China Glaze Sea Goddess Swatches

This collection came out about a month ago, and even though I'm a little late I still thought it would be nice to share this collection. The collection has a total of six shades, but I only purchased four.  I thought it would be fun to share my swatches and my opinion of these polishes. Oh, if you didn't know, these are all textured polishes too. Let's take a look and see how these work!

NOTW: China Glaze Rendezvous With You

You know I really love a polish when I wear it twice! I have so much polish and when I wear just one color I like to try one I haven't tried yet. HOWEVER....I absolutely love this polish and this is the second time this year I've worn this color. The formula is amazing, it's a stunning shade, and it glows on your nails. Yes, glows. In dim lighting it turns into a mauve color and looks even better. I think it's the most stunning foil polish that I own. I really feel this is a must have shade for any nail polish lover. Aaaaand you can get it on Head2ToeBeauty (right now it's towards the bottom of page 2) for only $3.25. So go get it! Okay, I've typed enough, so let's take a moment to look at the awesomeness of this polish.

Thanks for checking out my post! Much love and polish!

Know anyone in the Denver Metro Area that needs handyman, tradesman or A/V services? Have them check out www.tysdesign.com! Competitive pricing and customer service tailored specifically for you!

Disclaimer: All items shown were purchased with my own money. All opinions are my own and honest.

Two Valentine's Manis

I have two different manicures for this post. One I did on myself and one I did on a friend. I like how they both turned out, and it gave me a lot of practice making hearts! Making hearts is fairly easy, but does take some practice finding the proper spacing and I did have to do some touch up so the lines look straight.
Let's take a look at what I did!

NOTW: China Glaze Gaga for Green║LA Girl Sputter

This post has way too many pics for my normal NOTW's, but now that I have decent lighting to use in my house, I've been going a little camera crazy! I've been swatching like a mad man just so I can take pictures! I know, I'm not normal....but who is?

Anyway, I wanted a mani with some color due to all my holiday/muted colors I've been using lately. What better way to do this than with green and purple?

Gaga For Green is such an awesome green tone, not too dark, not too light. The formula is a bit on the sheer side, but it built nicely, formula was nice and it dried so shiny!  This pic has no top coat, I think it looks awesome!

NOTW: Traditional Christmas

I wanted to do a traditional Christmas color manicure, and I wanted it to be simple. I obviously used a different polish on each finger and combined some gold to try to tie it altogether. Even though the gold on my thumb and pointer look the same, they are different polishes. The gradient doesn't show the differences very well.

I need to work on my glitter gradients. Doing a gradient with a creme polish is easy because it's blendable, but it's harder to blend a glitter polish. Some of the formulas were a little meh, but they were still all workable. 

Colors I used:

Thumb: SinfulShine Amazonian (green) and OPI My Favorite Ornament     (champagne gold glitter - this one is so pretty and such a unique neutral gold shade)

Pointer: OPI Underneath the Mistletoe (red) and Sephora by OPI Looks Like Rain, Dear (gold glitter with holographic circle glitter)
Middle: OPI Liquid Sand Stay the Night (black base with red glitter) I did use a top coat with this as well.
Ring: Sephora by OPI Keep Me on My Mistletoes (neutral gold metallic) with SinfulColors Holiday Rebel (green/red/holo glitter)
Pinky: China Glaze Winter Holly (green microglitter with some gold glitter)

It didn't turn out quite as pretty as I had hoped, but I still like the color combos. My next mani will have some nail art!

Thanks for checking out my post! Much love and polish!

Know anyone in the Denver Metro Area that needs handyman, tradesman or A/V services? Have them check out www.tysdesign.com! Competitive pricing and customer service tailored specifically for you!

Disclaimer: All items shown were purchased with my own money. All opinions are my own and honest.

NOTW: Fall Flakies

I am behind with my manicures so at some point you may see two NOTW posts in a week. Oh, well.

