KBShimmer - Toast-ess With the Mostest

When it comes to nail polish, I really shy away from the indie world mainly due to costs. They are more expensive and I can't get deals/use coupons like how I can with mainstream brands. However, I saw this polish and fell in love and I decided I could at least try a few indie polishes. This glitter polish is from KBShimmer and is called Toast-ess With the Mostest. 

This polish is a circle glitter bomb! It has teeny tiny glitter and even has some very large silver holo circle glitter. I LOVE the look that it creates on the nail. You do need to use a dabbing motion when you apply this glitter, but it's obviously very densely packed and you really only need one coat. This is still available on their website for $8.75. So go check it out!

Simple St. Patty's Mani Using SinfulColors

I am FINALLY starting to feel better. I got a stomach bug and a really bad cold thing (both with fevers) back to back and spent over a week feeling miserable and a lot of time in bed. I finally felt good enough to do a mani, and I have to say sorry because I was lazy and didn't clean up my photo area so you are getting some photos I took with my iphone. Now that I'm feeling better I'll be cleaning up my office so by my next mani, I can have some *real* photos for you. Enough rambling about that....onto the post.

I am really starting to realize how much I love green nail polish. Lately, it seems that's all I keep grabbing and putting on my nails. But with St. Patrick's Day coming up, I thought using some green would be appropriate. I have another mani in mind already too.  I thought the gold glitter would look good with the darker green, but now I wish I had put it on the lighter green because I think it would have had more of a contrast. I LOVE the shade of the darker green and it had a pretty nice formula. It's a little crelly like, but it built nicely. The lighter green though is a little streaky and takes a little bit of effort to even it out. For my glitter placement I pulled out gold glitter from a mix with holographic glitter, so some of the gold has those glitters stuck to it too. It was nice using big glitters because it was easy to place and didn't take a lot of time (but I still had to do some glitter fishing!). I think this is a nice, clean, mani.

SinfulColors Exotic Green (darker)

SinfulColors Pistache (lighter)

OPI When Monkeys Fly! (glitter)

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.

Kisses for Valentine's Day!

I was able to get one more V-Day mani in. I wanted this to have lots of red and of course glitter! Simple nail art, but still looks adorable! I got my inspiration from cutepolish on YouTube. I'm using two of her designs and just added coordinating colors. I used a striper and dotting tool to create the xoxo on my thumb, and a smaller dotting tool to create the lips on my ring finger. You can go check out her channel for some really neat designs!

I got a little lazy with my Cinderella hand...I've done so many manicures and swatches this week and it's made me a little polished out (I bet you didn't think that could happen, huh?) so I just did some glitter nails. Nothing fancy, but my hands go together so it's fine. 

Not a super long post, I just wanted to share what I did!

Happy Valentine's Day!!!

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!

My First Splatter Attempt

I finally thought I would try my hand with a splatter design. It took some time, and made a huge mess (which you can see) but it actually turned out pretty good!

I seem to be on a purple and green kick...I need to change that and do other colors, but regardless I love this color combo. 

NOTW: OPI Underneath the Mistletoe

I actually did this manicure before Christmas, but didn't get around to posting it. This was one of those manicures where I couldn't stop looking at my nails! The red is OPI Underneath the Mistletoe and the glitter is OPI My Favorite Ornament. This picture does neither polish justice. The red is so sparkly and such a pretty red shade, I'm really glad I picked it up. :) The formula is a little bit thicker than I like, but not horrible. The first coat is kinda patchy, but it built nicely with the second coat. I had no problems with the glitter either. I'm normally not a red polish fan, but I really think this one is gorgeous!

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.

New Year's Design using Gwen Stefani's Collection & Review!

OPI's new Gwen Stefani Collecion just came out and I was really really excited about a few of these polishes, so I went and grabbed them (yes, I'm becoming that girl). I realized the three I purchased are great New Year's colors, so I thought I'd try them together. I really like how this manicure turned out and it was so simple! I will absolutely be doing this twist on a french manicure again with lots of color combos! To create the V shape I just used tape. It's that easy!

The Gwen Stefani collection consists of 7 polishes. Some of the shades I felt were nothing to write home about, so I only picked up 3. The ones I did not purchases were In True Stefani Fashion (a silver and holographic glitter that I almost bought), I Sing In Color (dark vampy red creme that I already own), Hey Baby (bright pink creme), and Over & Over A-Gwen (her signature red).

The 3 I purchased are Love.Angel.Music.Baby (gold satin), 4 in the Morning (black satin), and Push and Shove (silver chrome). I love the sleeve they put on the caps too, easily labeled and cute geometric shapes.

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.

