Twelve Nails of Christmas: Day 12

YIIIIPPPPEEEEEE!!! Christmas nails are done!!! Hopefully you are all entering my GIVEAWAY and following me now... DO IT! Some of my stuff is interesting, and I would like to think I am pretty entertaining... maybe. ANYWHO, this last mani is so far from Christmas. I am calling it my Christmas Handbag to kinda try to tie it back.

So I used Zoya Toni as a base except for Orly Lucky Duck on the ring finger, then used bits of chain from Hobbly Lobby and studs from the Born Pretty Store. Then I used Essie Matte About You to make it look like leather. I like how this one came out... its not very Christmas-y but it looks pretty bad ass!

What did you all get for Christmas? I got a bunch of nail stuff and a wallet that I have been wanting for forever.... and my first HELMER!!! Super excited about that, got it blinged out and filled up already. Then had prime rib for lunch with boyfriend, then went to the parental's for dinner and ate prime rib again... pretty darn stuffed!

Well goodnight all, hope you had a wonderful Christmas!

})i({ - Amy

Photo Dump

Another photo dump for you all, (im sure youre thrilled!!!)

I change my polish at least every other day, but sometimes it doesnt seem spectacular enough for its own post... or I dont have enough time.

This is Zoya Evvie with Glitter Gal's Silver Holorgraphic over the top, two coats each. I really love the Glitter Gal holo formula. Its packed full of holo.

These are my Bestie's nails!!! I love to paint other people's nails because it I can be more creative. I used hole reinforcements to paint a super thick tip then a dab of a lighter color for the belly and then China Glaze's Lux and Lush for the belly glitter, then a dotting tool in two sizes to make eyes and a striper for the beak.

This is my first Hare Polish... It deserves its own post but I didnt take notes on the polish when I put it on. It got a lot of attention at school. It's gorgeous think black with green glitter. I used a layer of Supernova Springs, then a layer of Liquid Leather (CG) then another coat of Supernova... almost like a jelly sandwich. 

For this mani I used the shimmery orange from my Color Barometer set (TNB) and then OPI's gold shatter and Essie's Matte About You... I like matte finishes but they dont last a full day for me, the matte polishes shiny by mid day.

I did this mani for a friend from school. She loves bright colors so I used a new Pixi polish I picked up in Vivid Coral. Its super close to Color Club's Jackie Oh! but a bit more orange tinged. Close enough that I shouldnt have them both... The consistency is good and application was easy. I used a striper for the rest of it.

Last but not least I bought this Color Club set at Ross and have no idea what the colors are, they should label their sets... its super irritating, le sigh. I cant be too sad because I picked it up for $4.99 since the price wasnt marked and there werent any others... I told them it was super similar to some other set with similar colors... but it was some brand I had never heard of and they didnt look as nice. Either way, I almost felt like I stole the set!!! I would REALLY like to know what the colors are called, I wore the purple one (which is a bit more purple than Zoya Charisma) and I received so many compliments at work. The pink isnt Jackie OH, its much darker and a bit more blue if that makes any since and the light robin's egg color is more mint green (but less pastel) than China Glaze's For Audrey. SOMEONE HELP!!!

Let me know what you think of the mani's and colors... Definitely let me know if you can identify the Color Club set. Thank you!!!

})i({ - Amy

Zoya Toni and OPI The Living Daylights, feat. The New Black Navy

This is my quintessential fall mani! Before a couple weeks ago I didn't have very many fall colors. I mentioned a couple posts back about buying some new Zoya and this is one of them. The color is a rich deep burgundy and as usual for Zoya, the application was really smooth. This is a great color for fall and would be good in an understated Christmas mani, (which I'm totally going to do!)

