Day 20: Nail Polish Advent Calendar

This was a quick little manicure today. It's a skittles of China Glaze Mrs. Clause and Mistletoe Kisses. These came out in a Holiday collection in 2010. This is the best photo I had again. Low light makes things blurry. :(

Macro of Mrs. Claus

Macro of Mistletoe Kisses

Day 16: Nail Polish Advent Calendar

Hello! Today box number 16 has provided China Glaze Love Marilyn. A pretty red glitter with and silver hex glitter. I used e.l.f. Cherry Bomb as a base color and then two coats of Love Marilyn. Poor lighting again today. :(

Here is the macro! Not bad!

Until tomorrow.

Day 4: Nail Polish Advent Calendar

Yes, I am technically a day behind in posting this. But I did wear this on December 4 and photo it. Just couldn't get around to blogging till now.

Day 4 brought to me essence - can't cheat on me and China Glaze - Liquid Crystals.

 I used essence - can't cheat on me as the base for this manicure. It's a very dull silver holo. For the glitter gradient I used China Glaze - Liquid Crystals. The essence is discontinued and the China Glaze polish shouldn't be too hard to find at the moment.

Super Macro!

Day 1 - Nail Polish Advent Calendar

My very first day! I went to open the box and found these...

Two lovely polishes. What should I do with these too? I used China Glaze Ruby Pumps as my main color and e.l.f. Blushing Beauty for an accent nail!

I used three coats of Ruby Pumps and two of Blushing Beauty. Both had lovely formulas and brushes. :)

The first day of December also proved to be a great day to pick out our Christmas Tree! Especially since the temperature was 60 F outside. Last year the trees were all frozen! I usually choose a traditional Frasier Fir but this year I fell in love with the Scotch Pines. A little small too, but so cute! I'll share photos of it decorated when I get to it! So far it only has lights.

China Glaze - Haunting

Yes, I'm showing you a polish from a Halloween collection in February. :p I picked this up on clearance at Sally's in December for $1.99. It's from the 2011 China Glaze Halloween Collection.

Haunting is a lovely black shade with bits of silver glitter. Totally an acceptable color to wear outside of the month of October too. I needed three coats to get coverage as at two I still had some bald patches. I think 3 coats are a bit much for black since it's usually suppose to be pretty pigmented.

The nice thing about the glitter is that it is fine, so my manicure is not bumpy at all!

The manicured worked well with the task I had to take care of today too. I had to make a trip to the Adler Planetarium for my Astronomy course. I watched a simulated star show in one of the theaters.

 

Have a nice weekend!

Happy New Year

Wishing you all a Happy New Year! Wanted to show you what I had on my nails for the last two days.

I started off by using China Glaze Blue Year's Eve. It's from the Winter 2011 Let It Snow collection. I happened to pick this up at Sally's on clearance! It's a lovely and pretty sapphire blue shimmer. I used 3 coats.

 

I ended up getting Blue Year's Eve because I was looking for a sapphire blue to go with the copper glitter I bought from Forever 21.  The brand is Love & Beauty and it's a copper glitter with hex. I think it looks great topped over blue!

I hope everyone has a great year! This year I'm going to do project 365 this year. Well, actually 366 since it's a leap year. So I will be taking a photo each day and uploading it on my Flickr. Here is my first one.

1/336 Reflective Chimpanzee

Essence - Wear Your Little Tutu / Water Marble

So at the moment the LE for essence is Ballerina Backstage. The polishes didn't really wow me too much, but I used to take ballet classes for 12+ years, so I wanted to pick something up. I chose the baby pink called Wear Your Little Tutu. Figured maybe I could find a nicer baby pink, then what I have in my stash.

Unfortunately, Wear Your Little Tutu is like most baby pinks and it needed four coats. It did dry nicely and I didn't have dents so it's worth keeping! I like that the color tone leans a bit salmon in color. There is also a little bit of pink shimmer, but it's hard to notice.

Two days later I was craving a water marble. I haven't tried one for almost a year.  I made a tutorial last August on how to do one if you're interested. This time instead of tape I used Vaseline on my fingers. I prefer the tape. The Vaseline was very messy and removing the extra polish with q-tips was a pain.

I used Wear Your Little Tutu as the base color and I watermarbled with the colors shown below.

OPI - Flower to Flower, Essence - Andy,  You're A Star, China Glaze - Strawberry Fields

I water marbled really fast this time around. It took me about 30 minutes start to finish.

I really like this color combination. Especially in this shot.

