OPI Stay the Night

I have nothing to disclose.

Today I am finally showing you one of the hottest trend polishes so far this year, from OPI's Liquid Sand collection.. here is Stay the Night.

I'm a dork so I had to photograph my textured manicure next to our moonscape walls. (NOT my choice in walls! hate renting..) For this manicure I applied two coats of Stay the Night, and 1 coat of Seche Vite on the accents.

I've been very curious about these polishes since they came out. When I first saw the pictures my first reaction was I hated them. Stay the Night was the only polish in the collection which caught my eye and only then it was because I thought it was really pretty with top coat. I knew these were going to be polishes I just had to see in person and try out myself to know for certain if I liked or not.

So what's the verdict?

I really really love Stay the Night matte! In person, I really don't care for it with clear coat (go figure). Probably because it is such a top coat hog - 7 coats on my nail wheel before I was pretty satisfied with it. Sorry, but I'm not wasting that much clear coat on one manicure. Speaking of top coat, one of the concerns I know most of us have had with these polishes is the durability because these polishes are not meant to be used with top coat. My manicure lasted 3 days, which I suppose isn't terrible considering the lack of top coat but that isn't great either. Also, another concern I had was that the texture would be just too much for me, and it really wasn't.. it wasn't as thick or as noticeable as I had thought.. in fact, I think technically some of my glitters might be considered texture polishes if I really wanted to start comparing.

I really love the colors used in Stay the Night, but I have to say that I'm still not convinced I would love these polishes in any other color combination. For me, it's the combination of the red sparkles and the matte black which really make this a beautiful polish. I wish their other Liquid Sand polishes had contrasting colors. Hopefully OPI will continue with this trend and I'm keeping my fingers crossed they make another two color variant.

This is seriously the one polish I wish I would have had during high school. Despite the chipping after just 3 days, I have definitely fallen in love with this one. I'm happy I picked a winner!

I purchased my bottle from Amazon.com for $7.25 after shipping.

(I do apologize for the lack of good high quality pictures.. my camera really hates this polish and just would refuse to take good pictures of it! If you've seen other pictures of it I can tell you, yes, it does really look like that in person.. but better!)

Shany nail art swatches

I have nothing to disclose.

I couldn't resist swatching the Shany nail art polishes real quick, so here's a couple of pictures for you.

 One of the reasons I bought this set was I felt there were a bunch of different colors I don't already have.. there are a few I do have but hey, the only other actual nail art polish I had was black :P I could have sworn there were more purples and oranges in this set but oh well. The only real purple is on the tip of T and you can't really see it that well. The tip of S is actually a dark grey but it looks pretty black in the photos.

Just playing around with this set, I'm pretty happy with it and I'm already dreaming about their other nail art set (I think they only have 2). I think you can see, I could do some pretty awesome gradient nail art with some of these colors! The neons are pretty gorgeous and I really love the glitters.

Not bad for something I got with a gift card aka basically free! :)

Shany haul aka Belated birthday nail haul take 2

I have nothing to disclose.

Apparently this is not my week for purchases. I did receive my polishes as expected today. Let me show you what I got.

I purchased the Shany Magnetic Nail Polish Collection in Heavenly Colors. I haven't tried them out yet so I'm hoping the magnetic effect works well. I know it got some bad reviews so we'll see. I will comment that the colors don't look the same as what's on the box. One of the polishes is supposed to be a reddish color but there definitely aren't any red polishes in my box.

I'm really bummed as well because I opened my package and yes, I'm not crazy about brown polish, but this one was all dried out and when I opened it I discovered the brush had broken off :(

This next purchase I'm really excited about... I've been wanting this set of nail art polishes for about a year now and I finally decided to buy them. The set comes with 24 colors!!

I can't wait to try these out.. I hope they're as fantastic as they look. There's a whole range of different colors as I will show you. Everything from your basic colors to neons, shimmers and glitters.

This set was $25 just two days ago and of course now it's being sold for $20 on Amazon. This just is not my week. Oh well!

I got to babysit my 5 year old niece for a little bit today and we painted her nails. She picked Pure Ice Champagne and of course I had to show off her manicure :)

I have one more polish package on it's way next week!

