China Glaze Winter Holly

Above is three coats of China Glaze 'Winter Holly' with CND Stickey as base coat and Jordana Quick Shine top coat. (This ATE top coat, and I'd recommend Seche or Gelous!)

I found this beauty at CosmoProf, and it was the only one in the CG Holiday Joy collection that I picked up. I'm relatively sure they didn't have 'Glistening Snow' because I couldn't have passed that puppy up. Anyway, 'Winter Holly' is a nice, mossy green glitter with gold and (possibly?) a few holo glitters in the mixed. You can see the glitter better in the slightly blurry second picture.



This is WH without top coat. ... I LOVED it that way! It was kind of suede-y and really nice. This leads me to believe this would be great mattefied, but I haven't tried it yet. I liked the texture of it without topcoat, as well. I actually liked it better without top coat than with!

The CG Holiday Joy collection is available all over the place, including Head 2 Toe Beauty for $3.25.

Lustre Shine 'Scarab'

This is two coats (!) of Sally Hansen Lustre Shine in 'Scarab' with CND Stickey as a base coat and Jordana Quick Shine top coat.

One word for this: LOVE!

I don't know why it took me two months to wear this bad boy, because it's absolutely gorgeous. Sure, it's not very duo-chromey but I am more than okay with that. Now, I know I wear lot of blue polish. I have more blue nails posted than any other color. But I don't wear a lot of shimmery polish. For some reason, this one just spoke to me. I love the silkiness of Scarab. The downside? It chipped like cuh-razy! Chrome-y polish never lasts very well on my nails. I'm not sure if it's body chemistry or what. We'll see if it's the same for some of the other polishes in this collection.

Have you guys succumbed to the lure of the Lustre Shines? Which ones are your favorite?

RCM 'Dress For Success' over black

Shown above is Red Carpet Manicure 'Dress For Success' over Gelish 'Black Shadow', with one, two, and three coats.

Thanks to whomever requested this! I know it's how it was intended to be worn, and it looks fantastic! My favorite is just one coat.

Black Friday black nails.

Gelish 'Black Shadow'. Once again I used regular base coat (CND Stickey this time) and no dehydrator. I still use the Gelish foundation gel. This seems to work great! I get no chipping but it's still very easy to remove. (Using the dehydrator and no foundation gel let to chipping on the edges but still hard to remove gel in the middle.)

This is the first time I've done plain black nails since early high school, ten-ish years ago. I love it! It's not very interesting in terms of blogging, but plain ol' black cremes are my favorite nails to do. As great as stamping and glitter are, sometimes you need some simplicity!

Simple Election Day nails. (plus how to scrub in glitter)

Election Day nails, a photo by TartanHearts on Flickr.

(late to post them, I know. I put them on facebook and nowhere else.)

This is two coats of RCM 'Midnight Affair' with Wet N Wild Fantasy Makers glitter scrubbed in on my ring fingers. I used Nailtiques 2 as base coat and did not use the nail dehydrator. Removal is so much easier that way! No scraping.

If you are doing gel and have not done scrubbed in glitter DO IT NOW! I mean, unless you hate glitter or something. Which is fine, no judgement. (more for me!) If you do gel and like glitter and haven't done this technique, let me tell you: IT IS SO EASY!

I was thinking I'd have to ... do something complicated to achieve this. Nope! Let me go through the steps for scrubbing in glitter:

1. Choose a relatively jelly-like gel color. Most gel is fairly jelly-ish, so this shouldn't be hard.

2. Do your nails as usual, stopping before you apply the gel top coat. After curing gel color for the last time, get your glitter.

3. Using small paintbrush, pat glitter onto nail. It will stick to the cured gel, which is tacky.

4. Paint over glitter layer and cure that layer in the lamp. You can use a colored gel here or just clear coat/top coat. I've seen suggestions to wipe off any glitter that sticks or have a specific clear coat just for glitter. I am not that particular. You may be. Proceed accordingly.

5. Finish manicure as you usually would with top coat and then wiping/spraying with alcohol.

6. PROFIT!

Basically, let me sum this up: tap glitter onto your cured gel sometime during your mani.

