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Stamping Saturdays #39

Posted on 4 October, 2014 by Cynthia

Hello. I’m melting today. I’m super upset about this shitty weather because it makes me miserable. The dry heat and the winds make my allergies go nuts so I’ve been a total mess the last few days. Today I woke up early for my Saturday morning movie ritual and I watched Gone Girl. Man, that movie was a mindfuck. I had not read the book but I knew the plot and all because I had googled it when everyone started talking about the movie. That is one of my most annoying habits even to myself–I like to google everything such as movie plots, TV show summaries…you name it, I google it. I know it seems ridiculous since part of the enjoyment of watching a movie is to be surprised. I don’t know when I started doing this, but it’s a habit now. Anywho, I highly recommend the movie if you’re looking to watch something this weekend. I know I’m posting super late today, but I just had a crapton of stuff to do today and then it was so hot I just couldn’t function. I don’t have AC in my apartment so it gets super hot. Enough complaining about the weather–let me show you what I did today for Stamping Saturdays.

For my base color, I used Super Nails Cookie Dough (press sample). I have never seen a polish more aptly named!

This is two easy coats of Cookie Dough. The formula on this polish seemed a bit thick at first, but it applies easily and is very opaque. I like the base color of this polish, but I don’t think that it looks too good on me. Maybe it would look better on someone with a different skin tone.

I’m totally meh on this combination. I don’t thin that I made the right choice here because everything looks muddled. From far away it looks cool, but up close it doesn’t quite mesh. In case you’re wondering the jigsaw puzzle design comes from Bundle Monster plate BM 319.

So how has your Saturday been? Anything exciting going on in your life? I’m going to jump in the shower and meet up with a girlfriend for a cup of coffee since we haven’t had time to catch up lately. Hopefully I can get some watching done tomorrow otherwise I’m not going to have too much to post next week. I am so crossing my fingers that I start making it to the gym after work because I’m at a crossroads here. Let me know what you think of Super Nails Cookie Dough. It’s my first experience with the brand, and I quite liked the formula and application. Make sure that you check out KC’s etsy shop for all of her fun creations. You can also find Super Nails on Facebook and Twitter. Thanks so much for stopping by today, and I will talk to you soon!

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Salon Perfect Neon Pop! Collection

Posted on 29 July, 201428 July, 2014 by Cynthia

Is it hot in your neck of the woods? I know it’s supposed to be really hot here in Southern California, but to tell you the truth, I think it is unseasonably cool. Maybe I’m just on crack or something because it was in the low 90’s here today, but it did not feel that gross. Since it’s really starting to warm up, the collection I have for you today is perfect. The Salon Perfect Neon Pop! Collection is made up of 12 bright colors to sear your retinas. I have 9 of the 12 polishes to share with you today so let’s take a look at the colors first.

Salon Perfect Flamingo Flair

Salon Perfect Fired Up Fuchsia

Salon Perfect Haute Pink (don’t ask me why this looks so orange…my camera took a dump on me)

Salon Perfect Plum Sorbet

Salon Perfect Tickled Pink

This is Loopy Lime, Bermuda Baby, Yowza Yellow and Traffic Cone sponged over a white base of sugar cube. I wasn’t being very careful about my sponging as you can tell by the extreme sloppiness and the muddled outcome. I wasn’t too concerned about it since I was planning to stamp over it anyway.

This is what my mani ended up looking like after stamping it up with an image from Bundle Monster BM 319. I kind of like the grungy end result!

Now, let’s talk formula. These were typical neons but some had better formulas than others. All of the polishes I swatched on their own were rather opaque, and I did not need to use white undies. They dried to a satin finish so I applied a clear top coat to give them some shine. They dried really quickly so you can’t overwork the polish because you will have a major mess on your hands. Loopy Lime, Bermuda Baby, Yowza Yellow and Traffic Cone were a lot thinner so I recommend using a white base to get the most out of them because otherwise you might be applying 5 million coats and still see VNL. If you don’t have similar color, I can recommend these. My absolute favorites are: Plum Sorbet an Fired Up Fuchsia. If you’re interested in purchasing these, you can find them at Wal-Mart where they retail for $3.98 each. My Wal-Mart still had a great selection of these, but they are limited edition so get them while you can.

