I'm alive..

I'm just very very very bad at blogging. 

I'm going to try to keep up with this new challenge in September though.

I'll try to post some before then.

Neon Rainbow Crackle with bonus stamping mani!

I feel like such a blogger failure.  Things have just gotten so busy, with kiddo starting school, work, and card night with my cousins (anyone else ever play Peanuts!, it's so much fun).

I did a neon gradient rainbow mani for the challenge, but I am still really bad at gradients so I topped it with O.P.I. Black Shatter to try and hide how bad it was.

Color Club Mambo, Wham! Pow!, and Almost Famous on top of SinfulColors Snow Me White, with O.P.I. Black Shatter

Color Club Twiggie, Pucci-Licious, and Chelsea on SinfulColors Snow Me White, topped with O.P.I. Black Shatter

This is the mani I did instead of a Water Marble, cause I just can't muster up the courage to try that yet...

SinfulColors Midnight Blue and Secret Admirer stamped with Rain Song

I <3 this mani so much, the color change that Rain Song does on Secret Admirer is so awesome, I couldn't stop staring at my hands while at work!  Unfortunately I had a crack on my right ring finger, and have been patching it while waiting for it to grow out.  It finally grew out far enough, but then I broke another nail right before I went to grab my file.  So I am now sporting nubs, again. :(  

I'm working on getting a new post up of my polish set up now that Kiddo's stuff is back in his own room and I have more storage space for the ever growing stash!  So much love for bargain stores and clearance sales!

My First Ever Influenster VoxBox...

...and it was a flop.  I received a Strawberries & Cream SlimFast shake, a martini glass, and 4 recipes to make cocktails/mocktails featuring the 4 flavors of these particular line of shakes.  

Because I live in Southern Florida, and it is super hot here right now, the shake curdled/soured in my mailbox :(

Polka dot nails for this week's challenge.

O.P.I. Black Satin as a base color, with Not Like The Movies on middle and pinkie fingers, and SinfulColors Rain Song on pointer and ring fingers.  Dots are SinfulColors Snow Me White.

Inspired by Artwork

This week I was inspired by Sephora's Cinderella collection packaging, mainly the mirror compact. 

I used China Glaze For Aubry for the base, then used saran wrap and China Glaze Gold Fusion.

Green nails, and new polishes!

Wasn't feeling creative this week, so I just did a base of China Glaze Con-Fused, and figured I'd think of something to stamp it with later.  

Went out to Venice Island to check out the shops this past weekend, and one of the shops is full of sun-activated color changing shirts and other souvenirs.  They also have a bunch of polishes that do the same!  I had one from a few years ago, and picked up 2 new ones since they were having a sale.

I don't remember the name of the half-full one, but the blue glitter is City Girl, and the clear is Lollipop.  This is out of the sunlight.

This is out in the sunlight.  The blue glitter in the clear base turns to a purple base.  The blue metalic turns green. The clear turns nice and red.  I had to try out Lollipop.

Inside.  I had just come inside, so the red wasn't faded completely, but otherwise it's clear on the nail.

In the sunlight.  It takes a few minutes for this rich of color.  

The formula was ok to work with, though it does need some thinner.  This was 4 or 5 coats, as the color change was streaky otherwise.

I can't stand having the white parts of my nails show, so I painted french tips w/ Color Club Flamingo from the Fiesta collection.  

Delicate nails

Sally Hansen XtremeWear in Blinding Blue, topped with Fuzzy Coat in Wool Knot.

I think it looks kind of like a cashmere sweater, and it probably as close to 'delicate' as i'll get lol.

Color Inspired

I grabbed a few polishes at Big Lots the other day, and fell in love with one of them.   Sally Hansen Smooth and Perfect Air.  It's such a pretty pastel blue, I had to do a mani with it.

Here it is topped with Essie Luxeffects in Pure Pearlifecation.  

I then added a rainbow w/ striping tape, cause it was just the perfect background color.

Also, my son had to have his toenails painted just like mine.  He's such a crazy little 4 year old.

Color Club Mamba and Endless Summer, with SinfulColors Snow Me White.  I also topped mine with the Essie Pure Pearlifecation.