For this mani I used my new Zoya Toni and The New Black navy color. (As a side, TNB doesnt name their colors, so I dont know why groupon had names for the ones in the runway series. From now on I will just describe their colors instead of naming them!) I also bought a new glitter! I dont use much glitter, I hate removing it and I dont really want to soak my fingers in acetone to get it off easily... that being said, I did pick up a glitter when I went to check out the new OPI Skyfall collection. To be perfectly honest I went to check out The Man With The Golden Gun specifically, and after clutching the last one to my bosom and wandering around Ulta for an hour I decided to put it back... It wasn't worth it in my opinion. But I did pick up The Living Daylights and Live And Let Die (along with some other stuff, lets face it I have a bit of a nail polish problem.)

I like the way this mani came out. The Living Daylights is a really good fall glitter. It has copper, gold, silver and teal hexagonal glitters, so they go with most fall colors. It goes on really concentrated too, shown is one coat!

Please excuse the messy cuticles!

I couldnt decide what the best camera shot was, but I have the better camera back, so there's a plus.

These colors are great for fall! Do you have any favorite glitters you use in the fall? Or do you have any favorite fall colors? By the way, what is a good fall orange color? That is what I'm really after!

Let me know what you thought!

})i({  -Amy

Zoya Charisma

I Love Zoya's formula. It goes on really smooth and looks really nice, so when I was feeling a little blue the other day I went out and bought 3 Zoya polishes: Charisma, Tony (dark burgundy red), and Evvie (dark greenish tinted gray). I thought the last two would complement each other so you may see them in a post coming up...

This is Charisma, it is a fun magenta color. This was two coats, a little VNL but that wouldve gone away with a third. On the ring finger I used Butter London's Slapper and a dotting tool with Charisma.

This was a fun colored mani and picked my spirits right up! Charisma dried a little dull, kinda matte but the top coat solved that issue! Overall I like it... so yeah, super short post for you 

My internet was down for a few days, other wise I would have posted this sooner. Instead you get to have 2 posts today!!! Yippee!

Whats your favorite Zoya color? Do you even like Zoya? (why, why not?) Let me know!

})i({  -Amy

Photo Catch Up

Hello All!

These are photos of stuff I have done up to now... Not a riveting post, but one I need to do to move this process along, after this post it's all new stuff, techniques,  brands and quality.... or at least my description of those things. 

If you have done anything similar and want to share or help (mostly help!!!) then please leave a comment. I would love to include your information in my posts!

So I did eventually do an anchor... but it was so much work that I gave it up soon after. One of my earlier ones, so I don't even remember the crap polish I used.. no biggie, but I did abandon the scotch tape here for a striper.

I LOVE the color of this one... I desperately wish I could do this on all of my fingers because the nudes are just so elagant. This is OPI You Don't Know Jacques and Tickle my France-y with my lame excuse for cheetah spots! I bought these colors is a 10 pack of mini Opi polishes at Ulta. The set was called Best of the best and I literally paid like 6 bucks for the set, I think it was a pretty good find.

Another set of the Co-worker's nails. I liked this one a bunch. The colors are all of those Art Deco ones... it was hard to paint the whole nail with an art brush. And the bows are little nail stickers. I think this would be cute for a baby shower!

This is really what I wanted to do with the baby nails, but I couldn't find black bow stickers. I tried to paint them and then bought the Konad stamping set with bows but lost steam after a bit. Havent really done bows since. This is China Glaze For Audrey and those Art Decos.

These are my co-worker's nails again, (she lucked out with all the free manis!) I think these are super fun and I would definitely do them again. They are Art Deco colors over OPI Alpine Snow (part of that box set I talked about.)

I took this idea from one of my Instagram followers (iloveyou432)... Its a cute simple idea for a mani, easy to produce on both hands and subtle. 

Pink so hot it'll burn your retinas! I love this color! This is Color Club's Jackie-Oh! A friend of mine got it in her Birch Box and she hates pink. She gave this to me when I mentioned that I wanted to get a neon pink after giving one of mine to a co-worker.

