New Year's Design using Gwen Stefani's Collection & Review!

OPI's new Gwen Stefani Collecion just came out and I was really really excited about a few of these polishes, so I went and grabbed them (yes, I'm becoming that girl). I realized the three I purchased are great New Year's colors, so I thought I'd try them together. I really like how this manicure turned out and it was so simple! I will absolutely be doing this twist on a french manicure again with lots of color combos! To create the V shape I just used tape. It's that easy!

The Gwen Stefani collection consists of 7 polishes. Some of the shades I felt were nothing to write home about, so I only picked up 3. The ones I did not purchases were In True Stefani Fashion (a silver and holographic glitter that I almost bought), I Sing In Color (dark vampy red creme that I already own), Hey Baby (bright pink creme), and Over & Over A-Gwen (her signature red).

The 3 I purchased are Love.Angel.Music.Baby (gold satin), 4 in the Morning (black satin), and Push and Shove (silver chrome). I love the sleeve they put on the caps too, easily labeled and cute geometric shapes.

Christmas Trees

Lately it seems like I'm not having much luck with my manicures. They either aren't turning out very pretty or they are just getting messed up. Initially for this manicure I wanted to do Christmas trees and presents. The presents didn't turn out very well at all and then this happened...

Sorry for the poor image quality!

I didn't feel like fixing that finger so instead I decided to take off my presents and try something else. On my right hand I ended up doing more Christmas trees and my left I did stripes. My left hand turned out okay, but because I had to let my nails dry before top coat I ended up smudging a couple fingers. I went back and fixed the smudges, but it still looked better before.

NOTW: Traditional Christmas

I wanted to do a traditional Christmas color manicure, and I wanted it to be simple. I obviously used a different polish on each finger and combined some gold to try to tie it altogether. Even though the gold on my thumb and pointer look the same, they are different polishes. The gradient doesn't show the differences very well.

I need to work on my glitter gradients. Doing a gradient with a creme polish is easy because it's blendable, but it's harder to blend a glitter polish. Some of the formulas were a little meh, but they were still all workable. 

Colors I used:

Thumb: SinfulShine Amazonian (green) and OPI My Favorite Ornament     (champagne gold glitter - this one is so pretty and such a unique neutral gold shade)

Pointer: OPI Underneath the Mistletoe (red) and Sephora by OPI Looks Like Rain, Dear (gold glitter with holographic circle glitter)
Middle: OPI Liquid Sand Stay the Night (black base with red glitter) I did use a top coat with this as well.
Ring: Sephora by OPI Keep Me on My Mistletoes (neutral gold metallic) with SinfulColors Holiday Rebel (green/red/holo glitter)
Pinky: China Glaze Winter Holly (green microglitter with some gold glitter)

It didn't turn out quite as pretty as I had hoped, but I still like the color combos. My next mani will have some nail art!

Thanks for checking out my post! Much love and polish!

Know anyone in the Denver Metro Area that needs handyman, tradesman or A/V services? Have them check out www.tysdesign.com! Competitive pricing and customer service tailored specifically for you!

Disclaimer: All items shown were purchased with my own money. All opinions are my own and honest.

NOTW: Fall Flakies

I am behind with my manicures so at some point you may see two NOTW posts in a week. Oh, well.

This one I wore over Thanksgiving. I like flakies polishes and I think they look cool over a variety of colors. My base color is Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure in Malbec. It's a really really deep purple. So dark is almost looks black. Pretty decent formula, but a little thick. I do like this one better than some of the other Complete Salon Manicures though. The flakies polish I used is Luxe and Lush by China Glaze. Formula was as expected, a little sparse and had to dab on. In the picture I used one coat of the flakies. On my left hand I used two coats, but thought it was too much and didn't like it as much. Also, I would recommend using two coats of top coat as some of the glitter can peek through. If you are using a thick top coat one may be okay.

 Thanks for checking out my post! Much love and polish!

Know anyone in the Denver Metro Area that needs handyman, tradesman or A/V services? Have them check out www.tysdesign.com! Competitive pricing and customer service tailored specifically for you!

Disclaimer: All items shown were purchased with my own money. All opinions are my own and honest.

