*sigh* I'm having mani troubles....

They are either get mangled while drying (which sometimes I can save so that the nails in question look somewhat decent), or they chip off before I can get any pictures. What was my go-to basecoat hasn't been performing very well, but when I try new ones (recently I tried Studio M Stuck on You) they make my nails peel.
On top of mani troubles, my hubby and I are looking for a new place to live. We would like to move ASAP for financial reasons, but every time we find a place we *love*, the deal falls through.
*sigh* What's a girl to do?

For everyone that does read this blog, know that I am still here. I still polish my nails, stalk polishes, and even buy new gems (though I really need to be stricter about a no-buy with moving coming up). I vow to return with pictures!
-Lynnette

Week 13: Ruffian mani (Updated)

So....I've been a bad blogger! I totally wore Kinetic Candy before I did this manicure, but didn't take any picture of it. Nope not even one. I will say that it's a great color, and the formula is like Sweet Hook from the same collection. However, I know that Kinetic Candy is one I will be wearing again, so I'll nab a picture then.

Another bummer.....I'm back to nail nubs :( After I took off Agro I noticed a hairline crack in one nail. Then as I was getting ready to put on Kinetic Candy, the nail fully broke. My slight OCD kicked in, and then all the nails had to go (this is a habit I've had since before I was a polish addict). This is another reason why there are no pictures of Kinetic Candy; I couldn't stand to take pictures of nubs :(

Anyway, on to the challenge mani! This week is a Ruffian style. I had to google this, and originally I was going to copy-cat a red and black look. Then over the weekend, I found some new Sinful Colors displays and changed my mind. I picked up Sinful's Cinderella and Glass Pink and used those as "undies" for Revlon's Whimsical and Starry Pink (I've also seen this called Popular). The Sinful "undies" have a TON of shimmer, that even shows through the Revlon!

 Left hand

Right Hand

This turned out ok, but I'm not in love with it. My "ruffian lines" are uneven, but masked by the milky glitters on top. Then there is just so many layers......2 coats of the bottom color, 1 coat of quick dry topcoat, 2 coats of the top color, then the glitter coat, and another coat of quick dry topcoat (I'm currently using Sally Hansen Insta-dry). Oh, and then on top of that, I woke up this morning to bubbles. Also trying to cleanly paint nubs is a joke; even clean up sucked (as you can see...my nails look horrible in the pictures). I would have skipped the pictures until I could try to make them look better, but I have a feeling that this isn't going to be staying on long. 

Ugh....At least I finally found "undies" for Starry Pink. I have been looking for a while, but hadn't found anything I liked.

Next time, I think I might show some of the polish strips I've been making.

-Lynnette

EDIT: This mani never. fully. dried! Even after I posted about it, this was still gummy and dentable. Yuck! Needless to say, this has come off to be replaced with Starry Pink over Glass Pink. Pictures to follow.

Small haul and Hunger Games manis

Last Friday I stopped by my local Sallys, and picked up 3 1/2 polishes there.

Agro, Stone Cold, Kinetic Candy, Ruby Pumps

They had about 1/2 of the Capitol Colors collection, and 2 of my favorites. I haven't read the Hunger Games book, but it looks good, I'll have to pick it up now. Out of the collection I got Stone Cold and Agro. Then from the Electropop collection I picked up Kinetic Candy; I think it will make great "underwear" for Revlon Whimsical as well as being pretty on it's own. Then I found a mini bottle of Ruby Pumps in the clearance for 50 cents, can't pass that up!

Here's Stone Cold as a mani:

Lovely in matte, but chips super quick!
Now Agro as a mani:

One of the few greens I like. In the sun this flashes orange as well as gold. Also, look at those lovely long nails! I'll have to show you "righty" more often now!

Now today, I stopped at my local CVS and picked up 2 more polishes.

 Spoiled Shuffle the Deck, Sally Hansen Showgirl Chic.

This time they had the Spoiled line, and about time! I had been looking for it since I started seeing swatches on other people's blogs. It was my lucky day since CVS had the shade that I really wanted, Shuffle the deck. Then I grabbed Sally Hansen Showgirl Chic from their gem crush line. This might wind up as my first pedi of spring!

That's all I have for now. We'll see what my next mani is after Agro!
-Lynnette

Week 11: St. Patty's Day!

So here's my green mani. I raided my stash for all my greens, and added Argo from China Glaze Colors from the Capitol collection, as well as Stone Cold (I'll talk more about that in my next haul post). I wanted to do a cool needle marble I saw on youtube, but it wasn't working out. So i whipped out a makeup sponge and sponged all the colors on.

