China Glaze Howl You Doin' (2013 Halloween Monsters Ball Collection)

Hi everyone!

Just a simple polish post today. Don't despair, the polish is amazing! And it's Halloweeny! Which is what I'm going for from now up to Halloween. I'm embracing the holiday on my nails!!

It's China Glaze Howl You Doin' form the 2013 Monsters Ball Halloween Collection. It's a deep purple crelly with copper and blue flecks in it. I love this polish it reminds me of some sort of magical liquid bubbling away in a witchs' cauldron!

Doesn't it look all mystical and spell casting?! I wore it for a day shiny and then I mattified it.

I think I liked it better matte, it looked dark in most lights, but then a little sparkle would peek through. It was really interesting. Which do you like better?

Thanks for reading!!

OMD 31 Day Challenge - Day 21 - Stamping

Stamping!! Yay! I like stamping!! So many possibilities for one mani!

I was really inspired by my day 17 gradient. It really reminded me of the color of the sky at dusk. So I recreated the colors in another gradient using China Glaze Urban-Night and China Glaze Traffic Jam and then I used Bundle Monster 205's butterfly image to have the butterflies fluttering into the night. I didn't topcoat after the stamping because I liked the way the butterflies looked matte against the shininess of the sky.

Thanks for reading!

Don't forget to check out the other challenger's manis here

OMD 31 Day Challenge - Day 19 - GLITTER

ZOMG! GLITTER!!!

Day 19 of the OMD 31 Day Challenge is glitter! I love glitter, lol. I did a glitter gradient using my new favorite pink China Glaze Innocence (told you it would be making another appearance very soon! lol!).  I did four coats of Innocence and then sponged on a glitter gradient using Nubar Violet Sparkle. Violet Sparkle was super opaque! I ended up needing to go further down my nail than I had planned since it was so opaque. Violet Sparkle is a gorgeous glittery saturated purple, my pictures don't do it justice.

This was so blingy and sparkly! I loved wearing it!!

Thanks for reading!

Check out the other glittery mani's here

OMD 31 Day Challenge - Day 17 - Gradient

Whoops....this was supposed to be the mani for Wednesday but I'm only posting it today! Silly life getting in the way of posting. Anyways, I know I'm super far behind but I'm hoping to get caught up in the Challenge over the next couple of days so expect lots of posts.

My gradient manicure is pink and purple and girly all over! It's actually the first gradient I've done that I've been happy with, so now I'm excited to do more!! I started with a quick base of white and then I sponged on China Glaze Urban-Night and China Glaze Traffic Jam. Both colors are gorgeous, but I had a hard time capturing them in photos. Thus I took a bazillion photos of this manicure, so here's the ones I thought were truest to color! They look sort of speckly in the photos, but they weren't in real life, the colors were opaque and no white was showing through.

I can't wait to do another gradient! Thanks for reading :)

Check out the other gradient manicures here

OMD 31 Day Challenge - Day 6 - Neon

Today is day 6 of the OMD 31 Day Challenge, and it's neons!! I've chosen to do a simple neon and nude mani.

I started with three coats on my thumb and pinky of China Glaze Flying Dragon, a beautiful fuschia neon with blue shimmer. On my pointer, middle and ring fingers I used two coats of an unnamed Color Club nude. All the Color Clubs that I have which came in a 7 piece pack are nameless. If anyone knows the name let me know and I'll update the post! On the nude fingers I freehanded a ribbon-esque design with Flying Dragon. I had to go over it twice to get the appropriate opacity. I tried to get it to look like the neon ribbon continues through the fingers and I think it does!

Thanks for reading!!

You can check out the other participant's mains here

OMD 31 Day Challenge - Day 5 - Skittles

Happy Friday everyone! I hope your Friday was great and you're looking forward to your weekend!! I'm going to be doing my best to keep up with the challenge so fingers crossed that there will be two manis from me this weekend.

Today is Skittles day in the 31 Day Challenge. I have a pastel polka dot skittle mani for you! Here's what I used:

• Thumb: two coats of China Glaze Something Sweet
• Pointer: two coats of Julep Renee
• Middle: two coats of Julep Shenae, it has a slight shimmer
• Ring: two coats of Pure Ice Bikini. I LOVE this blue, it was so smooth and the perfect dusty pastel blue.
• Pinky: three coats of OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls

My thumb, pointer, middle and ring finger are all dotted using OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls. The dots on my pinky are done using the base colors on the other finger.