Zoya Zenith Winter Collection

I had never even heard of this collection and I was wandering around Ulta (you know, who doesn't love to window shop nail polish?) and I saw the display for these. At first I didn't think it was anything special and then I saw Dream. O.M.G. It was love at first sight and I just had to get it. Now, I know it's not really that serious, but try telling my obsession that. Anyway, they were on sale, buy 2 get one free and I had points built up and had coupons so I picked up 4 out of the 6 from the collection. And yes, I picked up 2 others to to make an even 6. These polish retail for $8.00 a piece, but I got mine for around $3.50 ea. Made me pretty happy!

Dream and Payton are both crellyish bases (jelly and cream) with tons of holographic micro glitter. The first coat on both is pretty streaky but the second coat evens out everything beautifully. Formula on these were perfect, one of the best I've seen for a while. These two are pretty much the same polish, minus the color.

NOTW: Fall Colors

This manicure sounded like a good idea, but I'm not very happy with it. Pretty simple, painted a base color, used wavy scissors to cut tape, and then applied another color. This top color dried matte so on two of the nails (thumb and ring) I applied a top coat. Thought it was okay and then I showed it to my husband and he said, "Yeah, it looks cool, it's like a southwest design." Me, ready to defend myself, reply with, "No, it's -- oh man, you're right. Now I don't like it."  And I don't. I hate southwest designs and now that he said that that's all I think about when I look at it. Was planning on leaving this on over Thanksgiving, but now I'm pretty sure that I'm taking some polish with me to NM and changing it...probably tomorrow.

My base color is Essie Miss Fancy Pants. It's a beautiful taupey gray color, and I think it's a great neutral. I must mention too, that it has an AMAZING formula. Easy to work with, dried quick and self-leveled. What more could you ask for?

SinfulColors Get It On, is the burgundy wine color I used on top. In the bottle it looks pretty vibrant, but since it's matte it actually dries much darker. Applying a top coat does help lighten the color, but I still think it dries darker than what you see in the bottle. In the picture it looks much brighter than what it actually is. Not very true to color. :( Pretty good formula on this one also.

What should I paint on my nails for Thanksgiving?

I tired taking the pic in different lighting, this one looks better.  Isn't it crazy how different the same polishes look in different lights?  This one is much truer to color. I think I'll start taking pics in this lighting till I get my lightbox made.

 Thanks for checking out my post! Much love and polish!

Know anyone in the Denver Metro Area that needs handyman, tradesman or A/V services? Have them check out www.tysdesign.com! Competitive pricing and customer service tailored specifically for you!

Disclaimer: All items shown were purchased with my own money. All opinions are my own and honest.

NOTW: Pretty in Pink Foil

I really like foil polishes. They tend to dry quick, have beautiful finishes and I love all the colors they can come in. Strike Up a Cosmo from China Glaze is no exception. As soon as I saw this shade I just knew I had to have it. It's a nice pinky/mauve color with gold flecks. It has a great formula and I love the way it dries on the nail.

I accented with a glitter from Julep. I have misplaced that polish at the moment and couldn't find it on Julep's website either so I don't know the name. I am in the middle of re-organizing and purging old things in my office, so I'm hoping it turns up soon! Anyway, it's a nice autumn type glitter, it has varying sizes of goldish-orange and red glitter. It's a very nice, dense glitter.

Pics aren't the best, it was kinda cloudy out the day I took them. A big reason why I want to re-organize my office is to make it photo friendly and get a light box made. I'm really hoping it will help this winter when there is minimal light!

 Thanks for checking out my post! Much love and polish!

Know anyone in the Denver Metro Area that needs handyman, tradesman or A/V services? Have them check out www.tysdesign.com! Competitive pricing and customer service tailored specifically for you!

Disclaimer: All items shown were purchased with my own money. All opinions are my own and honest.

Stripes and Dots

I don't know why, but I am in love with this manicure. I'm already thinking of different colors I can use and other ways I can use this. It was really easy and I just kinda went with it. I started painting my nails, not really sure what I wanted to do and then I came up with this.

Pretty self explanatory, but all I did was paint all my nails blue and then used striping tape and a large dotting tool (only used one size) to make all the dots.

I love the peach color....it's the perfect amount of pink and orange and it just makes me happy looking at it. Is that weird?  Formula for the blue was pretty good and I have to say the formula on the peach was really great. Perfect consistency and very easy to work with.

