Nail Art: Thanksgiving!

Today is Thanksgiving! I hope everyone gets the opportunity to spend some time relaxing and enjoying the company of family this holiday. I love Thanksgiving, for me, it kicks off the Christmas season, but more importantly it gets me thinking about what I have to be thankful for. One of my favorite memories of Thanksgiving was when I studied abroad. The American students made Thanksgiving dinner for all of our European friends. It was so fun to share our tradition with our study abroad family!

On to the nails! With all the festivities, I didn't have much time to think up what I wanted to do, so I decided to try one of MissJenFabulous' designs. It is a little turkey on the ring finger with random feathers on the other nails. I think my turkey looks a little alien-like, but we'll just go with it.

 

What I liked most about this design was actually be base color and the feathers. The base is OPI Tickle My France-y, which I have had for a while, but never tried. I hate that, when I have an amazing polish on hand but somehow I neglect it. I am thankful I have Tickle My France-y! I hope you all have a lovely Thanksgiving!! Enjoy your turkey and pumpkin pie!

Tutorial: Applying Nail Suds

I just bought a package of silver and gold nail studs from Amazon for a great deal, purchased here. It took a while for them to arrive, and in that time I contemplated how to go about applying nail studs. I heard that you could use top coat or nail glue, but seeing as I don't own nail glue, I wanted to try top coat first. Turns out, it works great. I wanted to share a little tutorial to show new nail stud users like me how I did it. 

 

 1. Supplies: Top Coat, Nail Studs, and Tweezers

2. Start with a base color of your choice, here I am sporting La Moss

3. Apply top coat to the one finger you want to work on first

4. Apply studs in whatever design you like using your tweezers to your wet top coat

5. Add another layer of top coat over your stud design

6. Follow steps 2-5 for the rest of your nails!

So simple, but it adds such a great dramatic effect to your look! I love the way it instantly adds a little edge to your nails. Normally I wouldn't wear as many as I did in the first picture, but I do like a little hardware accent. What do you think? Will you be buying some nail studs in the future?

Swatch and Review of butter LONDON: La Moss

Today I have butter LONDON's La Moss for your viewing pleasure! This beauty came in my Ipsy bag a couple of months ago. It is a half size sample, but the brush and quality are perfect. La Moss is what I would call an oxblood color, which translates to a brown tinted dark vampy red. This is a jelly, which means I had to apply several layers for it to be opaque. Below I actually applied 4 layer, but I went a little crazy, 3 is just fine.

These pictures were without top coat! It applies so evenly and dries so glossy, I almost don't want to add a top coat! I love this polish. I found absolutely no faults in it. I love the way it applies, I love the color, I love the fact that it is a jelly, I love the quality. For real, I love it. One of the best nail polishes I have gotten in my beauty subscription bags ever. The many layers weren't a problem for me, but if you are only a fan of one coaters, this one isn't for you. I will say though, the polish dries really quickly. Highly recommended and if you are lacking an oxblood in your polish collection, I would go for La Moss.

Nail Art: Catching Fire Nails

I feel terrible, I have been neglecting my nail community here. It has been five days since I last posted, can you believe it? Work has been crazy lately, which makes it difficult to publish blog posts. I promise, today's post will be worth the wait. For #nailartnov the theme for Day 22 was "Catching Fire" for the premier of the movie Hunger Games: Catching Fire. I read all the books after I saw the first movie, so, needless to say I was really excited for this challenge. Some of you know, last year China Glaze came out with a Hunger Games collection, two of the polishes I used here to create my Catching Fire look. I used Smoke and Ashes as the base color and the top gradient color. I used Riveting as the orange gradient color. I sponged on the two colors over a layer of Smoke and Ashes and it worked really well. I also finally got my order of nail studs, so I was able to use those for this design!

What do you think? I wore these for the movie, which felt really special. I loved the design, I did notice that the polish chipped really quickly, which was not cool. Maybe I just had too many layers. For those of you who have the China Glaze Hunger Games nail polish and the new Cover Girl Hunger Games nail polish, which collection do you prefer? Do you know of a difference in quality? I love the HG collection from China Glaze. I loved what they did with their collection, I was a little ticked that they weren't doing the polish this go around and haven't picked up any Cover Girl because I was protesting. Let me know if you like it though, I am always a fan of good polish finds! Hope you like this design, I will try not to neglect the blog so much anymore! I am planning a tutorial soon, so stay tuned!

