Love Yourself Mani: Dirty Dots

So I've been seeing a lot of dot manicures lately on pinterest. So I thought I would attempt my own! I got my inspiration from this amazing mani at A Girl and Her Polish, she title the post: These Dots are Freakin' Amazing! And it is so true so go check her blog out!

For my mani I used Catrice Dirty Berry. This is a lovely purple polish with a slight holo. Gorgeous! I did two coats, I could have just done one but I wanted full opacity. I got this polish from Jewli at Fanning the Fumes in our awesome swap!

I used my dotting tools and OPI Funky Dunkey (darkest), OPI Planks a Lot (medium almost invisible purple dots), and Catrice Sing: Hey Dirty-Lilah (lightest color, also from the swap with Jewli).

 

Here is a picture of Dirty Berry on it's own, two coats and a coat of Seche Vite, trying to show of it's holo. Gorgeous color huh!

And another shot of it! :)

I really liked this mani and wanted to do something for me, that I enjoyed. This is part of the Love Yourself manis. For more information click on this picture or the one in my sidebar to be taken to the facebook group!

Indie Haul

 

So another nail diva in PAA showed a picture of some awesome polish she had bought off etsy from a shop called Daring Digits. So I took a look and fell in love with four polishes! And what was even better is that the polishes are 20% off! (sale is still going on until 4/16/2012) So I bought the minis so I could get all of them! :) 

Here are the polish bottle backsides! (l-r) Diamond Block, Mrs. Peacock, Girls Night Out, and Why So Serious? Aren't they loverly!

Diamond Block and Girls Night Out may look similar but they are different. Don't believe me? Let's look at some bottle macro shots!

First up is Diamond Block. The inspiration for this one is a mineable block from Minecraft: Diamonds. It is a silver base with light blue glitter! I'm excited to see the contrast of the light blue on the silver! :)

I think she did pretty good at the created a polish that looks like this:

 

Awesome! I personally don't play Minecraft but I can see the resemblance!

This is Mrs Peacock! Look at that! A polish based on Clue! Yes! Win! This is a light blue polish with varying sizes of multi colored glitter! Very excited for this one! It's very fun!

Here is Girls Night Out. See! Not at all like Diamond Block! :) It's a dark grey base with pink and green highlights! Party time! Love this!

Here is Why So Serious? This is the one I had to have! I am most excited for this one. Look at the colors! How more Joker-like could you get! Dark metallic purple base with green glitter! Wow! This one makes me happy! Can't wait to try it!

I love Batman and I loved Heath Ledger as the Joker! So, here's a bit of Joker for you:

Mmmmm...Candy Shop!

 

This is Candy Shop from Claire's. This is a dupe for Deborah Lippmann's Candy shop. This is such a fun yummy polish! I wanted to show both the polish alone and a layering shot, so I combined them in one! 

My pointer and middle finger are two coats of Candy Shop alone. My ring finger and pinkie are one coat of Candy Shop over OPI Steady As She Rose. Obviously the two coats are more glitter but there is still a lot of glitter on the layered nails too!

This polish just screams candy and I love it! It went one really well without any application or formula problems even for being a glitter! That's fantastic! :)

And here's the bottle macro shot:

Doesn't that look yummy! And happy! And fun!

Fancy Haul!

So I have finally joined the ranks of the fancy polish collector! :) I bought Butter London Wallis and Deborah Lippmann Bad Romance on sale! Woot! They were only about $8 each! I couldn't pass it up! I'm so excited to try them and see what everyone is talking about with their formula and application. I will definitely be doing a big ol' fancy post about them! :)

So, the other day I was headed to a party up in the area where my beauty supply store is so I thought I would go a bit early and hit it up! Well, it was closed for the night! :( So I drove across the street to try a different store. It was much smaller with less product but I found one of my lemmings for $4! Yep, that is China Glaze Atlantis there on the left! I'm super excited! The OPI isn't an older one but it caught my eye with it's shimmer. It is OPI It's My Year. Super gorgeous!

Want to see some macros bottle shots of these two polishes? Duh! Of course you do! Here you go!

Here is the awesomeness of China Glaze Atlantis. Oooooh! Ahhhhh! Shiny! Love!

