Tag Archives: jelly

Agent Orange

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I have TONS of work to do lately but I really have been itching to do a design. I’ve been painting my nails with just basic shades on the days with no art, but its frustrating because I look down and get ideas, but I just don’t have the time to do them!

Here’s a quick design today that was inspired by our nice weather. Its beautiful out (50F!) and windy, which reminds me of the summer and fruit. That, combined with the amazing squishy sorbet shade “Ya’ll Come Back, Ya Hear?” from the new OPI Texas Collection, I couldn’t resist doing this design.

Its SUPPOSED to be orange slices. :-) I used OPI Ya’ll Come Back, Ya Hear? for the squishy base and OPI Alpine Snow as the pith. Topped off with a coat of Seche Vite.

Good things about this polish: SUPER high shine, even without a top coat. Dries super quickly, and unique texture. Bright colors with high pigmentation and saturation. doesn’t chip or scratch easily. DOESN’T Stain :-D

Bad things about this polish: I use thin coats, and even after 4, there was VNL. I REALLY don’t like VNL so in the future I’ll layer it over a layer of Alpine Snow, but I wanted the full squishy effect so I didn’t do that this time. Also, the texture is SO shiny that its actually pretty hard to paint over. Its like using watercolor paint on plastic- its sort of just streaks over and beads…. yeah, weird. A solution I will try in the future is after the sorbet dries, I’ll add a clear coat of a regular polish if I’m going to paint over it…. its almost rubberized!

In other news, I don’t know if you noticed but my nails are finally longer again! Which means, more frenches and bigger and better designs. Its great to have them back after the gel-tastrophe. And Rafik and I are headed to Atlanta to setup an apartment, find our dream jobs, live happliy ever after, that sort of thing! :-)

Until next time….


Some of the products in this post were sent to me for consideration and review. For further information, please read my disclosure statement.

This is Just A Tribute

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You gotta believe it, and I wish you were there, just a matter of opinion……

Okay, enough Tenacious D Tribute lyrics, they served their purpose! This manicure is a tribute to some (emphasis on some, not all) of my favorite brands. I picked some of my favorite colors (one for each brand) and did the design that appears on the top of their bottle on each respective color. I have so many favorites but these jumped out at me.

Tasteful Tribute

For this manicure, I used one coat of OPI’s Natural Nail Base Coat on each hand. I used three coats of OPI’s Blue Moon Lagoon on the thumb, two coats Essie’s A-List for the index finger,  two coats China Glaze’s Platinum Silver on the middle finger, two coats Orly La Playa on the ring finger, and two coats of Color Club’s Rule Breaker on the pinkie. I used Sally Hansen’s Lavender Cloud for white, Sinful Colors Black on Black for black, and a mix of the two for gray. I topped off with two coats of Seche Vite Top Coat.

I wasn’t going for color coordination here- but rather some of my favorite go-to polishes that would work well with the logos.

I love all of my polishes and I should have done five more on my other hand but I just did this on the right hand as well- I was going to do Sally Hansen, Claires, Nfu Oh, Sinful Colors, and CND but those logos weren’t as easy to duplicate- especially with my non-dominant hand… so we’ll see, maybe another series will be coming soon!!

Christmas In… August?

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I told you before that my mother has some serious crafting talent, and I wasn’t kidding. Now, I had someone put me in the Christmas mood by telling me that they were sending some polishes to me as a gift that I’ve been SERIOUSLY lemming (for all you non-nail folk, that means, pining over, lusting for… or otherwise known as WANTING, BADLY)… just because she wanted them to be appreciated. So, I decided to continue with my Christmas spirit by pulling out one of my favorite ornaments that my mother made (she made more than I can count on two hands, but I have six, all different styles) and do a nail design from it. I’ll feature the other ones another time, but this one is my favorite. It’s on a matte ball, which made for a cool nail art design.

All I Want for Christmas, is Nail polish….

For this manicure, I used one coat of OPI’s Natural Nail Base Coat, two coats of Essie’s A-List, and two coats of China Glaze’s Matte Magic as a base. Then I used OPI’s Golden Rules as the moon freehanded in, Sally Hansen’s Lavender Cloud for the white, Claire’s Kelly Green for the Green, and Claire’s Red Velvet for the bottom red tassel bead.

I just want to say this though, if this looks too busy for your or too time consuming, I LOVED the look after I did the moon and lined it with white dots, it would be a great place to stop if you’re looking for a fall/winter manicure that is out of the ordinary, and I wish I had taken a picture for you.

The Colors:

I just did a mini haul of Claire’s for the lovely lady whose sending me my lemmings, and I picked up Kelly Green for myself- and I’m SO glad I did. I’ve been in desperate need of a forest green creme and it fits the bill as ordered. It was super easy to apply as dots and has dried well, even with no top coat.

Essie’s A-List is a cherry red jelly that would be a wonderful addition to any red-lovers collection. I used two coats and had complete opacity with the matte on top, but before I put the matte on, it made my nails look like stain glass because you could see through my tips so well. I’ll be interested to see if it stains, but I’ve had good luck with my reds and I hope it doesn’t stop here. Also, as an aside; the Milani Neon Fresh Teal I used yesterday stained SO badly, it took me over an hour to remove that manicure. I had to toothpaste the heck out of my nails and I still had staining- it was mostly under the nail where the growth starts out of the quick. But it was worth it.

Here’s my mom’s great ornament and my inspiration:
Is she talented or what? All hand made.