OPI Jade Is The New Black

OPI Jade is the New Black topped with China Glaze Fairy Dust

Most of you can probably tell, my pictures do Fairy Dust absolutely NO justice. It's so much more gorgeous in real life! 

NOTD: Floral Stamping

Good morning!! Guess what! My Zoya package came in the mail yesterday, finally!! 8 new beautiful Zoya's, I'm so excited! I'll show you guys them in a couple days, I have i think 4 more nail posted piled up that I haven't gotten around to posting yet, then I'll do that. :)

Anyway, I broke out my stamping plates again the other day, and of course I had to try two of my new polishes I picked up at Ulta the other day.

Colors Used

OPI French Quarter For Your Thoughts

Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Purple Haste

BM-221

My "First week at college" mani!

First I'd like to apologize for these poor quality pictures. My camera was spazzing out because of the glitter. I tried..i really did! These were the most "non-blurry" out of them all! :(

Anyway, as you may know by now...I started college this week! Well, orientation started last week: conservatory orientation on Wednesday and University orientation on Thursday. So of course I had to use my lucky polish for these! My "lucky polish" is actually Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Rockstar Pink. For the past almost two years I've worn it for every band concert, audition, and anything else major, such as starting college! College has been WONDERFUL so far- Capital University is marvelous. And the Conservatory of Music is fantastic, I'm so happy there, I never thought I'd be this happy in a school! I'm proud to call myself a Music Education Major at Capital University. :)

Now for the polish. I started off with three coats of OPI Pink Friday, then once that dried I sponged Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Rockstar Pink on the tips. I got so many compliments on these! And they lasted from Tuesday night to Sunday with minimal chipping!! The only reason I didn't redo them was because I wanted to have my lucky polish on for my audition on Sunday.

OPI Black Spotted!

Hi guys! Sorry I haven't been posting as much- like I said before, I just started college so I've been reaaaaally busy! and guess what, I MADE 5TH CHAIR IN THE SYMPHONIC WINDS BAND! AHHHH! The symphonic winds is the top band at Capital University for those who don't know, I REALLY didn't expect to get in it! Especially since I'm only a freshman! So far classes are good, I've had to change my schedule 3 times already! I never really understood why they always said "music is one of the most demanding majors"....until this week. It's only been 3 days and I'm INCREDIBLY busy. 17.5 credit hours. crazy. In the long run it'll be worth it though! :)

Onto the polish- I have just something simple to show you today..but it's something I really really like! I enjoyed the jelly sandwich I posted previously, however for my taste, it was a little..dare I say boring? So I decided to kick it up a notch and added a coat of OPI Black Spotted to it! I absolutely love OPI. I wish I could say I acquired this in a swap with a friend from France, but unfortunately I don't have any acquaintances in France...so I bought it on ebay! $50ish. crazy, right? But soooo worth it. 

I think I actually like Spotted better than Shatter. I love my shatters, don't get me wrong, but this is just so....AWESOME! I almost don't want to use it because I don't want to run out!

Pink and Girly Jelly Sandwich!

I'm back! I'm sorry that took SO much longer than I anticipated. I thought I'd be able to post these once I got back from orientation and before I went out of town for a day, but I was just too exhausted after walking around campus for 12 hours at orientation on Thursday, and Wednesday and Friday once I got back I decided to practice for my audition which was this evening, which didn't go too well, maybe it went better than I think it did? Who knows. I'll find out Tuesday. Long story short, I've been super busy with college and my best friend's mom's wedding that I haven't had a chance to post these!

Here I decided to FINALLY try a jelly sandwich! No, not a sandwich with some jelly on it, a jelly polish jam packed with layers of glitter in between! Awesome, right? Not too shabby for my first one :)

excuse the sad looking cuticles. I apologize :(

Colors Used

OPI You Callin Me A Lyre?

