Category: Manicure

Of Life and Lacquer > Manicure

Orly Skinny Dip

Posted on by Cynthia

I don’t tend to purchase many Orly polishes and I don’t know why. They are just as easily accessible to me, but it seems that I don’t pay much attention to their collections. Even when I am aware of their upcoming collections, I am not as excited to get my hands on them. Their Summer 2012 Feel The Vibe Collection is full of neons which are super popular right now. However, I wasn’t really feeling the colors. The only one that I was interested in is Skinny Dip: of course it’s a blue that I love, and it had this super pretty light purple microshimmer flash in the bottle. As I have come to expect, the purple pretty much disappears once the nails. It dries satiny so you need a top coat if you want a shiny finish. I applied 3 coats and I felt that it needed all three. It is a sheer polish, but it’s easily buildable.

 

I’ve never really done sponging which I think looks amazing. I wanted to use some glitter (gasp!) to sponge on my tips so I looked through all my glitter polishes. I chose Wet N Wild Believe Me It’s Real which came out for the holidays in 2011. I had such a hard time finding this collection because it was a Walgreens exclusive and it seemed that no one had even heard of it. Since I don’t have Gelous, I had to apply like a million coats of Poshé to smooth out the glitter. This glitter is rough and eats up top coat like a mofo.

I can’t believe I still haven’t cut my nails yet. O_o I think this is the longest they have EVER been even when I wore acrylics. It’s been so weird getting used to the length, but I think I’m finally getting the hang of it.

I think the people I see regularly at the gym are going to start calling me the crazy nail girl. What do you think of this combo? Not too flashy?

What’s Up With Your Nails?

Posted on by Cynthia

My neighbor asked me this when she saw me taking pictures of my nails this afternoon. She’s about 3 years old and very talkative. I told her that I was taking pictures because I wanted to share how they looked with some friends and she thought that was cool. Invariably, someone always catches me taking pictures of my nails outside, and I always get strange looks. It used to bother me but not anymore…the light is too good.

I was messing around with the OPI drawer in my melmer and I saw Fly. I love Fly because it’s so bright and creamy looking so I decided to use it today. I actually hadn’t used it since I swatched it a while back. I know you like it. Don’t tell me it’s not gorgeous.

 

Since I’ve been trying to lay off the Konad, I played around with another color and my Jessica holo topcoat. OPI Pamplona purple is the other polish I picked for this manicure.

Frankly, this was way too much work for me. I am going to try to leave this on my nails at least 3 days because it’s a waste of time otherwise. How often do you change your nails? What are you wearing right now?

Polka Polka Polka

Posted on by Cynthia

I love John Candy and when I started taking pictures of this mani, I instantly thought about this scene in Home Alone. I remember that my dad took my brother and I to watch Home Alone when I was 11 years old, and I thought it was one of the greatest movies ever made. It has become a Thanksgiving and Christmas tradition to watch this along with It’s A Wonderful Life. I think it’s so amazing how things will stick in your mind from your childhood, and they will always bring warm memories. Sorry for the crappy video quality but it’s the only one I could find on youtube that wasn’t super long.

As soon as I wrote in my previous post that I was going to take advantage of the lovely sunglight, it immediately became overcast. Normally I would have had at least 2 hours of useable sunlight, but it didn’t quite work out. I was forced to take pictures inside with artificial light. Poo.

I ended up using one of the new polishes I purchased today: Essie Mint Candy Apple. How gorgeous is this color? Besides falling in love with the color, I couldn’t be happier with the formula. It flowed like butta. I used China Glaze White Out as well. It’s a color that I don’t use often, but I like the formula and opacity.

 

I really like how this manicure turned out. It’s so fresh and spring inspired.

What do you have going on this weekend? Anything fun?

Emerald Konadicure

Posted on by Cynthia

Emerald Fitzgerald. How awesome is that name? I know I’m not the only one who thought of the cover of The Great Gatsby? What an iconic cover, right? I remember the first time I read The Great Gatsby, I was struck by how much Jay Gatsby idealized Daisy despite her being a vacuous specimen. Beautiful, yes, but so empty of real humanity. Anyway….back to nail polish.

Emerald Fitzgerald is part of the Vintage Vixen Collection from Fall 2010. I’ve seen this polish photograph kind of blue, but I don’t really see it in person; it’s actually a deep and shimmery emerald green and maybe the tiniest hint of blue. Really tiny. The formula was perfect and only needed two coats.

And here is the polka dot stamp from Konad plate M79.

If you are a green polish lover, this is a must. Let me know what you think.

Saint Patrick’s Day Nail Looks

Posted on by Cynthia

I wasn’t really planning to do any Saint Patrick’s Day nails on myself, but after I did my sister-in-law’s nails I felt inspired. She went to a SPD party so she wanted something fun. This is how her nails turned out:

Cute, right?

I obviously also went the green route. I started off with China Glaze Gaga For Green as my base color.

Then I used Color Club Holiday Splendor for the chevron design on my tips.

I should have left it at that, but then I decided to add a shamrock sticker and rhinestones.

