February Review

Hey-yo!  What's happening?  Lot of the same around here.

Like I promised last month, here I am with a review of the manis I wore during February.  It's gonna be a long one - hold on tight!

We'll start off the month in review with ChG For Audrey with OPI Pirouette My Whistle.  I lemminged after that glitter for a while - it's perfect for a bit of sparkle on top of pretty much any color.

February is all full of hearts and flowers, and because of that, I went with a couple different pink looks.  This is Zoya Reece.  Gorgeous pink with green-gold flash.  This was one of my first Zoya purchases.  I added the last pic to show how strong the green-gold flash can be.

OPI Black Cherry Chutney - another long-time lemming.  This is such a gorgeous, glowy (in the right light), vampy color.  This mani only lasted one night because...well...it didn't survive a night of pretty rowdy drinking.  And that's all I've got to say about that.

My first Butter London: Lady of the Muck.  Pretty cornflower blue with just a touch of shimmer.  I added pink and white striping for decoration.  The wear on this was decent but it didn't impress me enough to rush out and buy a bottle.

Marble time!  Makeup Zombie hosted a pink and red challenge around Valentine's Day and I knew immediately what I was going to do.  This is Color Club She's So Glam with Zoya Alix.  I topped it all off with ChG Fairy Dust (because you can never have too much sparkle).

Around Christmas when all the good sales were happening, I grabbed a trio of polish from Glitzology.  This one immediately caught my eye: Nebula.  Sheer black jelly with micro holo, hexie holo, AND holo stars?!  SOLD!!  I used two layers over Zoya Noot, a super dark green-grey. 

This was probably my least favorite of the group.  These are Zoya Tiffany (pink-peach) and Crystal (blue).  What I love about both of these is the gold flecks - it really makes the blue gorgeous.

And now, the best two of the month...

AEngland Tristam (royal blue holo) and Dragon (Kelly green holo).  These are gorgeous in person - I could not capture the holo correctly to save my life.  I could see myself wearing these much more frequently if they didn't chip like a biatch...and that's even with using Nfu Oh Aqua Base.  So, so pretty.

Color Club started coming out with some killer holos.  THANK YOU COLOR CLUB!  This is Cloud 9, a gorgeous, super strong pale pink holo.  I've seen the second collection and they're just as pretty as the first.  Want. them. all!!

There ya go...the whole month of February.  Which is your favorite?  Any suggestions/special requests for March?

Misc Nails 2012 - Part 1

Hello, again!  I went through some of my manis from 2012 and I thought I'd share some of them with you now. 

Ready for lots of pictures?  I'm splitting this up in to two parts because there were quite a few pictures and I didn't want to overload you all in one sitting.

Part 1

Orly Snowcone with KleanColor Blue Holo as an accent.  I waited a long time to get Snowcone and I have no idea why.  It's super pigmented and *bonus*, it doesn't stain!  A big thank you to Nailstah for the KleanColor way back in 2011.

Zoya Evvy (dark green-grey creme) and Zoya Quinn (deep berry).  The contrast of these colors was really great IRL...couldn't exactly capture it in pictures.

Zoya Bevin (mint) and Zoya Kristen (blue-based grey) with a little NYC Love Letters for some sparkle. 

Color Club Revvvolution (black holo), Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Orange Crush, black striping polish and a bit of silver holo glitter to give it some pow.  Obviously, this was a Halloween mani.  I was feeling kind of uninspired for Halloween this year.

Milani Violet Dash (purple creme) and Milani Jewel FX Lavender as a glitter gradient.  I wore this for the first annual Southwest SparkleCon 2012 as organized by Makeup Zombie.  SO much fun meeting some new sparkle friends!!

A plastic wrap mani using a pale pink (I haven't a clue what it was) and China Glaze Designer Satin.  Super easy mani with maximum bang for your buck.  I loved this one!

And last, but definitely not least, a really pretty water marble using Zoya Anja (purple) and Zoya Midori (green).  This is the first marble I'd done in a while and I was happy how it turned out.  I really like how some of the green faded in to the purple.