This one I wore over Thanksgiving. I like flakies polishes and I think they look cool over a variety of colors. My base color is Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure in Malbec. It's a really really deep purple. So dark is almost looks black. Pretty decent formula, but a little thick. I do like this one better than some of the other Complete Salon Manicures though. The flakies polish I used is Luxe and Lush by China Glaze. Formula was as expected, a little sparse and had to dab on. In the picture I used one coat of the flakies. On my left hand I used two coats, but thought it was too much and didn't like it as much. Also, I would recommend using two coats of top coat as some of the glitter can peek through. If you are using a thick top coat one may be okay.

 Thanks for checking out my post! Much love and polish!

Know anyone in the Denver Metro Area that needs handyman, tradesman or A/V services? Have them check out www.tysdesign.com! Competitive pricing and customer service tailored specifically for you!

Disclaimer: All items shown were purchased with my own money. All opinions are my own and honest.

NOTW: Pretty in Pink Foil

I really like foil polishes. They tend to dry quick, have beautiful finishes and I love all the colors they can come in. Strike Up a Cosmo from China Glaze is no exception. As soon as I saw this shade I just knew I had to have it. It's a nice pinky/mauve color with gold flecks. It has a great formula and I love the way it dries on the nail.

I accented with a glitter from Julep. I have misplaced that polish at the moment and couldn't find it on Julep's website either so I don't know the name. I am in the middle of re-organizing and purging old things in my office, so I'm hoping it turns up soon! Anyway, it's a nice autumn type glitter, it has varying sizes of goldish-orange and red glitter. It's a very nice, dense glitter.

Pics aren't the best, it was kinda cloudy out the day I took them. A big reason why I want to re-organize my office is to make it photo friendly and get a light box made. I'm really hoping it will help this winter when there is minimal light!

 Thanks for checking out my post! Much love and polish!

Know anyone in the Denver Metro Area that needs handyman, tradesman or A/V services? Have them check out www.tysdesign.com! Competitive pricing and customer service tailored specifically for you!

Disclaimer: All items shown were purchased with my own money. All opinions are my own and honest.

Stripes and Dots

I don't know why, but I am in love with this manicure. I'm already thinking of different colors I can use and other ways I can use this. It was really easy and I just kinda went with it. I started painting my nails, not really sure what I wanted to do and then I came up with this.

Pretty self explanatory, but all I did was paint all my nails blue and then used striping tape and a large dotting tool (only used one size) to make all the dots.

I love the peach color....it's the perfect amount of pink and orange and it just makes me happy looking at it. Is that weird?  Formula for the blue was pretty good and I have to say the formula on the peach was really great. Perfect consistency and very easy to work with.

A side note....I have decided I really need to make a light box. Since I'm losing sunlight I'm really having a hard time coming up with my pics. I have used my bathroom a lot, but there is awful glare and it doesn't always pull very good colors. My pics tend to have a really bad yellow coloring to them and it washes out the colors.

Another side note...I have some ideas for blogs coming up that aren't focused on polish. I really want to do one on storage/organization ideas, compare a few different top coats, talk about "3-free" and some other things.  Those obviously just take a lot longer to do, but I want to do them soon!

Anyway, here are my pics.

Thanks for checking out my post! Much love and polish!

Know anyone in the Denver Metro Area that needs handyman, tradesman or A/V services? Have them check out www.tysdesign.com! Competitive pricing and customer service tailored specifically for you!

Disclaimer: All items shown were purchased with my own money. All opinions are my own and honest.

Final Halloween Mani

I tried soooo hard to get this up before Halloween, but last week I was hardly even home; much less had time to post this. I'm kinda bummed anyway because pretty much all my pics on this turned out really bad and so I'm just gonna show one okay pic of the end result and tell you what I did.

Initially on this mani I wanted to do a cat's face on my thumb, but even after practicing multiple times it just wasn't turning out the way I wanted. So, I ditched that idea and just did a witch hat on my ring finger. I still don't like the way the hat turned out in this mani either, but that's what this is all about!  Trying things out and seeing if it works.

On my purple fingers I applied a black crackle over the purple and then I used a hologram top coat that I have. It's really awesome!  The top coat is called Northern Lights by inm. I got it at Sally Beauty Supply.

On my pointer finger I just painted it green and then applied a silver and black glitter. The glitter has several types and sizes.

