Pokemon Nail Art Challenge: Normal

I'm way behind on all of my posts.. I have over a week's worth of stuff to share with you but unfortunately I just don't have much time to do it right now. So I'm going to start with some nail art.

This past week we were doing Normal type Pokemon in the nail art challenge. I had a really difficult time deciding which Pokemon to do.. most of the normal types are brown or basically just pink blobs and where's the fun in that? Of course I hate brown on my nails so that was immediately out of the question. I thought about doing Rattata but I felt uninspired. After a few tests with Chancey nails, I finally settled on doing Porygon.

Look at that! his head is a perfect shape for nail art, don't you think?

I tried taping off the design but then decided that was just too much work.. and I wanted something simple so I settled for a skittle with Porygon on the accent. Of course I did shiny Porygon as well.

Here are all the polishes I used.. if you want the name of a specific polish please let me know.

Pictures!

This manicure was kind of a fail to me... the colors on my left hand just aren't "ME". So I applied a coat of Tip Top Nail Crackle in Iceburg and problemo fixed!

I seriously felt better after applying Iceburg.. those solid bright colors were just too much for me. It's funny how little things like that can effect us.

So anyway, there's my Normal type nails for this week.. what do you think?

(PS: WHY is Porygon Normal? I always think it's Electric.)

Make extra cash at home with SendEarnings.com

I just added this banner to my page and I wanted to talk about it briefly. My sister in law told me about SendEarnings.com because she's been using it and so far she's made like $60 on it. I don't know how long she's been using the site, but I had to check it out for myself. I've been a member for a couple of weeks now, but of course with my computer not working & Mike being home.. I haven't had much of a chance to use it to it's full capacity. However, I've already made $7+.




If you're not familiar with this sort of thing, basically you sign up, they send you emails, surveys to read (and apparently you can play games.) You earn points for taking surveys, reading the emails and sometimes completing offers. Sometimes its only a few cents, but I've seen offers where you could earn $10 or more. I haven't completed any of those myself yet. You can also earn money just for using their site as a search engine.

The catch to this site is you have to earn $30 before you can request your payment so it might take some time to build up that credit. For me, it would probably be worth it.. just because I can do it here and there. If it adds up to only $60 a year, that would be great! If it added up to even more, fantastic! So I'll see :)

The other site I use is http://www.i-say.com. I've earned $40 in gift cards since last July, which isn't great but I've also gotten a few products to try out (toilet paper, paper towels.)

What do you think of these types of sites? Have you tried any? I'd love to know of any that work really well. On the other hand, I'd also love to hear if you've tried any that just seem like schemes. Thanks!

Pokemon Challenge: Flying

Last week we did Flying type Pokemon! I've already shown you what I wore as the base for this manicure, so let me show you the final manicure. Since this was part of my Valentine's Day manicure, I thought it would be fun to do Butterfree nails! If you're not familiar with the anime, there was one episode in which Ash's Butterfree was trying to win the heart of a female Butterfree.

For my left hand, I used:
Sinful Colors Tokyo Pearl
WingDustCollections Love, love me do!
Julep Charlotte
Model's Own Red Alert
Simple Pleasures "Peace" (this is what I call it, it has a peace symbol on it. no name given.)
Kiss Nail Art in black

 For my right hand I used:
Sinful Colors Tokyo Pearl
JENsations Key to My Heart
Wet N Wild How I Met Your Magenta
Model's Own Red Alert
Simple Pleasures "Peace" (this is what I call it, it has a peace symbol on it. no name given.)
Kiss Nail Art in black

This has definitely been one of my favorite manicures so far!

I have one last picture for you and it's not really related at all.. Mike & I were looking at weird toy pictures yesterday and he found this one. I just had to share it since I'm a fan of both of these shows.

What did they do to poor Pikachu's mouth? I just love knock off toys.. they're so funny! But Sailor Moon's head on Ash's body? Have to wonder what they were thinking!

Remembering Tim...

Happy Birthday, Tim. Today would have been your birthday...