I don't usually post makeup pictures but I wanted to share this one.  I did this as my look for a derby bout in October.  This is Fyrinnae Velvet Vampire (red) and Raven's Prophecy (black).  This look took me FOREVER but it turned out just like I wanted it and it was so pretty with gorgeous sparkle (that I couldn't capture). 

Stay tuned for Part 2 - coming soon!

Blue Skies Ahead

Happy weekend, Kitschies!  I hope you're busy doing things that make you happy and you have nothing but blue skies ahead.  Here in the Kitschy household, I'm keeping down the fort while the hubs is on a camping trip.  On today's agenda?  I hope to get some cleaning done and I need to run a few errands - tomorrow is Father's Day and ideally, I'd like to get out while the hubs isn't home but that's not really looking like it's going to happen.

So...in the meantime, I have a mani to share with you.  I haven't a clue when I did this mani - you all know how seriously behind I am in posting.

This is 2-3 coats of a powder blue creme from Color Club (Blue Light, maybe?  It probably came in a set - those don't usually names on the bottles).  As with most pastels, application was horrible.  You can see drag marks on my index and ring fingers.  With a dotting tool, I started with SH Thinking of Blue (navy), then combined it with white to make the cornflower blue dots.  I finished off the gradient dots with SH White On.

All in all, I was happy with this mani.  I have a question, though...how hard is it to make a pastel without it being super streaky and a pain in the butt to apply??  Do you have any tricks when it comes to applying pastel polish?  I'd really love to hear them.

Happy weekend!  See you soon. :)

Why You No Green!?!

Good day, Kitschies!!  It's FRIDAY!!!  It's supposed to beautiful weather this weekend, so we're planning on taking the boys sledding on Sunday.  I can't wait!  I think it'll be more for me than the boys, but it'll be fun either way.  Saturday will be spent getting things done around the house so we can play on Sunday.  What do YOU have planned for the weekend?

I have a fun mani to share with you today.  I've done a few like this before, but of the 3 I've done so far, this is, by far, my favorite.

I started with a base of a pale, pale pink Color Club (I cannot remember the name of it right now).  I wanted something light but not as stark as a plain white.  This super pale pink worked perfect!

Then I splattered ChG Four Leaf Clover (yes, that really *is* green, almost a neon green, but it would NOT capture correctly at. all.) and Orly Charged Up (purple) alternately on each nail.

For a more color-accurate pic, check out this swatch by ALU.  No matter how I tweaked the settings on my camera and no matter what I did in Photoshop, I could NOT get that green to look green.  Strange.  Usually I have trouble with purple.

I loved this mani!  Some of the polish dragged when I put on top coat and usually that would bug me but this time it gave it an almost watercolor effect, a la David Mack.

And just as a little side note, I've noticed I've picked up a few new followers here and there and I want to say WELCOME and thank you!  It's amazing to me that people are interested enough in what I do on my blog to follow me.  Keep an eye open for a giveaway to be happening very soon!  Happy weekend!

Sugar Plum Yum!

Good morning, Kitschies!!!  I don't know about you, but I am *beyond* happy it's Friday.  It has been a very, very long week.  Work has been a roller coaster.  The boys are being PitAs and the hubs is the hubs.  So, I'm really looking forward to having a few days off.  Well, not really off since I'll be at home, but at least I won't have to worry about work.  Unless they call me.  But I'll worry 'bout that when it happens.

I was at Sally Beauty Supply before Christmas and I had heard some girls who had found some Color Club glitter polishes there.  I was skeptical because my Sallys has never had Color Club, but wonders of wonders, they had the holiday display!

This one was a little hard for me to photograph, but I started with two coats of WnW Black Creme and then used two coats (I think it was 2 coats) of Color Club Sugar Plum Yum (SPY).  I was a little worried about SPY because it was scented and the last scented polish I tried, I couldn't stand the scent, but I pressed on.