On my ring finger I used tape to make the point, painted the tip and then used stripers and a dotting tool to complete the rest.

The rest of the polishes I used:

Essie Mojito Madness (green)

SinfulShine Slick (purple)

OPI Black Oynx (black)

China Glaze Black Mesh (crackle)

Sally Hansen Silver Streamers (silver/black glitter)

black and silver glitter stripers by Jordana 

Thanks for checking out my post! Much love and polish!

Know anyone in the Denver Metro Area that needs handyman, tradesman or A/V services? Have them check out www.tysdesign.com! Competitive pricing and customer service tailored specifically for you!

Disclaimer: All items shown were purchased with my own money. All opinions are my own and honest.

Candy Corn, Pumpkins & Glitter, Oh My!

Time for more Halloween nails!! So far these have gotten more recognition than my Frankenstein nails. These are a little more flashy too. These nails were easy to do. The pumpkins were a little tricky though, and doing them on my right hand just wasn't happening....but you could still try! This is pretty picture heavy, just FYI...


 Here are all the polishes/tools I used to create the candy corn and pumpkin nails.

Side note: I got the Rimmel Cocktail Colour polishes (there is an orange one in a pic below) on clearance at Walgreens for $.62!!! They had Sally Hansen and Essie polishes for $2.00 too. I got them just a few days ago so you may want to see if your Walgreens has any!

Start off with a white base on all nails. Give a little dry time for your nails.

For the candy corn nails you start with painting an orange horizontal stripe. A tip to help keep your lines straight is to rotate your finger and keep your brush still. Allow the orange to dry for a few minutes and then do the same process with the yellow. Once your nails are dry if you want to add some sparkle or if your lines aren't as straight as you like you can use a glitter striper. You can use a nail art brush dipped in gold glitter too. 

For the pumpkin nails you start by drawing kind of a lopsided 'x' shape. We are trying to get a heart shape for our end result. After you have your 'x' shape then you fill in the rest. Try to make your lines as smooth as possible because we will not be covering them up. After your orange pumpkins have dried for a bit, then use a green glitter polish to add the stems. Using a white nail striper, add three lines to your pumpkin to add detail. The center line is straight and the outside lines are curved to match the pumpkin. You can stop with this step or if you want you can use a nail art pen dipped in green glitter to go on top of the white stripes. Depending on your green polish (mine was sheer) you want to make sure you do the white stripe first so your colored polish will show up against the orange.

Clean up any polish on your skin, add a shiny top coat, and then your nails are done!

Here is an alternative if you don't want to do pumpkin nails.... 

On my right hand I couldn't do pumpkins so I just did glitter nails instead. On my pointer finger I used a fine orange glitter in an orange base and my ring finger I used a small red and gold glitter in a clear base. I have a white base on those two nails also.

Thanks for checking out my post! Much love and polish!

Know anyone in the Denver Metro Area that needs handyman, tradesman or A/V services? Have them check out www.tysdesign.com! Competitive pricing and customer service tailored specifically for you!

Disclaimer: All items shown were purchased with my own money. All opinions are my own and honest.

A Crackly Audrey

If you aren't very familiar with China Glaze then I have a beautiful polish that I would like to share with you. It's called For Audrey and it's one of China Glaze's most popular colors. For Audrey is creamy, thick and opaque in one coat. It's super smooth, easy to work with and a gorgeous color. It's the perfect Robin's egg/Tiffany blue color. This color was made in dedication to Audrey Hepburn for her role in Breakfast at Tiffany's. I have worn this a few times now and I just LOVE the color and application. It's a must have in any collection in my opinion! 

I really wanted to try out my China Glaze crackle polish and thought that this would be a great duo to go with my black crackle, and I have to say, I think that the combo turned out pretty nice.

Sorry for the smudge on my pointer finger. Ack!

I had never tried a crackle before (although I've practiced a few times) and I really can't decide if I'm a fan or not. Crackle polish can really seem to be a hit or miss and honestly, the only reason I purchased any was because they were on super clearance at Sally's. I bought a black, white, and gold crackle and each cost me only $1.34. I've played around with all three and I can say the white one is really hard to work with. It dries fast and not very much product sticks to the brush which makes it difficult. The gold and the black aren't too bad though, but I do recommend practicing and trying different thicknesses first.

