Monday Mani: MOVEMBER

Today's Monday Mani theme is Movember. The idea is to raise awareness for prostate cancer. Movember comes in because mustaches are the symbol and some men (and maybe women!) participate in something call No Shave November. My husband's done it in the past, but he has a full beard so it's not much different.

I received Glam Polish Lisbeth and decided to use this stunner as the base for my Movember mani. I used three coats of Lisbeth to get full coverage and depth. The details are all black acrylic paint.

I recently changed up my nail shape I got a big corner break.

It's not my favorite, but seems to be more "in" than square or squaoval these days.

Monday Mani: Decals using Water Marble Decals

Today's Monday Mani theme is decals. It's such a great theme because they are SOOOO many things you can do.

I decided to go with water marble decals which seem to be popular lately. The idea is that you do your regular water marble.

Instead of dunking your finger in, you let it dry for a long time (I did about an hour I think) and gently lift it out, letting it dry on paper towel.

Then you can cut the decal and apply it to a semi sticky base on your nail.

I see tons of advantages to this: less waste (I used one go for 4 nails), less mess, time saver (I marbled more nap time and finished my nails during nap), and more accurate (you can redo the marble over and over again without redoing your whole nail plus you can cut the exact part you want to use instead of hoping you're dunking right!).

Onto the mani!

I used China Glaze Kalahari Kiss as the base for my thumb, ring, and pinkie. I also used it along with Zoya Pepper and O.P.I. Chop-sticking to My Story for the water marble decal.

The brown glitter is Hits Glitter Forte 389 Brown.

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: Chevrons

Today's Monday Mani theme is chevrons! It was actually a super close race!

I was gone for a family reunion on Sat and wasn't sure how much time I'd have so I did this mani on Friday. To make sure it would last, I actually used a gel base! I did a regular gel mani using Finger Paints Stay True to the Art (white) as the base. Gel manis don't last super long on me, but that last longer than a normal mani so I figured white would be a good base to use with other stuff on top!

After finishing up the gel part, I added the details using Nabi Fushia (yes that's how it's spelled :/) and some nail vinyls. Topped the whole thing off with Rica Glossy Glam which is also how I secured the studs).

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.

Monday Mani: Copy Cat Mani

This week's Monday Mani theme at PAA (Polish-aholics Anonymous) is Copy Cat Manis. For today's theme, we were to copy another blogger's mani and show both of them side by side.

I really really really wanted to use Gosh Holographic Hero which I got in a swap not too long ago. So I searched Google for some nail art using it. I thought about just picking a mani from my Pinterest board, but there's too many! This narrowed it down for me. I ended up recreating this mani from ChitChatNails. And here they are!!!

I'm suffering from breakage issues, so my nails aren't as pretty as hers. This is also my first time doing this form of dotted nail art. Not too bad if I don't say so myself.

As I mentioned earlier, the base coat is Gosh Holographic Hero. I used 2-3 coats for this mani. I didn't use a base coat. Then I put on 1 thin coat of Holographic Hero to lay a foundation. I added 1-2 thick coats on top making sure to sort of float the polish on top of the thin layer to prevent dragging. It worked pretty well that way!

I got some beautiful shots of Holographic Hero in the sun so enjoy the picture spam below!

Monday Mani: Purple Up! For Military Kids

This week's Monday Mani theme at PAA (Polish-aholics Anonymous) is Purple Up! for Military Kids.  This picture explains today's theme quite well.

I did a group order forever ago it seems when Illamasqua was doing a sale on their website so we could get free US shipping. It took a long time, but my polishes finally made it to me a week or two ago.

I got Illamasqua at part of my order and KNEW I had to use it for today's purple mani.

Look at that glow! Illamasqua describes Baptiste as "a deep royal purple" with a "shimmer finish."  I would say it's so much more than that. It has this beautiful inner glow to it that really makes it stand out.  I used two coats for what you see here. I used thin coats so you could probably get away with one thick coat.

On my accent fingers, I used Rimmel Black Satin and one coat of Milani Lavender. Lavender is a super dense glitter with lavender hexes and purple micro glitter. It applies great and really stands out over black.

What is your favorite glitter to layer over black?

Monday Mani: Fishtail/Braided

This week's Monday Mani theme at PAA (Polish-aholics Anonymous) is Fishtail/Braided. (I'll show you the last Pixie Dust later this week as I wanted to show you the Monday Mani on time).

