Strawberrific Oobleck

The last polish I bought from a sale at LynBDesigns is Oobleck. I bought a bunch of mini polishes Hit Polish since she was having an awesome sale on them (she might still have some on sale, so check her out! Plus her regular prices are great too!!!) and decided to combine one of them (Hit Polish Strawberrific) for a cute and easy mani!

LynBDesigns Oobleck is a minty seafoam green with tons of shimmer. It was pretty thick, but application was still good and dry time was decent.

Hit Polish Strawberrific is loaded with pink, green, and red glitters. On my middle finger, I used one thick coat while I did a thinner one on my pinkie. By doing this, you can change the look of your mani. I prefer the more glitter dense look myself.  Strawberrific went on very nicely and wasn't thick at all despite the tons of glitter in the bottle. I even had a mini bottle and didn't have to dig out any glitters! You can say that about all minis.

Kiwi Flowers

Quintessential Kiwi is another of the polishes that I picked up from a sale at LynBDesigns.

Jenna describes her process for coming up with Quintessential Kiwi: "So, I started with a sheer and creamy spring green base. After that I added fine cut black and brown glitter, small black hexes, a mix of green stain glitters."

I used 3 coats for this mani. On top, I stamped using Konad Black and Mash-08.

Below is Quintessential Kiwi by itself. I forgot to take a photo before stamping so this is of my non-blogging hand. I used 2 coats here and could possibly have used a third for full opacity.

Zoya Kieko and Hit Polish Mr Bubbles

Base color: Zoya Kieko

2 coats of Hit Polish Mr. Bubbles

TARDIS roses

I think I may be allergic to single polish nails! I added some flowers to yesterday's LynBDesigns Time And Relative Dimension In Space.

I love love love these nails! They turned out simple gorgeous and were sooooo easy to do! I've been wanting to do flower designs all over the place, and these pretty pink roses really pop against the dark blue of TARDIS.

To do these nails, I painted on circle-ish shapes using Zoya Shelby. Next I added the highlights using Ulta Encore Pink. Finally I added on the green leaves using Sinful Colors Rise and Shine.  I let it dry for a while and then added top coat to seal everything in.

I couldn't stop staring at my nails the whole time I wore this! I can't wait to play with more rose designs in all the colors!

LynBDesigns TARDIS

Jenna from LynBDesigns makes some beautiful polishes and has some really awesome sales! During one of them, I picked up three of her polishes, and I'll be doing a mini series featuring them.

Today's polish is LynBDesigns Time And Relative Dimension in Space.  It's inspired by the TARDIS from Doctor Who. As I've mentioned before, I'm a pretty recent convert to Doctor Who (I've finished everything except the newest season with Matt Smith plus you know, 40 some years of the old show O.o).  Besides being a nerdy polish, it's also beautiful so I knew I had to have this!!!

Jenna describes this as, "a deep jelly like base that has blue, silver, navy, and dark silver glitters suspended in it."

Application was wonderful at two coats. The polish wasn't too thick or thin, and the glitters placed themselves nicely.  It didn't dry gritty either. These photos are all taken without top coat which is nice too!

Hard Candy Gummy Green

I bought Hard Candy Gummy Green from a blog sale not long ago. It's such a pretty color, but I have had other pretty colors I wanted to use first so I kept putting off this one!

I used two coats of Gummy Green for this mani. I was a bit worried when I put it on originally because the coverage wasn't very good in just one coat as you can see from the picture below. The pinkie finger has two coats, and you can see how nicely it built up and quite quickly!

In the photos, you can see a tiny bit of VNL (visible nail line), but that really wasn't as obvious in person.

I'm super glad I was able to get one of these trendy speckled polishes and at a fraction of the cost!

Black Poppy Skittles

I belong to an awesome nail polish group where we swap polish but also post polish for free (just pay postage!).  Today's feature polish is one that I just paid postage for :)

This is a dark teal polish courtesy of Black Poppy. Black Poppy polish is sold at PacSun. Unfortunately, that's all I found out about this company. This is also no name or number on the polish.  But it's gorgeous!