A side note....I have decided I really need to make a light box. Since I'm losing sunlight I'm really having a hard time coming up with my pics. I have used my bathroom a lot, but there is awful glare and it doesn't always pull very good colors. My pics tend to have a really bad yellow coloring to them and it washes out the colors.

Another side note...I have some ideas for blogs coming up that aren't focused on polish. I really want to do one on storage/organization ideas, compare a few different top coats, talk about "3-free" and some other things.  Those obviously just take a lot longer to do, but I want to do them soon!

Anyway, here are my pics.

Thanks for checking out my post! Much love and polish!

Know anyone in the Denver Metro Area that needs handyman, tradesman or A/V services? Have them check out www.tysdesign.com! Competitive pricing and customer service tailored specifically for you!

Disclaimer: All items shown were purchased with my own money. All opinions are my own and honest.

Final Halloween Mani

I tried soooo hard to get this up before Halloween, but last week I was hardly even home; much less had time to post this. I'm kinda bummed anyway because pretty much all my pics on this turned out really bad and so I'm just gonna show one okay pic of the end result and tell you what I did.

Initially on this mani I wanted to do a cat's face on my thumb, but even after practicing multiple times it just wasn't turning out the way I wanted. So, I ditched that idea and just did a witch hat on my ring finger. I still don't like the way the hat turned out in this mani either, but that's what this is all about!  Trying things out and seeing if it works.

On my purple fingers I applied a black crackle over the purple and then I used a hologram top coat that I have. It's really awesome!  The top coat is called Northern Lights by inm. I got it at Sally Beauty Supply.

On my pointer finger I just painted it green and then applied a silver and black glitter. The glitter has several types and sizes.

On my ring finger I used tape to make the point, painted the tip and then used stripers and a dotting tool to complete the rest.

The rest of the polishes I used:

Essie Mojito Madness (green)

SinfulShine Slick (purple)

OPI Black Oynx (black)

China Glaze Black Mesh (crackle)

Sally Hansen Silver Streamers (silver/black glitter)

black and silver glitter stripers by Jordana 

Thanks for checking out my post! Much love and polish!

Know anyone in the Denver Metro Area that needs handyman, tradesman or A/V services? Have them check out www.tysdesign.com! Competitive pricing and customer service tailored specifically for you!

Disclaimer: All items shown were purchased with my own money. All opinions are my own and honest.

Matte & Shiny

I meant to have this up a few days ago and then after all my car drama I just felt kinda blah. Anyway, here is a design that I thought turned out pretty cool. I do have another "cute" design I plan on still getting in before Halloween, but I wanted something a little more "dark." So I came up with this.

I started with a dark red polish, and applied a matte top coat. After some dry time I cut some triangles in scotch tape and applied it to my nail. I used black polish and then quickly applied a shiny top coat. I really like the contrast between the matte and the shiny. I also think this design could work with a huge variety of colors, and I'd like to try it again with more contrasting colors and maybe switch the matte and glossy part. 

Just a quick post for this one! Hope you guys like it and it gives you some inspiration!

And if you are wondering here are the colors I used (sorry no bottle shots):

SinfulShine Mirror Mirror (red)

OPI Black Onyx

I also used OPI Matte Top Coat and Seche Vite for my Glossy Top Coat.

Thanks for checking out my post! Much love and polish!

Know anyone in the Denver Metro Area that needs handyman, tradesman or A/V services? Have them check out www.tysdesign.com! Competitive pricing and customer service tailored specifically for you!

Disclaimer: All items shown were purchased with my own money. All opinions are my own and honest

Candy Corn, Pumpkins & Glitter, Oh My!

Time for more Halloween nails!! So far these have gotten more recognition than my Frankenstein nails. These are a little more flashy too. These nails were easy to do. The pumpkins were a little tricky though, and doing them on my right hand just wasn't happening....but you could still try! This is pretty picture heavy, just FYI...


 Here are all the polishes/tools I used to create the candy corn and pumpkin nails.

Side note: I got the Rimmel Cocktail Colour polishes (there is an orange one in a pic below) on clearance at Walgreens for $.62!!! They had Sally Hansen and Essie polishes for $2.00 too. I got them just a few days ago so you may want to see if your Walgreens has any!

Start off with a white base on all nails. Give a little dry time for your nails.