WalMart, you suck! aka belated birthday nail mail post 1

I have nothing to disclose.

Our last trip to WalMart was a nightmare. Despite getting lots of new pretty things, it was not a fun experience.  I'm really sensitive to the stupid new light bulbs they have in a lot of the stores. At worst, it makes me feel like I'm going to have a seizure, at best it just makes me really disoriented and makes my head hurt (worse than normal.) Anyway, that aside, I'm really sensitive to lights in general, and our specific WalMart store just really messes with my head. I only go there a handful of times a year, and that's enough to make me not want to go there again for another 6 months or so. I absolutely hate it.

The thing is, after our last excursion to WalMart, I still had a balance on my gift card. I didn't want to face having to make another trip to the store and have an awful repeat of that day. I HATE paying for shipping if I can avoid it, but I decided to bite the bullet and buy some things online anyway just so I could avoid the store.

I picked up a couple of new pajama sets, since I donated most of my summer pjs last month. I got this set with no problems whatsoever, except I was happy to discover they were a bit large on me and I probably could have gotten a smaller size.

 The second set I should be receiving tomorrow, and I just looked at their site.. these were on sale for $6 when I purchased them and I just now noticed they charged me $12 which is the price they're selling for now! What the hell, WalMart?? I have contacted WalMart about this, so we'll see what they say.. I'm not expecting to get my money back but let's just say I won't be shopping at WalMart any time soon. Here's the other reason why I won't be buying anything from WalMart.

This is how my nail polish arrived.

 See that little piece of packaging paper? That is THE only thing used as packaging! No bubble wrap, nothing! Thank goodness this didn't break. I think I would have been stomping down to the store at that moment and yelling at someone. This shipped FedEx, which I suppose is a little bit better than USPS but regardless I cannot believe I paid.. oh what was it? $7? for shipping and they didn't even bother protecting my purchase AT ALL.

OK. Now that that's sort of out of my system, here's what I got. Sorry for the wonky photo.

I've been eyeballing Hard Candy Shot of Lemon for awhile and for whatever reason, I did not pick it up when we were actually at the store last time so I got it with this purchase. It's a gorgeous yellow with duo gold/green microglitter.

I've been wanting some new makeup to play with, and I've been wanting to get some of Hard Candy's products for.. oh.. well over a decade so I finally got this little set which is basically a sample set. I got the Bad Girl Next Door set which contains 2 kal-eye-descopes (baked eyeshadow), eyeshadow primer, lash tinsel, take me out linter and ginormous lash mascara. The set isn't exactly what I had in mind, but it will still be fun to play with one of these days.

Here's a quick swatch on my nail wheel.. it doesn't really capture the pretty shine or the duo glitter but it is a pretty decent capture of the base color, I think. This is just 1 coat.

I'm expecting more polishes today (30 of them!) so I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a better experience this time.

Holo Polishes: SH Nail Prisms vs CC Halo Hues

The nail studs were provided as a press sample. That post may be found here and you can find even more pictures of these polishes on that post. All other items were purchased by me.

 Since I recently purchased Color Club Beyond, I thought it would be fun to do a comparison with one of my oldest holos, from the Sally Hansen Nail Prisms. I chose to show off one I haven't used much yet, Ruby Diamond.

Despite being old, Ruby Diamond was really easy to work with. It was really smooth, no real problems. I did have to redo a couple of fingers because well, I'm me, and I'm messy. In short, I bumped and ruined my manicure a few times before I could even apply top coat and a few times again after applying top coat. No fault to the polish itself. One thing this manicure has taught me is that while I love the look of holo polish, it just isn't for me! It allows for zero imperfections because if it isn't flawless the holo effect really highlights every little mistake. That's not a good thing when you're naturally messy like I am.

Beyond was a little bit more difficult to work with. I believe I had trouble getting it smooth. Additionally, I found that it chipped faster than the SH.

I'm a dork so I don't remember exactly how many layers this is, but I do believe it was 2. Ruby Diamond could have been applied with just 1 layer. Beyond, however, is pretty sheer so definitely needed at least 2 layers.

