Skittles Kick

I've been on a real "skittles nails" kick lately, using a bunch of different colors for each manicure.  I think I just enjoy looking at all the different colors/finishes of the polish, plus a skittles manicure means I don't have to pick just one polish!

My right hand features a bunch of different golds.  From thumb to pinky: 

• LA Colors Antique Gold: a butter London Wallis dupe!  This is one of those ugly/beautiful green golds that are just neat to look at, even if they are really weird.
• Julep Sienna: possibly the best gold polish ever.  Opaque in one coat, good wear, and a really neat white gold look to it.
• Wet n' Wild The Gold and The Beautiful: a greenish leaning gold glitter, it doesn't have as much visible nail line in real life.  2 coats.
• OPI Rising Star: from the Burlesque collection, which may be OPI's prettiest collection ever.  I only have a mini, and I wish I could get my hands on the full-size set, but scouring eBay for it doesn't seem worth the time when I have all this other polish to use.
• Zoya Tiffany: this is such an unusual orangey pinkey goldey glassfleck polish.  It looks a lot like Zoya's Rica, but leans way more pink and gold, while Rica leans more orange.  2 coats got me to opacity, which is really nice for a polish with a moderately sheer formula.

 Silver on the left, to go with the gold on the right! On my left, from thumb to pinky, I've got:

• Zoya Trixie: great formula, 2 coats
• Nicole by OPI Make a Comet-Ment: A scattered silver holo, slightly thin but no visible nail line after 2 coats
• Zoya Harley: A tricky formula, I had to use 3 coats to make sure this wasn't patchy, and I'm not sure the final result is flawless, but the color is just beautiful.
• Essie Power Clutch: I just got this in a 6 polish set from Ross (for less than $18!!), and thought it'd be the worst color on me, but I think it actually looks fantastic.  I did 3 thin coats to make sure there were no bald spots, but it dried like a dream and was a great consistency.
• Color Club Magic Attraction: Another Ross find, this one has holo silver glitter and small pinkish glitter in it; I don't have a lot of silver polish, so this was what I went with in a pinch, but it has great coverage after 2 coats.  It is still a little gritty to the touch after a coat of Out the Door though, but that doesn't bother me much.

So much more fun to look at than just one color!

Happy 4th of July!! (And farewell to 1/3 of my right thumbnail!)

I love the 4th of July.  I hope you all have a wonderful day of grilling, relaxing, parades, fireworks and fun!  I'm celebrating with a pretty simple 4th manicure:

I finally busted out the FingerPaints magnetic polish, and used the China Glaze star magnet to make little stars/fireworks on my nails!  I don't have striping tape, and for some reason couldn't find any actual tape, so I used OPI's Pirouette My Whistle over Nailtiques Moscow for my thumbs.

Why did I photograph my left hand for this?  Because I broke my right thumb nail on a gate at work.  Not just broke, practically obliterated it.  Here's the damage:

You can actually see how far down the nail a layer broke off; I'm super, super lucky it wasn't worse though, as I didn't even bleed.  Here's my thumb compared to my whole nails, to show how I like to keep my nails (when they aren't polished!).  

Fingers crossed that it grows back soon.  Field work is rough!

NOTD: Flakies!

Lab Muffin recently did an excellent article breaking down why flakies look a lot better over dark colors.  I did a darker manicure yesterday, and felt the need to jazz it up to make it a little less fall-like, so I threw some flakies over Zoya's Valerie and Edyta, and came up with this gorgeous manicure!

Flakies add so much depth to a plain manicure, I just LOVE them!

4th of July giveaway!

The 4th of July is my favorite holiday.  It's so wonderfully low-key; go to a parade, eat a hot dog, watch some fireworks, wave a flag, go to bed.  It's easy, it's fun and it celebrates something I really like (I really do like America).

I can't spend this 4th of July with my family in my hometown, as it falls on a Wednesday and it's just not practical to fly 800 miles one way for a single day.  My hometown has an annual parade where half the city is in the parade, and half is watching.  Then we'd have a barbecue with whoever is around for the day, and watch the city's fireworks display.  You can actually see the fireworks from my bedroom window.

I'm sad I can't be there, but I'll have fun in my new town, going to a festival and seeing some fireworks here. It's time to start some new 4th of July traditions!

To celebrate further, and to share my total love for the 4th of July, I'm giving away 3 nail polishes to one winner!  Julep's Molly is the red,Maybelline's Colorshow in Porcelain Party is the white, and FingerPaints Electro-Midnight is the blue (and it's magnetic!).  Simply fill out the Rafflecopter widget below to enter; this giveaway will end on June 26th, and the winner will have 24 hours to e-mail me their address.  If they don't contact me in the allotted time, I'll pick a different winner.  U.S. only for now, sorry! Good luck!
4th of July giveaway!

Nail of the Day: OPI DS Extravagance

I love this polish.

DS Extravagance is fairly pretty indoors, a dark purplish garnet color with a little bit of shimmer.  I was actually a little disappointed with it at first, since I put it on in the evening and could only see it by lamplight, where it was a rich, deep color, but totally not summery.

But this morning, when I saw it in the sun? Holy moly!  Just stunning!  Scattered holographic shimmer! Raspberry color!  I'm in love!

Not only that, but this is a single, solitary coat.  It took me 5 minutes to paint my nails, and they were dry in no time with my Out the Door topcoat.  Can't beat that!

I'm hoping to put a gradient over this later, so I'll make sure to post pictures once it's done.

Julep June Mystery Box!

I love the Julep mystery boxes; every once in a while (usually around a holiday, or just for fun), Julep offers a box for $19.99 (they provide a link to the box and a code to make sure it is discounted to $19.99) that has between $60 and $200 worth of product.  You don't know what you'll get, but I have yet to be disappointed!

I have bought 4 mystery boxes including this one, but the first three were smaller boxes.  I still loved the colors, and the boxes prompted me to sign up for the Julep Maven program because I liked them so much, but this month I got the big box!!

I got the Pedi Creme (I have never had such soft feet, I swear!), their basecoat, fast dry topcoat, Alyson (a camel colored creme), Amy (a turqoise blue), Sienna (a white-gold that is STUNNING), and Megan (mermaid blue!).

I also got their plumping lip gloss in Arousal (terrible name, nice product, but you definitely feel the burn from the plumper!), the Julep Reveal nail serum, and a pomegranate body creme and scrub.  Not too shabby for $19.99, huh?

You can get the monthly Julep box for just $0.01 by using the code MAVENINTRO when you sign up at Julep.com!

Disclaimer: the links in this post are referral links for my account with Julep.com

Ruffle manicure!

I found a tutorial at Chalkboard Nails on how to create a ruffle manicure, and it looked so appealing that I couldn't wait to try it out.  I used a sewing pin with a large plastic head to make the dots, and while I wish I had put one more row near my cuticle, I'm pretty pleased with the result!