My wedding NOTD

I wanted to share with you my wedding NOTD.  I got married last October and it was perfect!  We wanted something very quiet and private so we had a ceremony in a chapel (easy to find here in Las Vegas!) and a small private reception.  It was lovely and exactly what we hoped for.  I debated for weeks over what my mani should be for the big day, my colors were red & black and my dress was a white, slightly more vanilla irl.  My first thought was black base with red hex glitter or white base with red and black accents or konad stamping.  The day before the wedding I sat down to do my nails and this polish just popped into my head and I grabbed it and went for it.  It ended up being the perfect shade and I couldn't be happier with what I chose. 

This is Illamasqua Load.  One of my current favorite polishes.  Beautiful soft shade, fantastic formula and dirty name, what's not to love?  This is one of the few polishes I own that I've worn several times.  It goes on smooth and dries fast.  Although when I got it I had to put A TON of thinner in it to get the formula nice but now I just thin as needed and it goes on like a dream.  Love it!  

Thanks for looking! :D

New Year, New Start

Well, this is awkward.... 2011 was such a big and busy year for me and my family.  We bought a house, new car, and got married! Wonderful times and much celebrating and hard work but unfortunately less nail time for me.  I have only recently got my nails back into picture worthy shape and I'm ready to start over and get back to my blogging. I hope to post some pics soon even if I start small with a few NOTD posts.  Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season and fabulous New Year so far.  I'll leave you with my favorite shot from our wedding.

Thank you for looking. :D

Only 2 days left!!!

Please check out this link to enter the Lacquered Lover Unicorn Puke Giveaway!!!  Unicorn Puke!!!!

http://www.lacqueredlover.com/2011/11/lacquered-lover-unicorn-puke-giveaway.html

My St. Patrick's Day NOTD

Here is my St. Patty's NOTD

 Nars Zulu with Rococo Gold Leaf 

I used Barielle Manicure Extender under Seche Vite for my top coat, it makes all my cream & jelly manis smooth as glass.

Thank you for looking. :D

Golden Rose Haul

Here's some quick haul pics I've been meaning to post for the past week.  After seeing amazing swatches of #112 on MUA I had to have some of the Golden Rose holos.  I ordered them all from Golden Rose USA and despite hearing a lot of bad shipping stories my package arrived safe and packed well.

All the polishes were individually bubble wrapped and shipped in a bubble mailer.

 



As you can see the bottles arrived not completely full as some other consumers have reported. :(



These are far more holo irl but these were the best pics I got out of a lot taken.  I'm most excited to try out #112 & #118, 

Thank you for looking! :D

China Glaze Tronica Swatches with OMG Comparison

Here are some skittle swatches showing some of the new China Glaze Tronica collection. Tronica is a collection of scattered holo polishes. These are a Sally Beauty exclusive and having been seen in store starting this week. All pics were taken in sunlight, no flash. 


LtoR: MEGA BITE, ELECTRA MAGENTA, GAMER GLAM, DIGITAL DAWN & thumb is HOLOGRAM

LtoR: 3D FANTASY, LASER LIME, HYPER HAUTE, TECHNO TEAL & thumb is CYBERSPACE

As I mentioned before Tronica is a collection of scattered holo polishes. China Glaze had released a collection of linear holo polishes a few years ago, the OMG collection. Here are bottle comp pics with the dupes I think are most similar from the OMG collection. OMG bottles are on the left and Tronica bottles on the right in all pics.

OMG vs HOLOGRAM:

 FYI vs CYBERSPACE:

L8R G8R vs LASER LIME:

 DV8 vs TECHNO TEAL:

IDK vs GAMER GLAM:

BFF vs ELECTRA MAGENTA:

TTYL vs DIGITAL DAWN:

QT vs HYPER HAUTE:

 TMI vs 3D FANTASY:

 I don’t own OMG dupe for MEGA BITE but here’s sun pic:

The formula on the Tronica collection was great and they work really well for konading so I'm very happy I bought these even though the colors are so similar to the OMG collection. 

Thank you for looking! :D

Tips & Tricks: Clean-up Method

My first Tips & Tricks post I have for you is what the MUA nailboard refers to as the clean-up method.  The original tutorial I used was posted by Meganchair and helped me immensely.  

You can look at Meganchair's original tutorial here:

Meganchair clean-up method (CLICK) for link: http://polishorperish.blogspot.com/2010/09/how-to-get-that-picture-perfect.html 

Now onto how I perform my clean-up.  While paiting my nails I like to use a clean orange stick to wipe off any paint I get on my skin or mistakes I make.  This helps make clean-up faster and easier, the less mess you make the less yo will have to clean-up later.

Before clean-up

Items needed:

Acetone

I prefer to use a 1/2 & 1/2 mix of Beauty Secrets brand Pure Acetone and Acetone Remover.  This mix works best FOR ME since it removes polish I'm cleaning up quickly but doesn't dry out my skin or leave the

white residue pure acetone does. 

I use this smaller bottle to keep my mix in:

A stiff brush

Got this brush from Michaels.  It's a #8 Flat brush, from the painting section, and I paid around $2-$3 for it.

Since I am NOT a fan of pouring remover into the cap of my bottle, I prefer to dip my brush directly into my bottle and wipe some of the excess off in the cap or on a paper towel.  Then use the brush to wipe around your nail and remove any polish mistakes that may have happened while painting.  I also prefer to do this after I have applied Top Coat so that any Top Coat that got onto my skin gets removed and won't flake off later.

For me, there was definitely a learning curve for this method.  When I first started, I was taking way too much polish off and ended up having very large cuticle gaps.  Just like learning to paint my nails better though with practice the gaps got smaller and smaller and now I love that I can have that perfect line on all my fingers.

After clean-up. OPI DS Signature with China Glaze Cracked Concrete Crackle accent nail

Holo goodness!