I really liked this mani, it was delicate and fun at the same time. Not really season appropriate, it was more springy, but that's ok I still loved it!

Thanks for reading!!

You can see the other participant's manis here

OMD 31 Day Challenge - Day 3 - Purple

Oh my! I'm super late today, barely squeaking the challenge in!! Today is day three of the challenge and the prompt says today is purple!

I have a geometric skittle manicure in purple for today. It's a lot of information so I'm going to break it down finger by finger:

• Pointer: two coats of Pure Ice New Lilac, stamped with Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Co-Bolt Blue and  a Fauxnad plate of m65
• Middle: two coats of Pure Ice New Lilac, stamped with Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Co-Bolt Blue and Gals Plate 35
• Ring: two coats of Pure Ice New Lilac, three royal blue square rhinestones
• Pinky: one coat of Pure Ice New Lilac as undies, then four thick coats of Pure Ice Cheatin

Wow, that was a lot of writing about what's going on in this mani! I bought Pure Ice New Lilac as a potential stamping polish, I'm not sure how well it's going to work. I'll have to give it a try in the nearish future!

Thanks for reading!

You can check out the other participants mani's here

China Glaze Joy with Stamping

Hi everyone! I hope your weekend was fantastic, I got some yard work done. Not fun but it had to be done! (Apparently I'm a poet and I don't even know it! hehe)

I just have a quick post today. I have one coat of China Glaze Joy on all my nails. ONE coat! How fantastic!! I think this one will be amazing for stamping, it's on my to-do list to give it a try! I have a simple accent on my ring finger stamped with Konad White and Cheeky plate 13.

Thanks for reading!

Yellow Rays

I looooove striping tape! I love how it makes such clean and crisp lines and easily adds interest to a manicure.

Today I have some yellow rays, made using striping tape. This mani sort of reminds me of sun rays breaking through the dark of the morning just itching to lighten up the day.

For my pointer and pinky finger I used two coats of Wet N Wild Night Prowl. On my middle and ring finger I used three coats of Joe Fresh Pineapple. If I were wearing Pineapple by itself I likely would have done one more coat, it was still sort of streaky, darn yellow polish! Since I was planning on covering it up though I stopped at three coats. It was opaque, just not perfect, but good enough for the next step! Once Pineapple was dry I arranged striping tape in a sort of ray pattern and then covered it with a quite thick coat of Night Prowl as the yellow didn't want to be covered that easily.

The purple flecks in Night Prowl were more prominent in real life than I was able to catch in photos. You can see the gorgeous purple quite clearly in the bottle.

Looking at the photos now, I should have tried a matte top coat with this mani! I love mattifying manicures, and now I want to see what this would have looked like. Oh well...maybe next time I'll remember!

Thanks for reading!

Purple and Gold Glitter and Stamping

Going through my archives of mani photos it turns out I don't use glitter nearly as often as I thought I did! But...what would the first nail post of a blog named after glitter be without glitter? SUPER SILLY!

Thus, I present gold glitter! Oh, and some purple and gold stamping to go along with it.

To create the look I used two coats of Joe Fresh Eggplant, a creamy dusty eggplant purple, on my pointer, pinky and thumb. After that was dry I stamped with Essie Good as Gold and Bundle Monster plate 314. The ring and middle finger contain the piece de resistance, the glitter! I used one coat of Sonia Kashuk Golden Ticket as undies and covered that with three coats of Sinful Colors All About You. All About You is a lovely warm gold glitter with some copper flecks in it to give some depth. It's very sparkly and beautiful and goes well with the dusty purple.

Look at the lovely sparkles in All About You! It's even sparklier in real life, but since it's more of a dusty seeming glitter it isn't as in-your-face as other glitters can be, it's more subtle. Can you tell I'm quite enamoured with this glitter??

The photo below shows the purple truer to real colour, it's a bit dark in the above photos. It doesn't read quite as blackened on the nail.

I really liked this design, it had a sort of elegance about it with the scroll like stamping and the golden accent fingers.

Thanks for reading!