Obviously you paint your base color first, and although For Audrey was ready to go in one coat, I applied two really just out of habit. I let them dry for around 20 minutes and then I applied my crackle polish. There are a few different ways you can use the polish. If you put on a thin coat you will get very small, thin cracks. If you apply a thick coat (right thumb is the best example) you will get very large and wide cracks. If you put it on too thick it won't crack at all. My left middle finger has a big glob in the center because I got it on too thick there and it wouldn't crack. It still turned out okay though.

If you want to see what the white and gold crackle looks like let me know and I'll do some swatches and do a post about it. I like the colors together in this one though. In the right lighting the blue looked more green and turquoise-y and it kind of made me think of a turquoise stone. I thought that was cool. I think that if you can find a good color combo and if the formula is right that crackle polish can add some fun diversity to your mani. If it's weird colors or hard to work with (like the white) than I think it can make your mani look messy and unattractive. I'm sure it helps that I love For Audrey so much!

Disclaimer: All items shown were purchased with my own money. All opinions are my own and honest.

Gold and Black(ish) Stripe Design!

I am so excited to share this with you! I took lots of pics this time so I can show you the whole process. The funny thing is that since I was taking so many pictures I took my time and painted a lot slower so the manicure as a whole came out a lot better than normal! I'll have to remember to slow down and then they should come out a lot better, ha!  This one did take me a little longer than I would have liked, but I think there are some things I can do next time to speed it up a little. Hope you enjoy this one!!

Obviously you can use any colors/glitters that you want with this design, I chose to go with a gold and charcoal color design. The first thing you need to paint all of your colors your base color, which I used a metallic gold. Even though you are applying a different color on top I would still recommend two coats of polish. After your base is down if you want to do an accent nail I would suggest doing that now just so that nail is finished and you don't have to worry about it anymore. I used two coats of a gold glitter polish and then applied top coat. Just a tip, whenever I do a nail that's all glitter I normally apply two heavy coats of your top coat. This helps seal in any bumpy edges you may have due to the glitter. After that, depending on your polish, you need to let your other nails COMPLETELY dry. I usually wait an hour or so (maybe even up to two depending on the polish I am using).

Once you are sure your nails are good to go then you can apply the tape. I am using striping tape, but you can use scotch tape also. The scotch tape may be trickier because you have to cut very thin, straight lines, so if you plan on doing a lot of this type of art work I would suggest striping tape. **You can get it very inexpensively on Amazon, and my next post is actually going to be about nail art supplies and how CHEAPLY you can get them all, so make sure you come back to read that!**  Anyhoo, back to nails... I would suggest cutting up several pieces at a time; it seems to go smoother and save time this way. I didn't have anywhere to really put mine, so I used my desk lamp....hey it works!

Once you have your strips cut, then go ahead and apply them to your nails in any direction/design that you want. You really can't mess this up. I think it's awesome because every single one of your nails can be different! After tape is applied, apply one heavy coat (since you can't do two) and give it about 30 seconds (or until it is slightly tacky) and then pull the tape off. I have an important suggestion here that I think will save you time. I've seen people use tweezers to pull off the tape and my response has always been, "Pshh, tweezers? Why would you need those, you have fingers!" Well now after doing a few manicures like this, I now say, "Use tweezers, it will save you time and frustration!!" Why you ask? When you pull the tape off you obviously have wet polish on it, and not to mention wet nails. The tape is sticky and sticks all over you and it's hard to get off and it can get stuck to other nails...and...and (see my point?). So use tweezers! I will never make that mistake again.

I totally have a type-o...Don't forget to take the TAPE off

...jeez Katie...

Once all your nails are finished make sure your top polish is pretty dry before applying top coat. The last thing you want is to apply top coat and make your polish run in all your pretty lines! Some of my pictures are portraying bumpy looking nails, I think the camera was just picking up the detail because they do not look like that in real life.

Polishes used are listed down below.

