Purple Parachute

Hello Ninjas!

It's almost Friday and that means it nearly the weekend. Does anyone have any neat plans for the weekend? I'll be learning cool secrets about the history of the Togakura Ryu of Ninjutsu on Sunday since my mother is far away on the West Coast. Hopefully you get to spend time with your mom this weekend!

Tonight's manicure is two coats of Purple Parachute from last year's Sephora Pantone Jewel Lacquer collection. This polish has been hailed as a dupe for the highly sought Scrangie but in reality the shimmer in PP is blue leaning teal instead of the green from RBL's Scrangie. Still, this was a pretty polish. The formula was a little on the thick side and not self leveling as I would have hoped thus the uneven look here.

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.

Illamasqua Speckle

Hello Ninjas!!

Hubby and I have visited some houses over the last few days and we're getting really excited about getting our first home! I do think my hand is going to fall off by the end of this process though and we've only just submitted the loan application! Oy, I need a signature stamp.

Tonight's manicure is two coats of Illamasqua Speckle which is a very pretty light purple with black hex and micro-glitter scattered throughout. Illamasqua describes Speckle as as speckled lilac finish and it comes from the I'Mperfection collection. This is shown with only one coat of topcoat but could probably have used two to get a super smooth finish. Overall, I really love the way this looked on and it was really easy to work with despite being completely packed with glitter.

Winning Layering

Good evening Ninjas!

Hopefully you've been having a good week so far. Tomorrow we'll be over half way through, woooo!

Tonight's manicure is a combination of two polishes I received when I won My Lucid Bubble's giveaway. The base polish is two coats of Ava from Jessica's It's a Girl Thing Spring 2013 collection. Ava (New Kid in Town) is a very pretty lilac that has a subtle silver shimmer throughout. Over this polish I did a thin coat of Shift Happens from Girl Bits just to make this purple even better! I could have done two coats but I didn't want to use up my mini and the light purple of Ava is already a nice Winter pick-me-up.

Zoya Lovely Day 3

Hi darling Ninjas!

Day three! This is the last of the three shimmers that came in the Zoya Lovely collection.

Zoya describes Julie as, " a full-coverage, soft wisteria purple metallic. The soft color and subtle shimmer give nails a delicate and feminine look. Originally created as a custom runway shade for fashion designer Zang Toi." This one is a little darker than the others with the same thick formula. It took a little while to even itself out but at least it only needed two coats!

Product sent for consideration by Zoya PR for honest review.

Zoya Aurora

Hello Ninjas!

Sorry about the day late posts, I got really sick starting on Friday and I'm just now feeling more human.  With my fever finally broken, I figured I'd take the time to do the final post I had planned for holo week!

Today's manicure is a scattered holo from Zoya's Ornate collection, Aurora. I have always loved the name Aurora and all of the neat things the name reminds me of: the Northern Lights, Sleeping Beauty, and the X-men Storm. Zoya describes Aurora as, "a full coverage, medium sugarplum purple flecked with a high concentration of micro fine diamond holographic glitter." Two very smooth coats made this an easy opaque manicure that lasted 4 days (2 more than I usually wait to change a polish) without chipping.

I love how vivid the blue on this one is that it actually blew out the blue on my camera.

Flakies Galore!

Hello Ninjas!

This week seems to be particularly heavy on the flakies. I'm not entirely sure why that is, I guess all the polishes I recently acquired from Cult Nails have flakies in them. That's ok, that's why I chose them!

Today's manicure is a really pretty purple combination. I used two coats of Zoya Monica as a base for one medium coat of Cult Nails Seduction. Seduction is a sheer purple jelly base with blue and iridescent orange/green/red flakies suspended throughout. I really liked this combination and it was surprisingly easy to apply the two together. I was worried that the number of coats might cause bubbling but when I used Wicked Fast to top it off, the whole manicure dried wonderfully!

 Monica provided by the Zoya PR team for honest review.

More Pure Ice Layering

Hello Ninjas!

I'm happy to see the world didn't end yesterday, aren't you? I went to an End of the World party as one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, I got to be Famine! It was fun, I got pretty creative with part of my costume too. On to the Manicure!