Swatch and Review of Revlon Parfumerie: Autumn Spice

I love fall! I am one of those people who want to pumpkin spice everything! Pumpkin spice lattes, pumpkin spice brownies, pumpkin spice candles and now pumpkin spice nails! Revlon recently came out with Parfumerie- a new line of scented polish. I saw this at my local Fred Meyer on sale for $3.99, so I had to try it! Autumn Spice is a brown based polish with orange and red toned flakie glitters. Take a look:

I love the subtle flakie glitter in this polish! The formula was amazing! I only needed two coats, and it was wonderfully self leveling. I really liked the way this polish applied. However, the selling point of this polish is the scent. I made the mistake of inhaling the polish fumes by trying to smell it from the bottle- not recommended! The fragrance starts to come out as the polish dries. I am not sure if you are or aren't meant to add a top coat, but instinctively I added a top coat. It had a great scent after everything dried. It reminded me of a pumpkin spice candle more than a baked good or a drink. I was really happy that the scent was good and it seemed to work. The problem was that halfway through day two, which was really less than 24 hours later, I couldn't smell it anymore. Now, after a full day of work I can only catch a faint scent coming off of my nails, but not even enough to really notice. I think this polish fails in that sense. If you are looking for a really strongly scented polish that lasts, this isn't it, but it has a beautiful color and an amazing formula which makes it worth buying!

Nail art: Black and Red Chevron Tips

If you read my last post about the Maybelline Color Show Brocades Collection, you know that I wasn't a fan of Embellished Blue. I did, however, decide to try out another shade:Crushed Crimson. This time, I wasn't disappointed. The polish is still really thick because of the dense glitter, but it was easier to work with. I really like how there is a mixture of shapes of glitter in this polish, especially the random larger hex glitter.

I used two careful layers of Crushed Crimson and then free hand painted chevron tips in two layers of Rimmel Lasting Finish PRO in Black Satin. Really simple. I did this while cooking dinner, which is something I don't recommend, but was doable. I really liked that Crushed Crimson was less textured than Embellished Blue. It is a great Christmas color, and I will definitely be using this again closer to the holidays! Hope you like it!

Nail Art: Glitter, Stripes and Flowers

Have you noticed how having different polish on each nail is becoming more and more popular? I wasn't sure I liked the trend until I saw a design inspired by Amkuch15 on instagram. Her nails are really popular on instagram, and I've enjoyed seeing her designs. The design I have for you today is inspired by her with a little twist. I think these colors really go well together! I used China Glaze Fancy Pants (blurple) and I'm not Lion (gold/silver) and Sally Hansen White On.

I'm not Lion is a polish I just got, and I have to say, I love it! This design is pretty easy. For my ring finger I painted it with I'm not Lion, let it dry then applied striping tape and pained White On over it. I removed the tape right away and then with a dotting tool created the flower. This isn't really fall/winter, but I needed a brighter color on my nails. So fun! I hope you like it! Thanks for reading!

Nail Art: White Roses

Today I have my creation for #nailartnov challenge: black and white. I was actually really excited about this challenge! I really like black and white looks, because it is really about the design rather than the color. I had a hard time deciding on what to do, but I settled on something I had seen and wanted to recreate for a while. I was inspired by Centralparkkitty and Nail_Art_N3rd on instagram for their rose designs in color, so I wanted to try it in just pure white. Here is what I came up with:

I used Rimmel Lasting Finish PRO in Black Satin for the background. Rimmel Lasting Finish PRO is my favorite drugstore polish and am so sad it is being discontinued! I need to stock up before they are all gone. Anyway, for the white roses, I used a dotting tool to add my layers and I used Sally Hansen White On. I don't know if you can see it well, but I also painted some leaves in a grey/green, OPI Nein!Nein!Nein! OK Fine! but it kind of blends in with the background. This design really didn't take me too long at all. I want to recreate this in color soon, but for now I really like the simple black and white. What do you think?

Swatch and Review of Maybelline Color Show: Embellished Blue (Brocades)

First of all, Happy Veteran's Day! I greatly value our veterans and hope that they all feel how very much appreciated and honored they are today and everyday. Our country would not be the great country it is without our service men and women!

I have something very rare for you today: a nail polish I don't like. I know, you're thinking, how is this possible? Well, it happened. Not only did I dislike this polish, but I disliked it so much, I returned it. Yeah, that bad. It looked so beautiful in the bottle, but I soon found out it was not what I expected. The polish I am talking about is Maybelline Color Show Embellished Blue from the Brocades collection. I was on the hunt for Silver Swank because I saw a friend wearing it and it is gorgeous! I ran to my local Rite Aid looking for it, but sadly they ran out. Lucky for me, I found this gorgeous blue color! I loved it and was so excited about it. That is, until I got home and put it on.

