Born Pretty Store Water Decals

This item was a gift.

Yay, I finally painted my nails again! Last week I received a gift nail mail of Born Pretty Store water decals item number T115. I decided to go ahead and give these a try while I didn't have any official nail products to review and since I love nail decals so much! :)

I wasn't sure what polish to use as an undercoat for these but looking at BPS's Web site gave me the idea to cut these in half so now I can use them again for another manicure some time. Yay! It also gave me the idea to use Chrome Girl Bedroom Eyes as the base. Bedroom Eyes is a gorgeous metallic shimmer which almost matches the blue of these decals perfectly. The texture is kind of odd, it makes me think of magnetic polish consistency. Its also quite sheer so I had to use 2 coats to get to a nice opacity. I also apparently got a little bit smurfed, which I didn't realize til looking at the pictures today. Oh well!

These decals are super cute and applied really easily. I messed up a couple of the decals because I used either too much top coat or the wrong kind of top coat. I was working on my nails with company over and completely forgot to test these for top coat issues first so my Chrome Girl top coat did melt the first decal a little bit. After that I switched to Fantasy Makers Go With the Glow just for something different. It did matte down the color a little bit but hey now this glows in the dark so that's just awesome!

Here's a closeup so you can see the cuteness.

 Glow, baby, glow!!

Here's one somewhat blurry look at these cute decals in more natural light. These decals are only $2 and if you cut them in half as I did you can do two full manicures (or lots more if you just do accents!)

If you use my coupon code, you can get them for even cheaper of course :)

(image contains an affiliate link)

Dragon: Ten Tales of Fiery Beasts (ebook) Review

Press sample.

I have another e-book review for you today! This one is called Dragon: Ten Tales of Fiery Beasts edited by Rayne Hall, whose own story was one of my favorites in this collection. Here's a brief description of this book, taken from Amazon.com:

"Ten exciting stories - frightening, thoughtful and funny - about dragons by ten authors, edited by Rayne Hall.
The stories selected for this book have different writing styles, from tongue-in-cheek humour to exciting frights, and they present ten different kinds of dragon. Some of these dragons are evil, some are kind, and others just want to be left in peace. But they all are dangerous, and they are formidable foes when their ire is roused.
Leave your disbelief behind and travel with us to lands where dragons roam."

I've loved dragons ever since I was a little kid, and some of my own characters (once I get around to writing about them) are dragons. So needless to say, I was excited to have the chance to read this book. Now that I have, I think I'll have to read more dragon themed fantasy.

I liked this book because it was short but entertaining. Its rated PG13 so it would make a great book for kids. As the description states, this book is full of different stories from authors with varying backgrounds so I really enjoyed the different takes on what exactly they felt a dragon is. Hall's story, the Introvert Dragon, is about an introvert dragon who just wants to live in peace during retirement but her social neighbors have a different idea. It was among my favorites because being an introvert myself I could really relate to this story and I just found the whole thing highly amusing. To Eat a Bard by Larisa Walk was another favorite which sent the sounds of laughter spilling through my home. The writing was a bit clunky, but once I got past that I found it enjoyable. If you ever wondered about the dragon's version of those ancient dragon slaying myths were, well.. this is the story for you. Educating Puff by Jonathan Broughton also stands out in my mind as one of the better stories, and another cause for laughter.

I had read some of the Amazon reviews before reading this book, and one in particular stood out. It claimed this book was mostly advertisement, which had me worried a bit. After reading this book, however, I can appreciate it for what it is. Some of the stories are quite short, only a few pages, which surprised me. Regardless, they accomplish the end goal of telling a story (who ever decided a good story must be hundreds of pages long? not true!) I can see however why that reviewer took issue with this book. The last quarter of the book is information about the authors followed by samples of their other works. Some of the samples are longer than the actual stories in this book. I can understand and appreciate having some information about the authors and minimal amounts of sample work. A quarter of the book in promotional material is overkill.

With that in mind, I did really enjoy this collection of stories and for only 99 cents on Amazon, I do feel its worth the price. I will definitely keep this book in mind when my niece is a little bit older and hopefully she will enjoy these stories as well. I'm currently reading a second anthology edited by Hall, so I hope you will check back for that review.

I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.

Pet spam!

I have nothing to disclose.

I was going to do some Pokemon nail art this week but then I got really busy and just never felt like painting my nails. So unfortunately I've had naked nails all week and have nothing to show you. Tomorrow is my gerbils' 1st birthday, and I haven't posted any pet pictures in awhile so I thought today would be a good chance to spam you with some cuteness :D

Mister Green Nose.
(Its lint from his hammock.)

Being hot and pathetic..

speaking of, it was hot so naturally Pikachu was climbing all over Marvin.

 (Yes, we know you're a little jerk, Pika. Poor Marvin.)


 Happy almost birthday Marvin & Pikachu!!!!

Now, moving on to cuter things, here is Mister Fancy Pants himself, Winslow!

We were dog sitting for a couple of days and Winslow was NOT happy.