Now let me talk about the holo effect with these. You can tell from the pictures, while Ruby Diamond is very sparkly it doesn't have the true holo effect you can see with Beyond. I was actually disappointed with Beyond though because I discovered it took a lot of light in order to see that holo effect.  Let me show you what it looked like in the light I viewed it in most of my day (one of the downsides to living at night, I guess.)

Actually, there is more rainbow in this picture than what I could typically see throughout my day. In general, it just looked like I was wearing a dark gray, black polish with a little bit of silver shimmer. Disappointing! I had no idea these polishes needed that much light to draw out the holo effect. I mean, I understand they need light, that makes sense, but I didn't realize it would be such a difference. I guess I'll be saving my holo polishes for the future if I'm ever living during the day again.

For comparison, here's another picture where the holo looks pretty dull. This was taken in the early morning, right by my window where the sun was shining in (not directly on my hand.)

So, I just wanted to warn you about the holo effect if like me, you're not really familiar with these polishes. Just be warned, if you live in a cave or you may be a vampire, these polishes may not be for you ;)

All joking aside, these both are really gorgeous polishes in proper lighting. As for Ruby Diamond, if you're really lucky you might be able to find a good bottle somewhere... I looked briefly on Amazon and did find one for sale but the color doesn't look correct to me. Hopefully, like me, you've held on to this precious gem since it was new!

Beyond shouldn't be too difficult to find. I purchased my bottle from Amazon.com for $7.80.

Homemade Deep Dish Pizza

I have nothing to disclose.

I want to sneak in one more post tonight and this one is not polish related, but I want to share it here anyway. Last weekend I made homemade deep dish pizza for the first time and I gotta say, it was delicious.

 Sauce Recipe
6 ounces tomato paste
1 can crushed tomatoes (I think it's like 24 ounces or so, my recipe calls for 20 ounces but I just use the entire can)
1/4 cup water
2 Tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon oregano
1 cloves garlic, crushed
1/2 teaspoon pepper
salt to taste
1 Tablespoon chopped onion and green pepper if desired.

That's the basic recipe. We season it to taste, so I actually use at least double the amount of oregano and probably twice the amount of garlic, onion and green pepper. I mixed all of this in a pot and cooked it on medium low for about 2 hours. Set aside and let cool, then stored it in the fridge to use the next day. The longer this sauce sits, the better it gets. I normally make this and use it the same day on my pizza, but it makes enough for several pizzas so I store the leftovers in the freezer with no problems.

Pizza crust recipe
1 1/4 cup water
2 Tablespoons olive oil
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon sugar

3 - 4 cups flour
garlic powder, to taste
onion powder, to taste

1 tablespoon yeast

I let the yeast rise in half a cup of water, mixed with maybe a teaspoon of white sugar. Then I mix the remaining water and remaining ingredients in a bowl. After ten minutes, I add the yeast to the dough. I knead the dough for about 8 minutes.

For the deep dish pizza I was making two pizzas so I had to make two batches of dough and I ended up with about enough dough left over to make 1 more normal pizza. So I just put the leftover dough in a freezer bag and stored it in the freezer for some other time.  So if you're making just one deep dish pizza, this about the right amount of dough for one pizza depending on the size of your pizza, thickness, etc.

Normally I would let the dough rise for about 30 minutes, punch it down and roll it out, then let it rise for another half an hour, and then apply the toppings. I wanted a thinner crust, so instead I let it rise for 30 minutes, punched it, then started rolling it out. The dough wasn't behaving so it did take longer than expected to roll out. So anyway, here's what I did:

Make the sauce
Make the dough
Cut one batch of dough in half. Cut one half in half again. Take one of the quarter pieces of dough and add it to the larger half piece.
Roll out the large piece of dough until about 16 or 18 inches. This will be large enough for a 10 inch spring form pan.
Carefully set the dough inside the pan, making sure not to leave any air pockets between the pan and the dough. The edges of the dough should be hanging over the top of the pan.
Fill the inside with a layer of sauce.
Fill with toppings.
Take the remaining hunk of dough, roll it out to about 12 inches or so and carefully place it on top.
Pinch the edges of the two layers of dough together to form a crust and trim away any really long ends.
Top with a layer of sauce and a layer of cheese.

