Pokemon nails return! Fighting type

I have nothing to disclose.

So after 8 months - almost 9 - of Slaking, I finally got back to doing my Pokemon nail art for the nail art challenge! Woohoo! It's my goal to get back to doing these and get all caught up within the next couple of months. I was aiming to start in January so I'm actually ahead, right?? 

(Yes... I'm a dork.. couldn't resist that slaking joke...)

I left off with Fighting type, and although I had an idea for it.. I just, I don't know.. didn't feel like doing it, I guess? It's kind of ironic that I left off with fighting because I've been fighting myself to get back to doing these for so long. Oh well. Anyway... I picked number 67, Machoke!

For this manicure, I started with a base of Sation I'm So Ogre It, 2 coats. Then I used my Shany nail art polishes: 3, 7, 8, 9, and 10.

I don't know why on Earth it took me so long to do this manicure.. I had the idea in my head for so so long.. and it turned out to be so easy. Even if my Machoke does look like a mutated Bulbasaur :P

I took these pictures before applying top coat, just in case I messed up my nails... so of course what did I do? I applied 1 coat of Chrome Girl matte top coat. Then I let it dry a bit, got excited about which Pokemon I'm going to do for the psychic type and started flipping through one of my Pokemon game guidebooks for ideas.

The good part is... this polish looks pretty nice matte. Except for Machoke. He is now Picasso Machoke :P

Here's a brief look at I'm So Ogre It.. just because I don't want to do a separate blog post.

 As I mentioned, this was 2 coats. It applies pretty sheer with 1 coat, so this is definitely a 2 coater. No real problems with application or any of that stuff, and I really like the color. It is just a tad bit more blue than what I thought, but for this manicure that worked perfectly.


I guess that's it for that. I hope you'll check back later to see if I've done any more Pokemon nail art... and hopefully it won't be another 9 months this time :P

Dreamy Lacquer Company: Blaine, Patricia, and Cradle of Lud

I was provided with these samples in exchange for an honest review.

 I have 3 more Dark Tower polishes from Dreamy Lacquer Company to share with you today. These are unreleased polishes.. and honestly, it's been a few years since I've read the Dark Tower books so I actually had to look it up to get the references. I laughed when I did though.. now the polishes make more sense ;)

This trio reminds me a little bit of the Zoya Lovely colors from last year, or at least Blaine does. These colors are perfect for the traditional pastel spring colors and I love the pastel pink and blue theme, perfect for Spring time, when.. to put it gently, love is in the air and new life is being created. I know the blue and pink colors were inspired by the Dark Tower, but it still seems very fitting and perfect for the coming season.

OK, moving on.. first up is Blaine, which is a gorgeous pink metallic shimmer. This one is pretty sheer, but I felt it covered well in 2 coats. Normally I'm not a fan of pastels, but I found with both Blaine and Patricia, that I love both of the colors and I think they work a bit better on me because they are metallic.

I love the frost like finish of both Patricia and Blaine, in addition to being beautiful shades for Spring, I feel these polishes are perfect for Winter as well because of the finish. I'm not sure if you can make it out in the pictures, but Blaine has just a hint of holo shimmer to it. It's really a very pretty polish.

Now here's Patricia for you! (Btw, if you're wondering why the pink has a boy's name, and the blue has a girl's name.. read the books! ;))

This is two coats of Patricia. I think I would prefer this one with 3 coats. I didn't realize how sheer it was with 2 coats until I saw the pictures later. It really doesn't look that sheer in person, but you can see where it didn't quite cover evenly with just 2 coats. This one reminds me of the Bombardier's Eyes concept polish I received by accident.. except this one has just a touch of duochrome to it and of course it's also more opaque. The duochrome effect isn't enough that's it's really obvious on camera, but enough that you can see just a hint of a grayish sheen in real life. Really pretty color.

