Hi my fellow polish friends, Today I have some swatches of the nails that I wore during the week ending in November 4, 2017. I've been doing these videos on my YouTube channel, when I got the idea to post them here as well. I can't promise that I will post full collection reviews, although I'm not ruling that out either! Let's get into the nails! Friday 10/27-Sunday 10/29 Polka Dots Nails-Essie Petal Pushers (a dusty grey lavender cream) with OPI Manicurist of Seville (plum cream)
Monday 10/30 OPI Krona-logical Order (greyed out brown cream, OPI Iceland Collection, great formula, 2 coats)
Tuesday 10/31-Halloween Zoya Storm (black cream with scattered holographic, great formula, 2 coats)
Hi friends. Long time no talk. I'll be honest, this year has been a little rough for me. I feel like I'm at a point in my life where I don't know myself anymore. I'm struggling with this, knowing who I am, knowing what I like, where I think I should be at 30. It's been hard for me, and I'm not really sure how to get over it. There's one thing I do know though...I love polish. Today I have a quick and simple swatch of a new polish by OPI for Fall 2017. OPI Less is Norse is considered the star shade of the new Fall collection, it's what the ads have been focusing on...and for good reason. Less is Norse is a really interesting shade. To me, it's a dusty denim blue cream. I thought it would be darker but it's not too dark that you can't tell that it's blue.
I wanted to take a picture again my dark jeans so you can really tell the blue in the polish. The formula was fantastic, two easy coats. One thing that I noticed was how shiny the finish was. Even without topcoat it was incredibly shiny. With topcoat above, you can see my camera reflection in it! I do have a really glittery polish up next, I'm super excited about it. Nice talking with you, I am super tempted to just buy every OPI Fall shade :) Did you pick any up?
Hi everyone. It's been quite a week around here. Work's been busy and it was the hubby's birthday on Wednesday. I'm also in week 4 of bronchitis, which I've never had, but has really been wearing me down. Although today I realized that I'm finally starting to get my sense of smell back....after a month. I'll take it though! Today I have a new polish to me, that has become an instant favorite. I've had it for awhile but never tried it...it'll be a regular from now on. I'm talking about OPI Let's Be Friends from the Hello Kitty Collection. I picked up almost all of the polishes from this collection but few were standouts to me. Let's Be Friends is a pale, pale baby pink; almost like a white with a few drops of pink in it. Now normally pastels are known for bad formulas and chipping badly, but I'm happy to report that this was neither.
Above is a picture in natural light. The formula was surprisingly good, needing only two coats for full opacity. It was really easy to work with!
Overall I'm very pleased with this polish. It held up really well, especially for a pastel. Definitely a new favorite for me! Have you tried this polish, what did you think of it?
Planning has really become my current creative outlet. I've been into
Erin Condren planners for a few years now but have finally reached
planner peace with the Erin Condren Horizontal Neutral. I've tried all
three setups, the vertical layout, horizontal layout, and hourly
layout. The horizontal layout just works for me. I would love to share
my spreads each week, for the week before, to show everything fully
completed and filled out, with much more detail than is shown in
Instagram. This last week, February 27th through March 5th, is a super girly
planner week. I got this kit from The Glam Planner on etsy and
immediately used it. It's a pink princess theme with accents of black
in the dragons, crown, and castle. It does have accents of red, a color
that doesn't thrill me in the slightest, but pink definitely is the
overwhelming force in this spread.
I stopped posting my filled out spreads on instagram for privacy
reasons, but this way works much better. This week wasn't too eventful,
but we did travel up to Chicago over the weekend for the hubby's
birthday. We got to spend time with his family on Saturday and had a
fun pizza party at this brother's.
I like to think of each day in four sections, just like the vertical
layout without the separation. The left column is usually reserved for
work and one really important thing going on in the day. The second
column is reserved for my to-do list. I've really been drawn to simple
checklists instead of the checklist boxes. The third section is for
appointments or other semi-big things going on during the day and the
fourth section has the full boxes.