I used two coats of the dark teal as my base coat. It was wonderfully opaque in one coat though. I needed the second to help cover up brush lines though and even things out.

The dark teal is soooo opaque that it stains though :( It's also watery so it flooded a bit and was hard to control. (Maybe that's why I got it for free).

But I still like it. The color is just too pretty not to! I left the dark teal polish by itself on my middle finger.

On my ring and thumb, I layered a coat of Lynnderella Connect the Dots.  I added a simple stripe on my index using China Glaze Stone Cold and left the matte finish there. On my pinkie, I used Wet n Wild Black Creme to create a gradient effect which looks so great with the dark teal.

I loved how this mani turned out so much that I couldn't stop myself from staring at it! That's especially dangerous while driving ;)

Glittering Garland Mosaic

I've seen quite a few mosaic designs on Pinterest (my favorite place for inspiration!) and put it on my nail art to do list.

I love love love the way this turned out. Unfortunately, it started chipping right away. I'm not sure if it was the base coat (I just changed that so we'll see) or the Seche Vite I used as the top coat (I normally use Sally Hansen or NYC).

I started with 2 coats of China Glaze Glittering Garland.  It's a silver holographic glitter.  I would say it's a bit dense to use as a layering polish, but with 2 coats it works nicely as a base. You can see a teeny bit of my nail peeking through, but that didn't bother me.

Next I used some striping tape to block off some sections.

I used a small brush and filled in the shapes with Wet n Wild Black Creme, Wet n Wild French White Creme, Barry M Pomegranate, and O.P.I. Fly. Then I removed the tape carefully and top coated.

The colors went together very nicely, and I love the little bits of holo glitter peeking out from the mosaic design.  This design was super easy to do too, so I foresee myself doing more in the future!

OPI DS Temptation

I bought O.P.I. DS Temptation a while ago from a friend. I've seen several manis on Pinterest creating chevron/zig zag design over glitter so I decided to do one!

I used 2 coats of DS Temptation on my middle and ring fingers and my thumb. On my index and pinkie, I used two coats of Wet n Wild Black Creme.

To add the chevron design, I just used nail stickers! Super easy! I love the ease of this design plus it's super pretty. Normally, I do my accent nails as my thumb and ring finger, but I enjoyed playing around a bit with this design and switching things up!

Zoya Aurora (and thoughts on Blogging)

Last night I had a nail blogger friend over for dinner, and we got to talking about things. When I first started blogging, it was a way for me to share my nail art ideas and manis that I had done. Blogging was just an afterthought. As I've gone on, I dread writing up blog posts just because I'm not super creative in the writing area.  Nail polish also isn't the only hobby in my life. I also love to bake/cook, coupon, crochet, cross stitch, and read. I've found that I can't do those things as much since blogging takes up so much of my time.

So I've decided to change things up a bit. My blog posts are going to be more photo focused only. I will mention colors/supplies used, but that's it. I also plan on utilizing my Facebook page more. I recently started an Instagram too so follow me there @rubytadpole.  I envision eventually switching to purely my Facebook page and Instagram and not using my blog as much. It'll still give me the ability to share my manis without spamming my personal page.

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Zoya Aurora is part of the Ornate Collection from Holiday 2012....and yet I haven't shown it to you yet! Bad blogger :(

BUT.....I picked a wonderfully sunny day to wear this so you can see the beautiful holographic effect!

Aurora is a purple scattered holographic polish.  The last photo which is taken in the shade is the most color accurate. I used 2 coats for these photos, but probably should have done a third.

Influenster: Mary Kay Box

Recently, I qualified to receive a Mary Kay Box from Influenster (disclosure policy). I'm not a big makeup person, but I still love to use it for special occasions. I've already heard about Mary Kay for forever so I was curious to check out their stuff.

Here's what came in the box. It was all beautifully packaged and came with this great post card describing everything in the box so I didn't have to guess!

