Did you guess what it was?  Well, if you did, give yourself a pat on the back!  This is my attempt to squash my lemming for DL's Across the Universe without breaking my no-buy!

Sorry that the swatches are a little messy today.  It's one of those times where the macro shot picked up stuff I didn't see in person and I admit, I probably should have reshoot these, but I was wearing a mani by the time I edited these... Boo at me today.

I hope that you can still enjoy this though.  I am pretty sure this attempt to dupe AtU is off, because I made two bottles and this one was the wonkier one.  I sent the nicer one to my best friend.  She wore it, but didn't send me pictures!  Of course, I got caught up talking about frankens and didn't ask, but that's beside the point.

In real life, it's a lot easier to see the glitter in this polish.  I think the camera did this no justice, because dupe or not, pretty blue and green glitter in a dark blue jelly base?  Awesome!  I shot these under a daylight lamp, but we have been having a lot of sunshine lately in Washington and I might go out and do some sun pictures! I just usually swatch in the evening when my hubby goes to work, but springtime and longer days should give me the chance to get outside in the sun!

This is a better shot to see the glitter on that middle finger.  I did top coat this for an extra shiny and squishy jelly look.

Totally going to be wearing this soon!  Thanks for reading!

Franken: As If She Mean It

Hi kids!  I hope you're all doing well today!  I'm in the mood to show you two franken "dupes" that I've been working on, so let's take a look at the first one!

 I've always had a lemming for Deborah Lippmann's Lady Sings the Blues but I always resist pulling the trigger and ordering it.  I sent my BFF a text and asked if she supported me attempting to dupe it, and of course she was all for it.  I mean, I still want the real thing, but I am pretty happy with how this turned out.  I actually made two bottles, because the hazard of texting my friend about frankens is that I have to send her one in the mail =P

From pictures, I came up with this, As If She Mean It.  I can pretty much guarantee that it isn't a perfect dupe.  Swatches online have been helpful in the past, but it's hard to pin down a polish when I can't see it in person.  In any case, I do kind of love this franken.  It satisfies my lemming for now!

The finish is a little dull, so I top coated for these photos.  It brings out the shiny and squishy jelly appearance that I wanted.  I love how polishes like this become a jelly sandwich in a bottle and I particularly love dark, midnight blue jellies.

Stay tuned for tomorrow when I show you my second franken dupe attempt!  Thanks for reading!

Cult Nails: Divas and Drama Collection

Hi there!  I've been a little MIA on my blog lately, which I hate, but I've been super busy.  Hopefully things are settling down for a bit.  I spent yesterday doing swatches of this new collection and started to write this post, but my computer ended up eating it... Thus, I'm starting over and making sure I save it this time!

Today, I want to show you the Divas and Drama collection from Cult Nails.  It's the first full collection I've ordered from this company, but now I'm wondering what took me so long!  If you're not into gushing, just scroll through the many pretty pictures =)

The first polish I have for you is Scandalous, an orangey coral jelly.  This was actually the color I was apathetic about when I pre-ordered this collection because I am not a huge coral fan, but I was curious about this being a jelly.  I'm glad that I gave it a shot because it's one of the most gorgeous summer shades I have!

For the record, this has one of the best formulas in the world.  It is so easy to apply and work with.  These pictures show four coats, no top coat, because I wanted to see it at full opacity.  I can't wait to make jelly sandwiches with it!  It's such an awesome shade with a great squishy finish.

  The second picture is the most color accurate.  It is a little pinker than it wanted to photograph.

The second shade I have for you is Manipulative, a beautiful aqua colored creme with a hint of a shimmer.  That shimmer is definitely more prominent in the bottle than on the nail, but you can still catch a hint of it from time to time.

Application was good, but it was a tad thick and I will be adding a few drops of thinner.  These photos show three coats because I needed a third to even it out.  Still, I really like this polish a lot!  

The shade of blue here has a hint of green to it and it gets picked up depending on the light.  The first three are a little brighter than how it looks in the bottle, but this last picture shows its dustier side.  It really is brighter and upbeat most of the time.

In this last picture, you can also see the shimmer!

Next we have Enticing, which actually perfectly fills a gap in my collection that I have been searching for: a pretty, sheer pink with a tiny bit of a spark to it.  I'm not huge on sheers and neutrals, but for whatever reason, I really wanted to have something like this on hand.   

 This happens to be the shade I was hoping to find with a bit of a shimmer and another fantastic formula.  It was like Scandalous, so very smooth and wonderful to apply.  These pictures show three coats with no top coat.  As you can see, it is almost opaque here, but it was beautifully sheer at one and two coats and definitely wearable that way too.  The pigmentation makes it really awesome for me because I have slightly yellowed nails and it actually camouflages them rather well.

If nothing else, Enticing made this collection worth it for me!

The last polish in this collection is also something to write home about.  Seduction is a multi-colored flaky in a purple jelly base, a close cousin to the famous Unicorn Puke/Clairvoyant.  

These two pictures show it over Scandalous, two coats for good coverage.

I do own the original Unicorn Puke, but I haven't compared them on the nail (Pointless Cafe has a comparison post though!).

These two pictures show two coats layered over Manipulative.

One coat over Enticing.

And I also pulled some random colors to try it over from my stash, a medium blue creme, a plum purple creme and a black creme.  I left my index finger blank.  There are two coats of Seduction on each finger in these pictures.