For the candy corn nails you start with painting an orange horizontal stripe. A tip to help keep your lines straight is to rotate your finger and keep your brush still. Allow the orange to dry for a few minutes and then do the same process with the yellow. Once your nails are dry if you want to add some sparkle or if your lines aren't as straight as you like you can use a glitter striper. You can use a nail art brush dipped in gold glitter too. 

For the pumpkin nails you start by drawing kind of a lopsided 'x' shape. We are trying to get a heart shape for our end result. After you have your 'x' shape then you fill in the rest. Try to make your lines as smooth as possible because we will not be covering them up. After your orange pumpkins have dried for a bit, then use a green glitter polish to add the stems. Using a white nail striper, add three lines to your pumpkin to add detail. The center line is straight and the outside lines are curved to match the pumpkin. You can stop with this step or if you want you can use a nail art pen dipped in green glitter to go on top of the white stripes. Depending on your green polish (mine was sheer) you want to make sure you do the white stripe first so your colored polish will show up against the orange.

Clean up any polish on your skin, add a shiny top coat, and then your nails are done!

Here is an alternative if you don't want to do pumpkin nails.... 

On my right hand I couldn't do pumpkins so I just did glitter nails instead. On my pointer finger I used a fine orange glitter in an orange base and my ring finger I used a small red and gold glitter in a clear base. I have a white base on those two nails also.

Thanks for checking out my post! Much love and polish!

Know anyone in the Denver Metro Area that needs handyman, tradesman or A/V services? Have them check out www.tysdesign.com! Competitive pricing and customer service tailored specifically for you!

Disclaimer: All items shown were purchased with my own money. All opinions are my own and honest.

Frankenstein!

It's Halloween time! I don't know how many of these I will get up, but I'm hoping to at least do three!

Here's my first one: Frankenstein! I wore these nails subbing today and I had so many people do a double take to look and see what was on my nails! These nails turned out so cute and they are so easy to do.

Here's what you need:

• Green, black, and white nail polish
• Black nail art pen (You could use a striper, but it would be harder to do)
• 2 different size dotting tools (or whatever you use to make dots)
• Obviously a base and top coat.

Essie The More the Merrier, Xtreme Wear in White On and Black Out

Obviously, the first step is to paint all your nails green (after base coat of course).

You could do all your nails with a Frankenstein face or just one. Whatever suits you. For the Frankenstein hair you start with the nail art pen and just draw a zig-zag line. It doesn't need to be neat at all, you really can't mess this up. Then just fill in the hair with your pen. I did have to do this 3-4 times to make it opaque. I did notice the black was cracking a little while it was drying which I just touched up. 

For the eyes you start with your larger doting tool and make two black dots. I didn't mean to make mine crooked, but I ended up giving it a crooked mouth too (on purpose) and I think it ended up giving it a little more detail. After the black dots, use your same dotting tool dipped in white polish and create two smaller dots. Then take your smaller dotting tool and place two small black dots to finish the eyes. 

For the mouth you use your nail art pen again and draw a horizontal line (straight or not) and then smaller vertical lines for the stitches. Then those nails are done!

For the remaining nails you do the same thing you did with the mouth to create a stitched look. I just placed mine randomly.

Allow some dry time so you don't smear any of your hard work, apply top coat, and you are finished!

Thanks for checking out my post! Much love and polish!

Know anyone in the Denver Metro Area that needs handyman, tradesman or A/V services? Have them check out www.tysdesign.com! Competitive pricing and customer service tailored specifically for you!

Disclaimer: All items shown were purchased with my own money. All opinions are my own and honest.

NOTW: Irritating.

I can't believe how frustrating this mani became. It's nothing hard or time consuming....or at least I thought. In my opinion, the Complete Salon Manicure line from Sally Hansen is so hit or miss. Some polishes I love and some not so much. This one in particular took sooooooo long to dry and even after applying my top coat (which normally makes nails hard within 10 min) it was still squishy and annoying. I had to redo my left thumb seriously like 10 times. No exaggeration. Something kept hitting it and I was just getting ready to lose my mind. I had to redo my accent nail twice because even after 20 min of dry time when I applied top coat it still smeared horribly and didn't even look kind of good. The only reason I didn't give up on this mani altogether was because we took pics today so they had to look nice. I got a ton of shrinkage on my tips too which was also irritating.