I used a mixture of 6 cheese shredded, a mixture of provolone and mozzarella on the inside and on the outside I topped it with shredded parmesan.

I repeated this process for a 9 inch pizza, but of course making the crusts smaller. Hopefully this process makes some sense!

I cooked these in my oven at 425 for 25 minutes, then let them cool for about 15 minutes before removing the side of the pans and cutting. The 9 inch was done just fine in that amount of time.. I really hate dough that isn't cooked all the way through so believe me, this was most definitely cooked well. The 10 inch I didn't realize until I was putting away leftovers that it wasn't quite cooked long enough so I think for the 10 inch I would cook it another 5 minutes next time.

 As I mentioned, I used spring form pans to make these which worked perfectly. I bought a set of three size pans at WalMart for under $10. 

This pizza does require a little bit more work than normal pizza.. in part because I made so much of it (we were expecting company.) I felt it was well worth it though! One piece is enough to fill you up, so we were eating on this for several days! I've read some recipes where others use a different type of dough for their deep dish pizza, but using my regular pizza dough it turned out really well. I want to say the crust ended up more like a bread. I'll definitely be making this again some day. Really good, and really yummy for a special treat and different style of pizza :)

KKCenterHK Review NNAIL-DRN638

This item was provided to me as a press sample. All opinions expressed here are my honest thoughts. Yours may differ.

 Today I have another item from KKCenterHK to review for you. For this manicure, I used Sally Hansen Hardener as a basecoat, Sally Hansen Nail Prisms Ruby Diamond, Color Club Beyond and Seche Vite. I'll talk about those polishes later in another post. For now, I just want to share my experience with working with these nail studs.

For this look, I used the KKCenterHK Nail Studs item number NNAIL-DRN638. These are 8X3 mm, they cost $4.73 but you get approximately 50 pieces.

This was my first time using studs, so I'll tell you how I did it. First I applied all of my polishes, and I let them dry for at least a day. I used Kiss Maximum Speed Nail Glue to glue these on. The studs themselves I had absolutely no problems with. I found the easiest way to glue these on was to dot a little bit of glue on my nails, then just simply lay the stud on the glue. Simple!

I was concerned these might be too thick and they would snag on things, especially my hair. I had no problems with that at all.. if anything, the nails without the studs seemed to snag.  The glue itself was a problem because it did eat some of the paint off of the studs, but not too badly and it was barely noticeable after applying top coat. Speaking of the paint, it started to wear off of the studs after about 3 days. So the wear time isn't fantastic, but it isn't terrible either. It's definitely a great way to dress up a simple manicure.

(You can see a little bit of where the glue ate away the paint on my pointer finger in this picture.)

(again, you can see a little bit of the wear on the pointer and thumb)

Once I figured out how to get the nail glue off properly, these came off really easily. I did want to mention that the acetone ate the black paint off the studs and left behind just a plain silver stud. I'm pretty sure I'll be able to reuse these, which is just awesome and since the paint came off I'll have a completely different look next time! I have a few more ideas for these so I'll definitely be using them again.

 (picture taken BEFORE I figured out how to remove the glue. but see? now I have silver studs to play with!)

I definitely love this item and look forward to using it again. Thanks to KKCenterHK for the opportunity to review this item!

Use code GETFANCY at checkout for a 10% discount.
Offer valid through January 31, 2014

Nail Haul!

I have nothing to disclose.

One of my birthday presents was a WalMart gift card. I've been wanting to go to WalMart for a month now.. due to different sleep schedules, bad weather, etc. we kept having to put it off. Last weekend, Mike was out with his brother in law and they went to WalMart. He came home and told me he stopped by the nail polish section and informed me that he was never taking me to WalMart :(
(I quickly reminded him I had a gift card I HAD to use!)

So we finally made it to WalMart last night, and they had everything on my list except for the Essie Snakeskin polishes and of course that was the one thing I wanted the most. Boo! I did manage to pick out a few things, and I still have a balance on my card so we'll definitely be going back. I got home and realized I somehow picked out very monochromatic colors. Oops. So next time I'll listen to Mike and buy some color instead of just picking out my "I need this!" list.

