Essie Bobbing for Baubles and glitter!

Hello Ninjas!

Tonight I've got a quick combination that I produced after asking people on my dog forum what I should wear. Blue won out by majority but there were other bright color suggestions that I incorporated through glitter! The base color is Essie's Bobbing for Baubles from their Cocktail Bling collection for Winter 2011/12. This was a great dusky blue with a wonderfully opaque formula. If I wasn't worried about bubbling, I probably could have gotten away with one thick coat but I ended up with two thin ones. Then I added a generous coat of Spoiled Peacock which is a clear base containing purple/blue/green/silver/gold hex glitters. The end product looked very festive, like something I could have worn for New Year's Eve! I got a lot of compliments on this look and it wore very well.

Zoya Kristen

Hello Ninjas!

Tonight I've got Zoya Kristen from their Winter 2011/12 Feel collection. Kristen is a gorgeous light blue cream that works wonderfully with the grey bulky sweater I've been a fan of wearing this winter. The formula on this was a little thinner than I have come to expect from Zoya creams but the color pay off was amazing. It only took two coats for an opaque pastel cream!

OPI Designer... De Better

Hello lovely ninjas!

Tonight I've got a super pretty manicure for you that reminds me of champagne and therefore New Years Eve :)  Designer... De Better is from the Muppets Collection for winter 2011 from OPI. This is a really awesome silver foil with flecks of pink/gold mixed in. From far away I think it looks a lot like rose gold which I adore! Seriously, I just bought a rose gold necklace from Kohl's that I'm in love with, it even has rose quartz. ANYWAYS, on to the gorgeous polish. I couldn't stop staring at the shiny reflective surface of my nails while I was wearing it, so be careful driving with it on, you might get distracted. I did thin coats so I needed three for full opacity but this was totally worth it. Since I only have the mini, I have decided I absolutely MUST get the full sized bottle if I can find it the next time I make it out to ULTA.

Essie School of Hard Rocks Gradient

Hello darling ninjas!

Today I've got my first attempt at a gradient nail design. This is a bas of two coats of Essie School of Hard Rocks from their Cocktail Bling collection for Winter 2011. I was expecting SoHR to come out much lighter but it ended up drying to a nice muted medium teal instead of the more khaki green I was expecting. This was still a very pretty color and an easy formula to work with. If you have a steady hand, you could probably make this color into a one coat wonder but I just didn't want to risk the bubbling.

After the coats of Essie, I did one layer of Orly Twilight on about 3/4 of my nails. My original intention had been to do the gradient entirely with the Orly color but it was just too subtle to produce the effect I wanted. I ended up adding a layer of Sally Hansen Glass Slipper to the tips of my nails to finish off the gradient. The overall effect looks like I dipped my nails in water and let them freeze. I love the frosty look!

I don't think I did too bad for my first try at a gradient, what do you think? Oh yes, I did chop my nails down after a bad break on my right hand. Sorry for the shortness!

Orly Androgynie

Hello Darling Readers!

I've been feeling less than stellar today but thanks to my lovely husband, I have homemade chili to make me feel better. Tonight I've got one of the new colors from Orly's Winter 2011 collection, Androgynie. This color is a black base with scattered holo glitter, various colored hex glitter, and a ton of gold fleck glitter. While this looks amazing in the bottle, it doesn't exactly translate on the nail. What you mostly get is black polish with a lot of gold fleck and maybe one or two hexes if you carefully place them. What also doesn't help is that the base is not a very good suspension base for the holographic particles so they are very sparse on the nail. Add to that a black base that doesn't show hex glitter through it unless it's on the very top coat and you have a basically black manicure. This is two coats with Seche QD on top.