I started with a base of Zoya Storm. I use thinner coats so I needed two here. What you see is the mani without clean-up. That's right! No cleanup! No wonder the Zoya brush was voted the best :)

Many bloggers have reviewed Storm before so I'll be brief. It's a wonderful base scattered holo polish. Simple, chic, and beautiful.

I've seen several different tutorials for the fishtail/braided mani so I didn't need one for this. I chose to do just my ring finger as an accent so Storm could still stand out on the other nails.

I used Barry M Silver Foil (which I normally only use for stamping, but I wanted a super opaque silver to go over Storm) and Zoya Isla. I was able to do just one swipe of Silver Foil since it's nicely opaque. For Isla, I used 2 swipes for the first braid but only did 1 for the second. You can tell that it's not quite dark enough there, but it still looks really nice.

This was my first time doing a fishtail/braided mani, and it was SO easy! I can't believe I haven't done one before. I'll definitely be doing more in the future.

Have you done a fishtail/braided mani before? What color combinations would you like to see me do?

Monday Mani: Easter

This week's Monday Mani theme at PAA (Polish-aholics Anonymous) is Easter. I decided to go super cutesy for today's mani, and I love how it turned out. It was super fast to do too!

On my ring finger I used a base of 2 coats of Sinful Colors Candy Coated. The formula is really nice on this, and the dry time is decent considering it's a pastel.

On my index finger, I used a base of 3 coats of Sinful Colors Unicorn. Since it's a yellow and a pastel, dry time was pretty slow though the formula was decent.

I used 2 coats of Candeo Colors Jellybean on my other fingers. I knew I had to use Jellybean for this mani, because well the name is jellybean! Plus the yellow base matched Unicorn and the purple glitter matched Candy Coated.

I painted on the bunny and the chick shell using Rimmel French White Nail Tip Liner and just the brush from the bottle. The black details on both are done with Wet n Wild Black Creme and a nail art brush.

The chick's beak is Zoya Arizona, and I just used the brush that came with Arizona. The pink details on the bunny are Ulta Encore Pink, and I again just used the bottle brush to add in those.

I topped everything off with top coat after I let it dry for a while (to prevent dragging of the colors), and tada!

I love how this turned out!

Monday Mani: Creative Layering

This week's Monday Mani theme at PAA (Polish-aholics Anonymous) is creative layering. I used 3 layers for this mani, not including base coat or top coat.

I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do going into this, but I ended up with this color blocked mani loosely based on this design by Nails 4 Dummies!

I started with a base coat of Rimmel Grey Matter. I only did one coat because I knew I was going to layer something on top of it.

On top, I layered two coats of KBShimmer Elle. The polish description says: "The circus, full of fun, color, and a wonder for people of all ages. Lions, tigers, and elephants! Elle is our nail polish elephant. A pale grey jelly color, we added several pink glitters, white and grey glitters for a polish that soft and beautiful."

Because it's a jelly, I chose to layer it. You can see some issues on my middle finger. Elle took a bit to dry so I ended up smudging it. But....I just covered it up later on! This mani is great for covering up imperfections!

To do the blocking, I just taped off random sections and painted using Sinful Colors Black on Black and NYC MoMa. Finally I added topcoat to smooth everything out.

Monday Mani: St. Patrick's Day!

Monday Manis are officially back! For those of you who don't know what they are, let me tell you!  Each week at PAA (Polish-aholics Anonymous), we vote on a theme for a mani.  Then on Monday, everyone post their manicures in the album. You can do your mani at any time, but no posting until Monday! It's so cool so see everyone united over polish and to see where our imaginations can take us.

This week's theme was St. Patrick's Day.

For this mani, I used 2 coats of China Glaze Glittering Garland plus 2 coats of Revlon Gold Coin.  Then I used my dotting tools and those two colors to add on a 4 leaf clover plus some dots.

This mani was super shimmery, and I loved it!

This last photo isn't the best, but it really shows off the shimmer in these two polishes.

Monday Mani: Sponging

I loved using Hits Hefesto for the mani in my last post so I decided to incorporate it along with this week's Monday Mani theme: sponging.

For my base, I used 2 coats of OPI Stranger Tides.  Next I sponged on some Nicole by OPI Khloe Had a Lam-Lam, my favorite color of all time. I'm still working on my sponging skills.  I followed it up with 1 coat of Hits Hefesto which made this mani AMAZING!

Onto the pictures!

Monday Mani: Flowers

I know, I know! I haven't done one of these in forever! Well, I'm back to it. Today's theme was flowers, and I decided to incorporate stamping since I haven't done that in while.