This will not be the last time you see this technique from me. I love glitter, and I love that the removal for this is just as easy as regular gel removal (which rivals removing normal glitter in terms of time). I'm considering doing some pretty cool stuff with this technique for Christmas. Maybe that tape mani to make a tree with multi-size glitter scrubbed in as ornaments. How neat would that be?!

the final Halloween manicure

This is one coat of Sinful Colors 'Black on Black' with a coat of twee & honey 'Viscera' over it. Base coat was Nailtiques 2 and top coat was Jordana Quick Shine Top Coat.

I love this. I loved it enough to actually take off one nail, after it chipped, and replace it with the exact same thing. 'Viscera' is amazing and the best part was that it had teeny little hearts! I didn't see them in the bottle and they were a wonderful surprise! There aren't words to describe how awesome this was. And it was perfect for when my GIANTS WON THE WORLD SERIES!

Also, this gorgeous mani matches my blog! I didn't plan it, but it's perfect!

Halloween/Giants manicure!

China Glaze Riveting stamped with BM-221 and Sinful Colors Black on Black. Two coats of Jordana Quick Shine top coat, one before stamping and one after.

I LOVE THIS! I hadn't stamped anything since around St. Patrick's Day. Somehow the stars aligned and I didn't have to re-stamp anything! And miraculously, my right hand looked better than my left. The bottle of SC Black on Black that I use for stamping is a couple years old now, and it stamps like a mofo! As good a Konad special polish, for sure. (I will probably replace it with a bottle of the Konad special polish, but for a starter stamping polish, you can't go wrong with it.)

We all know how fantastic China Glaze's 'Riveting' is. I don't have to reiterate that. It is even more amazing when you stamp over it. I love stamping over creams, but stamping over this micro glitter/shimmer was fantastic. It gave a lot of depth. (I have a gorgeous pendant made with it in my shop now.) And this is one of the few oranges that works pretty well on my skin tone. The gold shimmer really helps with that.

This has inspired me to do a little more stamping. Or maybe do some leopard print freehand. Or both!

Pretty & Polished 'Candy Corn' color change polish

This stuff is amazing! I think I'm going to have to get some more of Pretty & Polished's color change polishes because it was so much fun to have this on. Every time I'd look at my nails, they would be different. Especially great this time of year because the temperature is all over the place.

The one downside to this polish was that it wasn't totally opaque. I HATE hate hate VNL and had I realized I would have it (somehow I didn't think I would; wishful thinking!), I'd have done it over white or nude gel or something. Next time! Because I *will* be wearing this again. It would be very cool to stamp over.

Pretty & Polished polishes are available on etsy here: http://www.etsy.com/shop/PrettyandPolished 'Candy Corn' is in stock at the time I'm posting this.

Halloween mani #2

Three coats of Revlon Sparkle Aplenty with Pretty & Polished Pumped Up Pumpkin accent nail.

I LOVE the Sparkle Aplenty. It's the kind of thing I'd use any time, not just for Halloween. It's hard to tell, but it has both silver glitter AND black glitter in a black base. Gorgeous!

I also love the Pumped Up Pumpkin. It's got red and orange glitter (mostly orange) and I think some holo/silver micro glitter. Perfect for Halloween.

However, I didn't love the combination. I think Sparkle Aplenty is enough by itself and Pumped Up Pumpkin would be better over a cream.

What do you guys think about this combo?

Halloween/NLDS manicure

Halloween/NLDS manicure, a photo by TartanHearts on Flickr.

China Glaze 'Ick-a Bod-y" with Kleancolor "Chunky Copper" accent nail. Two coats of Jordana Quick Shine top coat.

LOVE THIS! And it has worked so far. Fingers crossed for tomorrow. I'm not sure whether I should change it or keep it the same to keep the mojo going.

Orange is one of my least favorite colors, and isn't the best on my skin tone, but it is my favorite team AND Halloweentime! I have to wear it. Ick-A Bod-Y is my favorite of the CG Halloween polishes that I own. I'm really lemming the new Orly orange and black Halloween polish, R.I.P. Reminds me of China Glaze Fortune Teller, which is amazing.

I also have a pendant that matches this mani in my shop! https://www.etsy.com/listing/107975007/los-gigantes-nail-polish-pendant Perfect for Halloween.

Do you have a favorite orange (or black) polish that I haven't mentioned? There are some great ones out there.