Seduction is a limited edition color and is still in stock on the Cult Nails website, as is the rest of the collection.  I'm really in love with these four polishes and definitely recommend them!

Thanks for reading!

Blogging Outdoors

So oddly enough, today I find myself sitting outside, enjoying a terrified dog on my lap and some rare Washington sunshine. My husband is splitting wood for his mother and I'm definitely one of those people who is better off not helping. Think the girl who is completely used to the city meets the lumberjack mountain man. On top of the fact that I don't want to break a nail because it's a nail blogger's worst nightmare!

In any case, I'm trying to pretty much stay out of the way so I don't hurt myself or someone else, but I forgot my book (Currently reading Clash of Kings because my hubby is obsessed with Game of Thrones, btw).  So I've decided to get a post going for you lovely people and talk about my current mani.  But! I don't have pictures, so I am bringing you a special edition with phone photos! Don't be too scarred though, my phone has a really good camera!  And Instagram!! Can't go wrong with that!

The polish today is Orly's Royal Navy, which I am using to test how Butter London's top and base coat combo works for me.

Homeage Month: Eyeballs from Chalkboard Nails!

Hey there!  Today I'm showing you another homage month manicure from Chalkboard Nails.  Like I said yesterday, Chalkboard Nails is one of the first two nail blogs I started following and this is actually a Halloweenish manicure.  Another great perk?  There's a tutorial for this one too!

Eyeballs!  This actually took a bit longer to do than I expected, but I'm happy with how it turned out.  I'm not happy with how hard this was to photograph!  Between the lighting and the focus not cooperating, I shot these pictures three times and there still weren't that many decent shots.  Sorry guys =(

The reason why I chose this one while I was looking for something to pay homage to was actually because of My Little Pony.  My hubby and I were watching this episode and well, poor Fluttershy is now being watched by my nails too!

I wanted to quickly show you the base color for this, so please excuse the messy paint job!  It's an old bottle of polish from Avon that I had in high school, which probably makes it around eight years old... The last time I was interested in nail polish was pre-sixteen.  In any case, it's called Decadence and it doesn't have its ingredients list anymore, but it smells like it is not B3F, but Avon does have this shade currently available in a mini for $1.99.  They also have a free shipping for orders over $10 right now, I believe.

Decadence is one of my faaaavorite bottles.  If I ever see a full sized new version, I'm going to order it as a back up.  I haven't thinned this bottle, just remixed it because there was some settling, and it has a great formula.  The problem?  I must have been rough on this brush as a fifteen year old... I might try to find a replacement or decant it into another bottle...

In any case, on top of Decadence, I followed Sarah's tutorial to the letter and voila!  I did have to mix my own red jelly for this and now I'm completely obsessed with turning every color I own into a jelly with some clear polish!

Thanks for reading!

Homage Month: Nailside Clouds

Hi there!

Today I'm going to start off showing you my first Homage Month manicure, but first, I just want to gab a little bit about nail art.  The biggest reason why I started blogging was a desire to showcase my nail art.  I love having pretty, polished nails and sometimes I do want a simple look, but most of the time, I love having art on my fingertips.

Before I started blogging though, I read blogs.  I started off reading two that my friend recommended, Nailside and Chalkboard Nails, and quickly became addicted.  My feed reader now tracks many, many more, but I have to start off Homage Month with my tributes to these two fantastic nail artists.

This design comes from Nailside and she's even done a handy dandy tutorial on it to make it super easy to replicate!

I actually had to do this manicure twice.  The first time, I used a springy bright green, a light baby blue and a peachy orange, but when I top coated, the top coat I was testing bubbled like crazy all over!  Suffice to say, it has to go!  In any case, I was a little sad, so I decided to change my colors when I redid it.  This gray version features China Glaze Concrete Catwalk, American Apparel Mouse, and OPI Stranger Tides.  

I didn't get to take pictures right away because it was super late when I finished it, so it's a little scratched up from the continued spring cleaning going on this week.  I won't make you suffer through a bunch of photos =P  I grabbed my SV for this as well, without really thinking, and I got a ton of shrinkage.  I did actually have to go back and fix my accent nail at the tip because it showed really badly in photos, so I apologize for that too!

 Thanks for reading!

World Autism Awareness Day Mani

Hey everybody!  It's late, but it's still World Autism Awareness Day here, so I'm not too late!  I've had a crazy busy day today.  Spring cleaning has me going completely nuts this year because of the mess that has accumulated lately from my polish lab to my excessive shipping!  I cleaned my work space today and assembled a new desk and chair.  If you'd seen my old desk set up, I am pretty sure you would agree that I needed a new one!

Excuses aside, I did manage to do a manicure to show my support for today!

This is what I came up with!

I started with Julep Jessica, which is one of my latest obsessions.  I really dig this polish and showed you some nail art with it already, but I also thought it would be great underwear for...

Sinful Colors Cinderella!  My Walgreens finally got this polish in with the Sheer Shimmer collection.  It's been around the block a bit already, but it's really very pretty.  I love the pink shimmer.

I do kind of think these pastel colors make my nails look fat...but when I told my husband this he thought I was being batty...

In any case, Cinderella wasn't enough for me, so I took Sinful Color's Neptune and freehanded a diagonal line across the tips.  It looked okay, but I still wasn't happy!

I grabbed my American Apparel Passport Blue and added some stripes!

So tada!  My blue manicure of the day!  Thanks for reading!