Last is the glitter, Cradle of Lud. This one has small circular glitter, and larger blue diamond glitter. The colors are just a shade darker than Blaine and Patricia. Normally, I wouldn't use similar colors together, but this one was just screaming at me to use it with these two. I think it turned out nicely, and I actually love how it looks over Blaine. This one I think would look very nice over a white cream (just not on me!) or maybe over a bright or dark purple. Something else to play with at another time :)

I had no issues with any of these polishes. They all three dried quickly. Patricia is a little bit more sheer than I would have liked, but otherwise it's very pretty. As I mentioned, I'm not typically big on pastel colors so I was really surprised by how much I do like these. The colors are gorgeous, the formulas are perfect and I love how well the colors play together.

Dreamy Lacquer polish is available at $8 for a full size bottle at their online store. Minis are also available at $3.25.

You can find Dreamy Lacquer on Facebook, Twitter, and be sure to check out their blog.

My thanks again to the Dreamy Lacquer Company for providing me with these samples.

Merry Christmas!

I have nothing to disclose.

 I got a couple nail related surprises for Christmas so I wanted to show them off :) I also have one very last Christmas manicure to share with you this year... then I'm back to finishing up my Dreamy Lacquer reviews!

First up, my sister bought me the butter London Double Take Ice Duo set which looks amazing. The Daily Varnish reviewed this set, and the swatches look amazing.. Bluecoat looks absolutely gorgeous just from the swatch I did on my wheel and this is one awesome look flakie! I'll definitely have to try out this set before too long.

I asked my mom for some flocking powder, and she got me this Bundle Monster set of 36 colors! It looks like one or more of the containers was a little loose and some of the powder went all over the place inside the packaging.. but that's OK, I have a ton of powder to work with.

On that note... I have so many awesome looking polishes and nail art products that I still haven't tried. So for 2014 I'm setting a goal to get caught up on the Pokemon nail art challenge in January and February, and aside from special occasions such as my birthday.. I'm going on a no-buy! I need to try out so many of the products I have instead of buying more and more stuff :) I hope you guys like nail art, because that means there should be quite a bit of it on my blog next year!

Anyway, here's the last of my Christmas manicures for this year. First, I applied Barielle's Elle's Spell which is a jelly red base with red/gold shifting flakies. This is two coats. I didn't get fantastic pictures of it on my nails, but you can see how pretty this is in the bottle at least :P

 Then I applied Zoya Opal, 1 coat. Opal is a green flakie, so this combination made for a really gorgeous Christmas color themed double flakie!

I topped the accent with one coat of Pop Culture Cosmetics Sleigh Bells, just to add some extra glitter and sparkle and make it even more glittery obnoxiously sparkly.

(Pardon the mess here.. this was a quickie manicure of sorts as I was just getting started with it and company arrived!)

I hope everyone had a nice Christmas and hope I'm not the only one that good spoiled with pretties :) Thanks for reading!

Above the Curve: Oh, the Who-manity!

I purchased this polish.

Last year I purchased Above the Curve's Oh, the Who-manity! as my singular Christmas polish present to myself. I never did get the chance to wear it all by itself so of course I had to this year.

When I bought this, for whatever reason I thought it was just a plain white creme base.. and it's not. So while this polish is gorgeous, I'm still a bit disappointed about that.. I will have to find something similar in a white creme base, I think. Anyway..

This is 3 coats. It's a nice opacity at 3 coats, otherwise it's a bit sheer. This one I did have quite a bit of trouble working with after the first coat. The formula was  a bit thick and hard to work with. I don't think it ever dried correctly either. I used the glue method as a base coat, but even so the polish removed itself from my nails after just a few hours. It started to chip after about 3 hours. Bummer!

I do love how this one looks, it's definitely very festive and very pretty! The shimmer is completely gorgeous! I just wish the quality of the polish were a bit nicer. I think maybe next time I used this (probably in another year..) I'll have to try layering it. See if that helps with the dry time, chipping, etc.

Here's one more look at this pretty polish just for the sake of it. I do love how pretty this is layered over itself!

I'm not sure if I'll get a chance to post again before Christmas, so just in case...

MERRY CHRISTMAS !!!

Review: Dreamy Lacquer Company Bombardier's Eyes

This post contains a press sample. All other polishes I purchased myself. 

