Green on Green manicure

Good evening Ninjas,

I hope you've been having a good weekend. The weather has been a little weird here between pouring rain and sweltering heath. You never really know how to dress. This week is graduation week at the dojo and I'll be graduating this time around. I'm super nervous about my first red belt graduation!

Tonight's manicure is two polishes provided by Zoya PR for review. Rikki and Josie. I used Josie as a base color and did a triangle on each fingertip as a sort of reverse chevron with an art brush. I thought this turned out to be a pretty neat accented look.

Here's what Zoya has to say about these two colors:

"Zoya Nail Polish in Josie can be best described as a full-coverage grassy green cream"

"Zoya Nail Polish in Rikki can be best described as a full-coverage fern green foil metallic."

 Polishes provided by Zoya PR for honest review.

Cinderella manicure!

Good evening Ninjas!

Sorry I missed Wedesday, I had a party to go to and didn't have any time between work and fun time to stop to post. Sorry about that! If it makes it any better, I specifically brought my laptop to my babysitting job tonight to post once the kids were asleep just so I didn't miss two posts in one week!

Tonight's very pretty manicure is done with a base of China Glaze Fade into Hue which is an awesome periwinkle blue. For some reason the polishes from the Avant Garden collection have been bubbling on me so I added a coat of Essie As Gold as it Gets to mask the bubbling issue. To make this pretty blue manicure a little blingy, I added a spiral of light blue rhinestones that I received from MASH for review purposes. When I posted this look in a facebook group, some of the ladies commended on how it was a Cinderella blue manicure and I agree! With all the shine and sparkle it's pretty princess-y too :)

Rhinestones provided by MASH PR for honest review. Affiliate link included in this post.

Wordless Wednesday

Essie Navigate-her with Funky Fingers Taffy Town

Essie Navigate-her with Funky Fingers Taffy Town

Easter Mani Monday

Hello Ninjas!

Sorry about missing Friday's post, I was out of town at my Grandparents' house which is about 5 hours away. Since our visit out there was a belated Easter weekend, I figured now would be a good time to show you my actual Easter manicure.

Tonight's manicure is made up entirely of the awesome Zoya Lovely polishes that were sent to me for review a few months back. The base of this manicure is three coats of Jacqueline with Piaf, Julie, or Gei Gei dotted on with the rounded end of a bobby pin. I have to say that the bobby pin is much easier to use than actual dotting tools for me. Maybe it's because the pin is shorter? On the bright side, it's a cheap way to do pretty nail art! I was aiming for my nails to look like Easter Eggs, I thought they came out pretty well :)

Zoya Lovely collection provided by Zoya PR for honest review.

Wordless Wednesday: Green and Gold scallops

Zoya Logan, Zoya Ziv, Ulta Maine Attraction

Zoya Logan, Zoya Ziv, Ulta Maine Attraction

Zoya Logan, Zoya Ziv, Ulta Maine Attraction

A very decorated St.Patrick's manicure

Hello Ninjas!

Some of you may have read about the recent changes in FTC disclosure regulations and others may not know. The changes basically mean I have to make it painfully obvious whenever a product included in one of my blog posts was provided by the parent company for review. I've always noted this fact on the bottom of my posts but now I have to put it THREE places in my posts, The beginning, middle, and end. This is pretty ridiculous to me and I'm still not entirely sure what the FTC fines people for and what jurisdiction is has to fine people but I guess I have to cover all of my bases. Therefore, I want to apologize in advance for the annoying and repetitive disclosure that I have to add to this and future posts.

Tonight's manicure features products provided for review by MASH nails. Specifically, the rhinestones and stamping plate were sent to my by MASH PR for review purposes. The rhinestones I used can be found at their website here and the plate I used (MASH 50) can be found here.

Now that I've gotten that out of the way, check it out! This is three coats of China Glaze Budding Romance stamped with a design from a provided MASH Plate 50 using Sinful Colors Casablanca. If you're ever in the market for a great opaque silver stamping polish, Casablanca is fabulous! Then, to cover up a few imperfections in my stamping, I added green and orange/gold colored rhinestones from MASH to the middle of my nails.

Stamping plate and rhinestones provided by MASH PR for honest review. For a better look at my review policy, please visit this page: http://www.laquerlover.blogspot.com/p/disclaimer-and-pr-info.html

Stamping and Rhinestones!