Clearly I like a good mix of white space although I've found that too
much white space also bothers me....because that makes some kind of
weird sense. I'll usually fill out too much white space with decorate
stickers if the day hasn't been too eventful.
Overall I really like the look of this spread. I can't predict if I'll
like the week until the end when everything is filled out. Glam Planner
kits are historically some of my favorite spreads, although she does
seem to use alot of red in her stickers, especially in the monthly
mystery kits.
What was your planner theme for last week? Did you like how it turned out?
Birthdays are about beginnings, so they say. It's relevant, I promise.
This year has been one of big changes for me. Some good, some bad, but
the major realization happened the other day, as my husband stood in
the living room and I was upset and frustrated. He said the truest
thing I had ever heard, but never realized. "You are a non-traditional
person," he said. In my 30 years on this Earth, not once had I ever
stopped to realize it. Since then, that phrase remains a daily reminder
for me. It means different things...that I need to stop and accept
myself for who I am, that I need to be positive in my life instead of
negative, and to stop giving in to what I think I should be doing and
instead doing things that I want to do. I'm living my life for me now,
so I'm going to pursue things that I want to do.
This weekend we celebrated my wise husband's birthday, even though it
isn't until next week. We visited his family in Chicago and had a
low-key party on Saturday night. As we ventured home I shut my eyes and
just started thinking. I want to be positive and creative in my life
and one thing that I've truly missed is writing. I laid in the car and thought about what my
new niche could be. And then I remembered....I'm non-traditional, so
I'm going to write about what I want.
So here's to new beginnings, new interests, and a new positive outlook.
Things won't always be perfect (see Happy Birthbay above), but that's
what makes it interesting.
Wow. A year and a half later. Things are very different in my life, which is to be expected. However, I miss my nails, I miss writing, and I miss my online friends. I can't say that I know exactly what this blog will become, but I just know that I miss it. So to come back, I'd like to show what my current nails look like. I have a different job now and it is really rough on my nails. I do have acrylics on, but eventually I would like to transition back to natural nails....it's just impossible right now with the amount of breakage and peeling that occurs at work. Even with the acrylics, I still paint my nails every few days. Here's what I'm sporting right now-
Right now I'm wearing a very spring-y combo of OPI Do You Lilac It? with ring and thumb accent nails with Nicole by OPI Be Awesome. Lilac It is a very cool-toned lilac purple. Normally I don't care for purples on my nails but this polish feels fresh, soft, and pretty. It applies in two easy coats. I used two coats of glitter which I really like. Be Awesome is a pastel combination of diamond shaped glitters, and it's one of my favorite glitters to add to many different polish colors. Here is Lilac It on it's own.
Clearly I'll need to get back on the cuticle oil bandwagon. Let's just see where this little blog goes. I might talk about different things that I'm loving right now, planners, crafting, etc. It feels good to be back.
Wow! Hello there. Clearly I haven't written anything in awhile and I haven't meant to but tonight I was just feeling it. Maybe it was because I had a terrible day at work and I was feeling chatty perhaps? Either way, I wanted to share my polish with you and I really like the idea of sharing untried polishes. Maybe it will only be every once and a while, we'll see. Let's get to it! Today's very first untried is Essie Sexy Divide. I have definitely not been into Summer polishes this year...it's pretty much just been nudes, metallics, and pastels for me. We had a nice week of 70's this week and I just went for the vampy polishes. I reached for Essie's Sexy Divide, which originally comes from the Winter 2008 collection. It's a dark, cool-toned shimmery purple, which is almost black and sometimes a bit blue looking.
The formula was really great on this polish, I had zero formula problems. I used two easy coats with one coat of Seche Vite topcoat for my swatches, which are also taken after a full days wear of this polish.
Overall I'm quite pleased with this vampy little number, although I know I'll have to keep the vampy nails to a minimum next week because we're going to be in the 90's...yikes! Do you own this polish? What do you think of it?