OPI It's My Year. Look at that shimmer gold shimmer over the purple! Gorgeous! I'm excited to see this one in action! :)

Teal Tuesdays - Tape Mani

Our challenge for this weeks Tealicure is a tape mani! Gulp! I've been putting this trend off because I was nervous! :) I decided to go to Nailside for a tutorial because she does some amazing tape manis! Her tutorial that I used was: Nailside: Tutorial: Mummy tape mani. My mani turned out to be more tiger stripes than mummy wrappings but I was happy with it. My right hand was way better because I did it after the left hand (more practice), so that is why my right hand gets the starring picture! :) But sorry for the less than perfect polish job because my left hand isn't as good as applying the polish, so there's a bit of cuticle flooding. :)

My base coat is Essence Bella from the Nail Art Twins that I got from Jewli from Fanning the Fumes in this awesome swap. Like all other Essence polishes it went one like a dream! Look at that shine! Bella is a gorgeous teal creme that everyone should have in their collection, that is, if you can find it! Sadly the Nail Art Twins are discontinued! :(

Here's my left hand. See, not as great as the right but still not horrible! I'm proud of myself! :) I used Essence Nail Art Twin in Romeo as the over color. He is a lovely grey creme with purple undertones.

Have you ladies every done a tape mani? Do you like them? I love the look of them but it takes time and work! At least for me it does! :)

Teal Tuesdays was started because teal is unloved and needed its own day of celebration!
Teal is a medium to dark bluish green color of low saturation; a dark cyan.
Open to interpretation, anything green with a hint of blue or blue with a hint of green is welcome here!
Aqua, Turquoise,Tiffany Blue, etc etc...all are welcome - we do not discriminate!

Click the Teal Tuesdays logo on this post or in my sidebar to be taken to the facebook page!

Some of the other blogs participating are
Colorsplash Nails
Gaga for Nails
Fancy Phalanges 
Gnarly Gnails
Geeky Owl
Mandy's Polish
Nails Beautiqued
No Holos!
Persistently Glittery
Simple-and-Beautiful

Spotty Orchid

So I decided to do a quick mani the other day and decided to try some of my untrieds. I did one coat of Joe Fresh Orchid. Orchid is a gorgeous reddish plum with a creme finish. Application was excellent with no problems. I then did one coat each of All That Glitters Spotty Dottie Dark and Spotty Dottie Light. Both bottles are filled to the brim! Application wasn't too bad, the normal glitter placement issues nothing too hard! Most of my glitter wanted to go to the free edge of my nail but as soon as I noticed that I had no problem and quickly got to work. This is with one coat of Seche Vite over it. Sadly some bubbles occurred (probably because of the ceiling fan working overtime!).

Here is a photo of just Joe Fresh Orchid, one coat, on it's own. Kinda splotchy with one coat two would have been better but I was in a hurry and figured since I was covering it up with the Dotties it didn't matter too much! :) Granted, some of those splotches are reflections because it was shiny too!

Nothing to hard about this mani, quick and easy and I got a lot of compliments! Many people are buying these two glitter to get the look of Lynnderella's Connect the Dots. So when I was applying the Spotty Dotties I was singing Pee Wee Herman's Connect the Dots song. Do you remember that song? Why don't I refresh your memory! :)

You are most welcome. :)

Adventures in Stamping: April Fool's Day Mani

Today's challenge was for anything BUT stamping. No stamping allowed for the Adventures in Stamping April Fool's Day mani! So I decided to try something a bit different! :)

Flocking! Can I just say it's flocking fantastic! ;) We were talking about this in PAA and I've seen other blogs do it and I thought to myself, self, you have a lot of flocking for scrapbooking why don't you finally use it. And I agreed with myself, because I'm usually right. :)

My base coat is Finger Paints Pretty as a Portrait, but you really can't see it except for a few edges on my ring finger and pinkie (which I tried to edit out but cropping the photo). But the polish went on nicely with a great formula like the rest of the Finger Paints polishes. :)

I used Cupcake's Clothes Flocked Nails Tutorial as my guide. But I changed up how I applied the flocking because mine came in a tiny container that I got from Michaels a few years ago.

See! Tiny container. Didn't really want to be pouring this over my nail because there isn't a ton in it! But it was big enough for me to dip/pad my wet nail into the container making sure I covered the entire nail. And it worked without as much mess! :)

Ready for a full on flash close up!?

Look at that furry goodness! Kinda looks like velcro huh! And surprising enough, it isn't all that soft! But it was very interesting to have on! I really love this shot! :)

Oh and guess what. I tried getting it wet and it held up! Crazy huh! I though for sure it would melt off, nope. I didn't wash my hands like a crazy person though so who knows. Also taking it off was easier than glitter but more than just polish.

What do you think? A cool trend or just plain weird? :)