Another copy from Instagram (leacoast) and I LOVE it. the flowers are super easy, you do uneven spots (so not with a dotting tool) and then with a lighter shade of the color you do a swirl inside. They were beautiful and I wished I couldve done them for myself (instead of for my co-worker, lucky B.) China Glaze Four Audrey and Art Deco

Another idea from Instagram, can't really give credit since this girl was reposting reposts... and I HATED IT!!!! The little palm trees are cute enough and since I only had to do my middle and ring of my left had I thought it was cute (the rest of the nails were skittled with colors from the palm tree stripes.) What I really hated was the nail polish I bought, (it was around this time that I learned to stop buying cheap nail polish... GRRR), the yellow stained SO BAD! It is only starting to grow out and you can see it on some of my later manis... :( Never buy Sally Hansen's Complete Salon Manicure in Buttercup.

Had to do something dark after the staining and I love how it turned out! This is China Glaze Recycle with CND Silver Chrome tips. (I use the hole reinforcements to do the tips, super easy.)

I did these for my Bestie's birthday. Silver Chrome base with roses and thorns... got this idea online, so I guess I stole it. In future posts I will credit all ideas, but hopefully have more of my own.

Thought this would be a really cute way to use more of the Silver Chrome (I became obsessed shortly after buying it.) This is Jackie-Oh and Silver Chrome with zebra striping on my co-worker.

I bought my first 4 Butter London colors at Ulta, I waited until they had a buy one get one free sale that I had heard rumors of. This is Gobsmacked and I LOVE it. It is like a pure glitter coat with medium sized gunmetal black sparkles. It is so awesome!

I totally stole this idea from another blogger right down to the brand of polishes and most of the colors (except they used Lesbihonest instead of Ilf.) At this point I can't remember who. My apologies if I took this idea from you but, as they say: "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery." I used ManGlaze's Matte is Murder, Fuggen Ugly, and Ilf for this, on top of Butter London's Diamond Geezer. I wish I was able to make the stripes smaller; I swapped from scotch tape to electrical tape, but haven't found the right scissors for the job. I really like ManGlaze's matte polishes, they go on smooth and don't dry too quickly during application (but do dry quickly overall.)

I assured myself that I would not pay for Deborah Lippmann's Glitter in the Air when Revlon made an exact dupe called Whimsical that I could buy from Ulta for  5 bucks... but I waited too long and by the time I got around to getting this Ulta didnt have it anymore and it was selling on Amazon for 15 bucks... might as well buy Lippmann's at that price, right? If you look close enough you can still see the staining from the palm tree mani... le sigh

This is my current favorite. If I only had one color, it would probably be this... This is Zoya's Yasmeen and I dont really like purple. This purple is rich, smooth, radiant and opaque as all hell, it also has a fine golden sheen to it. I put a little rhinestone on as an experiment.

My Bestie wanted to borrow my  OPI DS sapphire... which I haven't swatched yet, and when I went over we ended up doing something a little different. This was exactly last week, practically the same time as now. It's Butter London's Trout Pout and Slapper with another little rhinestone.

This is my first crackle or shatter or whatever its called. Its OPI Gold Shatter over Butter London's Slapper, it reminds me of natural turquoise, maybe if I had put a little black in there it would've been more like the stone.

This was an excuse to go buy black polish (I had lost mine.) This is ManGlaze Matte is Murder with China Glaze Liquid Leather. I adore this look, very simple and classic. I paired it with a white pencil skirt and a black v-neck sweater with little floral black and white flats... ADORBS!

I got my dotting tools in the mail yesterday and had to do this mani Monday morning. Its Julep's Alicia and the darker pink spots were going to be Butter London's Trout Pout, they are very similar but the Pout is a bit darker. Not dark enough though, so I frankened Jackie-oh and Trout Pout... I guess if I had to name it, it would be Jackie's Pout. I dont know what the green one is, it came in my mystery box and it didnt have a name on it... if i do this mani again (and as I type away and see how cute my fingers are, I think I will) then I will probably do a dark blue instead of the green. Maybe an excuse to buy a blue from Zoya.

Any Zoya fans out there? I have it narrowed down to Charla, Ibiza, and Song. All pretty different, but very pretty. I don't have a darker blue yet and could use one! If you have an opinion or a swatch you want to share, I will post it when I decide on a blue. Let me know!

})i({   -Amy