ManGlaze Santorum

For today, I have a swatch of ManGlaze Santorum.
Have you heard about ManGlaze? They've been around for a while but have kept their core small line the same for years. Still, they have some of the best matte polishes around! I have about half of their polishes in my collection. All of ManGlaze polishes are matte, and they have some dirty names too. Go ahead and Google Santorum, but be careful! Lol. Also of the polish bottle also have really cool art on the labels too.

Santorum applied really nicely in 2 coats. I did a top coat sandwich as I do when applying all my matte polishes to increase the wear time. A top coat sandwich is when you layer a coat of the matte polish, followed by top coat, followed by the matte polish.

Green March Mani: Day 9

This is a simple mani, but I really love how it turned out!

I started with a base with ManGlaze Nawsome Sauce. Then I stamped on a floral design from Born Pretty Store plate BPL-024. I didn't add top coat to keep the design matte.

Despite no top coat, it lasted surprisingly long!

Monday Mani: Black and White with ManGlaze

This week's Monday Mani theme is Black and White Only. It worked perfectly because I recently received two new ManGlaze polishes in the mail!

I used two coats of Matte is Murder and 3 of Mayonnaise. They both have shimmer, though you can't really see it in Mayo.

Monday Mani: Different Color on Each Nail

In the past, I've mentioned Monday Manis at Polish-Aholics Anonymous on Facebook. Well, they've been coming back!

This week, the voted in theme is to have every nail be a different color. We agreed that it only needed to be each nail on one hand, not all ten digits.

I had a few ideas in mind and had a hard time narrowing it down.

I ended up going with a mani using only (well, mostly) ManGlaze polishes. Starting at the thumb, the colors are Santorum, Fuggen Ugly, Fatty's Got More Blood, Nawsome Sauce, and ILF. The dots are Barry M Gold Foil. 

When I did this mani, I used the matte sandwich technique to help it last longer.

I applied two coats of each matte polish, then one coat of Rica Glossy Glam. Let dry. Then apply one more coat of your matte polish. I wore this mani for only two days, but I only had a tiny chip. That's good wear time for a matte mani and for me as well! I'm super hard on my nails.

And here's a bonus pedi I did.

Mixed Finish Half Moon

Happy Tuesday everyone! Just a quick post today. This momma is pooped! My baby has turned into a spider monkey and is climbing all over the place. I'm worn out.

I will have another post for you on Wednesday and Thursday though with some 4th of July designs.

I'm not a huge fan of half moon manis, but I saw some mixed finish ones and really liked the concept.

I started with a base of OPI Push And Shove and let it dry. Next I use paper reinforcement stickers to mark off the moon and painted on ManGlaze Fatty's Have More Blood. It's a beautiful red shimmery matte polish, though the shimmer is hiding a bit here.

Matte Graveyard

I did some simple graveyard nails using all matte polishes.

Base China Glaze Stone Cold

Gravestone ManGlaze Fuggen Ugly

Trees Sinful Colors Leather Loose

Grass Sinful Colors Rise and Shine

Roses Layla Fire It Up

Details Sinful Colors Cold Leather

31 Day Challenge, Part 2!: Day 12, Stripes

I've had a lot of fun doing this challenge, but sometimes it been a bit rough with a two month old to find time. So I've been trying to figure out quick manis to do for some of the days. I also wanted to have some fun with my matte polishes (which I love!) and so I came up with today's mani.

I started with a base of China Glaze Stone Cold. I used two coats just to make sure of coverage. I love the shimmer in this grey/black polish.

Next, I drew a line down the middle with Zoya Phoebe, a neon blue matte polish. On either side of that line, I used ManGlaze Fuggen Ugly to add two lines. Those are a bit hard to notice since they are grey like Stone Cold.

Finally I finished off the design by adding two horizontal stripes with ManGlaze Santorum. Santorum is a dark brown but reads black here.

The whole design reminds me of plaid. The best part about this mani? Since I used all matte polishes, it took me 5 minutes total. 5 minutes! That includes dry time and clean up (which was very minimal).

Enjoy the close-up where you can see the great shimmer in Stone Cold

Check out some other great stripe manis below.

Top Polishes of 2012

Several bloggers have been doing lists of their favorites polishes/manis/products. It seems the end of the year always brings these best of or countdown lists. Well, I decided to do my own! It was so fun reviewing through my blog posts and seeing the awesome manis I did over the past year.