I used the brush to put on the eye color and thought it did a great job!

This is the brush on the eyelash primer. I'm still not quite sure what primer does...any help from those who are better at makeup than me?

I loved the way the mascara brush looked. It's very different from most wands I've been before. This definitely proved to be a good thing! My eyelashes were noticeably longer, and there was no clumping! The mascara also dried pretty fast too. That's a big deal for me since I wear glasses and have definitely had mascaras smear on my lenses before when they took FOREVER to dry!

The eyeshadow was a cream kind which is totally new to me (did I mention I'm not a big makeup person? lol!)

The lipstick came in this super slick tube.

It looked sorta bright and totally not my color though. This may be kinda weird to notice, but the lipstick smelled really good! Like a sorta of fruity sweet flowerly smell. I really liked it, and it was nice to have a good scent to something that is so close to my nose when I wear it!

The pink didn't swatch quite as bright on my hand on in the tube and was not as pink on my lips either. I'm not a huge lippie fan, but this will definitely be a nice color to wear. The eyeshadow is going to get tons more use from me though. I love purple shadows because they bring out my dark dark dark (did I mention dark?) brown eyes very nicely. This purple is sort of muted and will great for many occasions too.

It's My Birthday!!!!

Today I'm turning 28 so I needed to do some nail art to celebrate!

I've been really wanting to do this jelly flower sandwich by Olive View Fashion that exploded in popularity all over Reddit and Pinterest. I only have a handful of jelly polishes though. Luckily one of them is OPI Guy Meets Gal-veston. As I mentioned in last year's birthday post, this polish is very fitting to use in my birthday mani because I was born in Galveston, Texas! It read very orange-y in last year's posts, but it's much more pink like it shows in these photos.

After putting on my base coat, I added three coats of Guy Meets Gal-veston. Next, I added two flowers using my dotting tool and Wet N Wild French White Creme. Then another layer of Guy Meets Gal-veston, then two more flowers, then another layer of Guy Meets Gal-veston, then one more flower, then top coat. Phew!

On my index and pinkie fingers, I added on 1.5 coats of Deborah Lippmann Happy Birthday followed by top coat.

Overall the look is super girly and festive and a great non-traditional birthday mani. Perfect for a summer birthday too!!!

Happy 4th of July!!!

Happy 4th of July to everyone! And Happy Independence Day to those of us living in the States!

Our town is celebrating with a parade and fireworks on Saturday so nothing too exciting planned here. I am going to finally put together our grill, and we're going to have chicken and veggie kebabs for dinner, yum!

What are your plans?

For today's mani, I started with a base of Zoya Phoebe. The formula is a bit thin, so I needed 3-4 coats. Fortunately, it's a matte polish so it dried super fast!

On my index and middle fingers, I added Dollish Polish It's A Me Mario! I used two coats and had to dig for the stars.

Enjoy your holiday today!!!!!!

Cookie Monster

As several of you know, I have a little guy at home! Some days he can be quite the handful. He's teething finally(!), but that's making him super crabby. He normally fights his naps big time, but it's been even worse with the teething.

We were headed out of town for 2 days, and I had a ton of stuff to do around the house (as you usually do before leaving on trips). The husband was off to work, and of course little man was a big crank that day! Well, I called in for back up!

My husband's coworker is a good friend of ours and lives just down the street. Her niece was visiting so I had her come on over to play with the little man while I got stuff done. She was great and wore him out!

He ended up eventually taking a nap so I did her nails as a big thank you.  She asked me to do Cookie Monster nails so of course I obliged!

I started with a base of Wet N Wild French White Creme on all the nails. I used two coats.

Next I added Cookie Monster using L'Oreal Notting Hill Blues and Wet N Wild Black Creme for the details.

The cookies were done with Essie Brooch the Subject and Essie Little Brown Dress.

You can't see it very well in this picture, but her pinkies have exclamation marks while her thumbs say, "Yum yum."