Tag: M84

Stamping Saturdays #13

Stamping Saturdays #13

Hey good morning! I just rolled out of bed, and I remembered that I passed out in the middle of putting this post together last night so here I am blogging before breakfast. I don’t know what time you have to be at work in the morning, but I start at 5 am which means that I am up before 4 am during the week. When I get the chance to sleep in a little, it feels like I am cradled by clouds while angels gently sing me awake. I really wish I could be a morning person, but I will never be happy to wake up before 10 am so I’ll just have to deal with it like everyone else. After work yesterday I went polish shopping which is always a disaster waiting to happen because I want one of everything. Since I liked my first ibd polishes, I decided to pick up a few more to see if the quality is consistent. I ended up purchasing two searing neons that I then decided to use for my Stamping Saturdays mani.

ibd Peony Bouquet and ibd StarburstThis is ibd Peony Bouquet and ibd Starburst. They are even brighter in person if you can imagine that!

ibd Gradient 1ibd Gradient 2I decided to try another gradient now that I have some confidence in doing them. It didn’t turn out as smooth as I had hoped but it looks a lot better than my other efforts. I call this a radioactive sunset!

Konad M84 1Konad M84 2Lastly, I used this start pattern from Konad plate M84 and black special polish to bring it all together. At first I didn’t really like how this turned out, but now I’m really liking it!

What do you think of this mani? Do you have anything fun planned for this weekend? I don’t have any plans yet except maybe to go on a shopping binge since Sephora is having a 15% off sale. Someone please take my wallet away now! Anyway, I hope you like today’s mani and thanks a bunch for stopping by. Have a great day!

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On ne voit bien qu’avec le cœur…

The very first book in French that I ever read is Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s Le Petit Prince. I was 14 years old and my French teacher was trying to slowly introduce us into reading something a little more complicated than our grammar books.  If you’ve never read this deceptively simple little book, I strongly recommend that you go out and get yourself a copy. Although it is a “children’s book,” it speaks to us adults on a different level. Even the most jaded and hardened amongst us will see that the story and ideas behind The Little Prince will remind us that too often we let ourselves get wrapped up in things that don’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. Sometimes the most simple of things are truly the most important. Before I show you my mani, here are the polishes and items I used to create my manicure:

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The polishes I used are all from Sation: Dance With The Drummer, Down and Dirty Flirty, Strumming My Nails and Lemon Pearl.  I am going to have to do a review of all of these polishes individually because they are gorgeous. I think I have found my new favorite white…it was seriously perfection.

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I also used three stamping plates and Konad stamping polishes in yellow, red and green. I used the black stripping polish for the details in drawing The Little Prince as well as the Winstonia nail art brush. The plates I used are: Konad M84 for the stars, Mash 36 for the rose and Mash 33 for the shooting stars.

collage1

I started out by painting my nails with the base colors. As I said before, these colors are amazing–super buttery and smooth. Second, I stamped my three nails with the star designs and the rose before I moved on to my middle finger. I seriously redid that nail about 4 times–I just could not get The Little Prince to look right which kind of shocked me considering how simple the drawing is.

collage2

I took these pictures out in direct sunlight so the colors warmed up a bit, but I liked how they turned out nonetheless.  I think that out of all the manicures I have done over the past year, this is the one I am most proud of not only because of the cuteness factor but because I adore The Little Prince.

Let me know what you think about this mani…and it better be positive or else we’re going to have some problems. 😛 Just kidding…sort of. I’ve been in a very bad mood lately, and I think I just realized that it’s due to all the bottled up anger coming from the situation with the mooch. Have you read The Little Prince? Anyway…thanks for checking in with me today, and I will talk to you soon!

P.S. In case anyone was wondering, the title of this post comes from one of my favorite lines in this book: “Voici mon secret. Il est très simple: on ne voit bien qu’avec le cœur. L’essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.”

“Here is my secret. It is very simple: One sees clearly only with the heart. What is essential is invisible to the eye.”

 

Disclosure: All Sation polishes and the Winstonia Store brush were provided to me by the manufacturer or their PR. All other products featured in this post were purchased by me.  For more information, please refer to my disclosure policy tab.

 

Happy 4th Of July!

I was not feeling any kind of inspiration for a 4th of July nail look. None at all. I’ve been posting like a machine lately, and I’m trying to slow down. The thing is that I am working really hard to keep myself occupied. I have not been feeling very motivated lately, and I’m afraid of my anxiety getting worse. I thought Prozac was supposed to help with anxiety as well, but it’s not working very well lately. I’m having problems sleeping regularly and have started the stupid cycle of nightmares. It seems that my nightmares always center around my worst insecurities so they seem even more intense and leave me completely emotionally overwhelmed when I do wake up. I hate feeling like this but there isn’t that much to do about it right now except to keep my head above water and not let it get the best of me again.

As far as being patriotic, I don’t think I’ve ever been crazy patriotic. I am grateful for living in a country where I can say and write whatever I want without fearing persecution. We enjoy many freedoms that we take for granted so it’s worth taking a moment to be thankful for all that we do have. I always try to put things into perspective because in the grand scheme of things, we are almost living in paradise compared to other places in the world where war, extreme poverty and hunger are just something that is in their every day reality. I’m not trying to be preachy or anything; I just think it’s nice to have a day to spend with your friends and family even if you’re not all hyped up on Independence Day.

So back to nail stuff…

I used Adventure Red-y which is an amazing one coat red from the China Glaze On Safari collection as my base color and then used Man Hunt, also from the same collection, for the chevron tips. Using Konad plate M84 and their white special polish, I stamped the stars over both colors. Simple, right? This was actually the second look I tried today. The first one was a complete disaster–better as an abstract idea because it was horrid once I tried to execute it. Oh well…you live, you learn.

If you’re in the States, do you have anything fun planned for today? Stay safe whatever you end up doing!

Ho-hum

I’ve been feeling kinda blah lately. Nothing is really wrong, I’ve just been dealing with the vivid dreams side-effect of my meds. It’s really hard to get a good night’s sleep because I wake up so many dang times during the night freaking out about my stupid dreams.The last time I talked to my doctors about this, they suggested that I try to “take control of my dreams.” WTF. If I could do that, of course I would do it. Anyway…I hope this goes away soon because my dreams are centered around all my insecurities which really sucks.

Today I went to my nail supply place and picked up a couple of China Glaze glitters which I am loving because one is super bright orange and the other is super bright green. LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE! I also bought some fake eyelashes because I want to try wearing them. My lashes are so yucky and I hate wearing mascara. Let’s see how long this fake lash thing lasts. I also found out that my nail place carries Konad stuff. Great…more crap to waste money on. I ended up getting two new plates for $5.00 each. I usually buy my plates on amazon.com, but I noticed that the prices have gone up about $1-$1.50 per plate!!!! I used to be able to get them for $2.50-$3 (plus s&h) so now they are a better deal at $5. I’ve done my nails a couple of times since my last post but I wasn’t feeling like posting much.

Today I did my nails with OPI’s Romeo and Joliet. I like it but it’s not one of my favorites.

I used one of my new plates for this cute star pattern. Overall, I like the contrast.