Watercolor Mani!

Dig it! :D

Here's the technique from Jen on Polish and Pearls!

The gist is you put droplets of polish on your nails
and smear a bit with a plastic baggie.

Unlike Jen's lovely muted color palette on Polish and Pearls, 

I wanted summertime crazy colors happening!

Uh, I think I captured that whole crazy vibe pretty well. 

But I am a tad dismayed to see how lacking are my clean up skills... 

Wait, there's no CLEAN UP skills in CRAZY!!! 

So these are the colors I used.... hee hee!  Man, there were quite a few and most were from my friend Sarah's collection so I just took a pic of the box she brought :)  But I did add Essie's Shine of the Times over everything followed by Seche Vite!

As per usual, Shine of the Times comes through beautifully in person! 

...not so much here in the pix!

Be well lovies!

Camping = Manis

A camping trip with a nail polishy friend means Manis!!!!  (My girlfriend prefers not to be named on the blog so we'll just call her Voldemort from here on out.) 

It's doing Mani's outside on lawn chairs while our hubs and kids are swimming!  

What could be better!!!! 

These were the lovelies we chose....  once again Cult Nails My Kind of Cool Aid... essie's Shine of the Times... Sally Hansen's Rockstar Pink... & Sinful's Dream On.

On the way to the camp ground we made a pit stop at Target where I just happened to find myself running through the nail polish collections and I spotted Shine of the Times!  It's reputation preceded it!  I'd never seen it in Target before!  To say I pounced on that last bottle wouldn't be an overstatement!  :D  

Camping was off to a REALLY good start!

 Voldermort was smitten too! What's not to like after all? 
Right over the way cool Cool Aid.

Shoot.  I don't even know how to describe what's going on here!  

Here goes a try: Chunky, iridescent, transparent, dusky loveliness!

Voldemort is rockin' this look, don't you agree?

I was feeling less subtle, more I'M CAMPING AND LIFE IS GRAND!!!    The florescent Dream On was my good start!

 Topped by the crazy little silvery gold, blue and pink sparklies in RockStar Pink!

I love camping, don't you?  

:)

Matte Sparkley Hot Pink

I bought a Revlon Top Speed polish at Walgreens the other day.   It was solely because the color on the  little card beneath the name of the polish transitioned from hot pink to a burgundy.  Well I'm here to tell you... the little card was a stupid head.
No transitioning what-so-ever to be found in Lava.  Great hot pink color, but this color is my m.o. from days gone by.  It's so 10 years ago for me when I had all manner of variations of this very color in my nail polish collection and no other color of nail polish... NONE. 
So no offense, Lava.  But this was no great shakes for me... What to do.  It took me a while of paging through countless other blogs... to stumble across the mother of all un-pc nail polishes once again... Man Glaze.  And the color... wait for it.... Fatty's Got More Blood.  Sorry to say, but that matte crimson color is just gorg.  And it inspired me to haul out my Sally Hansen's Diamonds and Essie's Matte About You.

 Above is the final deal.  Lava, SV, Diamonds and then the Matte.

 oooooo, my magnolia tree is in full bloom so it's the backdrop here.  Above and below are without the matte.

And above is with the matte.  Usually in a 'matte' versus 'glossy' bout, I always go with the glossy.  But this time familiarity was breeding contempt big time.  I'm loving this color in a form I'm not already bored with... as a matte!  :)

Shades of Grey Area

Maybe it's the sad state of nail polishes today that this impresses me... but it's 4 days and there is nary a chip on my SH Xtreme Wear Grey Area!  It kinda feels like a waste to take it off before it starts looking bad!  On day four, I'm champing at the bit to get some new colors on there so maybe I'll get over that whole "being patient" thing someday. In the meantime I decided to change up the look without removing the Grey Area.  Enter Essie's Matte About You!  :D  Tape my hands up and give them a new chic look!  Seriously... scotch tape :)

Scotch tape is great because you can see if it's pressed firmly up against your nail.  I have it pressed down right where I'm going to make a line with my Matte. Throw some Matte polish on the untaped part of your nail...    and peel that tape off just as soon as you're done applying!

My pinky finger's matte eeked under the tape a bit so I rubbed ever so lightly with a pointy q-tip soaked with polish remover and it worked pretty well I think.
And only if you want your polish gloriously shiny do you top it off with SV, so not this time! xo