Manicure Monday: Valentine's Day Nails!

I love holidays, so even though I'm single I still feel the need to celebrate Valentine's day :)  So I've spent the last week sporting all these girly, pink Valentine's inspired nails.

This is a "jelly sandwich" manicure.  Basically I painted alternating layers of a hot pink jelly and a multi colored glitter.  I used "Too Hot Pink To Hold 'Em" from OPI's Texas collection and Wet & Wild's "Party of Five Glitters."  I love how the glitter looks like it's suspended in the jelly polish.

This is two coats of Sally Hansen's "Rockstar Pink."  It's a fun, fairly opaque pink, blue, and (a little) red glitter.  It like this glitter all on it's own, but I thought it might also look pretty with a jelly on top, so...

I put two coats of "Do You Think I'm Tex-y" (also from OPI's Texas collection) over the glitter.  And, of course, I LOVE IT! 

This is "Kim-pletely In Love" from Nicole by OPI's Winter 2011 Kardashian collection.  It's a gorgeous pale pink with subtle blue shimmer.  Apparently this is the polish that Kim Kardashian wore on her wedding day.  Because of that, I sort of feel jinxed when I wear this polish...but it's so pretty I just really don't care.

This is "Wear Something Spar-kylie," another pretty polish from the Kardashian collection.  It's a very opaque medium pink glitter.

And last, but not least, this is Sally Hansen's salon effects nail strips in "Cross My Heart."  I've never used this stick on type of polish, but I really love it!  They were super easy to apply, and are supposed to stay on for up to 10 days...but there's no way I'll be able to make it that long without changing my polish :)

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

Manicure Monday: OPI Nicki Minaj Collection

I'm not a big fan of Nicki Minaj and her music...but I'm loving her collection for OPI :)  I only bought my three favorite colors, and here they are!

This is "Fly" a lovely, bright teal.  This picture doesn't show the color exactly right...in real life this polish has a bit more green and is more of a true teal.

This is "Fly" with one coat of "Save Me" on top.  I am so in love with "Save Me."  It's a beautiful small silver glitter filled with blue and holographic bar glitter.

Here's two coats of "Save Me" by itself on my thumb.  I am loving the bar glitter.  It's like a confetti party explosion :)

And last, this is "Metallic For Life."  It's a light black/gray jelly packed with small, medium, and large hexagonal glitter.  It's so pretty on and I think it looks more speckled than glittery.  I'm torn about this one.  It's beautiful but horrible to apply!  It was super thick and I had a really hard time spreading it evenly across my nails.  And then huge pieces chipped off just a few hours after I painted them.  And I had a good top coat on and everything...Still, it's so gorgeous that I think it's worth the problems.

I really like this collection.  I still can't decide if I want to go buy all the other shades...I'm leaning toward yes.  :)



Candles...random...but yeah, candles

Not really sure why, but today I'm talking about candles.  I just love scented candles.  Smell is such a strong sense, and I love how a scent can immediately bring good memories to mind.  When I get home from work I love lighting a candle and working at my desk.

For Christmas, my little sister Macy gave me this amazing Slatkin & Co. candle from Bath & Body Works. Not sure how she knew I would love it...maybe because when we were in the store I handed it to her and told her I loved it :) Anyway, it really is so good. 

It's called Mahogany Teakwood.  Now I don't know if it smells like mahogany or teakwood, but it smells awesome.  You know when you're walking through a mall and you know there is an Abercrombie & Fitch nearby just because you can smell it?  That's exactly what this candle smells like.  That's a guy smell, so I wondered if it would be weird for my room to smell like that.  Nope.  Not weird, wonderful.  It's so super strong that I never burn it for very long.  Just long enough to let the wax melt all around the top so it burns cleanly.  Even after you blow it out the scent stays for hours.  Good stuff.

This is my all time FAVORITE candle.  It's Bird of Paradise by Circle E Candles, based out Fredericksburg, Texas.  I also don't know if this smells like a bird of paradise flower.  What I can tell you is that it smells so good I just want to eat it.  It smells sweet (but not sickeningly sweet), sort of like strawberry frosting.  Meh...that's not a very good description.  Trust me, it just smells heavenly.

My family moved to a house in the country when I was in Jr. High school.  My mom always had one of these burning in our new house, so the smell just takes me right back.  It makes me feel safe, happy, and like I don't live 1,500 miles away from my family.  I have these shipped to me all the way from Fredericksburg.  They're that good.

