Chrome Fishtail Braid

Happy Earth Day everyone.  All last week, both my daughters have been learning about endagered animals, oil spills, pollution, how planting trees affect our environment, etc..  All leading up to Earth Day. It's so great listening to them excitedly explain everything.  We recycle and garden at home, I tell them about littering and taking care of our environment, and  they watch shows that enforce all those things.  Somehow, it seems more important when their teacher tells them at school.  Like yeah, mom does know what she's talking about.  I'm excited to hear all about their day when I pick them up this afternoon. 
 This is my first fishtail design on myself.  I usually do my daughters big toe as a fishtail braid. I started with a coat of Unpredictable as the base color. Then alternated between No Plain Jane, Unpredictable, and Swanky Silk from the China Glaze Bohemian Lustre Chrome set.  Using different finishes of polish will make a more outstanding design.  I liked using all chromes because it resembles printed silk.  To me anyway.

Get Outta My Space

The China Glaze Hologlams have arrived!! I was excited until I broke my no buy (5 successful weeks) and tried them for myself.  On the salon swatches, the Hologlams are beautiful!  It shows a strong holographic property on all of the colors making it hard to decide what do get.  On the nail in normal lighting, these are a slight disappointment.  The holo is very subtle.  Get Outta My Space is a lavender/pink that looks like a chrome unless I'm outdoors. The formula is thick and I didn't experience any dragging.  I'm using two coats over bare nails.  I tried using a base coat, but the polish bubbled and I retried without base coat.  I don't have an aqua base coat and my Seche Vite base coat has a stuck cap and refuses to open.  I stamped lightning bolts over with Sci-Fly By to give it more demension. The stamp is not noticeable in person, but it creates more of a holo illusion indoors.   Sealed everything with Seche Vite top coat.

All pictures shown were taken outdoors in natural sunlight.

I got mine from Trade Secrets and paid $7/bottle.  I was expecting $14 like everyone online was mentioning.  For the price, I can't complain too much.  Just wishing Get Outta My Space was more in your face holo and less chrome looking. 

Lights of Emerald City over Grape, Set, Match

This is a quick post today.  I'm using Lights of Emerald City over OPI Grape, Set, Match.  I almost used Funky Dunkey, but switched last minute.  Grape, Set has a slight duochrome shimmer that pairs better with LOEC.  I'm really happy with the 4 colors I bought from the Oz collection.  I've used all 4 multiple times.  Considering all the untrieds I have in my collection that is really saying something.

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I prefer using Lights of Emerald City and also When Monkeys Fly over jewel tones and bright colors instead of the soft shades they were originally paired with.  Have you tried these polishes and what polishes do like pairing them with?

Euro? Not Euro.

I'm referring to the OPI Euro Central. Such beautiful colors! The design I did looks like it could be from the Euro Central collection. Only one of the colors actually is. I wanted to do an Autism Awareness design and this is what I came up with.

I started with one coat of Sinful Colors Sweet Nothing. It is a dupe for Can't Find My Czechbook. I'm saving my teeny tiny bottle of the actual polish. Sweet Nothing applies slightly thick and one coat was enough for this gradient. I also have to say that this was the tidiest painting that I have ever done.   Barely any polish got on my cuticles. The irony was that this was a gradient and getting polish on my cuticles is a given. I did want to keep the neatness up and brushed on cuticle oil before sponging the colors on. I then used a napkin to wipe off the oil right after each finger was sponged. No fuss cleanup.
The purple used is the actual You're Such A BudPest. Sinful colors did have a dupe in their Sugar Rush set. I now wish I had grabbed the two purples from that set when I saw it.
For the stamping, I did try using Eurso Euro. The result was too light. To achieve that same blue in the bottle, I pulled out Revlon Moon Candy in Galactic.  Perfect. The glitter on my pointer and pinkie is obviously not Polka.com. It is Spolied in Trust Fund Baby.

The Impossible

Currently I'm on week 4 of my 9 week long No Buy. Here is my progress so far.
Week 1- Failed terribly.
Week 2- Failed on Sunday, but did good the rest of the week. It could count as a successful week.
Week 3-SUCCESS!!! Almost two weeks!
Week 4-Success on a technicality. I got a polish, but my aunt bought it. It could be considered a no buy since I didn't actually buy it. Right? It was also the last bottle on the display. And it completes my Mariah Carey Liquid Sand collection. She knew I was on a no buy and has been teasing me since my fail in week 1.

This polish is The Impossible. Perfect, since it is nearly impossible for me to do a no buy. I am really loving this color. Maybe it's because I haven't had a new color for 2 1/2 weeks and am appreciating it a lot. I also discovered that it is the same grapefruit red/pink shade as my plastic mixing bowl.  The Impossible is a bright shade normally saved for my toes.  I found myself trying to coodinate what I wore with it, which is something I normally would not fret about. There are star shaped gliiter throughtout the bottle and no matter how I fished-could not get one out on my nails.  I'm going to store my bottle upside down.  Removal of this was very easy. 

Hard Candy Jubilee

Hard Candy Jubilee is one of the Crystal Confetti polishes.  When I purchased it, I was really excited with it because it is unique.  It reminds me of a cucumber salad with olives and grated carrots.  I swatched it over Who the Shrek Are You?.  On my nails, I didn't like it so much.  Application is fine, I just didn't like the look of it as a manicure.  Jubilee went right back to the store. 

 

I still have So So Sequin and Tinsel Town to try on.  They are the only two I picked up from the Glitteratzi group.  They both seem more my style.

Can't Let Go Alteration

Good morning.  Hope everyone had a nice Easter weekend.  Ours was great!  We went to church and had an egg hunt after service.  From there, went to a relatives house for a get together.  Today is April Fools.  It's a good thing my daughters don't know about that yet.  They can be little pranksters sometimes.  This is an eventful week.  I live on the Big Island and Merry Monarch is in full swing.  For those of you who don't know, it's the biggest hula competition held annually.  Halaus (dancing groups) come from all over the globe to compete.  It lasts the whole week.  There are craft fairs and other events that accompany The Merry Monarch.  The roads are packed and the stores and local places are full of visitors.  Besides this event, we have a couple family birthdays and one more next week, dentist appt. tommorrow for both girls, and a family vacation this weekend to pack for.  I have two more scheduled posts for this week and none the following.  I should have something posted again by next weekend.

Today, I am showing Can't Let Go-a liquid sand shade from the January release of the Mariah Carey collection. I like wearing it on its own for the "sand" effect, but after a couple days I wanted to change it up a bit. I applied a coat of NYX Girls Dreamy Glitter. I chose it because of the star glitter similar to that in The Impossible liquid sand. The Impossible is the only liquid sand that has star glitter. I think it would have been great if all four had some kind of shaped glitter in it (diamonds, hearts, etc.). After applying Dreamy Glitter, it was too shiny for what I was going for and added two coats of Revlon Matte Top coat. The result looked pretty unique and I got a lot of comments on it.