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NOTD: Neon purple and a reminder of why I hate stamping…

So the night before last I asked my Facebook fans if I should do neon purple or neon pink nails and everyone suggested purple!

Guys…you have great taste 😀 Sadly the camera doesn’t quite capture the true color of this polish. I got it in a swap but I’m pretty sure it came in this mini set as the other color I got looks like the second color in the pack. It’s not Pucci-licious though, it’s WAY darker, so I’m stumped as to what color it actually is. OH WELL. It’s gorgeous!

When doing this manicure I was reminded of why despite my love of stamping I do it so rarely. I tried probably 4 or 5 different times to get ANY of my stamps to work. The polish I used has worked great in the past so I don’t know if maybe it’s just too dang hot (it is for me, I know that) or if the polish has dried up too much, or maybe my stamps just sucked. In the end I had to totally take off and redo my accent nail 3 times, and even the stamp I used in the end didn’t transfer perfectly so I stamped over it again. It’s still not perfect, but I covered the biggest mistake with a lovely rhinestone so all is well!

Today I went swimming and the sunlight shows the true color a lot better. I also got a shot of the iridescent stamping on my nail!!

 

  • Color Club Poptastic purple
  • Sally Hansen Silver Chrome
  • Sally Hansen Platinum
  • BM212
  • Konad m60
  • nail crystal
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NOTD: Trying to use up an original Zelda prototype, and possibly drive myself insane

In the process of planning my Legend of Zelda collection I mixed up preliminary prototypes using craft glitter, which does NOT hold up in nail polish base. Over time it bleeds out and now I have a whole set of 12 minis at varying degrees of bleeding. Some of them are so bled-out that the original color of the glitter is completely gone and they’ve turned silver with a colored base (sometimes brown due to the original glitter mix, ew) but this color has maintained its original slight yellow tinge. This is 4 coats of Prototype Prelude of Light, it’s NOT going to be fun to take off 😉

Being a frugal lacquerista I can’t justify throwing this stuff away!! And so I’ve decided to work my way through them and try to empty out at least one bottle in the foreseeable future. I absolutely failed at doing even a single manicure for last week’s theme so I’m just counting last week as a break, I’m re-starting week 12 and hoping to ACTUALLY do some stamping this week!

The purple I used is Color Club Electronica, I got it on Copious for just a penny after I applied my credits (this has been an AMAZING way to get through no-buy months) but haven’t had the chance to try it out yet. I thought it paired nicely with my base color and it’s even prettier than I thought!! I think my next mani will have this as its base 🙂

  • Kyoti’s Nails Prelude of Light (original prototype)
  • Color Club Electronica
  • MASH18

And just for fun, I wanted to show how drastically a jelly sandwich can change a glitter, so I did my first jelly sandwich(ish)!

Un-sandwiched; half-sandwiched; full-sandwiched!

With a normal jelly sandwich you use a jelly polish as a base as well as on top, but I didn’t want my nail line to show so I used an opaque red base.

  • CoverGirl Cherry Brandy
  • Love & Beauty silver glitter
  • Wild n Crazy Pierre
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NOTD: Blue color blocking

I’m sorry this post is a little rushed but I have SO much to work on right now, I’m working hard on moving my blog over to a REAL website so that I can integrate everything (blog, shop, whatever) into one place.

Today’s NOTD is another entry into a nail art contest. I love nail art contests, they give me the inspiration I’m often lacking! This theme was color blocking and it gave me an excellent opportunity to use my striping tape for the first time. I did the different colors freehand then covered the dividing line with striping tape, it left me with a very neat finished product!

I’m sorry the picture isn’t very good, I just took a quick shot with my camera phone and my new phone doesn’t seem to have as good of a camera as my old one–which is really weird because this one’s an iPhone 4S, the other one was just an iPhone 4! I’m going to try to start taking pictures with my fancy-pants camera more often so you can actually get an accurate idea of what the colors look like 🙂

  • Anise Urban Jungle
  • Hema 09
  • Maybelline Denim Dash
  • Essence Blue Addicted
  • striping tape
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NOTD: Christmas in July

I spontaneously wanted to wear red nail polish today. Don’t ask me why because I have no idea. I have probably 20 pinks/reds but I wear them maybe once a month, but I can’t bear to part with most of them! I think red nail polish just makes me think of being a mom too much, which is a thought that terrifies me!!

So to break up the red, “Mom” feeling, I decided to do something fun. A blog I follow was doing a Christmas in July nail art contest and another was doing a season-inspired contest (I think a mish-mash of winter and summer counts!) and so I got my creative gears goin’. Here’s what I came up with:

And descriptions of my inspiration for each nail:

* The tinsel that continues to clog up the vacuum every. Single. Time.

* The glitter. Oh god, the glitter. Why does it never come off?!

* The Christmas tree you’ve been meaning to take down since January but have never quite gotten to.

* The re-gifted present that you can’t for the life of you imagine why Great Aunt Ethel thought you’d like it.

* The final credit card payment for your extravagant Christmas…just in time to start buying for this year!

This was tons of fun to do and I’m really glad I took the dive and participated. I generally don’t like Christmas-y stuff, but this was fun enough to make up for it! 😉

  • CoverGirl Cherry Brandy
  • Love & Beauty silver glitter
  • Wild n Crazy Pierre
  • NYC Bryant Park
  • ManGlaze Santorum
  • LA Colors silver striper
  • Orly Lucky Duck
  • Sally Hansen Green with Envy
  • China Glaze Twinkle Lights
  • striping tape
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The winners of the LGBT Pride/Support contest!