Hi polish friends. I hope everyone is doing well. Long time no write here but I've pretty much been doing daily videos on my YouTube channel here. A few days ago I was contacted by Royal Caribbean cruise lines because they wanted to use a swatch photo of mine. Well, I wanted to show it off and I thought the concept was really cool. They wrote an entire article about matching your manicures to your type of cruise. I've been on many of cruise, including a cruise to Alaska for my honeymoon. So I just wanted to share the article with you guys because I'm proud of it :D
Here's my picture below which was a swatch of Ciate Pool Party chosen for a cruise to Aruba. I have been to Aruba and I do love snorkeling, although scuba diving would be amazing as well!
If you'd like to check out the full article, just click here.
Hi everyone, happy Friday! I can't believe we are right in the middle of February already. Today I have the perfect Valentine's nail polish to share with you. If you are a long-time follower of my blog, you'll know that I am not a red lover whatsoever. So when Valentine's Day rolls around, I am all about the pink. I wear pink, I will usually be sporting some kind of rose gold makeup, and you know it's going to be about the pink polish. Today I have this bright pink number from Live, Love, Polish to share with you that is the ultimate hot pink for the day of love tomorrow. Seche is a brand that I've heard of before, mostly from the topcoat, but I was given the opportunity to try out a polish from the line. I of course went for a traditional cream (they always steal my heart...pun intended) and this one blew me away. Seche Rendezvous is a hot pink cream and it applied like a dream! It was seriously a one coat wonder. I have absolutely no complaints. The color was stunning and the formula was a dream to work with.
I'm sure many of you have heard of the wonder that is Seche Vite Top Coat but if you haven't, it's definitely one of the better topcoats out there. Seche Vite is high up on the list of my topcoats because it dries pretty much instantly and it has that mega-shine factor. It's also the only topcoat I use when topping nail art because it doesn't smear the designs. My only negative with this topcoat is that it doesn't really work with my body chemistry and tends to chip pretty quickly on me. That doesn't happen for everyone though.
Overall I was really impressed with my first try with Seche nail polish and Seche Vite continues to be my go-to topcoat for nail art. Have you tried Seche brand nail color before? You can find both products on the Live, Love, Polish website here. Happy Valentine's Day :) *Products in this post were received for review in exchange for my honest opinion.
This post is probably a surprise right? Me too :) Maybe I just needed a break, to vent, not sure but I'm ready to get back into the blogging game. I think my old schedule is too much pressure but I think I can manage a few posts a week. The comments were so heartfelt and nice and meant so much to me. So today I present some OPI holiday swatches I've been holding onto. I have the entire collection but it didn't thrill me so I haven't worn it all. I also want to not hold myself to some weird pressure standard so I'll just show you the swatches I have, if I get to the rest I get to them! Red Fingers & Mistletoes- First up, is a red with gold shimmer. Normally I would hate this color of polish but for some reason I tried it out right away and LOVED it. For some reason it was so warm and cozy and I loved the look of the shimmer. The formula was good with two easy coats below.
Cinnamon Sweet-
Next up, another red. I wasn't thrilled with the prospect of so many reds (even though this happens every year), but again, I really liked this one. This red to me was a little bit cooler and deeper than a traditional red, which I tend to not go for. The formula was really nice and covered evenly with two coats.
Unfrost My Heart-
Last of this swatch trio is a silver foil. I was disappointed because we've seen this polish multiple times before from OPI, especially in the past year or two. There wasn't anything different about this one, just a standard silver foil. The formula was good in two easy coats.
So overall, as surprising as it is, I really liked the two reds so far and I really could have skipped on another silver foil. What are your thoughts?
