Orange Layering

Good evening Ninjas!

Well, our loan passed underwriting so we're going to be home owners! It's very exciting and I'm starting to feel like a real grown up now. My favorite part of the house is the extra space in the back yard that I plan to turn into an archery range. I'll be Hawkeye in no time!

Tonight's manicure is one I did for a creative layering challenge. The base is two coats of butter LONDON MacBeth followed by one coat of a nameless orange duochrome by Funky Fingers and topped off with a coat of *Chloe from Zoya's Fleck Effect collection. The overall manicure was quite pretty and very interesting to look at in different lighting scenarios.

Chloe provided by Zoya PR for honest review.

butterLONDON Scuppered

Hello lovely Ninjas!

I hope your weekend has started off well. Tomorrow is a busy day at work between visiting Jiu Jitsu celebrity Royce Gracie, a really neat survival camp out, and a birthday party. Not to mention it's also the Chinese New Year! I don't know if my nails will be all snaked out but I'm sure I'll have some neat reptilian manicures in the next week or so to celebrate the Year of the Snake since I'm a Snake myself :)

Tonight's manicure is three thin coats of butterLONDON Scuppered from their Winter 2012/13 collection. This is the first color from the collection that really caught my eye and I think it was the complex finish of the polish that really makes it interesting. Not only is Scuppered a metallic foil but it also has a slight gold to pink duochrome to it AND emerald green hex glitter sprinkled throughout. ButterLONDON describes Scuppered as, "Opaque, copper shimmer with pink, gold, and green glitter." The only downside to this polish was that it took three coats for opacity but this was a pretty fantastic color to wear.

butterLONDON and MASH nail art!

Good evening Ninjas,

Sorry I've been posting a little further apart. I keep getting my timelines mixed up and thinking it's only been one day when it's actually been two. I'm finally done with my antibiotics so I should be better and more consistent in the next few days!

Tonight's manicure was done over a base of butterLONDON Slapper. Slapper is described as "A truly teal nail lacquer, bold and very bright." I really loved this color all by itself, I chose it to cheer myself up after a few less than stellar days. This pop of color was a really nice accessory for more neutral outfits like those I often wear in the winter.

On top of Slapper I added triangular half moons with rhinestones from MASH. You can find the set I used at the MASH website, right here. The stones were very easy to work with and didn't catch on anything with topcoat over them. This is my first ever rhinestone heavy nail art look and I was really proud of it!

Rhinestones provided by MASH for honest review.

butterLONDON Shag

Good evening Ninjas!

I hope your Friday was awesome and you're ready to have a relaxing weekend. I'm working tomorrow, as usual, but one of my co-workers is having a Super Bowl party so at least I have that to look forward to!

Tonight's manicure is the one I wore for part of Trivia Weekend until I had to take it off so I'd stop chewing the polish off of my nails. This is two coats of butterLONDON Shag from their Fall 2012 collection. Now that I own this, Trustafarian, and Dodgy Barnet, I've gotten all of the polishes from that collection that I wanted! Three coats probably would have looked a little richer here but with my new shorter square nail shape, two worked out ok. ButterLONDON calls Shag, "A London Fashion Week favourite, this high-shine metallic nail lacquer is a warm orange-burgundy hue. Reminiscent of fallen Autumn leaves. Sigh. " This is a great autumn color!

Two in one!

Good evening darling Ninjas!

It's winding down here at work as we get ready to close next week for the Holidays. I've had fun over the last couple days decorating our windows for the Holiday spirit :)

Tonight's manicure is one that served a double purpose. I did my "Inspired by a holiday song" on one hand and "Ugly Christmas Sweater" on the other! The base here is butter LONDON Victoriana which was a gift from my lovely Mother in Law. The accents are done with color club art brushes.

I chose the Dreidel song for my Holiday Song :) I went with a blue dreidel with white characters like this one:

source: http://us.123rf.com/400wm/400/400/webking/webking0511/webking051100250/283514-isolated-blue-dreidel.jpg

Then for my inspiration for the Ugly Christmas Sweater I did something that was reminiscent of this cute little dog sweater!

source: http://www.baxterboo.com/images/products/medium/east-side-collection-christmas-star-dog-sweater-blue-1.jpg

And my customary bottle label shot!

This is Halloween Day 8

Good Morning Ninjas!

Week two at work, working our way through the water curriculum for the second time. I'm getting better at the foot work but it's still not intuitive for me. Hubby loves it because it's a natural way to move for him; I'm jealous! Tango seems to be feeling better and now he smells pretty because he got a bath last night :) MiL leaves today to go back to NY, it was great having her down here, she's super fun and really sweet so it's always sad when she leaves.

Day 8 is ghosts! I did the design over a base of butter LONDON Branwen's Feather. BF is a really pretty blackened purple with silver and pink shimmer that I thought would work really well for a dark night time background. I did a freehand ghost with Sinful colors Snow me White on my index fingers and used a black striping brush to do the eyes and outline (White dots in eyes were also a striper). I then did "BOO" on my middle-pinky fingers with an orange Sinful striper I picked up this Saturday. Since I saw a bunch of spiderwebs on nails when I was looking at ghost designs, I decided to use my white striper to do a web on my thumbs. The left one came out much nicer than the right but that's to be expected!

butter LONDON Dosh

Good Evening Ninjas!