The LGBT Pride/Support contest for June was a huge success! I had 21 entries from bloggers and hobbiests (is that a word? It is now!) of all skill levels. It was fantastic seeing all the creativity and different inspiration that people used for the theme and picking just one winner from each category was so hard. I really wish I could have had everyone be a winner! (I’ve seen bloggers say that before but never really understood how true it was)

Sadly, I just can’t afford for everyone to be a winner! And so, after much careful deliberation I, my honey, and my mom have picked our favorites. There were two categories, Advanced (which will win a full-sized Pride) and Amateur (and I use that word very loosely! They will win a mini-sized Pride), and a lot of people who thought they were amateur actually ended up in the Advanced category! You all don’t give yourselves enough credit for your skills 🙂 Before I announce the winners please take a moment to look through all the entries though, there are lots of great blogs you should follow and some amazing inspiration 🙂

And so, without further ado, here they are!

Advanced

Violet S from Girls’ Night In

Violet says “My partner and I talked last night and came up with this manicure together, which is perfect considering I wanted to create a kind of tribute to us. You see, my girlfriend is a (gorgeous, sweet, funny) trans woman, and I am a bisexual cis woman. On my left hand I did a transgendered flag design with the male, female, and trans gender symbols on my three middle fingers. My right hand shows the bisexual flag with a lambda symbol on my middle finger.”

Amateur

Rose Liner of [kossori hana]

Rose says “Today, 6/23/12, is Alan Turing’s 100th birthday! I don’t normally celebrate dead people’s birthdays, but Alan Turing is one of my heroes. His work in cryptanalysis and computing is legendary. Breaking Germany’s Enigma ciphers in WWII helped the Allies win. In 1952, he was arrested and convicted of homosexuality. He was chemically castrated by the British government. In 1954, he died of cyanide poisoning – suicide is assumed, but never proven. The general public was not made aware of his amazing contributions to the world until 20 years after his death. While PM Brown apologized for his treatment in 2009, the British Government continues to refuse to issue a pardon.”

Rose blogged about this manicure here.

Lucky Duck

Since it was so hard to pick just 2 winners I decided to have a random winner from all the entries. random.org apparently loved Violet’s entry because the first number it picked was her entry, lol, but of course she couldn’t win twice! This winner will also get a mini Pride. Here’s the Lucky Duck 🙂

Brittani Wilson of Britta Rose Nails

Some of the entrants are bloggers and blogged about their manis so check out what they have to say about their entries!

Girls’ Night In

Cash on the Nail

Nails, Actually

The Not-So-Secret Life of Micheladas

JennaFroggy

Lit From Within

Jilltastic Nail Design

DIY Polish

Ink&Polish

Spellbound Nails

CreativeNailFun

[kossori hana]

Nail Polish Adventure

Britta Rose Nails

Nails by Joslyn

Glazed and Confused

Lena Loves Nails

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NOTD: I’ve been a busy blogger!

Ok, so I haven’t gotten to post a few things recently because stuff has been super crazy. Working non-stop on my rainbow skirt, learning to ride a motorcycle, and getting all the orders out from the Legend of Zelda collection. I actually went 3 or 4 days this week with totally naked nails–not even a basecoat! I was almost ashamed when I went out of the house, I tried to keep my nails out of sight, lol.

But now most of the craziness is over and hopefully I’ll be able to return to my usual posting schedule of 3 or 4 times a week 🙂 So let’s do a recap of what’s happened over the past week or so, shall we?

First, I got my prize from a flash giveaway Set in Lacquer held on Facebook as well as a few other goodies I picked up at Sally’s and from Copious.

Sally Hansen Preps’ Cool; OPI Lil’ Shooters minis; Orly Out of this World; China Glaze Smoke & Ashes; Orly Mysterious Curse (Royal Velvet re-release); nail crystals

Last week’s theme for my personal nail art challenge was Trans* pride but I didn’t get to devote nearly enough effort into it so I’ll be doing a couple more trans* pride manis soon. This was my first attempt at “Spun sugar” nails and I’m fairly pleased with it!

Finally, the Frankenbug bit me and I just had to mix up a neon green glittery polish. I added some of my loose glitter to it and came up with this, which I’m pretty pleased with! I wore it over Sally Girl Lime because I knew I couldn’t stand to remove 3 layers of glitter polish 😉 I added the random stamp as I just had a plate swap with a friend and I thought this one was kinda funky!

  • Revlon Impulsive
  • Valmy 155
  • Valmy 156
  • Sally Hansen White On
  • Sally Girl Lime
  • Kyoti’s Nails unnamed green glitter
  • Sally Hansen Crystal Chrome
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NOTD: Link, he come to town!

Let’s start with a cute song and video, shall we?

I haven’t actually gotten the chance to try on my Legend of Zelda collection‘s final formulas–how ridiculous is that?!

I accidentally mixed up an extra Link mini so I’ve decided to keep it for myself 🙂 I’ve also had China Glaze Agro for like 2 months and haven’t used it yet even though I’ve been dying to try it on. So tonight I decided to use both of them! And boy do they look great together. Link has gold, green, brown, and blue glitter. I just love the blue since it’s such a stark contrast to the more low-key colors.

I haven’t bothered to topcoat this yet so it’s not as smooth as it could be but I’m actually not sure how long I’ll be keeping this on–I have a design I just need to try!

Click for hi-res

  • China Glaze Agro
  • Kyoti’s Nails Link