Time And Relative Dimension In Space

Hello Ninjas!

I hope you're all ready for a great three day weekend! I'll be working some extra hours but that's already since my parents are visiting next weekend. I just get to stress about packing and cleaning until they get here.

Tonight's manicure is three coats of Time And Relative Dimension In Space (TARDIS) from LynBDesigns. TARDIS is a navy blue jelly with silver square glitter suspended throughout. If you don't already know, the TARDIS is the name of the spaceship from Doctor Who which is hands down my favorite TV series. This is a really pretty nail polish but my bottle needed a little thinner to make the formula more manageable. TARDIS was also a bit of a topcoat eater so this is pictured with two coats of TC.

Jessica Nadia: Sterling Queen

Good evening Ninjas!

I hope you've been having a great week. The weather here in NC is lovely as can be, finally reflecting Spring! Of course Spring means green season here in NC so my car and the roads are covered in allergy inducing pollen. So far my allergies haven't been bad, I hope it stays that way!!

Tonight's manicure is two surprisingly easy coats of Jessica Nadia. This is from Jessica's Spring 2013 collection that I won in a giveaway a few month back. Nadia: Sterling Queen is a lovely light grey with a fine silver shimmer throughout. I was pleasantly surprised how quickly this became opaque considering the pastel nature of the base grey. This was a fun polish to wear!

Review: Zoya Dahlia

Good evening Ninjas!

Anyone have plans for Easter? I'll be heading to a friend's house for a Misfit Easter lunch, I'm excited!

Tonight's swatch is a press sample provided by Zoya for my review. This is two coats of Zoya Dahlia from the PixieDust collection. Zoya describes Dahlia as, "a black beauty with a sugared sparkle." I liked this polish for the quick opacity and neat texture; it would probably look awesome gloss too!

Product provided by Zoya PR for honest review. Post contains an affiliate link.

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

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!

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 15

Good evening Ninjas!

Sorry I'm running late on this post, had another rainy day so I didn't get a chance to take pictures until I got out of work for the night and re-adjusted my camera settings a bit.

Not the best representation of zombies but I didn't have a whole lot of time for the nail art. This is two coats of Zoya Storm stamped with Sinful Colors Casablana and free handed red stitches done with a striping brush. The plate is Mash m28 and I thought it was convenient that the Skull and Crossbones had stitches in addition to the eye patch to make it a little more zombie-esque.

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!

Layla Hologram Effect: Mercury Twilight

Hello lovely Ninjas!

It's a nice mild day here in NC, it doesn't seem at all like a Monday. Alas, I do have to go back to work in a while. That's ok though because it's Stripe Week at the dojo. That means that I'll get to test for my first stripe on my blue-white belt. There are three stripes on each belt so I'll be a third of the way to my next one! Time flies when you're having fun.

Today's polish was a gift from my Mother-in-Law for my birthday. After spending some time together at Ulta, she commented that I couldn't leave without at least one polish. I showed her the Layla display and she let me pick one out. This is the first Layla I've ever owned and it's sort of a signature holographic color, bright silver. This wasn't the easiest polish in the world to work with but I've since read up on some ways to make it more manageable in the future. Since my MiL bought me two more Layla polishes, I'll get a chance to try the tips out. I don't know how many coats this was, I basically kept going until there weren't any bald spots. This polish did wear wonderfully and the holo was great to look at, even indoors. My camera had a really hard time picking up the rainbows though so I apologize for the less than stellar pictures.

Color Club Steel of Night

Hello Ninjas!

Hope you're all having a good Monday! I know that seems like an oxymoron but I actually had a decent day and I wish Mondays could be so good more often.  I'm excited, we're getting a new Point of Sale system at work that will make my life so much easier, very cool. It goes live tomorrow and I have to go in early for training but the way it works should result in much fewer billing errors and keep everyone happy :)

Tonight I've got one of the Color Club Magnetic Force polishes for you. Steel of the Night looks like a dark metallic grey in the bottle and before you hold a magnet to your nail. This is one of the polishes I picked up at Hot Topic for just $7! Much better than the $17 you could pay for a bottle of Nails Inc or Layla Magneffect. The magnet on these Color Club magnetic polishes is identical to the one that Nails Inc uses and is nicely detachable from the lid of the bottle!

I have super short nails in this post, this is what happened after my bad break on each hand. I figured it would be easier to get the magnetic pattern to show up on the whole nail. I love how stark the contrast is between the silver magnetic lines and the black absence of magnetic material. Many people loved this and asked where I got the "3D" nail polish! One coat over a black base polish.

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!

Zoya Tao and Color Club Fall 2011!

Hello again!

Here's Zoya Tao, from their Mirrors collection for Fall :) Two coats made it perfect and it wasn't hard to apply at all. This was a color I was wary to try, looked a little blah in the bottle. I like it though, it's a nice darker grey with silver shimmer. What I tihnk is really neat is the pink and teal micro shimmer. The shimmer is similar to Essie's Absolutely Shore but much finer.

Ok so this last picture is because this polish matches my couch! I love it because I was sooo excited to see the pretty grey in a couch! anyways, the next two pictures are the Back to Boho collectio from Color Club for fall. I found them for $7.99 a half at Ross so I got the whole set!