Week 32 Yellow :(

Just a quick post, as I highly disliked how it turned out, the color just didn't look good with my skin tone.

Color Club Almost Famous w/ China Glaze Gold Fusion, no top coat

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My new Samsung Chromebook!  Sorry I've been MIA for a bit, been in a polish funk lately, and not feeling creative.  Been trying to organize my polishes and take updated pictures for a new stash post, since I've been getting new polishes.  Here's a couple of nail looks that I've done in the past week:

First up is a rainbow skittle mani using China Glaze Magnetix II collection.  Found the set hiding at Marshall's, one of my favorite places to find polish deals.  I can usually find Color Club sets for only $9.99.  

Had some major shrinkage cause I rushed and used thick coats and didn't wrap my tips, plus my topcoat didn't help either.  Still working on getting better with my timing with the magnet, the blue didn't turn out too well as a result.  All the colors shown worked great and had gorgeous effects with the magnet, but the collection came with an orange color that's magnet effect was not as strong, and I thought didn't look good with my skin tone.

This is what's on my nails currently: 

I used Color Club Poptastic and Twiggie, SinfulColors Last Chance, Wet'N'Wild Wild Shine Black Creme, and topped it China Glaze Fairy Dust.

I'm going to be working on a tutorial for removing polish using soaker pods like these from Amazon.  My friend +Jamie Cannon and I got each other a set mainly out of curiosity, but they actually do work really well!

Blue frost for Autism, a new base, and a nostalgic love.

I failed at trying to do a flag-inspired mani last week, and I haven't gotten around to doing this week's challenge, so here's my mani that I did for Autism Awareness.

I used Color Club Chelsea, and sponged Wet'N'Wild Break The Ice for the tips.  I loved how shimmery and  frost-like it looked.

I bought the O.P.I. Original Formula Nail Envy at Marshall's for $7.99, and it came with this adorable charm bangle.

Also, I love Ring Pops.  One of my favorite candies from my childhood, along with those bug-shaped SweetTart-like candies in the jar that could be reused as a bug jar.

A Grey Day

I used SinfulColors Snow Me White and Wet'N'Wild Wild Shine Black Creme and mixed them together for the grey base. I used Color Club Poptastic for the dots.

Bonus Easter nails using my new fan brush.  SinfulColors Candy Coated and Color Club Warhol.

Cinnamon Roasted Almonds and Stripes

A while back, I found an awesome garage sale find, a Back To Basics Nut Roaster.

I had wanted to get one of these as kind of a joke for my aunt, who has a love for Cinnamon Roasted Almonds, (Whenever we'd go somewhere they were, she'd exclaim "I smell my nuts!"), but I never ended up buying one and they disappeared from the shelves.  So when I found this one brand new and never used for $3, I snatched it up!  So now I make a batch of almonds to take to family get-togethers, and sometimes just because!

I've found that they're best when I dry-roast them in the oven first.  Not only do they taste better, but the whole house smells awesome!  I just toss them onto a cookie sheet/baking dish and put them in a 350 F degree oven for about 20-25 min (I've found that the time will vary depending on ovens, so just keep an eye on them near the end and make sure they don't get to dark).

After they've roasted, I put them in the pan and add the cinnamon and sugar, and turn the burner on to medium high heat. Then I add the water and vanilla extract.  Then you just slowly stir and stir and stir until the liquid evaporates and the nuts are glazed.

This is the recipe that came with the pan, you can tweak it depending on how much sugar/cinnamon/vanilla you'd like(just don't use a ton of cinnamon, you'll end up with a goopy mess that looks like tar!).  You don't have to use a special pan, any heavy bottomed pan will work (like cast iron).  

1 C sugar

1/2 Tbsp ground cinnamon

2 C nuts

1 1/2 tsp vanilla

1/4 C water

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This week's nail challenge was stripes, and I just did a very simple design.  I used Wet'N'Wild Wild Shine Black Creme as a base color, then used N.Y.C. Matte topcoat on it.  I then painted a single stripe down the center of my nail with a shimmery dark cherry color polish, but that didn't really look nice to me.  So I got SinfulColors Let's Talk and painted over the red.  I loved the color combo, and also loved how pretty the shiny purple was against the matte black.

Tutorial Inspired - Week 25

This weeks nails are inspired by this tutorial by one of the first nail bloggers that I started following, +Wacky Laki.  I wanted to use my purples, SinfulColors Candy Coated and Let's Talk, and Color Club Pucci-Licious.  The design was easy enough to do on my left hand, although a bit time consuming.  My right hand though, I'm sad to say did not go as easily.  I used the pointy end of my orange sticks that came with the Ms. Manicure set I have to draw on the design.

This is the most color accurate picture, by the way.

Left Hand

Right Hand

By far my favorite nail look so far!

Week 24 - Violet

Not sure if I can call this violet, but it's the closest color I have at the moment.  

SinfulColors Let's Talk stamped with a Sally Hansen polish pen in a purple chrome color. 

Let's Talk is so hard to capture on camera!  It def leans more red that the blue it shows in my picture.  I've found this as the best color match. (Image originally found here )