Essie In the Cab-ana

I went to a baby shower over the weekend and took some inspiration from the pink unicorn nails I did. Because they are having a boy I tweeked it a little...

I didnt have a baby themed Hex charm I decided to go with a hand drawn duckie since it matched the wrapping I did for the gift!

I made that bow too! With hot glue and a wooden duck thing from Hobby Lobby!
I had so much fun doing all this! Being creative makes me so happy!

})i({ -Amy

PS: GO ENTER MY GIVEAWAY!!!

Twelve Nails of Christmas: Day 10

YIPPEE I bought new green polish!!! If you've ever read my "About Me" you will know that I love bottles... so I went to the mall to help a friend buy her sister a present for Christmas. I asked "what kind of stuff does your sister like?" She told me think of a gay male gangster... and I thought of Hot Topic! I havent been in Hot Topic since I was in High School and was really kind of looking for an excuse to see what it was all about... LOOK WHAT I FOUND THERE!!!

How adorable are these little bottles??? I have never heard of this brand Black Heart Beauty and dont even know if I like the polish but I love the colors and the fact that they are in little skulls, and $5 a piece! So for my Christmas mani I used that green, its called Jealous Type, and Essie Forever Yummy.

 I also used my stripers... cus thats about all I use for nail art. I got the stars from Wet and Wild Hollywood Walk of Fame and the multi colored hex glitters from American Apparel Galaxy and the tops of the ornaments are small studs. This was a pretty easy mani... other than fishing the glitters out.

This is probably one of my favorites... but since I cant paint my right hand like that I had to wipe it clean :( so sad. Its times like these I wish I had a room mate, ooooh I would paint her nails so hard! Oh well.
SO: Jealous Type was about what you would expect from a jelly... poor first coat application, cleared up by a second coat... but the color is pretty damn cool! Forever Yummy is a dream, like I have said before.
COME ON CHRISTMAS, I am ready!


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 3

So this is my first experience with caviar beads... not so easy. I really wanted to do a pattern with them, because it was something I hadnt seen before. There's a reason not many people have done this... its a right pain in the ass.

It didnt come out so bad. The point was a bit crooked but I cant really complain. I started by painting a little red triangle at the top of my nail, cover it in caviar beads and using an orange stick to push it all into place and lined it up. Then the next section, same with the stick, and so on. It was a bit weird.

I used Orly Lucky Duck for the green and Essie Forever Yummy for the red... OMG this is a beautiful true red that is easily a well applied one coater.

The whole half hour it took me to apply the caviar beads (which I think was pretty quick considering the work) my little pup was sleeping on the bed, watching me paint! Isnt he precious?

I wish I hadnt applied so much top coat, this is before top coat and look how beautiful the beads are... the top coat didnt even make them last all that long, le sigh.


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

Photo Dump

I dont know what the deal with blogger is, but it doesnt like the files from my camera's sd card and almost always rotates them weird. It can be a big hassle to post pictures sometimes. Anyways, I have a couple of photos that I wanted to post but didnt really want to do individual blog posts for. 

Lets start with this ADORABLE fox! I found these socks at Target and had to have them. When I went home to stare lovingly at them I realized I could paint it on a nail. So I did... with different colors, and better proportions.

Isnt he precious??? The base color is Essie's Chinchilly. I have been looking for a tan colored polish for forever... and when I was at Target (same trip as the socks) I found nothing close to what I wanted but did find an Essie mini set with Chinchilly and Forever Yummy with a glass nail file. I have ventured a bit off topic, basically the color I was really searching for was probably Essie's Case Study which I found at Marshall's and I bought the mini set from Target because I have been having a really hard time finding a glass file... PHEW!

... and this is what my sweet baby Bandit was doing during all of that! All curled up in my expensive shearling coat... oh well!

This is OPI's Houston We Have a Purple, which isnt purple but in fact a superb raspberry jelly!

This is me being bored and screwing around with dotting tools that I promptly broke and then replaced... I dont even know what the base is.

This is Enchanted's Ciao Milano, Its amazing... I'm wearing in now as I type even though these pictures were taken 5 mani's ago. I was experimenting with bases, mostly dark or similar colors, like black, OPI's Lincoln Park After Dark, Essence's Chic Reloaded and Orly's Royal Velvet. I think it's best over black, but you all probably knew that!

Anywho, that was my photo dump... hope you enjoyed!

})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