The house ended up being extended a week and I ended up getting tonsiliths over the weekend which I am still recovering from. First time I've ever had it and I've never hated eating or drinking so much in my life (wait I take that back, the only other time was when I had strep like 10 years ago). So this week, other than subbing, that's really all that's on my agenda (still cleaning at the house). But I WILL start some Halloween type manis this week. I really want to get quite a few in this month! No promises they will be any good, but I'll try!

Anyway....

Love the color. Formula was really thick and took FOREVER to dry. Ugh. Oh, but the white is a great formula and for the price, you can't beat it!

Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure ~ Resurrection & Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear ~ White On

Thanks for checking out my post! Much love and polish!

Know anyone in the Denver Metro Area that needs handyman, tradesman or A/V services? Have them check out www.tysdesign.com! Competitive pricing and customer service tailored specifically for you!

Disclaimer: All items shown were purchased with my own money. All opinions are my own and honest.

NOTW: Duochrome

This is one of OPI's new colors from their fall San Francisco collection. A lot of other brands have come out with a polish similar to this, but from reviews I've seen OPI tends to be the favorite.

This polish is a deep grey color with a purplish/pink and blue/green duochrome. I really have to say I'm loving this polish. The formula was great, very easy application and it was pretty opaque with one coat. All day I've been staring at my nails, seeing how they look in different light. I see myself wearing this one a lot this fall/winter!

If I'm not too crazy busy this week (this is the last week for the remodel at my mom's house and I've been over there cleaning a lot) then I plan on doing a mini tutorial type blog. If not then it will happen next week!

OPI ~ Peace & Love & OPI

Thanks for checking out my post! Much love and polish!

Know anyone in the Denver Metro Area that needs handyman, tradesman or A/V services? Have them check out www.tysdesign.com! Competitive pricing and customer service tailored specifically for you!

Disclaimer: All items shown were purchased with my own money. All opinions are my own and honest.

Starting NOTW

If you can't figure it out, NOTW stands for Nail of the Week. I want to start this to make quick posts of my manis. Obviously if I do something more art-y then I will post a tutorial, but for my quick easy ones I want to post them so I can track my progress and whatnot. Hopefully you will want to check them out too! I'm only going to post one pic and it will probably just be taken with my phone. I'll also post a couple of sentences telling you what I thought of the polish. Thinking of maybe doing a rubric type thing so that it goes faster. I may end up posting the pic on Facebook or Instagram too. I'm really wanting to use Instagram more often and I think this will be a good way for me to not only incorporate it more but also force me to post in my blog more regularly. I typically change polish once a week so I should have one of these posts a week (I'm hoping).

Thank you guys so much for taking the time to look at my posts, pin them, and give me feedback. I really appreciate it and I'm starting to actually get views on my blog which I think is amazing. It would be so cool for this to actually turn into something awesome!! I really appreciate all of you supporting and helping me with this. Please share this blog with your other polish loving friends! 

Many of you already saw this, but I'm going to post again. I thought this polish was pretty awesome. The sequin type things make the polish very thick which I like because then it doesn't run all over your nails. I like the concept and the color. They have an orange one like this that I think would be awesome for Halloween. I do think though that for a "drugstore" polish it was kind of expensive. You only get .23 fl oz and I spent $2.99 on this (at Target). A normal size polish is .5 fl oz.

Maybelline Color Show Polka Dots - Drops of Jade

Thanks for checking out my post! Much love and polish!

Know anyone in the Denver Metro Area that needs handyman, tradesman or A/V services? Have them check out www.tysdesign.com! Competitive pricing and customer service tailored specifically for you!

Disclaimer: All items shown were purchased with my own money. All opinions are my own and honest.

Some places to visit!

I have been on a quest to find websites that sell OPI at discounted prices and so far I really haven't found much. It's hard to find websites that sell them at all, let alone at discounted rates. During my hunt though, I did find a ton of websites that sell China Glaze, Essie, and more. This did excite me and honestly this is why I own so much China Glaze now and why I prefer them over OPI.

In regular retail stores the cheapest I've found China Glaze is $5.99 at Sally's (with their club card). Online though I've found them around $3 a bottle, and factoring in shipping it averages to around $4 a bottle. Still way cheaper, and the selection is much more amazing!  In all my searching I have found two websites to be the best. I will describe each one. Some things are the same for each site, but there are some differences.

