Emily de Molly Harmony

Just a super quick post today while the little man is napping because I have a ton I want to get done.

The one polish I managed to snag during the Emily de Molly restock at Llarowe was Harmony. I love gray and I love glitter so of course I had to get this one!

Harmony is a light gray creme polish with white, lavender, teal, and purple glitters plus super super fine holographic glitters.  It's been raining here so my camera didn't want to pick up the fine holographic glitters.

I used 2-3 coats for this mani. The formula was perfect. The first coat was pretty sheer, but it built up really nicely for the other coats.

Emily de Molly Cosmic Forces

I recently got Emily de Molly Cosmic Forces during the last restock at Llarowe. It's currently sold out, but Llarowe should be getting more stock in this month!

I don't always have time to keep up with the new polishes coming out, so I didn't even know about this one until by friend at Constantly Redone showed it to me. Then I had to have it! Luckily I managed to snag a bottle for her too :)

This polish is amazing. I mean it. Cosmic Forces is a dark purple jelly base with tons of different purple holographic glitters and a bit of pink glitter thrown in.  The formula was great and applied smoothly.

This picture isn't the best, but you can see the holographic effect of the small glitters as well as the large dots. Beautiful!

This macro photo really shows off the depth of this jelly polish. You can see the layers of glitter, but the jelly isn't so dense as to cover them. Perfection!

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!

Grab Another Polish from My Stache :)

The title is my attempt at humor and a clue to what today's mani features :)

In case you can't guess, today's mani features moustaches, but it also features Illamasqua Grab.

Illamasqua Grab is a almost neon magenta-pink color. And it's beautiful. I normally don't like pink, but I really like this one. The formula is great too. I used 2 coats on this, but you could possibly get away with one.

On my index finger, I used another sample Jamberry nail shield courtesy of Kelly.

The mustaches are vinyl nail stickers that I got in a swap, but they are similar ones available on Etsy through various sellers. I love these because they sizes get gradually smaller so they look very nicely proportional on all my fingers.

I am so in love with my mani. Like for real. It took 10 minutes to do which is great since my little man has been taking short naps lately (his poor teeth are bothering him).

What do you think of the mustache trend?

Barry M Pomegranate and Jamberry

I recently did a swap with a friend from the UK and received two lovely polishes. The one I'm going to show you today is Barry M Pomegranate from the Gelly Collection.

Pomegranate is lovely! It's thick so I was able to do just one coat (just one!) for this mani! Even though it's thick, the formula is wonderful and it's so easy to apply. I'm no sure why the collection is called Gelly because Pomegranate is definitely a cream.

So silly me decided to look up why it's called Gelly. The Gelly collection is formulated to give the appearance of wearing gel polish with its high shine formula. And they hit the nail on the head. These pictures show it with top coat, but it's just as shiny without. The dry nice was nice on this too though I still used a fast dry top coat (some polishes take forever to dry even with a fast dry top coat).

On my ring finger as an accent is a Jamberry Nail Shield. This one is called Turquoise and White Horizontal Stripe (not very original, I know). I received the shield as part of a free sample from my friend Kelly who is a Jamberry Nails Consultant. Jamberry recently reformulated their shields, and I wanted to try them out!

The directions say to use a hair dryer, but I just peeled off the shield using tweezers and held it in front of the space heater that's on our bathroom counter. So easy. It took me less than a minute to apply this. I like these shields better than Sally Hansen ones because it's easy to remove the wrinkles. Just keep sticking your hand in front of your heat source and smoothing out as needed. Jamberry says this process will also help to create a tight shield and increase wear time.

If you have any questions or want to request your free sample, contact Kelly on her Jamberry Facebook page.

I plan on getting more of these to use for vacations or on my toes (I hear they can last as long as a month on toes!).

Have you used nail shields in the past? What are your favorite brands?

Rainy Love

I decided to add some nail art to Illamasqua Load, but I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do.  I thought about doing some rainy day nails, but I did some last year. The art on last year's design could be improved, but I still wanted to do something more original.  I decided to head over to my Inspiration board on Pinterest. There, I save things that I can use as inspiration for manis.  A lot of the pins are patterns, but I also have some pictures.

I saw this picture and knew it would be perfect! It would great with Load as a background, plus it had the rainy day idea.

Source

I really love the way this turned out! I do wish the shape of the birds was a teeny bit better, but I am my own worst critic!

I think I love the cloud on here the best. I love that little heart on it <3

Colors used were Illamasqua Load for the base, Nina Ultra Pro Ink-ling for the body of the birdies, Zoya Dove for the other grey details, Wet n Wild French White Creme, and OPI Chop-Sticking to My Story for the perfect orange.

Here's a close-up of the birdies and the cloud.

Where do you find inspiration for your manis?

Illamasqua Load

This is another polish that I got as part of my Illamasqua group order. Load has been a major lemming of mine for a while so I'm soooo glad that I got it finally! I ordered a second one as a backup too :)

Load is a pastel creamy yellow-ish white. I love the sort of neutral color it is without being a plain ole white.

I needed 3 coats for this mani, and the dry time was a bit slow which is pretty expected for a pastel/white color. I used Seche Vite on top, and it still took a while to dry for me.

I still love the color of Load, and the Illamasqua formula (very little cleanup needed here!)

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?

Butter London All Hail The Queen

I have a super simple yet pretty mani for you today.  I recently got Butter London All Hail the Queen from a little sale a friend had. It wasn't on my wishlist, but I love holos so I'm not sure why it wasn't!

All Hail the Queen is a super pretty nude (yes, nude!) holo. The holo here is not in-your-face like the Color Clubs are so it makes it perfect to wear to formal/business-related occasions.

It was on with 2 easy coats and dry time was good. I used a base coat which didn't make application difficult and a top coat which didn't dull the holo at all.

I decided to add a small gold metal star stud as an easy accent without covering up All Hail the Queen.  I put a drop of nail glue down, placed my stud on top, and used a dotting tool to push it down until the glue was mostly set.

It is lifted up a bit as you can see in the pictures below, but honestly not enough to bother me. I know it might bother some others though.

What's your favorite easy way to jazz up a mani?

Follow me!

I just mentioned a few days ago that you could follow me via Bloglovin in addition to Google Friend Connect that most of you already follow me through. I've also made a Facebook page so you can follow me there.

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Thanks!!!