Category: Konadicure

Of Life and Lacquer > Konadicure

Happy 4th Of July!

Posted on by Cynthia

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!

Sephora by OPI My Personal Serpent

Posted on by Cynthia

I was debating what to wear on my nails today, and bright cheery colors just weren’t appealing. I’ve been in a crappy mood today so I wanted something dark and smoky. I looked at my untried stash and pulled out SOPI My Personal Serpent which I recently got on sale at Sephora. This color is part of their Fall 2011 collection called The Garden Of Good And Evil which included seven other polishes. Before I get into swatches and the stamping I did, I wanted to do a quick polish comparison. My Personal Serpent reminded me of Essie Bobbing For Baubles and Zoya Cynthia so I did a side-by-side comparison

Pretty similar, right?  I purchased Bobbing For Baubles first and really liked it. Out of the three, Essie has the best formula. They actually all are pretty great when it comes to the formula and you reach opacity with 2 thin coats.  I purchased Cynthia because…well…it’s my namesake so how could resist? I just imagined that my namesake polish is a crazy glitter in an alternate universe. NOOOOOOOOOOOO! So why did I purchase My Personal Serpent even though I have 2 other nearly identical colors? Because it was on sale, and who can resist any nail polish sales? I am such a psycho nail polish hoarder….

You already know I like blues so this dark smoky blue fit the bill today. This color is just so dark and saturated that it makes me dream of fall/winter colors. Ahhhh!

I am anxiously waiting the arrival of my Bundle Monster plates so I took out my konad and used my favorite mummy bandage plate design.

Do you have multiple dupe polishes from different brands? Do you feel dumb once you realize you purchased a dupe? I need a polish intervention.

Zoya Wednesday

Posted on by Cynthia

I have way too many untried polishes. It makes me feel bad that I now have over 500 bottles of nail polish and I continue to add to my collection without having worn all the ones I already have. Wednesday is a color that I picked up during the Zoya Earth Day Promo along with another dozen or so polishes. Yeah, I know…terrible. You can’t really go wrong with Zoya most of the time.

Really beautiful and creamy, right? I’m sure there are a lot of dupes out there…Essie Turquoise & Caicos is the one that comes to mind first, but I haven’t done a side by side comparison yet. This is 3 thin coats.

 

Since I’m getting back into stamping with a fury, I used Konad M73 and the special black polish. I love the pigment in the black polish, but it is a huge pain to clean up. I still have staining on my skin.

 

Do you have Zoya Wednesday? Can you think of any other dupes? Let me know what you think!

Sation Miss Emo Shun All

Posted on by Cynthia

I’m still trying to figure out what the name of this polish means. At first I thought it was like an Emo girl who shuns everything/everyone and then I thought it just meant Miss Emotional.   Of course this could just be ambiguous on purpose to drive people like me crazy. Which one do you think fits better?

Well, whatever the case may be, this color is gorgeous. I think it might be a dupe for Color Club Disco Dress. They are both really bright purples and they have that really pretty satin finish. Why can’t there be more satin finish polishes? I really wasn’t expecting this to be a satin so it was a nice surprise. Besides, I can always put a top coat on it if I want a super shiny mani with this color.

I used three thin coats for this manicure. I guess that you could get away with two thick coats, but I always prefer to do thin coats for a faster drying time. After the second coat, it was rather opaque but I noticed that I could see some slight bald spots when I went outside so I applied a third coat to even out the coverage.

I’m a konad maniac even though I have been neglecting all my stamping stuff. I seriously used to konad at least every other day, but maybe I got sick of it. I am really interested in seeing the new Bundle Monster plates before I purchase them, so I’m going to wait and see some of the designs my fellow stamping friend, Nicole, uses on her blog first. Who am I kidding? It’s just a matter of time before I cave and get them too.

So how do you like Miss Emo Shun All? Do you like to use konad to spruce up your nails?

I hope you’re having a good weekend so far!

Nubar Prize

Posted on by Cynthia

Last night I went to  L’s house and we watched The Vow. I don’t usually watch sappy movies by choice, but I wanted to see this one cause I like Rachel McAdams. It was alright…not super impressed by it. I was petting L’s cat a lot yesterday and all of a sudden my eye got so red and irritated. It felt like I had something stuck in it so we tried flushing it out but nothing seemed to help. By the time I left, my eye was swollen shut. That was fun on the drive back home. I do not recommend driving with only one eye at night. I figured that it was probably some kind of allergic reaction to Tigger. Here is the little fur ball:

He is a super shy cat and always runs away to hide when someone comes to the door. He’s no longer scared of me so after a minute, he comes back out and lets me pet him. He’s cute, right?