Well well well, long time no see. I didn't mean for this to happen so let me explain (briefly, I promise). The weekend before the week of Christmas I got insanely sick, 103 degree fever, delirious for the entire weekend. I ended up having a really nasty strain of the flu also with a really bad strain of the stomach flu---at the same time! For nine days I didn't work, I couldn't keep down anything. I've never been more sick in my entire life. I didn't even think I was going up for the holidays. I lost a ton of weight, could barely stand, and was just surviving on small sips of water basically. So that's where I've been. Eventually I had to go to the doctor to get medicine just to keep from throwing up because every smell or commercial with food was making me sick. Even after all this time, my stomach is still healing, I had a little sickness relapse after Christmas. Like I said, I didn't mean for any of this to happen. So today I have a very sad first offering. I had never done a pond manicure and it didn't turn out how I wanted. I started with three coats of OPI Do You Think I'm Tex-y? which is a jelly magenta pink. I wanted to go in the direction of Valentine's day so I created some freehand black hearts in a pattern. I think the black was too dark to create the pond effect but it was my first try :/
I'll slowly be coming back, even if it's just Tuesdays for now :) Welcome to our newest Twinsie members as well! Thanks for sticking with me everyone, you guys are the best :)
Hi there everyone, welcome to Friday. I finally dragged myself out of bed and into work this morning. Basically it's Christmas party day at work and I didn't want to abandon my friend, otherwise I'm not so sure if I'd really be here. The stomach bug continues on! Today I have some swatches of OPI's special holiday topcoat that was recently released. I haven't really been painting my nails but when I have they stay on for five days usually. So, that means I'm slowly working my way through this ginormous collection :)
OPI Don't Speak is a special 18K Gold topcoat with gold flakies and gold shimmer. It comes in a heavy duty box (see at the end of the post), which to me is much nicer than the last silver topcoat that came out in the Mariah Carey collection. This polish looks similar to OPI Man with the Golden Gun which came out in the James Bond collection but that was just a hair before my blogging started so I don't have it to compare to. For my swatches, I used one coat over OPI Red Fingers and Mistletoes, which is a shimmery red from the holiday collection. I loved how the flakies looked with the addition of the shimmer because it gave it extra dimension. Admittedly I wasn't a big fan of the last silver topcoat but I like this one much better.
I did really enjoy the look and the formula on this polish, the really big downside is the pricetag though. I believe this polish retails for $30 in stores, although a friend was kind enough to pick it up for me at a beauty supply for half the price. Even at that it still stung a little but I think the cost was worth it on this one. What do you guys think of this polish? Will you be splurging on it?
Hi there everyone, I hope the week is going well for you. I had another flare up of whatever stomach thing has been going around. Apparently it has been making its way around the office as well...gross! As promised, today I have my most request video, how I shape my square nails. It's the entire process from start to finish plus the two ways that I remove glitter polish. Hope you enjoy!
Hey guys, just a quick update. I was so excited this morning because I all set to finally be back and I had my most requested video set to go up....how I shape my nails. I go to publish it this morning and it was corrupted when it was uploading last night, of course. It will go up tomorrow now but I just wanted to let you guys know that I'm back. Last week I had the worst food poisoning/stomach flu of life. It was like a continuation or a second round of the one that took me out Thanksgiving week, except worse and my husband had it too. I made it through work on Wednesday and then Thursday and Friday we were both miserable at home. I have some catching up to do but that's life. It will also be a funny week because I'll only be working two days and then I'll be up in Chicago helping my family move Wednesday through Friday for their move to Iowa which I am all too bitter about. I guess it wouldn't be the holidays without some snags and craziness ;)
Hi there polish friends. Hopefully the week is going well for you. Same old same old here. Today I have two more OPIs to share with you. I'm working on swatching a bunch of collections right now so I thought I'd throw in some random polishes I had on hand :) First up is Can You Tapas This? This polish is one of my first polishes, even before starting my blog, and it remains one of my favorite colors. It's a maroon with a touch of brown, cream formula. I used two easy coats with topcoat below.
Second is one of my favorite opaque neutrals, Did You 'Ear About Van Gogh, which is a cool-toned nude with almost a taupe hue to it. Again this one was easy to apply, two coats below with topcoat.
So there's a look at two of my favorite polishes, do you own either of these?