Then I thought to myself that the rhinestones looked pretty tacky so I pried them off. Unfortunately, this left a ding on my nails.

And because it bothered me that I could still see where the rhinestones used to be, I then tried to cover it up with glitter.

So by this point, I thought that my nails looked pretty gross and just took everything off and started all over.

This was my final look. I used OPI Mermaid Tears as the base color and Color Club Holiday Splendor for the chevron tips. I used only one design on my accent nail and I was pleased with the way they turned out.

I had a nice SPD after all! I went to dinner with two friends whom I have known since we were kids. After we stuffed ourselves as Lucille’s BBQ, we went to a karaoke lounge and sang all the embarrassing songs that we could think of. Ahhh…it was a lot of fun.

How did you spend SPD? Did you sport any fun and festive nail designs?

 

I’m In Love…

Posted on by Cynthia

In love with nail polish, that is. I just about crapped my pants when I saw this color. Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating, but I got really excited. This is another beauty from the Up & Away Collection that I had forgotten about. I think that these blue/teal/green/turquoise polishes are replacing my obsession for purple polishes. Can that even happen? The formula was dreamy and 2 thin coats was all I needed. If you don’t have Flyin’ High in your collection yet, you are really missing out.

Yes, I cut my nails SUPER short again. They had grown out a little and were driving me nuts. After I finished painting my nails,  I layered this gorgeous glitter called Blue Hawaiian and now I have shiny ball syndrome. I can’t stop looking at it. I don’t care that it’s going to be a pain to remove. I. Cant. Stop. Looking. At. It.

 

I can’t wait to see this in the bright sunlight tomorrow.

 

Orange You Glad It’s Almost Friday?

Posted on by Cynthia

After the big fail at my doctor’s office, I decided to change my nail polish to get the stench of disappointment off my fingers. Incidentally, last night one of my lovely readers told me that red is a color that schizophrenics gravitate towards after I posted about red being my color of confidence. It made me laugh because it reminded me of one of my roommates at the psych ward. She was an older lady who snored so loud that it took me a week to finally be able to sleep with her snoring in the bed across the room. I remember that the first night I was admitted, it was past midnight so I had to go to sleep right after they checked me in and strip searched me…yeah….strip search. I guess I can imagine people try to sneak dangerous things in. So anyway, once I got into bed, this lady was snoring so loud and made so many choking sounds that I actually got up to talk to a nurse because I thought she was dying or something. Sorry for the tangent. The reason why I laughed was because my roommate was schizophrenic and she was obsessed with wearing red lipstick. She had no teeth, but she couldn’t live without her red lipstick. Go figure.

The color I chose today is Calligraphic Calico by Finger Paints. Finger Paints can be found exclusively at Sally Beauty Supply. I’ve had this color for a while and I really like it. I think Finger Paints puts out pretty decent polishes, and I do grab some when they have a sale going on.

 

Then I used Essie’s As Gold As It Gets to paint my tips. It’s not that noticeable in these pictures but it looks pretty cool in the sun.

 

Calligraphic Calico is a color that I really like. It’s orangey with a little pink and very subtle gold shimmer. I’m really happy that we’ve been seeing so much orange lately because I love the way it looks. So what do you think?

Purple, Purple, Purple!!!!!

Posted on by Cynthia

I know I’ve said it a million times, but I’ll say it again: I love purple. China Glaze’s Grape Pop is really one of my favorite classic purples. It’s such a rich and saturated color that applies like a dream. I really love wearing this color. After I painted my nails, I wanted to use one of Essie’s flaky Luxeffects topcoats but I didn’t want to completely cover up the purple goodness so I decided to paint a triangle of flaky delight.

Beejus! Didn’t I tell you this color was amazing?! And that’s just two thin coats.

You can’t really see the triangle with the flash but wait for the low light….

Purty, right? Anyway, it’s been super windy and dry here in So Cal so my skin has been acting crazy: it’s so dry in certain areas that it hurts. I’ve been having to use extra hand cream on my hands as well. Thank you L’Occitane for your amazing hand creams.

Well, I’ve been watching The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo trilogy on Netflix for the last 5 hours!!! I watched the movies when they first came out in the theaters and re-watched them on Netflix a few times. Now they have come out with a Special Extended Edition that has 2 extra hours that were cut out of the movies that were shown in US theaters. The trilogy was originally shown on TV in Sweden so they did end up cutting stuff for the theater edition. If you’ve never seen these movies, I highly recommend them. Noomi Rapace is amazing as Lisbeth Salander. I haven’t watched the American adaptation yet, but I hear it’s pretty good as well.

I hope you all had a nice weekend and thanks for stopping by.

Today’s Manicure

Posted on by Cynthia

There are plenty of tutorials out there for half moon manicures so I won’t go into a lot of the details. Despite being such a nail fanatic, I had never tried this before until tonight. I ended up using two Orly colors: Coffee Break and Prince Charming. I also did a matte version and a shiny version. Which one do you prefer?

 

Matte with Essie’s Matte About You

 

Shiny with Seche Vite