Manicure Monday: Recycled eyeshadow edition

Today's Manicure Monday is kind of a strange one...

A few weeks ago I was watching a money saving beauty segment on the Rachael Ray show.  It was sort of interesting until her guest started talking about how you can make nail polish out of your old eyeshadow.  Then it got really interesting!  Whaaat, craftiness and nail polish?!  Of course, I had to try it :)

I got these cute little Wet & Wild eyeshadows for super cheap, but the colors are so bright that I hardly ever use them as eyeshadow. What better to try and turn into nail polish?

So I used a paintbrush to loosen the shadow and brushed it onto a paper plate.

Then just add some clear polish (fewer drops=opaque & more drops=sheer)...

Mix with your paintbrush...and start painting!

***disclaimer*** I painted these quickly so the polish wouldn't dry up on the plate, so the application is sloppy.

Here's the first set of eyeshadow polishes, "I'm Feeling Retro."  I mixed these first and used a lot of clear, so it took about four coats to build up the color.

And this is "Spoiled Brat."  I used a lot more shadow for these, and I really like the way it turned out.

It was so interesting to paint with these.  I didn't expect these to go on as smoothly as regular polish, but they really did.  Actually, the formula on these was better than the formula for some of my normal polishes.  I had a lot of fun mixing and painting with eyeshadow, but it's definitely not something I would do often...because it's a giant pain.  But I'm glad I tried it!

Oops...

I deserve the award for Worst Blogger of 2012.  I can't believe it's been over a month since I blogged!  I've been pretty busy so far this year, but I am going to do better about making time to blog, because it really is therapeutic in a weird sort of way...

Anyway, I basically have nothing of importance to say today :)  I have a four day weekend off work, so I'm relaxing and trying to spend my time fairly productively.  I promise that (somewhat) interesting blog posts are returning this week.

Oh, and Scooter says hi!

He looks grumpy because I was practicing for my voice lesson...apparently he hates my singing more than anything in the world.

Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening

My favorite Christmasy poem, by Robert Frost.

Manicure Monday: Essie Winter/Holiday

Gasp, I almost missed Manicure Monday!

Today's polishes are a little random...they aren't all from the same collection because I just bought what looked prettiest to me at the time.  I have a polish from Essie Winter 2010 collection, Essie Winter 2011 collection, and Essie Luxeffects (Holiday) 2011 collection.

This is Brooch the Subject from Essie 2011 Winter collection.  When I saw this bottle in the store, I fell in love with it.  But I changed my mind once it was on my nails.  It's so close to my skin color that it gives me mannequin hands, and I'm just not crazy about the way that looks.  I guess it would be good in a situation where I wanted to wear polish that wasn't too noticable.  Not too much to say, other than that it's a beige creme.  The formula was perfect, as usual.  I love Essie's formula.

This is Going Incognito from Essie 2010 Winter collection.  I think this is one of my favorite polishes of all time.  It's an emerald green creme.  Again, perfect formula.

Here's one more picture of Going Incognito.  It looks even prettier in the sunlight!

I had been searching for Essie Shine of the Times for a long time.  It's part of their Holiday 2011 Luxeffects collection, but I couldn't find it anywhere because it's been such a popular color.  My favorite nail polish store finally got it back in stock last week and I snagged a bottle.  It's a flakie glitter topcoat.  The best thing about this polish is that it shows up differently depending on the color you layer it over.  My favorite nail blogger Scrangie suggested layering it over white, so I had to try that.  Here's a link to her Essie Luxeffects post.  Her Shine of the Times pictures are waaaay better than mine.

This is the polish I chose to put under Shine of the Times.  It's Sally Hansen Polar Bare, a semi sheer white.  I love this color even by itself, but it's really pretty with the Essie top coat.

My pictures just do not do this polish justice!  Only my pinky really shows the fun color of the top coat.  This is one coat of Shine of the Times over two coats of Polar Bare.  Shine of the Times is an iridescent flakie glitter that shifts between red, pink, orange, and green.  I'll post some pictures of Shine of the Times after I put it over a darker color.  The flakie glitter really pops over black, dark blue, and purple.  It's more subtle, but really beautiful and wintery over white.  It reminds me of sun shining on snow.