Twelve Nails of Christmas: Day 6

I love poinsettias! They remind me of Christmas every time I see them.

This was actually a super easy mani: I used Orly Luxe and then used my LA Colors Art Deco Stripers to paint the details... I know a lot of bloggers like to use a striping brush and then their nice polish to do designs, but I seriously love having these stripers. They were super cheap, I dont have to clean the brushes off after Im done, I can just trim the brushes (because they usually come in all terrible and jacked up) and they are really easy to use... what more could you ask for?

I really like how this one came out...the colors are vibrant and the subject is recognizable (sometimes thats a big issue for me).


What do your Christmas nails look like? If I get any emails with pictures I want to post them on a "day after Christmas" post.

})i({ -Amy

Twelve Nails of Christmas: Day 2

I LOVE THESE NAILS!!! I think I am getting the hang of these Christmas nails, the only problem is that I dont have much for Christmas colors... le sigh, that just means I have to buy more polish right???

So this is Orly Rock-It for a base again... its very festive, dont judge me! I just used my Art Deco stripers for the stripes, but they're fun none-the-less

I really like the way these came out, they look a lot like candy canes. If I were more patient then the white stripes would have been smaller and closer to the green stripes to offer some variation in spacing... but Im not so they arent.


What do your Christmas nails look like? If I get any emails with pictures I want to post them on a "day after Christmas" post.

})i({ -Amy

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

What an ordeal!!! I have my nails painted all Halloween-y and am super excited about it. Today has been a bit of a post dump this is my third, but I did these nails last night and just in time for Halloween.

I used so many polishes for this mani. Since I am no good at nail art on my own fingers I went for a mix of finishes and textures. Nail polishes in order from left to right:

Mini OPI Alpine Snow

Essence Grey-t To Be Here

Essie Matte About You (for a matte topcoat over a matte polish)

Piggy Polish Nocture-Nail

Illamasqua Nurture

Cult Nails Deal With It

Urban Outfitters Tiny Shorts

The New Black shimmery orange

China Glaze I Herd That

OPI Ya'll Come Back Ya Hear?

OPI The Living Daylights

Butter London Gobsmacked

OPI Black Shatter

China Glaze Liquid Leather

LA Colors Art Deco black striper

ManGlaze Matte Is Murder

So I know that there are more polishes here than I have fingers, but the effect I was going for required it. Every nail is different, and they mostly came out the way I wanted.

On my right hand from my pinkie to my thumb:

• I used TNB orange shimmer with CG I Herd That. This is the first time I've used the CG orange glitter. I think its a nice fall orange glitter.
• I used CG Liquid Leather and a nail sticker. I LOVE LIQUID LEATHER. It is by far my favorite black. Its really like a black jelly, which is why I think it goes on so well
• I used Illamasqua Nurture, I literally just posted a swatch of this but I really used it like a week ago... you know how I feel. I used my Seche Vite over the top so it was shiny
• I used ManGlaze Matte Is Murder. I think ManGlaze has the best matte polished I've ever used. I love the application, they don't dry too quick when applying and they look great even with a shiny top coat. I used Essie's Matte About You as a topcoat over this. I really value the use of top coats
• I used Tiny Shorts on the thumb. I swatched it a while back and I like the color a lot.

Left Hand thumb to pinkie:

• I used Butter London's Gobsmacked. This has to be one of my favorite polishes. If I were stranded with one polish for the rest of my life, this would probably be it. Its super sparkly but deep and dark.
• I used Cult Nails Deal With it and OPI's Black Shatter. I did these nails a while back but didn't post about it ( I literally so my nails everyday, I don't have time to post about it.)
• This is OPI's Ya'll Come Back Ya Hear? from their Texas collection. This is a very thin orange jelly despite looking very opaque in the bottle. I made a jelly sandwich with OPI The Living Daylights which I also posted about today. Its a nice combination, I may do it for a big Denver Bronco game because the blue glitters stand out over the orange (and I'm in Denver.)
• I used Essence Grey-t To Be Here. This is my first Essence polish, I'm a bit of a snob when it comes to my polish. I dont like to buy a lot of cheap stuff, but the color is phenomenal! It's a light grey with pink micro flaky things in it. Its gorgeous! At .99 cents GO BUY IT! I used the LA Colors black striper to make it look like a tombstone EDIT: I also used Julep's Meryl cling wrapped over the top to make it look like stone.
• I used the mini bottle of OPI's Alpine Snow to make the base of a ghost and then used the LA striper to make the outline and actually used a dotting tool with CG's Liquid Leather to make the eyes and mouth.

They all look a bit dull because I used the Piggy Polish glow in the dark Nocture-nail over the top of everything. To get a good glow you have to use like 4 coats of it. So it distorted a lot of the colors. VERY sad on the CG Liquid Leather with skull and crossbones nail... it was so richly black before I put the glow on... le sigh. This is also why I was obsessed with top coats on this mani: Piggy Polish uses formaldehyde in their polish and I put my fingers in my mouth a lot. 

It looks pretty cool and I am going to try to keep my nails like this until Wednesday... TRY is the operative word there. We'll see.

I want to see your Halloween nails! Email me at drama.ocelot@gmail.com and I will post the pictures I get before Halloween!

})i({ - Amy

>(/ / /)<  (candy)
[¬º-°]¬  (zombie) 

Breast Cancer Awareness Month

So... I should've done this at the beginning of the month, but better late than never right?

Please excuse the lack of clean up!!! I usually fix the spill in the shower the morning after I do the mani (I do them at night because I don't move much when I sleep and SV dries pretty quick.) Anyways, I take an orange stick or manicure stick and rub the excess off in the shower after I've soaked for a bit!

I thought this would be a really good color scheme for a breast cancer mani. I think it came out pretty nice (even on my right hand!)

I used the mini OPI Bubble Bath for the base on all the nails save the ring fingers. Then using Color Club's Jackie-Oh! (which I am OBSESSED with) I painted the whole of the ring fingers and then the tips of the rest of the fingers (using the hole reinforcements for guides.) I painted thick tips so that I could use the Art Deco white striper to paint white tips on the pink ones, then used the striper to draw the ribbon design. After that I used the Art Deco blue small glitter striper to stripe between the pink and white tips and to outline the breast cancer ribbon. Over the top I used Essie's Kisses and Bises to add shimmer over every nail. (BTW I totally picked the Kisses and Bisses up at Marshall's for 3 bucks!!!) I top coated with SV and voilà!

I picked up a decent camera... from the boyfriend's junk pile aka: his house. He always has the newest and best electronics so when he replaced his small point and shoot cannon with 12.1 megapixels and 14x optical zoom, with a DSLR, I took the Cannon. I used it to take pictures of the revisited Two Fingered Salute mani but then it died and he doesn't know where the battery charger is... probably somewhere in the junk pile. I both praise him and damn him simultaneously... BOYFRIEND!!! (*shakes fist at the heavens*.) So I'm back with the cell phone camera for now... le sigh. It's decent enough, but I want the cannon to swatch some of the new polish I got in and am getting in... Stay tuned!!!

What did you do for breast cancer awareness? I've realized that you may not be able to upload photos to the comment box but I would be happy to post anything I get in an e-mail!

Let me know what you think!

})i({  - Amy