 

A while ago I had purchased two polishes from the Prisms Collection that Nubar released in 2010.  I just love holos even if they are not linear. I can’t believe I hadn’t tried this yet considering how pretty it is. The only thing I didn’t like about it is that it dries so incredibly gritty and rough so you have to use a thick top coat if it bothers you.

 

Since I haven’t been using my Konad as much lately, I used stamp M73 for this design.

So what do you have going on this weekend? Anything fun? I am feeling super crappy right now because I have monstrous cramps so I’m just laying low. I hope I feel better tomorrow so I can actually do something fun.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend! 🙂

Sunday Morning

Posted on by Cynthia

Am I the  only one who really really likes this song?

Anyway, happy Sunday to all. Thanks for stopping by! I am kind of exhausted right now. I didn’t get home until around midnight last night and didn’t fall asleep until almost 2 am. Then I woke up at 6 am because my friend and I wanted to go to the beach. It’s been eons since I’ve been to the beach even though it’s literally like 10 minutes from my place. It was so nice to be out that early breathing fresh air and hearing the sound of the waves. I also saw tons of people with their dogs. When can I get my dog, dangit?!

We were there for a long time. We walked along the sand laughing and making fun of each other. See, I’ve known V since we were like 10 years old. We didn’t like each other very much until we were stuck working together on a project for one of our classes in 8th grade. So 20-some years later, we’re still friends and I’m very lucky to have her in my life. I always tell people that my litmus test for friendship is to travel together. Well, we have gone on vacation twice and we had a fantastic time. The first time we went to Hawaii which was freaking awesome…even if we got so hammered we could barely walk up the stairs at the hotel. Ok, maybe that was just me but I  know she was probably pointing and laughing. The next time we took a trip to Europe and went to Paris, Florence and Rome. She reminded me today of how we were freezing in Florence (it was late fall/early winter) but we HAD to have some gelato late at night. So we went to find a place that was open and walked outside eating our gelato and freezing our bums off.

Since V is a true friend, she told me that my nails looked ugly. Haha! Yeah, true biatch. (I still love you, though!) I can’t say that she’s wrong because I didn’t like my nails much so I didn’t even post them yesterday. They just turned out so ugly…kind of ghettoish. I started with Zoya Malia. I don’t have a lot to say about Malia. It just looks like OPI Do You Lilac It? to me. It is a color that I like but not terribly exciting. The formula was great, and it only needed two thin coats.

You can tell by the crappy job that I wasn’t that excited about doing my nails for some reason. I didn’t even do decent clean up! But wait till you see them after konading.

My nails are starting to look wonky to me because they are so long. However, I can’t cut them because I am going to beat Nicole at our imaginary nail competition. I just noticed a hair or fiber that got stuck on my middle nail. Can you spot it? How gross.  Anyway, I need to take these things off asap and try another color.

Last night was really fun as well. I went into a sushicoma with my sil. We both didn’t eat all day so we could fully enjoy our sushi. So this place that we go to is a little neighborhood joint. The sushi is really good, fresh, delicious and reasonably priced. Their service has always been on the slow side which we don’t usually mind because we are slow eaters and talk the whole time. Sometimes it does get a little ridiculous like waiting an hour or more to get our food when they are super busy. Surprisingly, they weren’t busy last night so we were annoyed with attentiveness. We should have counted how many times the waiter came by our table or the busboy peeked to see if we had any empty dishes. It might have been 20 or more times. It was getting beyond annoying. At one point, we thought we were on some hidden camera show to see how much we could take before we told them to fuck off and let us eat in peace. After we were done eating, they brought us the check without even asking if we wanted dessert!!! So of course we had to order some out of spite (and cause who are we kidding? we love our sweets!). We laid a bet to see how many times someone would come to our table to bug us while we ate dessert. My sil said 3 and I said 5. I won. 5 times!!!!!!!!!

After that we watched The Lucky One which was ok. There really wasn’t anything else we could watch and The Avengers was sold out for the rest of the night. Is it just me or does Zac Effron still look like a baby?