Half Moon Mani

I will say, I am not a fan of this on my short nails :(   

SinfulColors Candy Coated and Let's Talk, topped with China Glaze Fairy Dust

I felt these made my nails look even shorter than they are.  Plus I def did not give them enough time to dry in between layers, so it smudged a little :(

Matte Magnetic Mani

First, an update of my polish stash.  I will have to get pics of my rearranged set up later when kiddo isn't sleeping.  I did snap a pic of the polishes I picked up the other weekend, though.  

Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure in Loves Me Not, Kleancolor Green Addicts set, Color Club Fiesta set, and my first bottle of Seche Vite.

I also received my MOO.com cards!  

I've wanted to get some contact cards for a while, but have put it off cause I couldn't think of a cute picture/theme for them.  Then they emailed me a great deal, and I found this design in their gallery, so of course I had to get them!

This week's challenge was a simple one, a Matte Mani.  My nails are still nubs, so I didn't have much room for artwork. I bought 3 polishes this weekend, so I chose from them to do the mani.  I chose Nails, Inc in Spitalfields, which I mainly got because of the fishnet magnet :)  I used China Glaze Matte Magic to make it matte.  I still need practice with magnet timing.

Quick Post

Just a quick post while we have some tech issues here at work. 
Tried my hand at Galaxy Nails for the challenge (which I am failing so bad about), did not work so well with the polishes I had.

Wet'N'Wild Wild Shine Black Creme, sponged with Zoya Pru, China Glaze Magnetic II Get Charged & Sparks Will Fly, Wet'N'Wild Megalast in Break The Ice, and dotted w/ Sinful Colors Snow Me White.  It turned out not so great, but super shiny!  

Bought 2 sets of polish last weekend at discount stores, a set of Color Club Fiesta collection, and a Kleancolor mini set in greens.  Also found a Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure in Loves Me Not, and holy cow is that my new favorite purple polish!

Had to nub my nails last night cause I had a break and no time to do a fix. Currently wearing Color Club Mamba. This is 2 coats topped with Seche, which I finally bought since my usual go-to top coat caused shrinking w/ my China Glaze polishes.

Summer Nails Wordless Wednesday Edition (Plus 2 other manis I've worn so far this summer)

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

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

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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 )

Springtime!

I am in LOVE with SinfulColors new spring colors, especially Candy Coated!  It might be because it matches my eReader cover that I got for Valentine's Day.

I of course couldn't leave it alone, so I stamped with Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Celeb City.

I used the same Mash plate as the fish scales for the grid stamp, and one of the plates that came in my Salon Express stamping set for the dragonflies.

Color Club In True Fashion duo French Tips

Trying to get back into the habit of posting, and following the Challenge.  This week is French Tips, and my cousin Jen had suggested pairing 2 of my Color Club polishes together, so I figured I'd give it a shot.  I started with my normal nail strengthener and base coat.  I then used Wet'N'Wild Wild Shine in Black Creme as an undie for Color Club Personal Stylist.  Here's a shot I took before stamping and clean-up, to show off how gorgeous this color is!  This is 2 coats, with top coat.

I then used my MASH plate and stamped Color Club Editorial in the fish scale pattern.  I then did a french tip and added top coat.

It was insanely shiny and shimmery, and I didn't want to take it off!  I did eventually take it off, since it was starting to chip and snag.  This design reminded me of fishing lures for some reason as well.  I want to get more stamping plates!

Inspired by Nature

Things have finally started going back to normal around here, so I've resumed the 52 week challenge.  Last week's challenge was Inspired by Nature.  I decided to try to do a natural-looking nail, but with polish.  

I used Sally Hansen Smooth and Perfect in Dune as the base color, and Wet'n'Wild Megalast in Break the Ice for the tips.

Inspired by a Book

Trying to get back into blogging.  It's been a tough week.  Flew out for my Grandpa's funeral this past weekend, still haven't really gotten my head wrapped around the fact that he's gone.

I ended up breaking like 3 nails during my trip, my nails did not take well to the the cold.  This is what they looked like before I left:

Sally Hansen Smooth and Perfect Dune, stamping done with Salon Express plate with my SinfulColors red and green polishes.

And this is what they look like today:

SinfulColors Base Coat only.

I'd love to try to do a Cheetah print in honor of my friend +Jamie Cannon's books, but it just ends up looking like a mess. :( I need more practice and patience.  I also need the patience for waiting for Moon Rises, the sequel to Night Falls (also available on Kindle)

I promise I will be better about blogging in the future.