Today's manicure is another one of the really easy layering manicures I've done with a Pure Ice polish. This is one coat of Pure Ice Rio over two coats of Zoya Toni from their Fall 2012 Designer Collection. Rio is a really neat bright magenta jelly polish with duochrome glass flecks that flash blue and purple. This was an eye catching combination and a nice pop of color in the fall/winter months.

Toni provided by Zoya PR team for honest review.

Color Club Port-Folio

Hello Ninjas!

I'm currently watching the Walking Dead mid-season finale so this will be a super short post!

This is two coats of Color Club Port-Folio from their fall collection over one coat of Essie No More Film. This is a really awesome duochrome polish that flashed bright emerald green and a nice reddened purple. I really loved the extreme color change on this one but it didn't come through in the pictures very well so I had up increase the saturation on most of these pictures to get the colors more accurate.

Purple Nail Art

Hello Lovely Ninjas!

I hope you all went out and voted if you're in the US. It's been an interesting day here in NC with a lot of back and forth about how our popular vote would go!

This is a manicure I did so I could wear the wonderful two coat purple manicure from this post for a little bit longer. I added one layer of Essie Nothing Else Metals in a cloudy shape followed by Zoya *Toni in the same shape.

* Toni provided by Zoya PR for honest review.

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!

Awesome purple layering

Hi Ninjas!

Monday was crazy, not only did we have the big Grand Opening but I was sick so it was quite a handful! It was great to see so many new people and celebrate this new beginning with our Jiu Jitsu guys :)

 This is a manicure that was incredibly simple to do and looked awesome. This is exactly TWO coats of polish! One coat of the fantastic dark plum purple by Essie, No More Film, covered evenly and was completely opaque on the first try, I was quite impressed. The second coat was one of the pretty translucent purple with pink/gold/purple shifting glass flecks by Pure Ice, Busted. I cannot express how much I loved this manicure and it was soooo easy to do!

This is Halloween day 19

Hello Ninjas!

I gotta say, this is probably my favorite manicure for this Halloween challenge do far! Bats are really neat animals and I have a habit of calling my chihuahua a fruit bat because of his huge ears and love of fresh fruit.

This manicure is done on two coats of ManGlaze Cabrón as a base and various art pens or striping polishes for the art. Cabrón is a color I picked up for two reasons: The name would probably amuse my mother as a native Spanish speaker and it's purple! This polish actually looks almost identical to butter LONDON Branwen's Feather when you first apply it. Sadly, it does not look as pretty when you apply a glossy topcoat over a mat topcoat (I wore this alone for one day before the art) Either way, I am, super proud of this manicure. The middle three fingers are my bat and my thumb is the flight trail of the moth that the bat is stalking on my pinky.

Doctor Who Layering!

Hello Ninjas!

Sorry for the late post, I didn't get a chance to edit my photos earlier in the day so I had to do it after work and tomorrow's manicure. Tomorrow is Graduation and it is also the LAST DAY of my Blue Belt Giveaway! Don't forget to enter if you're in the US or Canada, there are three awesome prizes to be won that you can check out in the original giveaway post here.

Tonight's manicure is one that started as a layering experiment and ended up being a nerdy tribute to the7th  season premier of Doctor Who 2005. I started with three coats of SpaRitual Blue Moon which is a sheer ultraviolet jelly base with both purple and blue glitter throughout. On top of that I did one coat of Max Factor Fantasy Fire that I swapped for. FF is the purple jelly based multichrome effect polish that is hailed as the twin of Clarins 230 aka Unicorn Pee. After wearing that awesome combo for FOUR whole days with no chips, I did a little nail art that made my index finger and thumb into a Dalek which is The Doctor's number one nemesis!

Egg egg egg eggsterminate, EXTERMINATE!

I think my Dalek turned out pretty good, this is sort of what I was going for:

http://pics.livejournal.com/irreparable/pic/004rwdw7

Blue Moon purchased with a gift certificate from my sponsor SkinCareRx.com