How do you feel about neons? Strictly for summer or do you rock them year-round? Thanks so much for stopping by today, and I will talk to you soon!

Stamping Saturdays #6

Posted on 15 February, 201414 February, 2014 by Cynthia

I’ve gotta be honest: I had a hell of a time coming up with today’s stamping manicure. Not only was I having some serious mani inspiration block, but my camera was giving me a lot of problems and wouldn’t focus. The only way I could get it to focus was to change my hand position which is why today you will see a different angle. Things just weren’t working out for me! When I started thinking about what I wanted to do, I remembered how much I love Butter London Wallis so that is where my mani started. Let’s take a look at this gorgeous polish.

Butter London Wallis is like a perfect combination of gold and green and just looks incredibly rich. A metallic olive gold you say? Yep, perfect description. Here I top coated it with Seche to give it a nice shine.

And here I applied a matte top coat over it. Doesn’t it look even more amazing?

I the picked a design from Bundle Monster plate BM-319 and stamped it with my black special polish. I initially wanted to mattify the whole design, but it just didn’t look as great because there wasn’t that much of a contrast. I much prefer this as a shiny manicure.

So what do you think of this mani? I’ve gotten a lot of questions about stamping and what I use and how, so I was thinking about maybe doing some sort of tutorial? There are a lot of tutorials out there so I don’t want it to just be boring and/or redundant. Would you guys be interested in this? Don’t forget to check out the other Stamping Saturdays manis from the other participants. Thanks so much for the visit today, and I hope you enjoy your weekend.

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Barielle Elle’s Spell

Posted on 21 December, 201231 December, 2012 by Cynthia

Beejus, can you believe that Christmas is in a few days and then it’s just a hop, skip and a jump to 2013? I am actually really excited about the new year just because I want to close the chapter on the crapfest that 2012 has been. Don’t get me wrong–things have definitely improved these last few months of 2012, but I am just looking forward to a fresh start.

For my first real holiday mani, I decided to stick with a combination of red and white.

I started out with two coats of Nails Inc. Gatwick. Great Odin’s Raven! this polish is awesome. I usually have a love/hate relationship with matte polishes, but this one just blew me away. The formula is super thin so it doesn’t get goopy at all, and it’s really easy to control.

And here is the belle of the ball: Barielle Elle’s Spell. This gorgeous polish is from Barielle’s 2010 holiday collection and I definitely think it was the stand-out from that collection. It has a slightly red-tinted base that is pretty sheer and it’s chock-full of golden-red flakes. I have not tried to wear this polish on it’s own and I don’t think I will–I prefer an opaque base as opposed to a sheer jelly.

Lastly, I applied a snowflake design from Bundle Monster plate BM 319. Snowflakes are definitely my favorite holiday design right now. Just because I couldn’t help myself, I ended up mattifying the whole manicure.

Which version do you prefer: shiny or matte?

Well, my dears, there you have my holiday mani. This year I have decided not to buy any Christmas gifts. I feel kind of like a Scrooge, but I’d rather save the money right now. My parents aren’t coming for a visit this year so I will probably be spending Christmas with my brother and sil–along with my youngest brother whom is also known as “The Mooch” to my long-time readers. Are you prepared for Christmas? What are your plans?

This weekend I am going to have 2 guests posts for you from two of my lovely blogger friends: Amanda and Siobhan. I can’t wait for you to see their awesome designs. There is one more day left to enter my 1 year blogiversary giveaway so don’t miss out!
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Thanks for stopping by today and have a great weekend.

Seche Irresistible

Posted on 28 November, 2012 by Cynthia

As most of you may already know, Seche came out with its first line of nail polishes a few months ago, and I was super curious about it but hadn’t come across the line at any of my usual places…until yesterday. I came upon a big display full of Seche polishes so of course I had to pick one up. My first instinct was to grab one of each, but as a reformed polish hoarder, I backed away from the display and only chose one polish to try out: Seche Irresistible. I felt proud of myself! I also think that it’s a good idea since this will be my first experience with this line of polishes but not my first experience with the brand since I am a pretty loyal Seche Vite customer.