HEAD2TOEBEAUTY (click me!)

China Glaze averages for around $3.25/bottle. Some are a little more depending on the type of polish. INCREDIBLE selection....you can find polishes from collections from like 3 years ago. After shipping, bottles are about $4.00-$4.15/bottle. Does sell other brands such as Essie and Orly, but they are sold at regular retail rates. Able to sell collections as soon as they are released; almost always has them before stores. Sells manicure accessories for awesome prices as well as skin care and hair care. Has a continuous 5% off sale (it's not much, but it's something!); just type in the first three letters of the month you are in and then 05 after it. Ex. SEP05. Ships internationally. I experienced quick shipping.

TRANS DESIGN (click me!)

China Glaze averages for around $3.25/bottle. After shipping, bottles are about $4.00-$4.15/bottle. Some are a little more depending on the type of polish. Pretty good selection, but Head2ToeBeauty has a much wider, larger selection. Does sell other brands such as Essie and Orly, and they ARE sold at discounted rates. They sell Essie for $4.00 (retails for $8).  Orly sells at $4.25.  Able to sell collections as soon as they are released; almost always has them before stores. Shows previews of polish collections/items that are coming soon. This website seems to mostly sell nail polish/supplies with a few other products. Ships internationally. I experienced quick shipping.


I have a running wishlist of polishes that I want to get from these sites. The biggest thing about buying online is to make sure you are looking up swatches since you aren't able to see them in person. Another option is to go into a store and look at them. A great retail store to check out is Beauty Brands. They have the largest polish selection that I have found. I've gone in there a few times to look at them in person and then I was able to add it to my list or take it off if I didn't like it. But ya know...I'm also a little crazy because now since my collection is getting rather large I really have to take the time to figure out if I already have a shade close to what I'm looking at because the last thing I need is two colors that are like 1 shade apart. So you may just be able to buy and not worry about it, haha!  But really, at least looking at a swatch online will give you a better color representation to figure out if you want it or not.

Thanks for checking out my post! Much love and polish!

Know anyone in the Denver Metro Area that needs handyman, tradesman or A/V services? Have them check out www.tysdesign.com! Competitive pricing and customer service tailored specifically for you!

Disclaimer: All items shown were purchased with my own money. All opinions are my own and honest.

It's like I feel the beach on my nails!

I took these pictures this morning. Blue skies, warm weather; perfect day. Then mid-afternoon the clouds rolled in, the rain, wind, and hail came and it turned into a pain. We got 3 in. of rain in less than an hour. Flash floods, leaves everywhere and a flooded basement. Luckily Ty was able to pull a lot of the water up with a Rug Doctor. Now I'm doing my blog post because why not? Haha. It was a crazy day, that's for sure.

Since Sept. is my birth month Ulta sent me a $10 coupon. I strolled in and went straight to the nail polish. I REALLY REALLY want OPI's Alcatraz...Rocks (a liquid sand) from their new fall collection, but of course they didn't have it. I did decide though that I was going to purchase a liquid sand since the only liquid sands I have tried were Wet n Wild and they weren't the best. I've heard OPI has a great sand formula so I wanted to check it out. I decided to go with one called Tiffany Case which is a gorgeous light blue color with silver shimmer in it. 

I have to say that everyone is right. Fantastic formula. I wasn't sure if I was going to like a textured polish, but I think I do. Since it's textured, the polish was very thick which actually made it incredibly easy to apply. It dried pretty quickly too. The little tag on the bottle says not to apply a top coat. I did my mani last night and decided to leave as it with no top coat. The tag also said it would dry matte, and it did to an extent. Since it has silver glitter/shimmer/whatever it is, it was still fairly shiny. 

I wanted to see how the polish would change with different top coats so this morning I applied Seche Vite on my pinky and OPI Matte Top coat on my ring finger. I like the finish the best without any top coat. The Matte really just dulled everything and muted the silver shimmer and the Seche Vite made the silver much more noticeable and obviously made the whole nail very shiny. The top coats also made the nails feel a little smoother and not as rough. 

It's hard to see the differences in the picture, but they are much more noticeable in real life. 

My nails feel like sandpaper. I'd have to say that the only thing I'm really not liking about this is that since it is rough my polish does get caught on things which is slightly annoying. Outside of that though, I think it's great! At least now I'm not scared to purchase polishes like this. 