I have a different kind of post today, it's not a happy fun one but it's a post I feel best written. When I was 17 I made friends with a British boy of my age over the Internet. We and another boy all became friends and we talked online for hours, mostly just being silly.. but I grew to know them both. I don't remember exactly how long I knew them, as that time period is kind of a blur in my mind (my seizures weren't yet under control.) Anyway, I came to find out my Internet friend Tim had committed suicide. I don't know for certain why, but I always suspected it was because he was gay. This was back in 1997, so people just weren't as acceptable of homosexuality as they are now.. it tears my heart to know that if he had just waited a few more years, things might have been better. Of course, that's just my own speculation, but whatever the reason here it is 16 years later on Tim's birthday and I'm still thinking of the friend I miss.

It's crazy how the world works.. back then, people would blow you off if you said you had friends online. It was still a pretty new idea. Now though, I think most if not all of you can appreciate it how one person can quickly become your friend, even if you've never met them in real life.

I'll probably talk about this some more soon, as next month is National Brain Injury Awareness month, but I too have struggled with thoughts of suicide due to my chronic pain, in part. Suicide is never the answer.

I hope my readers don't think any less of me for this post, but I wanted to get it out there... I know when you're that depressed and that desperate it seems like no one in the world cares about you. It just isn't true. A 17 year old boy half the world away touched my life and I don't know if I'll ever really forget him. Everything you say and do effects us all, even if it's on a tiny scale which in some eyes may seem insignificant. There are bigger things going on in this world, and we're just too small to see the big picture.

Please remember, you're not alone.

What I wore on Valentine's Day Part 2

Yesterday I showed you what I wore on my left hand for Valentine's Day so today I'm going to show you my right hand... because I'm silly and like to wear different manicures :P

Just like my left hand, I first applied 3 coats of Sinful Colors Tokyo Pearl on all fingers except my thumb and pinkie. On those, I applied 3 coats of Wet N Wild How I Met Your Magenta. On my thumb and pinkie, I applied JENsations Key To My Heart. I actually had to do my thumb twice. I had read somewhere recently that with glitters you should dab them on so you get the glitters you want in large amounts. The result with this polish was a big mess that did not dry. What worked best was to do several thin coats. I did have to fish for the glitters I wanted.

I love How I Met Your Magenta.. mostly because I actually do have a friend named Magenta and this polish always reminds me of her. The color is very pretty and you can't tell from the pictures, but they have lots of shimmer to them.

I'm not sure how I feel about Key to My Heart... it's a very different polish than what I'm used to but it's a bit chaotic and almost reminds me of a glitter train wreck on my nails. Not exactly in a bad way. It's just a bit more chaotic than what I'm used to I suppose. This polish is filled with matte glitters in many different sizes, shapes and colors: white bar glitter, white hexagon glitters and white square glitters, black heart, black hexagon glitters and black bar glitter. You probably can't see these too well in my pictures, but there are also pink hexagon, square and heart glitters! I didn't even know there where pink hearts in there until I applied it.

I'm definitely going to have to apply this again some time over another color to see what I think. I'm sort of thinking this might be a good polish to try as a jelly sandwich. I'll have to see sometime :)

You can find JENsations on Facebook and Etsy

edit: I just wanted to mention that this was a real pain to remove! Lots and lots of acetone, but I had to use several cotton balls just for those two fingers :( Maybe next time I'll use just one coat..

What I wore on Valentine's Day Part 1

I'm not really a big fan of Valentine's Day, I think it's pretty much just too commercialized. However, I had to take this chance to do something fun for a manicure and I had a great idea! This is prep work for my Pokemon manicure for the week.. but let me just show you what I wore on Valentine's Day and you'll see my final manicure later :)

On my left hand I wore 3 coats of Sinful Colors Tokyo Pearl and I topped my pinkie and thumb nails with 1 coat of Wing Dust Collections Love, love me do!

I absolutely love Tokyo Pearl and after wearing this manicure for many days, I've decided I really love white or at least pearl white on my nails. I think I've found a new favorite polish color here!

As for Love, love me do!.... well, the name speaks for itself! I really love this polish. Easy to apply, dried quickly and I only really had to fish for a couple of heart glitters. This polish is full of tiny pink glitters, large holo silver hexagons glitters, and smaller hexagon glitters in pink, purple and white. There are also pink holo heart shaped glitters which really make this polish perfect for Valentine's Day. Gorgeous polish and I had no issues with application.

