Christmas mani #2 featuring Candy Lacquer "Rudolph's Treats"

This is three coats of Gelish "Runway for Your Money" with a coat of Candy Lacquer "Rudolph's Treats". Accent nail is a taped Christmas tree using China Glaze "Winter Holly" for the tree, Candy Lacquer "Dippin' Dots" for the ornaments and a fished out giant piece of glitter as the topper from Kleancolor "Afternoon Picnic". All topped off with two coats of Poshe top coat.

As soon as I saw the Candy Lacquer polishes with all round dots, I *had* to have them. They are really fun! They are something that is a lot cuter to me and in close up pictures than anything else, because you can't tell the difference between the round and hex unless you're really looking. (As I'm typing this, I can't tell when they're at keyboard's length.) Also, I had a bit of an issue with the glitter separating from the base in the round glitters. I own several other Candy Lacquer glitters and haven't had this issue with any of the others, so I assume it is related to the round glitters. A little shaking and everything is back to normal, so no biggie!

I didn't like this as much as my other Christmas mani, but it would be pretty hard to beat that one! I'm not sure what it was, but something about this one just didn't "click". I'll try "Rudolph's Treats" over another base in the future and see how that works. (I'm getting all kinds of ideas now, but it's after Christmas! Day late; dollar short.)

Happy New Year! New Year's nails coming soon.

Christmas nails! featuring the Hungry Asian "Candy Cane"

This is three coats of Gelish "Black Shadow", with one generous coat of The Hungry Asian "Candy Cane". Accent nail has one coat China Glaze "Twinkle Lights". All topped with one coat of Jordana Quick Shine top coat.


"Candy Cane" is a clear/slightly shimmery base with small red and white matte hex glitter and small green matte square glitter. It spread very well. I used the dabbing on method to apply it, because it is somewhat thick but that helped get maximum glitter on the nail.

"Twinkle Lights" is a clear base with tiny red, green, and gold glitter.

This was my first time using any of the Hungry Asian polishes I have, even though I've got a few minis. (I'm not sure why, because they are almost all colors that will go great over gel, but that's another subject entirely.) I can't recommend it more enthusiastically! Not only are her polishes very cute and quite often stuff that you don't just see everywhere else, she adds personal touches to every order. The labels are hand-drawn and every order has a cute little handwritten note inside. I adore stuff like that! It will keep me coming back over and over more than anything else. Plus, the quality of the polish is wonderful. And you know being TartanHEARTS and all I don't have to say that I adore the heart-shaped bottles because it's too obvious but I will say it anyway! I know I would be justified buy full-sizes of any of her polishes because they are so beautiful, but I can't get over how cute the heart-shaped minis are.

I'd also been sitting on China Glaze "Twinkle Lights" for a year or so. I was surprised at how much I liked it on the nail! I wasn't sure, because it seems a little muddy in the bottle. Not so on the nail! The red and green stand out from the gold very distinctly.

Over-all, I wanted to put this back on after a week. I didn't so I could wear more Christmas-themed polish but I would have been happy putting this right back on.

*All polishes featured here were purchased by me. 

Sally Hansen Lustre Shine 'Copperhead'

Sally Hansen Lustre Shine 'Copperhead', a photo by TartanHearts on Flickr.

This is CND Stickey as base coat. Three coats of SH 'Copperhead' and a coat of Jordana Quick Shine top coat.

I hated this. I didn't even bother to do much clean up. There is a gorgeous green shade in the bottle that doesn't show up on the nail at all. It ends up being a rose gold or copper color most of the time that shows purpley-brown at extreme angles. It would be MUCH better with the green. I like most of my duochromes to have the DUO part!

I've only swatched one other Lustre Shine (Scarab) and it was great. This one was not. I still have a couple more, so the jury is still out on the collection as a whole.

With all the awesome duochrome/multichrome polish out there, don't waste your time with this one.

Candy Lacquer 'Midnight Gems'

Top photo: Three coats of Red Carpet Manicure's 'My Inspiration' with CND Stickey as base coat plus regular Gelish base and top coats. 

Bottom photo: Above PLUS a coat of Candy Lacquer 'Midnight Gems' and two coats of Jordana Quick Shine top coat. 

I LOVED this. The moment I saw Midnight Gems, I knew I had to have it. I love holographic glitter, so when you add many colors of holo glitter plus regular glitters, it is a wonderful effect. (CL's description: "Gunmetal holographic glitter mixed with lots of other holographic colors including red, blue, orange, pink, gold and lavender.") I loved it over the grey, and it really reminded me of a pendant I made. Holo over medium grey is a good look, all around! This look was perfect for a Christmas party my sister put on. Just enough sparkle to catch your eye, without being IN YOUR FACE! 

(All products reviewed were purchased by me. I'll have a post pretty soon where this won't be the case, so I figured I'd better start specifying!)

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!