UPDATE: It turns out this is not Bombardier's Eyes. I accidentally received a prototype polish, so you get to see the prototype! I will be receiving an actual bottle of Bombardier's Eyes to review as well :)


Many years ago, my boyfriend bought me my first Stephen King books as a present - the first couple Dark Tower novels. I had never read anything by King, I had no idea if I would even like his books or not. Fast forward to today, and I currently have the majority of his works. It turns out that yes, I do love King's novels. I know there are a lot of hard critics of Stephen King - including my boyfriend, ironically, after King completed his Dark Tower series. If you're one of those people.... skip to the pretty nail polish picture! Or if you somehow got here and don't care about nail polish whatsoever, you have my sympathies :)

 (image source: Google)

What does Stephen King have to do with nail polish, you ask? Why Dreamy Lacquer Company created Dark Tower inspired collections, of course! That's one of the really cool things about indie companies.. finding so many common interests among the makers themselves! The ladies at Dreamy Lacquer Company were awesome enough to provide me with SIX polishes to review, so I'll be sharing those with you over the next week or so (I do hope to sneak in another Christmas manicure or two as well though!)

First up is Bombardier's Eyes, which was inspired by the second Dark Tower novel, the Drawing of the Three:

"Faded denim blue polish with a light shimmer finish."
 

 Before I get to the actual review of this polish, along with some swatches. Check out their bottle! I absolutely love the logo, which is actually the reason why I even found their polish in the first place. I just happened to see a picture of their logo on Facebook somewhere and I said "yes, I have to try that polish!" I love the logo. Bonus! They have matching little charms attached to the full size jars as well. I love little touches like these.

When I first tried this polish, I was surprised by how sheer it is. I kind of expected it to be more opaque, just going by the color in the bottle. Now please pardon my ugly nails as I show you how sheer this is.

 

 This is one coat. Already you can see some of the pretty shimmer this polish has and just a hint of the blue. Fortunately, application of this polish was perfect and it dried very quickly. By the time I was done painting both hands, the first hand was dry. So if you want to go for multiple coats with this one, go for it!

At two coats, it has a nice gentle frosty shimmer... almost pearlescent.

Just by itself, I was reminded a bit of butter London's Knackered, only without the holo glitters and duochrome effect. So with that in mind, I decided to make this manicure a bit more festive. I applied one coat of Knackered to all nails except the accents. On the accent nails I applied one more coat of Bombardier's Eyes. After that, I added a touch of Sinful Colors Faceted to the tips. Below, you can see the sparkles from Knackered on the first two fingers, with the third finger being the accent. There really isn't much color difference between the nails.

I was really happy with opaque this is at three layers. I'm not sure I would consider this a faded denim blue, but I can appreciate what they were going for with this color. The shimmer is really pretty, and it's just a nice soft bluish silver color which would honestly be a great shade for this time of year. I can't help but look at this color and think of my own boyfriend's eyes, although his aren't this grey.. but if the gunslinger were to have steely blue eyes, I think this would be the perfect shade.

My thanks to Dreamy Lacquer Company for providing me with this sample for review.

Bombardier's Eyes is available for $8 for a full size bottle at their online store.
You can find Dreamy Lacquer on Facebook, Twitter, and be sure to check out their blog.

Christmas nail art and another KKCenterHk review

I was provided with this item in exchange for an honest review. The polishes used here were gifts or purchased myself.

 Happy Winter everyone!


KKCenterHk provided me with item N.NAIL Sweet Series White 2mm Circle Nail Art Decorations [NNAIL-DRN809] to review this time. These are some white, 2mm circular rhinestones, a first for me to try out. I decided these would be perfect to use in a Christmas manicure. I started with a base of Herome Minsk, 2 coats. My friend Narmai of Piggieluv.com gave me this one.

A perfect green for Christmas, don't you think? This is kind of sheer with 1 coat but looks fine with two. Next, I decided to just try out the rhinestones as accents on my accent nail. I used some red tape to create stripes. Then I filled in the outside areas using one coat of Pop Culture Cosmetics Candy Cane Lane. Then I just applied a light coat of top coat in the middle. The tricky part was picking up the individual rhinestones and getting them in place.. I'm sure this would have been easier with tweezers, but I just had to do things the hard way. I finished by clearing off with one coat of Jior Couture top coat. 

