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.

Review: Zoya PixieDust for Summer 2013

Good afternoon Ninjas!

I hope you're having a lovely Friday. I'll be working today and tomorrow, as I usually do over the weekends but hubby and I do have Sunday off together so that will be fun :)

Today's post is the swatches for Zoya's summer PixieDust polishes. These polishes were sent to me for unbiased review. I really like the color combinations Zoya did for this collection! In fact, they're pretty much perfect for doing color block manicures. Since I thought the colors paired up so well, I swatched them side by side with the color I thought would make a fitting color block manicure. Not only did this save me time swatching but it gives you a neat idea for how to use these summer colors in pairs!

Descriptions of the colors below are from Zoya's site. Links lead to external affiliate website.

Solange:  Zoya Nail Polish in Solange can be best described as a gold metal foil sparkle featuring a Zoya EXCLUSIVE GOLD PIGMENT in the best-selling Zoya PixieDust Textured, Matte, Foil Twinkle formula.

Beatrix:  Zoya Nail Polish in Beatrix can be best described as a tangerine metal sparkle in the exclusive Zoya PixieDust Textured, Matte, Foil Twinkle formula

Left: Beatrix, Right: Solange

Destiny:  Zoya Nail Polish in Destiny can be best described as a coral metal sparkle in the exclusive Zoya PixieDust Textured, Matte, Foil Twinkle formula.

Miranda: Zoya Nail Polish in Miranda can be best described as a rose sparkle in the exclusive Zoya PixieDust Textured, Matte, Sparkle formula.

Left: Destiny, Right: Miranda

Stevie:  Zoya Nail Polish in Stevie can be best described as a violet sparkle, in the exclusive Zoya PixieDust Textured, Matte, Sparkle formula.

Liberty:  Zoya Nail Polish in Liberty can be best described as a blue sugary sparkle in the exclusive Zoya PixieDust Textured, Matte, Sparkle formula.

Left: Liberty, Right: Stevie

Polishes provided by Zoya PR 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!

CQ Rustic Dream

Good evening Ninjas!

I finally went for a run tonight after a week off from running to recover. It wasn't my fastest run but I felt pretty good afterwards so that's a step in the right direction. Next week is stripe week at work and I'm hoping to get my second stripe on my blue-black belt which will put me only one stripe away from Fire!

Tonight's manicure is actually a pretty firey one. This is three coats of CQ Rustic Dream. This is a really pretty multichrome polish with a base color of metallic orange that flashes bright golden yellow as well as light pink. It was very difficult to get a picture of the pink using my lightbox so there is one really icky bright flash picture to try and show you that color.

Bright Orange Layering

Hello Ninjas!

The weather has been pretty deceiving around here lately, mild during the day but cold as heck at night. We finally had to turn on the heat today, way earlier than usual for North Carolina!

Tonight's manicure is a bright manicure I did to brighten up my mood with all the cloudy days we've been having recently. I started off with two not-so-even coats of Essie Braziliant followed by a medium coat of Kleancolor Chunky Holo Poppy. Poppy is a pretty color shifting glitter that flashes both a bright sunny yellow and a vivid orange.

Natural Light

With Flash

This is Halloween day 30

Hello Ninjas!

We're getting to the end of this challenge! This will be my first challenge ever and if I can stay on track, it will be my first completed challenge as well. I imagine I'll have a little trouble reproducing a manicure for this but I'll certainly try! My main problem will be figuring out how to coordinate this with my Halloween costume.

Same base as yesterday, two coats of Barielle Decadence with various striping polishes used to make the "treats" I did two treat bags in the shapes of a ghost and pumpkin. I think my favorite treat is the devil shaped lolly pop, the piece of hard candy didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped so pay no mind to that!

This is Halloween day 12

Hello Ninjas!

This was not an easy manicure for me! I picked up a black nail art pen with the idea that it would make it easier to do a Jack'o'lantern face with a finer tool than a striping brush but it didn't want to cooperate. Ironically, it was easier for me to properly draw the faces on my left hand than the right hand. I ended up cheating and using triangular nail art stones for the majority of the face on my two left hand Jack'o'Lanterns.