For the base, I used two coats of China Glaze Trendsetter. Then I used BM-224 to stamp on the flower image. I know some people are huge fans of Trendsetter, but I love it. With the stamping on it like this, I think it adds at retro 70s look to it that is great.

Monday Mani: Butterflies

Today's Monday Mani theme at Polish-aholics Anonymous is Butterflies. I thought I would go simple with this one and so I decided to stamp.  I did a flower on my pinkie, and it sucked so I didn't do anymore. Even though I haven't stamped in a while, this still turned out pretty good.  The base polish on this is 2 coats of A-England Galahad.  The stamping is Mash Plate 18 with Wet N Wild Black Creme.

Monday Mani: Food!!!

Today's Monday Mani theme at Polish-aholics Anonymous is Food. I was looking through all of my saved pictures at Pinterest for ideas and found that I had a hard time picking just one. So I decided to pick all of them! LOL. Not all at one time though. I loved doing the Green series so I've decided to work on a nail art series about Food, which is another of my passions.

Today I choose to do popcorn nails.

The base is 2 coats of Sally Hansen Whirlwind White. Then I used Zoya Sooki for the red stripes. For the actual popcorn, I dotted on 3 dots in a cluster using Maybelline Sunshine. Then I swirled in some white to add dimension.

Look, I even did my right hand and have a picture for you all! (Please ignore the super short index finger--it broke super low. And the awkward pose--it's hard to take a picture of your right hand with a DSLR.)

Monday Mani: Pets in the Photo

Today is the 2nd day of my Green series in honor of all the greens in my stash and St. Patrick's Day.
This design was inspired by these French army nails at Polish Art Addiction.  To stay on theme, I used only greens (and yes, teal counts as green!).

I also combined this with the Monday Mani theme at Polish-aholics Anonymous: Pets in the Photo.  All pictures were taken with my iPhone because my cat decided to lay on me so I was able to get some cute 

photos!

My base coat is 2 coats of OPI Stranger Tides, a beautiful murky military-esque green.  For the French tip, I used Nicole by OPI Khloe Had a Lam-Lam, a dark teal that is one of my favorites.  The dots were made using OPI Don't Mess with OPI.

I didn't realize until typing up this post that all of my polishes were from OPI! It's just a coincidence.  OPI is by no means my favorite brand, but they do make some great green polishes.

This is my baby, Ari. She's 4 1/2 years old and spoiled rotten.  She loves napping, knocking things off the counter, playing with boxes, and chasing her stuffed puppy.  Her favorite foods are shredded cheese, ice cream, Shamrock shakes, yogurt, tortilla chips, and fried chicken.

I had to include this one just because her face looks so goofy!

Monday Mani: Sun, Moon, Stars

I decided to incorporate my mini-theme of A-England with this week's Monday Mani theme at Polish-aholics Anonymous. I choose A-England Lady of the Lake as my base, although Tristam would have been a most fitting choice.

I love holographics, and A-England sure does make some nice ones. Beautiful application and color. I used 2 coats for this just because I found some spots that were lighter and I wanted to make sure everything was covered up.

It wasn't super sunny the day I took these pictures so you can't see the holo effect as well as I wish.

Then using my Migi nail part pens, I drew on some stars and a moon on my ring finger. I was in a bit of a rush so I don't think it looks as good as it could have. I will definitely revisit this idea in the future.

Monday Mani: Water Marble or Happy Birthday (to our fearless leader)

At Polish-aholics Anonymous this week's Monday Mani theme is Water Marble or Happy Birthday (to our fearless leader Krissi!).  I totally voted for the Happy Birthday theme even though Krissi posted it as a joke. In fact, lots of people voted for it! I've never water marbled before and really wanted to do cupcakes so I decided to go with the theme that I voted for!

I really love the way these turned out. They're super girly which is not really me, but I loved them all the same.

Here's a list of all the polishes I used.
Index, middle, and pinkie fingers: base coat is 2 coats of Disney Villains #40 Urusula, pink dots with Ulta Encore Pink, white dots with Rimmel French White Nail Tip Liner, and silver dots with Wet N Wild Metallica

Ring finger: base coat of 2 coats ELF Light Pink, cupcake liner with Disney Villains #40, pink stripes with Ulta Encore Pink, white frosting with Rimmel French White Nail Tip Liner, sprinkles with Wet N Wild Party of Five.


And believe it or not, all I used was a dotting tool! No brushes here!