Favorite Nail Art of 2011

I thought it would be fun to list my favorite nail art designs for the year. Here are a few of my favorites.

Valentine's Day

Waterless Marble

Freehand Butterfly

Halloween

Midnight Blue

Fun with stamping

Peacock

NOTD

Lace Stamping

Stamping over Foil

So these were my favorites! I can't believe I only did one foil this year. I'll have to whip them out soon.

Hope you enjoyed my picks!

Top 11 of 2011, My Favorite Polishes of the Year!

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens

Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens
Brown paper packages tied up string These a few of my favorite things....

My favorite polishes of the year in no particular order

Oh my Megan you're such a gem. Elegant and sophisticated. Although it's not your typical neutral I think it can pass in various environments.

I think I finally figured out how to create the perfect movie manicure. You know the one that Jennifer Aniston usually wears in movies. Mousseline takes a few coats but it's like cushiony clouds once you get there.

The perfect little topcoat to quickly spice up a mani, Nubar White Dots.

The perfect Holiday green Glittering Garland.

I coveted the magnetics from a far throughout 2010 and was thrilled when they made it to the US in 2011. One of my favorites the year, Layla Black Metal.
The Special Effects arrived late this year but just in time to ignite a fire on my nails. Twisted was my favorite from the collection of five. I know a lot of people don't like the density of the polish but I think it's perfect because it allows me to create the look I'm going for. I can be a demure vixen with 1 coat or take it into overdrive with several coats.

Khloe Had A Little Lam Lam. Need I say more?

Change your Holiday vision. Blue is not a color that comes to mind during the Holidays but Snow-Man of My Dreams was the perfect mate this year.

The Lovely Gayle. This muted one coat-er won me over.

My first neutral glitter, or should I say a neutral based. Glitter in the Air makes me happy :)

First Mate. A stunning cobalt blue that's sure to turn heads.

The return of DS polishes. We were all hoping for holographics but were gifted with glitter instead. With the mix of purple, blue and pink used to make DS Temptation, I'm not complaining.

Perfecting a Dupe. This may be one of the most popular Revlon's of the year. A duplicate to Deborah Lippmann's Bad Romance, Facets of Fuschia, was definitely a favorite of mine.

While the excitement over crackles has died down there were a few stars amongst the bunch. Clean Break was one of my favorites from the plethora of crackles that were released in 2011. It was one of the few that cracked wide enough to allow ample room to visualize the base color. Go Color Club for mastering this formula!


And there you have it. A few of my favorites. Yes I know, I went well over 11 polishes but I just couldn't narrow it down!

I hope you enjoyed my selections. Until next time, Happy Polishing!

Holiday Manis

Hope you're enjoying the Holidays! I had a great Christmas but now all I want to do is sleep and eat chocolate chip cookies. Part of me wants to get up and get moving but the other part wants to sit back, relax and enjoy the break :D

My current nail of the day is a foil stamp using the Red Angel plate RA-107. I really like the flower petal image so I tried it again with the Color Club Foil Collection over Wet N' Wild Black Creme. The outcome was a very dramatic but I like it!

The colors I choose were Cold Metal (blue), Perfect Molten (green), Hot Like Lava (pink) and Sally Hansen Silver Sweep. To create this look I randomly placed dots of each polish over the image then swiped. The colors will combine to create a swirled appearance. The silver is very dominant so you only need a smidgen.

I love this so much I might wear it for New Years Eve!

And my simple Christmas mani. I used 1 coat of Wet N' Wild Hallucinate and sponged Milani Melt In The Sun over it. The nail decal is by Born Pretty.

And those are my Holiday manis. Until next time, Happy Polishing!

Queen's Color Holiday Crackle

A quick view of a Holiday inspired crackle, CK18 Metallic Rose by Queen's Color. I couldn't capture this one correctly. It's called metallic but it's looks more glitter-y to me. I like the rugged and uneven look of the crackle. I used one thick coat over LA Colors LIVE a silver foil.





And that's all for today. I'll have another Holiday mani tomorrow. Thanks for stopping by!

Sephora by OPI Glimmer Wonderland Set Swatches

Last week I picked up the Glimmer Wonderland Set. I looked for swatches all over the Internet before I purchased it and couldn't find any, so I thought I'd share a few quick swatches with you today. The set comes with 6 mini polishes in different Holiday inspired colors and finishes.

Bare to Be Different - Nude base that's almost sheer. Excuse my horribly stained nails. I usually put a nail brightener on when doing French manis to hide my stains. I used 2 coats.


Never enough shoes - black base with micro gold shimmer. It's really hard to notice the shimmer in this one but it's there.

No-el If I Know - Holographic glitter topcoat. I really love this one over Never Enough Shoes.

Looks Like Rain Dear - Golden base with medium and micro silver hex glitter. Another favorite. I used 2 coats.

Sample Sale - I only used 1 coat of this one but probably could have used another. Medium red with micro shimmer.

Already Famous - lovely pewter foil but I did had to use 3 coats to make it opaque.