 Thanks for checking out my post! Much love and polish!

Know anyone in the Denver Metro Area that needs handyman, tradesman or A/V services? Have them check out www.tysdesign.com! Competitive pricing and customer service tailored specifically for you!

Disclaimer: All items shown were purchased with my own money. All opinions are my own and honest.

Shop your discount stores!

I really can't believe that my last post was three weeks ago....I've been pretty busy with my mom coming into town a lot and then I had my LA trip, but now that's all over I can get myself into a routine (hopefully)! Time is flying by right now. My ultimate goal is to get to two posts a week. Right now I'm aiming for once a week and once I can get that down then I want to get another post in. Writing the post itself isn't hard, but taking all the pics, the editing, painting my nails or anything I have to do is what takes all the time. I just need to find a balance that works for me.

Anywho.....

Go check out discount stores!! I've seen OPI, China Glaze, Orly, drugstore, and many other random brands at these places for great deals! I honestly never thought to check there for polish and/or makeup items, but they do have them! Sorry if you are thinking, "uh, duh Katie!!" and you have known this forever, but I am just joining the loop!!  Some places I've checked are Ross, TJMaxx, Big Lots, Marshall's and Gordman's. Marshall's and Gordman's selection though was pretty limited. However, you can find some great polishes at these places. Some places sell the polishes individually and other places you buy them in a pack. I'd say the only cons to shopping at discount stores is that they have very limited selection and if they are in a pack you may only like 2 colors in that set and don't want the rest. But I still think it's worth it to look into it.

And before we get into the pics, I have sad news to tell you. I broke a nail. :( Rather I bent my nail (on Brendan's head of course) and it bent so far back that some of nail came apart from my skin. Aaaaaand it had to happen the day I was planning on doing my swatches for this post (which was a little over a week ago). I did my swatches anyway but I didn't paint any on that nail because putting polish/remover on an open wound would not have been a great idea!! So you will see a really really short nail in these pics! Also, I have two tutorials I really want to do, but I'm gonna have to wait a few weeks till my nail grows back. I'm sure I'll find something to blog about until then!

All polishes have 2 coats except for one which I will mention. Overall, I loved the formulas, colors, and variety that I got in this set!

Man, I'm rambling today, see what happens when I don't post in forever, haha. :) Onto the swatches......

This is obviously what the package looks like. I loved that I could get a wide variety of the different lines! And how can you beat $5.99 for 5 bottles of polish?  You could spent $5.99 on just one of these bottles at full retail value. Great deal!

I love that Let's Dance is in a clear base, makes it much more versatile. Pretty light blue and silver chunky glitter. While I personally would never wear Duchesse Lace on it's own (since it doesn't look very good with my skin tone), I love the sandy nude color for nail designs.

I LOVE the bright green in B-right On! It's not a neon, just an in-your-face bright color. Very unique in my opinion!  While LCD is pretty, you can see how sheer it is, which was disappointing. For this swatch I used 4 coats and still didn't get much build up in color. HOWEVER, the blue duo-chrome in this polish is so pretty that it totally makes up for the sheerness. The pictures really do not do it justice. I'm not sure if you can find the HD polishes anywhere? I haven't seen them much, but also never really looked for them either. 

This is such a pretty color! Chocolate shimmery brown is the best way to describe it. With fall coming up too, I think this would be a great color to wear. Loved the formula on this and may have to try some more from the insta-dri line. My only complaint is that the brush is wide and the neck of the bottle is narrow (see pic). I felt like I didn't have much room to move the brush around.

 Thanks for checking out my post! Much love and polish!

Know anyone in the Denver Metro Area that needs handyman, tradesman or A/V services? Have them check out www.tysdesign.com! Competitive pricing and customer service tailored specifically for you!

Disclaimer: All items shown were purchased with my own money. All opinions are my own and honest.

Pop Art Craze!