Check back for my final manicure, but next I'm going to show you what I wore on my right hand :)

You can find WingDustCollections on Facebook and on Etsy

edit: I forgot to mention, my pointer finger looks a little lumpy? it's not the polish.. I have a tea bag on that nail and it just did not go on flat :P

Palmolive Influenster Voxbox

A couple of weeks ago I was sent 3 new bottles of Palmolive Fresh Infusions dish soap to try out, courtesy of Influenster. You can read my first post about these products here.

I used all three bottles: Ginger White Tea, Lemon Thyme, and Lime Basil.Here's a look at the very last time I used the Lime Basil. It's the last few drops in my bottle, but look at how many bubbles it made!

Now that I've tried all three of these, let me give you my opinion on them. I was kind of nervous about trying these once I found out the brand was Palmolive because I used to use Palmolive and I had to switch because I think I had an allergic reaction to it. I wore rubber gloves the entire time I used these products, and hand no issues with them drying out my skin as far as I can tell (living in Wisconsin, the middle of Winter my hands are always dry no matter what!)

The first scent I used was the Ginger White Tea. This was my least favorite smell... I'm sensitive to smells, and this definitely made my headache worse. I was not looking forward to trying the other products because I disliked this scent that much. However, I really loved the Lemon Thyme and Lime Basil! The Lime Basil was definitely my favorite. It made my kitchen smell like Key Lime Pie.

The bottles list the soap as concentrated, which I didn't know until I read it on another blog. Despite this, I seemed to use about the usual amount of soap I normally would. I did go through each bottle rather quickly. We have a family of 2, and one 16 fluid ounce bottle lasted about a week and a half to 2 weeks. I would like to see if these were available in larger bottles.

I don't know if I would buy these or not. I haven't seen them at all in my local stores although I haven't really looked that hard. I didn't get the coupons with my box, so that's another reason I probably won't be buying them any time soon. I'll have to look around if I get a chance and see if they're available near me. A quick look at Walmart's Web site isn't showing them for whatever reason, but these are supposed to be sold at Walmart. I wonder also where else they will be sold. I don't know how much these cost, either, so that would definitely be the final decision maker! I did enjoy trying these out, however!

So to summarize, I loved the smell of the Lime Basil and Lemon Thyme scents, hated the Ginger White Tea. They cleaned effectively, so I'm happy.

These items were provided by Influenster in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own. Yours may differ.

Nail mail.. and something sweet!

Today I have to show you some nail mail I received Saturday. I didn't think ahead so I don't have any swatches of it for you, but let me just say I'm really excited to finally have this little baby in my hands. This was one of the first polishes I saw last year when I started blogging which I said I had to get. I finally did, thanks to a gift card for Amazon I got it for free :)

This pretty polish is Color Club Fame & Fortune. It's a pretty pink jell base full of silver holo glitters of different shapes and sizes.. and it's not your normal glitter!

Saturday was also Mike's birthday, so this is the cake I made him! I made a devil's food cake and filled it with peanut butter chips. Then I iced it with milk chocolate frosting, and decorated it with peanut butter chips and walnuts. Mike loves chocolate and peanut butter together. I had asked him what he wanted to have for ice cream, without telling him what kind of cake I was making... and he said chocolate and peanut butter. Yummy combo! :)

Julep Polish Remover Wipes

After a few days of wearing my Parasect inspired nails, I decided to liven them up a little bit with some glitter. I couldn't resist the chance to use one of my glitters with hearts in it, so I went with Kleancolor's Peaceful Heart.

I've been slowing working my way through some of my samples, so I decided to give one of my Julep nail polish remover wipes a try. As you can see in this next picture, it worked really great for the first nail! It even removed the glitter without too many issues. These wipes are made with acetone, so it's no wonder.

By the next few fingers, however, the wipe had just dried up too quickly and I really wasn't able to use it any more.

I'll definitely have to try these out again some time when I'm not wearing a bunch of glitter, just to see how these do with just plain nail polish. What do you think of wipes? Have you tried any and found any that work well?