This is one of a handful of places Winslow resides 95% of the time. I swear all that cat does is sleep.

"I am much to fancy to waste my time with the likes of you." Or maybe that's his "Leave me alone, I'm sleeping" face. I don't know.

He hates baths, I know that much!

He does like to play. Sometimes.

Well, I guess that's it for today! Seems like I should have more pictures to share with you... some other time, I suppose! Thanks for reading & I'll be back with more manicures soon :)

New technique?

I have nothing to disclose.

Two weeks ago Mike & I were watching an old video about a couple who were restoring old furniture to help them save some money. The woman was painting a piece, and the technique inspired today's manicure post. She painted a layer of gold, let it dry, and then used a streaky white paint on top. I heard this, and immediately thought 'Oh, I have to try this on my nails!' So I'm not sure if its a new technique or not but its different for me in any case.

For this manicure I started with Zoya Ziv, a gold foil. I let it dry a few minutes and then applied a very very thin coat of Sally Hansen White Tip, a plain white creme. You want to use just enough that it covers the nail while at the same time the undercoat shows through. Use those streaks to your advantage!

I really love how this technique looks. In natural light, it came out looking almost a tan color, a color I normally hate. The underlying gold has just enough sparkle to make this a really interesting look. This was so very simple, and the gold adds a bit of elegance while creating a look which looks as though it were inspired by nature.

Unfortunately I don't have any really good pictures of this manicure, the one above is the best. My mom, aunt, and cousins were in state for a visit (YAY!!!) so I was in a big hurry and didn't take enough time to photograph this correctly and most of my pictures turned out blurry (BOO!) I do have a few decent pictures with the flash but honestly I don't like how this looks with the flash. It looks so pretty and awesome in real life so I'm not going to ruin it by showing you those pictures.

I'll definitely try out this technique again sometime and I'm thinking I'll try it out with some other colors. I'm already thinking about a Halloween manicure with this technique possibly?

Please leave a comment and let me know what you think! If this is an already established technique, I'd love to see some other manis.

Now you have something fun to do with all of those streaky polishes you have ;)

Keomi Skincare - Organic All Natural Handmade Soap Review

I received one or more of the products mentioned below for free using Tomoson.com.

Wow, sorry for the lack of posts lately, I've been really not feeling well for the past 2 weeks or so. I hadn't even realized it had been so long since my last post. Boo :(

Anyway, today I have another review for you. Today's post is about Keomi Skincare's organic handmade soap. I was provided with one bar of their Green Tea Goddess soap. Here's a little information about the company:

This is, quite possibly, the finest soap you have ever experienced. As part of the Keomi Skincare Signature Collection these truly superior handmade soaps are the epitome of Luxury! Each Soap is uniquely fragrant and smells amazing!
Our fine soaps are carefully crafted in small batches using the cold-process method to retain the benefits of the living oils. The soap's base is a rich blend of over 10 USDA certified organic vegetable, fruit and seed oils, plus shea and cocoa butters. The complexity of each of the Pure Aromatherapy-grade Essential Oils adds something wonderful and unique to each bar. The result is a superior soap that's healthier for your skin and better for our planet!
Each Keomi Skincare soap is made by hand using only the highest quality ingredients. Each soap is uniquely infused with a variety of Organic Herbs, Dead Sea Clay & Salt, Seaweed and French Green Clay. Our fine soaps are super-fatted and derive their beautiful rich sudsy lather naturally, leaving your skin clean and moisturized, supple and soft and never dried out. The All Natural, Organic ingredients ensure that our soap is gentle enough for people with skin sensitivities.

Here's a close up of the packaging so you can see the ingredients. There's a couple of things I do like about this soap: it is paraban free, made of natural ingredients. I absolutely love that it doesn't have all of the nasty chemicals you find in commercial soaps.

 Here's how the soap actually looks. I did photograph it next to a penny for size comparison, but just remember this is a sample size. The full bar is 4.25 oz. I'm not sure what size this sample was, maybe half that. The sample did last me about a week which is longer than expected.

So.. what did I think of this soap? Well, first of all I could smell it as soon as I got it out of my mailbox, I hadn't even opened the packaging yet. The smell is absolutely overwhelming which is not a good thing for those of us who are prone to migraines (I don't think I'll do any more soap reviews after this experience, I should have thought of that before I applied, oops!) Even as I type this, I have the leftover packaging next to me and it is just too much. I definitely feel like they could use less of the scented oils in this soap.

Scent aside, the other issue I had with this soap was it did melt after just one use. It definitely did not hold together well at all. Also, I do have sensitive skin but my skin did mostly OK with this. I did notice an increase in acne after the first few uses but after that my skin cleared up. It definitely seemed to make my skin softer.

You can purchase Keomi Skincare products on Amazon. At the moment, you can purchase 3 full size bars for $21.97 or 4 full size bars for $29.97. I do have an Amazon promo code for you if you would like to use it: 25P7X5OW

I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.