Tag: Fingernails
FABulous DRAGon
I was not too in love with my Gumby nails. Since I didn’t get to put a shiny top coat on, it was bugging the crap out of me.
Glitter fixes everything, right?
I tried a single coat of essie Luxeffects “A Cut Above” to jazz it up. The glitter looks like badass reptilian scales. Now I look like a FABulous DRAGon – like a real life version of a Drag Queen Dragon! Or that sexy lady dragon on Shrek?
Gumby?
At first I thought of green Play-Doh, but then I was like…no – Gumby!
Lily also wanted her nails done and she demanded that we match. I tried to talk her into Sinful Colors “Vintage”, but refused. She chose Funky Fingers “Oogie Boogie”, Sinful Colors “Pine Away” & “Mystery Moonshine” and China Glaze “Four Leaf Clover”. I couldn’t handle all of those together…but I picked something close.
I tried out the Sinful Colors Basecoat – it was fine. It went on smoothly and dried quickly, no complaints. I put on 2 coats of “Four Leaf Clover” and then topped with Sinful Colors “Green Ocean”.
I tried out the Sinful Colors Quick Dry…and I totally misunderstood the product I was buying. I thought it was a quick dry top coat, but it is a quick dry oil – like Julep Ta-Da! Well fuck. I already have 2 bottles of Ta-Da! and I don’t really use them. The combination REALLY needed a shiny topcoat – the flakies in “Green Ocean” sank into the polish and made the finish all cloudy. Since I had already started with the Quick Dry, I couldn’t put another top coat over it. Live and learn…
The Walking Dead
So The Walking Dead is back tonight, so I made blood-spattered Zombie Apocalypse nails for the occasion. I’m not all crazy about the show, but I do watch it fairly religiously. I’m not going to riot if they kill Daryl or anything. I will, however, riot if they cancel Talking Dead.
I used RUFFIAN “Naked” (from last month’s Birchbox) for the flesh tone. It’s the most perfect nude polish ever. It is a bit streaky in one coat, but two coats are perfect, with no visible nail line. I used Maybelline Street Art “Wild at Heart” for the blood and gore splatters. I tried a kind of splattered gradient effect by applying a second coat of “Wild at Heart” to the right side of each nail. I went back to using the Revlon Quick Dry Base and Top Coat, because they are WAY better over non sparkly glitters and polishes than the NYC.
It reminds me more of the comic book than the show…
This is Halloween
It doesn’t get any Halloween-ier than this!
Sinful Colors “Mystery Moonshine” is one of those polishes that you only set to wear once a year – or maybe twice – it has a kind of Mardi Gras thing going. It’s a metallic green, purple and orange jagged glitter in a clear base. I carefully chose my solid colors to match up with their respective glitter colors – Sinful Colors “Pine Away” for the green, Sinful Colors “Amethyst” for the purple and Julep “Zoe” for the orange. (I felt naughty mixing brands, but “Zoe” was just too perfect.)
Each of these polishes looked great after a single coat over Orly Bonder. I’m weary of Sinful Colors “Pine Away” now – it stains like a sonofabitch. I had to dab the “Mystery Moonshine” a bit, but it didn’t take a lot of work to get a good glitter spread. I topped it off with NYC “Grand Central Station”. I really need to get another good top coat.
Confession…I’ve never seen The Nightmare Before Christmas. I know, I know…
Flash! Ah Ahhhhh…
So I was going for a Flash Gordon, lightning type thing…it didn’t exactly turn out how I imagined.
After Orly Bonder, I did one coat of Sinful Colors “Yellow Spotted”. To get a glowy effect, I then did one coat of Julep “Casper”. In retrospect, I should have done 2 coats of the “Yellow Spotted”, because “Casper” totally obliterated the yellow and made it look like a muted gold. Oh well. I then did one coat of Sally Hansen “Star Burst” Crackle Overcoat. Crackle polishes are very unpredictable. You may get a beautiful crackle, like on my thumb nail – or you could get very little crackling, like on my ring finger. “Star Burst” was very thin and grayish, but a coat of NYC “Grand Central Station” made it dark and glossy.
I tried to get a pic of the glowing, but “Casper” doesn’t glow as brightly as Funky Fingers, but maybe that’s just because I only did one coat.
Did you know that one of my nicknames in High School was “Flash”? (My BFF started it – and yes, we’ve been BFFs THAT long.) I’ll divulge no further details, other than it wasn’t for my running speed.