Good evening Ninjas!

I took my test for red-white belt on Monday and I passed! Now I get to keep practicing my water until graduation on March 6th and I still need to plan my graduation manicure as well. Red and white would have been perfect for Valentine's Day!

This is a pretty complex manicure. The base polish is four frustrating coats of Zoya Kotori which Zoya describes as "A dense bright blue shimmer superimposed over a sheer black base." Kotori is rated at a 3 out of 5 on the Zoya sheer scale but I really wanted three coats to be enough! I stamped Kotori with Blu from the Lovely collection. I used the dandelion seed image from MASH plate 30. Then, because I couldn't be happy with that, I added a border around the ring finger nail using the silver rectangular rhinestones from Cult Nails that came as a free gift with purchase around Christmas time.

Blu and MASH 30 were received from their respective PR companies for honest review.

Illamasqua Glitter Gradient

Good evening Ninjas!

Happy Monday, hope you had a lovely weekend. I think the highlight of my weekend was Walking Dead coming back for the Mid-Season premiere! Do you watch that show?

Tonight's manicure is one I really didn't want to take off. This is two coats of Illamasqua Phallic which is, hands down, my new favorite blue nail polish. Illamasqua describes Phallic as a "deep midnight blue, shimmer finish" which doesn't do this polish justice. This polish absolutely glows on its own but I couldn't just leave well enough alone. I did a sponged glitter gradient on the tips of my nails with Finger Paints Falling for You which is a Copper mini and hex glitter combination. This was an awesome duo!

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.

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!

Blue-Black Manicure!

Hello Darling Ninjas!

Last week on Wednesday, hubby and I graduated from our solid blue belt to our blue-black belt in Ninjutsu. If you've followed me for a while, you know that I like to do a manicure to match the belt I'm going to for each graduation. Here's my blue-black mani!

This is a pretty simple manicure as far as nail art goes. This is two coats of L'Oreal Notting Hill Blues with black french tips. My left hand turned out really well since I got to use my dominant hand to do the tips; my right hand turned out much worse and I ended up throwing black crackle over my blue to cover it up! Here's my pretty hand :)

Wintery Nail Art

Hello Lovely Ninjas!

It's time to try another challenge on my lovely little blog. This one is much easier though because there's no specific time frame for the posts, they just have to be in order!

Tonight's post is Snowflakes. I did this manicure for the night that my husband and I went to the Trans-Siberian Orchestra concert. This was done over my Electro Midnight manicure from Tuesday to give it a nice blue wintery look. I used Mash plate m20 with Sinful Snow Me White and Casabalnca to do the "snowflakes" since there was no closer design on any of my other 20-ish plates. After the stamps I added caviar beads to the middle of each flake for a little blue accent and topped it off with a coat of Seche QD.

Fifth Degree Nail Art

Hello Ninjas!

Sorry I didn't finish the Halloween Challenge, I had too much going on between the outrageous costume I was doing and work that I didn't have time to do a costume manicure and a repeat manicure of another blogger's design. Maybe the next challenge I do I'll complete!

Tonight's manicure is the one I did for the huge Ninja Festival in Dayton, Ohio way back on September 29th. I replicated the belt that our dojo owner was recently awarded, his Godan or Fifth Degree black belt.  The Godan belts are black with a metallic silver stripe down the middle with the kanji for Toshindo in red on one end and the warrior name on the other end. I did the Toshindo kanji as well as the five gold bars that accompany them to represent each degree. The symbol on my pinky is what we call a kuginuki and is one of the crests of our martial art.

This is Halloween day 26

Konbanwa Ninjas!!

This wasn't the easiest week but now it's over! As long as I stay healthy and don't pick up another cold  the next week should be great. I need to re-dye my hair red so I can be Poison Ivy for Halloween but it should be an otherwise uneventful (except for work tomorrow) weekend!

For witches, I went with the stereotypical pointed witches hat. They were freehanded with a black paint pen and silver/purple striping polish over two coats of Zoya Ziv. Ziv was an AMAZING gold polish that I almost didn't want to cover it up to do nail art on it. The star is from a glitter I got from Hot Topic a year or so ago and I thought it worked pretty well as an accent on the tip of the hat!