Smudgy Gradation

In the past I have mostly done gradients that used colors of the same family  because its a lot easier... So I decided to try it with 2 completely different colors, purple and green. Blending was a little hard so I decided to smudge the line with some Out The Door which worked great! I just glopped a ball of Out The Door on the middle of the nail and used the brush to blend the 2 colors together.

Etude House in Beach Green

Etude House in Plum Chou

Etude House in Heart topcoat

Topped the whole shebang with some glittery topcoat (with hearts) and tadah!

Until next time ^_^

Etude House Polish

Etude House is a Korean brand cosmetic company. One of their spokesperson is Lee Min Ho, gorgeous actor from Boys Over Flowers ^_^

I have been wanting Etude House polishes since the first time I laid eyes on them on a friend's Facebook page.

The bottle is so cute and the colors available are actually really interesting!

So I arranged a swap with a wonderful person in Singapore who had access to this brand.

There they are!

Dear Darling Nails Bling Bling collection

Black Glam, Black, and Spangle Purple

Peach blush and Strawberry blush

LuciDarling Collection

Tender Mint, Ruby Purple, and Mint

Petite Darling Nails HD Beam and High Heel Pedicure (white cap)

Plum Chou, Beach Green, Fantastic Heart PealTop coat

I have no idea what the blue one is called. It was a gift from the the swapper :D

Out of the 12 I have tried 8 of them and I have found the formula to be quite good. The cremes are opaque in  2 coats and they are neither think nor runny. Glitters are amazing! The black glam required about 3 coats of topcoat before it became shiny, but the color only took 2 coats to be opaque.

The LuciDarling collection is by far my favorite. The mint colors have this amazing shimmer to them and the ruby purple has cute silver stars and hexes

Here is a quick swatch of some of them. Expect to see the rest of the colors pop up soon!

Glam Black, Black, Peach Blush, Strawberry Blush, Purple Spangle, Purple Ruby

as always, you can click on the picture to make it bigger! :D

I am getting more Etudes at the end of the month because I am so pleased with these. The colors are so unique and the pretty bottles are too awesome to pass up!

you can get these from directly from Etude House USA for around $4 to $7 a bottle

you can also get these on ebay from rubyruby76  for $1 to $8 a bottle. I have never purchased polish from her but I did get some BB creams. She ships directly from S. Korea but she is very prompt and very nice.

Classy Stripes

Black and white stripes are amazing. I wear them all the time. Black and white in general is usually a win.

Here is my stripey black and white mani!

Sally Hansen in White out

NYX in Black

Sally Hansen in Celeb City

Stripe Rite in White

Art Deco in Black and in Silver

So classes are out for winter break! woooo! which means I will have more time to do  my nails and upload what Ive got :)

Until next time ^_^

Purple Mani

I have a lot of purple nail polish. Mostly because I like purple so much :)
So I got out all of my purple shades and glitters and made a purple mani!

These pics are from the day after I did it so some colors (Chameleon for example) started to chip. Also after I broke my index nail changing the trash in the Rat-Cave
 :(

from left to right

China Glaze in Agent Lavender with Jesse's Girl in Confetti

Color Club in Pucci-Licious with Stripe Rite in White

Hard Candy in Beetle layered over black

OPI suede in Lincoln Park After Dark with BM10

Sally Hansen in Lively Lilac with BM19

...

China Glaze in Agent lavender with LA Colors in neon purple

LA Splash in Sparkling Fushia

Color Club Pucci-Licious with BM20

Chameleon in Calypso

LA Colors in neon purple

I ended up covering my right hand thumb in OPI Sparkle-Icious....

Until next time ^_^

Exam break :)

Im taking a break from finals so I decided to post a quick picture of some nails I did earlier. Nothing fancy, I just wanted to try out this holo looking black I got. Not so very holo after all, but it was pretty shimmery!