Pokemon Challenge: Bug and a Review

I have a little bit of time to work on my blog today, so I'm going to try to get caught up on some things and schedule these posts in advance. I'm a little behind on the Pokemon Nail Challenge, so today I'm going to show you my bug nails. I also have a review for you with this.

I say I want to show you my bug nails.. but really these are more Pokemon inspired than actual Pokemon. I just wasn't feeling it and just wanted to do something simple.

Here is what inspired this manicure.... Parasect!

Of course, shiny Parasect as well :)

Here's a short description of Parasect: "Like its previous stage, Parasect is an insectoid creature. However, in this stage, the mushroom has completely overtaken the host's body."

For this manicure I used just three Zoyas: Paloma, Arizona and Pippa. It was almost Valentine's Day when I did this manicure, so I decided to do a spin on Parasect's mushroom pattern. I used the Two Heart Nail Printing Mode item number NPM-M043 from KKCenterHK.com for this look. To give the manicure a more "mushroomy" look, I applied one coat of Julep's matte top coat.

The printing modes are $2.67 and you get a set of 11 stickers, which is good because it's enough for all fingers plus one to practice with. These did take some practice. Basically, these are masking stickers. You paint your nails, let them dry. Next, you peel off one sticker from the packaging, roll it on your fingers a few times so the glue doesn't stick to your nail. Next, you place the sticker on your nail, then fill in the design with another polish. The final step is to remove the sticker. Sorry I don't have pictures of the entire process... I'll keep that in mind for next time!

You can see in this next picture my first attempt with this item. As you can see, it doesn't quite look like a heart. I do want to mention that I tried to use the same "mode" on my thumb multiple times so that may be why it messed up a little bit. The instructions said to apply a moderate layer of polish but I found that a somewhat thinner coat worked best.

 I found these to be a little time consuming.. it took about half an hour to do all of my nails, just with the heart design. I was really happy with the final effect however! It was fun and this would be great for anyone who isn't well practised in nail art.

 Sorry the pictures aren't cropped.. I'm using Mike's computer and I'm not used to his operating system. I thought the images were cropped until I imported them here :P

Thanks to KKCenterHK for providing me with the printing mode to try. All opinions stated here are my own. Yours may differ.

Why I vanished

If you hadn't noticed,  I haven't been posting and I haven't been on the social networks much.
As I recently mentioned,  my boyfriend is currently unemployed which means he's on his computer most of the day. Not a problem except now my computer has decided it's not going to cooperate. IE I can't turn it on without getting a blue screen of death.
So unfortunately I'm going to be on break until further notice and I have absolutely no idea how long it will be. Which really sucks because I have so much to blog about,  especially with my blogiversary coming up :(
I do have two product reviews I will somehow find time to post sometime.
Until then, take care and thanks for your continued support.

edit: obviously I've had more computer time than expected since posting this.. so let me rephrase.. I'm not on a break, just posting will be somewhat more sporadic than usual :)

So if I vanish again for a week straight you'll know why :P

Birthday Wishlist

My birthday is next month, so I thought it would be a good time to do a post in regards to some of the things I would like. Since my dad asked :)

OPI Drip Dry Drops

Seche Vite Fast Dry Top Coat

I love gift cards, they're about the best thing ever!
Llarowe

I really can't think of anything else I really want or need. There are always nail polishes I want of course but that changes so often with me :P

Two of my favorite authors, Terry Goodkind and Terry Pratchett, both have books being released this year so I could always use an Amazon gift card :)

Short list.. and these are really just suggestions of course!

Blog update

Short update: I accidentally posted this early, but anyway... if you look at my page menus, I've added pages for Contests and Challenges. I'll work on adding to this as I can. I'm very far behind on my GFC news feed so I'll try to get through them as I can and add on :)

As always, if you have a Contest or Challenge (or giveaway!) you think I should be aware of, just drop me a link in the comments. Hope this new blog feature helps!

Stash Update

Angel and Shawn of Above the Curve created a new polish Facebook group called Hey Mani, Do you lacquer? We've been busing sharing stash pictures so I figured I'd do a short update here as well.

 This is where I keep everything.. all boxed up so I can't see it. Not much room in our small apartment :(

 Here's just about everything! My polishes, some of my nail wheels, nail art tools, etc.

Close up of the majority of my stash!

How do you store your polishes?