Looks Like Rain Dear over Sample Sale looks great together but it was difficult getting even coverage using Looks Like Rain Dear as a topcoat. Nevertheless they look great together!

I own very few Sephora by OPI's so I was eager to try these out. The formula is thinner than the standard OPI line but I like the small brush for ease of application. My least favorite was Bare to Be Different only because I have so many stains. It would probably look great over stain-free nails. I'll have to look into getting full sizes of Already Famous and Looks Like Rain Dear. These two stood out to me from the 6 in the collection. No-el If I Know was another favorite.

I purchased this set from Sephora.

Holiday NOTD

Happy Holidays! I hope you and family are enjoying the Holiday Season. I've been busy with last minute preparations for the big day but wanted to take a moment to share my current nails with you. It doesn't look very Christmas-y to me but it's still cute.

The design was done using the new Red Angel Amazon plates. RA-107 to be exact! Base color is Essie Splash of Grenadine topped with China Glaze Mrs. Claus. Stamped with Konad franken (Konad Green + Konad Mint Green). I'm glad I found a use for the greens. I always thought Konad Green was too dark and Mint Green was too light.

Excuse the shrinkage. This was day two and Poshe tends to shrink on me. Either that or my nails grow at a very rapid pace :)

And that's it for today. I'll try to post more Christmas manis soon. Until then, Happy Polishing!

FingerPaints Special Effects over Purple

Good morning lovelies! Here are a few swatches of Special Effects over purple. For the purple base I choose Zoya Hope. I like the look of Motley and Twisted the best.

And a few close ups.

Swatch of Zoya Hope, a medium purple-violet. I used 2 coats as the base.

And that's all for today. If you haven't checked out my swatches over black you can view them here. Happy Holidays!

Finger Paints Special Effects Collection Swatches and Review

You know you have an obsession when the Sally’s sales lady knows you and your husband, lol. Just when I swore I was finished nail polish shopping for the year, along comes these beautiful flakies!!! I was at home with the little ones and hubby was kind enough to pick these up for me while he was out (kudos to hubby). I’m so excited I got these last night! They are due for release in January at Sally’s Beauty Supply but the SA was kind enough to pull them from boxes. There are 5 polishes in the Special Effects Collection: Asylum, Twisted, Motley, Flashy and Flecked.

I only picked up 3 colors in an effort to avoid dupes. I choose Asylum, Twisted and Motley. Flashy looks like Hidden Treasures to me and Flecked I thought would look like Sinful Colors Green Ocean but boy was I wrong.

First up is Twisted – the best from the collection, IMO. Even though I don’t have the entire collection (haha). Twisted has several colors that pop when applied over black. I noticed red, blue, gold, orange and green. It’s a flakie lover’s dream! I believe the rainbow of flakies come from the duochrome of some of the flakes (red/gold and green/blue). Whatever the reason I’m in love with this one! This was the most concentrated of the 3 that I have, meaning, it seemed to have more flakes inside the clear base compared to the other two. This makes since because it appears to be a combination of flakies from the other polishes.

Asylum – makes a blue and red fireball on the nail when applied over black. This is my second favorite from the collection. It has less flakies inside the clear base than Twisted, but I still only used 1 coat over black to achieve this look. Asylum looks VERY similar to Edge of Glory according to pictures.

Motley – is beautiful but it’s my least favorite from the set. In the swatches I saw it looked blue but on the nail it’s actually blue and green and VERY similar to Sinful Colors Green Ocean. I actually have Green Ocean on the pinky finger in the swatch below. It’s not an exact duplicate but close. Green Ocean’s flakies are larger, brighter and includes fine glitter so bright that it looks like flakes, versus Motley’s blue/green duochrome flakes which are smaller but still beautiful. Both polishes create a bright blue/green shine on the nail and it’s difficult to tell them apart unless you look very closely.

Here are close-ups of the collection.

I was wrong about Flecked. It looks like Motley is almost a dupe to Sinful Colors Green Ocean.

Overall these flakies are the business!!! I’m totally impressed with the Special Effects line. I used 1 coat of each polish over Wet N' Wild Black Creme. Motley and Asylum may require a second coat if you want your nails to look saturated with flakies but I was happy with the effect of just 1 layer. The small FingerPaint's brush allows ease of application and the flakies lay down very nicely on the nail, unlike Green Ocean which sometimes has to be patted down in order to lay flat.

I’m not sure how close Asylum is to Deborah Lippmann’s Edge of Glory polish but it's a great alternative at a fraction of the price. The polishes will be on display beginning in January for $4.99. I copped mind for $4.49 with a Beauty Club Card, lol. I hope you enjoyed these swatches; they were so much fun to do! Now I swear I’m done polish shopping for the year. For real this time! Oh and if you want to see swatches of all 5 polishes visit The Nailphile's blog. She has gorgeous pictures of all 5!

P.S. I have NOT forgotten about the 10-day Nail Challenge. I’ve been busy preparing for the Holiday and entertaining my daughter. I’ll continue the Challenge very soon. I also have another giveaway coming up soon. Thanks so much for stopping by! I hope you are enjoying the Holiday Season!!!