I've decided to bring my list up into two different posts: one with just my top polishes and another with the top nail art designs I did.

For today, I have my top polishes of 2012. These aren't polishes that necessarily came out this year, just polishes that I collected this year. I tried to narrow it down to 10 but couldn't quite do it. So here they are in no particular order, my top polishes of 2012!

Candeo Colors Sprouse: A perfect blend of black, silver, and white glitter, a hint of blue, and silver microshimmer. It applies beautifully with no need to dig out or place glitter.

Zoya Isla & Dollish Polish It's A Me Mario!: This is a two-fer! Zoya knows how to do red polish, and Isla is no exception! Dollish Polish really hit the scene this year with her amazing polishes, especially her glitters. The Mario collection was super popular, and you can really see why here!

Zoya Phoebe: Phoebe is stunning neon blue matte polish. I'm a sucker for matte polishes, and this neon one makes it super fun.

Dollish Polish Expecto Patronum: I couldn't help putting another Dollish Polish on this list! I love these milky white polish bases with glitter. Expecto Patronum is jam packed with tons of teal/aqua glitter.

Candeo Colors Jellybean: And another Candeo Colors!!! This one is based on the same concept as the milky base with glitter, except it's a milky light yellow with glitter.

OPI Chop-sticking To My Story & Dollish Polish The Koopa King: Here's another two-fer and another Dollish Polish (I told you it was her year!). Part of the reason why I choose this mani is not just for the color but the combination of colors. Both polishes play of each other nicely without one dominating the other.

Enchanted Polish Across the Universe: I don't even know what to say about this polish! Holo, color shifting, and named after a Beatles song, drool!

 Smitten Polish EMERAHGERD CANDY CORMS: I really am obsessed with these milky bases. This time we have another white with candy corn colored glitter.

Nicole by OPI Khloe Had a Lam-Lam: My favorite polish of all time. Hands down. I love green, dark colors, and dusky tones. This polish has it all including a great formula. If only it wasn't that weird Nicole by OPI bottle...

ManGlaze Santorum: I bought this color on the suggestion of a friend, and I'm so glad I did. ManGlaze makes the best matte polishes around. Santorum while being a totally gross name is beautiful dark brown matte polish with tons of micro shimmer. Try this one topcoated. Seriously.

Green flower vines

I really love the way these nails turned out! I was craving some nail art on my nails, but I've been sorta of busy. I just made myself take the time out to do some nail art, and I'm so glad I did!

I started off with 2 coats of Barry M Emerald Green.  It's a metallic medium green.  In the picture, there is a lot of polish on my skin and that's because I tried sponging on the polish after the final coat to even out the streakiness.  It sort of worked, but I ended up with a small dent in my middle finger. No worries! I'll just cover that up later.

Next I added 2 coats of NYX Girls Emerald Forest. It's such a beautiful mixture of mostly emerald micro glitter suspended in a sheer emerald green base. It also looks like a bit of lighter green micro glitter was also used in this polish.

Finally for the nail art I used Rimmel French White Nail Tip Liner for the petals, ManGlaze Santorum for the vines (it's got a great shimmer that appears when topcoated, plus it flowed very nice for the tiny detail of the vines), and China Glaze Trendsetter for the flower centers and dots.

ManGlaze Fuggen Ugly

This is the other ManGlaze polish that I ordered.  The color is called Fuggen Ugly, I so don't think it's ugly at all!

I need two coats to get complete coverage with this polish. I layered 2 coats over my base coat, put on a top coat, and put another layer of polish on top. This topcoat sandwich is the best way to get matte polishes to last longer.

The sun didn't want to come out and play this day, but Fuggen Ugly has some beautiful micro shimmer to it. I meant to show what it looked with topcoat but totally forgot to take pictures! Oh well, it just means I'll need to wear it again soon!

ManGlaze Santorum

I was itching to buy polish the other day, and one of my polish friends suggested ManGlaze. What was even better is that they sell on Amazon and I had some gift certificate credit to use! I ended up getting two. Today for you I have Santorum.  It's a wonderfully easy to apply matte polish with a bit of shimmer to it. It wore longer on me than the OPI Suedes normally do. I can wear those for less than a day before they chip. Santorum wore for 2 days before it started to chip pretty badly. Very exciting!

I adore how this color looks on my skin tone too. My husband says it's ugly, but what does he know?! Lol.