OPI Divine Swine

Sephora by OPI Only Gold For Me

China Glaze Fairy Dust

This kind of reminded me a little bit of OPI Teenage Dream, but not really. Having Fairy Dust on top made it holo looking in some lights and doesn't Teenage Dream have holo glitter in it? And just being pink and glittery and holo I automatically thought Teenage Dream. Maybe not super close, but more like a second cousin twice removed type deal haha

Saran Wrap Nails= Complete Nail Fail

Hi guys! I wasn't planning on posting this because I wasn't pleased with how they came out, but I figured someone out there might enjoy seeing people's failed mani's. I know I do! It kind of reassures me that I'm not the only one who messes up new techniques and such.

Anyway, after seeing multiple pictures and checking out a couple tutorials, I decided to give the saran wrap nails a try. Maybe it was just my color combo, but either way it just looked...odd. At least it did to me. I used OPI Sparrow Me The Drama as the base color and OPI Mermaid's Tears over top of it, which is the polish that the saran wrap is supposed to pick up and create a "marbled effect".

"Why on earth is there music in the background?" someone out there is thinking that and I can feel it. Reason being I was practicing clarinet for auditions on Sunday and took a quick break and decided to just snap a couple pictures to show you the failure of a mani this is. I disliked it so much that I didn't even bother to try to take a normal, decent picture. I screwed up the ring finger by waiting too long to touch it with the saran wrap and had to start that one all over and it turned out odd looking. And to me, every other one looks like I did my nails then accidentally touched them on objects and messed them up. Maybe a different color combination would work better? I'm not really sure. 

Does anyone have any good tutorials or tips for the saran wrap nails? I thought it looked simple enough, but this doesn't even look good to me. I have to be doing something wrong. 

Playing with Striping Tape!

Good morning guys! Well, I guess it's still night since it's only 2 am, but I wanted to post this before I go to bed since I'll be very busy tomorrow.

Over top of I Vant To Be A-Lone Star from yesterday's post, I decided to try out the striping tape I recently got! Not to shabby for my first try! I definitely need to make sure the tape is down all the way though, there's some spots where it started to come back up and I didn't push it back down before painting. Oops!

I used 2 coats of OPI How You Blue-In'? over top of OPI I Vant To Be A-Lone Star.

And, because I thought it was weird looking, what my nail looked like with the striping tape on and after painting How You Blue-In'? over it. It reminds me of a spider. A weird, oddly shaped, possibly dead, spider haha

What do you guys think? Are you a fan of using striping tape in this way, or do you prefer to just cut the tape to the length of your nail and leave it on to create stripes?

Personally, I prefer using it as a guide to do stripes, I can only imagine that after a little while of wear the tape would just peel up and drive me insane!

OPI I Vant To Be A-Lone Star Swatch & Review

 Today I just have a quick little post for you guys. Last week when I went to Ulta I picked up again. Every time I've gone to Ulta in the past few months I'd always pick this one up and say "ooh this is pretty!" then put it back. But this time was different- it was on clearance! It was only marked down to $6.49 instead of the usual $8.50, but hey, that's still enough to make me finally buy it! It didn't disappoint either.

Pictured here is three coats of I Vant To Be A-Lone Star with one coat of Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Anti-Chip Top Coat (review of which is soon to come!)

I Vant To Be A-Lone Star is is a light blue with a hint of grey. It has some silver shimmer in it too. The shimmer in this reminds me of a frost, it's not though, which is good because that means no brush strokes showing! Application and consistency were pretty good. Three coats and it was perfect, and it wasn't too watery or runny either, I can honestly say this is now one of my favorite polishes I own!

Unrelated to the color, but I had to trim my nails down because I will be starting college in about a week and a half and since I'm going to be a music major I have to take a keyboard class. If any of you guys have tried playing piano with longer nails, you'd understand why I cut them, playing piano with long nails is not only hurtful but really difficult when your nails just slide around on the keys and get stuck between the keys!

How do you guys prefer your nails-short or long? Personally, I prefer this length but just get too lazy to cut them and let them just grow!