 I also got this Kiss nail glue to try out. Hopefully it works well. I'll be using it this week!

Here's my little haul.

NYC matte top coat. Yes, I finally got it! So glad I found some place local that sells it, even if I only go to WalMart about 2 or 3 times a year... now I know where to get it!
NYC Starry Silver Glitter
Hard Candy Black Tip Optional
Hard Candy Tinseltown

 Sally Hansen Gem Crush Glitz Gal
Wet n Wild Party of Five Glitters (this one Mike picked out)
Hard Candy Fireworks

Here's a quick swatch of the polishes. Sorry the picture isn't the best :P

I have some other stuff to show you but I'm not awake yet so I'll save it for some other time :) I'm so excited because I finally got the matte top coat, I got my first NYC and Hard Candy polishes and I've been wanting a Gem Crush for awhile! Plus of course, the added bonus that I didn't actually pay a dime for any of this :) (Thanks Mom!!!)

The Polish Jinx posted a link to a Hard Candy coupon awhile ago and I was able to use it (may have to print out another coupon haha.) The coupon doesn't expire until June 30, 2013 so you still have plenty of time to use it. It's $1.00 off any Hard Candy products at WalMart!

Pokemon Nails: Poison!

One of the items used here was provided to me as a press sample. This post also contains affiliate links. Regardless, all comments are my honest opinion. 

I did this manicure on a whim so the colors aren't exactly right. I was getting ready for bed the other day when I realized they were just about the same colors I had planned on using for my poison nails so I just went with it.

For this Pokemon, I actually did 2 Pokemon because I went with Nidoran. I've never understood why they made the female and male as two distinct separate Pokemon. Eh, whatever. Technically.. I did Nidorina because I wasn't feeling inspired by the female Nidoran. :P

 I used Sally Hansen Aquamarine Chrome, SH Royal Purple Chrome, (affiliate link) Zoya Cynthia, SH White Tip, Kiss nail art in black and a generic red polish. I do apologize.. because the polishes are chrome, they were almost impossible to photograph well!

For the right hand, I used Sally Hansen Royal Purple Chrome and Aquamarine Chrome, Julep Gayle (this polish was provided to me as a press sample; affilate link), Sally Hansen White Tip, Kiss nail art black and the generic red again, oh and also Loud! Music polish but you really can't see it here.

Hope you enjoyed my Pokemon nails for this week! I'm not sure when I'll be doing another one. Next is fighting type and I'm stuck on what to do for it :(

Sally Hansen Chromes!

I have nothing to disclose.

Today I have two more of my vintage polishes to show you! I've used these a few times in the past for various manicures but I don't think I've shown you either of these on their own.  So for today, here is two Sally Hansen Chrome polishes, Aquamarine and Royal Purple.

These are two more of the beauties I've held on to since my teenage years. I can't remember exactly when these were released. It's too bad these were discontinued because they are very pretty!

Like the name implies, these are chrome polishes. I decided to do these this week because my sister in law saw my bottles and wanted to know if they really do look like they do in the bottles. They're pretty darn close! Even after all these years, the polishes have held up pretty well. They are a bit thick and lumpy at times. However, I was able to do a manicure with just 1 coat and they dry really quickly. No need for quick dry top coat, seriously! I did top them off with Tip Top Nails Top Coat and then used my OPI quick dry drops just because it is so humid here. Normally though, you could just apply top coat and probably not worry to much about it.

I just have a couple of pictures for today. You'll see more next time with (finally) my next Pokemon manicure!

Looking at the bottles, I just noticed they have the year 2001 on them. So now we know! They're 12 years old. Not my oldest polishes, but definitely not my youngest. Anyway, I also still have the price tag on Aquamarine. I was hoping you'd be able to read it but there was just too much reflection. So I'll read it for you! $3.47! Looking at Amazon, these pretties now go for about $15 including shipping. These would definitely be a great find if you could find them at garage sales, eBay, etc. for cheaper. Still great polishes.

Here's two shots of chromatic effect using 2 light sources.

Now I've never seen them turn that pearl color naturally, but I thought it was neat enough to be worth showing here.

Hope you've enjoyed this post! I'll continue to share my vintage polishes soon :)