I hope this post was helpful to anyone who wants to try something similar to this. Let me know if you have any questions!  If you are inspired by this manicure I'd love to see a picture so tag me on Facebook! You can also email it to me: totalpolishjunkie@gmail.com. Also let me know if you have any nail designs you want me to try, I love hearing all the ideas other people have.

Oh, one more thing. In case you are wondering how I edited my photos I found a really awesome online photo editor that I will now be using. There is a free version (and a paid monthly upgrade if you so choose). Go check them out, picmonkey. 

Epic Fail Ombre! + Why I am Starting This Blog.

Before we get into the nail stuff I just want to mention really quick why I decided to start a nail blog. First of all, I've always enjoyed blogging, but the last few years I haven't done it much due to school, work, my son, you know, life in general. However, I have been finding myself drawn towards doing blogs again. I recently started another blog about how I'm changing my lifestyle to be a healthy one and that blog is ahealthierkatie.blogspot.com.  Since I've become SO obsessed with polish and nail art I decided this would be a good way to document the different designs that I do, what polish I like/don't like and my overall progress (hopefully I will continue to get better with time!). If I end up being the only one who reads this...than cool. But I'm hoping that I will find some people along the way who want to watch my progress too and maybe even inspire a few people.

Okay, let's get started with the good stuff.

I. Am. So. Disappointed. I was so looking forward to doing my neon color ombre manicure and it didn't turn out well at all. I made two mistakes that I think made it an epic fail. This is only my second ombre manicure, so I think a little more practice would help also. The first mistake I made was using the wrong side of my sponge. I cut my sponge and then ended up painting on the longer side of my sponge and didn't realize it till I had already painted 7 of my nails. I wasn't getting any of my top color (purple) on my nails and I just couldn't figure out why! The second mistake I made was cutting my nails too short. I typically wear my nails on the longer side, but decided they were getting too long and so I cut them. However, I cut them shorter than I wanted them to be and I think that made it harder for me because I'm not used to doing nails designs on shorter nails. On some nails I didn't go a great job of covering up all the white either. Practice makes perfect.

Getting the true color of neon colors on camera is hard. I have tried so many different types of lighting and none of them really capture the colors. The colors are much brighter and very neon in real life, so please remember that while looking at the pics.

Now all of this being said I don't think they look horrible, but I don't think they look good either. Part of me almost took it all off because I was so upset, but I spent a lot of time on it so I decided to keep it on. I'll probably only keep this for a few days though before I decided to do something different. I don't know how long I'll be able to look at it and feel okay with it.

For those of you who aren't familiar with ombre designs I'll explain it a little bit for you. It's really just a gradient design with multiple colors. I've seen them done with 2-5 different colors, but in my opinion I think three colors works the best. First you need to paint your nails with a white base and make sure you use two coats. Do not skip this step! The white really helps bring out the colors in the polish (especially with neon colors) and make sure you have a nice thick coat of polish. And I actually want to take a second and talk about the white polish I used. I used China Glaze White on White and I can tell you I really don't know if I'll use this polish again. The end result (forgot to take a pic before ombre) was good, but I really dislike the formula. It was gloopy and uneven and hard to apply and work with. Just because it looks like white out doesn't mean it should be like white out!  I usually use Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in White On, but I think I'm going to try OPI Alpine Snow next time.

Anyway, once you get your base done then you take a makeup wedge sponge and cut it to the length and width that fits your nail bed. I cut a new sponge to show you since my other sponge I used got all messed up.

Then just paint on your colors that you want to use. Make sure you use a generous amount of polish since the sponge typically sucks some up.

After you filled your sponge with polish you then just sponge it onto your nail. Make sure you apply new polish for every finger that you do. And voila! if you did it right (unlike me) you will have a beautiful gradient design!

Here are the polishes I used:

                    (White)                        (Neon Orange)                 (Neon Pink)              (Neon Purple)     

                     China Glaze                      China Glaze                     China Glaze                 Essie  

                   White on White                Sun Worshiper                    Pool Party           DJ Play That Song

Again, like I mentioned, the colors do not pull well from the camera. The orange is a nice bright neon and the pink is a dark vibrant hot pink neon. Same things goes for the purple, it is very bright and pretty.