OPI Pirouette My Whistle over OPI My Pointe Exactly

Pictured is one coat of OPI Pirouette My Whistle Over yesterday's nails, OPI My Pointe Exactly. I am absolutely in love with Pirouette My Whistle! I have a huge weakness for glitter polish and I don't have anything like this in my collection. It reminds me of China Glaze Techno, except it's not holo glitter! Despite not being holo, it's still sparkly and gorgeous, it just makes it great for when you want glitter, but don't want it to be "in your face" glitter. The larger pieces of hex glitter are more sparse than the fine pieces, which means if you don't want to have a nail with only 1 hex piece of glitter and others with a large amount of hex glitters, then you will want to just pay a little more attention to your application, unlike if you were applying China Glaze Fairy Dust. Aside from that, the application is wonderful. Unlike China Glaze Snow Globe, where it sinks into the polish a little bit, this just lays on top of the polish perfectly. It is lies smooth and flat.

OPI My Point Exactly Swatches & Review

Pictured is 4 coats of My Pointe Exactly and one coat of Seche Vite

I've seen many pictures of this and read many reviews of the NYC Ballet Collection, and in all the reviews I've read, everyone said these were not streaky, patchy, and were "self-leveling".

Obviously I didn't quite get the application right then, because you can see in the last picture with flash that it's streaky and uneven in spots. Unevenness aside, this is a great color. It's a sheer grey jelly, that on my skin tone leans more on the blue side. It leans so much on the blue side on me that it makes my hands look like I'm just really cold. However the application was much better than I expected with this. Usually with sheer polishes they're a streaky mess on me, these didn't even look that streaky and uneven unless I was really looking for it, so even though they were uneven in spots, it was not that noticeable and was most likely just due to my application. 

Usually I hate seeing any VNL, but the finish on these made these acceptable to me, and I actually really love it! I bought it with the intention of doing a jelly sandwich, but I think I actually might wear it by itself a lot also! 

Icing After Party

Icing After Party is the colorful rainbow version of Icing Shredded, which is what I was originally looking for when I purchased this. It reminds me of OPI Rainbow Connection if it were thrown in a paper shredder and shredded into tiny bits. The brushes on Icing polishes reminds me a lot of China Glaze brushes, I'll include a picture of the brush, I like it, it's not too big but it's not too small, it's just right for me. The only downside of this polish for me is that my bottle has dried polish and glitter on the outside of it, which was there when i purchased it. I think that maybe it was with another bottle that broke and they just didn't bother to clean the bottle off, which is no big deal, but you can really see the dried polish on the bottom of the bottle. You would definitely want to wear a topcoat with this since some of the glitter bits don't lay flat against the nail and stick up a little bit, nothing a little Seche Vite can't solve though!

Pictured is one coat of Icing After Party over top of three coats of OPI Are We There Yet? 

Look at that glitter! So pretty

See the dried polish on the bottle?

A lot like China Glaze brushes, am I right?

OPI Are We There Yet?

Are We There Yet? is from OPI's Fall 2011 Touring America Collection. It's a nice orange coral with pink and gold shimmer in it. However the shimmer is so subtle that once I applied it I actually forgot it was there until I saw my nails in the sunlight! That's not to say it's not a nice color, because to me it is, and sometimes it's nice to have a color where the shimmer is incredibly subtle. Pictured here is three coats of Are We There Yet? and one coat of Seche Vite. Application was alright, it was a little streaky though, but not so streaky that it was unbearable, just mild streaking that required me to go a little slower. I tried to capture the shimmer but my camera couldn't even capture it really. But trust me, it's there.

Shatter...Experiment?

Hey guys! This is actually one of those "I wonder what this looks like if I do this" kind of experiment posts. I was about to take off the Polka dots I had done with Sally Hansen Lacey Lilac and China Glaze White on White when a thought popped into my head: What would shatter look like over polka dots? So I quickly threw on a coat of OPI Black Shatter over top of the nails from my previous post. I think the second picture really shows the polka dots more...take a look!

Now I'm sure someone somewhere has done this before, but I've never seen a picture of it so I thought I'd give it a go. I personally think that while you can't really see the polka dots all that well after putting the shatter over it, that it's kind of fun. More fun than plain old shatter over a solid color at least. Would I ever go through the trouble to put polka dots on my nails just so I could do this again? No. But if I had polka dots on previously and wanted a change but didn't have time to redo my nails, this is something I might consider doing. What do you guys think?