 

Stock photo from Maybelline

As you can see from these horrible pictures this polish was really textured. It looks kind of smooth though, right? Yeah, that is under THREE coats of Seche Vite AND a coat of matte top coat. This is pathetic! I used only one coat of the actual color and most of my nail here is top coat. It wasn't advertised as a textured polish and some of the others in the collection are not textured, so that was a definite surprise. Another surprise was that the color didn't look as gorgeous on the nail. I should have taken a photo with just the regular top coat, but I wanted this color off my nail as soon as possible. I had hoped the polish would be really sparkly and have a great dimension of glitter since there was a good mix of glitter, but I was again, disappointed. The color wasn't truly all blue either. I felt like there were some green flecks, which wouldn't be bad, but was definitely more pronounced on the nail than in the bottle. The worst part was that it was difficult to apply! You would think with everything that put me off the polish it would at least be easy to apply. Nope, not the case. I only did one coat, but that one coat was terrible. The small glitter clumped together so badly I thought I got a bad batch. It was so clumpy going on, I wasn't even going to try to apply it on the rest of my nails. So, if you were thinking about getting this color, save yourself a headache and $3.99. It wouldn't be worth it if it was free. Highly recommend that you do not buy this polish. Now if I could just find Swanky Silk... Thanks for reading my little rant today.

Nail Art: Maroon and Silver Stripes

I have been wanting to perfect the nail striping tape technique. Every time I have tried recently, I wasn't completely happy with it. This time, I think I pulled it off. For #nailartnov the challenge was maroon for day 7. I'm a little late posting this, but I hope you like it! I used Zoya Trixie as the silver base and Zoya Payton from their new winter collection as the overlay.

I let the silver base dry first and then added striping tape in a pattern over the silver. I added Payton over the striping tape and made sure to remove the tape while the polish is still wet. Added top coat and that's it! I have some fun ideas in my head for Christmas nail art with this technique!  I really love both of these Zoya polishes. They both applied beautifully with the perfect consistency. I highly recommend Zoya! Thanks for reading!

Nail Art: Fox for Nail Art November

Have you seen this YouTube sensation- Ylvis "The Fox" or "What Does the Fox Say?"? I hadn't seen the video until today, you need to check it out! This month I am again participating in a nail art challenge. Day 4 was Fox and everyone had been tagging their fox nails with what does the fox say? I had to google it and now it has been stuck in my head all day! On to the nail art, I wasn't really sure of how to paint a fox, but I saw a few tutorials and this is what I came up with:

At first, I did a fox on all my nails, but I didn't like the way that looked. I swapped that out for the large polka dots and I like this a lot better. I used a larger dotting tool and a striping brush for this design. I painted a base of white (Sally Hansen- White On) and for the fox, painted the lower half of my nail orange (Essie- Meet Me at Sunset). I added the ears with a fine brush, dotted the eyes and nose and added the whiskers with the striping brush. What do you think? I think it is cutesy! I've done two cutesy designs recently and I think I need to move to edgy to balance it out now. Do you participate in the monthly nail art challenges? I do as much as I can, I missed "movember" on the first but I plan on doing the next one for the 7th, which is maroon. If you participate I'd love to see your designs on Instagram (@HandtasticIntentions). Thanks for reading!

Swatch and Review of Sephora by OPI: Leotard Optional

Hello! I hope you all had a fun and safe Halloween! No dressing up for me this year, but I did watch some scary movies! Today I have Sephora by OPI: Leotard Optional. SOPIs are being discontinued from Sephora to be replaced with the new Sephora X line. I snapped up a bunch of SOPIs so that I could take advantage of a great deal. I bought several from Hautelook for $3 each! Leotard Optional was one of them. I have been searching for the perfect nude for my skin tone, which had proven to be a bit difficult. My skin is darker and tanner than usual nude polishes and most of the time they end up looking too yellow toned or the color suddenly looks sickly grey on my hands. Luckily, I think Leotard Optional may be the nude for me! I figured my nude would have to be a little darker for it to blend well and I think I found my match. It is a somewhat mocha toned brown-tan. In some light it looked a little pink leaning, but it was really nice. 

You all know I don't normally wear such subdued colors, so it was a bit difficult to get used to this. I really like it though! This was only two coats, and it applied beautifully. No streakiness or patchiness to speak of, and it wasn't too thick or tacky either. Quite enjoyable to work with. I have noticed all SOPIs are a perfect consistancy. Make me wonder why they are discontinuing the line. I heard some complaints that it doesn't last that long. I can't really speak to that since I change my polish so often! I heard the new line is supposed to have an amazing formula, but it is also higher priced than SOPI. Originally SOPI was $9.50 each but the new Formula X is $12.50. Whatever the reason, I am very happy with the ones I own and am sad to see the line go. If you have the opportunity to get some, scoop it up now! Thanks for reading!