Matte & Shiny

I meant to have this up a few days ago and then after all my car drama I just felt kinda blah. Anyway, here is a design that I thought turned out pretty cool. I do have another "cute" design I plan on still getting in before Halloween, but I wanted something a little more "dark." So I came up with this.

I started with a dark red polish, and applied a matte top coat. After some dry time I cut some triangles in scotch tape and applied it to my nail. I used black polish and then quickly applied a shiny top coat. I really like the contrast between the matte and the shiny. I also think this design could work with a huge variety of colors, and I'd like to try it again with more contrasting colors and maybe switch the matte and glossy part. 

Just a quick post for this one! Hope you guys like it and it gives you some inspiration!

And if you are wondering here are the colors I used (sorry no bottle shots):

SinfulShine Mirror Mirror (red)

OPI Black Onyx

I also used OPI Matte Top Coat and Seche Vite for my Glossy Top Coat.

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: Duochrome

This is one of OPI's new colors from their fall San Francisco collection. A lot of other brands have come out with a polish similar to this, but from reviews I've seen OPI tends to be the favorite.

This polish is a deep grey color with a purplish/pink and blue/green duochrome. I really have to say I'm loving this polish. The formula was great, very easy application and it was pretty opaque with one coat. All day I've been staring at my nails, seeing how they look in different light. I see myself wearing this one a lot this fall/winter!

If I'm not too crazy busy this week (this is the last week for the remodel at my mom's house and I've been over there cleaning a lot) then I plan on doing a mini tutorial type blog. If not then it will happen next week!

OPI ~ Peace & Love & OPI

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.

It's like I feel the beach on my nails!

I took these pictures this morning. Blue skies, warm weather; perfect day. Then mid-afternoon the clouds rolled in, the rain, wind, and hail came and it turned into a pain. We got 3 in. of rain in less than an hour. Flash floods, leaves everywhere and a flooded basement. Luckily Ty was able to pull a lot of the water up with a Rug Doctor. Now I'm doing my blog post because why not? Haha. It was a crazy day, that's for sure.

Since Sept. is my birth month Ulta sent me a $10 coupon. I strolled in and went straight to the nail polish. I REALLY REALLY want OPI's Alcatraz...Rocks (a liquid sand) from their new fall collection, but of course they didn't have it. I did decide though that I was going to purchase a liquid sand since the only liquid sands I have tried were Wet n Wild and they weren't the best. I've heard OPI has a great sand formula so I wanted to check it out. I decided to go with one called Tiffany Case which is a gorgeous light blue color with silver shimmer in it. 

I have to say that everyone is right. Fantastic formula. I wasn't sure if I was going to like a textured polish, but I think I do. Since it's textured, the polish was very thick which actually made it incredibly easy to apply. It dried pretty quickly too. The little tag on the bottle says not to apply a top coat. I did my mani last night and decided to leave as it with no top coat. The tag also said it would dry matte, and it did to an extent. Since it has silver glitter/shimmer/whatever it is, it was still fairly shiny. 

I wanted to see how the polish would change with different top coats so this morning I applied Seche Vite on my pinky and OPI Matte Top coat on my ring finger. I like the finish the best without any top coat. The Matte really just dulled everything and muted the silver shimmer and the Seche Vite made the silver much more noticeable and obviously made the whole nail very shiny. The top coats also made the nails feel a little smoother and not as rough. 

It's hard to see the differences in the picture, but they are much more noticeable in real life. 

My nails feel like sandpaper. I'd have to say that the only thing I'm really not liking about this is that since it is rough my polish does get caught on things which is slightly annoying. Outside of that though, I think it's great! At least now I'm not scared to purchase polishes like this. 

 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.

Hot & Spicy

I have been so busy and haven't posted anything! Shame on me! I've taken tons of pics and have lots of posts to do, but haven't sat down to do any of them. I need to fix that!

Today is just a quick post about a color that I am in love with. I feel it deserves it's own post because I think the color is really unique and would compliment most people.

This particular mani I did while I was out of town and I think I took literally 30+ pictures of this color. My camera would NOT pick the color up right. It kept showing more red or more orange or darker and I was getting quite frustrated. A random thought popped in my head and I remembered that I could take pictures with my camcorder. I then also remembered that Ty had told me that the camera had X.V. color (which is just fancy words for saying that the camera has a wider color spectrum so it will pick up images truer to color). I took it outside and BINGO! almost perfect color. I'm so glad I know that now!  My digital camera does pretty good most of the time, but I do have to say that I think these pictures came out so much better! I may just start using my camcorder all the time.

So by the time that amazing thought came to me I had already had my mani on for about 5 days so I have tip wear and it doesn't look so fresh, but you can still see how pretty the color is!

Formula on this polish was awesome. Smooth, easy to work with application and a creamy texture. Color was opaque with one coat, but two really smoothed out the polish. OPI did a great job with this polish!

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