This is one careful coat of China Glaze Stone Cold, sponged with Revlon Emerald City, Gosh Golden Dragon, China Glaze Agro, and Julep Leah. It needed 2 coats of topcoat to get it smooth because it was a little bumpy from the sponging.
Next time I'll have a haul post for you.
Until then!
-Lynnette

Nabi Magnetic in Black Berry

After the skittles came off, I decided to try out the magnetic polishes I picked up from Walgreens. I grabbed 2 colors, Black Berry and Red (and I may be going back for the Wine color.....love the way it looks on Scrangie's blog) one with the diagonal lines magnet, the other with the chevron.

I had a TERRIBLE time with this polish. I did 2 coats, using the magnet on the second coat (I probably could have done just one, but I didn't want to rely on that for opacity and the magnetic design). It stunk to high heaven, and I think it still smelled after my topcoat dried. On top of that, i couldn't get the magnets to pull the design on my whole nail. Not sure if my nails are more curved than others, or if the polish and/or the magnets just suck. The mani turned out pretty though....

I ended up using the magnet from my Icing polish, and doing only half of my nail at a time. My proceedure went like this: Basecoat and one coat of color for all nails, then a medium coat on one half of my nail followed by the magnet, then the other half of my nail. It was a PITA. Then clean up was a bit excessive because the polish liked to run everywhere (not to mention that I had to redo several nails). Here's how bad the acetone was after clean up:

Eeek! At least it didn't stain! Thank goodness for basecoat.
Until next time!
-Lynnette

Week 12: Spring Skittles!

By now, you can probably tell when I have the day off from work because I get all my posting done lol!
As I mentioned in my previous post, I didn't/don't feel like doing St. Patty's day quite yet. So instead of falling a week behind on the challenge, I figured that I would skip week 11, and do week 12.

    I think this is my first time doing a skittle mani since I was in middle school. Usually I am pretty decisive on what color to wear and don't usually feel the need to wear more than one polish. Skittles was actually pretty nice. I did both hands the same (my brain couldn't handle doing them each different lol) and subconsciously did lightest to darkest lol.

So diggin the spring colors! What you see is 2 coats of:
Thumb- China Glaze Sweet Hook
Index- Fingerpaints Brushstroke Blush
Middle- Julep Hayden
Ring- my first franken (names anyone?)
Pinkie- Julep Charlotte
Then I topped all the nails with a coat of Julep Melissa to give them all the same finish (my franken has a slight shimmer that didn't blend well with all the cremes). I realized AFTER I was finished that my indexes could have used another coat of pink due to a slight visible nail line. However you couldn't really see it, and I can be incredibly lazy so I didn't re-do it.

Well, that's all for now. When my current color comes off, I'll do something St. Patty's (and green...ugh!). Until next time!
-Lynnette

Dragon Lady and a Hubbycure

First up, Gosh Golden Dragon by itself in it's beauty.

 This is a but more yellow-toned in real life and the gold shimmer really comes alive. A great color, but yellow and yellow-green doesn't play well with my skin all the time. So after a few days I did another layer.

This is with a layer of Julep Melissa on top. This made it more blue/jade/teal-ish....much more of a "Lynnette" color. However, with so many layers of polish it quickly peeled off (hence the naked first finger!).

My hubby saw the green, and said the next mani should be blue and yellow (his team colors). Since I don't own a proper yellow, I went with gold. This is 2 coats of Professional 10 Old Hollywood, stamped with Julep Marisa.

I let my hubby pick the stamping design.....he almost always picks this design lol! You get my right hand for this pic because it has longer/nicer nails....for the moment. Since this mani was designed by my husband, I call it a Hubbycure instead of a manicure :)

As a side note, I'm going to switch challenge weeks. I really don't want to do something for St. Patty's this far out , and I'm not digging another green mani so close to the last one.

Until next time!
-Lynnette

Recent Nail Mail

If I remember right, BOTH of my packages came late Thursday, or Friday....my days blur together and I can't remember what came when lol. I guess as long as they came right?

First up is my first contest win Gosh Golden Dragon, courtesy of the polish insomniac. I still can't believe I won lol. On to bottle shots....

All that pretty golden shimmer! This is what I'm going to wear next.

Then my mail carrier came back to my house, this time with my Julep Maven box!

From top to bottom: Julep Charlotte, Melissa, and Jodie. Kinda sad that Jodie came with that smear on the bottle, but the rest of the box was fine.
Hooray for nail mail! Now off to use Golden Dragon!
-Lynnette

Week 10: Polka Dots!

Hello there! Another challenge mani to show you, and this one I really loved! I wish it had stayed more than 3 days, but that's life. For this one I used 2 coats of China Glaze Sweet Hook, a lovely sweet creme. Nice and thick, but still manageable and easy to apply. Then for the polka dots I used Julep Charlotte and the end of a small paint brush.

Charlotte tended to make Sweet Hook look more pink, but I think they looked great together and I got a few compliments :)

Well, next on the agenda is to show you the nail mail I got late last week!
-Lynnette