Bruise Violet
I couldn’t NOT try out Julep “Logan” first.
Julep’s site describes the color as sultry aubergine shimmer – I would replace sultry with earthy. There’s a vegetable like brownish undertone – this color feels very organic.
Well, duh – aubergine is a fancy word for eggplant. It’s not as inky as “Padma” and has a subtle shimmer, but could still be mistaken for black at first glance.
I went back to the Revlon Quick Dry Base and Top Coats. There’s something about Julep polish that doesn’t mix well with base coats – bubbles, no matter what brand I try – even Julep’s own base coats. I only got 2-3 bubbles this time, but each one is like a pinprick to my soul.
I also painted my toenails with “Logan” last night…right before I broke my pinky toe, tripping over my daughter’s metal lawn chair.
(Yeah, we keep metal lawn chairs in our living room. That’s normal, right?)
I was astounded at how well the polish matched the violet bruises – I couldn’t have planned it better!
The last time I broke a toe was during Hurricane Ike, stumbling around in the dark. As clumsy as I am, that’s a pretty good record.
He Sees You When You’re Sleeping…
Well, originally, I was going for a sexy Freddy Krueger look, but what I ended up with Xmas fingers. Oh well, both of those assholes see you when you’re sleeping.
After Orly Bonder, I painted one coat of Rimmel 60 Seconds “Passion”. I painted stripes with Sinful Colors “Pine Away” and then topped it all with Julep “Shoshanna”. Since “Shoshanna” is gold with red and green highlights, I thought it was match the red and green really well – and it did, although in a very Xmas ornament type of way.
I got one final use out of my Sally Hansen Diamond Flash and then threw the bottle away. My husband asked me if I was going to “have a funeral for my dead solider.” He’s silly…but I considered it.
Cabana de Muertos
I wonder how suspicious we looked – my BFF and I – scurrying into the Taco Cabana Bathroom and giggling? I couldn’t help it – I was just so excited to turn the light off and show off my glow-in-the-dark nail polish!
This is Funky Fingers “Dia De Muertos”, from their Glow in the Dark Halloween collection. It’s a baby blue jelly base, with hot pink matte glitter in different sizes. There is
This is one of the bumpiest glitters I’ve ever used. Not only did I buff all of my nails first and use Orly Bonder, but I also topped with Sally Hansen Diamond Flash – and the two coats were still bumpy as all hell.
This stuff REALLY works – it glows like a sonofabitch.
I didn’t hold out much hope for getting a good “glowing in the dark” pic, but I was pleasantly surprised at the picture I was able to get inside of my closet. Of course, it doesn’t glow for very long, so I had to hold my hand up to the light, run into the closet, slam the door and try to get my camera to focus before the polish stopped glowing. So yeah, it took me 3 tries to get this pic.
Get ready for a spoooooky October. All month long, I’ll be doing Halloween-y or Fall themed nails. I don’t have all of my ideas worked out yet, so I am open to suggestions!
Unicorn Farts
Yes, Kenneth…unicorns fart glitter. What else would they fart?
I dug to the bottom of my plastic bin to find the perfect red to go underneath Funky Fingers “Unicorn Farts”. I dug out Sinful Colors “Under 18”, which I don’t think I’ve ever used before. It is a pearly tomato red and it went on smoothly without pooling in my cuticles. I did have to a bit of artful dabbing to get decent glitter coverage, but it wasn’t as bad as other beauty blogs had claimed. It certainly wasn’t as annoying as “Fruit-Ta-Ta”.
I used Orly Bonder as the base coat and Sally Hansen Diamond Flash for the top coat. (My Diamond Flash is almost empty! I don’t know whether I should buy another one or try another quick dry top coat. Probably both.) The texture of my nails is still a bit bumpy, but none of the glitter is lifting up, so I’m content.
I wanna try “Unicorn Farts” over a silver holographic polish – maybe Julep “Coretta”?
Horny Lady Gremlin
Remember the horny lady Gremlin in Gremlins 2? She was EASILY the best part of the movie, sexually assaulting the doctor from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Well, that’s what this polish reminds me of – the horny lady Gremlin. Don’t ask me to explain how my brain works – I don’t understand it either.
After Orly Bonder, I used one coat of Sinful Colors “Pine Away” and one coat of Orly “Bubbly Bombshell”. I used Sally Hansen Diamond Flash for the top coat. Easy Peasy – and my nails were dry within 15 minutes.