The base is one to two coats of Finger Paints Courder-orange from last year's Fall collection. I used Wet n Wild's Tangled in my Web for the non-pumpkin nails, and a black Sally Hansen nail art pen for the faces. With the studs, I colored the tops of them black with the pen because they were already orange and you couldn't see them on my nails.

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!

Zoya Myrta

Hey Ninjas!

Still carrying on the Zombie theme from last post since we're on the last few episodes of The Walking Dead season 2 here at home. Shows and movies about Zombies tend to make me wonder what I would do in the event of an apocalypse, how about you?

Tonight's polish is Myrta from Zoya's Surf collection for summer 2012. Myrta is described as, "Warm medium orange coral with red undertone, gold and silver metallic shimmer, and a foil-like finish." That's pretty accurate though I don't think I would have described it as coral when I first saw it. There is a definite metallic finish to this polish with multiple colors of shimmers in it but I still consider it distinctly orange.  This is two thin coats of Myrta over Nail Envy and under Seche QD.

Myrta provided by Zoya PR for honest review.

New Essence and Kiko 600

Hello Ninjas!

Today's post includes two polishes that are from European brands! While Essence is becoming easier to find in the US via the store chain Ulta, I haven't seen Kiko anywhere in person. A really awesome student at work went to London for the Olympics to watch the wrestling events and asked if I'd like a shot glass souvenir. I said I wasn't much in to shot glasses but if he found Olympic nail polish I'd be all over it. Well, as far as I can tell, there wasn't any Olympic exclusive nail polish done but he did pick me up two Kiko colors he thought would go well together. One of them was Kiko 600 which is a light yellow crackle topcoat.

I picked up this new Essence, Gorgeous Bling Bling, at Ulta a while back along with four other new colors with their redesigned bottles and thought it would pair wonderfully with Kiko 600. GBB is a medium orange with gold glass flecks that applied nicely in two coats. I added one coats of K600 over my thumb and ring fingers as a neat accent and really likes this manicure!

Don't forget, my Blue Belt Giveaway ends next week! Hubby and I graduate on Wednesday the 5th so that's when I will be drawing the names (That night after graduation)

Orange Skittles

Hello darling Ninjas!

Two days until I get to leave for NYC! I'm all packed and ready to go but I have one more day to work. I'm sure the day will seem like it lasts foreeeeever. I'm a little nervous about leaving my dogs for a week but they're in good hands with my friend Anna. It's nice that they can stay in the house instead of a kennel. Onward to adventure!

This manicure was initially intended to be an ombre but one of the colors ended up in the wrong position. They looked a lot different under a lamp than they looked in sunlight! Ah well, this was a fun manicure to wear! In no particular order, the oranges are HITS Ceres, Zoya Paz, Zoya Myrta, Sally Hansen Sun Kissed, Essence Wake Up!, and Finger Paints Courder-orange. These were VERY hard to photograph together! It was nearly impossible to get Paz to show neon andhave Ceres show holographic. Ah well, this was fun!

Zoya Arizona and Chloe

Hello Ninjas!

My newest ailment appears to be a bout of TMJ issues in my right jaw *sigh* I would really love a normal, pain free week!  I'm hoping next week will be better. I'm spending the weekend at my parents' house for a little TLC.

Tonight I've got a combination I was surprised hadn't been blogged yet. I started off with three coats of Zoya Arizona from their Beach Collection. This was a very pigmented bright orange polish but it went on streaky like some neon colors are prone to. Zoya describes Arizona as "Softened bright citrus orange with a muted cream finish." Even though it isn't a complete neon, this color was very bright and did a good job giving me a good mood lift when I wore it!

I wore an orange shirt with this polish because they matched really well!

And then, because I thought this would be an awesome combination, I added a coat of Chloe from the

Fleck Effect Collection. This combination was amazing! The flakies caught the sun and reflected orange and green both; the end result looked like flickering flames on my nails. Hunger Games anyone?

Products in this post were provided by the Zoya PR team for honest review.