Petites Color Fever in Black Diamonds

Petites Color Fever in Fiji

OPI Suede in Lincoln Park After Dark

I will be back with more posts as soon as finals are over. Ive got some pretty neat things to show you, like my new Etude House polishes!! :D

Until next time ^_^

Dot Dot Dot

Hello again!
Break is over so it is back to school for me. Only a 12 days left however! hooray! This also means that I am swamped with papers, finals, and presentations... As well as trying  up to finish my research but it is very difficult when the Skinner box malfunctions  >_<

On to the nails!

I was dying to try out my first Sparitual polish. That is the most amazing smelling nail polish I have ever come across. It's not suffocatingly overwhelming like most other brands :)

Free spirit is not an exciting color (its the creamy beige accent fingers) but I was in desperate need of an off-white polish and someone was willing to trade for it on MUA.
I quite love this polish though. It is a little on the sheer side but it dried quickly and the smell made it pleasant.
Overall nice experience with this brand :)

I felt it was a little plain so I added some layered dots on the rest (and stripes)

Sparitual in Free Spirit

China glaze in For Audrey

China Glaze in Solar Power

Petites color fever in Figi

Sally Hansen in Lively Lilac

Tadah!

Went to the State Museum earlier this month and they had one of those nifty static lightning balls and I couldnt resist!

Until next time ^_^

Snow nails

Well at least kind of
 see for yourself!
Just a simple glitter-jelly gradient over white

Sally Hansen white out

Sinful colors in hottie

Oz nails

My econ professor was talking about the wizard of Oz a couple of weeks ago. He mentioned that there are some who believe the book was an allegory about the debate over monetary policy of the 1900's. I won't bore you with all the details of our discussion (im quite of fan of economics but I know most people arent...) so here are few of the nifty symbolism that was brought up!
the yellow brick road represent the gold standard (the method used to back up our currency back then)
the silver slippers (red in the movie) is the people wanting silver to be used as well as gold for the currency
they go to OZ - oz=ounces, you measure gold in ounces!
Each of the friends (lion, tin man, ect) were meant to represent important leaders of the time.

anyhow! This was just my ramble of the day I suppose, but after we talked about the movie, I came up with this little mani

gold and green!

NYX in Las Vegas

China Glaze in Medallion

I dont have an awesome silver glitter or I would totally have made the tips silver :D

Also! I made my friend be the guinea pig for Hard Candy's beetle. I have seen that it is a dupe for Orly's Space Cadet but since I dont have that polish, I cannot confirm nor deny. I just know that this is a wonderful polish!

Thumb is just beetle and index is layered over black. Not the greatest photo but you can always click on it to make it bigger!

Until next time

Mystery OPI

I really wanted to try out this new OPI polish I got. It is such a pretty fall color. Unfortunately it is nameless. Well, the label with the name fell off. Im sure it has a name, I just have no idea what it is!

If you know what this color might be, please let me know. It is a burgundy color with a purple base...
here is it with a brown and a red for comparison:

now on to the mani!

Again, sorry about the lack of cleanup. I am a slacker.

OPI polish

LA Girl Metal in Gold Plated

Art Deco in Black

I had some trouble making the swirl because I don't really have the appropriate brush yet but that is something I am working on getting! Other than that, I just added some stars mostly because I had them.

I hope you like it! and again, if you have any idea what the OPI  might be, let me know. I will be investigating this further :)

Unexpected Jelly

This is just a quick post of a mani I did while sick and stumbling around on cold meds. I wanted to try out NYX asphalt that I purchased from Cherry Culture. It is black with blue, red, and silver glitter.

It is the middle bottle :D

It looks so pretty, no? Unfortunately it turned out to be one of the sheerest polishes I have :( but I had already committed to wearing it, so I layered. And I layered. And I layered. Until eventually, it became acceptable for me to wear out in public.

 that was about 8 or 9 coats... yeah... I know.

it looked better in the shade:

Ill have to figure something else to do with this polish

It is quite pretty. Lots! of glitter. Next time I will layer it though.

until next time :)