I don’t know what to do right now. I want to change my nails, but I really want to take a nap. Wow, a nap sounds so good…………………

Jessica Born 2 Pansy

Posted on by Cynthia

Can someone please explain to me the name of this nail polish? Born 2 Pansy? What am I missing here? Anyway, this polish is from Jessica’s Spring 2012 Collection and it’s a baby soft pink with a hint of lavender and some fine iridescent blue micro glitter. I liked this a lot more in the bottle than I did on my nails. I don’t really see the shimmer too much on my nails in regular light, but it could be that the sun has been MIA for the last week or so. I love how it looks pink, purple and kinda blue sometimes. The formula was ok. It is very sheer but buildable without any major issues. I had to apply 3 thick coats which I don’t like to do so a quick dry top coat like Seche Vite is a must. Ultimately, I do like this color but can’t see myself wearing too often.

 

Because I hadn’t done any konading in a few days, I decided to put a stamp on it. Single ladies, put a stamp on it! Cause if you liked it then you shoulda put a stamp on it. Ok, yeah…I think I’m delirious right now.

 

I liked it better without the konad on it, but it’s too late now.  Oh well, better luck next time.

PS. My nails are growing. Any bets on how much longer I can go without cutting them down to the nub?

Jessica Polishes

Posted on by Cynthia

My introduction to Jessica polishes came by way of the Peacock Queen Collection that was a dupe of Chanel’s Illusions d’Ombres. I really hadn’t heard much about this brand, but I’ve been pretty satisfied with the polishes I tried so far. My main gripe is that I don’t like the brush at all. I find it hard to work with. I am usually really good about following the curve of my cuticles on my nails with the polish, but the brush on Jessica polishes makes me do some jagged and awkward lines. This color is called Midnight Moonlight and it reminds me of OPI Yoga-ta Get This Blue.  I don’t think they are dupes but are quite similar.  Midnight Moonlight is a lot brighter, I think.

 

I really feel like I ruined this polish with the stamp. I don’t know what is up with my new Konad white polish because it feels thinner than my other special polish bottles and not as opaque. I really like this design. I got tons of compliments today when I went to the store with these nails. People were asking me where I got them done and they seemed shocked when I told them I did them myself. They thought they were stickers or something. I have a whole little speech about Konad because people are always confused when I say it’s a stamp. It would be funny if I could talk to those people again because I know some of them totally went looking for Konad stuff. I should start giving away little cards with my blog info so they can come and visit later on. lol

So I had started this post earlier in the day before a bomb got dropped in my lap. I am upset, stressed out and really pissed. I’m going to chill for a few minutes with my iced caramel coffee before I even attempt to explain what happened today. Please heed my warning if you decided to read my next personal post because it’s going to be a fucking doozy. If you’re offended by profanity, I apologize in advance.

 

Aquadelic Stars

Posted on by Cynthia

My nail polish guy picked up Aquadelic and asked me: “Why do you want this one? It’s like For Audrey and I know you have that one already.” Pffft! Ok, Mr. Nguyen, you do not know your nail polish as well as I thought you did. Aquadelic is NOT a For Audrey dupe. Aquadelic is definitely greener than For Audrey. Yeah, they’re “close” but are different enough that I gladly purchased it.

Aquadelic is one of the few colors from the Electropop Collection that I didn’t purchase right when the collection came out. At first, I had a hard time finding it in stock and then I just forgot about it. When I saw it today, I knew it had to me mine. Muawhahahahaha! I have to say that I found the formula to be a big pain in my big rear end. It dragged, created bald spots, felt goopy…everything I dread. I’m going to add a couple of drops of thinner and hopefully that will help for the next time I use this polish. I hate having to add thinner to a brand new bottle of polish but whatever; it is what it is.

 

I’ve been into stars a lot lately. Can ya tell?

Blue’s After My Heart

Posted on by Cynthia

There can never be enough blue nail polishes. How much better can it get than a creamy, vibrant and glossy blue?

OPI Dating A Royal is one of those colors that instantly grabs my attention. Who am I kidding? Most nail polishes call to me like vodka to an alcoholic. It’s pretty, right? This color is very similar to Essie Mesmerize but they are not exact dupes. The main difference is that Dating A Royal is so sheer; it needed three coats while Mesmerize is perfect in one coat. Since I am a Konad freak, you know what’s coming….

This is the first time I’ve used this stamp and I absolutely love it. What do you think?