I have been wanting to do this post for like two weeks now and I was so worried that you wouldn't be able to buy these anymore, but I've still seen them at Walgreens, so yay! If you want to go buy them you can. While I was in NM visiting my parents my mom and I went to K-Mart and I was scoping out the nail polish and makeup and then just randomly saw these babies and was so excited to see them! These are the Wet n Wild Limited Edition Pop Art Craze nail polishes. They came out with 6 polishes and 6 eye shadow trios. I picked up some of the eye shadows too (but got those when I got back into town at Walgreens) they are really bright colors and Wet n Wild has AMAZING eye shadows and they are so inexpensive. I picked up 4 different nail polish colors at K-Mart.. One color was already sold out and the last color was white, and I didn't feel like it was anything special (not too keen on white polishes). Luckily for me though when I came back to town they had the other color so I picked up 5 out of the 6 colors. (The last color is at the bottom of the pics since I had already taken pics while I was in NM.) They only cost $.99/ea (and sometimes cheaper if they are on sale!) so there is no reason you shouldn't go get you some! :)

I want to start by saying how AMAZINGLY AMAZING the formulas are on these polishes. The polishes themselves are the Wild Shine line and I have previously never tried this line from WnW.  It's hard to believe that these are only $1 a piece because the quality is so amazing. The formula is so creamy, forgiving, easy to apply and fun to work with. The formula was the same for all polishes. I was so impressed with them that I went a purchased a few from their permanent line and the formula is just as amazing. You can check out the different colors from the Wild Shine line HERE but the color swatches aren't very true to color. You can go to Wal-Mart, Walgreens or K-Mart to check out the regular line in person. Don't think Wal-Mart ever gets the LE stuff, I would start with Walgreens. I've found them at multiple locations.

All colors have 2 coats and no top coat. It is incredible how shiny these are on their own. There is one pic I took in the shade and my nails are so shiny you can see my reflection in them! I was very impressed with how these look with no top coat.

Also, I have to say how in love I am with the pics that come from my camcorder. The pic below shows you the same pic taken with my digital camera and my camcorder. Neither picture has ANY editing done to it except for adding the text. The digital does okay, but you can really see how much brighter and vibrant (and truer to color) the camcorder pic is. You can even see how beautiful the reflection of light showed up!  Pretty sure I'll hardly be using my regular camera at all anymore. The ONLY downfall to using the camcorder is that since it's HD and designed for video it's all in 16:9 format which can be a little awkward for taking pics, but I'll figure it out.

I love these colors!

After painting these I thought they might be good colors to try with my white crackle. I really had to play with the crackle to figure out the best way to apply it, but I think they turned out somewhat okay with these colors. I'm still not a fan at all of the white crackle from China Glaze and it was a nightmare to get it to crackle right and look good. I don't think I'll use that polish much. Formula is lumpy and it still gets two big thumbs down from me! I am so glad I only paid like $1.30 for the bottle....

Not sure why the light/sky blue color is called TEAL Slowly and See since it's not teal at all, but whatevs.... I guess they figure they can call it whatever they want! This light blue though is my favorite out of all the colors. It's so pretty on my nails!

Thanks for checking out my post! Much love and polish!

Know anyone in the Denver Metro Area that needs handyman, tradesman or A/V services? Have them check out www.tysdesign.com! Competitive pricing and customer service tailored specifically for you!

Disclaimer: All items shown were purchased with my own money. All opinions are my own and honest.

Hot & Spicy

I have been so busy and haven't posted anything! Shame on me! I've taken tons of pics and have lots of posts to do, but haven't sat down to do any of them. I need to fix that!

Today is just a quick post about a color that I am in love with. I feel it deserves it's own post because I think the color is really unique and would compliment most people.

This particular mani I did while I was out of town and I think I took literally 30+ pictures of this color. My camera would NOT pick the color up right. It kept showing more red or more orange or darker and I was getting quite frustrated. A random thought popped in my head and I remembered that I could take pictures with my camcorder. I then also remembered that Ty had told me that the camera had X.V. color (which is just fancy words for saying that the camera has a wider color spectrum so it will pick up images truer to color). I took it outside and BINGO! almost perfect color. I'm so glad I know that now!  My digital camera does pretty good most of the time, but I do have to say that I think these pictures came out so much better! I may just start using my camcorder all the time.

So by the time that amazing thought came to me I had already had my mani on for about 5 days so I have tip wear and it doesn't look so fresh, but you can still see how pretty the color is!

Formula on this polish was awesome. Smooth, easy to work with application and a creamy texture. Color was opaque with one coat, but two really smoothed out the polish. OPI did a great job with this polish!

Disclaimer: All items shown were purchased with my own money. All opinions are my own and honest.