There's a Tornado Warning going on right now here in NC so hopefully I'll keep power long enough to finish this post! Currently it's just pouring cats and dogs and I'll take a deluge over a tornado any night. Last night was the Season premier of the 7th season of Doctor Who 2005 and it was fantastic! Keep an eye out for my who themed manicure in the new couple of days, I'm very proud of how my Dalek turned out :)

Tonight's manicure is butter LONDON's Dosh. Dosh was a gift from my amazing mother in law. She sent my hubby home with FIVE butter LONDON polishes all from my wishlist. I could scarcely believe my eyes when I was opening up all the gorgeous bottles of polish. Here's a quick picture of the haul:

I'd been having serious trouble finding Dosh whenever I went looking for it so I had to try it out first. Dosh is a gorgeous spring green polish with multicolored pink/green/gold glitter in it. The butter LONDON website describes it as "A molten metallic apple-green nail lacquer shot through with gold. DEEEELICIOUS!" I love it! This is two pretty coats in so-so lighting. I seriously need to invest in a light box. My homemade one got ruined by my evil cat.

Only three more days until my Blue Belt Giveaway ends!

Butter LONDON No More Waity Katie

Hello lovely Ninjas!

Next week will be stripe week here at the dojo and I'll be earning my red stripe! I can't wait to graduate to solid blue belt. It's really nice to be making progress towards higher ranks and it's nice to be committed to something that means so much to me.

Tonight's polish is a Butter LONDON that I was really excited about. No More Waity Katie was created commemorate the engagement of Prince William and Kate Middleton. Butter LONDON says of NMWK, "this soft lilac glitter nail lacquer is the perfect marriage of fashion and fun." I like how they slipped the word marriage in there! This polish was not easy to work with at all. The light purple jelly is very sheer and the lilac glitter is a hungry glitter. It took three coats of NMWK over my existing Zoya Natty manicure to achieve opacity. By the third coat, the polish was getting thick and starting to string. As you can see, the topcoat was eaten and and didn't create the glassy finish you usually hope for.

butter LONDON Dodgy Barnett

Hello Ninjas!

Over the last couple of weeks or so there has been a ridiculous amount of photo theft from the nail blogging community. As such, I took the time to create my own watermark that you'll be seeing from now on in my pictures. It's fairly small so it shouldn't change the picture quality and it certainly won't hamper your view of the polish. I just wanted to let you all know why I started to add it! Also, do you like my new blog header?

Today's manicure (and actually the one I'm wearing today!) is Dodgy Barnett from butter LONDON's Fall 2012 collection.  I picked this up at the Nordstrom Buy 2 Get 1 Free that happened on Sunday. I love holos and this polish is not exception! Butter LONDON describes this polish as "A highly holographic lacquer in a classic shade that blurs the line between grey and silver. " Which is pretty accurate. When I was looking at it in the sunlight, DB made me think of AEngland's Princess Tears without the strong duochrome effect. I love this, and if you've been lemming Glitter Gal Light as a Feather, this is pretty similar and more accessible!

These pictures are three coats which isn't bad at all for a very light colored holographic!

In-Law Haul and a Polish Rack!

Hello ninjas!

Today I've got pictures of all of the polishes  my amazing Mother In Law got me for Christmas (and after). This is an amazing Haul. I'm not kidding, she willingly took me to a mall nearly an hour away so I could get my hands on some Illamasqua polish from a Sephora. She's so awesome at enabling my polish addiction <3

Whole Illamasqua Collection: Scarab, Poke, Viridian, Vice, and Kink.

 Isn't she amazing? I am so incredibly lucky to have her as a MIL, she's the best! The other pictures I have for you are another great present from my MIL: an acrylic polish rack! Now, I could probably use almost 5 of these so I ended up putting only my favorites on the shelves. It took me nearly an hour to do! I've got a whole picture, row pictures then an updated row picture after I received my amazing Illa. polishes and my Nails Inc Magnetic!

L-R: Base and Top Coats, Stripers, Flakies, Effects, Holos, Duo/Multi-chrome glitters

L-R: AEngland, Butter London, Chanel, Cult Nails, Essie Untrieds, Illamasqua, Cool Cotoure (I love this polish!) Orly, RBL, Revlon Dupes, Rimmel London

ZOYA

Updated with my new Illa polishes :)

Thanks for looking!!

Butter London Wallis

Hello lovelies!

Tonight I've got a super pretty polish on some nubbins :) This is Butter London's Wallis which I picked up when the Butter Londons were BOGO at Ulta. This is a neat polish that is hard to describe, it seems like a greenish jelly base with a TON of gold shimmer/glitter. The effect ends up looks fairly metallic and on short nails it looked like I have snake scales on my fingertips. I love it! This is two coats with Seche QD on top.