I wasn't feeling quite up to doing all of my nails this way, so I just applied 1 coat of Candy Cane Lane on the remaining nails. I really love how easy the rhinestones were to apply, and they make such a pretty little accent. According to the Web site, you get about 100 pieces of these rhinestones for $4.50. I've never gotten rhinestones before but just looking at eBay.. that is seriously expensive! I had no idea rhinestones usually run so cheap.. I'll have to get some more when I can :)

Here's a close up of the rhinestones.. and yes, candy cane glitter! 

I'm so sad that Christmas is almost here already.. it doesn't seem like I've even done very many Christmas manicures this year :( Oh well, more ideas for next year, I suppose!

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

They're also having a sale right now, check it out!

Thanks again to KKCenterHK for sending me this product for review.

website: http://www.kkcenterhk.com
Blog: http://kkcenterhk.blogspot.com/
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Review: KKCenterHk Red Laser Pattern Nail Foil Transfer

I was provided with this item in exchange for an honest review.

Hello everyone,

This is my second review of one of KKCenterHk's nail foil transfers. First I want to mention in my last review, it turns out I did not use the glue correctly so I gave the glue itself a bad review. My apologies to KKCenterHk. Sometimes these things are simple human error issues, and I will updated my old review to mention this!

So anyway, now that I know how to use the glue and foils as they were properly intended... here's my review of Red Laser Pattern Nail Foil Transfer, item number NNAIL-E01. For this manicures, I used the foil, the glue and Chrome Girl Heartbreaker.

I started with just 1 coat of Heartbreaker, and it applied smoothly, perfectly. Then I did the cleanup and learned the sad truth: this one is a hearbreaker because it stained horribly! Dang it! This one just does not look nice however you cut it because of the staining. Gotta hate that.

So moving on, I applied one coat of the glue on top of this. I recommend doing this one hand at a time. Otherwise you're just going to make a big mess out of one of your hands, like I did. Oops. I gave the glue a few minutes to dry, then I cut out a small piece of the foil and pressed it onto my nail. I used a q-tip to help press down the foil and smooth it out. This worked perfectly and the foil came out really nice. Once I smoothed out the foil, I just gently lifted the remaining pieces off of my nail.

-flash, bright light - and -low light -

 The only thing I still don't like about these foils is that you really can't use top coat with them. I've tried several different top coats, and they all cause some kind of problem. Either slight wrinkling or they completely dull down the holo effect. I did try using my Jior Couture top coat on one of the nails and the result wasn't horrible, but even so it only lasted a few hours before I started to notice some wear.

 I think applying a thin coat of a very sheer polish *might* work. I just haven't tried it enough to find one that works well. So unfortunately these were absolutely gorgeous while they lasted, they just didn't last long. They were nice for about an hour or so and then the glue started showing through and the foil started coming off. They still look pretty from a distance, just not nearly as nice when first applied. Oh well. This is definitely a fun look that's worth trying a few times... if you can find them at a better price, that is. They're fun but I don't think they're worth the almost $7 price tag.

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

They're also having a sale right now, check it out!

Thanks again to KKCenterHK for sending me this product for review.

website: http://www.kkcenterhk.com
Blog: http://kkcenterhk.blogspot.com/
Tumblr: http://kkcenterhk.tumblr.com/
Facebook: KKCenterHK
Google+: 108172894204617826877
Youtube: wwwkkcenterhkcom
Twitter: @kkcenterhkcom
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Gerbil spam!

Hi everyone! I've been really busy the past couple of days, getting ready for Christmas. I am just now sitting down to paint my nails for the first time in a couple of days. So I don't have anything pretty to show you today.. but I do have some more gerbil cuteness!!

Pikachu had something called sore nose for quite a while, and as you can see in this picture, his nose is getting better but he's still missing most of the fur on his poor little nose. Basically, I put some wood in their cage which it turns out he was allergic to. He's feeling much better and is now a very happy and curious little guy :)

On December 30, they will be full grown, assuming the pet store sign was accurate!

OK, back to work and I should have another KKCenterHk review for you tomorrow :)