Let’s look at my final mani:

This is my finished manicure. Do you want to recreate it? Read below to see what I used.

Seche Irresistible is a vibrant and shiny red-berry colored polish. It is a one-coater if you are careful, but I applied 2 thin coats for these swatches. I had heard that some people experienced shrinkage with these polishes when they used Seche Vite, but I am happy to report that I did not. This polish dries incredibly shiny and glossy which I love! I usually don’t have a lot to say about polish brushes, but I tend to prefer wider brushes (my favorite being OPI’s Pro-wide brush) so I wanted to mention that the Seche brush is pretty thin.

Despite the thin brush, I didn’t feel that it made that much of a difference in application for me. The brush does not fan out as nicely so I did have to be more careful with it because it would be very easy to flood my cuticles with polish–which I HATE.

I used an image from Bundle Monster plate BM 319 for this design along with Konad’s special white polish. The red and white is definitely getting me in the mood for December and Christmas!

What do you think about Seche Irresistible? Have you spotted these polishes already? Since I have you here, I might as well pimp out my blog sale again. I added A LOT of new polishes today so check it out. Please help me give these babies a new home–I just know they won’t get any use here anymore.

Thanks for stopping by and see you tomorrow where I will find a million way to mess up tomorrow’s movie inspired challenge.

Sara Smile

Posted on 9 July, 2012 by Cynthia

Has there ever been a song named after a person and you secretly you wish that was your name…even just for the length of the song? Well, that’s me with Sara Smile.

I don’t really know why I thought this would be a good way to open up this blog post, but the only reason I can think of is that I heard a bit of this song when I watched The Fighter tonight. Believe it or not, I had not watched this movie until tonight, and it was freaking awesome. I think I’ve stated on here before what a huge H&O fan I am, but I don’t think anyone understand what an understatement that is. Any time I hear a H&O song, I have to sing along with it…no matter where I am.

Let’s move along from Hall & Oates and back to nail polish! OPI DS Coronation has made quite a few appearances on my blog and rightly so! It’s a freaking amazing scattered silver holo.

DS Coronation applies like a dream. It only take two coats and it really settles and flows perfectly on my nails. There is absolutely no way that you can mess up a mani if you’re using this polish. And since my Bundle Monster obsession continues, I stamped this baby up!

I used plate BM 319 for this design. I really like the design but I keep thinking that these nails look Christmas-y because of the color combination I used. Maybe I would have liked them better if I had used black for the design. Despite my reservations about my color choices, I adore this design. Ugh…I am a stamping fool lately.

What do you think of these nails? Do you have any Designer Series OPIs? Do you think they are worth the extra money? What different color combination would you use for this stamping look?

“Hello Oscar Mayer Weiner…Lover.”

Posted on 5 July, 2012 by Cynthia

My hot dog looks a little anorexic and frankly kinda burnt. So what?! It was still good. Oh, 4th of July was a day of ridiculous feasting for my family. We had a bbq and endless snacks. My mom made a beautiful fruit platter so that she could fool herself into thinking that at least we were eating one healthy thing. Yeah, right! The city where I live allows fireworks so we went outside to watch everyone set off their fireworks. My youngest brother bought a bunch and was creating his own by ripping up picolo petes and the like. Boys! Overall, I had a really nice time playing Scrabble and watching movies. I finally watched Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid and I really liked it. I mean, what is there not to like? Robert Redford. Like! Robert Redford. Double Like!! And Robert Redford…

I’ve been super excited about playing with my new Bundle Monster plates so I tried stamping without using my special polishes. I really like the look of the special polishes because they are so pigmented and always produce really crisp designs. I started with a base of OPI French Quarter For Your Thoughts.

I seriously love this color. It’s so different from all the bright and crazy colors that I have been wearing lately.

I used OPI Ski Teal We Drop as the stamping color and plate BM 319 for the jigsaw puzzle design. This color stamped better than I thought it would. I usually don’t have much luck with stamping using regular nail polish so I’m glad this wasn’t a total disaster. If you like stamping or are interested in getting started, you MUST get these new Bundle Monster plates. They are so much fun and will change the way you do your nails.

How was your 4th of July?

P.S. Do you know where the title of my post came from?