SPY is a clear based *packed* with large purple hex glitter and smaller green hex glitter.  The scent on this was not as offensive as Revlon Grape Fizz - I didn't even notice it by the next morning!

The thing I didn't like about SPY was some of the large purple glitter wasn't all the way flat, so it didn't lay flat on my nail.  But, overall, I did like this mani.  I wore it around Christmas and it was a nice change to the other more Christmas-y manis I did.  It was festive without being in-your-face.  You can click on that image to see the pretty, pretty glitter better.

Did you pick up any of the Color Club holiday collection?  What did you think?

Hope you all have a great weekend!!  I have a lot to do this weekend (as always) and I hope I get it all done.  Oh!  And I have to remember to go to the store because we're having THIS for dinner tomorrow night.

Why Go With the Flow?

Good day, Kitschies!  I hope you're enjoying your week and you can see the light at the end of the tunnel.  It's been an *interesting* week, to say the least.  Halloween was good - the boys got TONS of candy.  We went to see Harry Potter 7.2 (finally) and I loved it.  I think it was the best of all the HP films.  I cried a lot more than I expected I would, but that's not really surprising.  I'm a cry-baby when it comes to movies.  Anyway...I posted my Halloween manis on Monday and in case you missed it, go take a look at them HERE.

I know it's usually WWtKW or On Wednesday We Wear Pink, but I don't really feel like going with the flow today, so I'm going to share a purple mani with you today.

You've heard of my disinterest in neon and you've heard my love of the CC Electro Candy collection.  This little neon lovely comes from that wonderful CC collection.

This is CC Ultra Violet.  It's a really pretty purple neon with a blue flash.  I love this color in person, but like most purples, this one was hard to capture.

No matter how I adjusted the color balance in PS, I couldn't get it quite right.  It's more purple and less pink IRL.

It was too much POW just left as purple, so I grabbed my black and white striping polishes and did some racing stripes.  And no, you're not imagining things - I've done a mani similar to this a while back with a Cult Nails polish (you can check that post out HERE). 

I love the color of this polish, but I *really* love the blue flash.  It's crazy strong in the sunlight!  If more neons were made with a flash, I wouldn't shy away from them so much.

In other news, I had to chop down all my nails.  *I haz a sad*  I haven't chopped my nails for MONTHS and now I feel like I'm missing half my fingers!  *sigh*  I know they'll grow back but they're so SHORT!  

Well, there ya go.  I'm about outta here for the day - have to go take care of Thing #2 and have the hubs go to work.  Don't ya just love sick kiddos?

One More Summer Fling

Happy Monday, Kitschies!  It was a fun weekend over here in the Land of Enchantment - well, Saturday was fun, anyway.  It was derby championships and I got all dolled up.  I was stuck behind a computer for both bouts, but I got to don my skates and glide around the area a few times.  It felt so good to be back on my skates - I hadn't laced them up since October 4th and let me tell you...I am itching to get back on the track!!  I'm going to my first practice tonight since breaking my toe - wish me luck! 

And yes...I hear you...rest that toe. :|  I hear you.

Now...for the real reason of the post.  Nail polish!  LOL

Waaaaay back in August (yes, another mani from August), I got on a French mani kick.  This is one of the few that survived the cut.

This mani *screams* summer to me!  I did the tips with CC Tangerine Scream (from the Electro Candy collection) then I used Finger Paints Paper Mache for the flowers and dots with a blue rhinestone in the center of the flowers.

I don't usually go for neon polishes, but I dig the whole Electro Candy collection.  They have the prettiest flash to them.  The orange has a really pretty white pearl flash to it.  Oh...and that's Nate's little foot over there in the corner of the pool.

I really liked the contrast of the bright bold cobalt blue against the neon orange.  And the white dots broke up the blank field of the nail bed a bit.

This is how Tangerine Scream looked in the shade.  I don't know what it is about neons, but you can't really capture their heat unless you're in half-light.