Illamasqua Speckle

I HAD to buy this the other day at Sephora. I may even need to go back and buy all the colors! If I can restrain myself I'll only get Fragile and Mottle. I figured this was the least like anything else I've had since I dont have much in the pale purple department.

How awesome is that? I love the different sized spots. This is three coats but someone with enough skill could use two. It went on really nicely and you dont really need to adjust the glitter but you can really easily, the formula is thin without being "watery". It is a bit cuticle flood prone so be careful!

I thought this random low light shot might give you a better idea of color, its not as grey as the first shot made it out to be.

Have you seen these or any like it? I know Hard Candy and Deborah Lippmann have some out like these but I think their glitter is all the same size... this is better in my opinion. Plus it goes on smoother than the Hard Candy one looks like it does, but I am headed to Walmart to see if I can find them anyways... the price on those (HC) are super.

})i({ -Amy

Twelve Nails of Christmas: Day 11 GIVEAWAY!!! (Not open internationally... SORRY)

WOOT So I said I would have a giveaway because I got my first follower on Day 3 of my Christmas nails! HERE IT IS!!! I bought myself the Illamasqua Christmas Duo and I LOVE them, so I hope you will too!!!

So I didnt really do a Christmas mani... If you've been reading my blog you'll know that I am totally over this project. But I did paint both colors so that you all would know what you were getting!

Those are shots of Viridian a gorgeous shimmery blue green (or a viridian for those of you who know your colors). It applies super smooth in potentially one coat, but I did two. Very smooth, very nice formula, very unique color!

Glitterati is a beautiful deep and vampy red/burgundy. I love how this looks, much thicker than a jelly, this is two thin coats and the glitter can still peek through!

Together these feel like Christmas, but I love them separate like this! Glitterati would be perfect on Valentine's Day, and I am gonna wear the shit out of Viridian through the winter! Great new additions to my collection, and hopefully yours!

Giveaway is below, wish you luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

})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) 

Illamasqua Nurture (Rubber Finish)

I LOVE green! It is my favorite color. That being said I own probably 5 green polishes and maybe a couple green stripers. So when I heard about Illamasqua's rubber finish I was intrigued enough to buy one, and their green was perfect! But I can't get a good picture of it, you can find it HERE.

The polish goes on gloopy and dries quickly. It makes it kind of a difficult polish to apply. But the color is great and the finish is different. Its not really matte, more satin, but less shiney. This is three coats... I hate how I cant really capture it. Its a good color, with a workable formula. As you can see it does even out, but looks horrible on my right hand, very uneven and bumpy. I like Illamasqua's regular polish, the rubber was kind of fun though.

I have had this polish for a while now, but never used it. I cut my nails super short and have had difficulty growing them out again, but I like bright fun colors on short nails so I thought I'd give it a go.

On that note, any suggestions out there on how to grow my nails out? I have been using cuticle oil and not cutting my cuticles (as you can totally see in every FREAKING photo - my nails have been a mess since before the blog started), because I heard somewhere that the key to healthy nails are healthy cuticles. I also switched base coats recently to Orly's Nail Defense for strengthening and repairing (super recently: only for the last two manis... not even posted yet!) I just don't know what to do! I used to have the strongest nails and they were always very long. I think it might have something to do with eggs. I used to eat way more eggs than I do now... but I still drink the same amount of milk, I dont know if these things affect anything. When I studied nutrition I learned that more vitamin A and protein are good for growing out nails, which seems to work but they keep flaking and breaking... LE SIGH! 

In need of some help here! Would love to get some comments about nail health...

})i({  -Amy