And the shot of the right hand never as good as the left. Doesn't help that my nails are shorter, I suppose.

What do you think? Have you tried a water marble manicure? Going to try it anytime soon?

Catrice - Don't Feed The Birds with China Glaze - Lightning Bolt

I bought this back in the spring when Catrice was switching out the stock. So this color is now discontinued. Don't Feed The Birds is a sheer yellow shimmer which needed four coats. It did dry nicely for the amount of coats. It's a very pretty yellow so I'm glad I got it before it was gone.

The next day I slapped a coat of China Glaze Crackle Glaze in Lightning Bolt. I liked the color combination a lot. Application of the Crackle Glaze was pretty good. I tried to put it on thick for nicer crack.

Glossy shot...

Close up shot...

One Year of Living in Switzerland

Hello ladies! Yesterday was my one year anniversary of moving to Switzerland. Decided to celebrate by painting some Swiss flags on my nails. I'm very surprised by how fast the year went by. I've been having a nice time in Zurich. It's a very fun city and very unique. But I'm starting to get antsy and I'm ready to move back to the USA in the fall.

I used two coats of China Glaze Ruby Deer (From 2010 Holiday Collection). It's a really pigment red jelly/creme finish. So pigmented that please ignore how terrible I painted around the cuticles. I tried cleaning it up with acetone but the red was just spreading out and staining everywhere and that looks terrible too.
The crosses I made with a white Sally Hansen nail art pen. I didn't do too bad with my left hand as you can see. But the right hand was a hot mess compared to this. This is the first time I've done free handed nail art.

And because I share even the crappy nail art job. Here is the result on my right hand. :(

Thanks for taking a look. Hope you liked my first attempt at nail art. Good thing the Swiss flag is easy to manage. Don't expect any American Flags for my 4th of July mani. haha. Have  a nice weekend.

MNY - 661 & China Glaze - Cracked Concrete

Tuesday is a great holiday in Switzerland. The stores finally start opening up after the Easter break. Which means that all the Easter candy is 1/2 off! I went out specifically to hunt for some Lindt Chocolate Bunnies. I was also naughty and got some goodies from the MNY display

Check out how big that chocolate bunny is!

So the new polish I want to show off is MNY 661. It's a bright bright blue with an icy blue-silver shimmer. I used three coats for this manicure.

The application from MNY is pretty decent for the price. These are about $4 a piece. If you're not aware MNY is a branch of Maybelline that is geared towards teens and preteens.

After wearing this for the most of the day I wanted to add a bit of crackle to it. I think the weather today in Zurich was an inspiration for this. It switched back and forth between bright blue skies to gray. So I pulled out one of the China Glaze Crackle Glazes.

I popped one coat of Cracked Concrete to create this look. The first few times I tried the Crackle Glazes I was a bit unsure how I liked them. They are a bit more finicky than other crackles I've tried, but eventually I got the application down on this. You really need to make a thick coat to get the big cracks.

I like how the blue peaks through the grey! Any of you have good crackle combination's you like?

Eyeko - Punk with China Glaze Crackle - Crushed Candy

Eyeko Punk is a hot pink neon. My bottle had gotten really thick since the last time I used it. Making application really difficult and bubbly. Which is a shame since the first time I used it on my toes it applied beautifully with out any problems. I used two coats for this manicure. I've also included a photo I took under the black light.

Afterwards I put on a coat of China Glaze Crackle - Crushed Candy. Crushed Candy is a turquoise creme that crackles once placed over your manicure. I have the whole set of China Glaze Crackles thanks to a swap with Emily! For the most part I'm impressed by the color range, but I would say that the crackle effect is a lot more finicky than Barry M or P2.

I had this look on my toes for awhile and decided that it would work well as a manicure. Kind of reminds me of vibrating colors.

I took pictures under the black light too!

What do you think of this hot pink neon underneath the turquoise Crushed Candy?

China Glaze - Starboard and Lighthouse

Starboard and Lighthouse are polishes recently released in the  China Glaze spring collection called Anchor's Away.

Starboard is a medium green creme. I used three coats when applying this. Didn't have any problems with the application. It's a nice green, but it really didn't wow me.

Lighthouse is a very sunny yellow that contains bits of flecked golden yellow glitter. One of my favorites of the collection. It's very sheer and at three coats you can see my nail line especially in the sun. I'm okay with the sheerness and it allows it to also be a great layering polish.

As I said before, I wasn't that wowed by Starboard when I had it on. So very soon after I added a coat of Lighthouse. I showed this look before when I put a post up for my Superbowl nails.